Quotes from Samuel Butler

Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.

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

A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

X-rays will prove to be a hoax

I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.

A lawyer's dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.

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

Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.

For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure --tangible material prosperity in this world --is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism.

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

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