The Dedalus Book of English Decadence Quotes

“I would give many lives to save one sonnet by Baudelaire; for the hymn, ‘À la très chère, à la très belle, qui remplit mon cœur de clarté,’ let the first-born in every house in Europe be slain;”
― James Willsher, The Dedalus Book of English Decadence: Vile Emperors and Elegant Degenerates

“What care I that some millions of wretched Israelites died under Pharaoh’s lash or Egypt’s sun? It was well that they died that I might have the pyramids to look on, or to fill a musing hour with wonderment.”
― James Willsher, The Dedalus Book of English Decadence: Vile Emperors and Elegant Degenerates

“Hither the world has been drifting since the coming of the pale socialist of Galilee; and this is why I hate Him, and deny His divinity.”
― James Willsher, The Dedalus Book of English Decadence: Vile Emperors and Elegant Degenerates

“Now the world proposes to interrupt the terrible austere laws of nature which ordain that the weak shall be trampled upon, shall be ground into death and dust, that the strong shall be really strong – that the strong shall be glorious, sublime.”
― James Willsher, The Dedalus Book of English Decadence: Vile Emperors and Elegant Degenerates