Samuel Butler

The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.

For every why he had a wherefore.

The Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.

I really do not see much use in exalting the humble and meek; they do not remain humble and meek long when they are exalted.

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

It is only through labour and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage; that we move on to better things.

Civilisation will not last, freedom will not survive, peace will not be kept, unless a very large majority of mankind unite together to defend them and show themselves possessed of a constabulary power before which barbaric and atavistic forces will stand in awe.

People die of fright and live of confidence.

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

Only in the darkness can you see the stars.

A graceful and pleasing figure is a perpetual letter of recommendation.

If women were as fastidious as men, morally or physically, there would be an end of the race.

Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with a cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.

You know about a person who deeply interests you more than you can be told. A look, a gesture, an act, which to everybody else is insignificant tells you more about that one than words can.

Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind.

Do you know that the tendrils of graft and corruption have become mighty interlacing roots so that even men who would like to be honest are tripped and trapped by them?

A mere literary man is a dull man; a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man; but when literature and commerce are united, they make a respectable man.

There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles… but there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and to engage in conscious mischief -a beauty with which you can never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the state of mind into which it throws you.

I was not the lion, but it fell to me to give the lion’s roar.

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