“Gradually and then suddenly” and “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”

Gradually and then suddenly

This is from “The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway. Two characters meet somewhere in Spain. It turns out one got bankrupt. The other one asks how did he get bankrupt. The answer is “Gradually and then suddenly”. In typical Hemingway fashion the discussion changes without much explanation and it’s easy to overlook the depth of the answer.

In that particular context the character probably borrowed and borrowed over time until all of a sudden the creditors stop lending any more money.

The quote is a good match for situations that seem to change all of a sudden, but are preceded by a long string of small changes in that direction e.g. this is how the Soviet Union collapsed.

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way

This is a quote from Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”.

I’ve first seen it applied in “Guns, Germs & Steel” regarding domestication: all domestic animals are the similar, the undomesticated failed to be domesticated for different reasons.

I’ve also seen in a coding context “Good types are all alike; every poorly designed type is poorly defined in its own way.”