Samuel Butler

All truth is not to be told at all times.

For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.

God cannot alter the past, but historians can.

The thief. Once committed beyond a certain point he should not worry himself too much about not being a thief any more. Thieving is God’s message to him. Let him try and be a good thief.

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.

People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.

God has no religion.

Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts.

You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.

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

I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up – they have no holidays.

Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.

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.

One who conquers himself is greater than another who conquers a thousand times a thousand on the battlefield.

You’ve got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body’s sermon on how to behave.

I lost my faith in God when I lost my daughter to Cancer, the beast. I begged, I cried, I offered my life for hers, and day by day, I watched that beautiful little Angel slip off. So, excuse me for not taking my seat next to you on Sunday in Church, I feel too cheated to worship.

A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.

In the end, only three things matter: How much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.