Top 100 Quotes About Decadence
#1. 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
#2. The glossy surface of our civilization hides a real intellectual decadence.
Simone Weil
#3. 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
#4. 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
#5. I think Illium can take care of himself."
"Not if he keeps flirting with you."
A fine, almost elegant tendril of heat, champagne and sunshine, decadence in the light.
"Raphael's not the sharing kind.
Nalini Singh
#6. 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
#7. To have to fight the instincts - that is the definition of decadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness equals instinct.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#8. America was aptly described by George Bernard Shaw, who said that it was 'the only country which had gone from barbarism to decadence without once passing through civilization.' Guy
Maya Angelou
#9. What is the sign of every literary decadence? That life no longer dwells in the whole. The word becomes sovereign and leaps out of the sentence, the sentence reaches out and obscures the meaning of the page, the page gains life at the expense of the whole - the whole is no longer a whole.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#10. As a youth, I sought out decadence; as an elder, I try to avoid decay.
Mason Cooley
#11. American society is the only one which has passed directly from barbarism into decadence without once knowing civilisation.
Albert Jay Nock
#12. How does one make a movie about decadence these days? Now that we're allowed to do it, it's too late.
Wilfrid Sheed
#13. 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
#14. 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
#15. Fascism was an explosion against intolerable conditions, against remediable wrongs which the old world failed to remedy. It was a movement to secure national renaissance by people who felt themselves threatened with decline into decadence and death and were determined to live, and live greatly.
Oswald Mosley
#16. Religion is the biggest influence on the intellect and the decadence of a people.
Siddharth Katragadda
#17. It should surprise no one that modern soldiers return home just as conflicted and detached as previous generations. The difference is that in the age of vapid American decadence, their simpler fundamental values are largely irrelevant to we civilians.
Tiffany Madison
#18. The inside operation of Congress - the deals, the compromises, the selling out, the co-opting, the unprincipled manipulating, the self-serving career-building - is a story of such monumental decadence that I believe if people find out about it they will demand an end to it.
Bella Abzug
#19. It was the heart of any true moment of decadence: the knowledge that an epoque is already slipping from us, inexorably, even in the moment of its glory.
Tilar J. Mazzeo
#20. 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
#21. 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
#22. Elaborate burial customs are a sure sign of decadence.
J.G. Ballard
#23. 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
#24. The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.
David Sarnoff
#26. 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
#27. Evil was the most contagious of diseases, so virulent that no herb, surgery, or dream-humor could cure it. One's sense of what was normal, acceptable, became distorted by proximity to wrongness; entire nations had succumbed this way, first to decadence, then collapse.
N.K. Jemisin
#28. The carnal way their bodies slid against each other, the decadence of how he felt moving inside her made her blood race and her heart swell with love.
Because he was hers.
And she was his.
Donna Grant
#29. This cosmic dance of bursting decadence and withheld permissions twists all our arms collectively, but if sweetness can win, and it can, then I'll still be here tomorrow to high-five you yesterday, my friend. Peace.
Pendleton Ward
#30. 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
#31. Decadence begins when men no longer find within themselves a reason to relate their lives to that of others and not when material resources run short.
Anonymous
#33. I have always thought of sophistication as rather a feeble substitute for decadence.
Christopher Hampton
#34. You shut up. I'm older and I'm not going to stay at your palace of decadence and deviance.
Brody to Erin.
Lauren Dane
#35. The horse is, like man, the most beautiful and the most miserable of creatures, only, in the case of man, it is vice or property that makes him ugly. He is responsible for his own decadence, while the horse is only a slave.
Rosa Bonheur
#36. Content without style is propaganda or adolescence. Style without content is decadence.
Rita Mae Brown
#37. 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
#38. I swallowed him down like liquid decadence and begged for more.
Shawna Grace
#39. 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
#40. 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
#41. Sweetness. That was the first surprise. He'd heard so many tart words from these lips . . . but her kiss was sweet. Cool and sweet, with a hint of true decadence beneath. Like a sun-ripened plum at the height of summer. Ready to fall into his hand at the slightest inducement.
Tessa Dare
#42. History shows that male homosexuality, which like prostitution flourishes with urbanization and soon becomes predictably ritualized, always tends toward decadence.
Camille Paglia
#43. Lipstick stains on a cigarette filter summons to mind noir evenings of decadence. A girl with carmine lips smoking is obviously a girl who does not intend to go home alone that night.
Chloe Thurlow
#44. 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
#45. 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. General
G.K. Chesterton
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. What could destroy us more quickly than working, thinking, and feeling without any inner necessity, without any deeply personal choice, without pleasure - as an automaton of "duty"? This is the very recipe for decadence, even for idiocy.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#49. But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.
E. M. Forster
#50. 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
#52. 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
#53. Decadence is the total loss of unconsciousness, which is the very basis of life. Could it think, the heart would stop beating.
Fernando Pessoa
#54. 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
#55. America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
Oscar Wilde
#56. Poverty is bad,
but so is decadence.
Tyranny is bad,
but so is chaos.
Injustice is bad,
but so is godlessness.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#57. Political cynicism, disengagement, democratic decadence - call it what you will - is too often an excuse for physical and intellectual laziness.
Matthew Flinders
#58. 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 descending into decadence. We will be able to triumph over terrorism not by waging war on it, but through a conscious, fearless way of life.
Salman Rushdie
#59. Basic insight regarding the nature of decadence: it's supposed causes are its consequences.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#60. What we now have is the freedom which attends decadence, or the decadence which attends freedom.
Terence McKenna
#61. One defining symptom of decadence is a fondness for vast and nonsensical extravagance.
Robert Silverberg
#62. Decadence attracts me. It suggests a new world, and, for me, society's struggle between life and death is absolutely beautiful.
Yves Saint-Laurent
#63. This kind of detail impressed me. It suggested a whole life of marvelous, elaborate decadence that attracted me like a magnet.
Sylvia Plath
#64. 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
#65. Let's acknowledge that America's increasing decadence is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. When we tolerate trash on television, permit pornography to invade our homes via the Internet, and allow babies to be killed at the point of birth, we are inflaming radical Islam.
Charles Colson
#66. The pessimism of the creative person is not decadence but a mighty passion for the redemption of man.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
#67. Decadence begins when the budget to beautify a man's home exceeds the coin spent to ensure its defense.
Mark Lawrence
#68. 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
#69. 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
#70. Sammi watched him walk toward her.
He walked like a predator, a conqueror. A king who ruled and commanded all. He was sex and sin, decadence and sensuality.
He was, simply put, spectacular.
Donna Grant
#71. 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
#72. 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
#73. Fond of bewailing the decadence of the modern world, of denouncing the younger generation for its lack of idealism and public spirit, he is blind to the fact of his own enormous selfishness. He is one of those invalids who make use of their real or imagined sufferings to get their own way.
Christopher Isherwood
#74. I love chocolate cake for breakfast," Peggy stalls, "it sets me up for the day. A little decadence is good for the soul." She's been eating more cake than usual, lately. Impending death does have compensations after all, then, if only chocolate-covered ones.
Menna Van Praag
#75. 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
#76. Apathy is just lack of energy, which to me, is just the literal definition of decadence.
Anonymous
#77. 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
#78. Fame introduced me to a world of instant gratification and decadence I hadn't seen before.
Jesse Metcalfe
#79. Those very superficial sensualists and profligates who lead the dance of Latin decadence have not seen, among their dancing girls and their pennies, that the disappearance of symbols was a precursor to the ruin of a people; communities only have abstract reasons for existing...
Josephin Peladan
#80. Variety is not the spice of life. It is the mother of disorder. Individuality is not the hallmark of freedom. It is the essence of decadence. Freedom is slavery to chaos. Unity is peace, all thinking and acting as one.
Dean Koontz
#81. Will you have me, though I come to you corrupt? My armor tarnished with sin and decadence.
Nicole Jordan
#82. '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
#83. America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization.
John O'Hara
#84. Delicious foods are drugs that will inflame the gut and rot the bones, but there is no harm if one eats moderately. Delightful things are all purveyors of destruction and decadence, but there is no regret if one enjoys them moderately.
Zicheng Hong
#85. I absolutely believe that when one goes on vacation, it should be pure decadence.
Crystal Renn
#86. The Stones suggested that if you dabble in decadence, you could turn into a devil-worshipping junkie. Paul McCartney suggested that if you mess around with girl worship, you could turn into a husband. So Paul was a lot scarier.
Rob Sheffield
#87. 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
#88. to have to combat one's instincts - that is the formula for decadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness and instinct are one.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#90. It is easy to forget the decadence of glass. How some of us find it only in fragments. The glass between us and the world is often the measure of our wealth. Looking out at the world through it colors the hunger beyond.
Chris Abani
#91. Batman knew what it was like to trip balls without seriously losing his shit, and that savoir faire added another layer to his outlaw sexiness and alluring aura of decadence and wealth.
Grant Morrison
#92. 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,
#93. 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 D. Alinsky
#94. Depravity and decadence are two sides of the same coin.
Manoj Vaz
#95. Limited means often constitute the charm and force of primitive painting. Extension, on the contrary, leads the arts to decadence.
Georges Braque
#96. 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
#97. The mixed woods of Germany were the sort that deserved a good savoring - no, a savouring, with a British u in there for the sake of decadence, as colours are somehow more vibrant to me than mere colors.
Kevin Hearne
#98. 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
#99. In this age of decadence that we live in, people's minds are twisted and only words are loved but not preactial deeds.
Renee Ahdieh
#100. 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
