Heaven is the work of the best and kindest men and women. Hell is the work of prigs, pedants and professional truth-tellers. The world is an attempt to make the best of Heaven and Hell. – Samuel Butler
Every mans work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself. – Samuel Butler
A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing. – Samuel Butler
Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such. – Samuel Butler
No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been. – Hannah Arendt