Samuel Butler

Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.

People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.

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

It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.

A man’s friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage – but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.

We, unaccustomed to courage exiles from delight live coiled in shells of loneliness until love leaves its high holy temple and comes into our sight to liberate us into life. Love arrives and in its train come ecstasies old memories of pleasure ancient histories of pain. Yet if we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls. We are weaned from our timidity In the flush of love’s light we dare be brave And suddenly we see that love costs all we are and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.

Important encounters are planned by the souls long before the bodies see each other.

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or ever inventors.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

Short words are the best and old words when short are best of all.

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.

A man’s house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By and by, as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing. And when he casts about for it he finds that it was in that house. Always it is an essential – there was but one of its kind. It cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost. It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster.

The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.

Responsibility is the price of greatness.

God screens us evermore from premature ideas.

Extended empires are like expanded gold, exchanging solid strength for feeble splendor.

Our tastes greatly alter. The lad does not care for the child’s rattle, and the old man does not care for the young man’s whore.

Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.