Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting:
So were it with me if forgetting could be willed.
Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring
Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled.
—George Meredith (1828–1909)
Do they merit vitriol, even a drop of it? Yes, because they corrupt the young, persuading them that the mature world, which produced Beethoven and Schweitzer, sets an even higher value on the transient anodynes of youth than does youth itself.... They are the hollow Men. They are electronic lice.
—Anthony Burgess (b. 1917)
All my fond love thus do I blow to heaven
‘Tis gone.
Arise, black vengeance, from the hollow hell!
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)