Laudator Temporis Acti

Robert Burton (1577-1640), Anatomy of Melancholy ("Democritus Junior to the Reader," vol. 1, pp. 69-70 of the Everyman edition):

Every man thinks with himself, Egomet videor mihi sanus [I regard myself as sane], I am well, I am wise, and laughs at others. And 'tis a general fault amongst them all, that which our forefathers have approved, diet, apparel, opinions, humours, customs, manners, we deride and reject in our time as absurd. Old men account juniors all fools, when they are mere dizzards; and as to sailors terræque urbesque recedunt they move, the land stands still, the world hath much more wit, they dote themselves. Turks deride us, we them; Italians, Frenchmen, accounting them light-headed fellows; the French scoff again at Italians, and at their several customs; Greeks have condemned all the world but themselves of barbarism, the world as much vilifies them now; we account Germans heavy, dull fellows, explode many of their fashions; they as contemptibly think of us; Spaniards laugh at all, and all again at them.

Id. (pp. 70-71):

The Chinese say, that we Europeans have one eye, they themselves two, all the world else is blind (though Scaliger accounts them brutes too, merum pecus [mere cattle]); so thou and thy sectaries are only wise, others indifferent, the rest beside themselves, mere idiots and asses. Thus not acknowledging our own errors and imperfections, we securely deride others, as if we alone were free, and spectators of the rest, accounting it an excellent thing, as indeed it is, Aliena optimum frui insania, to make ourselves merry with other men's obliquities, when as he himself is more faulty than the rest, mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur [change but the name, the tale applies to you], he may take himself by the nose for a fool; and which one calls maximum stultitiæ specimen [a gross exhibition of folly], to be ridiculous to others, and not to perceive or take notice of it, as Marsyas was when he contended with Apollo, non intelligens se deridiculo haberi [not perceiving that he was being made a laughing-stock], saith Apuleius; 'tis his own cause, he is a convicted madman, as Austin well infers, "in the eyes of wise men and angels he seems like one, that to our thinking walks with his heels upwards." So thou laughest at me, and I at thee, both at a third; and he returns that of the poet upon us again, Hei mihi, insanire me aiunt, quum ipsi ultro insaniant. We accuse others of madness, of folly, and are the veriest dizzards ourselves.