Samuel Butler

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.

The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.

There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.

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.

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.

I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry.

O imitators, you slavish herd!

Many a man’s strength is in opposition, and when he faileth, he grows out of use.

In the word of no master am I bound to believe.

The poets aim is either to profit or to please, or to blend in one the delightful and the useful. Whatever the lesson you would convey, be brief, that your hearers may catch quickly what is said and faithfully retain it. Every superfluous word is spilled from the too-full memory.

I do not like work even when someone else does it.

As to the rout that is made about people who are ruined by extravagance, it is no matter to the nation that some individuals suffer. When so much general productive exertion is the consequence of luxury, the nation does not care though there are debtors; nay, they would not care though their creditors were there too.

Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.

Even the youngest of us may be wrong sometimes.

The disgrace of others often keeps tender minds from vice.

Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.

In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.

Tis a superstition to insist on a special diet. All is made at last of the same chemical atoms.

Believing that I was born for the service of mankind, and regarding the care of the commonwealth as a kind of common property which, like the air and the water, belongs to everybody, I set myself to consider in what way mankind might be best served, and what service I was myself best fitted by nature to perform.

Who shall set a limit to the influence of a human being?

Any so-called material thing that you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for itself, but because it will content your spirit for the moment.