Samuel Butler

The voice of the Lord is the voice of common sense, which is shared by all that is.

Heaven is the work of the best and kindest men and women. Hell is the work of prigs, pedants and professional truth-tellers. The world is an attempt to make the best of Heaven and Hell.

Loyalty is still the same, whether it win or lose the game; true as a dial to the sun, although it be not shined upon.

I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.

The thief. Once committed beyond a certain point he should not worry himself too much about not being a thief any more. Thieving is God’s message to him. Let him try and be a good thief.

The want of money is the root of all evil.

A wise man makes what he learns his own, the other shows he is but a copy or a collection at most.

No question is so difficult to answer as that which the answer is obvious.

I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

You are perfect. An exquisitely fine work of art, labor of love, suspended in silence. Bejeweled, trembling, kissed by a breeze, mesmerized by your beauty. You await in silence, beckoning me to a silken-wrapped slumber.

Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.

Syllables govern the world.

People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.

The disgrace of others often keeps tender minds from vice.

The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder – in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.

There is not human being from whom we cannot learn something if we are interested enough to dig deep.

Surrender is faith that the power of love can accomplish anything… even when you can not foresee the outcome.

A genius can never expect to have a good time anywhere, if he is a genuine article, but America is about the last place in which life will be endurable at all for an inspired writer of any kind.

Every mind has a choice between truth and repose. Take which you please you can never have both.

Give a man health and a course to steer, and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not.

The thief. Once committed beyond a certain point he should not worry himself too much about not being a thief any more. Thieving is God’s message to him. Let him try and be a good thief.