Samuel Butler

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

I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.

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

It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.

Things derive their being and nature by mutual dependence and are nothing in themselves.

The results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the days never know. The persons who compose our company, converse, and come and go, and design and execute many things, and somewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked for result. The individual is always mistaken. He designed many things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blundered much, and something is done; all are a little advanced, but the individual is always mistaken. It turns out somewhat new, and very unlike what he promised himself.

At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

I find that the Americans have no passions, they have appetites.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.

What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men’s minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were framed upon.

The more I see the less I know for sure.

Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.

Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.

Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.

There is little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative.

I think there is something, more important than believing: Action! The world is full of dreamers, there aren’t enough who will move ahead and begin to take concrete steps to actualize their vision.

Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit.