Many clever men like you have trusted to civilization. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal about yours?

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer

The Napoleon of Notting Hill, Book 1, ch. 2 (1904)
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