Top 164 Quotes by Samuel Butler

If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.

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.

To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.

If people would dare to speak to one another unreservedly, there would be a good deal less sorrow in the world a hundred years hence.

All truth is not to be told at all times.

If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him.

Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. I you look at it to admire it, you are lost.

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.

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

If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.