Well, I guess this is a bring-your-own-quote party. So here goes.
“I create the newness of each hour by completely forgetting yesterday”
With thanks to Google
Here is the quote in question: “Culture, born of society, eventually kills society.”
What does this quote mean? Do you think that it’s true?
Since I don’t remember the context, I’ll just have to make a WAG.
Society is simply people living together. Culture is a ‘higher’ phenomenon, leading people to go for refined manners and tastes. This can go so far as to undercut the healthy habits of more primitive society, in the end even cutting the very roots of society. This is basically what is called decadence.
While I think such a picture is a bit simplistic, there is some truth in it. Lots of societies have strange customs that do not really serve a particular purpose but are religiously observed, which detracts from the basic ‘health’ of society. An example could be the supposed puritanism of Victorian England. We live with much less restrictions, and I don’t see society come to naught because of it. So it looks as if people just gave each other a hard time in those days for nothing.