Samuel Butler

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

If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him.

Rare virtues are like rare plants or animals, things that have not been able to hold their own in the world. A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal.

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.

Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.

Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.

Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.

The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.

God screens us evermore from premature ideas.

No crime is so great as daring to excel.

The good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws himself on your part so heartily, that he can get you out of a scrape.

Often the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.

Every man’s work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship.

Don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he wanted. He lived happily ever after.

Nothing does reason more right, than the coolness of those that offer it: For Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders, than from the arguments of its opposers.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

The fickleness of the women I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

Humility like the darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.