We are not won by arguments that we can analyse but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.
— Samuel Butler
To die is but to leave off dying and do the thing once for all.
What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth.
Silence and tact may or may not be the same thing.
There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.
A lawyer's dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.
It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.
It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy - but he who has shown the better temper.
When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy, the only decent thing to do is die at once.
Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers.
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.
Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. If you look at it to admire it, you are lost.
Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.
Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.
Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.
It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.
The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
In the midst of vice we are in virtue, and vice versa.
Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.
Faith - you can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it.
Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.
Money is the last enemy that shall never be subdued. While there is flesh there is money or the want of money, but money is always on the brain so long as there is a brain in reasonable order.
If people would dare to speak to one another unreservedly, there would be a good deal less sorrow in the world a hundred years hence.
They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'
Theist and atheist: the fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name.
Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.
The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
Justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.
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.
If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.
The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing.
There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.
Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
Our ideas are for the most part like bad sixpences, and we spend our lives trying to pass them on one another.
My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine.
There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.
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.
Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.
The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.
If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.
You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.
All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.
It is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us.
He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.
The history of art is the history of revivals.
The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
