Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.
I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.
There is no friend as loyal as a book.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear, or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life, and one is as good as the other.