To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, / In a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock, / Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock, / From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!

A remarkably delicate balance between the small scale phenomena of atomic and nuclear physics and the large scale phenomena of astronomy and cosmology is required for the Universe to be hospitable to chemically based life. Efforts to prove that this must be so are sometimes dignified by the name anthropic principle.

The door was opened by an odd, swarthy, dried-up person of uncertain age, with a dark pilot jacket and brown leather gaiters.

[…] will live until he dies perhaps, and then lie down in clover.