Samuel Butler

The family is a survival of the principle which is more logically embodied in the compound animal. . . . I would do with the family among mankind what nature has done with the compound animal, and confine it to the lower and less progressive races.

Some boys are born stupid; some achieve stupidity; and some have stupidity thrust upon them.

Stowed away in a Montreal lumber room The Discobolus standeth and turneth his face to the wall;

For Justice, though she’s painted blind, Is to the weaker side inclined.

The world is a gambling-table so arranged that all who enter the casino must play and all must lose more or less heavily in the long run, though they win occasionally by the way.

A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal.

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

It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.

It is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us.

It is only a good, sound, truthful person, who can lie to any good purpose; if a man is not habitually truthful his very lies will be false to him and betray him.

There is no permanent absolute unchangeable truth; what we should pursue is the most convenient arrangement of our ideas.

Time is the only true purgatory.

The dons are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.

People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever, or amiable.

The foundations which we would dig about and find are within us, like the Kingdom of Heaven, rather than without.

We want a Society for the Suppression of Erudite Research and the Decent Burial of the Past. The ghosts of the dead past want quite as much laying as raising.

Shall I be remembered after death? I sometimes think and hope so. But I trust 1 may not be found out before my death.

The true laws of God are the laws of our own wellbeing.

Little quarrels often prove / To be but new recruits of love.

A man should have any number of little aims about which he should be conscious and for which he should have names, but he should have neither name for, nor consciousness concerning, the main aim of his life.

There is a photographer in every bush, going about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.

To put one’s trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it.

The Will-be and the Has-been touch us more nearly than the Is. So we are more tender towards children and old people than to those who are in the prime of life.

Prayers are to men as dolls are to children. They are not without use and comfort, but it is not easy to take them very seriously.

Going away: I can generally bear the separation, but I don't like the leave-taking.

The more unpopular an opinion is, the more necessary is it that the holder should be somewhat punctilious in his observance of conventionalities generally.

An obstinacy’s ne’er so stiff, / As when ’tis in a wrong belief.

Oaths are but words, and words but wind, / Too feeble implements to bind.

To know whether you are enjoying a piece of music or not you must see whether you find yourself looking at the advertisements of Pear’s soap at the end of the program.

The only absolute morality is absolute stagnation.

Morality turns on whether the pleasure precedes or follows the pain.

Money has a power above / The stars and fate, to manage love: / Whose arrows, learned poets hold, / That never miss, are tipped with gold.

In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved.

Manners maketh man. Yes, but they make woman still more.

If a man know not life which he hath seen, how shall he know death, which he hath not seen?

Life is not so much a riddle to be read as a Gordian knot that will get cut sooner or later.