Degenerate Quotes

1. "You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken."
Author: Anaïs Nin

2. "Each of us attempted to stem & hold fast the unending flood of his thoughts which tended to trickle off into that inner void. Our personalities were in an evanescent state, with sudden fits of remembering, faint intimations from the senses, irradiations from the subconscious, degenerate appetites & a most insidious lassitude. Everyone knows these little manikins of elder-pith that have a pellet of lead at the base so that they always stand up on their feet, no matter how one puts them down. Imagine that the leaden pellets are a little off center. One figure will lean to the right, another to the rear, another will bow its head or almost lie down. So it was with us. We had lost our balance, our sense of individuality, the perpendicular of our lives; our conscience was adrift, was sinking to the bottom, & we have no ballast to drop. We were out of kilter."
Author: Blaise Cendrars

3. "Some of us are crèmes brûlées, unfortunately in the presence of those who would rather have corn dogs. We can try to degenerate into corn dogs to make them happy, or we can just accept the fact that we were made for Paris!"
Author: C. JoyBell C.

4. "Every good idea sooner or later degenerates into hard work."
Author: Calvin Trillin

5. "Of course, Storm-Lord! But why would a god marry a poor farm girl?" asked one of the bound novices, his voice thin and chirping as an insect."All things must eventually mate," I shrugged, "having been cast into a man's flesh I must do as flesh does. And it hardly matters whether one mates with a woman or a rock or a river - the end result is the same. Once all the world wed stones and trees - but this is a degenerate age, and no one keeps to tradition."
Author: Catherynne M. Valente

6. "It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption."
Author: Charles De Montesquieu

7. "Those darling byegone times, Mr Carker,' said Cleopatra, 'with their delicious fortresses, and their dear old dungeons, and their delightful places of torture, and their romantic vengeances, and their picturesque assaults and sieges, and everything that makes life truly charming! How dreadfully we have degenerated!"
Author: Charles Dickens

8. "In architecture the idea degenerated. Design allows a more direct and pleasurable route."
Author: Charles Eames

9. "Not anymore. I'm afraid I've degenerated into a bibliophile.""A what?" asked Eragon."One who loves books," explained Jeod."
Author: Christopher Paolini

10. "The worst crimes are not committed by evil degenerates, but by decent and intelligent people taking 'pragmatic' decisions."
Author: Colin Wilson

11. "To practice tantra requires even greater compassion and greater intelligence than are required on the sutra path; thus, though many persons in the degenerate era are interested in tantra, tantra is not for degenerate persons. Tantra is limited to persons whose compassion is so great that they cannot bear to spend unnecessary time in attaining Buddhahood, as they want to be a supreme source of help and happiness for others quickly."
Author: Dalai Lama XIV

12. "Films have degenerated to their original operation as carnival amusement - they offer not drama but thrills."
Author: David Mamet

13. "What a foreigner may see in a fool, a bigot, an idiot or others of their kinds? Really I cannot say. As normalcy goes beyond natural light and extremism is sometimes loosely defined. But every fool must be a foreigner to his potential in the positive light, a degenerate in the negative light. In between potentials is where normalcy may hide."
Author: Dew Platt

14. "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket."
Author: Eric Hoffer

15. "I am a degenerate modern semi-intellectual who would die if I did not get my early morning cup of tea and my New Statesman every Friday. Clearly I do not, in a sense, 'want' to return to a simpler, harder, probably agricultural way of life. In the same sense I don't 'want' to cut down on my drinking, to pay my debts, to take enough exercise, to be faithful to my wife, etc. etc. But in another and more permanent sense I do want these things, and perhaps in the same sense I want a civilization in which 'progress' is not definable as making the world safe for little fat men."
Author: George Orwell

16. "It is simply the truth that the political system that I am part of has degenerated to the point that it needs fundamental change."
Author: Gloria Macapagal Arroyo

17. "Civilization, in fact, grows more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. Wars are no longer waged by the will of superior men, capable of judging dispassionately and intelligently the causes behind them and the effects flowing out of them. The are now begun by first throwing a mob into a panic; they are ended only when it has spent its ferine fury."
Author: H.L. Mencken

18. "Would to Heaven we had never approached them at all, but had run back at top speed out of that blasphemous tunnel with the greasily smooth floors and the degenerate murals aping and mocking the things they had superseded-run back, before we had seen what we did see, and before our minds were burned with something which will never let us breathe easily again!"
Author: H.P. Lovecraft

19. "The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have."
Author: Henry David Thoreau

20. "He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair."
Author: Henry David Thoreau

21. "All in all, the League of Nations is not inevitably bound, as some maintain from time to time, to degenerate into an impotent appendage of first one, then another of the competing great powers."
Author: Hjalmar Branting

22. "But he had always believed in fighting for the underdog, against the top dog. He had learned it, not from The Home, or The School, or The Church, but from that fourth and other great moulder of social conscience, The Movies. From all those movies that had begun to come out when Roosevelt went in.He had been a kid back then, a kid who had not been on the bum yet, but he was raised up on all those movies that they made then, the ones that were between '32 and '37 and had not yet degenerated into commercial imitations of themselves like the Dead End Kid perpetual series that we have now. He had grown up with them, those movies like the every first Dead End, like Winternet, like Grapes Of Wrath, like Dust Be My Destiny, and those other movies starring John Garfield and the Lane girls, and the on-the-bum and prison pictures starring James Cagney and George Raft and Henry Fonda."
Author: James Jones

23. "Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Maker of the world, but degenerates once it gets into the hands of man"
Author: Jean Jacques Rousseau

24. "The most widely raised type of silkworm, the larva of the 'Bombyx mori', no longer exists anywhere in a natural state. As my encyclopedia poignantly puts it: 'The legs of the larvae have degenerated, and the adults no longer fly'."
Author: Jeffrey Eugenides

25. "I like computers. I like the Internet. It's a tool that can be used. But don't be misled into thinking that these technologies are anything other than aspects of a degenerate economic system."
Author: Jerry Brown

26. "Exactly. I think the original tantric Buddhists took notice of was some very wise old people who never studied in their youth, but took part in a range of risk-taking adventures when they were younger, and finally became wise when they reflected upon their lives in old age. There is only one problem.""Which is?""Risk-taking is a way to die young. It is dangerous and you may forfeit the opportunity to grow old. An early death is not a sure path to wisdom in old age," Ranjit said, running his finger around the inside of the pipe bowl, "and if you survive without reflecting, then you simply become an old degenerate."
Author: Joe Niemczura

27. "The doctors realized in retrospect that even though most of these dead had also suffered from burns and blast effects, they had absorbed enough radiation to kill them. The rays simply destroyed body cells - caused their nuclei to degenerate and broke their walls."
Author: John Hersey

28. "Filth!' Ignatious shouted, spewing wet popcorn over rows. 'How dare she pretend to be a virgin. Look at her degenerate face. Rape her!"
Author: John Kennedy Toole

29. "In his day, liking someone like David Bowie would have been the domain of degenerate officers in black and white movies about nazis."
Author: Jonathan Goldstein

30. "But because their ancestors were men of righteousness, shall we consent to the abuses of their degenerate descendants? Because they did us a great good, would we be guilty if we prevented them from doing us evil?"
Author: José Rizal

31. "He has heard, and causes those with ears to hear, even today, what we shall not see until the end of time - the whole context of Providence. As though in the light of this end, he heard the harmony of creation to which the shadow belongs but in which the shadow is not darkness, deficiency is not defeat, trouble cannot degenerate into tragedy and infinite melancholy is ultimately forced to claim undisputed sway...Mozart causes us to hear that even on the latter side, and therefore in its totality creation praises its master and is therefore perfect."
Author: Karl Barth

32. "Was there a degenerate sex goddess lurking beneath her innocent skin?"
Author: Kitty French

33. "The only absolute truth is change, and death is the only way to stop change. Life is a series of judgments on changing situations, and no ideal, no belief fits every solution. Yet humans need to believe in something beyond themselves. Perhaps all intelligences do. If we do not act on higher motivations, then we can justify any action, no matter how horrible, as necessary for our survival. We are endlessly caught between the need for high moral absolutes—which will fail enough that any absolute can be demonstrated as false—and our tendency for individual judgments to degenerate into self-gratifying and unethical narcissism. Trying to force absolutes on others results in death and destruction, yet failing to act beyond one's self also leads to death and destruction, generally a lot sooner."
Author: L.E. Modesitt Jr.

34. "Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity."
Author: Lord Acton

35. "Religion now has degenerated and it has turned into a wolf; it has opened its mouth to show his ugly teeth; its spreading fear instead of love; and science has hidden in a corner like a lamb, trembling with fear!"
Author: Mehmet Murat Ildan

36. "Our manly ways and stern simplicity wreak much confusion to the enemy's councils. For they are men yet garb themselves as women, wearing wigs and finery and lace. And for this offense if it be God's will we will come upon them in the night, from the rear, and penetrate their degenerate bodies with our holy truth. For we are manly saints and possess the full swelling hardness of our faith, which gushes forevermore from Christ's unyielding root."
Author: Oliver Cromwell

37. "But we never get back our youth… The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to."
Author: Oscar Wilde

38. "A King, by disallowing Acts of this salutary nature, from being the father of his people, degenerated into a Tyrant and forfeits all rights to his subjects' obedience."
Author: Patrick Henry

39. "Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work."
Author: Peter Drucker

40. "Emigrate or Degenerate."
Author: Philip K. Dick

41. "The boys at school are so degenerate that it makes one feel pessimistic about the future of the male gender in general."
Author: Regina Doman

42. "You know God does not manifest Himself," Halgan shouted. "That is also heresy. The Revelation is not corporeal. You know this. Why do you persist in this perverted speech?""I like perverted. Maybe you would, too, if you gave it a chance.""Leave my men alone," Rakan said coldly. "Degenerate."Ringil smooched a kiss at him."
Author: Richard K. Morgan

43. "Is it true that man was once perfectly pure and innocent, and that he became degenerate by disobedience? No. The real truth is, and the history of man shows, that he has advanced. Events, like the pendulum of a clock have swung forward and backward, but after all, man, like the hands, has gone steadily on. Man is growing grander. He is not degenerating. Nations and individuals fail and die, and make room for higher forms. The intellectual horizon of the world widens as the centuries pass. Ideals grow grander and purer; the difference between justice and mercy becomes less and less; liberty enlarges, and love intensifies as the years sweep on. The ages of force and fear, of cruelty and wrong, are behind us and the real Eden is beyond. It is said that a desire for knowledge lost us the Eden of the past; but whether that is true or not, it will certainly give us the Eden of the future."
Author: Robert G. Ingersoll

44. "The memory of what others have accomplished kindles in the breasts of noble men a flame that is not quenched until their own prowess has won similar glory and renown. In these degenerate days, however, one cannot find a man who does not seek to rival his ancestors in wealth and extravagance, instead of uprightness and industry."
Author: Sallust

45. "The elderly are spooky when they degenerate intoreflections of their younger selves. They say things thatmake sense on some grammatical level, but it's not alwaysconnected to reality."
Author: Scott Adams

46. "Get your butt over there and start reading before I beat you with my Rod of Time. (Sin)I can think of much better things to do with your rod than beat me, baby. (Kat)Aww, gawd, we've degenerated into really bad punage. I yield. Save me before my IQ points are damaged. (Sin)"
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

47. "Point taken there. Now, the important question, so pay attention, ye ADD degenerates. How the F do I kill them? 'Cause no offense, I was trying and they were kicking my ass all over the place. It really wasn't pretty and didn't do much for my ego either. My only reprieve is that no one I have to face on a regular basis witnessed my beating. Don't know why you wanted me here when I'm about as useful as a wart on Aremis's bum." – Sasha"
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

48. "The one great advantage of Bhakti is that it is the easiest and most natural way to reach the great divine end in view; it's great disadvantage is that in its lower forms it oftentimes degenerates into hideous fanaticism. The fanatical crew in Hinduism, Mohammedanism, or Christianity, have always been almost exclusively recruited from these worshippers [sic] on the lower planes of Bhakti. That singleness of attachment (Nishthâ) to a loved object, without which no genuine love can grow, is very often also the cause of the denunciation of everything else. All the weak and undeveloped minds in every religion or country have only one way of loving their own ideal, i.e., by hating every other ideal. Herein is the explanation of why the same man who is so lovingly attached to his own ideal of God, so devoted to his own ideal of religion, becomes a howling fanatic as soon as he sees or hears anything of any other ideal."
Author: Swami Vivekananda

49. "There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an idea of boundary. But the idea was real. It was important. For seven generations there had been nothing in the world more important than that wall.Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side of it you were on."
Author: Ursula K. Le Guin

50. "A samurai is a total human being, whereas a man who is completely absorbed in his technical skill has degenerated into a ‘function', one cog in a machine."
Author: Yukio Mishima

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