Samuel Butler Quotes on World (11 Quotes)

To me it seems that those who are happy in this world are better and more lovable people than those who are not.

Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world.

The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.

Priests are not men of the world; it is not intended that they should be; and a University training is the one best adapted to prevent their becoming so.

Rare virtues are like rare plants or animals, things that have not been able to hold their own in the world. A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal.

There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.

For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure tangible material prosperity in this world is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism.

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.

If there is any moral in Christianity, if there is anything to be learned from it, if the whole story is not profitless from first to last, it comes to this that a man should back his own opinion against the world s.

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.

There are two classes of people in this world, those who sin, and those who are sinned against if a man must belong to either, he had better belong to the first than to the second.