Samuel Butler

For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.

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.

A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.

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.

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.

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

Life isn’t as serious as the mind makes it out to be.

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.

Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.

Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, neverin nothing, great or small, large or pettynever give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.

A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.

Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.

Success must include two things: the development of an individual to his utmost potentiality and a contribution of some kind to one’s world.

For every why he had a wherefore.

The power of daring anything their fancy suggest, as always been conceded to the painter and the poet.

To be mature you have to realize what you value most… Not to arrive at a clear understanding of one’s own values is a tragic waste. You have missed the whole point of what life is for.

The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.

Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.