Samuel Butler

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

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.

Genius is a nuisance, and it is the duty of schools and colleges to abate it by setting genius-traps in its way.

Genius is a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble.

[Genius] is no respecter of time, trouble, money or persons, the four things around which human affairs turn most persistently.

I consider being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill.

As soon as any art is pursued with a view of money, then farewell, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, all hope of genuine good work.

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.

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

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