Samuel Butler quotes

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

A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.

Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.

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

Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

Life is not an exact science, it is an art.

God cannot alter the past, though historians can.

It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.

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.

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.

The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.

People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.

Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.

Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.

The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.

All truth is not to be told at all times.

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.

To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.

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

Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

Life is not an exact science, it is an art.

A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.

You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.

The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.

Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

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.

The history of art is the history of revivals.

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

If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.

Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know.

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

Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?

The history of art is the history of revivals.

Life is not an exact science, it is an art.

All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

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.

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.

Faith - you can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it.

Those who have never had a father can at any rate never know the sweets of losing one. To most men the death of his father is a new lease of life.

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

A physician's physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric's divinity has to his power of influencing conduct.

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