Birth and death are so closely related that one could not destroy either without destroying the other at the same time. It is extinction that makes creation possible. – Samuel Butler
Life is like music it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule. – Samuel Butler
It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy — but he who has shown the better temper. – Samuel Butler
Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity? – Samuel Butler
What a strange thing is the propagation of life! A bubble of seed which may be spilt in a whores lap, or in the orgasm of a voluptuous dream, might (for aught we know) have formed a Caesar or a Bonaparte — there is nothing remarkable recorded of their sires, that I know of. – Lord (George Gordon) Byron
Luckless is the country in which the symbols of procreation are the objects of shame, while the agents of destruction are honored! And yet you call that member your pudendum, or shameful part, as if there were anything more glorious than creating life, or anything more atrocious than taking it away. – Savinien Cyrano De Bergerac