Laudator Temporis Acti

Gildas, The Ruin of Britain and Other Works, edited and translated by Michael Winterbottom (London: Phillimore & Co, 1978 = Arthurian Britain Sources, 7) pp. 24-25; Latin text p. 96 (De Excidio Britonum, 21):

And it was not only this vice that flourished, but all those that generally befall human nature — and especially one that is the downfall of every good condition nowadays too, the hatred of truth and its champions and the love of falsehood and its contrivers .... Every head is sick, every heart is sorrowful; from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head there is no health in it. Everything they did went against their salvation, just as though the true doctor of us all granted the world no medicine.

Non solum vero hoc vitium, sed et omnia quae humanae naturae accedere solent, et precipue, quod et nunc quoque in ea totius boni avertit statum odium veritatis cum assertoribus amorque mendacii cum suis fabricatoribus .... Omne caput languidum et omne cor maerens: a planta pedis usque ad verticem non est in eo sanitas. Sicque agebant cuncta quae saluti contraria fuerint, ac si nihil mundo medicinae a vero omnium medico largiretur.

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.