Robert A. Heinlein book Beyond This Horizon
Source: Beyond This Horizon (1948; originally serialized in 1942), Chapter 13, “No more privacy than a guppy in an aquarium”, p. 127
"The Match-Maker"
The Chronicles of Clovis (1911)
Robert A. Heinlein book Beyond This Horizon
Source: Beyond This Horizon (1948; originally serialized in 1942), Chapter 13, “No more privacy than a guppy in an aquarium”, p. 127
Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer
Jeremy Taylor, "Apples of Sodom," Part II, Sermon XX of Twenty-Five Sermons for the Winter Half-Year, Preached at Golden Grove (1653)
Misattributed
Variant: What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster!
“The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.”
David Hume (1711–1776) Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian
Source: On Suicide
William Stanley Jevons (1835–1882) English economist and logician
Reflections on his earlier life, written when he was 27 (December 1862), published in Letters and Journal of W. Stanley Jevons (1886), edited by Harriet A. Jevons, his wife, p. 12.
William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian
Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter IV, "Intellect", p. 385.