Samuel Butler

You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.

Logic is like the sword – those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.

Every one is a genius, more or less. No one is so physically sound that no part of him will be even a little unsound, and no one is so diseased but that some part of him will be healthy — so no man is so mentally and morally sound, but that he will be in part both mad and wicked; and no man is so mad and wicked but he will be sensible and honourable in part. In like manner there is no genius who is not also a fool, and no fool who is not also a genius.

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

Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderated use rather than total abstinence.

To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.

It is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us.

Life is tough, my darling, but so are you.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

What drives me to be who I am, to do all that I do, is not what words will be engraved for my epitaph. What drives me to be who I am, to do what I do, is not vanity, is not for adulation in the eyes of others. What drives me is my own desire to be better; to be happy. When I am dead and buried, the words above will not bring me back to life, I choose to live out my epitaph, and not just for it to be a collection of words someone has chosen to define me.

We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us.

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.

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.

If women were as fastidious as men, morally or physically, there would be an end of the race.

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

The walking of Man is falling forwards.

I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises that the organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity.