Samuel Butler Quotes
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The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.
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Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.
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There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.
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Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
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What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth.
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A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.
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Faith - you can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it.
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The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
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If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him.
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Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.
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And so there is no God but has been in the loins of past gods.
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The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.
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Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
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To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.
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Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
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Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.
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Christ was only crucified once and for a few hours. Think of the hundreds of thousands whom Christ has been crucifying in a quiet way ever since.
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The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
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It is tact that is golden, not silence.
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There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.
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To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.
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God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
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My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine.
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He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us.