It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?
--
Book I, ch. 20.Epictetus
There are no small number of people in this world who, solitary by nature, always try to go back into their shell like a hermit crab or a snail.
Anton Chekhov
When Jesus was nailed to the cross, how was it that he could, in spite of so much pain and suffering, pray that those who nailed him should be forgiven? When an ordinary coconut is pierced through the shell, the nail enters the kernel of the nut. But in the case of the dry nut the kernel becomes separate from the shell; and when the shell is pierced, the kernel is not touched. Jesus was like the dry nut; his inner soul was separate from his physical shell. Consequently the sufferings of the body did not affect him. Though the nails were driven through and through, he could pray with calm tranquility for the good of his enemies.
Jesus Christ
We hope the "real" person behind the words will be revealed as ignominiously as a shapeless snail without its shapely shell.
John Updike
Scholars, like princes, may learn something by being incognito. Yet we see those who cannot go into a bookseller's shop, or bear to be five minutes in a stage-coach, without letting you know who they are. They carry their reputation about with them as the snail does its shell, and sit under its canopy, like the lady in the lobster. I cannot understand this at all. What is the use of a man's always revolving round his own little circle? He must, one should think, be tired of it himself, as well as tire other people.
William Hazlitt
And C was good at something I like to call manipulexity, that is the manipulation of complex things. While shell was good at something else which I call whipuptitude, the aptitude for whipping things up.
Larry Wall
Epictetus
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