Nowadays most long novels are bad

Besides, nowadays most long novels are bad. It was different a hundred or two hundred years ago. Today life moves faster, its parts are less connected; one assumes of most interesting events and relations (however intense) that they will be of no greater length or complication than can be described in twenty or thirty pages.

A. Lurie, Real People (1969), Collected edition (1999), 375

The Hungarians are more honourable and cleaner infidels

The Hungarians are Protestants while the Austrians are Catholics. Therefore these two infidel groups are opposites to one another, despite their both being Christians. ... In short, though both are unbelievers without faith, the Hungarians are more honourable and cleaner infidels. They do not wash their faces every morning with their urine as the Austrians do, but wash their faces every morning with water as the Ottomans do.

Evliya Celebi, Book of Travels 7.3, ed. & tr. R.Dankoff & S. Kim, An Ottoman Traveller (2010), 230-31

As for coffee: it is an innovation

As for coffee: it is an innovation; it prevents sleep; it dulls the generative powers; and coffee houses are dens of sedition.

Evliya Celebi, Book of Travels 1.6, ed. & tr. R.Dankoff & S. Kim, An Ottoman Traveller (2010), 25