# Quote — L. Sprague deCamp, The Purple Pterodactyls

> I fear me that the eighteenth century, which I have idealized all these years, never really existed. The real one was far dirtier, more narrow-minded, brutal, orthodox, and superstitious than I could have ever conceived without seeing it.

- Author: [L. Sprague deCamp](https://www.leafyquotes.com/l-sprague-decamp.md)
- Book: [The Purple Pterodactyls](https://www.leafyquotes.com/l-sprague-decamp/the-purple-pterodactyls.md)
- Page: 24
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/L._Sprague_de_Camp#The_Purple_Pterodactyls_(1980)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/l-sprague-decamp/the-purple-pterodactyls/i-fear-me-that

## More from this book

> But what argument could I offer? It was nothing but an irrational feeling—the kind of “premonition” we get from time to time but remember only on the rare occasions when it is fulfilled by the event. I had no evidence.

p. 198 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/l-sprague-decamp/the-purple-pterodactyls/but-what-argument.md)

> I passed that off as women’s intuition, which is wrong more often than not. People remember the times it works and forget those it fails.

p. 184 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/l-sprague-decamp/the-purple-pterodactyls/i-passed-that.md)

> His voice had a hypnotic quality, which lulled one into a kind of passive daze. One ended with the impression that one had had a wonderful revelation but without remembering much of what the Master had actually said. Some of his assertions seem to contradict what others had told me of his doctrines; but I understood that he brought out a new doctrine every month or two, keeping his suckers too confused to think.

p. 138 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/l-sprague-decamp/the-purple-pterodactyls/his-voice-had.md)