"Prayers are to men as dolls are to children."
- Samuel Butler
"All animals except man know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it."
"Embryos think with each stage of their development that they have now reached the only condition that really suits them. This, they say, must certainly be their last, inasmuch as its close will be so ..."
"[P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's."
"Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them."
"The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them."
"I remember one incident which bears upon this part of the treatise. The gentleman who gave it to me had asked to see my tobacco-pipe; he examined it carefully, and when he came to the little protubera..."
"Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature."
"It has been said that although God cannot alter the past, historians can --it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence."
"To do great work one must be very idle as well as very industrious."