The reputations of the nineteenth century will one day be quoted to prove its barbarism. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Uses of Great Men” (lecture)

When you can’t do something truly useful, you tend to vent the pent up energy in something useless but available, like snappy dressing. – Lois McMaster Bujold

Barbarism is needed every four or five hundred years to bring the world back to life. Otherwise it would die of civilization. – Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Journal, 3 September 1855

It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct. – Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents