Nineteenth Century
The pessimistic element was available in Schopenhauer's philosophy and Matthew Arnold's cultural criticism. The tide of Whiggish optimism (exemplified by Macaulay) receded somewhat in the middle of the reign of Queen Victoria.
Classical culture, based on traditional classical scholarship in Latin and Greek literature, had itself been under attack externally for two generations or more by 1900, and had produced in Nietzsche, a model pessimistic thinker.
The increasing availability of information of world events during this period, led to increased despondence and consultants such as Marcus Buckle vocalised this as a general feeling of doom.
Read more about this topic: Cultural Pessimism
Famous quotes related to nineteenth century:
“The secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy nor power for power’s sake ... but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy. It is the instinct which drove America to the Pacific, all through the nineteenth century, the desire to be able to find a restaurant open in case you want a sandwich, to be a free agent, live by one’s own rules.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1934)
“Of the creative spirits that flourished in Concord, Massachusetts, during the middle of the nineteenth century, it might be said that Hawthorne loved men but felt estranged from them, Emerson loved ideas even more than men, and Thoreau loved himself.”
—Leon Edel (b. 1907)
“I delight to come to my bearings,... not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The most revolutionary invention of the Nineteenth Century was the artificial sterilization of marriage.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Posterity—the forlorn child of nineteenth century optimism—grows ever harder to conceive.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)