Samuel Butler

Silence is not always tact, but it is tact that is golden, not silence.

A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.

A blind man knows he cannot see, and is glad to be led, though it be by a dog; but he that is blind in his understanding, which is the worst blindness of all, believes he sees as the best, and scorns a guide.

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

When the righteous man truth away from his righteousness that he hath committed and doeth that which is neither quite lawful nor quite right, he will generally be found to have gained in amiability what he has lost in holiness.

A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.

There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?

A man who has no office to go to – I don’t care who he is – is a trial of which you can have no conception.

The philosopher is Nature’s pilot. And there you have our difference: to be n hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.

Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o clock is a scoundrel.

Do what you love. Know you own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

A good scare is worth more than good advice.

Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.

The future is purchased by the present.

Civilisation will not last, freedom will not survive, peace will not be kept, unless a very large majority of mankind unite together to defend them and show themselves possessed of a constabulary power before which barbaric and atavistic forces will stand in awe.

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

What could we accomplish if we knew we could not fail?

Who shall set a limit to the influence of a human being?

What if… everything you are going through is preparing you for what you asked for?