Samuel Butler

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

Don’t learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world.

To die is but to leave off dying and do the thing once for all.

Opinions have vested interests just as men have.

Logic is like the sword – those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.

God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.

The right merchant is one who has the just average of faculties we call common sense; a man of a strong affinity for facts, who makes up his decision on what he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of arithmetic. There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune in making money. Men talk as if there were some magic about this. He knows that all goes on the old road, pound for pound, cent for cent – for every effect a perfect cause – and that good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.

In charity there is no excess.

Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing.

No man is much regarded by the rest of the world. He that considers how little he dwells upon the condition of others, will learn how little the attention of others is attracted by himself. While we see multitudes passing before us, of whom perhaps not one appears to deserve our notice or excites our sympathy, we should remember, that we likewise are lost in the same throng, that the eye which happens to glance upon us is turned in a moment on him that follows us, and that the utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear is to fill a vacant hour with prattle, and be forgotten.

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.

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.

Love and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation.

There are no have-to’s, just choices.

To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.

Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gongthese are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.

Every being is in search of truth, but small fears go on preventing you.

Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths?

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm

There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages.

That’s what I can’t stand. I know I’ll bounce back, and that’s what I can’t stand.