Samuel Butler

Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.

A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.

All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

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

A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.

Such as take lodgings in a head that’s to be let unfurnished.

A jay hasnt got any more principle than a Congressman. A jay will lie, a jay will steal, a jay will deceive, a jay will betray; and four times out of five, a jay will go back on his solemnest promise.

Youth is wasted on the young.

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.

We bust build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.

Gazing to the south, from the eastern peak, the moon appears through the raindrops.

Virtue is too often merely local.

Froth at the top, dregs at bottom, but the middle excellent.

It was his peculiar happiness that he scarcely ever found a stranger whom he did not leave a friend; but it must likewise be added, that he had not often a friend long without obliging him to become a stranger.

If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire.

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

Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it!

Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.

Patience makes lighter What sorrow may not heal.

I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.

Use every distraction as an object of meditation and they cease to be distractions.