Robert Macaire, discount broker: “Here are my conditions.”

- Honoré Daumier, Le Charivari, 27 September 1836

Jean Baudrillard once suggested an important correction to classical Marxism: exchange value is not, as Marx had it, a distortion of a commodity’s underlying use value; use value, instead, is a fiction created by exchange value.

- n+1 Magazine, Death by Degrees

He had ferreted so much, collected so many clues, that he could have prophesied how the new neighbourhoods would look in 1870. Sometimes, in the street, he would look curiously at certain houses, as if they were acquaintances whose destiny, known to him alone, deeply affected him.

- Émile Zola, The Kill

Our new Gilded Age looks a lot like the 19th century version, as seen and annotated in Rob Kovitz’s Capital of the World, with words and images collected and remixed from Émile Zola, Honoré Daumier, Lewis Lapham, Baron Haussmann, Sam Lipsyte, n+1 Magazine, and various others.

‘You’ll see,’ murmured Monsieur Hupel de la Noue, ‘that I have perhaps carried poetic licence too far, but I think my boldness has worked. Echo, seeing that Venus has no power over Narcissus, takes him to Plutus, the god of wealth and precious metals. After the temptation of the flesh, the temptation of riches.’

‘That’s very classical,’ replied Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, with an amiable smile. ‘You know your period, Monsieur le Préfet.’

- Émile Zola, The Kill