Samuel Butler

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.

The Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know.

A physician's physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric's divinity has to his power of influencing conduct.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.

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.

Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.

People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.

The history of art is the history of revivals.

God cannot alter the past, though historians can.

People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.

The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.

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

The seven deadly sins: Want of money, bad health, bad temper, chastity, family ties, knowing that you know things, and believing in the Christian religion.

To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.

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.

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.