Samuel Butler

It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.

The money men make lives after them.

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.

Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.

The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.

All truth is not to be told at all times.

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

An autobiography is not about pictures; it’s about the stories; it’s about honesty and as much truth as you can tell without coming too close to other people’s privacy.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookshelf on the wall.

All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Just the omission of Jane Austen’s books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it.

Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.

Never judge a book by its movie.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

As a child I used to read Gone with the Wind over and over again. I wanted to be Scarlett O’Hara. I never wanted to believe that it was possible that there could be infidelity. I never wanted to be believe that it was even possible for a man to look another way, even for a moment. My bubble of monogamy was pierced in a harsh way.