Samuel Butler

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

I went to the Bach Choir concert and heard Mozart’s Requiem. I did not rise warmly to it. Then I heard an extract from Parsifal which I disliked very much. If Bach wriggles, Wagner writhes…

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

Christ: I dislike him very much. Still, I can stand him. What I cannot stand is the wretched band of people whose profession is to hoodwink us about him.

In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved.

The money men make lives after them.

Fear follows crime and is its punishment.

For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.

If you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes.

A graceful and pleasing figure is a perpetual letter of recommendation.

I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.

My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession.

Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.

We are free to yield to truth.

Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.

Riding a horse is not a gentle hobby, to be picked up and laid down like a game of solitaire. It is a grand passion. It seizes a person whole and once it has done so, he/she will have to accept that his life will be radically changed.

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.

Don’t call a woman a bitch. Call her an ass-hole. It still gets your point across and it’s not sexist.

I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.

People who can’t be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.