Critics generally come to be critics by reason not of their fitness for this but of their unfitness for anything else. Books should be tried by a jud… - Samuel Butler

Life and death are balanced as it were on the edge of a razor.

God's merits are so transcendent that it is not surprising his faults should be in reasonable proportion.

Slugs have ridden their contempt for defensive armour as much to death as the turtles their pursuit of it. They have hardly more than skin enough to hold themselves together; they court death every time they cross the road. Yet death comes not to them more than to the turtle, whose defences are so great that there is little left inside to be defended. Moreover, the slugs fare best in the long run, for turtles are dying out, while slugs are not, and there must be millions of slugs all over the world over for every single turtle.