Samuel Butler

A blind man knows he cannot see, and is glad to be led, though it be by a dog; but he that is blind in his understanding, which is the worst blindness of all, believes he sees as the best, and scorns a guide.

For every why he had a wherefore.

If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.

The clergyman is expected to be a kind of human Sunday.

The world will only, in the end, follow those who have despised as well as served it.

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.

You sold me a dream and it shattered. I didn’t know how to put it back together again. So instead, I’m lovingly gluing those fragments anew with seams of gold, creating a vibrant new dream, rendering the broken strong and more than ever, breathtakingly beautiful.

Courtesy Life be not so short but that there is always time for courtesy.

There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man’s self.

Possession isn’t nine-tenths of the law. It’s nine-tenths of the problem.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.

What is it they want from a man that they didn’t get from his work? What do they expect? What is there left of him when he’s done his work? What’s any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around. What’s left of the man when the work’s done but a shambles of apology.

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

If you are good, life is good.

Life is tough, my darling, but so are you.

I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.

The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.

What drives me to be who I am, to do all that I do, is not what words will be engraved for my epitaph. What drives me to be who I am, to do what I do, is not vanity, is not for adulation in the eyes of others. What drives me is my own desire to be better; to be happy. When I am dead and buried, the words above will not bring me back to life, I choose to live out my epitaph, and not just for it to be a collection of words someone has chosen to define me.

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