Samuel Butler

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.

Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.

People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.

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.

Logic is like the sword – those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.

The seven deadly sins: Want of money, bad health, bad temper, chastity, family ties, knowing that you know things, and believing in the Christian religion.

The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.

Society is a hospital of incurables.

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

New ideas come into this world somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion, and perhaps somebody

If it be an evil to judge rashly or untruly any single man, how much a greater sin it is to condemn a whole people.

Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.

Whatever limits us we call fate.

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.

The country life is to be preferred, for there we see the works of God; but in cities little else but the works of men. And the one makes a better subject for contemplation than the other.

To be free minded and cheerfully disposed at hours of meat and sleep and of exercise is one of the best precepts of long lasting.

A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.

The billiard table is better than the doctor.

Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.

All personal achievement starts in the mind of the individual. Your personal achievement starts in your mind. The first step is to know exactly what your problem, goal or desire is.

Don’t call a woman a bitch. Call her an ass-hole. It still gets your point across and it’s not sexist.