Samuel Butler

Conscience is thoroughly well-bred and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it.

A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.

The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.

Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.

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

The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt.

If you believe in fate, believe in it, at least, for your good.

Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.

Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.

A man’s house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By and by, as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing. And when he casts about for it he finds that it was in that house. Always it is an essential – there was but one of its kind. It cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost. It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster.

I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep.

There is nothing that can be changed more completely than human nature when the job is taken in hand early enough.

Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.

Only a man’s character is the real criterion of worth.

The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.

The desire to conquer is itself a sort of subjection.

Sincerity is the highest complement you can pay.

Do the wise thing and the kind thing too, and make the best of us and not the worst.

What a new face courage puts on everything!

I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.