For some strange reason we don't go to charming, light movies anymore. People expect a movie to be heavy and turgid, like "American Beauty." We've become a heavy-handed society.

Finished products are for decadent minds.

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.

5545. When all is gone, Repentance comes too late.

The phrase "a literature of decadence" implies a scale of literature: infancy, childhood, adolescence, etc. This term, I would say, supposes something fateful and providential, like an inescapable decree; and it is completely unjust to reproach us for the fulfillment of a law that is mysterious. All I can understand of this academic saying is that it is shameful to obey this law pleasurably, and that we are guilty of rejoicing in our destiny.

There is only one type of decadence which is dangerous in art and literature, and unfortunately critics seldom scourge it as it deserves: it consists in being conventional and imitative, in tritely expressing cheap and superficial emotions.

This is a decadent era. Its main characteristic is that it’s dependent on lies and cheating. Once it loses this characteristic, it can’t survive for even a day.

Perhaps our own fin-de-siècle decadence takes the form, not of libertarian excess, but of the kind of over-the-top puritanism we see in political correctness and the assorted moral certainties of physical fitness fanatics, New Agers and animal-rights activists.

After Altamira, all is decadence - we have invented nothing

The Cinema is too rich; it is obese.

How sweet time feels
when it’s too late

Movies are one of the bad habits that have corrupted our century. They have slipped into the American mind more misinformation in one evening than the Dark Ages could muster in a decade.

Isto está tudo decadente: já nem decadentes há.

It's not the side-effects of the cocaine - I'm thinking that it must be love.

It's too late to be grateful,
It's too late to be hateful,
It's too late to be late again,
The European canon is here.

- Station to Station