Samuel Butler

The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.

The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.

Life is one long process of getting tired.

The want of money is the root of all evil.

If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.

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…

You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.

The secret in education lies in respecting the student.

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, rather, a manner of traveling.

Do not bring people in your life who weigh you down. And trust your instincts … good relationships feel good. They feel right. They don’t hurt. They’re not painful. That’s not just with somebody you want to marry, but it’s with the friends that you choose. It’s with the people you surround yourselves with.

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.

The person that had took a bull by the tail once had learnt sixty or seventy times as much as a person that hadn’t, and said a person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was getting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn’t ever going to grow dim or doubtful. Chances are, he isn’t likely to carry the cat that way again, either. But if he wants to, I say let him!

It is very natural for young men to be vehement, acrimonious and severe. For as they seldom comprehend at once all the consequences of a position, or perceive the difficulties by which cooler and more experienced reasoners are restrained from confidence, they form their conclusions with great precipitance. Seeing nothing that can darken or embarrass the question, they expect to find their own opinion universally prevalent, and are inclined to impute uncertainty and hesitation to want of honesty, rather than of knowledge.

Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.

O imitators, you slavish herd!

It is proved…that things cannot be other than they are, for since everything was made for a purpose, it follows that everything is made for the best purpose.

Love and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation.

The pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.

Pale death with an impartial foot knocks at the hovels of the poor and the palaces of king.

In this war, a danger there is, of losing who we are.

A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.