Quotes By Samuel Butler

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

All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.

When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy, the only decent thing to do is die at once.

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.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.

Faith - you can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it.

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

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

In the midst of vice we are in virtue, and vice versa.

The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.

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.

My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine.

Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.

The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.

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