It is bad enough to see one’s own good things fathered on other people, but it is worse to have other people’s rubbish fathered upon oneself. – Samuel Butler
Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. I you look at it to admire it, you are lost. – Samuel Butler
Youth is like spring, an over-praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits. – Samuel Butler
It should be a pleasure to the appreciative reader, while recognizing their beauty, to cull these flowers of thought for the benefit of those who, less fortunate than himself, have not the time to indulge in literary pleasures. – Maturin M. Ballou, January 1886, preface to Edge-Tools of Speech