Samuel Butler

It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy – but he who has shown the better temper.

We all like to forgive, and love best not those who offend us least, nor who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.

Life is not an exact science, it is an art.

The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt.

When the righteous man truth away from his righteousness that he hath committed and doeth that which is neither quite lawful nor quite right, he will generally be found to have gained in amiability what he has lost in holiness.

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

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

Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.

Courage: the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.

Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable.

The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace.

Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.

Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.

We’re so infatuated with studying labels that we forget to read between the lines of one another.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

Any so-called material thing that you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for itself, but because it will content your spirit for the moment.

If you are in a poker game and after 20 minutes you don’t know who the patsy is, then you’re the patsy.

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.