Samuel Butler

Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.

Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world.

Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbours, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them.

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.

Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.

When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.

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.

There is no true gracefulness which is not epitomized goodness.

The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money.

The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.

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

People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.

Opinions have vested interests just as men have.

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

Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.

A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.

There is no bore like a clever bore.

The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.

One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.

Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.

It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.