Samuel Butler

We all like to forgive, and love best not those who offend us least, nor who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.

There is but one step from the Academy to the Fad.

All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.

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.

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.

The world will only, in the end, follow those who have despised as well as served it.

There isn’t a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled as American.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

For so many people, TV and movies may be the only way they understand people who aren’t like them. It becomes important for the world to see different images of each other, so that we can develop empathy and understanding.

Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.

The world is his who has money to go over it.

At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.

We have to learn to be our own best friends because we fall too easily into the trap of being our own worst enemies.

It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have it, it requires ten times as much skill to keep it.

It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‘always do what you are afraid to do.’

Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.

Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.

In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.

The one who cannot restrain their anger will wish undone, what their temper and irritation prompted them to do.

Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.