Decadence Quote by Thomas Pynchon

“To have humanism we must first be convinced of our humanity. As we move further into decadence this becomes more difficult.” quote by Thomas Pynchon — Download Open image

“To have humanism we must first be convinced of our humanity. As we move further into decadence this becomes more difficult.”

Thomas Pynchon

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Decadence Difficult Firsts Humanism Humanity Moving Nature of man

More by Thomas Pynchon

“How strange tonight, this city. As if something trembled below its surface, waiting to burst through.”

Thomas Pynchon

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“It was one of those great iron afternoons in London: the yellow sun being teased apart by a thoasand chimneys breathing, fawning upward without shame. This smoke is more than the day’s breath, more than dark strength--it is an imperial presence that lives and moves. People were crossing the streets and squares, going everywhere. Busses were grinding off, hundreds of…

Thomas Pynchon

“Surely for as long as there have been nights as bad as this one---something to raise the possibility of another night that could actually, with love and cockcrows, light the path home, banish the Adversary, destroy the boundaries between our lands our bodies, our stories, all false, about who we are: for the one night, leaving only the clear way…

Thomas Pynchon

“Death glided by, shadowless, among the empties on the grass.”

Thomas Pynchon

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“People read what news they wanted to and each accordingly built his own rathouse of history's rags and straws.”

Thomas Pynchon

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“Out of that night and day of unconditional wrath, folks would've expected to see any city, if it survived, all newly reborn, purified by flame, taken clear beyond greed, real-estate speculating, local politics--instead of which, here was this weeping widow, some one-woman grievance committee in black, who would go on and save up and lovlingly record and mercilessly begrudge every…

Thomas Pynchon

“As spread thighs are to the libertine...so was the letter V to young Stencil.”

Thomas Pynchon

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“Oedipa wondered whether, at the end of this (if it were supposed to end), she too might not be left with only compiled memories of clues, announcements, intimations, but never the central truth itself, which must somehow each time be too bright for her memory to hold; which must always blaze out, destroying its own message irreversibly, leaving an overexposed…

Thomas Pynchon

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.

Thomas Pynchon

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“remember didn't you sneak away from camp to have a moment alone with What you felt stirring across the land . . . it was the equinox . . . green spring equal nights . . . canyons are opening up, at the bottoms are steaming fumaroles, steaming the tropical life there like greens in a pot, rank, dope-perfume, a…

Thomas Pynchon

“Through rain...then through dreaming glass, green with the evening. And herself in chair, old-fashioned, bonneted, looking west over the deck of Earth, inferno red at its edges, and further in the brown and gold clouds... Then, suddenly, night: The empty rocking chair lit staring chalk blue by--is it the moon, or some other light in the sky? just the hard…

Thomas Pynchon

“She knew instinctively: he will be fine as the fraternity boy just out of an Ivy League school who knows he will never stop…

Thomas Pynchon

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More Decadence quotes

One defining symptom of decadence is a fondness for vast and nonsensical extravagance.

Robert Silverberg

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“Like symbolism, decadence puts forth the idea that the function of literature is to evoke impressions and 'correspondences', rather than to realistically depict the world. ... the decadent aestheticized decay and took pleasure in perversity. In decadent literature, sickness is preferable to health, not only because sickness was regarded as more interesting, but because sickness was construed as subversive, as…

Asti Hustvedt

I think Illium can take care of himself.” “Not if he keeps flirting with you.” A fine, almost elegant tendril of heat, champagne and…

Nalini Singh

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“(Decadent style) is ingenious, complicated, learned, full of shades of meaning and research, always pushing further the limits of language... forcing itself to express in thought that which is most ineffable, and in form the vaguest and most fleeting contours; listening that it may translate them to the subtle confidences of the neuropath, to the avowals of aging and depraved…

Theophile Gautier

“After two years' absence she finally returned to chilly Europe, a trifle weary, a trifle sad, disgusted by our banal entertainments, our shrunken landscapes, our impoverished lovemaking. Her soul had remained over there, among the gigantic, poisonous flowers. She missed the mystery of old temples and the ardor of a sky blazing with fever, sensuality and death. The better to…

Octave Mirbeau

I definitely consider 'Poses' - the whole album in fact - to be kind of a miracle. Like the last breath of that moment…

Rufus Wainwright

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Content without style is propaganda or adolescence. Style without content is decadence.

Rita Mae Brown

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Misgovernment is of four kinds, often in combination. They are: 1) tyranny or oppression, of which history provides so many well-known examples that they do not need citing; 2) excessive ambition, such as Athens' attempted conquest of Sicily in the Peloponnesian War, Philip II's of England via the Armada, Germany's twice-attempted rule of Europe by a self-conceived master race, Japan's…

Barbara Tuchman

Fundamentalists believe that we don't believe in anything. In their view of the world, they are in possession of absolute certainties, while we are…

Salman Rushdie

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The attraction of horror is a mental, or even an intellectual, excitement, but the fascination of the repulsive, so noticeable incontemporary writing, can spring…

Ellen Glasgow

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“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…

Bernard Capes