Quotes About Bygone age

What at first was the delight of nations declines by slow but inevitable gradation into the luxury, or the business, or even the vanity of a few. What once spoke in accents understood by all is now painfully spelt out by a small band of scholars. What was once read for pleasure is now read for curiosity. It becomes "an interesting illustration of the taste of a bygone age," a "remarkable proof of such and such a theory of aesthetics."

The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.

About two thousand years ago