The World (n.) offers no observed case: have worlds ever been formed under your eye, and have you watched one from the first appearance of order to its consummation?
The World (n.) can no more be judged by us, for faults or for praise, than the Aeneid by a peasant who had never heard another poem.
The World (n.) may be, for all one knows, the first rude essay of an infant deity who abandoned it in shame, or the work of a superannuated god's dotage, running on since his death.
The World (n.) is an animal, and God is its soul — actuating it, and actuated by it.
The World (n.) resembles a vegetable more than an animal: no organs of sense, no seat of thought, no single origin of motion.
The World (n.) is in its infancy: an eternal world would not have waited ten thousand years for a Columbus — we might as well imagine men wearing stockings ten thousand years without thinking of garters.
The World (n.) resembles a vegetable or animal more than a watch or a knitting-loom — so its cause more probably resembles generation than design.
The World (n.) is a great theatre where the true springs of every event are hidden from us, and we hang in perpetual suspense between life and death, health and sickness, plenty and want.