Samuel Butler

“A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.”

“The history of art is the history of revivals.”

“The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money.”

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

“We all like to forgive, and love best not those who offend us least, nor who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.”

“He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us.”

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

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

“If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success.”

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

“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.”

“Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth.”

“Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.”

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

“Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.”

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

“God cannot alter the past, though historians can.”

“An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.”

“Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.”