"Decay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not {197} on that account be mistaken for the achievement; leisure may be made a worthy pastime through the cultivation of the sensibilities, but it must not be substituted for vocation, or allowed to infect a serious purpose with decay. ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... gold, But pale with ague-fears— A Wife lamenting love's decay, With secret cruel tears, Distilling bitter, bitter drops ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... his debts swallowed up everything. It was a wretched stormy day when the pictures were sold, and Mr. Graves secured, at very moderate prices, five original portraits. All the paintings had suffered more or less decay, and some of them, with their frames, had fallen to the floor. One of the best preserved pictures inherited by the late Marquis was a portrait of Pope, painted from life by Richardson for the Earl of Burlington, and even that had been allowed to drop out of its oaken frame. Horace Walpole ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... is everywhere. Even nature is full of evidence of a bad break in all of its processes. The finger-marks of decay and death are below and above and all around in all its domain. That is sin's unmistakable ear-mark. Man's mental powers, and his loss of a full knowledge of his powers, tell the same story. And so there is need. Everywhere you turn need's pathetic face, drawn and white, ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... this objection has little weight. Chateaubriand was seventy-nine; Madame Recamier seventy. The former was tottering on the brink of the grave. He had lost the use of his limbs, and his mind was visibly failing. Madame Recamier was keenly sensible of the decay of his faculties, though she succeeded so well in concealing the fact from others that few of the habitual visitors at the Abbaye recognized its extent. The reason she gave to her friends for refusing him was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... approaching their seventieth year, we are not able to do any great things by manual labour; however, we contrive to perform what is absolutely requisite, and intend, with the Lord's blessing, to prepare for the building of a new church, as the present is much too small, and gone to decay, We thank you for your readiness to assist ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... poet, and he is said to have met the book-loving ecclesiastic Richard de Bury at Rome. He gave his library to the Church of St. Mark at Venice in 1362; but the guardians allowed the books to decay, and few were rescued. Boccaccio bequeathed his library to the Augustinians at Florence, but one cannot imagine the books of the accomplished author of the Decameron as very well suited for the needs ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... year, due partly to greater care now taken of old bearing trees and partly to the large number of young trees coming into bearing each year but more largely to the greater extent to which nuts are now being gathered and not allowed to decay on ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... sufficed for the winter weather to eat into the sculptures, the small columns and the archivaults, with a really singular destructive effect, as though the stones, deeply penetrated, destroyed, had melted away beneath tears. The heart grieved at the sight of the decay which had attacked the work before it was even finished. Not yet to be, and nevertheless to crumble away in this fashion under the sky! To be arrested in one's colossal growth, and simply strew the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... still shown as the shop which Peter occupied while he was there. It is a small wooden building, leaning and bent with age and decrepitude and darkened by exposure and time. Within the last half century, however, in order to save so curious a relic from farther decay, the proprietors of the place have constructed around and over it an outer building of brick, which incloses the hut itself like a case. The sides of the outer building are formed of large, open arches, which allow the hut within ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... matter and form. For motion is presupposed in all kinds of change. If then all processes of life and death and change of all kinds presuppose matter and form, the latter cannot themselves be liable to genesis and decay and change, for that would mean that matter is composed of matter and form, which is absurd. We thus see how Aristotle is led to believe in the eternity of matter and motion, in other words, the eternity of the world processes ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... man does not more infallibly tend to decrepitude and imbecility, imperiously requiring a new being, and a new existence, to fulfil the objects of his creation, than the moral constitutions which are the fruits of his wisdom, contain the seeds of abuses and decay, that human selfishness will be as certain to cultivate, as human indulgence is to aid the course of nature, in hastening the approaches of death. Thus, while on the one hand, there exists the constant incentive of abuses ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... 1672, one of their own historians dates the "Decay of the Othman empire!" Since that date, the Turkish power is well known to have been straitened by the ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... fatigue that presented me to myself, on awaking this morning, so lack-lustre and trite. But I must needs take my petulance, contrasting it with my accustomed morning hopefulness, as a sign of the ageing of appetite, of a decay in the very capacity of enjoyment. We need some imaginative stimulus, some not impossible ideal such as may shape vague hope, and transform it into effective desire, to carry us year after year, without disgust, through the routine-work which is so large ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... the slow process of countless years the rock formation extended over the whole sea; the alluvial deposit deepened; seeds lodged in it, and the buffalo-grass and sage-brush began to grow, their yearly decay adding to ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... Roman people, who could so perfect society in its organic and civic relations and leave to the world the organic principles which must always lie at the base of all subsequent social development,—it does not seem possible that such a people should so decay as to leave hardly a vestige of its original stock, and that such cities as the Romans erected should so fall as to leave scarcely one stone upon another. Neither does it seem credible that a people who could so work out in its philosophical aspect ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... of the face. The skin, tongue, or the jawbones may become affected, and by a very slow process it may extend downward upon the neck and even into the cavity of the chest. In many cases the teeth have been found in a state of more or less advanced decay and ulceration. In a few cases disease of the lungs was observed without coexisting disease of the bones or soft parts of the head. In such cases the fungus must have been inhaled. The disease of the lungs after a time extends upon the chest wall, where it may corrode the ribs and work its way through ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... still two modes in which we can derive what I may call "spectacular" enjoyment from the study of history. There is first the pleasure which arises from the contemplation of some great historic drama, or some broad and well-marked phase of social development. The story of the rise, greatness, and decay of a nation is like some vast epic which contains as subsidiary episodes the varied stories of the rise, greatness, and decay of creeds, of parties, and of statesmen. The imagination is moved by the slow unrolling of this great picture of human mutability, as it is moved by the contrasted ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... her, he endeavored to picture her as dead. He saw her lying in an open coffin, wrapped in a white shroud. But he was unable to attach to her image any sign of decay, and her unearthly beauty aroused him to renewed frenzy. Through his closed eyelids he saw the coffin transform itself into a nuptial bed. Marcolina lay laughing there with lambent eyes. As if in mockery, with her small, white hands she unveiled her firm little breasts. ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... Pedagogy need have nothing whatever to say respecting the absolute truth or falsity of these ideas, but there is little doubt that they have an influence on the will, at a certain stage of average development, greater and more essential than any other; so great that even were their vitality to decay like the faith in the Greek or German mythology, we should still have to teach God and a future life as the most imperative of all hypotheses in a field where, as in morals, nothing is so practical as a good theory; and we should have to fall to teaching the Bible as a moral classic, and cultivate ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... excellent quality, of the stone, which, according to Huet, was brought partly from Vaucelle and partly from Allemagne. One of the corner abutments of one of the towers has fallen down and a great portion of what remains seem to indicate rapid decay. The whole stands indeed greatly in need of reparation. Ducarel, if I remember rightly, has made, of this whole front, a sort of elevation as if it were intended for a wooden model to work by, having all the stiffness ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... tender mercies of the weakest creature in the household, that is, his grandchild, Valentine; a dumb and frozen carcass, in fact, living painlessly on, that time may be given for his frame to decompose without his consciousness of its decay." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... character. His policies. Solomon's building enterprises. Solomon's writings. Nations surrounding Israel. Evidences of national decay. ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... satisfaction that the one person in the West who can call his ministration to account is exposed to the daily attacks of barbarians: is surrounded with palaces whose masters are ruined, and which are daily dropping into decay. The Pope, behind the crumbling walls of Aurelian, shudders at the cruelties practised on his people: the bishop of Constantinople, by terming himself ecumenical, announces ostentatiously that he claims to rule all his brethren in the East—that he is ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... which is erected upon the virgin rock. A roof of old wooden shingles shelters the well, and ancient rotting timber mingles everywhere with the impervious stone in the massive buildings of the castle, conveying a sense of weakness and decay in the midst ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... ride on prosperously, because of truth, meekness, and righteousness;" and be thou a follower of him. With this sword do justice, stop the growth of iniquity, protect the holy Church of God, help and defend widows and orphans, restore the things that are gone to decay, maintain the things that are restored, punish and reform what is amiss, and confirm what is in good order: that doing these things, you may be glorious in all virtue; and so represent our Lord Jesus Christ in this life, that you may reign for ever with him in the life ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... narrative of all the delights which Ogier enjoyed for more than a hundred years. Time flew by, leaving no impression of its flight. Morgana's youthful charms did not decay, and Ogier had none of those warnings of increasing years which less favored mortals never fail to receive. There is no knowing how long this blissful state might have lasted, if it had not been for an accident, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... hot-house bloom the flowers Which erst perfumed Arabia's field. To them the days in sameness dreary, And months and years pass slow away, In solitude, of life grown weary, Well pleased they see their charms decay. Each day, alas! the past resembling, Time loiters through their halls and bowers; In idleness, and fear, and trembling, The captives pass their joyless hours. The youngest seek, indeed, reprieve Their hearts in striving to deceive Into oblivion of distress, By vain ...
— The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems • Alexander Pushkin and other authors
... gleam'd, And rays of light from its full circlet stream'd: But now Neglect has stung him to—the core, And Hope's wild raptures thrill his breast no more; Domestic Anguish winds his vitals round, And added Grief compels him to the ground. Lo! o'er his manly form, decay'd and wan, The shades of death with gradual steps steal on; And the pale mother, pining to decay, Weeps for her boy ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... his situation was filled up by another. He was removed to what they call the helpless ward, where he was well nursed and attended. It is no uncommon, indeed I may say it is a very common, thing, for the old pensioners, as they gradually decay, to have their health quite perfect when the faculties are partly gone; and there is a helpless ward established for that very reason, where those who are infirm and feeble, without disease, or have lost their faculties while their bodily energies remain, are sent to, and ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... one of the candles and advanced into a stone vault about a dozen feet square, with a very low, arched doorway opposite to them, and another flight of steps descending into darkness, while on one side lay a little heap of rusty iron in the last stages of decay. ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... her niece with her, and has settled all her affairs, and thinks she is not long for this world.—Her distemper is an inward decay, all at once as it were, from a constitution that seemed like one of iron; and she is a mere skeleton: you would not know ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... It is undoubtedly one of the most ancient castles in the kingdom, though it was greatly enlarged in later years, and was kept up until the reign of Elizabeth, when it was abandoned as a stronghold, and allowed to fall into decay. As it was King Arthur's birthplace, so it was the spot where he lost his life. I found some lines by the ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... Hindustan at the gates of Delhi, and for a time succeeded in bringing almost the whole of India under their sway. But their splendid marble halls in the great Fort of Delhi recall not only the magnificence of the Moghul Empire, but its slow and sure decay, until it became a suitor for the protection of the British power, which, at first a mere trading power that had once sued humbly enough for its protection, had risen to be the greatest military and political power ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... commonwealth. The commons in their address expressed the continuance of their former zeal and devotion to her majesty's government; but, in the house of lords, the earl of Wharton expatiated upon the scarcity of money, the decay of trade, and the mismanagement of the navy. He was seconded by lord Somers and the leaders of the tory party, who proposed that, previous to every measure, they should consider the state of the nation. The design ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... oldest Christian church in existence, having been built more than fifteen centuries ago by the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine. Repairs were made later by Edward IV of England; but it is now again fast falling into decay. The roof was originally composed of cedar of Lebanon and the walls were studded with precious jewels, while numerous lamps of silver and gold were suspended from the rafters. The Greeks, Latins and Armenians now claim joint possession of the structure, and jealously guard its sacred ...
— Myths and Legends of Christmastide • Bertha F. Herrick
... being neglected by him entirely. Smells of pomace, and the hiss of fermenting cider, which reached him from the back quarters of other tenements, revealed the recent occupation of some of the inhabitants, and joined with the scent of decay from the perishing ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... in which a large number of the polypes have not been killed in the transit home, or at least so far knocked about, that (in the Anthozoa, which are far the most abundant) the polype - or rather living mouth, for it is little more - is thrown off to decay, pending the growth of a fresh one in ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... is much the less gloomy of the two, in spite of considerable signs of decay. The frescoes of the ceiling are better preserved than in the first temple. The walls, the tumbled down pillars, the ceiling, and even the interior rooms, which were lighted by ventilators cut through the rock, were once covered by a varnished ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... value of the different forces that advance or retard civilization, but we believe the weight of historic evidence goes to prove that religious skepticism was the actual cause, as it has always been the inevitable precursor, of national decay. Coleridge in The Friend quotes the historian Polybius as attributing the strength of the Roman republic to the general reverence of the invisible powers, and the consequent horror in which the breaking of an oath was held. This he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... there's others that go down pretty easy, lodge-pole pine, fer instance. But a tree doesn't have to be blown down to be ruined. Even if a branch is blown off—an' you know how often that happens—insects and fungi get into the wound of the tree and decay follows." ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... decay, the woods decay and fall, The vapors weep their burthen to the ground, Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many a summer dies the swan. Me only cruel immortality Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms, Here at the quiet ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... flat in the ground, must now be taken up, and the dead leaves clipped off; and when cleared from the mould, they must be spread upon a mat in an airy room to dry, and laid by for future planting. Tulip roots also must now be taken up, as the leaves decay: anemones and ranunculuses are treated in the same manner. Cut in three or four places, the cups or poles of the carnations that are near blowing, that they may show regularly. At the same time inoculate some of the ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... beyond all calculation. The keeping them up would be at a great charge. The management and attendance would require an army of agents, store-keepers, clerks, and servants. The capital to be employed in the purchase of grain would be enormous. The waste, decay, and corruption would be a dreadful drawback on the whole dealing; and the dissatisfaction of the people, at having decayed, tainted, or corrupted corn sold to them, as must be the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... knowledge can be so incessantly appealed to by the incidents of every day, as the knowledge of the processes by which he lives and acts. At every moment he is in danger of disobeying laws which, when disobeyed, may bring years of suffering, decline of powers, premature decay. Sanitary reformers preach in vain, because they preach to a public which does not understand the laws of life—laws as rigorous as those of Gravitation or Motion. Even the sad experience of others yields us no lessons, ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... favorable winds. Heading north, month after month, the Golden Hind sailed for the shore that should have led northeast, and that puzzled the mariners by sheering west and yet west; fourteen hundred leagues she sailed along a leafy wilderness of tangled trees and ropy mosses, beauty and decay, the froth of the beach combers aripple on the very roots of the {160} trees; dolphins coursing round the hull like greyhounds; flying fish with mica for wings flitting over the decks; forests of seaweed warning out to deeper water. ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... character of each judge. (4) From the story of Gideon and Sampson, point out New Testament truths. (5) From the story of Jephthah and Deborah gather lessons for practical life today. (6) Religious apostasy as a cause of national decay. (7) Political folly and social immorality as a sign of national decay. (8) The ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... man!... The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils, but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem." Let us, then, laugh at what is laughable while we are yet clothed in "this muddy vesture of decay," for, as delightful Elia asks, "Can a ghost laugh? Can he shake his gaunt sides if we ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... the rocks are lifted to form land the process will begin anew; again they will crumble and creep down slopes and be washed by streams to the sea. Let us begin our study of this long cycle of change at the point where rocks disintegrate and decay under the action of the weather. In studying now a few outcrops and quarries we shall learn a little of some common rocks and how they ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... the monkey, "When I left my home on the earth, I forgot to bring my liver with me, but hung it upon a tree, and now it is raining and my liver will decay and I'll die. Aita! aita!" and the poor monkey's eyes became red as a tai fish, and ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... and seminary, that are going to bless the world with good and happy homes, that shall eclipse all their predecessors, a fact that will be acknowledged by all men except those who are struck through with moral decay from toe to cranium; and more inexcusable than the Samson of the text is that man who, amid all this unparalleled munificence of womanhood, marries a fool. But some of you are abroad suffering from such disaster, and to halt others of you from going over ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... pitch, tar, and turpentine. {iv} These pines likewise make good masts for ships; which I have known to last for twenty odd years, when it is well known, that our common masts of New England white pine will often decay in three or four years. These masts were of that kind that is called the pitch pine, and lightwood pine; of which I knew a ship built that ran for sixteen years, when her planks of this pine were as sound and rather harder ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... as if attacked with ague as she came within sight of the gaunt farmhouse, and the broken windows and hanging doors gave her a sense of everlasting decay. ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... lethargic, somnambulistic character, being frequently caught by hand at sea. Battered and mouldy, the castellated forecastle seemed some ancient turret, long ago taken by assault, and then left to decay. Toward the stern, two high-raised quarter galleries—the balustrades here and there covered with dry, tindery sea-moss—opening out from the unoccupied state-cabin, whose dead-lights, for all the mild weather, were hermetically closed and calked—these ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... reason for the close intertwining is that, scattered, we may diffuse, and that at all points the world may be in contact with those who ought to be working to preserve it from putrefaction and decay. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... some difficulty that he found the way to his own house, which he approached with silent awe, expecting every moment to bear the shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. He found the house gone to decay—the roof fallen in, the windows shattered, and the doors off the hinges. A half-starved dog that looked like Wolf was skulking about it. Rip called him by name, but the cur snarled, showed his teeth, and passed on. This was an unkind cut indeed—"My very dog," ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... gap in the history of the Jews of France, as in that of their Christian neighbors; and literature, as it always does, followed the political and economic destinies of the nation. From the fifth to the tenth century, letters fell into utter decay, despite the momentary stimulus given by Charlemagne. The human intellect, to borrow from Guizot, had reached the nadir of its course. This epoch, however, was not entirely lost to civilization. The Jews applied themselves to studies, the taste for which developed ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... pines is shown by their sound condition in California buildings that have stood for generations, many of them in regions where climatic conditions are more conducive to decay than in the middle ...
— The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan • W.B. Laughead
... flowers, and bears no seed, And feeds the green earth with its swift decay, Leaving it richer for ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... has sprouted: There is an anxious period for the farmer after his corn is planted, for if the spring is "backward" and the weather cold, his seed may decay in the ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... and repose was rapidly melting away. The intellectual superiority of the oppressed people only rendered them more keenly sensible of their political degradation. Literature and taste, indeed, still disguised with a flush of hectic loveliness and brilliancy the ravages of an incurable decay. The iron had not yet entered into the soul. The time was not yet come when eloquence was to be gagged, and reason to be hoodwinked, when the harp of the poet was to be hung on the willows of Arno, and the right hand of the painter to forget its cunning. Yet a discerning ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the knowledge that she had never recovered the health she had previous to the terrible shock which his revelation of Donald's guilt had been to her. He forgot his own share in the shock and threw the whole blame of her early decay on Donald. "And if she dies," he kept saying in his angry heart, "I will ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... may not be thought a serious one by the sordid man who decries poetry as the useless product of an art already in its decay. Should this ever be the case, it would be a monstrous symptom, a symptom that the noblest impulses of the human heart are decaying also. The truth is, as the greatest of English critics, Hazlitt, has told us, that "poetry is an ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... may be conceded; but the concession does not deny the right nor the wisdom of gathering in those who wish to come. Comparative religion teaches that creeds which reject missionary enterprise are foredoomed to decay. May it not be so with nations? Certainly the glorious record of England is consequent mainly upon the spirit, and traceable to the time, when she launched out into the deep—without formulated policy, it is true, or foreseeing ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... and still nothing indicated that the East India Company would ever become a great Asiatic potentate. The Mogul empire, though undermined by internal causes of decay, and tottering to its fall, still presented to distant nations the appearance of undiminished prosperity and vigour. Aurengzebe, who, in the same month in which Oliver Cromwell died, assumed the magnificent title of Conqueror of the World, continued ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... trunks as, bent in the impotence of rottenness, they lie outstretched over knoll and hollow, like moldering reptiles of the primeval world, while around, and on and through them, springs the young growth that fattens on their decay—the forest devouring its own dead. Or, to turn from its funereal shade to the light and life of the open woodland, the sheen of sparkling lakes, and mountains basking in the glory of the summer noon, flecked by the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... forests fall. First comes his pioneer, the bee, and soon The mast which plumped the wild deer fats his swine. His cattle pasture where the bison fed; His flowers, his very weeds, displace our own— Aggressive as himself. All, all thrust back! Destruction follows us, and swift decay. Oh, I have lain for hours upon the grass, And gazed into the tenderest blue of heaven— Cleansed as with dew, so limpid, pure and sweet— All flecked with silver packs of standing cloud Most beautiful! But watch them narrowly! Those clouds will sheer small fleeces from their sides, ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... how little it is possible for him to know. This is not surprising except in the fact that it is called religious growth. And if this be a sign of growth one wonders what would be considered indications of decay. Historically religious life presents us, not with a process of growth, but one of shrinkage. To reduce the gods from many to few, and from a few to one is not growth. To limit the functions of deity from those of a direct, particular, and universal character, to an indirect, ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... daughters did. There were three of these bachelor ladies, of nicely graduated ages, who held a neighbouring farm-house in a united and more or less military occupation. The eldest warred against the decay of manners in the village children, and executed frontal attacks upon the village mothers for the conquest of courtesies. It sounds futile, but it was really a war for an idea. The second skirmished and scouted all over the country; and it was that one who pushed a reconnaissance right ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... preservation, and indeed had the appearance of having only recently fallen asleep, the intense cold having seized upon them with such fierce rapidity that their bodies had completely congealed before even the primary stages of decay had had time to manifest themselves. Indeed, judging from appearances, they had succumbed, in the first instance, to starvation, and, overcome by weakness, had been frozen to death. They were all of lofty stature and muscular build, with fair hair and tawny beards and moustaches, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... long been pledged to join the holy war; he had renewed his vow in 1177 and 1181. But it was a heavy burden to be now charged with the crown of Jerusalem. Since the days of his grandfather, Fulk of Anjou, the last strong king of Jerusalem, there had been swift decay. Three of his successors were minors; Antone was a leper; the fifth was repudiated by every one of his vassals. The last forty years had been marked by continual disaster. The armies of the Moslem ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... rumored, that greatly changed the tenor of his life; and from that time on there began to appear in him and to accumulate upon each other in a manner which became the profound study of Kookoo, the symptoms of a decay, whose cause baffled the landlord's limited powers of conjecture for well-nigh half a century. Hints of a duel, of a reason warped, of disinheritance, and many other unauthorized rumors, fluttered up and floated ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... grin of decay in Coventry Street, we mounted a motor-'bus, and dashed gaily through streets of rose and silver—it was October—and dropped off by the Poplar Hippodrome, whose harsh signs lit ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... another Universal Exposition held in Paris; and this was also a time of great outward glory and triumph for the emperor, surrounded as he was by European emperors, crown princes, and kings; but Queen Victoria was then a sorrowing widow, and decay was threatening ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... walls of the chapel, they detached themselves, and assumed material bodies inside the serdab. Notwithstanding these precautions, all possible means were taken to guard the remains of the fleshly body from natural decay and the depredations of the spoiler. In the tomb of Ti, an inclined passage, starting from the middle of the first hall, leads from the upper world to the sepulchral vault; but this is almost a solitary exception. Generally, the vault is reached by way ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... for ever It wor noa gurt shakes what might befall; Nowt but deeath, these two hearts could sever, An' that nobbut partly, net awl: For love like one's soul is immortal, If its love, it wont vanish away— Its birth wor inside o' th' breet portal Ov Eden, it knows noa decay. ...
— Yorkshire Tales. Third Series - Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect • John Hartley
... with the future progress of an agile and ambitious people, was certainly a rare and happy fortune, and must be considered, when we claim superiority for him over those who were placed in the midst of apathy and decay. His influence upon us may be seen in the material, but still more distinctly in the social and moral action of the country. With those laws which here restrain turbulent forces and stimulate beneficent ones,—with the bright visions of peace and freedom which the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... you had but begot A race of three-mouthed dogs for man to nourish And woman to caress, the muse had not Lamented the decay of virtues currish, And triple-hydrophobia now would flourish, For barking, biting, kissing to employ Canine ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... empires, changed in all save thee— Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters washed them power while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts: not so, thou; Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play. Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow; Such as creation's dawn ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... changes of this mortal life often bear heavily upon us. But there these things have no place. Moth and rust, change and decay, sorrow and death cannot ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... tides; the theoretical study of which, started by Newton, has developed, and is destined in the future to further develop, into one of the most gigantic and absorbing investigations—having to do with the stability or instability of solar systems, and with the construction and decay of universes. ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... living? Was it when they were going to nail down the coffin of the beautiful young corpse that the one who had adored her had cut off her tresses, the only thing that he could retain of her, the only living part of her body that would not suffer decay, the only thing he could still love, and caress, and kiss in ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... large ermine muff, she looked right into John's face, with the winning sweetness which Nature, not courts, lent to those fair features—already beginning to fade, already trying to hide by art their painful, premature decay. ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Australia is that much of its surface is sandy, but experiments and developments in various countries show that the planting of marram grass, lupins, and other plants ties even the drifting sand together and gradually, through their decay, turns the sandy wastes into fertile soil. Besides, science can, in many other ways, utilise the elements in the air to enrich ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... steward she received two empty bird-cages, together with a detailed account of the manner in which the occupants had effected their escape, and a bullfinch that seemed to be suffering from torpid liver. The condition of the geraniums was ascribed to worms in the pots, frost, and premature decay. ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... they breathed the horses again, and then on, on, on to the big hill whose vast bulk was beginning to tower mightily before them. Past the old school-house they dashed, without a glance for its forlorn state of decay; past one of the farm gates of the Cotswold estate; past the Baptist Bethel, indistinguishable from a school-house except for the white stones in the graveyard, upon which the sun ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... came in, he was shocked at the change which had taken place in the doctor's appearance. He had his death-warrant written legibly upon his face. The rosy man had grown pale; his flesh had fallen away; he was visibly balder and older; and yet it was not so much these tokens of a swift physical decay that arrested the lawyer's notice, as a look in the eye and quality of manner that seemed to testify to some deep-seated terror of the mind. It was unlikely that the doctor should fear death; and yet that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... describ'd A hot friend cooling: ever note, Lucilius, When love begins to sicken and decay, 20 It useth an enforced ceremony. There are no tricks in plain and simple faith: But hollow men, like horses hot at hand, Make gallant show and promise of their mettle; But when they should endure the bloody spur, 25 They fall ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... the history of every people and every nation will be subject to the same criticism, if it be regarded with the same severity. In all that man has done as yet in the way of government, the seeds of decay are apparent when looked back upon from an age in advance. The period of Queen Elizabeth was very great to us; yet by what dangers were we enveloped in her days! But for a storm at sea, we might have been subjected to ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... of the drainage contractors. They seemed to delight in turning up the fetid soil, cutting deep trenches through various strata of filth, and piling up for days or weeks matter that reeked with vegetable and animal decay. One needs not affirm that Rosemary Street was not so called from its fragrance. If the Ginxes and their neighbors preserved any semblance of health in this place, the most popular guardian on the board must own it a miracle. ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... it may happen that whilst, so far as years go, they are still in all the freshness of youth, they are already dying that death to all higher capacity which is worse than any decay of our physical organism. Such an early death of higher tastes and faculties, and of hope for the future, is sometimes effected even before schooldays are over. And the mere possibility of such a ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... THE MEDIEVAL NEIGHBORHOOD.—During the latter half of the medieval period, and during the earlier part of the modern period, a number of factors combined to break down this early type of neighborhood. The Crusades, the decay of feudalism, and the Renaissance disrupted the stable, isolated, and self-sufficing life of the medieval neighborhood. The discovery of America and the growth of towns and cities stimulated trade and ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... for her; every tree that is planted is planted for her; every crop that is harvested is harvested for her; and every trainload of grain is moving toward her as its destination. But for her, farm machinery would be silent, orchards would decay, trains would cease to move, and commerce would be no more. She it is that causes the wheels to turn, the harvesters to go forth to the fields, the experiment stations to be equipped and operated, the markets to throb with activity, and the ships of commerce to ply the ocean. ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... and we were native to it. Yet it was the first time I ever entered a little into sympathy with the exalted cruelty of your spiritual nature. For in the forest, ever present, is the intimation of Nature's indifference to pain. There is no charity in a commonwealth of trees. They live, decay, and die, and there is no sign of compassion anywhere. It is terrible, but there is a Spartan beauty ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... I crossed a barren land, A land of ruin, far away; Around me hung on every hand A deathful stillness of decay; And silent, as in bleak dismay That song should thus forsaken be, On that forgotten ground there lay The ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... big black opulent city was greatly changed. But the change in the people, affecting all ranks and every class, was even greater. There were compensations, if you could balance against the decay of good manners the improvements in sanitation, or set against the crop of evil sown by the dissemination of the vilest literature in the cheapest printed forms, the attainability, by the poorest, of the noblest productions of literary genius. Or if in congratulating yourself upon the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... support in history. There never was so blind a superstition as the belief that progress is inevitable. The world has seen the great civilization of the Western empire give place to the warring chaos of the baronial castles of the ninth and tenth centuries; it has seen the Eastern empire for 500 years decay and retrogress under the militarism of the Turk; it has watched the Red Indians, with rifles in their hands, grimly engage in mutual extermination. Is it still a blind world, doomed to blunder down ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... father's heir in beauteous form arrayed Like flowers in spring, and fair, like them to fade; Leaving behind unhappy wretched me, And all thy little orphan-progeny: Alike the beauteous face, the comely air, The tongue persuasive, and the actions fair, Decay: so learning too in time shall waste: But faith, chaste lovely faith, shall ever last. The once bright glory of his house, the pride Of all his country, dusty ruins hide: Mourn, hapless orphans; mourn, once happy wife; For when he died, died all the joys ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... grave-clothes, and staring vacantly at him, with lidless, shrunken eyes. The lower jaw was fallen, the upper lip drawn away from the uncovered teeth. He could make out a mottled pattern on the hollow cheeks—the maculations of decay. By some mysterious process his mind reverted for the first time that day to the photograph of Mary Matthews. He contrasted its blonde beauty with the forbidding aspect of this dead face—the most beloved object that he knew ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... nurslings of the vernal skies. Bathed in soft airs and fed with dew, What more of magic in you lies To fill the hearths fond view? In childhood's sports, companions gay In sorrow, on life's downward way, How soothing! In our last decay. ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... fell into every one of its vices, without attaining much of what constitutes its excellence. From the nature of the language, all French poetry is purely artificial, and its high polish is all that keeps out decay. The length of their dramatic verse forces the French into much tautology, into bombast in its original meaning, the stuffing out a thought with words till it fills the line. The rigid system of their rhyme, which makes it much harder to manage than in English, has accustomed ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... to the South%.—Thus drained of her able-bodied population, the South went rapidly to rack and ruin. Crops fell off, property fell into decay, business stopped, railroads were ruined because men could not be had to keep them in repair, and because no rails could be obtained. The loss inflicted by this general and widespread ruin can never be even estimated. Cotton, houses, property of every sort, was destroyed to prevent capture ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... was introduced, and impressed upon the people, and the rights of property thoroughly protected. By all these means a high degree of civilization was secured, which was maintained until after the establishment of Mexican independence; when, from want of government care and support, decay followed; and the Pueblos measurably deteriorated, down to the time when the authority of the United States was extended over that country: still they are a remarkable people, noted for their sobriety, industry, and ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... latitude was doing its work, with great power and beneficence. What was of nearly equal importance, the age of the pond had prevented any recent accumulation of vegetable matter, and consequently spared those who laboured around the spot, the impurities of atmosphere usually consequent on its decay. Grass-seed, too, had been liberally scattered on favourable places, and things began to assume the appearance of what ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... take the trouble to learn to carve. But the idle and wasteful fashion of employing servants to cut up your food after their own fancy, and of sitting round a board bereft of all appearance of dinner except the salt-cellars and glasses, to watch flowers and fresh fruit decay and droop in the midst of the various smells of the hot meats, while waiting to receive such portions as your attendant chooses to bestow on you, is so opposed to the social, hospitable, and active habits of an English ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... and with fifty-six pound iron west of there. As has been mentioned before, the first section was laid with cottonwood ties of local growth, treated by the burnettizing process, which was erroneously supposed would prevent decay. West of there hard wood ties from the East were used, some of them coming from far away Pennsylvania, and costing the Company two dollars and fifty cents laid down in Omaha. For the mountain section, ties of local growth were largely and satisfactorily ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey
... all her grey brood banished from the soul; Life, like the earth, is now a rounded whole, The orb of man's dominion. Live to-day." And every sense in me leapt to obey, Seeing the routed phantoms backward roll; But from their waning throng a whisper stole, And touched the morning splendour with decay. ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... another part of my day, a scene, which time or use cannot reconcile to me. I see my mother's strength grow less every day, without any consolation, but that her mind does not decay with it. In short, my dear Lord, as I have often told you, j'ai l'esprit et le coeur trop fracasses for me to be happy at present, and all I can say is that I might, by untoward accidents, be more miserable, and these are removed from my view pour le moment; ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... Reichstag I do not find that guardian of liberty for which I had hoped. Party spirit has overrun us. This it is which I accuse before God and history, if the great work of our people achieved between 1866 and 1870 fall into decay, and in this House we destroy by the pen what has ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... alternate in his descriptions, and only here and there is the background entirely unrelieved. The thunderstorm is to him a dispenser of divine energies among forest and field, even the seasons of decline and decay are not left without sunshine: "auf der stummen entblaetterten Landschaft, wo der Himmel schoener als je, mit Wolken und Sonnenschein um die herbstlich schlafenden Baeume spielte."[72] One passage in "Hyperion" bears so striking ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... loneliness put out a groping hand, catching at the friendship of, and trying to understand, whatever lives and suffers as they do. You will find it never fail that where a passionate regard for the animals about us, or even a great tenderness for them, is to be found there is also to be found decay in the State." ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... half its width, there stood a huge brick chimney: the crumbling mortar had left large cracks between the bricks; the bricks themselves had begun to scale off in large flakes, leaving the chimney sprinkled with unsightly blotches. These evidences of decay were but partially concealed by a creeping vine, which extended its slender branches hither and thither in an ambitious but futile attempt to cover the whole chimney. The wooden shutter, which had once protected the unglazed window, ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... marked by the repetition of its most frequent story—the fall of empire and the establishment of a new government. In the end of all governments at the same point, is the strongest argument in support of the theory of reincarnation; a state, as a being, has its birth, mature age, and decay. None seemingly is endowed with the attribute of immutability. It was the fond hope of our forefathers that the United States should prove the exception. Imperialism was the reef on which the classic empires were wrecked; commercialism is ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... the most common shapes of extinguished power from which Coleridge fled to the great city. But sometimes the same decay came back upon his heart in the more poignant shape of intimations and vanishing glimpses recovered for one moment from the Paradise of youth, and from fields of joy and power, over which for him too certainly he felt that the cloud of night ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... stories are usually forgotten in the material interest of the affairs, and it is only when some tragedy or comedy arising from them finds chance record that we realize how full of human interest they are. The decay of steamboating and the rise of railroading is in itself a romance if it could be rightly seen, and if the facts could be clearly set before us, the story of commercial triumph by a great monopoly would not be less fascinating than that of ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... be very quiet. Only just after the day was finally fixed, Mrs. Merrifield's long decay ended unexpectedly, and Sir Jasper had to hasten to London, and thence to the funeral at Stokesley. She was a second wife, and he her only son, so that he inherited from her means that set him much more at his ease with regard to his large family than ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had one window, or rather a small frame in which a window might perhaps once have been, but which was now empty. The door was exceedingly low, and formed of rough boards, and the roof was covered with broad cocoa-nut and plantain leaves. But every part of it was in a state of the utmost decay. Moss and green matter grew in spots all over it. The woodwork was quite perforated with holes; the roof had nearly fallen in, and appeared to be prevented from doing so altogether by the thick matting of creeping plants and the interlaced ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... Kibbock, of the Gorbyholm, farmer; and we were married on the 29th day of April, on account of the dread we had of being married in May, for it is said, "Of the marriages in May, the bairns die of a decay." The second Mrs. Balwhidder had a genius for management, and started a dairy, and set the servant lassies to spin wool for making blankets and lint for sheets and napery. She sent the butter on market days to Irville, her cheese and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... ascertained by the physiologist; but no doubt it has often occurred, precisely as a family is extinguished, or as certain trees (for example, the true golden pippin) are observed to die off, not by local influences only, but by a decay attacking the very principle of their existence. Of many ancient races it is probable enough that no blood directly traced from them could at this day be searched by the eye of God. Families arise amongst the royal lineage of Europe ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... year, long before you were born, this heap of decay," stabbing with her crutched stick at the pile of cobwebs on the table, but not touching it, "was brought here. It and I have worn away together. The mice have gnawed at it, and sharper teeth than teeth of mice ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... former, although it be not of it selfe a parte of Mathematicques: yet it is not vnlawful, being moderatlie vsed, suppose not so necessarie and commendable as the former. The second part is to truste so much to their influences, as thereby to fore-tell what common-weales shall florish or decay: what persones shall be fortunate or vnfortunate: what side shall winne in anie battell: What man shall obteine victorie at singular combate: What way, and of what age shall men die: What horse shall winne at matche-running; and diuerse such like incredible ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... times were sometimes very fine. Then came years of general depression, when the industry of weaving fell into decay. Finally the Austro-Hungarian administration was established at Bosnia, and new life was given to the work. Looms were erected by the Government, and a number of women were sent to Vienna, where they were taught the art of weaving. Returning to Bosnia, they were able to ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... Magnetism, Decay of. The gradual loss of magnetism by permanent magnets, due to accidental shocks, changes of temperature, slow spontaneous annealing of the iron and other ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... flowers and shrubs all around him. The first twelve lines of the Poem were engraved neatly on one of the window-panes, by the diamond pencil of the Bard. On Riddel's death, the Hermitage was allowed to go quietly to decay: I remember in 1803 turning two outlyer stots out ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Eagle, whose head was white with years of wisdom and experience, spoke to the despairing assemblage of creatures. From his lofty perch above the world the Eagle had looked down upon centuries of change and decay. He knew every force of nature and all the strange things of life. The hoary-headed sage said that the Good Hunter could not be restored until his scalp was found. Then all the animals clamored that they might be allowed to go and seek for the missing scalp. But to the ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... triumphs, the pestilences, of all the turbulence, the splendor and the wickedness, and the hot, evil, riotous life of the old planters and slave-owners, Spanish, French, English, and Dutch;—their extermination of the Indians, and bringing in of negro slaves, the decay of most of the islands, the turning of Hayti into a land of savage negroes, who have reverted to voodooism and cannibalism; the effort we are now making to bring ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... mounted the craggy heights above, and built a tower upon their crest. It is melancholy to think that so glorious a pile, teeming with so many historical recollections, and so magnificently situated, should be abandoned, and suffered to go to decay;—the family having, many years ago, quitted it for Walton Hall, near Walton-le-Dale, and consigned it to the occupation of a few gamekeepers. Bereft of its venerable timber, its courts grass-grown, its fine oak staircase rotting and dilapidated, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the chasm is the curse of every race, As it saps and kills its manhood ere it reach the zenith-place; Spartan valor, Grecian learning, Roman honor had their day, But land plunder rose among them, dooming death by slow decay. ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... on you, to be found untired, Watching the stars out by the bed of pain, With a pale cheek, and yet a brow inspired, And a true heart of hope, though hope be rain, Meekly to bear with wrong, and cheer decay, And oh! to love through ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... up, and saw that she was beating and brushing my father's uniform, previous to hanging it over a rail, so as to guard it from decay by exposure to ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... of oxygen with other elements is termed oxidation. This may take place slowly or rapidly, the two rates being designated as slow oxidation and rapid oxidation. Examples of slow oxidation are found in certain kinds of decay and in the rusting of iron. Combustion is an example of rapid oxidation. Slow and rapid oxidation, while differing widely in their effects upon surrounding objects, are alike in that both produce heat and form compounds of oxygen. In slow oxidation, however, the heat may come off ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... place is as solitary now as it was thronged and bustling on the evenings of the festival; and in broad daylight one is surprised at the deathlike decay of the sacred surroundings which at night had seemed so full of life. Not a creature to be seen on the time-worn granite steps; not a creature beneath the vast, sumptuous porticoes; the colors, the gold-work are ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... fading woods. I think, beautiful as this is, that its gorgeousness takes away from the sweet solemnity that makes the fall of the year pre-eminently the season of thoughtful contemplation. Our autumn at home is mellow and harmonious, though sometimes melancholy; but the brilliancy of this decay strikes one sometimes with a sudden sadness, as if the whole world were dying of consumption, with these glittering gleams and hectic flushes, a mere deception of disease and ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... gaily filled the street; parade and exercise, evening dance and the continuous sound of pipe and drum left no room for any other interest in life. Heretofore there was ever for the boy in his visions of the Army a background of unable years and a palsied hand, slow decay in a parlour, with every zest and glamour gone. But here in the men who stepped always to melody there was youth, seemingly a singular enjoyment of life, and watching them he was filled ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... matter, I beg the reader to look at the article on the 'Decay of the English Race,' in the 'Pall-Mall Gazette' of April 17, of this year; and at the articles on the 'Report of the Thames Commission,' in any journals of the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... have given my heart to a flower, Though I know it is fading away, Though I know it will live but an hour And leave me to mourn its decay! ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... engines or devices by which it operates will be impotent for good. Defective society cannot produce either a good fundamental law, a good philosophy, a good art, or any other thing. Conversely, these, when brought forth under an wholesome society, will decay and perish when ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... of no further use. Both men and women wear signs of mourning for their dead relatives. These consist of narrow strips of the palm-leaf wound round the head, the arms, legs, neck, and breasts, and worn till they drop off from decay. They believe in the existence of a supreme being, called Mpambe, and also Morungo, and in a future state. "We live only a few days here," said old Chinsunse, "but we live again after death: we do not know where, or in what condition, or with what companions, ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... explain the facts to Kinney; but that he meant to let Ricker enjoy his virtuous indignation awhile. Once, after a confidence of this kind at the club, where Ricker had refused to speak to him, he came away with a curious sense of moral decay. It did not pain him a great deal, but it certainly surprised him that now, with all these prosperous conditions, so favorable for cleaning up, he had so little disposition to clean up. He found himself quite willing to let the affair ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... solid beds should present their fractures or abrupt sections immediately under the confused materials with which they are covered; and the softer strata should appear to suffer gradual resolution and decay, by which may be perceived their transition into soil, the most important part of all the operations of the globe which do ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... certain records proved. Captain Ben may have built the shop, though I think it was older, for when we examined the picturesque little building, with a view to restoration, it proved to be too far gone—too much a structure of decay. So we tore down "the shop," and, incidentally, Old Pop, who did the tearing, found a Revolutionary bayonet in the loft; also a more recent, and particularly hot, hornets' nest which caused him to leap through the window and spring into the air several times on the way to the bushes by the brook. ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... me. A dozen men could have been accommodated in it, and there was ample room for that number either sitting or standing. In fact, the whole pyramidal mass which supported the tree was nothing more than a thin shell, all the heart having perished by decay. The floor, by the falling of this debris of rotten wood, was raised above the level of the water, and felt firm and dry underfoot. Near its centre I could perceive the ashes and half-burnt embers of an extinct fire; and along one side was ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... is employed by the natives for a great variety of purposes. It is bound on as a thatch in the manner we do straw, and not unfrequently over the galumpei; in which case the roof is so durable as never to require renewal, the iju being of all vegetable substances the least prone to decay, and for this reason it is a common practice to wrap a quantity of it round the ends of timbers or posts which are to be fixed in the ground. I saw a house about twenty miles up Manna River, belonging to Dupati Bandar Agung, the roof of which was of fifty years standing. The larger ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... turmoil of effort, how distasteful even the cave of the hermit—let ever such a splendid view spread abroad before its mouth! But when it comes it will be pleasant enough, for then its time will have come also—the man will be prepared for it by decay and cessation. If one were to tell me that he had that endless longing for immortality, of which hitherto I have only heard at second hand, I would explain it to him thus:—Your life, I would say, not being yet complete, still growing, feels in itself the onward impulse of growth, and, unable to ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... El Mahdi's stall like something out of a hole. He wore a rubber coat that had gone many years about the world, up and down, and finally passed in its decay to Roy. ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... the religious interests of their church and the community at large than these, yet Mr. Prince records, eighteen years after the beginning of his pastorate, that the ministers of Boston made an extraordinary effort to arrest the decay of godliness, but with no abiding results, and this was particularly noticeable in his own congregation. There seemed to be no change in this respect until the coming of Whitfield, in 1740, when he preached "to breathless thousands in the ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... man is the incessant walk of nature, wherein every moment is a step towards death. Even our growing to perfection is a progress to decay. Every thought we have is a sand running out of the glass ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... at Camille. He had never yet seen the body of a drowned person presenting such a dreadful aspect. The corpse, moreover, looked pinched. It had a thin, poor appearance. It had shrunk up in its decay, and the heap it formed was quite small. Anyone might have guessed that it belonged to a clerk at 1,200 francs a year, who was stupid and sickly, and who had been brought up by his mother on infusions. This miserable frame, which had grown to maturity between warm blankets, ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... it sounds oddly to hear from Dr. Dawson that "it obliterates the fine perception of differences from the mind of the naturalist, . . . . destroys the possibility of a philosophical classification, reducing all things to a mere series, and leads to a rapid decay in systematic zoology and botany, which is already very manifest among the disciples of Spencer and Darwin in England." So, also, "it removes from the study of Nature the ideas of final cause and purpose"—a sentence which reads curiously in the light of Darwin's special ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... negligent and slovenly appearance than a foul bed of cabbage. In very dry hot weather, their first bed should be watered now and then; after rain they should be set out, but not during its continuance, as it would wash the mould from the roots, and numbers decay without taking root at all in the new bed. Cabbages run to seed in ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... dead, at regular intervals. In the meantime the bodies were kept in their houses as long as possible—"until the stench became intolerable." Then, when this proximity could no longer be borne, the remains were left for a period to decay on a scaffold in the open air. After a time the remaining flesh was removed from the bones, which were arranged on the sides of their cabins, in full view of the inmates, until the great day of general interment. With these mournful objects before their ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... it pleased the gods above to guard thy liberty as it pleased them to avenge its loss. Lo! the noble body of Curio, covered by no tomb, feeds the birds of Libya. But to thee, since it profiteth not to pass in silence those deeds of thine which their own glory defends forever 'gainst the decay of time, such tribute now we pay, O youth, as thy life has well deserved. No other citizen of such talent has Rome brought forth, nor one to whom the law would be indebted more, if he the path of right ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... with funds, and with a library valuable for that day, presiding over its meetings in person, and distributing the poetical premiums with their own hands. During the troubles consequent on the death of Martin, this establishment fell into decay, until it was again revived, on the accession of Ferdinand the First, by the celebrated Henry, marquis of Villena, who transplanted it ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... stretch thy wings; Thy better portion trace; Rise from transitory things Toward Heaven, thy native place; Sun and moon and stars decay, Time shall soon this earth remove; Rise, my soul and haste away ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... the leisure the walk gave them for conversation, and then paying the painful visit, when Clara tried in vain to make it understood by the poor old lady that she was going away, and that James was her brother. They felt thankful that such decay had been spared their grandmother, and Clara sighed to think that her uncle might be on the brink of a like loss of faculties, and then felt herself more than ever ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this spirit that he constantly and inflexibly acts, though not failing to give Ministers a pretty sharp lecture every now and then. His forbearance has annoyed his own supporters to such a degree that they keep up a continual under-growl, and are always lamenting the decay of his faculties, and if they dared and knew how, they would gladly substitute some other leader for him. The 'ardor prava jubentium' has, however, no effect whatever on him: it neither ruffles his serenity nor shakes ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... seats without Windows or with shattered Roofs, & everywhere falling to decay, I could not help thinking of their unfortunate Owners, who, even if they were lucky enough to be reinstated in their possessions, might fear to repair their Places, lest an Appearance of comfort might tempt the ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... king of the Middle Ages, contribute to health and the preservation of life, and by the development of railroads make possible such a gathering as this,—these sciences, we cheerfully admit, outrank our modest enterprise, which, in the words of Herodotus, is "to preserve from decay the remembrance of what men have done." It may be true, as a geologist once said, in extolling his study at the expense of the humanities, "Rocks do not lie, although men do;" yet, on the other hand, the historic sense, ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... hanging from the ceiling, which Ali had filled and lighted, was also tarnished and its delicately shaped globe was cracked from top to bottom. Monte-Cristo sadly contemplated this scene of ruin and decay, but he contemplated it only for a moment. Then he turned to ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... the recluses from the neighbouring Grange met the sainted sisterhood, and mingled with them the prayers and tears of penitence. Otherwise they dwelt apart, each in diligent privacy, intent on their works of education or of charity. All the ruin and decay and somewhat dreary sadness of the scene could not weaken my sense of the beautiful life of thought and faith and hope and love that had once breathed there; and never before had I felt so deeply the enduring reality of the spiritual ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... acquainted with my lady Barrymore, pray tell her that in less than two hours t'other night the Duke of Cumberland lost four hundred and fifty pounds at loo; Miss Pelham won three hundred, and I the rest. However, in general, loo is extremely gone to decay; I am to play at Princess Emily's to-morrow for the first time this winter, and it is with difficulty she ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... opened a thousand blossoms to the sun as if to give a tenderer loveliness to the forest. Here trees grow and fall, and nature covers them where they lie with a new vegetation which altogether obliterates their hasty decay. It is four miles of beautiful and inextricable confusion, untrodden by human feet except on the narrow track. "Of every tree in this garden thou mayest freely eat," and no serpent or noxious thing trails its hideous form through ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... in reality there is none subsisting between them, and Gerson's adoption of a theory of Grecian origin proves that he scarcely understood the spirit of that mediaeval polity which, in his own country especially, was already in its decay. For not only is the whole system of government, whether we consider its origin, its end, or its means absolutely and essentially different, but the temporal notion of power is altogether unknown in the Church. "Ecclesia subjectos non habet ut servos, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... At the entrance to the sick chamber he clung for a moment to the door, gazing at the wild-eyed women who knelt about the room, their frightened eyes fixed on his father. His knees shook under him. He had a qualm of nausea at the slimy images of corruption and decay which the minister was trumpeting forth as the end to all ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... find in knowledge Light to guide me on my way; Yet I still must walk in darkness All that's known must soon decay. Ignorance, I turn to ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... of its own. Instead of resigning power they were forced to exercise it on condition of thorough responsibility to the central judiciary. Their privileges were not destroyed but were combined with the discharge of corresponding duties. Whatever their shortcomings, they were preserved from the decay which is the inevitable consequence of a divorce of duties ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen |
