Samuel Butler

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us.

Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.

Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.

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

Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.

Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim; and when you are calculating, calculate.

Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.

My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered but a general effect of pleasing impression.

It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgment.

It is nobler to be good, and it is nobler to teach others to be good – and less trouble!

Those who cross the sea change only the climate, not their character.

I refused to attend his funeral. But I wrote a very nice letter explaining that I approved of it.

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Tell everyone what you want to do and someone will want to help you do it.

I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.

I could not find the world if I searched ten years. I’ve forgotten the road by which I came.

It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.

Suppose the world were only one of God’s jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one?