Decadence quotes:

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Decadence is wonderful. -- Jack L. Chalker
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
I am the Empire at the end of the decadence. -- Paul Verlaine
I have always thought of sophistication as rather a feeble substitute for decadence. -- Christopher Hampton
Fame introduced me to a world of instant gratification and decadence I hadn't seen before. -- Jesse Metcalfe
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -- Oscar Wilde
An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence. -- Raymond Chandler
You gotta eat right, you gotta have healthy habits, you know, and balance out your decadence with a healthy lifestyle during the day. -- Talib Kweli
The fate of nations is intimately bound up with their powers of reproduction. All nations and all empires first felt decadence gnawing at them when their birth rate fell off. -- Benito Mussolini
Sunset Boulevard' - the story of Hollywood movies draped on a depressing sex affair - is an uncompromising study of American decadence displaying a sad, worn, methodical beauty few films have had since the late twenties. -- Manny Farber
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
In a free society, government reflects the soul of its people. If people want change at the top, they will have to live in different ways. Our major social problems are not the cause of our decadence. They are a reflection of it. -- Cal Thomas
I wanted to be an actor from a young age, but actually becoming one and seen the ugly side of the world does feel different and sometimes unwelcome. There are shallow, vapid, untalented people zombieing the streets of Hollywood, adding decadence and immorality to an already extravagant business. -- Fran Kranz
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 is the total loss of unconsciousness, which is the very basis of life. Could it think, the heart would stop beating. -- Fernando Pessoa
The difference between our decadence and the Russians' is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic. -- James Thurber
The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic. -- James Thurber
The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic. -- James Thurber
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History shows that male homosexuality, which like prostitution flourishes with urbanization and soon becomes predictably ritualized, always tends toward decadence. -- Camille Paglia
The vitality of a culture is in its capacity to assimilate foreign influences. The culture that's defensive and closed condemns itself to decadence. -- Juan Goytisolo
When I came to America, there was a lot of decadence in New York in the early '70s because the city was bankrupt and you could do whatever you want! -- Maripol
He had that curious love of green, which in individuals is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity, if not a decadence of morals. -- Oscar Wilde
The goal of every culture is to decay through over-civilization; the factors of decadence, -- luxury, skepticism, weariness and superstition, -- are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next. -- Cyril Connolly
First of all, whoever didn't want to be a member of this association or the other association, was branded, you know, like a dangerous individualist, you know, infected by the Western decadence, you know. So everybody joined. -- Milos Forman
It is a self-deception of philosophers and moralists to imagine that they escape decadence by opposing it. That is beyond their will; and, however little they acknowledge it, one later discovers that they were among the most powerful promoters of decadence. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
The American system is a beautiful and durable thing, but flawed. I would like to think that this decadence is not sustainable, whether in the eyes of the electorate or the eyes of whatever the local economy is built on; that would bring me hope. -- Mark Leibovich
The story of the decadence of the cathedral as a moral power, a spiritual energizer in civilization, is the sad but inevitable story of dogmatism. It is the story of the struggle of free thought with bigotry, religion making common cause with the wrong side. -- Jenkin Lloyd Jones
The desire to build a risk-free society has always been a sign of decadence. It has meant that the nation has given up, that it no longer believes in its destiny, that it has ceased to aspire to greatness, and has retired from history to pet itself. -- Henry Fairlie
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
I definitely consider 'Poses' - the whole album in fact - to be kind of a miracle. Like the last breath of that moment when decadence is healthy, 'Poses' encapsulates that feeling. It's a kind of song and a kind of album that I'll never be able to repeat. -- Rufus Wainwright
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
The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence. -- Aldous Huxley
When a republic's most venerable institutions no longer operate as they were intended, it becomes possible for small cabals to usurp power, and, while keeping the forms, corrupt the function of those institutions for their own ends. Looking at things that way, the George W. Bush presidency has been both result and symptom of the decadence of America's constitutional mechanisms. -- T. D. Allman
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
Progress of mankind is the decadence of humanity. -- Siddharth Katragadda
I love chess, but it's the height of decadence. -- Jennifer Shahade
Elaborate burial customs are a sure sign of decadence. -- J. G. Ballard
The glossy surface of our civilization hides a real intellectual decadence. -- Simone Weil
When the storytelling goes bad in a society, the result is decadence. -- Aristotle
Content without style is propaganda or adolescence. Style without content is decadence. -- Rita Mae Brown
One defining symptom of decadence is a fondness for vast and nonsensical extravagance. -- Robert Silverberg
To be wrong, and to be carefully wrong, that is the definition of decadence. -- Gilbert K. Chesterton
Religion is the biggest influence on the intellect and the decadence of a people. -- Siddharth Katragadda
I absolutely believe that when one goes on vacation, it should be pure decadence. -- Crystal Renn
As a youth, I sought out decadence; as an elder, I try to avoid decay. -- Mason Cooley
In its youth a people produce mythology and poetry; in its decadence, philosophy and logic. -- Will Durant
What we now have is the freedom which attends decadence, or the decadence which attends freedom. -- Terence McKenna
The pessimism of the creative person is not decadence but a mighty passion for the redemption of man. -- Isaac Bashevis Singer
Limited means often constitute the charm and force of primitive painting. Extension, on the contrary, leads the arts to decadence. -- Georges Braque
For me, I wanted to create something that's much more driven by a type of selfishness, a type of decadence. -- Kehinde Wiley
How does one make a movie about decadence these days? Now that we're allowed to do it, it's too late. -- Wilfrid Sheed
To have humanism we must first be convinced of our humanity. As we move further into decadence this becomes more difficult. -- Thomas Pynchon
To have to fight the instincts - that is the definition of decadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness equals instinct. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
Ultimately we must concern ourselves with pulling out by its roots the decadence that controls our culture, the profit motive that controls our culture. -- Jane Fonda
I think Gummy Bears should be the universal symbol for peace, because peace leads to prosperity, prosperity leads to decadence, and decadence leads to diabetes. -- Jarod Kintz
Luxury and excessive refinement are sure forerunners of the decadence of states, because when all individuals seek their own interests they neglect the public weal. -- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The parliamentary principle of decision by majorities only appears during quite short periods of history, and those are always periods of decadence in nations and States. -- Adolf Hitler
America is a country in which I see the most persistant idealism and the blandest of cynicism and the race is on between its vitality and its decadence. -- Alistair Cooke
Living in a world where people measure their happiness by self-indulgence and decadence, Is like watching a whole society being pushed into the abyss of perpetual decay and aberrations. -- Husam Wafaei
Just as the body has its progress and decadence, so also has the mind, and, therefore, the mind is not the soul, because the soul can neither decay nor degenerate. -- Swami Vivekananda
The history of prevailing status quos shows decay and decadence infecting the opulent materialism of the Haves. The spiritual life of the Haves is a ritualistic justification of their possessions. -- Saul
For this remains as I have already pointed out the essential difference between the two religions of decadence : Buddhism promises nothing, but actually fulfils; Christianity promises everything, but fulfils nothing. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
Here, I thought, I had found the human race in its final stages of decadence perverse, insouciant, without ambition. And I could not blame them. After all, they had no future. -- Michael Moorcock
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
Of course, the '60s was a study in decadence. Everything just got worse and worse, and at the end of the '60s, everything was so horrible that people were killing each other. -- Claes Oldenburg
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

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