Top 500 Jim Butcher Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “But the only way never to do the wrong thing is never to do anything.”

— Jim Butcher

52. “Build a man a fire and he’s warm for a day,” I said. “But set a man on fire and he’s warm for the rest of his life. Tao of Pratchett.”

— Jim Butcher

53. “Age is always advancing and I’m fairly sure it’s up to no good.”

— Jim Butcher

54. “Life is easier when you can write off others as monsters, demon, as horrible threats that must be hated and feared the thing is you can’t do that without becoming them, just a little.”

— Jim Butcher

55. “Where instinct fails, intellect must venture.”

— Jim Butcher

56. “What is the point of having free will if one cannot occasionally spit in the eye of destiny?”

— Jim Butcher

57. “It isn’t good to hold on too hard to the past. You can’t spend your whole life looking back. Not even when you can’t see what lies ahead. All you can do is keep on keeping on, and try to believe that tomorrow will be what it should be – even if it isn’t what you expected.”

— Jim Butcher

58. “I’m dealing with a lot of scary things. I think you have to react to them. And you either laugh at them or you go insane.”

— Jim Butcher

59. “You can’t plan for everything or you never get started in the first place.”

— Jim Butcher

60. “Everything was perfectly healthy and normal here in Denial Land.”

— Jim Butcher

61. “The human mind is not a terribly logical or consistent place.”

— Jim Butcher

62. “Nobody can be bad at everything. There’s no such thing as a perfect screwup.”

— Jim Butcher

63. “There are old swordsmen and bold swordsmen. But few old, bold swordsmen.”

— Jim Butcher

64. “Whatever you do, do it for love. If you keep to that, your path will never wander so far from the light that you can never return.”

— Jim Butcher

65. “I have nightmares about hell, where all I do is add up numbers and try to have conversations with people like you.”

— Jim Butcher

66. “If your opponent has you by fifty pounds, winning a fight against him is a dubious proposition, at best. If your opponent has you by eight thousand and fifty pounds, you’ve left the realm of combat and enrolled yourself in Road-kill 101. Or possibly in a Tom and Jerry cartoon.”

— Jim Butcher

67. “Even a broken clock gets it right occasionally.”

— Jim Butcher

68. “Somewhere out there was a village I’d deprived of it’s idiot.”

— Jim Butcher

69. “You’re a cop. I need a doughnut.”

— Jim Butcher

70. “Not that I was worried about anyone stealing my car. I once had a car thief offer to get me something better for a sweetheart rate.”

— Jim Butcher

71. “I do not need the written code of a spiritual belief to act like a decent human being.”

— Jim Butcher

72. “Pain is to be endured. It ends or it does not.”

— Jim Butcher

73. “I had a vague memory of being that ridiculous at one time. Let he who hath never worn parachute pants cast the first stone.”

— Jim Butcher

74. “You can’t change what has already happened. But you choose what to do next. Which means that you only cross over to the dark side if you choose to do it.”

— Jim Butcher

75. “Pain is a byproduct of life. That’s the truth. Life sometimes sucks. That’s true for everyone. But if you don’t face the pain and the suck, you don’t ever get the other things either. Laughter. Joy. Love. Pain passes, but those things are worth fighting for. Worth dying for.”

— Jim Butcher

76. “Survival was not enough. One had to live.”

— Jim Butcher

77. “Polka will never die.”

— Jim Butcher

78. “Hope is a force of nature. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”

— Jim Butcher

79. “Some free advice for you: Never fight an old man. They’ve been there, done that, written the book, made and starred in the movie, designed the T-shirt, and they’ve got no ego at all about how the fight gets won.”

— Jim Butcher

80. “Some things just aren’t meant to go together. Things like oil and water. Orange juice and toothpaste.”

— Jim Butcher

81. “Love is another kind of power, which shouldn’t surprise you. Magic comes from emotions, among other things. And when two people are together, in that intimacy, when they really, selflessly love each other it changes them both. It lingers on in the energy of their lives, even when they are apart.”

— Jim Butcher

82. “God isn’t about making good things happen to you, or bad things happen to you. He’s all about you making choices – exercising the gift of free will. God wants you to have good things and a good life, but He won’t gift wrap them for you. You have to choose the actions that lead you to that life.”

— Jim Butcher

83. “When you assume, you make an ass out of you and umption.”

— Jim Butcher

84. “Sticks and stones may break your bones, but Chinese throwing stars get you a dozen stitches.”

— Jim Butcher

85. “My hair had grown out long and shaggy – not in that sexy-young-rock-star kind of way but in that time-to-take-Rover-to-the-groomer kind of way.”

— Jim Butcher

86. “We all must die. There is no better way to do so than in the pursuit of something you love.”

— Jim Butcher

87. “For me chivalry isn’t dead; it’s an involuntary reflex.”

— Jim Butcher

88. “Hell’s bells. I don’t call him the Fist of God as a pet name, folks.”

— Jim Butcher

89. “Worry is fear in disguise. And fear will eat you from the inside out if you let it.”

— Jim Butcher

90. “There is, I think, humor here which does not translate well from English into sanity.”

— Jim Butcher

91. “There’s more magic in a baby’s first giggle than in any firestorm a wizard can conjure up, and don’t let anyone tell you any different.”

— Jim Butcher

92. “Evil’s afoot.” “Well, sure,” Bob said, “because it refuses to learn the metric system. Otherwise it’d be up to a meter by now.”

— Jim Butcher

93. “Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean there isn’t an invisible demon about to eat your face.” Harry Dresden.”

— Jim Butcher

94. “The best way to keep yourself from doing something grossly self-destructive and stupid is to avoid the temptation to do it. For example, it is far easier to fend off inappropriate amorous desires if one runs screaming from the room every time a pretty girl comes in.”

— Jim Butcher

95. “Speak only to those who listen. Anything else is a waste of breath. The answers to your questions were there, if you listened for them.”

— Jim Butcher

96. “What is this thing you speak of, ‘sleep’?”

— Jim Butcher

97. “Thank God for imminent doomsday.”

— Jim Butcher

98. “I have been beaten, but I have not yielded. I’m not going to start yielding now.”

— Jim Butcher

99. “The mad rarely know that they are mad. It’s the rest of the world, I think, that seems insane to them.”

— Jim Butcher

100. “I ask people impertinent questions. Hopefully turning up pertinent answers.”

— Jim Butcher