Samuel Butler

Arguments are like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him.

A man’s friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage – but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.

Birth and death are so closely related that one could not destroy either without destroying the other at the same time. It is extinction that makes creation possible.

From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.

Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.

Courtesy Life be not so short but that there is always time for courtesy.

Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding.

Knowledge is more than equivalent to force.

He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds.

I constantly ask myself if what I’m doing is for me or somebody else. It’s tripping me out!

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.

It’s much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.

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

Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated about among men of thought.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can let alone.

Let the stoics say what they please, we do not eat for the good of living, but because the meat is savory and the appetite is keen.