Decadence

(151 votes)   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
1903-1974, British Critic

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(142 votes)   Every civilization when it loses its inner vision and its cleaner energy, falls into a new sort of sordidness, more vast and more stupendous than the old savage sort. An Augean stable of metallic filth.

D. H. Lawrence
1885-1930, British Author

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(123 votes)   Men first feel necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance.

Giambattista Vico
1688-1744, Italian Philosopher, Historian

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website