Samuel Butler Quotes
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Faith - you can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it.
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Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.
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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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Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
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And so there is no God but has been in the loins of past gods.
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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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Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.
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Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
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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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The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.
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Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
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There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.
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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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To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.
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Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.
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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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It is tact that is golden, not silence.
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The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.
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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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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.
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The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt.
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God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
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The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.