Samuel Butler Quotes - Page 5

Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world.

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.

If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.

Justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.

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.

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.

God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.

They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, "Can he name a kitten?"

It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.

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

There is no true gracefulness which is not epitomized goodness.

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

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.

Women can stand a beating except when it is with their own weapons.

Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.

If people would dare to speak to one another unreservedly, there would be a good deal less sorrow in the world a hundred years hence.

Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such.

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.

In old times people used to try and square the circle; now they try and devise schemes for satisfying the Irish nation.

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.

There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.

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.

If I die prematurely at any rate I shall be saved from being bored to death by my own success.

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.

When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.