If kissing is man's greatest invention, then fermentation and patriarchy compete with the domestication of animals for the distinction of being man's worst folly, and no doubt the three combined long ago, the one growing out of the others, to foster civilization and lead Western humanity to its present state of decline.

Outside, under the marquee of the hotel, he stood a moment as he did each night beneath the marquee of the Hotel Hyperion, while he decided what direction to take, what to do. And suddenly, realizing it was not the Hotel Hyperion, that the circumstances were quite different, he felt loneliness spring up like a dark forest all around him. The odd thing was, he felt no impulse to hurry after her, to find her somehow. What would he have to offer her except the history of weakness, loneliness, and inadequacy, the decline and fall of himself? He himself was the core of the loneliness around him, and its core was inadequacy. He was inadequate even in love.

For instance? Well, for instance, what it means to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organized power. Subject to tremendous controls. In a condition caused by mechanization. After the late failure of radical hopes. In a society that was no community and devalued the person. Owing to the multiplied power of numbers which made the self negligible. Which spent military billions against foreign enemies but would not pay for order at home. Which permitted savagery and barbarism in its own great cities. At the same time, the pressure of human millions who have discovered what concerted efforts and thoughts can do. As megatons of water shape organisms on the ocean floor. As tides polish stones. As winds hollow cliffs. The beautiful supermachinery opening a new life for innumerable mankind. Would you deny them the right to exist? Would you ask them to labor and go hungry while you yourself enjoyed old-fashioned Values? You— you yourself are a child of this mass and a brother to all the rest. or else an ingrate, dilettante, idiot. There, Herzog, thought Herzog, since you ask for the instance, is the way it runs.

What can oppose the decline of the west is not a resurrected culture but the utopia that is silently contained in the image of its decline.

Diminishing returns is the outcome of restriction

Men shut their doors against a setting sun.

Apples taste sweetest when they're going.

How many worthy men have we known to survive their own reputation, who have seen and suffered the honor and glory most justly acquired in their youth, extinguished in their own presence?

As favour and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no one perceived before.

The passing years steal from us one thing after another.

The various aspects of decadence cannot be turned into functions of the economy and neither can they be grasped without relating them to this dynamic part of contemporary life.

He should be envied Who when his strength is spent lays down his life. Old age reserves a melancholy fate For noble souls before their life is done.

Statesmen and beauties are very rarely sensible of the gradations of their decay.

There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol.

The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop, The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.