Samuel Butler

Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know.
Samuel Butler

Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.
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.
Samuel Butler

I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.
Samuel Butler

We are not won by arguments that we can analyse but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.
Samuel Butler

You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
Samuel Butler

If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.
Samuel Butler

Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing.
Samuel Butler

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.
Samuel Butler

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.
Samuel Butler

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.
Samuel Butler

The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
Samuel Butler

And so there is no God but has been in the loins of past gods.
Samuel Butler

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.
Samuel Butler

Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.
Samuel Butler

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

Faith – you can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it.
Samuel Butler

Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.
Samuel Butler

Christ and The Church: If he were to apply for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty, adultery and desertion, he would probably get one.
Samuel Butler

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.
Samuel Butler

Silence and tact may or may not be the same thing.
Samuel Butler

Every man’s work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
Samuel Butler

Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.
Samuel Butler

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.
Samuel Butler

Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.
Samuel Butler

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.
Samuel Butler

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

Let every man be true and every god a liar.
Samuel Butler

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.
Samuel Butler

My main wish is to get my books into other people’s rooms, and to keep other people’s books out of mine.
Samuel Butler

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.
Samuel Butler

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
Samuel Butler

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

He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.
Samuel Butler

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

Nobody shoots at Santa Claus.
Samuel Butler

Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.
Samuel Butler

It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.
Samuel Butler

Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.
Samuel Butler

One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.
Samuel Butler

People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
Samuel Butler

God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
Samuel Butler

The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
Samuel Butler

Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
Samuel Butler