Samuel Butler

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

I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry.

For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure –tangible material prosperity in this world -is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism.

Those who have never had a father can at any rate never know the sweets of losing one. To most men the death of his father is a new lease of life.

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.

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

The years teach much what the days never knew.

Arguments of convenience lack integrity and inevitably trip you up.

It is possible to be free and loving no matter what your circumstances.

Bounty always receives part of its value from the manner in which it is bestowed.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

Your own safety is at stake when your neighbor’s house is in flames.

People who can’t be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.

Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.

All colors will agree in the dark.

I hate mankind, for I think of myself as one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

Common people do not pray; they only beg.

You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother’s milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.

Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants.

Without friends the world is but a wilderness. There is no man that imparteth his joys to his friends, but he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his grieves to his friend, but he grieveth the less.

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.