Samuel Butler

“Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.”

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

“All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.”

“People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.”

“The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.”

“We want words to do more than they can. We try to do with them what comes to very much like trying to mend a watch with a pickaxe or to paint a miniature with a mop; we expect them to help us to grip and dissect that which in ultimate essence is as ungrippable as shadow. Nevertheless there they are; we have got to live with them, and the wise course is to treat them as we do our neighbours, and make the best and not the worst of them.”

“There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.”

“To die is but to leave off dying and do the thing once for all.”

“There is no bore like a clever bore.”

“Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.”

“Mr. Tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he wisely refrains from saying whether they are good or bad things.”

“The Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

“Life is one long process of getting tired.”

“Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.”

“There are orphanages," he exclaimed to himself, "for children who have lost their parents--oh! why, why, why, are there no harbours of refuge for grown men who have not yet lost them?”

“For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.”

“A blind man knows he cannot see, and is glad to be led, though it be by a dog; but he that is blind in his understanding, which is the worst blindness of all, believes he sees as the best, and scorns a guide.”

“Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.”

“Peter remained on friendly terms with Christ notwithstanding Christ's having healed his mother-in-law.”

“The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.”