Samuel Butler

Compound for sins they are inclined to by damning those they have no mind to.

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.

If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.

Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.

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.

A skilful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war.

Valor consists in the power of self recovery.

Justice delayed is justice denied.

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.

There is in the act of preparing, the moment you start caring.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

Be not the slave of your own past – plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.

The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

We cannot see things that stare us in the face until the hour comes that the mind is ripened.

You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.

A man’s wife has more power over him than the state has.

There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.

Laws control the lesser man… Right conduct controls the greater one.

The newspaper that obstructs the law on a trivial pretext, for money’s sake, is a dangerous enemy to the public weal.That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.

Health is the condition of wisdom, and the sign is cheerfulness – an open and noble temper.

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.