#decadence

The baronet, in his old age, had been cast up by his vices on the shores of melancholy; heavy-eyed, grey-haired, bent, he seemed to pass through life as in a dream. ("The Undying Thing") ↗

— Barry Pain

#old-age #vice #age

They had...finished their lives before their death – which is not always the end of life and often comes long before the end. ↗

— Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly

#death #decadence #dissolution #life #death

The habit is now confirmed in me of spending the greater part of the day in sleep, while by night I wander far and wide through the city under the sedative influence of a tincture which has become necessary to my life ↗

— M.P. Shiel

#decadent #drugs #night #sleep #life

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

#always #beings #collectively #compensates #decadence

I have always thought of sophistication as rather a feeble substitute for decadence. ↗

— Christopher Hampton

#decadence #feeble #i #rather #sophistication

The difference between our decadence and the Russians' is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic. ↗

— James Thurber

#between #brutal #decadence #difference #our

If rape or arson, poison or the knife Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stuff Of this drab canvas we accept as life - It is because we are not bold enough! ↗

— Charles Baudelaire

#debauchery #decadence #poetry #life

An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence. ↗

— Raymond Chandler

#any #cleverness #decadence #except #incapable

At issue for Peladan is the potency of the visual image: art's ability to construct images for viewing that can mobilize, concentrate and redirect instinctive responses. He brings out into the open the recognition underlying all decadent art; that is, the political function of the fascinated gaze. ↗

— Jennifer Birkett

#decadent #gaze #image #peladan #art

Decadent cooks go one step further and make sculptures of the food itself. If life is to be spent in pursuit of the extravagant, the extreme, the grotesque, the bizarre, then one's diet should reflect the fact. Life, meals, everything must be as artificial as possible - in fact works of art. So why not begin by eating a few statues? ↗

— Medlar Lucan

#decadence #decadent #food #art