Status Updates From L'uomo senza qualità

The final cause of all great revolutions, which lies deeper than their effective cause, is not the accretion of intolerable conditions, but the loss of cohesion that bolstered the society's artificial peace of mind.

Had A. been able to see only a few years into the future, he would have seen that 1,920 years of Christian morality, millions of dead men in the wake of a shattering war, and a whole forest of poetry rustling in homage to the modesty of Woman could not hold back the day when skirts and hair began to grow shorter and the young girls of Europe slipped off eons of taboos to emerge for a while naked, like peeled bananas.