Samuel Butler

You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.

Birth and death are so closely related that one could not destroy either without destroying the other at the same time. It is extinction that makes creation possible.

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

Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.

Opinions have vested interests just as men have.

I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock and roll or Christianity.

In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.

To follow the path, look to the master, follow the master, walk with the master, see through the master, become the master.

Thou shalt not commit adultry is a command which makes no distinction between the following persons. They are all required to obey it: children at birth. Children in the cradle. School children. Youths and maidens. Fresh adults. Older ones. Men and women of 40. Of 50. Of 60. Of 70. Of 80. Of 100. The command does not distribute its burden equally, and cannot. It is not hard upon the three sets of children.

Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.

A man who is good enough to go to heaven is not good enough to be a clergyman.

Abandon yesterday, tomorrow and today. Cross over to the farthest shore beyond life and death.

As a bee gathering nectar does not harm or disturb the color & fragrance of the flower; so do the wise move through the world.

You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?

In order to fulfill yourself, you have to forget yourself. In order to find yourself, you have to lose yourself.

The ordinary mind is the way.

It is easy to believe we are each waves and forget we are also the ocean.

Be kind to all creatures; this is the true religion.

A mind committed to compassion is like an overflowing reservoir – a constant source of energy, determination and kindness.