Samuel Butler

Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.

Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.

The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.

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…

The voice of the Lord is the voice of common sense, which is shared by all that is.

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.

What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground.

The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

All endeavor calls for the ability to tramp the last mile, shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil. The fight to the finish spirit is the one… characteristic we must posses if we are to face the future as finishers.

I was brought up to hate and fear liberty. I came to love it. That is the secret of my whole career.

If man had created man, he would be ashamed of his performance.

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again. The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.

There are German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry.

Stand upright, speak thy thoughts, declare The truth thou hast, that all may share; Be bold, proclaim it everywhere: They only live who dare.

Real practice has no purpose or direction, so it can include everything that comes.

Regardless of who you are or what you have been, you can be what you want to be.

One gains universal applause who mingles the useful with the agreeable, at once delighting and instructing the reader.

Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, neverin nothing, great or small, large or pettynever give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.

Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms.

Why do you treat me as they do, as though I were exactly what I want to be. Why do we treat people that way?