Samuel Butler

Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.

Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.

When the righteous man truth away from his righteousness that he hath committed and doeth that which is neither quite lawful nor quite right, he will generally be found to have gained in amiability what he has lost in holiness.

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.

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.

It is immoral to get drunk because the headache comes after the drinking, but if the headache came first and the drunkenness afterwards, it would be moral to get drunk.

God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires.

You see things; and you say Why? But I dream things that never were; and I say Why not?

It is the nature of babies to be in bliss.

In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language: the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.

For many years I was a self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms and did my duty faithfully, though I never received payment for it.

The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

Believe that each day that shines on you is your last.

There is little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Guilt, regret, resentment, sadness and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past and not enough presence.

He who is upright in his way of life and free from sin.

Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.

It took me twenty years of studied self-restraint, aided by the natural decay of my faculties, to make myself dull enough to be accepted as a serious person by the British public.

I know of no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign mind as that of tenacity of purpose.