Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

What we now have is the freedom which attends decadence, or the decadence which attends freedom.

Our sires' age was worse than our grandsires'. We their sons are more worthless than they: so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.

I have seen the day, when, if a man made himself ridiculous, the world would laugh at him. But now, everything that is mean, disgusting, and absurd, pleases them but so much the better!

Decadence is wonderful.

The nature of peoples is first crude, then severe, then benign, then delicate, finally dissolute.

But I believe there is a decay that is eroding America, and as a result, God begins to disappear from our society.

The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.

In a free society, government reflects the soul of its people. If people want change at the top, they will have to live in different ways. Our major social problems are not the cause of our decadence. They are a reflection of it.

The moral fiber of the American people is beset by rot and decay

A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.

For the world was changing, and sweetness was gone, and virtue too. Worry had crept on a corroding world, and what was lost- good manners, ease and beauty? Ladies were not ladies anymore, and you couldn't trust a gentleman's word.

Pleasures bring effeminacy, and effeminacy foreruns ruin; such conquests, without blood or sweat, sufficiently do revenge themselves upon their intemperate conquerors.

As a youth, I sought out decadence; as an elder, I try to avoid decay.

In the acceptance of depravity the sense of the past is most truly captured. What is a ruin but time easing itself of endurance? Corruption is the Age of Time.

We know we are falling from grace, millennium.

Decadence is the total loss of unconsciousness, which is the very basis of life. Could it think, the heart would stop beating.

Were the life of man prolonged, he would become such a proficient in villainy, that it would become necessary again to drown or to burn the world. Earth would become an hell; for future rewards when put off to a great distance, would cease to encourage, and future punishments to alarm.

Decadence attracts me. It suggests a new world, and, for me, society's struggle between life and death is absolutely beautiful.

...of all the kinds of decay in this world, decadent purity is the most malignant.

Now we suffer the evils of a long peace; luxury more cruel than war broods over us and avenges a conquered world.

Our parents, worse than our grandparents, gave birth to us who are worse than they, and we shall in our turn bear offspring still more evil.

Is America becoming decadent? Do we no longer regard our promises and pledges as sacred? ... We promised to make peace with Germany only in conjunction with the Allies; but we brought forward a separate peace, demanding for ourselves all the advantages of the Treaty of Versailles but rejecting all the responsibilities embodied in the Treaty. It was America's President who induced Europe to form a League of Nations; and then America was the first country that refused to joint it.... If these are not the symptoms of national decadency, what are they?

A corrupt society is terrible for humanity and great for business.

A definition may be very exact, and yet go but a very little way towards informing us of the nature of the thing defined.

But what force in the galaxy is stronger than she is?" "Indifference." Jerusha surprised herself with the answer. "Indifference, Gundhalinu, is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don't stand a chance against it. It lets neglect and decay and monstrous injustice go unchecked. It doesn't act, it allows. And that's what gives it so much power.