Samuel Butler

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

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.

Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.

People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.

To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.

Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can’t sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can’t sleep with the window open.

Husbands and wives, first be faithful to each other. Second, keep the romance going all of your life by courting each other every day.

Michelle’s like Beyoncé in that song ‘Let me upgrade ya!’ She upgraded me.

Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.

What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are but how you deal with incompatibility.

My last divorce was in ’68. What made it come to a head was a promise. See, I had promised her that the next year I wouldn’t work as much. But then I got in trouble with the IRS, and I had to continue working just as much to pay the government. So she said I lied, which is something I never did.

Both marriage and death ought to be welcome: The one promises happiness, doubtless the other assures it.

Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher.

Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?

I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.

In marriage do thou be wise: prefer the person before money, virtue before beauty, the mind before the body; then thou hast a wife, a friend, a companion, a second self.

It is a woman’s business to get married as soon as possible, and a man’s to keep unmarried as long as he can.

I am a black American male from Chicago, who had my rehearsal dinner at Versailles and then got married in Florence with a view of the entire city.

It was a very meaningful ceremony and marriage means a lot to me.