“Two hands. One to destroy, the other to save. Which had he lost?”

“The two that is one the one that is all. One to save the world, the other to destroy it.”

“He envied the bark, which had been, in the course of one lifetime, both forest and fire. One endured; one destroyed.”

“My grandpa had a saying before he died: You can hope in one hand, shit in the other, and see which is filled first.”

“...the manner in which we live, and that in which we ought to live, are things so wide asunder, that he who quits the one to betake himself to the other is more likely to destroy than to save himself; since any one who would act up to a perfect standard of goodness in everything, must be ruined among so many who are not good.”

“I believe that some people are lost souls, with nothing left to save. But some aren't lost, and the problem is you can't tell which is which. All you can do is try to save them all, and hope none of the good ones slip away, and none of the lost ones hurt you."Jack Prescott, in Painted Black”