Samuel Butler

The only living works are those which have drained much of the author’s own life into them.

Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.

It is immoral to get drunk because the headache comes after the drinking, but if the headache came first and the drunkenness afterwards, it would be moral to get drunk.

I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.

I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry.

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.

If you protect a man from folly, you will soon have a nation of fools.

I could have become a soldier if I had waited; I knew more about retreating than the man who invented retreating.

Would not love see returning penitence afar off, and fall on its neck and kiss it?

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.

A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.

Every man is a consumer and ought to be a producer.

There are still many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history yet to be made.

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the funniest joke in the world.

The lofty pine is oftenest shaken by the winds; High towers fall with a heavier crash; And the lightning strikes the highest mountain.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.

Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.

Familiarity breeds contempt and children.

How we glow over these novels of passion, when the story is told with any spark of truth and nature! And what fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance or betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We understand them and take the warmest interest in the development of the romance. All mankind love a lover.

Punishment closely follows guilt as its companion.