Samuel Butler

Priests are not men of the world; it is not intended that they should be; and a University training is the one best adapted to prevent their becoming so.

A physician’s physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric’s divinity has to his power of influencing conduct.

Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism.

The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.

I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.

If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.

It the proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.

Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.

One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. They prefer suffering that is familiar to the unknown.

The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed.

In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.

Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg by the side of which more will be laid.

A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages.

Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.

We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.

Fortitude is the marshal of thought, the armor of the will, and the fort of reason.

They teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master.

Responsibility is the price of greatness.

This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put.

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.