Quotes by Samuel Butler
To die is but to leave off dying and do the thing once for all.
God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.
Be virtuous and you will be vicious.
It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.
It is seldom very hard to do one's duty when one knows what it is, but it is often exceedingly difficult to find this out.
God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.
Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.
Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know.
He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.
A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.
If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.
The Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
It is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us.
Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.
Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.
The want of money is the root of all evil.
God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.
I really do not see much use in exalting the humble and meek; they do not remain humble and meek long when they are exalted.
Let every man be true and every god a liar.
Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.
Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.
The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
