Samuel Butler

The only living works are those which have drained much of the author’s own life into them.

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.

If there is any moral in Christianity, if there is anything to be learned from it, if the whole story is not profitless from first to last, it comes to this: that a man should back his own opinion against the world s.

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.

The want of money is the root of all evil.

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.

Lying rides upon debt’s back.

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain’t so.

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

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.

Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.

The lawyer’s truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

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

Do not be angry with me if I tell you the truth

It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.

Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives by makebelieve.

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

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.

Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.

It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, ‘Go away, I’m looking for the truth.’ and so it goes away. Puzzling.