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Erewhon

Erewhon

by Samuel Butler

First published 1919 · 240 pages · about 4 hours to read

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About this book

Samuel Butler's Erewhon, or Over the Range was published anonymously 1872. In this satire of Victorian society, the main character Higgs discovers an unknown country, the seeming utopia called Erewhon, Nowhere backwards with the "h" and "w" transposed. The starting chapters detailing the discovery of Erewhon were based on Butler's experiences in New Zealand as a young man. Butler was possibly the first to write about the idea that machines might one day develop consciousness through the process of Darwinian Selection.

Quotes

  • “It was a monotonous life, but it was very healthy and one does not much mind anything when one is well. The country was the grandest that can be imagined.”
    Chapter I. waste lands
  • “Exploring is delightful to look forward to and back upon, but it is not comfortable at the time, unless it be of such an easy nature as not to deserve the name.”
    Chapter IV. the saddle
  • “It stands to reason that he who would cure a moral ailment must be practically acquainted with it in all its bearings.”
    Chapter X. current opinions
  • “There is no way of making an aged art young again; it must be born anew and grow up from infancy as a new thing, working out its own salvation from effort to effort in all fear and trembling.”
    Chapter XII. malcontents
  • “Should the child unhappily die, a coroner’s inquest is inevitable, but in order to avoid disgracing a family which may have been hitherto respected, it is almost invariably found that the child was over seventy-five years old, and died from the decay of nature.”
    Chapter XII. malcontents

Passages chosen with AI from the book's public-domain text on Project Gutenberg.

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