“Fourier thought that our dream of a golden age that never was is a vision of his Période Amphiharmonique. In our time we long not for a lost past but for a lost future.”

“For every lack of civilization we pay dearly with boredom, outrage, death.”

“Butler’s insight was that the machine enslaved us, changing all work to drudgery. All work became pandering to the reproduction of the machines.”

(Guy Davenport, Apples and Pears, p. 64, p. 77, p. 163.)