Samuel Butler

All truth is not to be told at all times.

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.

Life is not an exact science, it is an art.

Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.

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

If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.

The reward of one’s duty is the power to fulfill another.

Energy doesn’t lie so trust those vibes you’re getting.

So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person’s genius is confined to a very few hours.

Our planet is being turned into a filthy and evil-smelling imperialist barrack.

Practice is this life, and realization is this life, and this life is revealed right here and now.

The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.

We are wiser than we know.

To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, an they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.

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.

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.