A Dark World
It was a dark world; it was full of preventable disorder, preventable diseases, and preventable pain, of harshness and stupid unpremeditated cruelties; but yet, it may be even by virtue of the general darkness, there were moments of a rare and evanescent beauty that seem no longer possible in my experience.
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Context: The narrator, writing in old age, describes the world of his youth.
Not in a duel yet
Source: In the Days of the Comet, Book the First, Chapter the First (Dust in the Shadows), § 2