"We who have lived before railways were made belong to another world.... It was only yesterday, but what a gulf between now and then! Then was the old world. Stage-coaches, more or less swift, riding-horses, pack-horses, highwaymen, knights in armour, Norman invaders, Roman legions, Druids, Ancient Britons painted blue, and so forth—all these belong to the old period.... But your railroad starts the new era, and we of a certain age belong to the new time and the old one.... We who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark."
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), British author. "De Juventute," The Roundabout Papers (1863). |
"If, in looking at the lives of princes, courtiers, men of rank and fashion, we must perforce depict them as idle, profligate, and criminal, we must make allowances for the rich men's failings, and recollect that we, too, were very likely indolent and voluptuous, had we no motive for work, a mortal's natural taste for pleasure, and the daily temptation of a large income. What could a great peer, with a great castle and park, and a great fortune, do but be splendid and idle?"
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), British author. "George the Third," The Four Georges (1855). |
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