Samuel Butler

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.

You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.

We all like to forgive, and love best not those who offend us least, nor who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.

There are two great rules of life, the one general and the other particular. The first is that everyone can, in the end get what he wants if he only tries. This is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is more or less an exception to the general rule.

All truth is not to be told at all times.

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.

Being is the great explainer.

We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.

I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

Never learn to do anything. If you don’t learn, you will always find someone else to do it for you.

At 70 years old, if I could give my younger self one piece of advice, It would be to use the phrase ‘f**k off’ much more frequently.

I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.

I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.

The need for change bulldozed road down the center of my mind.

I went to the Bach Choir concert and heard Mozart’s Requiem. I did not rise warmly to it. Then I heard an extract from Parsifal which I disliked very much. If Bach wriggles, Wagner writhes…