Samuel Butler

Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.

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

The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.

Union may be strength, but it is mere blind brute strength unless wisely directed.

If there is any moral in Christianity, if there is anything to be learned from it, if the whole story is not profitless from first to last, it comes to this: that a man should back his own opinion against the world s.

He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us.

He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist.

If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire.

Do what you know and perception is converted into character.

Wealth is in applications of mind to nature; and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right spot.

I would rather have my ignorance than another man’s knowledge, because I have so much of it.

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

If matters go badly now, they will not always be so.

Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.

Every great achievement is the victory of a flaming heart.

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.

Haven’t you learned yet that I put something more than whisky into my speeches.

Blame is safer than praise.

The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.