Quotes from Samuel Butler

And so there is no God but has been in the loins of past gods.

He'd run in debt by disputation,And pay with ratiocination.

He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us.

Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?

Love is a boy by poets styled;Then spare the rod, and spoil the child.

They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'

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

As the ancientsSay wisely, have a care o' th' main chance,And look before you ere you leap;For as you sow, ye are like to reap.

'Twas Presbyterian true blue.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

God and the Devil are an effort after specialization and the division of labor.

One great reason why clergymen's households are generally unhappy is because the clergyman is so much at home or close about the house.

A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.

It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.

I'll make the furFly 'bout the ears of the old cur.

A physician's physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric's divinity has to his power of influencing conduct.

Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.

What makes all doctrines plain and clear?About two hundred pounds a year.And that which was proved true before,Prove false again? Two hundred more.

To give pain is the tyranny to make happy, the true empire of beauty.

To put one's trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it.

I am not now in fortune's power:He that is down can fall no lower.

Let every man be true and every god a liar.

Mr. Tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he wisely refrains from saying whether they are good or bad things.

All which he understood by rote, And, as occasion served, would quote; No matter whether right or wrong; They might be either said or sung.