Samuel Butler

I went to the Bach Choir concert and heard Mozart’s Requiem. I did not rise warmly to it. Then I heard an extract from Parsifal which I disliked very much. If Bach wriggles, Wagner writhes…

Priests are not men of the world; it is not intended that they should be; and a University training is the one best adapted to prevent their becoming so.

Neither have they hearts to stay, nor wit enough to run away.

Those who have never had a father can at any rate never know the sweets of losing one. To most men the death of his father is a new lease of life.

Don’t learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world.

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.

The true poem is the poet’s mind.

I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency.

It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.

I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.

With a burst of joy, my heels sprout wings, smile dancing. My heart sings like a bird caged, set free to soar, senses heightened like never before. Life. Is. Good.

She was taken by surprise at quite how breathtaking the twinkle in her eyes was. She listened and watched attentively, magnetized. As butterflies danced on her lips, her own stomach felt butterflies.

Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.

Cultivate kindness today and always.

We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

England and America are two countries separated by the same language.

Judges ought to be more learned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.

Regardless of who you are or what you have been, you can be what you want to be.

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.