Samuel Butler

Christ: I dislike him very much. Still, I can stand him. What I cannot stand is the wretched band of people whose profession is to hoodwink us about him.

For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure –tangible material prosperity in this world -is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism.

The money men make lives after them.

The thief. Once committed beyond a certain point he should not worry himself too much about not being a thief any more. Thieving is God’s message to him. Let him try and be a good thief.

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

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

Every great man, every successful man, no matter what the field of endeavor, has known the magic that lies in these words: every adversity has the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.

Let us then try what love can do to mend a broken world.

All mankind love a lover.

What your heart thinks is great, is great. The soul’s emphasis is always right.

When Satan makes impure verses, Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them.

The joy in life is to be used for a purpose. I want to be used up when I die.

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.

Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

There is nothing more distressing or tiresome than a writer standing in front of an audience and reading his work.

Most people think that aging is irreversible and we know that there are mechanisms even in the human machinery that allow for the reversal of aging, through correction of diet, through anti-oxidants, through removal of toxins from the body, through exercise, through yoga and breathing techniques, and through meditation.

However small the chance might be of striking lucky, the chance is there. The chance had to be there.

Do not discourage your children from hoarding, if they have a taste to it; whoever lays up his penny rather than part with it for a cake, at least is not the slave of gross appetite; and shows besides a preference always to be esteemed, of the future to the present moment.

Pain never really goes away; you just elevate and get used to it by growing stronger.

The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless; it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends; but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness.