Samuel Butler

A hen is only a egg’s way of making another egg.

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.

If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him.

Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.

The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and lichens and for the most part inaccessible and going to waste; the knowledge of the man of science is like timber collected in yards for public works, which still supports a green sprout here and there, but even this is liable to dry rot.

I mean why should somebody go steal and break the law to get all they can when there’s always some law where you can be legal and get it all anyway!

Morality is suspecting other people of not being legally married.

O imitators, you slavish herd!

Let us try what love will do.

If you do not take control over your time and your life, other people will gobble it up. If you don’t prioritize yourself, you constantly start falling lower and lower on your list.

Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.

Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.

It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

If you protect a man from folly, you will soon have a nation of fools.

Sir Joshua would have been glad to take her portrait; and he would have had an easier task than the historian at least in this, that he would not have had to represent the truth of change –only to give stability to one beautiful moment.

Love is only one of many passions.

Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.

On with dance, let joy be unconfined, is my motto; whether there’s any dance to dance or any joy to unconfined.