Quotes by Samuel Butler

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.

Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.

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

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.

To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.

Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

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.

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

The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.

People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.

God cannot alter the past, though historians can.

The history of art is the history of revivals.

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.

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

The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.

A physicians physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a clerics divinity has to his power of influencing conduct.

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

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