The brevity of our life, the dullness of our senses, the torpor of our indifference, the futility of our occupation, suffer us to know but little: and that little is soon shaken and then torn from the mind by that traitor to learning, that hostile and faithless stepmother to memory, oblivion.

Prologue to the Policraticus (ed. C. C. I. Webb, 1909) vol. 1, translated by Helen Waddell