Samuel Butler

Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. I you look at it to admire it, you are lost.

The clergyman is expected to be a kind of human Sunday.

All truth is not to be told at all times.

Logic is like the sword

Science, after all, is only an expression for our ignorance of our own ignorance.

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

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.

A hen is only a egg’s way of making another egg.

It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‘always do what you are afraid to do.’

Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves.

Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.

The way to do well is to do well.

It isn’t safe to sit in judgment upon another person’s illusion when you are not on the inside. While you are thinking it is a dream, he may be knowing it is a planet.

People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.

In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language: the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.

Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off.

It is necessary to hope… for hope itself is happiness.

The ear is the avenue to the heart.

I could have become a soldier if I had waited; I knew more about retreating than the man who invented retreating.

My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.