Subscribe Good Morning Quotes

Some centuries ago they had Raphael and Michael Angelo; now we have Mr. Paul Delaroche, and all because we are progressing. You brag of your Opera houses; ten Opera houses the size of yours could dance a saraband in a Roman amphitheatre. Even Mr. Martin, with his lame tiger and his poor gouty lion, as drowsy as a subscriber to the Gazette, cuts a pretty small figure by the side of a gladiator from antiquity. What are your benefit performances, lasting till two in the morning, compared with those games which lasted a hundred days, with those performances in which real ships fought real battles on a real sea; when thousands of men earnestly carved each other -- turn pale, O heroic Franconi! -- when, the sea having withdrawn, the desert appeared, with its raging tigers and lions, fearful supernumeraries that played but once; when the leading part was played by some robust Dacian or Pannonian athlete, whom it would often have been might difficult to recall at the close of the performance, whose leading lady was some splendid and hungry lioness of Numidia starved for three days? Do you not consider the clown elephant superior to Mlle. Georges? Do you believe Taglioni dances better than did Arbuscula, and Perrot better than Bathyllus? Admirable as is Bocage, I am convinced Roscius could have given him points. Galeria Coppiola played young girls' parts, when over one hundred years old; it is true that the oldest of our leading ladies is scarcely more than sixty, and that Mlle. Mars has not even progressed in that direction. The ancients had three or four thousand gods in whom they believed, and we have but one, in whom we scarcely believe. That is a strange sort of progress. Is not Jupiter worth a good deal more than Don Juan, and is he not a much greater seducer? By my faith, I know not what we have invented, or even wherein we have improved.

As time went on, I subscribed more and more to Toynbee’s idea that civilizations die not by murder but by suicide. And then one day everything changed for me. It was March thirtieth, 2013, I’ll never forget—Easter weekend. At the time I was living in Brussels, and every once in a while I’d go have a drink at the bar of the Métropole. I’d always loved Art Nouveau. There are magnificent examples in Prague and Vienna, and there are interesting buildings in Paris and London, too, but for me—right or wrong—the high point of Art Nouveau decor was the Hotel Métropole de Bruxelles, in particular the bar. The morning of March thirtieth, I happened to walk by and saw a sign that said the bar of the Métropole was closing for good, that very night.