David Rieff. “Illusion and Reality,’ World Affairs Journal, February 19, 2010.
"In his history of Florence, the Renaissance historican Guicciardini admonished his readers not to mourn the fact that their city was in decline: “All cities decline,” he wrote. Rather, if it was justifiable regret they were after, they should instead mourn the fact that they “had the bad fortune to be born when their city was in decline.""