Samuel Butler Quotes
-
Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.
-
When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy, the only decent thing to do is die at once.
-
I really do not see much use in exalting the humble and meek; they do not remain humble and meek long when they are exalted.
-
When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.
-
The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money.
-
If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success.
-
Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know.
-
Let every man be true and every god a liar.
-
In old times people used to try and square the circle; now they try and devise schemes for satisfying the Irish nation.
-
Opinions have vested interests just as men have.
-
For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.
-
The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.
-
Christ and The Church: If he were to apply for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty, adultery and desertion, he would probably get one.
-
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.
-
Silence and tact may or may not be the same thing.
-
From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
-
A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.
-
Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.
-
People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
-
Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.
-
When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.
-
To die is but to leave off dying and do the thing once for all.
-
Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?
-
A lawyer's dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.