Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character. — Samuel Butler Copy Share Image
Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers. — Samuel Butler Copy Share Image
Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow… — Samuel Butler Copy Share Image
The wish to spread those opinions that we hold conducive to our own welfare is so deeply rooted in the English character… — Samuel Butler Copy Share Image
Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers. Cannibalism is moral in a cannibal country. — Samuel Butler Copy Share Image
“It stands to reason that he who would cure a moral ailment must be practically acquainted with it in all its bearings.” — Samuel Butler Copy Share Image
Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the… — Samuel Butler Copy Share Image
For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure --tangible material prosperity in this world --is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever… — Samuel Butler Copy Share Image
I am the enfant terrible of literature and science. If I cannot, and I know I cannot, get the literary and scientific bigwigs to… — Samuel Butler Copy Share
If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason. — Samuel Butler Copy Share
All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it. — Samuel Butler Copy Share
The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places. — Samuel Butler Copy Share
“we must judge men not so much by what they, as by what they make us feel that they have it in them to… — Samuel Butler Copy Share
If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success. — Samuel Butler Copy Share
Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know. — Samuel Butler Copy Share
“Having, then, once introduced an element of inconsistency into his system, he was far too consistent not to be inconsistent consistently, and he lapsed… — Samuel Butler Copy Share
It is not sufficiently considered in the hour of exultation, that all human excellence is comparative; that no man performs much but in proportion… — Samuel Butler Copy Share
“The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.” — Samuel Butler Copy Share
