Samuel Butler

I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.

Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.

There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.

Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.

The history of art is the history of revivals.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

The cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy. It is the only dictator that free man acknowledges. It is the only security that free man desires.

Choose people who lift you up.

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

We must not inquire too curiously into motives… They are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.

Are you using your pain as an excuse or as a source of strength?

Pictures must not be too picturesque.

That observation which is called knowledge of the world will be found much more frequently to make men cunning than good.

Make a good use of the present.

Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.

If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.

I hate women because they always know where things are.

To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy.

We are prisoners of ideas.