The common man wants nothing of life but health, longevity, amusement, comfort-โhappiness.โ He who does not despise this should turn his eyes from world history, for it contains nothing of the sort. The best that history has created is great suffering.
Oswald SpenglerAt last, in the gray dawn of Civilization the fire in the Soul dies down. The dwindling powers rise to one more, half-successful, effort of creation, and produce the Classicism that is common to all dying Cultures. The soul thinks once again, and in Romanticism looks back piteously to its childhood; then finally, weary, reluctant, cold, it loses its desire to be, and, as in Imperial Rome, wishes itself out of the overlong daylight and back in the darkness of protomysticism in the womb of the mother in the grave.
Oswald Spengler