The whole art of life consists in knowing how to draw lines, and no one knows how to draw them in respect of more than one or two things.
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Men who get misled by schools and academies begin by wanting to do and not knowing how, and end by knowing how and not wanting.
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Any fool can paint a picture but it takes a wise man to be able to sell it.
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I do not greatly care whether I have been right or wrong on any point, but I care a good deal about knowing which of the two I have been.
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I said somewhere about myself, but I forgot where: ‘I attacked the foundations of morality in Erewhon, and nobody cared two straws. I tore open the wounds of my Redeemer as he hung upon the Cross in The Fair Haven, and people rather liked it. But when I attacked Mr. Darwin they were up in arms in a moment.’
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After all, what is the essence of Christianity? What is the kernel of the nut? Surely common sense and cheerfulness, with unflinching opposition to the charlatanisms and Pharisaisms of a man’s own times. The essence of Christianity lies neither in dogma, nor yet, in abnormally holy life, but in faith in an unseen world, in doing one’s duty, in speaking the truth, in finding the true life rather in others than in oneself, and in the certain hope that he who loses his life on these behalfs finds more than he has lost.
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The tendency of modern science is to reduce proof to an absurdity, by so continually reducing absurdity to proof, or pretending to do so.
(Further Selections from The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, 1934).