Content without style is propaganda or adolescence. Style without content is decadence.
'Sunset Boulevard' - the story of Hollywood movies draped on a depressing sex affair - is an uncompromising study of American decadence displaying a sad, worn, methodical beauty few films have had since the late twenties.
I have always thought of sophistication as rather a feeble substitute for decadence.
To be wrong, and to be carefully wrong, that is the definition of decadence.
What we now have is the freedom which attends decadence, or the decadence which attends freedom.
The difference between our decadence and the Russians' is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.
The story of the decadence of the cathedral as a moral power, a spiritual energizer in civilization, is the sad but inevitable story of dogmatism. It is the story of the struggle of free thought with bigotry, religion making common cause with the wrong side.
I was very much a daddy's girl, and was pretty tyrannical when he was sleeping. If I could get into trouble, I would. I didn't have a lot of respect for those people because I saw a lot of debauchery and decadence going on. People trying to hid it from me, but I was onto them.
Fame introduced me to a world of instant gratification and decadence I hadn't seen before.
America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization.