Samuel Butler

The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt.

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.

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

Opinions have vested interests just as men have.

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.

Upon retiring, sleep as if you had entered your last sleep. Upon awakening, leave your bed behind you instantly as if you had cast away a pair of old shoes.

Defeat in itself was part and parcel of the great gambling game of politics. A man who could not accept it and try again was not of the stuff of which leaders are made.

He that outlives a wife whom he has long loved, sees himself disjoined from the only mind that has the same hopes, and fears, and interest; from the only companion with whom he has shared much good and evil; and with whom he could set his mind at liberty, to retrace the past or anticipate the future. The continuity of being is lacerated; the settled course of sentiment and action is stopped; and life stands suspended and motionless.

Do Good with what thou hast, or it will do thee no good.

Branching streams cannot compare to the source.

Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.

Strange, that some of us, with quick alternate vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our persistent self pauses and awaits us.

Men are generally more careful of the breed of their horses and dogs than of their children.

It is a brave thing to have courage to be an individual; it is also, perhaps, a lonely thing. But it is better than not being an individual, which is to be nobody at all.

Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

The nose of the bulldog has been slanted backwards so that he can breathe without letting go.

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’

Let the world burn through you. Throw the prism light, white hot, on paper.

What is read twice is usually remembered more than what is once written.