Decadence

I fear that in a few years there may be a kind of 'panic', in this form: 'since Millet' we have sunk very low — the word decadence, now whispered or pronounced in veiled terms (see Herkomer), will then sound like an alarm bell. Many, like I myself, now keep quiet, because they already have the reputation of being awkward customers, and talking about it doesn't help. That — namely, talking — isn't what one needs to do — one must work, though with sorrow in the heart. Those who later cry out the loudest about decadence will themselves belong to it the most. I repeat: by this shall ye know them, [from: Matt. 7:16.] by their work, and it won't be the most eloquent who say the truest things. See Millet himself, see Herkomer, they're certainly not orators, and speak almost reluctantly.
- Vincent van Gogh his letter to Theo, from The Hague, 5 Nov. 1882 - original manuscript of letter no. 280 - at Van Gogh Museum, location Amsterdam - inv. b263 a-b V/1962,

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
- Gore Vidal, The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (1992)

In popular imagination, at least, the 1970s was the golden age of excess in Hollywood. This was the decade when the studios were taken over by a new generation of maverick, mostly male, artists and film-makers, whose creative brilliance was matched by their wild feats of self-indulgent hedonism when they were off duty.
- Decade of decadence: Nicholson, Polanski and Hollywood in the Seventies Independent UK, (23 October 2011)

Quotes