We all love best not those who offend us least, nor those who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.

— Samuel Butler

We are not won by arguments that we can analyze but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.

— Samuel Butler

We grow weary of those things (and perhaps soonest) which we most desire.

— Samuel Butler

We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.

— Samuel Butler

We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to them.

— Samuel Butler

We want words to do more than they can. We try to do with them what comes to very much like trying to mend a watch with a pickaxe or to paint a miniature with a mop; we expect them to help us to grip and dissect that which in ultimate essence is as ungraspable as shadow. Nevertheless, there they are; we have got to live with them, and the wise course is to treat them as we do our neighbors, and make the best and not the worst of them.

— Samuel Butler

What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer live.

— Samuel Butler

What runs through a person like water through a sieve.

— Samuel Butler

Whats'er we perpetrate We do but row we are steered by fate.

— Samuel Butler

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

— Samuel Butler