Samuel Butler

Then spare the rod and spoil the child.

There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.

A hen is only a egg’s way of making another egg.

Everyone should keep a mental wastepaper basket, and the older he grows, the more things will he promptly consign to it.

Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.

Originality is a device that untalented people use to impress other untalented people to protect themselves from talented people…

She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.

Things do not change; we change.

Every doctor will allow a colleague to decimate a whole countryside sooner than violate the bond of professional etiquette by giving him away.

Riches are for spending.

Let us treat the men and women well: treat them as if they were real: perhaps they are.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before.

That’s what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he’s wise.