Samuel Butler
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.Collection: Good
Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?Collection: Marriage
Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.Collection: Work
To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.Collection: Death
Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.Collection: Communication
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.Collection: Knowledge
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.Collection: Experience
Life is not an exact science, it is an art.Collection: Science
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.Collection: Food
In law, nothing is certain but the expense.Collection: Legal
Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.Collection: Thankful
The history of art is the history of revivals.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Health
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.Collection: Humor
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.Collection: Respect
Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.Collection: Morning
Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.Collection: Music
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.Collection: Chance
All truth is not to be told at all times.Collection: Truth
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.Collection: Romantic
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.Collection: Art
To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.Collection: Beauty
Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.Collection: Life
To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.Collection: Life
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.Collection: Nature
The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.Collection: Money
Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.Collection: Friendship
Self-preservation is the first law of nature.Collection: Nature
All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.Collection: Business
God cannot alter the past, though historians can.Collection: History
For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.Collection: Truth
Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.Collection: Fear
Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.Collection: Funny
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.Collection: Truth
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.Collection: Medical
A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.Collection: Marriage
The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.Collection: Best
Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know.Collection: Medical
The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
Life is one long process of getting tired.
Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.
Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.
Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.
It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.
Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.
From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
A lawyer's dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.
People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.
There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.