You Thought?

....Saith Mr. Bacon, "Well, my master, then I'll tell you, hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper."
— Francis Bacon, Wisdom of the Ancients, Apopthegms, p. 382.

     Bion, that was an atheist, was showed in a port city, in a temple of Neptune, many tables of pictures of such as had in tempest made their vows to Neptune, and were saved from shipwreck: and was asked, "How say you now? Do you not acknowledge the power of the gods?" But saith he, "Ay; but where are they painted that have been drowned after their vows?"
— Francis Bacon, Ibid., p. 392.

     Antisthenes being asked of one, what learning was most necessary for man's, answered, "To unlearn that which is nought."
— Francis Bacon, Ibid., p. 393.

     One said to Aristippus, "'Tis a strange thing why men should rather give to the poor, than to philosophers." He answered, "Because they think themselves may sooner come to be poor, than to be philosophers."
— Francis Bacon, Ibid., p. 402.

     One was examined upon certain scandalous words spoken against the king. He confessed them, and said, "It is true, I spake them, and if the wine had not failed, I had said much more."
— Francis Bacon, Ibid., p. 410.

     Without good-nature, man is but a better kind of vermin.
— Francis Bacon, Wisdom of the Ancients, Ornamenta Rationalia (Elegant Sentences), p. 420.

     Number itself importeth not much in armies, where the people are of weak courage; for (as Virgil says) it never troubles a wolf how many the sheep be.
— Francis Bacon, Ibid., p. 422.

     If a man look sharp and attentively, he shall see fortune; for though she be blind, she is not invisible.
— Francis Bacon, Ibid., p. 424.

     If you would work on any man, you must either know his nature and fashions, and so lead him; or his ends, and so persuade him; or his weaknesses and disadvantages, and so awe him; or those that have interest in him, and so govern him.
— Francis Bacon, Ibid., p. 425.

     Men first feel necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance. [The New Science, G. Vico, 241]
That's where it's at: decline.
The Decline of the West
A graffito (heiroglyph) from May 1968 in Paris:
"America is the only nation in history to go from barbarism to decadence with no civilization in between."
— Norman O. Brown, Closing Time, p. 29.