Samuel Butler

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.

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

The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.

When the water of a place is bad it is safest to drink none that has not been filtered through either the berry of a grape, or else a tub of malt. These are the most reliable filters yet invented.

Because they did not see merit where they should have seen it, people, to express their regret, will go and leave a lot of money to the very people who will be the first to throw stones at the next person who has anything to say and finds a difficulty in getting a hearing.

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.

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.

The reward of one’s duty is the power to fulfill another.

Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

If you are good, life is good.

Kindness, love, strength and determination personified!! Madiba reminds me that everything is possible!

Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.

We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.

Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.

I have never accepted what many people have kindly said-namely that I inspired the nation. Their will was resolute and remorseless, and as it proved, unconquerable. It fell to me to express it.

Don’t be a hard rock when you really are a gem!

October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.

In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the moralities.

Don’t think of yourself as indispensable or infallible. As Charles De Gaulle said, the cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.

Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity, and beauty as conspicuously as the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness, and ugliness.