Samuel Butler

To himself everyone is an immortal. He may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.

Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. I you look at it to admire it, you are lost.

He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.

People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

There is no path to happiness: Happiness is the path.

To give pleasure to a single heart by a single kind act is better than a thousand head-bowings in prayer.

The greatest impurity is ignorance. Free yourself from it. Be pure.

Be kind to all creatures; this is the true religion.

To be like Christ is to be a Christian.

A miracle is an event which creates faith. That is the purpose and nature of miracles. Frauds deceive. An event which creates faith does not deceive: therefore it is not a fraud, but a miracle.

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

What is a soul? It’s like electricity – we don’t really know what it is, but it’s a force that can light a room.

A man who is good enough to go to heaven is not good enough to be a clergyman.

I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.

Let us be grateful to Adam, our benefactor. He cut us out of the blessing of idleness and won for us the curse of labor.

All beings are by nature Buddha, as ice by nature is water. Apart from water there is no ice; apart from beings, no Buddha.

To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.

An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.

Heaven and earth and I are of the same root, The ten-thousand things and I are of one substance.