Samuel Butler

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

Art Human Philosophy

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

Beauty Empathy Happiness

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.

Friendship Money Relationships

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

Art Creativity Expression

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.

Expectations Gratitude Luck

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.

Danger Ignorance Knowledge

All truth is not to be told at all times.

Honesty Timing Wisdom

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

Life Love Reason

Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.

Life Mortality Nature

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

Happiness Life

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.

Humor Morality Reflection

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

Laws Nature

You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.

Actions Beliefs Faith

The history of art is the history of revivals.

Art History

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

Philosophy Reason

If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.

Death Humor Life

God cannot alter the past, though historians can.

History Philosophy Religion