Samuel Butler

Silence is not always tact, but it is tact that is golden, not silence.

Eating is touch carried to the bitter end.

The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.

Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.

He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.

It is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us.

I shall strike the stars with my unlifted head.

To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy.

The receipts of cookery are swelled to a volume; but a good stomach excels them all.

A wise neuter joins with neither, but uses both as his honest interest leads him.

Today, you can decide to walk in freedom. You can choose to walk differently. You can walk as a free person, enjoying every step.

Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.

We must not inquire too curiously into motives… They are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.

The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.

Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.

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

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

The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six years.

As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.

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.

Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.