It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.

—Samuel Butler

About Samuel Butler

Portrait of Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler (4 December 1835 – 18 June 1902) was an English novelist and critic, best known for the satirical utopian novel Erewhon (1872) and the semi-autobiographical novel The Way of All Flesh (published posthumously in 1903 with substantial revisions and published in its original form in 1964 as Ernest...

More quotations from Samuel Butler

Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

—Samuel Butler

God cannot alter the past, though historians can.

—Samuel Butler

Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.

—Samuel Butler

Never discourage anyone… who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.

—Samuel Butler

The thief. Once committed beyond a certain point, he should not worry himself too much about not being a thief anymore. Thieving is God's message to him. Let him try and be a good thief.

—Samuel Butler

More quotations tagged with “loss”

Time healed, they said, but it wasn't true, or not completely. The first raw wound of loss had closed and silvered over, yes, but the scar it had left would never heal. It would always be there, aching and tender.

—Ruth Ware in The Death of Mrs. Westaway

time pain loss healing

Grief is an unfillable hole in your body. It should be weightless, but it's heavy. Should be cold, but it burns. Should, over time, close up, but instead it deepens.

—Emily Henry in A Million Junes

grief loss body

Anything was possible. Everything was uncertain. But I knew one thing for sure: I'd bounced back before, and I would do it again and again and again. Because that's the only choice there is. And as many things as I still had to lose, I had just as many more left to find.

—Katherine Center in The Lost Husband

certainty loss possibility recovery

It's strange that I could have laughed so hard under those circumstances, during that very dark moment in my life. But I've decided sorrow can make things funnier. Endure enough hardship, and you start really needing a good laugh.

—Katherine Center in How to Walk Away

laughter sorrow loss funny

Maybe if you thought about them, people never really disappeared. It sounded so corny, but there was a scientific explanation for it, too. If you believed that thoughts were energy and energy is matter and matter never disappears, then a person can never truly leave you unless you stop thinking about them. Everything you shared with a person is still there swirling around in the universe.

—Wendy Wunder in The Probability of Miracles

people thoughts loss energy

History

4 Aug 2019 Added