Samuel Butler

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

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

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

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

“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.”

“A skilful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war.”

“The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.”

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

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

“The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.”

“Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbours, we have got to live with them and must 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.”

“Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.”

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

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

“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.”

“The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.”

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

“All truth is not to be told at all times.”

“Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.”

“To give pain is the tyranny to make happy, the true empire of beauty.”

“Priests are not men of the world it is not intended that they should be and a University training is the one best adapted to prevent their becoming so.”

“Let every man be true and every god a liar.”

“To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.”