By the way, I’m proud to say that my parents never, ever hit me, not even a spank. My mother says she realized in the middle of punishing my older brother, before I was born, that she didn’t like to be hit, so why should she inflict that on someone else?

Of course, I am pretty screwed up — I’m a barbaric wimp, you know, just finishing his dissertation and obsessively watching the sales of my first book on Amazon. So maybe they ought have spanked me — then I might be living a trailer park feeding stray cats.

http://jim.puddingbowl.org/archives/2005/01/star_wars_throu.html

Also for what it’s worth, here’s an observation I became aware of because a character in a book by Madeleine L’Engle quotes it:

The world is passing through troubled times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness to them. As for the girls, they are immodest and unwomanly in speech, behaviour and dress.’ (Peter the Monk in AD 1274)

It seems like the world should be in Hell, handbasket and all, by now, eh?