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Friday 10 February 2012

Notebook

So arose the situation, incomprehensible today, that youth was a hindrance in all careers, and age alone an advantage. Whereas today, in our changed state of affairs, those of forty seek to look thirty, and those of sixty wish to seem forty, and youth, energy, determination and self-confidence recommend and advance a man, in that age of security everyone who wished to get ahead was forced to attempt all conceivable methods of masquerading in order to appear older.

The newspapers recommended preparations which hastened the growth of the beard, and twenty-four- and twenty-five-year-old doctors who had just finished their examinations, wore mighty beards and gold spectacles even if their eyes did not need them...  Men wore long black frock coats and walked at a leisurely pace, and whenever possible acquired a slight embonpoint… All those qualities which today we look upon as enviable possessions – freshness, self-assertion, daring, curiosity, youth’s lust for life – were regarded as suspect in those days that only had use for “substance”.

Stefan Zweig, “The World of Yesterday”.

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