Samuel Butler (novelist)

"Feeling is an art and, like any other art, can be acquired by taking pains."

"Moral influence means persuading another that one can make that other more uncomfortable than that other can make oneself."

"When we go up to the shelves in the reading-room of the British Museum, how like it is to wasps flying up and down an apricot tree that is trained against a wall, or cattle coming down to drink at a pool!"

"All eating is a kind of proselytising — a kind of dogmatising — a maintaining that the eater's way of looking at things is better than the eatee's."

"We can no longer separate things as we once could: everything tends towards unity; one thing, one action, in one place, at one time. On the other hand, we can no longer unify things as we once could; we are driven to ultimate atoms, each one of which is an individuality. So that we have an infinite multitude of things doing an infinite multitude of actions in infinite time and space; and yet they are not many things, but one thing."

"Thought pure and simple is as near to God as we can get; it is through this that we are linked with God."

"Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have."

"The mere fact that a thought or idea can be expressed articulately in words involves that it is still open to question; and the mere fact that a difficulty can be definitely conceived involves that it is open to solution."

"Words impede and either kill, or are killed by, perfect thought; but they are, as a scaffolding, useful, if not indispensable, for the building up of imperfect thought and helping to perfect it."

"Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use."