Jeremy Taylor, "Apples of Sodom," Part II, Sermon XX of Twenty-Five Sermons for the Winter Half-Year, Preached at Golden Grove (1653)
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Can any thing in this world be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth can come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster!
• 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!
— Anatole France
What It Means
This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Can any thing in this world be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth can come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster!
• 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!" in the context of "Jeremy Taylor, "Apples of Sodom," Part II, Sermon XX of Twenty-Five Sermons for the Winter Half-Year, Preached at Golden Grove (1653)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.
Source: Wikiquote: "Anatole France" (Misattributed)
The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
About Anatole France
Anatole France (16 April 1844 – 12 October 1924), born Jacques Anatole François Thibault, was a French poet, journalist, and novelist. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters. A member of the Académie française, he won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Literature in recognition of his literary achievements. He is widely believed to be the model for the narrator's literary idol "Bergotte" in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time.
About Anatole France
Anatole France (16 April 1844 – 12 October 1924), born Jacques Anatole François Thibault, was a French poet, journalist, and novelist. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters. A member of the Académie française, he won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Literature in recognition of his literary achievements. He is widely believed to be the model for the narrator's literary idol "Bergotte" in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time.
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