Samuel Butler

To die is but to leave off dying and do the thing once for all.

Silence and tact may or may not be the same thing.

All animals except man know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

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.

It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.

Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.

I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.

Brigands demand your money or your life, women require both.

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.

You can do very little with faith but you can do nothing without it.

Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.

In the midst of vice we are in virtue and vice versa.

Theist and atheist: the fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name.

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten and to leave off fighting at once.

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.

People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.

God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.

A physician's physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric's divinity has to his power of influencing conduct.

If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.

Priests are not men of the world, it is not intended that they should be, and a University training is the one best adapted to prevent their becoming so.

In old times people used to try and square the circle, now they try and devise schemes for satisfying the Irish nation.

It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.

A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.

A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first not second hand.

The dead should be judged like criminals impartially but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt.

God was satisfied with his own work and that is fatal.

Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it shall perish by it.

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.

What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be I bet that my Redeemer liveth.

Life is not an exact science it is an art.

Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.

If life must not be taken too seriously then so neither must death.

There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.

Life is one long process of getting tired.

The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.

There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.

Do not be anxious about tomorrow for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day.

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.

Our ideas are for the most part like bad sixpences and we spend our lives trying to pass them on one another.

Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise and tunes herself as it were a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing.

Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

The sinews of art and literature like those of war are money.

A skilful leech is better far than half a hundred men of war.

We shall never get people whose time is money to take much interest in atoms.

The history of art is the history of revivals.

Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.

The want of money is the root of all evil.

When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.

People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good clever or amiable.

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.

Life is like music, it must be composed by ear feeling and instinct not by rule.

There is no bore like a clever bore.

They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say 'Can he name a kitten?'

The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.

Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.

The voice of the Lord is the voice of common sense which is shared by all that is.

The history of the world is the record of the weakness frailty and death of public opinion.

If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.

Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.

The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.

We all like to forgive and love best not those who offend us least nor who have done most for us but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.

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.

There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.

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.

The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.

The three most important things a man has are briefly his private parts his money and his religious opinions.

The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money the next worst his health the next worst his reputation.

If the headache would only precede the intoxication alcoholism would be a virtue.

Though analogy is often misleading it is the least misleading thing we have.

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.

To give pain is the tyranny, to make happy the true empire of beauty.

Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.

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

Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.

To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him or define him.

Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.

People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted and at seeing it practiced.

A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins or nearly all save those worth committing.

The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.

To live is like to love - all reason is against it and all healthy instinct for it.

He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.

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