#dec

My opposition to Interviews lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language. ↗

— James Thurber

#decline #english #english language #expression #fact

I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows. ↗

— Katherine Graham

#decide #democracy #flourishes #government #i

(Decadent style) is ingenious, complicated, learned, full of shades of meaning and research, always pushing further the limits of language... forcing itself to express in thought that which is most ineffable, and in form the vaguest and most fleeting contours; listening that it may translate them to the subtle confidences of the neuropath, to the avowals of aging and depraved passion, and to the singular hallucinations of the fixed idea verging on madness... In opposition to the classic style, it admits of shading, and these shadows teem and swarm with the larvae of superstitions, the haggard phantoms of insomnia, nocturnal terrors, remorse which starts and turns back at the slightest noise, monstrous dreams stayed only by impotence, obscure phantasies at which daylight would stand amazed, and all that the soul conceals of the dark, the unformed, and the vaguely horrible, in its deepest and furthest recesses. ↗

— Théophile Gautier

#decadents #age

He said that we belonged together because he was born with a flower and I was born with a butterfly and that flowers and butterflies need each other for survival. ↗

— Gemma Malley

#butterflies #butterfly #death #flower #flowers

I love you Anna Covey,' he said, his voice barely audible. And slowly, clumsily, he leant forward, and his lips found hers, and Anna felt him kiss her awkwardly, she knew that she wasn't a Surplus any more. And nor was Peter. ↗

— Gemma Malley

#death #declaration #gemma #kiss #life

He felt that he was still groping in the dark; he had chosen his path but kept looking back, wondering whether he had misread the signs, whether he should not have taken the other way. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#decisions #doubts #death

Decline is also a form of voluptuousness, just like growth. Autumn is just as sensual as springtime. There is as much greatness in dying as in procreation. ↗

— Iwan Goll

#decadence #decay #death

We suddenly feel fearful and apprehensive, naked in our perishable flesh, and for just a moment we wish we could go back to being stone—crumbling in death rather than rotting, trapped inside an immobile prison of stone rather than reduced to immaterial souls like those that now rattled within our skulls. The moment passes. There is no point in regretting irreversible decisions—one has to live with them, and we try. ↗

— Ekaterina Sedia

#decisions #mortality #regret #souls #death

...a third [of three] had died in his bunk of natural causes--for a dagger in the heart quite naturally ends one's life. ↗

— R.A. Salvatore

#deceit #drow #death

Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay; the worst is death and death will have his day. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#decay #destruction #ruin #death