Quotes by Samuel Butler
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.
The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.
Money is the last enemy that shall never be subdued. While there is flesh there is money or the want of money, but money is always on the brain so long as there is a brain in reasonable order.
There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.
Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.
People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.
Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
The seven deadly sins: Want of money, bad health, bad temper, chastity, family ties, knowing that you know things, and believing in the Christian religion.
Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.
Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.
It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.
When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy, the only decent thing to do is die at once.
The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?
Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.
Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.
They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'
Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success.
Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.
Christ was only crucified once and for a few hours. Think of the hundreds of thousands whom Christ has been crucifying in a quiet way ever since.
There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.
Women can stand a beating except when it is with their own weapons.
