Samuel Butler:
(4 December 1835 – 18 June 1902).
English novelist and critic, best known for the satirical utopian novel Erewhon (1872) and the semi-autobiographical novel The Way of All Flesh (published posthumously in 1903 with substantial revisions and published in its original form in 1964 as Ernest Pontifex or The Way of All Flesh). Both novels have remained in print since their initial publication.
Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.
Literally, autumn has fewer flowers than spring or summer, but it compensates with ripe fruit and the harvest.
Metaphorically, it suggests that ‘maturity and later life may lose some youthful beauty, freshness, or excitement, yet gain greater substance, wisdom, achievement, and fulfilment’. Here, “mellower” means richer, gentler, and more mature.
✍️ Author and origin:
The sentence is attributed to Samuel Butler (1835–1902), the English novelist and essayist best known for “Erewhon” and “The Way of All Flesh”—not the earlier Samuel Butler (1612–1680), author of “Hudibras”.
It appears in:
– “The Note-Books of Samuel Butler”
– Selected and edited by “Henry Festing Jones”
– Published posthumously in 1912
Thus, the attribution to Samuel Butler is well founded, although the collection was assembled from his private notebooks after his death, ‘so the exact date on which he originally wrote the sentence is uncertain’.
