Samuel Butler

Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.

To do great work one must be very idle as well as very industrious.

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.

Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.

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.

Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

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

Life is not an exact science, it is an art.

To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.

Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.

Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.

To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.

A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.

Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?

What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth.

The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.