Progress may have been all right once, but it went on too long… – Ogden Nash, “Come, Come, Kerouac! My Generation is Beater Than Yours,” New Yorke

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

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

People don’t like the true and simple; they like fairy tales and humbug. – Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Journal, 2 March 1861