It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to Heaven,
we were all going direct the other way
– in short, the period was so far like the present period,
that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received,
for good or for evil,
in the superlative degree of comparison only.
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Political economy confuses on principle
two very different kinds of private property,
of which one rests on the producers’ own labor,
the other on the employment of the labor of others.
It forgets that the latter
not only is the direct antithesis of the former,
but absolutely grows on its tomb only.
Karl Marx, Capital
維多利亞時代（Victorian era）一詞源自於英國維多利亞女王（Queen Victoria, 1819-1901）之名。她統治英國長達六十四年半之久（1837-1901），此時期大致與英國工業革命、大英帝國、以及歐洲三者的全盛時期相符。
