Samuel Butler

A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.

People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.

Every man’s work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

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.

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.

The luster of diamonds is invigorated by the interposition of darker bodies; the lights of a picture are created by the shades; the highest pleasure which nature has indulged to sensitive perception is that of rest after fatigue.

We all have our challenges, issues, things that we’re working through and insecurity is there because nobody is perfect no matter who you are. It’s that imperfection that makes you so dope.

That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another s. We see so much only as we possess.

If a man will kick a fact out of the window, when he comes back he finds it again in the chimney corner.

I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.

The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts.

The more I see the less I know for sure.

For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocency, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil: for without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced.

The trees are about to show us how lovely it is to let things go.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

If you want the time to pass quickly, just give your note for 90 days.

What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men’s minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were framed upon.

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

I’ll tell you why yes, because why people lie is, because when people stop lying you know they’ve stopped caring.