The apartments of the rich are cabinets of curiosities: a conglomeration of classical antiquity, gothic, renaissance; Louis XIII... Something from every century but our own, a predicament that has arisen in no other period... so that we seem to be subsisting on the ruins of the past, as if the end of the world were near.

This quotation is useful for explanations of the period of art nouveau, and the causes of the art movement. - Confession d'un Enfant du Siécle (1836)(translation)