Samuel Butler

“All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.”

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

“To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.”

“Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.”

“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.”

“A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.”

“Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.”

“Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.”

“Life is not an exact science, it is an art.”

“Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.”

“To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.”

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

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

“God cannot alter the past, though historians can.”

“Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.”

“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.”

“The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.”

“Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.”

“Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.”

“The history of art is the history of revivals.”

“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.”