Samuel Butler

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

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

A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.

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

For every why he had a wherefore.

When the water of a place is bad it is safest to drink none that has not been filtered through either the berry of a grape, or else a tub of malt. These are the most reliable filters yet invented.

Friends… they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams.

Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.

Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience.

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.

But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with.

We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.

He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

Self-command is the main discipline.

An empire is an immense egotism.

A Judge may be a farmer; but he is not to geld his own pigs. A Judge may play a little at cards for his own amusement; but he is not to play at marbles, or chuck farthing in the Piazza.

Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.

Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now.

It’s so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.

There is always a best way of doing everything.

Poverty is often concealed in splendor, and often in extravagance. It is the task of many people to conceal their neediness from others. Consequently they support themselves by temporary means, and everyday is lost in contriving for tomorrow.