Samuel Butler

People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.

When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.

Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

Because they did not see merit where they should have seen it, people, to express their regret, will go and leave a lot of money to the very people who will be the first to throw stones at the next person who has anything to say and finds a difficulty in getting a hearing.

A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.

Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.

We estimate the wisdom of nations by seeing what they did with their surplus capital.

Damn the subjunctive. It brings all our writers to shame.

The poets aim is either to profit or to please, or to blend in one the delightful and the useful. Whatever the lesson you would convey, be brief, that your hearers may catch quickly what is said and faithfully retain it. Every superfluous word is spilled from the too-full memory.

Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.

With all the doubt, with every worry, with all the negativity that I mistook for honesty, it kept me blinded. Lying for so long, I fooled myself in believing it to be my reality. And living in that world, it was my reality. Like when the lights come on, or when the curtains are drawn back, the shock of the clarity, meant I had to adjust to the new world I was witnessing. An honest; good with the bad, world, that I can thrive and grow in.

He who has made it a practice to lie and deceive his father, will be the most daring in deceiving others.

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable.

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

How real is any of the past, being every moment revalued to make the present possible.

Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off.