Samuel Butler

Because they did not see merit where they should have seen it, people, to express their regret, will go and leave a lot of money to the very people who will be the first to throw stones at the next person who has anything to say and finds a difficulty in getting a hearing.

If there is any moral in Christianity, if there is anything to be learned from it, if the whole story is not profitless from first to last, it comes to this: that a man should back his own opinion against the world s.

Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.

Neither have they hearts to stay, nor wit enough to run away.

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

Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.

If you value a man’s regard, strive with him. As to liking, you like your newspaper – and despise it.

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.

In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it’s more dangerous to lose than to win.

The best reformers the world has ever seen are those who commence on themselves.

The only thing grief as taught me is to know how shallow it is.

Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.

Why do you hasten to remove anything which hurts your eye, while if something affects your soul you postpone the cure until next year?

The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal.

I have never developed indigestion from eating my words.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

The endearing elegance of female friendship.

Nothing does reason more right, than the coolness of those that offer it: For Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders, than from the arguments of its opposers.