1900s Quotes

“Our era has produced many great men--- robber barons, masters of innovation, beast of business---whose staggering wealth, incomparable ruthlessness and personal legends would seem to prove they are dominant species but then one has a look at their son, and doubts the theory of evolution entirely.

-DR. Bertrand Legmam Cooper,
Problems of Science and Society,
Posted by One Who Has Known Both, 1900”
― Anna Godbersen, Splendor

“With the development of utility electricity for the masses in the 1900's, very few people realize that a new era of sickness and disease was unleashed that are collectively called radiation sickness.”
― Steven Magee

“Sie fühlte sich sehr jung; gleichzeitig unaussprechlich betagt. Sie schnitt wie ein Messer durch alles; war gleichzeitig außerhalb und sah zu. Sie hatte eine nicht endende Empfindung, während sie die Droschken beobachtete, draußen zu sein, draußen, weit draußen auf See, und allein; sie hatte immer das Gefühl, es sei sehr, sehr gefährlich, auch nur einen Tag zu leben.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“Erst im Unglück weiß man wahrhaft, wer man ist.”
― Stefan Zweig, Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman

“Did women actually faint, I wondered, or was that an invention of bad Victorian novels and Friday night picture shows? Or perhaps women simply contrived to collapse at convenient moments to delay the burden of hearing and seeing and feeling, just for a little while. I sympathized.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Ten Thousand Doors of January

“Elvira, as befitting one who represented a magazine, registered first and demanded a room and bath. She pronounced it "bawth." The clerk seemed aghast at the request. However, in that hotel, any lady got whatever she asked for. It was her unquestioned right, as a lady. But there was no bath in the hotel, nor running water for that matter. The clerk faltered out something about a nice bowl and pitcher in every room, and said he thought they could provide a foot tub. He was sorry; there was no bath. Elvira couldn't grasp the situation. She thought the clerk was stupid--a hotel without a bath was a contradiction in terms. When she explained that she wanted something for complete immersion, the clerk seemed embarrassed. At his wits' end, he suggested (blushing like fire) that the colored boy could bring up the hog scalder.”
― Beatrice Fairfax, Ladies now and then

“No opium-smoking in the elevator.
sign in New York City's Hotel Rand, 1907”
― Anonymous