413 Quotes by Samuel Butler

Parents are the last people on Earth who ought to have children.

It has been said that although God cannot alter the past, historians can --it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.

Don't learn to do, but learn in doing.

Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime

Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.

If people who are in a difficulty will only do the first little reasonable thing which they can clearly recognize as reasonable, they will always find the next step more easy both to see and take.

I have never written on any subject unless I believed that the authorities on it were hopelessly wrong.

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

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.