We think we progress wonderfully in the arts and sciences as one century follows another.

[...]

The arts and sciences go on and on - still we wonder. We have not yet ceased to weep. And we suffer still in 1902, even as they suffered in 1802, and in 802.
Today we eat our good dinners with forks.
A thousand years ago they had no forks.
Yet, though we have forks, we are not happy. We scream and kick and struggle and weep just as they did a thousand year ago - when they had no forks.

I await the Devil's coming [27/162]

(Mary MacLane, 1901, Tusquets Editores)