Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so. - Samuel Butler
Our ideas are for the most part like bad sixpences, and we spend our lives trying to pass them on one another. - Samuel Butler
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. - Samuel Butler
The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it. - Samuel Butler
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. - Samuel Butler
My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine. - Samuel Butler
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books. - Samuel Butler
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. - Samuel Butler
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. - Samuel Butler
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. - Samuel Butler
From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right. - Samuel Butler
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them. - Samuel Butler
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. - Samuel Butler
The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything. - Samuel Butler
When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy, the only decent thing to do is die at once. - Samuel Butler
To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead. - Samuel Butler
Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself. - Samuel Butler
Those who have never had a father can at any rate never know the sweets of losing one. To most men the death of his father is a new lease of life. - Samuel Butler