Samuel Butler

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

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

The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.

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.

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.

Why should I be unhappy? Every parcel of my being is in full bloom.

The envious person grows lean with the fatness of their neighbor.

Suffering is but another name for the teaching of experience, which is the parent of instruction and the schoolmaster of life.

Don’t call a woman a bitch. Call her an ass-hole. It still gets your point across and it’s not sexist.

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships. There is the whole case against censorships in a nutshell.

Wherever work is done, victory is attained.

We had the sky up there, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss whether they was made or just happened.

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.

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

There is always room for a person of force and they make room for many.

Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people?

The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.

Tis admirable to consider, how Powerful the Kings are, yet they move by the Breath of their People.

A man’s library is a sort of harem.

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.