Samuel Butler

There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.

All truth is not to be told at all times.

Life is not an exact science, it is an art.

Everyone should keep a mental wastepaper basket, and the older he grows, the more things will he promptly consign to it.

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

Every one is a genius, more or less. No one is so physically sound that no part of him will be even a little unsound, and no one is so diseased but that some part of him will be healthy — so no man is so mentally and morally sound, but that he will be in part both mad and wicked; and no man is so mad and wicked but he will be sensible and honourable in part. In like manner there is no genius who is not also a fool, and no fool who is not also a genius.

Zen mind is not Zen mind. Throwing away Zen mind is correct Zen mind.

I prayed for your peace even if you started this whole war in me.

All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.

Do not worship me, I am not God. I’m only a man. I worship Jesus Christ.

An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.

Heaven and earth and I are of the same root, The ten-thousand things and I are of one substance.

If something is easy for you, work on it a little. If it’s hard for you, work on it a lot.

I was kosher until I had my Bar Mitzvah, and I parlayed officially becoming a man into telling my father I wanted to eat cheeseburgers.

To give pleasure to a single heart by a single kind act is better than a thousand head-bowings in prayer.

All that we are is the result of what we have thought.

It was the schoolboy who said, Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.

I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

There are three books my daughter felt were the most important influences in her life: the Bible, her mother’s cookbook, and her father’s checkbook.

The Christian’s Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.