Samuel Butler

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 oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.

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.

Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.

The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.

Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism.

No comment is a splendid expression. I am using it again and again.

Art is the path of the creator to his work.

When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.

One gains universal applause who mingles the useful with the agreeable, at once delighting and instructing the reader.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies.

Usually the modest person passes for someone reserved, the silent for a sullen person.

The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisherman swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.

Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.

All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.

The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.