The American system is a beautiful and durable thing, but flawed. I would like to think that this decadence is not sustainable,… — Mark Leibovich Copy Share Image
“The exotic and the erotic ideals go hand in hand, and this fact also contributes another proof of a more or less… — Mario Praz Copy Share Image
The history of prevailing status quos shows decay and decadence infecting the opulent materialism of the Haves. The spiritual life of the… — Anonymous Copy Share Image
The attraction of horror is a mental, or even an intellectual, excitement, but the fascination of the repulsive, so noticeable incontemporary writing,… — Ellen Glasgow Copy Share Image
“Our way would seem quite familiar to the Romans, more by far than the Greek way. Socrates in the Symposium, when Alcibiades… — Edith Hamilton Copy Share Image
“Then Chameroy spoke. 'You always put the blame on opium, but as I see it the case of Freneuse is much more… — Jean Lorrain Copy Share Image
“The dense fog manifests ever-living gravestones, the tunes of decadence, the hearts that were doomed to dance alone. Here lies untouched beauty,… — Laura Gentile Copy Share Image
“I have no idea how long Quisser was gone from the table. My attention became fully absorbed by the other faces in… — Thomas Ligotti Copy Share Image
“Freneuse is an oddball, an idler, without any aim in life! If you ask me, he has smoked too much opium in… — Jean Lorrain Copy Share Image
I love this word decadence, all shimmering in purple and gold. It suggests the subtle thoughts of ultimate civilization, a high literary… — Paul Verlaine Copy Share Image
“It is precisely, if paradoxically, because reversal is in the service of repetition (so as to ensure, alongside its companion strategies, a… — Janet Beizer Copy Share Image
“Endless love and voluptuous appetite pervaded this stifling nave in which settled the ardent sap of the tropics. Renée was wrapped in… — Émile Zola Copy Share Image
“Society has three stages: Savagery, Ascendance, Decadence. The great rise because of Savagery. They rule in Ascendance. They fall because of their… — Pierce Brown Copy Share Image
“Cavenaugh rubbed his hands together and smiled his sunny smile. 'I like that idea. It's reassuring. If we can have no secrets,… — Willa Cather Copy Share Image
“Against a set of desolate scenery, amid spectral crags and livid mountains of ash, beneath the funereal daylight of slopes illuminated in… — Jean Lorrain Copy Share Image
There was no manifestation of contemporary culture that did not indicate to my grandmother how steadfast was the nation's decline, how merciless… — John Irving Copy Share Image
Misgovernment is of four kinds, often in combination. They are: 1) tyranny or oppression, of which history provides so many well-known examples… — Barbara Tuchman Copy Share Image
“Later, Aldapuerta spent two years at medical school where he learned the geography of the human body and something of its almost… — Anonymous Copy Share Image
“After two years' absence she finally returned to chilly Europe, a trifle weary, a trifle sad, disgusted by our banal entertainments, our… — Octave Mirbeau Copy Share Image
“But the trouble is that conscious futility is something only for the young. One cannot go on "despairing of life" in to… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
To preserve wild animals implies generally the creation of a forest for them to dwell in or resort to. So it is… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“I know that [civilized men] do nothing but boast incessantly of the peace and repose they enjoy in their chains… But when… — Jean-Jacques Rousseau Copy Share Image
“(Decadent style) is ingenious, complicated, learned, full of shades of meaning and research, always pushing further the limits of language... forcing itself… — Theophile Gautier Copy Share Image
“Rose was patently a degenerate. Nature, in scheduling his characteristics, had pruned all superlatives. The rude armour of the flesh, under which… — Bernard Capes Copy Share Image
“Here, in Lorrain's poisoned little jewel of a tale (“The Man Who Made Wax Heads”) the consummate achievement of decadent art is… — Jennifer Birkett Copy Share Image
“A long light robe, sulphur-coloured, clung to the sleeper from low throat to ankle; bands of narrow nolana-blue ribbon crossed her breast… — Bernard Capes Copy Share Image
“The Marquis de V... - whose falsetto voice and little watery eyes I have always detested - was saying to me with… — Jean Lorrain Copy Share Image
“It is well known how the book spread like an infectious disease, from city to city, from continent to continent, barred out… — Robert W. Chambers Copy Share Image
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… — Mark Steyn Copy Share Image
“Like symbolism, decadence puts forth the idea that the function of literature is to evoke impressions and 'correspondences', rather than to realistically… — Asti Hustvedt Copy Share Image
“Decadence is an elusive concept, resistant to concise definition. In the broadest sense one might explain it as a delight in or… — David J. Bell Copy Share Image
“I like the word ‘decadent,’ all shimmering with purple and gold … it throws out the brilliance of flames and the gleam… — Paul Verlaine Copy Share Image
“In this image (watching sensual murder through a peephole) Lorrain embodies the criminal delight of decadent art. The watcher who records the… — Jennifer Birkett Copy Share Image
“Jerusalem was capital of southern Israel, known then as Judah. Isn't it true that there's always a rivalry between north and south?… — Tom Robbins Copy Share Image
“In the course of my life I have had pre-pubescent ballerinas; emaciated duchesses, dolorous and forever tired, melomaniac and morphine-sodden; bankers' wives… — Jean Lorrain Copy Share Image
“Astarte has come again, more powerful than before. She possesses me. She lies in wait for me. December 97 My cruelty has… — Jean Lorrain Copy Share Image
“In the end, this volume should be read a s a collection of love stories, Above all, they are tales of love,… — Asti Hustvedt Copy Share Image
I certainly do not lament the decadence of knight errantry, nor wish to exchange the protection of the laws for that of… — Frances Trollope Copy Share Image
“Lady Sarah Henbery was his hostess, and the inspired projector of a new scheme of existence (that was, in effect, the repudiation… — Bernard Capes Copy Share Image
“Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such… — Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn Copy Share Image
![“I know that [civilized men] do nothing but boast incessantly of the peace and repose they enjoy in their chains… But when I see [barbarous man] sacrifice pleasures, repose, wealth, power, and life itself for the preservation of this sole good which is so disdained by those who have lost it; when I…” quote by Jean-Jacques Rousseau](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/b98/jean-jacques-rousseau-418_born-free_i-know-that-civilized-men-do-nothing-but_1084258.jpg)
