Laudator Temporis Acti

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), "Shooting Niagra: And After?" Essays on Politics and Society (Oakland: University of California Press, 2022), pp. 265-299 (at 279):

Varnish, varnish; if a thing have grown so rotten that it yawns palpable, and is so inexpressibly ugly that the eyes of the very populace discern it and detest it,—bring out a new pot of varnish, with the requisite supply of putty; and lay it on handsomely. Don’t spare varnish; how well it will all look in a few days, if laid on well! Varnish alone is cheap and is safe; avoid carpentering, chiselling, sawing and hammering on the old quiet House;—dry-rot is in it, who knows how deep; don’t disturb the old beams and junctures: varnish, varnish, if you will be blessed by gods and men! This is called the Constitutional System, Conservative System, and other fine names; and this at last has its fruits,—such as we see. Mendacity hanging in the very air we breathe; all men become, unconsciously or half or wholly-consciously,—liars to their own souls and to other men’s; grimacing, finessing, periphrasing, in continual hypocrisy of word, by way of varnish to continual past, present, future misperformance of thing:—clearly sincere about nothing whatever, except in silence, about the appetites of their own huge belly, and the readiest method of assuaging these. From a Population of that sunk kind, ardent only in pursuits that are low and in industries that are sensuous and beaverish, there is little peril of human enthusiasms, or revolutionary transports, such as occurred in 1789, for instance. A low-minded pecus all that; essentially torpid and ignavum, on all that is high or nobly human in revolutions.