Samuel Butler

When the righteous man truth away from his righteousness that he hath committed and doeth that which is neither quite lawful nor quite right, he will generally be found to have gained in amiability what he has lost in holiness.

There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.

A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.

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

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

If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.

The walking of Man is falling forwards.

Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age.

It is not where you start but how high you aim that matters for success.

The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.

Real practice has no purpose or direction, so it can include everything that comes.

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.

In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice.

The painters could be identified by dirty fingernails; the writers by conversation in labored monosyllables and aggressive vulgarities which disguised their minds.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.

Dear to us are those who love us… but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy, for they add another life; they build a heaven before us whereof we had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new powers out of the recesses of the spirit, and urge us to new and unattempted performances.

Conversation enriches the understanding; but solitude is the school of genius.

The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.

Stop listening to the bombastic loudmouths on the radio and television and the Internet. To hell with them. They don’t want anything done for the public good. Our incapacity is their livelihood