Samuel Butler

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.

Christ was only crucified once and for a few hours. Think of the hundreds of thousands whom Christ has been crucifying in a quiet way ever since.

We all like to forgive, and love best not those who offend us least, nor who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.

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.

We are not won by arguments that we can analyze, but by tone and temper; by the manner, which is the man himself.

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

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life … would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right.

The world is its own magic.

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

If you lose money you lose much, If you lose friends you lose more, If you lose faith you lose all.

Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be.

The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people but if we tried to shut up the insane we would run out of building materials.

Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.

I see the player piano as the grandfather of the computer, the ancestor of the entire nightmare we live in, the birth of the binary world where there is no option other than yes or no and where there is no refuge.

We have a lot of anxieties, and one cancels out another very often.

In your Salvation shelter I saw poverty, misery, cold and hunger. You gave them bread and treacle and dreams of heaven. I give from thirty shillings a week to twelve thousand a year. They find their own dreams; but I look after the drainage.