Samuel Butler

The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.

The advantage of doing one’s praising to oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.

The thief. Once committed beyond a certain point he should not worry himself too much about not being a thief any more. Thieving is God’s message to him. Let him try and be a good thief.

We are not won by arguments that we can analyze, but by tone and temper; by the manner, which is the man himself.

The world will only, in the end, follow those who have despised as well as served it.

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

Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.

Part of her mystery is how she is calm in the storm and anxious in the quiet.

No poems can please for long or live that are written by water-drinkers.

Oh man! There is no planet sun or star could hold you, if you but knew what you are.

So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person’s genius is confined to a very few hours.

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

Give, even if you only have little.

It is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to call it, and you roll in the chips.

I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.

It may be that we shall, by a process of sublime irony, have reached a stage in this story where safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.

Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence – neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish – it is an imponderably valuable gift.

It is better that some should be unhappy than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

When you’ve got them by their wallets, their hearts and minds will follow.