# Quote — Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh

> A man can stand being told that he must submit to a severe surgical operation, or that he has some disease which will shortly kill him, or that he will be a cripple or blind for the rest of his life; dreadful as such tidings must be, we do not find that they unnerve the greatest number of mankind; most men, indeed, go coolly enough even to be hanged, but the strongest quail before financial ruin, and the better men they are, the more complete, as a general rule, is their prostration.

- Author: [Samuel Butler](https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-butler.md)
- Book: [The Way of All Flesh](https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-butler/the-way-of-all-flesh.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Samuel_Butler_(novelist)#The_Way_of_All_Flesh_(1903)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-butler/the-way-of-all-flesh/a-man-can

## More from this book

> A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage—but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-butler/the-way-of-all-flesh/a-mans-friendships.md)

> Taking numbers into account, I should think more mental suffering had been undergone in the streets leading from St George's, Hanover Square, than in the condemned cells of Newgate.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-butler/the-way-of-all-flesh/taking-numbers-into.md)

> Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-butler/the-way-of-all-flesh/every-mans-work.md)