Samuel Butler

Eating is touch carried to the bitter end.

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderated use rather than total abstinence.

The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.

Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

A hen is only a egg’s way of making another egg.

Don’t try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.

I have lived with several Zen masters – all of them cats.

Men know that women are an over-match for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.

We cannot well do without our sins; they are the highway of our virtue.

A short letter to a distant friend is, in my opinion, an insult like that of a slight bow or cursory salutation — a proof of unwillingness to do much, even where there is a necessity of doing something.

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.

I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep.

Turn on the prudent ant thy heedful eyes. Observe her labors, sluggard, and be wise.

The doctor learns that if he gets ahead of the superstitions of his patients he is a ruined man; and the result is that he instinctively takes care not to get ahead of them.

Some men are born to own, and can animate all their possessions. Others cannot: their owning is not graceful; seems to be a compromise of their character: they seem to steal their own dividends.

One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.

He gains everyone’s approval who mixes the pleasant with the useful.

If he really thinks there is no distinction between vice and virtue, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

You show your worth by what you seek! – Rumi