Quotes from Samuel Butler

And pulpit, drum ecclesiastic,Was beat with fist, instead of a stick.

Life is a long process of getting tired.

Women can stand a beating except when it is with their own weapons.

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

For rhetoric, he could not opeHis mouth, but out there flew a trope.

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

God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.

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

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

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

God cannot alter the past, though historians can.

It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.

The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.

The course of true anything never does run smooth.

The body is but a pair of pincers set over a bellows and a stew pan and the whole fixed upon stilts.

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

An apology for the Devil: It must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.

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.

And wisely tell what hour o' th' dayThe clock doth strike, by algebra.

Beside, 'tis known he could speak GreekAs naturally as pigs squeak:That Latin was no more difficileThan to a blackbird 'tis to whistle.

From a worldly point of view there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.

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

There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.