Samuel Butler

To die completely, a person must not only forget but be forgotten, and he who is not forgotten is not dead.

I am not sure that I do not begin to like the correction of a mistake, even when it involves my having shown much ignorance and stupidity, as well as I like hitting on a new idea.

God's merits are so transcendent that it is not surprising his faults should be in reasonable proportion.

It is the manner of gods and prophets to begin: "Thou shalt have none other God or Prophet but me." If I were to start as a God or a prophet I think I should take the line: "Thou shalt not believe in me. Thou shalt not have me for a God. …

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

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

It is with philosophy as with just intonation on a piano, if you get everything quite straight and on all fours in one department, in perfect tune, it is delightful so long as you keep well in the middle of the key; but as soon as you …

As a general rule philosophy is like stirring mud or not letting a sleeping dog lie. It is an attempt to deny, circumvent or otherwise escape from the consequences of the interlacing of the roots of things with one another.

You can have all ego, or all non-ego, but in theory you cannot have half one and half the other — yet in practice this is exactly what you must have, for everything is both itself and not itself at one and the same time.

Our choice is apparently most free, and we are least obviously driven to determine our course, in those cases where the future is most obscure, that is, when the balance of advantage appears most doubtful.

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

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

Truth consists not in never lying but in knowing when to lie and when not to do so.

Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch cold on over-exposure.

The pursuit of truth is chimerical. That is why it is so hard to say what truth is. There is no permanent absolute unchangeable truth; what we should pursue is the most convenient arrangement of our ideas.

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.

A little boy and a little girl were looking at a picture of Adam and Eve. "Which is Adam and which is Eve?" said one. "I do not know," said the other, "but I could tell if they had their clothes on."

This poem [The Ancient Mariner] would not have taken so well if it had been called “The Old Sailor.”

To live is like to love — all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.

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

Silence is not always tact and it is tact that is golden, not silence.

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

A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.