413 Quotes by Samuel Butler

Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.

Having, then, once introduced an element of inconsistency into his system, he was far too consistent not to be inconsistent consistently, and he lapsed ere long into an amiable indifferentism which to outward appearance differed but little from the indifferentism …

It is so mean of people," he exclaimed to himself, "to inflict an injury of this sort, and then shirk facing those whom they have injured; let us hope that, at any rate, they and I may meet in Heaven". But of this he was doubtful, for when people had done so great a wrong as this, it was hardly to be supposed that they would go to Heaven at all - and as for his meeting them in another place, the idea never so much as entered his mind.

We all love best not those who offend us least, nor those who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.

Theobald had proposed to call him George after old Mr Pontifex, but strange to say, Mr Pontifex over-ruled him in favour of the name Ernest. The word 'earnest' was just beginning to come into fashion, and he thought the possession of such a name might, like his having been baptised in water from the Jordan, have a permanent effect upon the boy’s character, and influence him for good during the more critical periods of his life.

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

Books are like imprisoned souls until someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.

Besides so long as a man has not been actually killed he is our fellow-creature, though perhaps a very unpleasant one.

I said to him one day that the very slender reward which God had attached to the pursuit of serious inquiry was a sufficient proof that He disapproved of it, or at any rate that he did not set much store by it nor wish to encourage it.