Samuel Butler Quotes
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The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
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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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The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.
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Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.
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Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.
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Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
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If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.
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He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.
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The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
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God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.
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Christ: I dislike him very much. Still, I can stand him. What I cannot stand is the wretched band of people whose profession is to hoodwink us about him.
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The history of art is the history of revivals.
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In the midst of vice we are in virtue, and vice versa.
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Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
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All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.
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Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. If you look at it to admire it, you are lost.
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Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.
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No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction.
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Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbours, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them.
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It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.
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We shall never get people whose time is money to take much interest in atoms.
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Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.
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If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success.
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When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy, the only decent thing to do is die at once.