Samuel Butler

Logic is like the sword

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

Then spare the rod and spoil the child.

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

Silence is not always tact, but it is tact that is golden, not silence.

Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

The truth is that there is nothing noble in being superior to somebody else. The only real nobility is in being superior to your former self.

There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth.

Do not seek the truth, only cease to cherish your opinions.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.

The honest truth is that every day was new, every day was a challenge, every day was starting from a fresh place, and as time went on, over the course of about two years, things became better and better. But I don’t think that there was for me anything like, ‘Ah, this is taking too long’, because ‘long’ didn’t exist. So I see it as a blessing. I have to laugh. I mean there’s no other way to look at it.

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

The truth is sometimes a hard pill to swallow. It sometimes causes us difficulties at home and abroad. It is sometimes used by our enemies in attempts to hurt us. But the American people are entitled to it, nonetheless.

The truth knocks on the door and you say, Go away, I’m looking for the truth, and so it goes away. Puzzling.

I have such a high regard for the truth that I use it sparingly.

When in doubt tell the truth.

History is strewn thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill, but a lie, well told, is immortal.

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.

Truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding, disbelief or ignorance.

Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.