Quotes from Samuel Butler

The want of money is the root of all evil.

The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.

Our ideas are for the most part like bad sixpences, and we spend our lives trying to pass them on one another.

It is seldom very hard to do one's duty when one knows what it is, but it is often exceedingly difficult to find this out.

Let every man be true and every god a liar.

Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers.

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

The Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success.

A skilful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war.

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.

Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.

They say the test of [literary power] is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, "Can he name a kitten?" And by this test I am condemned, for I cannot.

Flying. Whatever any other organism has been able to do man should surely be able to do also, though he may go a different way about it.

An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him; for when he is once possessed with an error, it is, like a devil, only cast out with great difficulty.

All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it - and they do enjoy it as much as man and other circumstances will allow.

The extremes of vice and virtue are alike detestable, and absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is.

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.

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.

Friends are like money, easier made than kept.

The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.

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

All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.