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

— Samuel Butler

Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.

— Samuel Butler

Books should be tried by a judge and jury as though they were crimes.

— Samuel Butler

Conscience is thoroughly well-bred and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it.

— Samuel Butler

Don't learn to do, but learn in doing.

— Samuel Butler

Embryos think with each stage of their development that they have now reached the only condition that really suits them. This, they say, must certainly be their last, inasmuch as its close will be so great a shock that nothing can survive it. Every change is a shock; every shock is a pro tango death. What we call death is only a shock great enough to destroy our power to recognize a past and a present as resembling one another.

— 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

Every one should keep a mental wastepaper basket and the older he grows, the more things he will consign to it-torn up to irrecoverable tatters.

— Samuel Butler

Exploring is delightful to look forward to and back upon, but it is not comfortable at the time, unless it be of such an easy nature as not to deserve the name.

— Samuel Butler

Faith is a kind of betting or speculation.

— Samuel Butler