Samuel Butler

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.

Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.

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.

He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us.

Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.

He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.

Haste makes Work which Caution prevents.

Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it.

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

Love and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation.

The English never draw a line without blurring it.

In charity there is no excess.

The Pause; that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, however so felicitous, could accomplish it.

Tragedy was foresworn, in ritual denial of the ripe knowledge that we are drawing away from one another, that we share only one thing, share the fear of belonging to another, or to others, or to God; love or money, tender equated in advertising and the world, where only money is currency, and under dead trees and brittle ornaments prehensile hands exchange forgeries of what the heart dare not surrender.

We should always have three friends in our lives-one who walks ahead who we look up to and follow; one who walks beside us, who is with us every step of our journey; and then, one who we reach back for and bring along after we’ve cleared the way.

There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.

Language is the archives of history.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree. We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Oftentimes, it’s the way we react to change that is the thing that determines the overall experience.

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.