Samuel Butler

An idea must not be condemned for being a little shy and incoherent; all new ideas are shy when introduced first among our old ones. We should have patience and see whether the incoherency is likely to wear off or to wear on, in which latter case the sooner we get rid of them the better.

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.

Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.

Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.

There are two great rules of life, the one general and the other particular. The first is that everyone can, in the end get what he wants if he only tries. This is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is more or less an exception to the general rule.

Life is not an exact science, it is an art.

To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching Man to regard himself as an experiment in the realization of God, to regard his hands as God’s hand, his brain as God’s brain, his purpose as God’s purpose. He must regard God as a helpless Longing, which longed him into existence by its desperate need for an executive organ.

Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.

Humanity has unquestionably one really effective weapon

You can free yourself from aging by reinterpreting your body and by grasping the link between belief and biology.

We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America, and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery.

It is proved…that things cannot be other than they are, for since everything was made for a purpose, it follows that everything is made for the best purpose.

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.

I think that age is irrelevant. We’re all pretty much spiritual beings – I consider myself to be about eighty-five. I feel like I’m ancient, like two thousand years old.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.

Love and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation.

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.

True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.

Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.

Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.

Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right.