We are obliged to place ourselves on the level of our age before we can rise above it.

A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance. Observe how the greatest minds yield in some degree to the superstitions of their age.

All our affirmations are mere matters of chronology; and even our bad taste is nothing more than the bad taste of the age we live in.

The man who thinks only of his own generation is born for few.

A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries.

Let me stand in my age with all its waters flowing round me. If they sometimes subdue, they must finally upbear me, for I seek the universal-and that must be the best.

The men who come on the stage at one period are all found to be related to each other. Certain ideas are in the air.

If you lack the power to demoralize yourself along with the age, to go as low and as far, do not complain of being misunderstood by it.

Men are more like the time they live in than they are like their fathers.

Woe to these people who have no appetite for the very dish that their age serves up.