Samuel Butler

There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.

Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.

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.

If there is any moral in Christianity, if there is anything to be learned from it, if the whole story is not profitless from first to last, it comes to this: that a man should back his own opinion against the world s.

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.

The want of money is the root of all evil.

One who conquers himself is greater than another who conquers a thousand times a thousand on the battlefield.

God is a loving god.

Your talent is God’s gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.

[on enlightenment] Body and mind dropped off.

It is easy to believe we are each waves and forget we are also the ocean.

Don’t rush anything. When the time is right, it’ll happen.

A man who is good enough to go to heaven is not good enough to be a clergyman.

The Zen expression Kill the Buddha!” means to kill any concept of the Buddha as something apart from oneself.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.

I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God’s will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.

The instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.

I dressed the part and slipped into my Sunday best. I peeled open the heavy doors to every church I could find.

I come to realize that mind is no other than mountains and rivers and the great wide earth, the sun and the moon and stars.