“We are precarious. Which is to say some good things (accumulation of diverse knowledges, skills and abilities through work and life experiences… — Lisa Adkins Copy Share Image
The desire to build a risk-free society has always been a sign of decadence. It has meant that the nation has given… — Henry Fairlie Copy Share Image
“The beauty of the twentieth century is the charm of the hospital, the grace of the cemetery, of consumption and emaciation. I… — Jean Lorrain Copy Share Image
“The baronet, in his old age, had been cast up by his vices on the shores of melancholy; heavy-eyed, grey-haired, bent, he… — Barry Pain 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
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
“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
“The other evening, in that cafe-cabaret in the Rue de la Fontaine, where I had run aground with Tramsel and Jocard, who… — Jean Lorrain Copy Share Image
“Adornment, exoticism, affectation are all willed decadent strategies meant to pervert the texts they made. Decadent texts often live in their descriptive… — Asti Hustvedt Copy Share Image
I am seized with an abiding fear regarding what these two instruments are doing to our society, our culture and our heritage.… — Edward R. Murrow Copy Share Image
“This Sarah Perez had the most beautiful eyes in the world, those green eyes spangled with gold that you love so much:… — Jean Lorrain Copy Share Image
“Hidden away behind the closed doors of aristocratic and bourgeois privilege, concealed under those ultra-respectable masks of black frock coat and veil,… — Jennifer Birkett 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
“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
“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
“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
When you showed someone how you felt, it was fresh and honest. When you told someone how you felt, there might be… — Jodi Picoult Copy Share Image
Our culture has few taboos that can't be violated, and our establishment has largely given up on setting standards in the first… — Ross Douthat Copy Share Image
There is an old song which asserts 'the best things in life are free.' Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic… — Robert A. Heinlein Copy Share Image
“It is a sort of quasi-monastic diabolical vision. In a landscape populated with larvae - flowing and undulating larvae called forth like… — Jean Lorrain Copy Share Image
“He saw a chamber, broad and low, designed, in its every rich stain of picture and slumberous hanging, to appeal to the… — Bernard Capes Copy Share Image
“(visions) of strange cities, of sandy plains, of gigantic ruins, of midnight skies with strange bright constellations, of mountain-passes, of grassy nooks… — Mary Ann Evans Copy Share Image
“The neurotic youth of to-day renews no ante-existent type. You will look in vain for a face like Amos's amongst the busts… — Bernard Capes Copy Share Image
We must admit that today conformity is on the Left. To be sure, the Right is not brilliant. But the Left is… — Albert Camus Copy Share Image
“Masks! I see them everywhere. That dreadful vision of the other night - the deserted town with its masked corpses in every… — Jean Lorrain Copy Share Image
“There is nothing to be found in human eyes, and that is their terrifying and dolorous enigma, their abominable and delusive charm.… — Jean Lorrain Copy Share Image
The civilized nations--Greece, Rome, England--have been sustained by the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive as long as… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“i mean talk about decadence," he declared, "how decadent can a society get? Look at it this way. This country's probably the… — Richard Yates Copy Share Image
It is the psychic depression of decadence which has come to this place and time. It is what happens to people who… — Jennifer Stone Copy Share Image
In a 'wheat and tares' world, how unusually blessed faithful members are to have the precious and constant gift of the Holy… — Neal A. Maxwell Copy Share Image
“Evolution has no foresight. Complex machinery develops its own agendas. Brains — cheat. Feedback loops evolve to promote stable heartbeats and then… — Peter Watts Copy Share Image
I studied the Quran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have… — Alexis de Tocqueville Copy Share Image
“Mrs. Scamler,’ she said, ‘do you study French, ma'am?’ ‘I do, indeed,’ I said; ‘two hours a day.’ ‘Then, ma’am,’ she says,… — John Davidson Copy Share Image
“Superficially, the figure in the smoking-room was that of a long, weedy young man - hairless as to his face; scalped with… — Bernard Capes Copy Share Image
It is rather the nature of America - our freewheeling, outspoken, prosperous, liberty-loving citizens extend equality to women, homosexuals, minorities, and almost… — Victor Davis Hanson Copy Share Image
“There were charming ones as well as terrible ones, that I must admit. The painter was particularly entranced by Japanese masks: warriors',… — Jean Lorrain Copy Share Image
When a republic's most venerable institutions no longer operate as they were intended, it becomes possible for small cabals to usurp power,… — T. D. Allman Copy Share Image
“Through silent alleys where dark shadows fleeted past them like forest beasts on the prowl; through bustling market-places where bloaters predominated, into… — Hume Nisbet Copy Share Image
It does if you put yourself out there being a pirate. It's like if you have an army and your army sit… — Ray Stevenson Copy Share Image
