If people who are in a difficulty will only do the first little reasonable thing which they can clearly recognize as reasonable, they will always find the next step easier both to see and take.

— Samuel Butler

If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.

— Samuel Butler

I have never written on any subject unless I believed that the authorities on it were hopelessly wrong.

— Samuel Butler

I keep my books at the British Museum and at Muddies.

— Samuel Butler

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

— Samuel Butler

In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved.

— Samuel Butler

I reckon being ill is one of the greatest pleasures of life provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.

— Samuel Butler

I remember one incident which bears upon this part of the treatise. The gentleman who gave it to me had asked to see my tobacco-pipe; he examined it carefully, and when he came to the little protuberance at the bottom of the bowl he seemed much delighted, and exclaimed that it must be rudimentary. I asked him what he meant." Sir," he answered, "this organ is identical with the rim at the bottom of a cup; it is but another form of the same function. Its purposes must have been to keep the heat of the pipe from marking the table upon which it rested. You would find, if you were to look up the history of tobacco-pipes, that in early specimens this protuberance was of a different shape to what it is now. It will have been broad at the bottom, and flat, so that while the pipe was being smoked the bowl might rest upon the table without marking it. Use and disuse must have come into play and reduced the function its present rudimentary condition. I should not be surprised, sir," he continued, "if, in the course of time, it were to become modified still farther, and to assume the form of an ornamental leaf or scroll, or even a butterfly, while in some cases, it will become extinct.

— Samuel Butler

It does not matter much what a man hates provided he hates something.

— Samuel Butler

It has been said that although God cannot alter the past, historians can --it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.

— Samuel Butler