"It is one of the facts of history that it is impossible for two peoples of widely different culture to live peaceably side by side. Sooner or later one must absorb the other. It is not necessarily the highest culture which survives. It is the more virile. Early history is full of records of advanced and fine cultures being absorbed by barbarians. Lately – but only very lately, in the last two centuries – the tale has been reversed and we have seen, one by one, the lower civilizations falling to the higher. We have come to accept this as a universal law, when, in point of fact, it is due to the accident that our own civilization has taken the form, that invention has given new physical strength to counterbalance the loss in virility."
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Original Language: English
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'We Can Applaud Italy', The Evening Standard (13 February 1935), quoted in The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Donat Gallagher (1983), p. 163
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Evelyn_Waugh
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Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires Decline and Fall (1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934), the novel Brideshead Revisited (1945), and the Second World War trilogy Sword of Honour (1952–1961). He is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century.
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