The history of art is the history of revivals. – Samuel Butler
To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him. – Samuel Butler
Every one should keep a mental wastepaper basket and the older he grows the more things he will consign to it — torn up to irrecoverable tatters. – Samuel Butler
In America everybody is of opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards. – Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays, 1950