Decadence Quotes

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Quotes About Decadence

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It is foolish, generally speaking, for a philosopher to set fire to another philosopher in Smithfield Market because they do not agree in their theory of the universe. That was done very frequently in the last decadence of the Middle Ages, and it failed altogether in its object. But there is one thing that is infinitely more absurd and unpractical than burning a man for his philosophy. This is the habit of saying that his philosophy does not matter, and this is done universally in the twentieth century, in the decadence of the great revolutionary period. ~ G.K. Chesterton
Decadence quotes by G.K. Chesterton
What of Thought? The Crew had developed a kind of shorthand whereby they could set forth any visions that might come their way. Conversations at the Spoon had become little more than proper nouns, literary allusions, critical or philosophical terms linked in certain ways. Depending on how you arranged the building blocks at your disposal, you were smart or stupid. Depending on how others reacted they were In or Out. The number of blocks, however, was finite.
"Mathematically, boy," he told himself, "if nobody else original comes along, they're bound to run out of arrangements someday. What then?" What indeed. This sort of arranging and rearranging was Decadence, but the exhaustion of all possible permutations and combinations was death.
It scared Eigenvalue, sometimes. He would go in back and look at the set of dentures. Teeth and metals endure. ~ Thomas Pynchon
Decadence quotes by Thomas Pynchon
(The error in reasoning is a bit from wishful thinking, because education is considered "good"; I wonder why people don't make the epiphenomenal association between the wealth of a country and something "bad," say, decadence, and infer that decadence, or some other disease of wealth like a high suicide rate, also generates wealth.) ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Decadence quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
It is the psychic depression of decadence which has come to this place and time. It is what happens to people who ignore their artists and deny their children. It is a terminal case of involutional melancholia which comes from within and cannot be cured by T.V. or psychotherapy or anything but a creative life, which is hard to come by in a country where it doesn't pay to do anything for yourself. ~ Jennifer Stone
Decadence quotes by Jennifer Stone
Against all the odds, we built a better navy than theirs - from scratch - in two months! We now rule the waves in the Mediterranean Sea - Our Sea! The day will come - it begins today - when Rome will master the world! Alexander will roll in his grave, Atlantis will decay in her decadence, and these demons of Harappa will entertain Hades with their theatrics this very night. But Rome will live on in fame and glory. It starts with our victory today! ~ Jennifer McKeithen
Decadence quotes by Jennifer McKeithen
Saint Paul lives in the Christian imagination as the chief sponsor of Christian contempt for Jews, the avatar of law versus grace, flesh versus spirit, works versus faith, Moses versus Jesus, the Old Covenant versus the New. This brutal dichotomizing was attributed to Paul most influentially by Martin Luther, who used a perceived Jewish legalism, materialism, and obsession with externals as stand-ins for the decadence of his nemesis, the pope. "Because the Papists, like the Jews," he wrote, "insist that anyone wishing to be saved must observe their ceremonies, they will perish like the Jews."39 After Luther, both Protestants and Catholics read Paul as the preeminent tribune of Jewish corruption - a misreading that had terrible consequences, especially in Luther's Germany, where the Volk were defined in ontological opposition to Juden. Paul's ~ James Carroll
Decadence quotes by James Carroll
But there was a sense of something tipping out of balance. The times seemed out of joint. There was too much decadence. Too much intensity. Too much change. Too much happiness juxtaposed with too much misery. Too much wealth next to too much poverty. The world was becoming faster and louder, and the social systems were becoming as chaotic and fragmented as jazz scores. So there was a craving, in some places, for simplicity, for order, for scapegoats and for bully-boy leaders, for nations to become like religions or cults. It happened every now and then.
It seemed, in the 1930s, that the whole course of humanity was at stake. As it very often does today. Too many people wanted to find an easy answer to complicated questions. It was a dangerous time to be human. To feel or to think or to care. ~ Matt Haig
Decadence quotes by Matt Haig
Our greater beastliness lies not in a penchant for brute force,but in our greater corruption, nihilism, and decadence; in our servitude to the
overwhelming systems we create; in the sociopathic rationalism we adopt to master natural forces and to compete with the machines we build;and in the scientistic idolatry that co-opts the religious impulse. Of course the ancients resorted more to brute force: they lacked the infrastructure to punish their enemies and victims in a safer, more
sophisticated fashion, with advanced legal regimes and mass-produced, maximum security prisons; with engineered propaganda for social conditioning; and with economic, cyber, and drone warfare. We channel our aggression with more sophisticated instruments, but the use of those instruments doesn't ennoble us. ~ Benjamin Cain
Decadence quotes by Benjamin Cain
I swallowed him down like liquid decadence and begged for more. ~ Shawna Grace
Decadence quotes by Shawna Grace
The mother was convinced that the purchase of this piece of furniture would facilitate the bond she so hungered for with Gabriela, although she hated the unnerving history associated with the paravent. But, she thought, what could it possibly do to a child? ~ Laura Gentile
Decadence quotes by Laura   Gentile
Look, de Mazel, you've known him for years - hasn't he been known to sleep for forty hours in two days?'

'Forty hours?'

'Certainly. He awoke at meal times, just to take nourishment, and afterwards fell again into his torpor. And Freneuse had a strange horror of sleep; there was some abnormal phenomenon associated with it, some lesion of the brain or neurotic depression.'

'The troublesome cerebral anaemia which results from excessive debauchery. Another myth! I've never believed, myself, in the supposed debauchery of that poor gentleman. Such a frail chap, with such a delicate complexion! Quite frankly, there was no scope in him for debauchery.

'Pooh! About as much as Lorenzaccio!'

'You associate him with the Medicis! Lorenzaccio was a Florentine impassioned by rancour, a man of energy slowly brooding over his vengeance, caressing it as he might caress the blade of a dagger! There is not the slightest comparison to be drawn between Lorenzaccio and that gall-green, liverish creature Freneuse. ~ Jean Lorrain
Decadence quotes by Jean Lorrain
The exotic and the erotic ideals go hand in hand, and this fact also contributes another proof of a more or less obvious truth - that is, that a love of the exotic is usually an imaginative projection of a sexual desire. ~ Mario Praz
Decadence quotes by Mario Praz
In this image (watching sensual murder through a peephole) Lorrain embodies the criminal delight of decadent art. The watcher who records the crimes (both the artist and consumer of art) is constructed as marginal, powerless to act, and so exculpated from action, passive subject of a complex pleasure, condemning and yet enjoying suffering imposed on others, and condemning himself for his own enjoyment. In this masochistic celebration of disempowerment, the sharpest pleasure recorded is that of the death of some important part of humanity. The dignity of human life is the ultimate victim of Lorrain's art, thrown away on a welter of delighted self-disgust. ~ Jennifer Birkett
Decadence quotes by Jennifer Birkett
My brothers and sister and I were brought up in an atmosphere which I would describe as 'Puritan decadence'. Puritanism names the behaviour which is condemned; Puritan decadence regards the name itself as indecent, and pretends that the object behind that name does not exist until it is named. ~ Stephen Spender
Decadence quotes by Stephen Spender
For the Europeans there really is a peace dividend, because we provide the peace. They can afford social democracy without the capacity to defend themselves because they can always depend on the United States.
So why not us as well? Because what for Europe is decadence--decline, in both comfort and relative safety--is for us mere denial. Europe can eat, drink and be merry for America protects her. But for America it's different. If we choose the life of ease, who stands guard for us? ~ Charles Krauthammer
Decadence quotes by Charles Krauthammer
Here, in Lorrain's poisoned little jewel of a tale ("The Man Who Made Wax Heads") the consummate achievement of decadent art is caught in miniature. The genius of the artist entangles perpetrators and victims in a sticky web of perverse delights, in which exploitation becomes collusion, the ripples of guilt spread outward, and the real criminal slips away. In the end, responsibility is lodged firmly with the consumer, forced – he must confess – by his own perverse desires, to buy into the values of this particularly black market. ~ Jennifer Birkett
Decadence quotes by Jennifer Birkett
I've always been drawn to the Edwardian period in England. To me, it seems like such a fascinating time, when the British Empire was at the height of its powers and the strict mores of the Victorian age were dissipating into the decadence of King Edward's reign. ~ Kevin Kwan
Decadence quotes by Kevin Kwan
Then Chameroy spoke. 'You always put the blame on opium, but as I see it the case of Freneuse is much more complicated. Him, an invalid? No - a character from the tales of Hoffmann! Have you never taken the trouble to look at him carefully? That pallor of decay; the twitching of his bony hands, more Japanese than chrysanthemums; the arabesque profile; that vampiric emaciation - has all of that never given you cause to reflect? In spite of his supple body and his callow face Freneuse is a hundred thousand years old. That man has lived before, in ancient times under the reigns of Heliogabalus, Alexander IV and the last of the Valois. What am I saying? That man is Henri III himself. I have in my library an edition of Ronsard - a rare edition, bound in pigskin with metal trimmings - which contains a portrait of Henri engraved on vellum. One of these nights I will bring the volume here to show you, and you may judge for yourselves. Apart from the ruff, the doublet and the earrings, you would believe that you were looking at the Due de Freneuse. As far as I'm concerned, his presence here inevitably makes me ill - and so long as he is present, there is such an oppression, such a heaviness... ~ Jean Lorrain
Decadence quotes by Jean Lorrain
How does one make a movie about decadence these days? Now that we're allowed to do it, it's too late. ~ Wilfrid Sheed
Decadence quotes by Wilfrid Sheed
The game may have ended and the tomb have glided away,
But the impressions on the heart are growing brighter;
Oh, how I understood you: both the warmth's insinuation and
The splendor of flowerbeds where decay is showing through...

("August") ~ Innokenty Annensky
Decadence quotes by Innokenty Annensky
What decadence this belonging rubbish was, what time the rich must have if they could sit around and weave great worries out of such threadbare things. ~ Sunjeev Sahota
Decadence quotes by Sunjeev Sahota
no longer a sort of decadence but, rather, a dictatorship of horror, a programmed genocide of which the Western powers are guilty. This relentless campaign against life is a new, definitive stage in the relentless campaign against God's plan. ~ Robert Sarah
Decadence quotes by Robert Sarah
I wanted him to feel what I felt when I was with him: that incredible combination of comfort, decadence, and wonder; the knowledge that, with just a single taste of him, I was addicted. ~ Jodi Picoult
Decadence quotes by Jodi Picoult
All was calm and motionless in the wondrous Garden, and the marvelously brilliant flowers seemed breathless; and they suffused the Youth with a scent which made the head whirl and oppressed the heart with a sinister languor - a scent which was reminiscent of the obscure, rushing, thirsting sighs of vanilla, cyclamen, datura and lily, of evil and fateful flowers which in dying themselves destroy, bewitching with a mysterious death.
The Youth resolutely decided to make his way into the wondrous Garden, to inhale the mysterious fragrances which the Beauty inhaled, and gain her love even though the price might be life itself, even though the road to it might be a fatal road, a road of no return.
("The Poison Garden") ~ Valery Bryusov
Decadence quotes by Valery Bryusov
Decadence, decadence, he said to himself. They've lost everything and gained nothing. The French had merely daubed on the finishing touches at the end of a process which had begun five hundred years ago, at least. Their intuitive moral desires coincided with the ideals embodied in the formulas of their religion, yet they could live in accordance neither with those deepest impulses nor with the precepts of the religion, because society came in between with all the pressure of its tradition. No one could afford to be honest or generous or merciful because every one of them distrusted all the others; often they had more confidence in a Christian they were meeting for the first time than in a Moslem they had known for years. ~ Paul Bowles
Decadence quotes by Paul Bowles
There's a kind of decadence about all this: If 9/11 was really an inside job, you wouldn't be driving around with a bumper sticker bragging that you were on to it. Fantasy is a by-product of security: it's the difference between hanging upside down in your dominatrix's bondage parlor after work on Friday and enduring the real thing for years on end in Saddam's prisons ... ~ Mark Steyn
Decadence quotes by Mark Steyn
They possessed a peaceful relic to set their child free, and the simulacrum they had fed would fade away. ~ Laura Gentile
Decadence quotes by Laura   Gentile
There is nothing to be found in human eyes, and that is their terrifying and dolorous enigma, their abominable and delusive charm. There is nothing but that which we put there ourselves. That is why honest gazes are only to be found in portraits.

The faded and weary eyes of martyrs, expressions tortured by ecstasy, imploring and suffering eyes, some resigned, others desperate... the gazes of saints, mendicants and princesses in exile, with pardoning smiles... the gazes of the possessed, the chosen and the hysterical... and sometimes of little girls, the eyes of Ophelia and Canidia, the eyes of virgins and witches... as you live in the museums, what eternal life, dolorous and intense, shines out of you! Like precious stones enshrined between the painted eyelids of masterpieces, you disturb us across time and across space, receivers of the dream which created you!

You have souls, but they are those of the artists who wished you into being, and I am delivered to despair and mortification because I have drunk the draught of poison congealed in the irises of your eyes.

The eyes of portraits ought to be plucked out. ~ Jean Lorrain
Decadence quotes by Jean Lorrain
Thus spoke the Beauty and her voice had a cheerful ring, and her face was aflame with a great rejoicing. She finished her story and began to laugh quietly, but not cheerfully. The Youth bowed down before her and silently kissed her hands, inhaling the languid fragrance of myrrh, aloe and musk which wafted from her body and her fine robes. The Beauty began to speak again.

'There came to me streams of oppressors, because my evil, poisonous beauty bewitches them. I smile at them, they who are doomed to death, and I feel pity for each of them, and some I almost loved, but I gave myself to no one. Each one I gave but one single kiss - and my kisses were innocent as the kisses of a tender sister. And whomsoever I kissed, died.'

The soul of the troubled Youth was caught in agony, between two quite irresolvable passions, the terror of death and an inexpressible ecstasy. But love, conquering all, overcoming even the anguish of death's grief, was triumphant once again today. Solemnly stretching out his trembling hands to the tender and terrifying Beauty, the Youth exclaimed, 'If death is in your kiss, o beloved, let me revel in the infinity of death. Cling to me, kiss me, love me, envelop me with the sweet fragrance of your poisonous breath, death after death pour into my body and into my soul before you destroy everything that once was me!'

'You want to! You are not afraid!' exclaimed the Beauty.

The face of the Beauty was pale in the rays ~ Valery Bryusov
Decadence quotes by Valery Bryusov
There was no manifestation of contemporary culture that did not indicate to my grandmother how steadfast was the nation's decline, how merciless our mental and moral deterioration, how swiftly all-embracing our final decadence. I never saw her read a book again; but she referred to books often - as if they were shrines and cathedrals of learning that television had plundered and then abandoned. ~ John Irving
Decadence quotes by John Irving
Despite our wonders and greatness, we are a society that has experienced so much social regression, so much decadence, in so short a period of time, that in many parts of America we have become the kind of place to which civilized countries used to send missionaries. - quoting William Bennett ~ Dave Grossman
Decadence quotes by Dave Grossman
Decadence attracts me. It suggests a new world, and, for me, society's struggle between life and death is absolutely beautiful. ~ Yves Saint-Laurent
Decadence quotes by Yves Saint-Laurent
I have no idea how long Quisser was gone from the table. My attention became fully absorbed by the other faces in the club and the deep anxiety they betrayed to me, an anxiety that was not of the natural, existential sort but one that was caused by peculiar concerns of an uncanny nature. What a season is upon us, these faces seemed to say. And no doubt their voices would have spoken directly of certain peculiar concerns had they not been intimidated into weird equivocations and double entendres by the fear of falling victim to the same kind of unnatural affliction that had made so much trouble in the mind of the art critic Stuart Quisser. Who would be next? What could a person say these days, or even think, without feeling the dread of repercussion from powerfully connected groups and individuals? I could almost hear their voices asking, "Why here, why now?" But of course they could have just as easily been asking, "Why not here, why not now?" It would not occur to this crowd that there were no special rules involved; it would not occur to them, even though they were a crowd of imaginative artists, that the whole thing was simply a matter of random, purposeless terror that converged upon a particular place at a particular time for no particular reason. On the other hand, it would also not have occurred to them that they might have wished it all upon themselves, that they might have had a hand in bringing certain powerful forces and connections into our district simply by wish ~ Thomas Ligotti
Decadence quotes by Thomas Ligotti
Later, Aldapuerta spent two years at medical school where he learned the geography of the human body and something of its almost infinite capacity for suffering anddegradation. He took especial delight in tending to the physically incapacitated and wasthankful for the loose coats that "prevented the matrona from spotting the engorged cock that I would occasionally press against the bedridden patient". ~ Jesus I. Aldapuerta
Decadence quotes by Jesus I. Aldapuerta
Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts. ~ Ernest Hemingway,
Decadence quotes by Ernest Hemingway,
Everyone in a decadent society, Lorrain urges, is guilty. Everyone loves masking murder and everyone takes masochistic pleasure in the risk of discovery and punishment. ~ Jennifer Birkett
Decadence quotes by Jennifer Birkett
Apathy is just a lack of energy, which to me, is just the literal definition of decadence. So the energy gives out in a society - that is decadence. ~ Gore Vidal
Decadence quotes by Gore Vidal
On July 6, he gave a speech to newspaper and television executives at the great columned building housing the National Archives and the original copy of the Constitution of the United States. "When I see those columns," he said, "I think of what happened to Greece and Rome." "They lost their will to live," he said. "They became subject to the decadence that destroys civilization. The United States is reaching that period. ~ Tim Weiner
Decadence quotes by Tim Weiner
Astarte has come again, more powerful than before. She possesses me. She lies in wait for me.

December 97

My cruelty has also returned: the cruelty which frightens me. It lies dormant for months, for years, and then all at once awakens, bursts forth and - once the crisis is over - leaves me in mortal terror of myself.

Just now in the avenue of the Bois, I whipped my dog till he bled, and for nothing - for not coming immediately when I called! The poor animal was there before me, his spine arched, cowering close to the ground, with his great, almost human, eyes fixed on me... and his lamentable howling! It was as though he were waiting for the butcher! But it was as if a kind of drunkenness had possessed me. The more I struck out the more I wanted to strike; every shudder of that quivering flesh filled me with some incomprehensible ardour. A circle of onlookers formed around me, and I only stopped myself for the sake of my self-respect.

Afterwards, I was ashamed.

I am always ashamed of myself nowadays. The pulse of life has always filled me with a peculiar rage to destroy. When I think of two beings in love, I experience an agonising sensation; by virtue of some bizarre backlash, there is something which smothers and oppresses me, and I suffocate, to the point of anguish.

Whenever I wake up in the middle of the night to the muted hubbub of bumps and voices which suddenly become perceptible in the dormant city - ~ Jean Lorrain
Decadence quotes by Jean Lorrain
The American Conversation is an argument, after all, and way worse than our fear of error or anarchy or Gomorrahl decadence is our fear of theocracy or autocracy or any ideology whose project is not to argue or persuade but to adjourn the whole debate sine die. It's this logic (and perhaps this alone) that keeps protofascism or royalism or Maoism or any sort of really dire extremism from achieving mainstream legitimacy in US politics ~ David Foster Wallace
Decadence quotes by David Foster Wallace
A long light robe, sulphur-coloured, clung to the sleeper from low throat to ankle; bands of narrow nolana-blue ribbon crossed her breast and were brought together in a loose cincture about her waist; her white, smooth feet were sandalled; one arm was curved beneath her lustrous head; the other lay relaxed and drooping. Chrysoberyls, the sea-virgins of stones, sparkled in her hair and lay in the bosom of her gown like dewdrops in an evening primrose.
("The Accursed Cordonnier") ~ Bernard Capes
Decadence quotes by Bernard Capes
Progress of mankind is the decadence of humanity. ~ Siddharth Katragadda
Decadence quotes by Siddharth Katragadda
The Marquis de V... - whose falsetto voice and little watery eyes I have always detested - was saying to me with a wicked smile: 'Then again, the master gymnast might break his neck at any moment. What he is doing now is very dangerous, my dear, and the pleasure you take in his performance is the little frisson that danger affords you. Wouldn't it be thrilling, if his sweaty hand failed to grip the bar? The velocity acquired by his rotation about the bar would break his spine quite cleanly, and perhaps a little of the cervical matter might spurt out as far as this! It would be most sensational, and you would have a rare emotion to add to the field of your experience - for you collect emotions, don't you? What a pretty stew of terrors that man in tights stirs up in us!

'Admit that you almost wish that he will fall! Me too. Many others in the auditorium are in the same state of attention and anguish. That is the horrible instinct of a crowd confronted with a spectacle which awakens in it the ideas of lust and death. Those two agreeable companions always travel together! Take it from me that at the very same moment - see, the man is now holding on to the bar by his fingertips alone - at the very same moment, a good number of the women in these boxes are ardently lusting after that man, not so much for his beauty as for the danger he courts.'

The voice subtly changed its tone, suddenly becoming more interested. 'You have singularly pale eyes this evening, my ~ Jean Lorrain
Decadence quotes by Jean Lorrain
You will find very exquisite flowers sometime even on a dust-heap, as well as where humanity grows thickest and rankest. ~ Hume Nisbet
Decadence quotes by Hume Nisbet
Depravity and decadence are two sides of the same coin. ~ Manoj Vaz
Decadence quotes by Manoj Vaz
In the morning when he opened his eyes and when his glance fell upon the yellow linen of the curtain by the window, it seemed to him that its yellowness was suffused with the crimson of dark desire and that there was some strange and eerie tenseness in it. It seemed that the sun was insistently and fervently concentrating its burning and bitter rays towards this linen pierced by a golden color and summoning and demanding, and disturbing. And in reply to this fascinating external tension of gold and crimson the veins of the Youth were filled with a fiery agitation. His muscles were suffused with a resilient strength and his heart became like a spring of ardent fires. Sweetly pierced by millions of exciting, burning and arousing needles he leapt up from the bed and with a childlike gleeful laugh he began to leap and dance around the room without dressing.
("The Poison Garden") ~ Valery Bryusov
Decadence quotes by Valery Bryusov
Let the beggar speak for himself. He's in earnest. Haven't we been bred on the principle of self-sacrifice, till we've come to think a man's self is his uncleanest possession? ~ Bernard Capes
Decadence quotes by Bernard Capes
Day by day, month by month, doubt by doubt, law and order became fascism; education, constraint; work, alienation; revolution, mere sport; leisure, a privilege of class; marijuana, a harmless weed; family, a stifling hothouse; affluence, oppression; success, a social disease; sex, an innocent pastime; youth, a permanent tribunal; maturity, the new senility; discipline, an attack on personality; Christianity... and the West... and white skin... ~ Jean Raspail
Decadence quotes by Jean Raspail
Our way would seem quite familiar to the Romans, more by far than the Greek way. Socrates in the Symposium, when Alcibiades challenged him to drink two quarts of wine, could have done so or not as he chose, but the diners-out of Horace's day had no such freedom. He speaks often of the master of the drinking, who was always appointed to dictate how much each man was to drink. Very many unseemly dinner parties must have paved the way for that regulation. A Roman in his cups would've been hard to handle, surly, quarrelsome, dangerous. No doubt there had been banquets without number which had ended in fights, broken furniture, injuries, deaths. Pass a law then, the invariable Roman remedy, to keep drunkenness within bounds. Of course it worked both ways: everybody was obliged to empty the same number of glasses and the temperate man had to drink a great deal more than he wanted, but whenever laws are brought in to regulate the majority who have not abused their liberty for the sake of the minority who have, just such results come to pass. Indeed, any attempt to establish a uniform average in that stubbornly individual phenomenon, human nature, will have only one result that can be foretold with certainty: it will press hardest on the best. ~ Edith Hamilton
Decadence quotes by Edith Hamilton
We lived in a culture that denied any merit to literary works, considering them important only when they were handmaidens to something seemingly more urgent
namely ideology. This was a country where all gestures, even the most private, were interpreted in political terms. The colors of my head scarf or my father's tie were symbols of Western decadence and imperialist tendencies. Not wearing a beard, shaking hands with members of the opposite sex, clapping or whistling in public meetings, were likewise considered Western and therefore decadent, part of the plot by imperialists to bring down our culture. ~ Azar Nafisi
Decadence quotes by Azar Nafisi
Men first feel necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance. ~ Giambattista Vico
Decadence quotes by Giambattista Vico
The other evening, in that cafe-cabaret in the Rue de la Fontaine, where I had run aground with Tramsel and Jocard, who had taken me there to see that supposedly-fashionable singer... how could they fail to see that she was nothing but a corpse?

Yes, beneath the sumptuous and heavy ballgown, which swaddled her and held her upright like a sentry-box of pink velvet trimmed and embroidered with gold - a coffin befitting the queen of Spain - there was a corpse! But the others, amused by her wan voice and her emaciated frame, found her quaint - more than that, quite 'droll'...

Droll! that drab, soft and inconsistent epithet that everyone uses nowadays! The woman had, to be sure, a tiny carven head, and a kind of macabre prettiness within the furry heap of her opera-cloak. They studied her minutely, interested by the romance of her story: a petite bourgeoise thrown into the high life following the fad which had caught her up - and neither of them, nor anyone else besides in the whole of that room, had perceived what was immediately evident to my eyes. Placed flat on the white satin of her dress, the two hands of that singer were the two hands of a skeleton: two sets of knuckle-bones gloved in white suede. They might have been drawn by Albrecht
Durer: the ten fingers of an evil dead woman, fitted at the ends of the two overlong and excessively thin arms of a mannequin...

And while that room convulsed with laughter and thrilled with pleasure, g ~ Jean Lorrain
Decadence quotes by Jean Lorrain
Our inner lives must be lent a structure and our best thoughts reinforced to counter the continuous pull of distraction and disintegration. Religions have been wise enough to establish elaborate calendars and schedules. How free secular society leaves us by contrast. Secular life is not, of course, unacquainted with calendars and schedules. We know them well in relation to work, and accept the virtues of reminders of lunch meetings, cash-flow projections and tax deadlines. But it expects that we will spontaneously find our way to the ideas that matter to us and gives us weekends off for consumption and recreation. It privileges discovery, presenting us with an incessant stream of new information – and therefore it prompts us to forget everything. We are enticed to go to the cinema to see a newly released film, which ends up moving us to an exquisite pitch of sensitivity, sorrow and excitement. We leave the theatre vowing to reconsider our entire existence in light of the values shown on screen, and to purge ourselves of our decadence and haste. And yet by the following evening, after a day of meetings and aggravations, our cinematic experience is well on its way towards obliteration. We honour the power of culture but rarely admit with what scandalous ease we forget its individual monuments. We somehow feel, however, that it would be a violation of our spontaneity to be presented with rotas for rereading Walt Whitman. ~ Alain De Botton
Decadence quotes by Alain De Botton
The decadence which did occur in the Islamic world belongs to a much later period of Islamic history than is usually claimed. This fact would be fully substantiated if the integral history of Islamic science and civilization were to be written one day. Unfortunately to this day such a detailed history does not exist and moreover much of the scholarly work that has been done in this field has been carried out by Western scholars who have been naturally primarily interested in those aspects of the Islamic sciences that have influenced the West. It remains the task of Muslims scholars and scientists to look upon the whole of this scientific tradition from the point of view of Islam and the inner dynamics of Islamic history itself. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Decadence quotes by Seyyed Hossein Nasr
As an artist I am attracted by decadence, by those who exhaust their lives in the shallow pursuits of pleasure. Occasionally, I feel that spiritually I participate in all these kinds of lives. ~ Emil Nolde
Decadence quotes by Emil Nolde
The fascinated loathing which he (Jean Lorrain) cultivated for the decadence of fin de siecle Paris has a good deal of envy and ardent desire in it; in the words of Hubert Juin, he 'loved his epoch to the point of detestation.'

(Introduction: "The Life And Career Of Jean Lorrain) ~ Francis Amery
Decadence quotes by Francis Amery
This kind of detail impressed me. It suggested a whole life of marvelous, elaborate decadence that attracted me like a magnet. ~ Sylvia Plath
Decadence quotes by Sylvia Plath
I came to understand that the perception that freedom is decadence is a fictitious one. Freedom is a good that is preserved and defended because it places individual responsibility at the heart of society. ~ Omar Saif Ghobash
Decadence quotes by Omar Saif Ghobash
He saw a chamber, broad and low, designed, in its every rich stain of picture and slumberous hanging, to appeal to the sensuous. And here the scent was thick and motionless. Costly marqueterie; Palissy candlesticks reflected in half-concealed mirrors framed in embossed silver; antique Nankin vases brimming with pot-pourri; in one comer a suit of Milanese armour, fluted, damasquinee, by Felippo Negroli; in another a tripod table of porphyry, spectrally repeating in its polished surface the opal hues of a vessel of old Venetian glass half filled with some topaz-coloured liqueur - such and many more tokens of a luxurious aestheticism wrought in the observer an immediate sense of pleasurable enervation. He noticed, with a swaying thrill of delight, that his feet were on a padded rug of Astrakhan - one of many, disposed eccentrically about the yellow tassellated-marble floor; and he noticed that the sole light in the chamber came from an iridescent globed lamp, fed with some fragrant oil, that hung near an alcove traversed by a veil of dark violet silk.

("The Accursed Cordonnier") ~ Bernard Capes
Decadence quotes by Bernard Capes
I really love this city. It's so very beautiful. It's so multidimensional.People say it has a darkness and a decadence, which it tries to hide; they say it's full of the pretentious and opulent trying to strangle the dark reality. But that's true for most of the other great cities too ...
There is a soul here ... and that soul is as pure as the heat of the sun that shines down on it and the rain that falls to purify it. ~ Umair Naeem
Decadence quotes by Umair Naeem
Many people have told me that I have high requirements with the people I choose in my life. I disagree. If you defecate on the plate of a hungry person, you can't say he doesn't eat because he is unthankful and has no gratitude towards life. I do like mankind, but I can't see mankind in the souls of the many I encounter. And I will not ever accept such decadence just because many have done it. ~ Robin Sacredfire
Decadence quotes by Robin Sacredfire
Freneuse is an oddball, an idler, without any aim in life! If you ask me, he has smoked too much opium in the East, and that explains his somnolence, his morbid lethargies. It's the hazardous legacy of bad habits! He has been comprehensively undone; the heavy influence of poisonous opiates never ceases to oppress him. Besides which, his steel-blue eyes are surely the eyes of a smoker of opium. He carries the drunken burden of hemp in his veins. Opium is like syphilis' - le Mazel released the word carelessly - 'it is a thing which stays for years and years in the blood, because the body is unable to purge itself. It must be absorbed, in the long run, by iodide. ~ Jean Lorrain
Decadence quotes by Jean Lorrain
Democracy is the most difficult of all forms of government, since it requires the widest spread of intelligence, and we forgot to make ourselves intelligent when we made ourselves sovereign. ~ Ariel Durant
Decadence quotes by Ariel Durant
Decadence begins when the budget to beautify a man's home exceeds the coin spent to ensure its defense. ~ Mark Lawrence
Decadence quotes by Mark Lawrence
We revel in the laxness of the path we take. ~ Charles Baudelaire
Decadence quotes by Charles Baudelaire
The decadent artist markets other people's pain ~ Jennifer Birkett
Decadence quotes by Jennifer Birkett
What we now have is the freedom which attends decadence, or the decadence which attends freedom. ~ Terence McKenna
Decadence quotes by Terence McKenna
This,' said the stranger softly, as if to himself, 'is the woeful proof, indeed, of decadence. Man waives his prerogative of lordship over the irreclaimable savagery of earth. He has warmed his temperate house of clay to be a hot-house to his imagination, till the very walls are frail and eaten with fever.'
("The Accursed Cordonnier") ~ Bernard Capes
Decadence quotes by Bernard Capes
In all nations an exceptional man exists that compensates the deficiencies of the remainder. In those moments, when humanity is found collectively in a state of decadence, there always remain those exceptional beings as point of reference. ~ Augusto Roa Bastos
Decadence quotes by Augusto Roa Bastos
It is true that the Muslim world is not totally mistaken when it reproaches the West of Christian tradition of moral decadence and the manipulation of human life ... Islam has also had moments of great splendor and decadence in the course of its history. ~ Pope Benedict XVI
Decadence quotes by Pope Benedict XVI
The tradition of Islamic science of course gradually weakened but it did not decay as rapidly as some people have claimed in the West. It continued on into the 10th, 11th and 12th Islamic centuries especially in the fields of medicine and pharmacology. If one is going to talk about the decay of the Islamic sciences, it is only of the last two or three centuries that one should speak if one takes the whole of the Islamic world into consideration. And one should not be ashamed of that fact because no civilization in the history of science has always been avidly interested in the natural sciences throughout its whole history. There have been periods of greater interest and those of lesser interest in every civilization, and there is no reason why one should equate the gradual loss of impetus in the cultivation of the sciences in the Islamic world with an automatic decadence of that civilization. This is a modern, Western view which equates civilization with science as understod in the modern sense. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Decadence quotes by Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Superficially, the figure in the smoking-room was that of a long, weedy young man - hairless as to his face; scalped with a fine lank fleece of neutral tint; pale-eyed, and slave to a bored and languid expression, over which he had little control, though it frequently misrepresented his mood. He was dressed scrupulously, though not obtrusively, in the mode, and was smoking a pungent cigarette with an air that seemed balanced between a genuine effort at self-abstraction and a fear of giving offence by a too pronounced show of it. In this state, flying bubbles of conversation broke upon him as he sat a little apart and alone.
("The Accursed Cordonnier") ~ Bernard Capes
Decadence quotes by Bernard Capes
When the Devil was a woman,
When Lilith wound
Her ebony hair in heavy braids,
And framed
Her pale features all 'round
With Botticelli's tangled thoughts,
When she, smiling softly,
Ringed all her slim fingers
In golden bands with brilliant stones,
When she leafed through Villiers
And loved Huysmans,
When she fathomed Maeterlinck's silence
And bathed her Soul
In Gabriel d'Annunzio's colors,
She even laughed
And as she laughed,
The little princess of serpents sprang
Out of her mouth.
Then the most beautiful of she-devils
Sought after the serpent,
She seized the Queen of Serpents
With her ringed finger,
So that she wound and hissed
Hissed, hissed
And spit venom.
In a heavy copper vase;
Damp earth,
Black damp earth
She scattered upon it.
Lightly her great hands caressed
This heavy copper vase
All around,
Her pale lips lightly sang
Her ancient curse.
Like a children's rhyme her curses chimed,
Soft and languid
Languid as the kisses,
That the damp earth drank
From her mouth,
But life arose in the vase,
And tempted by her languid kisses,
And tempted by those sweet tones,
From the black earth slowly there crept,
Orchids -
When the most beloved
Adorns her pale features before the mirror
All 'round with Botticelli's a ~ Hanns Heinz Ewers
Decadence quotes by Hanns Heinz Ewers
Obviously, for these artists history has died; and even in their favorite "subjects" the face, name, past, and future of man have died; and out of this dead silence, out of this dark non-existence protruded - just as for the Decadents of our own day - nothing but "pale legs," the fixed idea of their morbidly disposed imagination.

("On Symbolists And Decadents") ~ Vasily Rozanov
Decadence quotes by Vasily Rozanov
They would chase the image rising from death, expect it, but then enter an empty room with a shrine of deadened memorabilia that made them lose their minds. ~ Laura Gentile
Decadence quotes by Laura   Gentile
Oh, if only it were possible to find understanding," Joseph exclaimed. "If only there were a dogma to believe in. Everything is contradictory, everything tangential; there are no certainties anywhere. Everything can be interpreted one way and then again interpreted in the opposite sense. The whole of world history can be explained as development and progress and can also be seen as nothing but decadence and meaninglessness. Isn't there any truth? Is there no real and valid doctrine?"
The master had never heard him speak so fervently. He walked on in silence for a little, then said: "There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught. Be prepared for conflicts, Joseph Knecht - I can see that they already have begun. ~ Hermann Hesse
Decadence quotes by Hermann Hesse
Every breath, every moment, possessed with an illusion of glamor, of filthy decadence, purely because it was ours, we two our own radical world, a star collapsing inward and bursting, gorgeous, in the dark. ~ Katie Lowe
Decadence quotes by Katie Lowe
I loved county fairs in the South. It was hard to believe that anything could be so consistently cheap and showy and vulgar year after year. each year I thought that at least one class act would force its way into a booth or sideshow, but I was always mistaken. The lure of the fair was the perfect harmony of its joyous decadence, its burned-out dishonored vulgarity, its riot of colors and smells, its jangling, tawdry music, and its wicked glimpse into the outlaw life of hucksters, tattoo parlors, monstrous freaks, and strippers. ~ Pat Conroy
Decadence quotes by Pat Conroy
Adornment, exoticism, affectation are all willed decadent strategies meant to pervert the texts they made. Decadent texts often live in their descriptive excursions, in their evocation of dreams, mysterious places and states of mind, in their excess of words, not events. The surface of the texts, the sound of the words, point to themselves as manufactured, as illusion. The decadents attempted to create texts that announced themselves as artifice. ~ Asti Hustvedt
Decadence quotes by Asti Hustvedt
Decadence is the total loss of unconsciousness, which is the very basis of life. Could it think, the heart would stop beating. ~ Fernando Pessoa
Decadence quotes by Fernando Pessoa
The history of the bagel suggests that Americans' shifting, blended, multi-ethnic eating habits are signs neither of postmodern decadence, ethnic fragmentation, nor corporate hegemony. If we do not understand how a bagel could sometimes be Jewish, sometimes be "New York," and sometimes be American, or why it is that Pakistanis now sell bagels to both Anglos and Tejanos in Houston, it is in part because we have too hastily assumed that our tendency to cross cultural boundaries in order to eat ethnic foods is a recent development - and a culinary symptom of all that has gone wrong with contemporary culture.

It is not. The bagel tells a different kind of American tale. It high- lights ways that the production, exchange, marketing, and consumption of food have generated new identities - for foods and eaters alike. ~ Donna Gabaccia
Decadence quotes by Donna Gabaccia
I love this word decadence, all shimmering in purple and gold. It suggests the subtle thoughts of ultimate civilization, a high literary culture, a soul capable of intense pleasures. It throws off bursts of fire and the sparkle of precious stones. It is redolent of the rouge of courtesans, the games of the circus, the panting of the gladiators, the spring of wild beasts, the consuming in flames of races exhausted by their capacity for sensation, as the tramp of an invading army sounds. ~ Paul Verlaine
Decadence quotes by Paul Verlaine
I am. . . .power. . I am. . . .joy . . . . .peace. . . . . I am. . weakness I am. . .undeniable . . boundless . .
I am force. . truth. . submission . . .decadence. . I am . . .malleable . . .distraction. . I am absolution
. . mystery. . . .I am. . . .temptation . . . . .rejuvenation . . .exaltation . . I . . .loyalty . . . .am. . .
.reckless. . . .imperfect. . . .I . . . . love . . . . human . . . am. . destruction . . .rebirth . . .life. . . .
I am flawed. ~ Suenammi Richards
Decadence quotes by Suenammi Richards
Much of the misgiving that Muslims feel for the West stems from our strong emphasis on freedom, always a risky enterprise. I've heard some say they would rather rear their children in a closely guarded Islamic society than in the United States, where freedom so often leads to decadence. ~ Philip Yancey
Decadence quotes by Philip Yancey
John Grandin thought of himself as modern and civilized. To some extent he understood the neuroses of his fellow men. Perhaps they could not help themselves. But being uninhibited - the giving in to wayward impulse - is anarchy and chaos. Civilization means control; where would he be if he should let happen what was impossible and abhorrent to even think of? To hell with being "modern," "civilized," or "sophisticated." Actually there was no such thing, beyond a self-induced or superimposed state of mind, unsound and superficial. The "twentieth century mind" was a euphemism which such persons as the glittering Arne Eklund used as a veneer for willful behavior, an excuse for self-indulgence. Even modern man was born a primitive and would always be a primitive so long as he had a feeling heart in his breast. ~ Charles Jackson
Decadence quotes by Charles Jackson
This would be the room of new beginnings, the room of madness, of death, where everything needed to be cleaned and fixed for the next couple to flourish. ~ Laura Gentile
Decadence quotes by Laura   Gentile
Feminine way of life is "life by probabilities". There are no absolutes, and the same laws can be interpreted differently at different times. Change is the only constant, and people live by Passion, Beauty and Freedom. But with too much freedom it can decline into decadence, corruption and debauchery. ~ Amish Tripathi
Decadence quotes by Amish Tripathi
The entire empire has sunk into a quagmire of extravagance from which they cannot extricate themselves. ~ Liu Cixin
Decadence quotes by Liu Cixin
In this game he had acquired a great deal of muddled knowledge, more than one approximation and less than one certitude. And absence of energy, a curiosity that was too sharp to be crushed immediately, a lack of order in his ideas, a weakening of his spiritual boundaries, which were promptly twisted, an excessive passion for running along forked roads and wearying of the path as soon as he had started on it, mental indigestion demanding varied dishes, quickly tiring of the foods he desired, digesting almost all, but badly, was his state. ~ Joris-Karl Huysmans
Decadence quotes by Joris-Karl Huysmans
To have humanism we must first be convinced of our humanity. As we move further into decadence this becomes more difficult. ~ Thomas Pynchon
Decadence quotes by Thomas Pynchon
It may well be a sign of the decadence of the Church and the failure of Christianity that gifts have to be coaxed out of people, and that often they will not give at all unless they get something for their money in the way of entertainment or of goods. Giving which is real giving has a certain recklessness in it. ~ William Barclay
Decadence quotes by William Barclay
The famous courtesan Clarimonde died recently, as the result of an orgy which lasted eight days and eight nights. It was something infernally
magnificent. They revived the abominations of the feasts of Belshazzar and Cleopatra. Great God!
what an age this is in which we live! The guests were served by swarthy slaves speaking an unknown tongue, who to my mind had every appearance of veritable demons; the livery of the meanest among them might have served as a gala-costume for an emperor. There have always been current some very
strange stories concerning this Clarimonde, and all her lovers have come to a miserable or a violent end. It has been said that she was a ghoul, a female vampire; but I believe that she was Beelzebub in person. ~ Theophile Gautier
Decadence quotes by Theophile Gautier
The inartistic methods that we use to blunt anxiety and unartful expedients that we resort to in order to escape pain and numb banality reveals what we dread most, the act of suffering from a mortal loss or the debasement that we earn by wallowing in our decadent acts of escapism. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster
Decadence quotes by Kilroy J. Oldster
Because I'm a Karamazov. Because when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I'm even pleased that I'm falling in just such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Decadence quotes by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Rome tolerated every abominable practice, embraced every foul idea in the name of freedom and the rights of the common man. Citizens no longer carried on deviant behavior in private, but pridefully displayed it in public. It was those with moral values who could no longer freely walk in a public park without having to witness a revolting display.
What happened to the public censors who protected the majority of citizenry from moral decadence? Did freedom have to mean abolishing common decency? Did freedom mean anyone could do anything they wanted anytime they wanted, without consequences? ~ Francine Rivers
Decadence quotes by Francine Rivers
The dense fog manifests ever-living gravestones, the tunes of decadence, the hearts that were doomed to dance alone. Here lies untouched beauty, a brittle dream, an unseen sea-born nightmare, an isolated acheirous harf, fishbones without flesh, a face without letters, the hypnotic power o Apollonian destruction. Ashes kiss the grapefruit essential oil skin, the soul beats with eaten sons and daughters, soaking wet serpents with cuspid tongues lollop for legendary goddesses. ~ Laura Gentile
Decadence quotes by Laura Gentile
Ah! I wish I had the courage to work for the debasement of my contemporaries. What good work it would be to defile their daughters: to insinuate something obscene into the infantile hands which caress each paternal beard and cheek; to poison them, even at the risk of perishing ourselves; to do as those Spanish monks did, who drank death in order that they might persuade the French rabble which had violated their monastery to do likewise. ~ Remy De Gourmont
Decadence quotes by Remy De Gourmont
...If statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky way. properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and had done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it.

"The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed; and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality? ~ Mark Twain
Decadence quotes by Mark Twain
In its youth a people produce mythology and poetry; in its decadence, philosophy and logic. ~ Will Durant
Decadence quotes by Will Durant
I studied the Quran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. As far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville
Decadence quotes by Alexis De Tocqueville
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