decadence quotes

America is the only country in history that miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to decadence without the usual interval of civilization.

- Georges Clemenceau
Attributed. This has also been attributed to George Bernard Shaw.

The absence of the urge to create is decadence.

- David Alan Mamet
  Writing in Restaurants,'Decadence'.

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.

- Sir Stephen Harold Spender
World withinWorld, p.314^15.