"Decay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had obviously been made to hold two of them; these midgets were the members of the club, dwarfed into dolls by its tremendous dimensions. A strange and sinister race! They looked as though in the final stages of decay, and wherever their heads might rest was stretched a white cloth, so that their heads might not touch the spots sanctified by the heads of the mighty departed. They rarely spoke to one another, but exchanged regards of mutual distrust and ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... certainly not more than thrice the length and breadth of our passage, floored with brick, the walls green with mould, the pews painted white, but the paint almost all worn off with time and decay. At one end there is a little gallery for the singers, and when these personages stood up to perform they all turned their backs upon the congregation, and the congregation turned their backs on the pulpit and parson. The effect of this manoeuvre was ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... exquisite opportunity. They profaned the groves whose very winds breathed peace; they polluted the stream that a poet would have found sacred. The remains are there of a Cistercian abbey, the ruins of a ruin, twice fallen into disuse and decay. It was a ruin in the eighteenth century when a member of Parliament, who was also a baronet and a Chancellor of the Exchequer, took it into his evil head to repair it. Under the care of Sir Francis Dashwood it was restored for a new and altered life. The abbey rose again, and once again ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... fields, as we proceed, begin to redden and the trees disappear. Rows of old cabins appear filled with renters and laborers,—cheerless, bare, and dirty, for the most part, although here and there the very age and decay makes the scene picturesque. A young black fellow greets us. He is twenty-two, and just married. Until last year he had good luck renting; then cotton fell, and the sheriff seized and sold all he had. So he moved here, where the rent is higher, the ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... ground of expectation that the race which has brought forth such products as these may, in good time and under fortunate circumstances, produce the like again. I am one of those people who do not believe in the natural decay of nations. I believe, to speak frankly, though perhaps not quite so politely as I could wish—but I am getting near the end of my lecture—that the whole theory is a speculation invented by cowards to ...
— William Harvey And The Discovery Of The Circulation Of The Blood • Thomas H. Huxley
... out," returned Kiddie. "Look at his thigh bone—the only bone that's left intact. It's longer'n mine, an' I ain't a pigmy. Must have been taller'n I am. Look at the teeth: they're not an old man's teeth. There ain't a speck of decay on 'em, they're not worn down any, an' they're well separate one from another, not crushed together like an old man's. Must sure ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... Within the town there were several patches of cultivated land, which the Indians were gradually augmenting by felling the trees, burning the wood, and after a few years, aided by the natural process of decay, eradicating the stumps. The French were kindly received and entertained with generous hospitality. Grapes just gathered from the vines, and squashes of several varieties, the trailing bean still well known in New England, and the Jerusalem artichoke crisp from the ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... a high road, but the name clung to it from old use rather than because of present service. Eighty years before it had been a famous coaching road, along which the galloping teams had whirled the mails, but now it had fallen into decay, and was little used except by people passing from Rushmere to Longhampton. A mile from the school it ran across a lonely, unenclosed piece of heath, the side of the way being bordered by clumps of holly, ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... of Junkerthum. On the race theory an exclusive aristocratic government recruited and maintained by artificial selection is the only logical and sensible government, and democracy is bound to be considered as a principle of decay. The Kings of Prussia select their rulers on the same principle on which King Frederick William selected his regiment of six-foot grenadiers ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... entering an outer room from an inner one, found Flora writing a note. The girl kept on, conscious that her irksome critic was taking keen note of a subtle, cruel decay of her beauty, a spiritual corrosion that, without other fault to the eye, had at last reached the surface in a faint hardening of lines and staleness of bloom. Now she rose, went out, dispatched her note and returned. Her manner, as the two sat ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... decay and failure to perform LIFE'S DUTIES properly are caused by excesses, errors of youth, etc., will find a perfect and lasting restoration to ROBUST HEALTH ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... I have inconsiderately begun to speak, when my occupant, lolling back in my arms, was inclined to take an after-dinner nap. Or, perhaps, the impulse to talk may be felt at midnight, when the lamp burns dim, and the fire crumbles into decay, and the studious or thoughtful man finds that his brain is in a mist. Oftenest, I have unwisely uttered my wisdom in the ears of sick persons, when the inquietude of fever made them toss about, upon my cushion. And so it happens, that, though my words make a pretty strong ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... our eyes grow clear! We see, in blank dismay, Year posting after year, Sense after sense decay; Our shivering heart is ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... balandra, or one-masted vessel of about a hundred tons' burden, which was bound to Buenos Ayres. As the weather was not fair, we moored early in the day to a branch of a tree on one of the islands. The Parana is full of islands, which undergo a constant round of decay and renovation. In the memory of the master several large ones had disappeared, and others again had been formed and protected by vegetation. They are composed of muddy sand, without even the smallest pebble, and were then about four feet above the level of the ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... to-night about one of those old despotic empires which were in every case the earliest known form of civilisation. Were I minded to play the cynic or the mountebank, I should choose some corrupt and effete despotism, already grown weak and ridiculous by its decay—as did at last the Roman and then the Byzantine Empire—and, after raising a laugh at the expense of the old system say: See what a superior people you are now—how impossible, under free and enlightened institutions, is anything so base and so absurd as went ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... front, badly cracked all over,—evidently a sort of old manor house of about the period of George IV,—and the sight of the smart motor cars drawn up on either side of the road in front of its partly dilapidated gate, seemed but to enhance the general impression of decay which characterised both the house ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... the house was ill-placed, ill-built, ill-planned, and ill-fitted. It was damp, it was not free from dry rot, there was a flavour of rats in it, and it was the gloomy victim of that indescribable decay which settles on all the work of man's hands whenever it's not turned to man's account. The kitchens and offices were too large, and too remote from each other. Above stairs and below, waste tracts of passage intervened between patches ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... the close of the Civil War our navy was suffered to fall into neglect and decay. The thirty-seven cruisers, all but four of which were of wood; the fourteen single-turreted monitors built during the war; the muzzle-loading guns, belonged to a past age. By 1881 this was fully realized and the foundation ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... flat-roofed and builded of a red, porous stone, in some cases coated with white cement, whiles here and there, towering high among these, rose huge structures that I took for palaces or temples, yet one and all timeworn and crumbling to decay. Before one of such, standing in a goodly square, we alighted and here found a crowd of people—men, women and children—who stood to behold us; a mild, well-featured people, orderly and of a courteous ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... ship at Deptford, on which occasion she declared her entire approbation of his conduct, and conferred on him the honor, and such it then was, of knighthood. His ship she ordered to be preserved as a monument of his glory. Having fallen to decay, it was at length broken up: a chair, made out of its planks, was presented to the University of Oxford, and probably is still to be seen in the Bodleian Library. Cowley wrote a Pindaric ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... Oratoribus, an inquiry into the causes of the decay of eloquence—'cur nostra potissimum aetas deserta et laude eloquentiae orbata vix nomen ipsum oratoris retineat' (Dial. 1). Some critics have supposed that Tacitus meant this work to be an apologia pro vita sua, a justification of his preference ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... of May, the day of the decree, was the period at which commenced the final decay of the Company, and of the bank, and the extinction of all confidence by the sad discovery that there was no longer any money wherewith to pay the bank notes, they being so prodigiously in excess of the coin. After this, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... living beings could then exist, the life in that ocean and on its bottom was so infinitely grand in its proportions that men can now form no adequate conception of the same. The force of growth as well as of decay was immense, and all that was grown or made by its decay only increased the mass of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... survives amongst them, even though, as seems to be the case, no worship now attaches to the gods, with personal names, who figure in the myths. That myths survive, when worship has ceased; and that the names of gods linger on, even when myths are no longer told of them, are features to be seen in the decay of religious systems, all the world over, and not in Australia alone. The fact that these features are to be found in Australia points to a consideration which hitherto has generally been overlooked, or not sufficiently weighed. It is that in Australia we are in the midst of general religious ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... it gives of Chopin: the graceful fall of the shoulders, the Polish look, the charm of the mouth." Continuing, he says: "Another good likeness of Chopin, but of a later date, between the youthful period and that of his decay, is Bovy's medallion, which gives a very exact idea of the outlines of his hair and nose. Beyond these there exists nothing, all is frightful; for instance, the portrait in Karasowski's book, which has a stupid look." The portrait here alluded to ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... of a Father in Law, and marry it to a Husband who will treat her as she ought to be, and lovingly entertain her, and that must be done with all possible Expedition too, if not, I am certain that she will suddenly decay and come to nothing by the covetous and sordid Deportment of the Governours, &c. And a little after he writes thus, By this Means your Majesty will plainly know and understand how to depose the Prefects or Governours of those Regions from their ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... earlier generation of his stamp bud and blossom, and decay into fat Captains and ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... shortly. As her face was still inquiring, he added: "Brain trouble. In his case a kind of decay of the tissue; perhaps inherited, certainly hastened by his habits, probably precipitated ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... and cross are not picturesque,—they are wild and inhuman as the sea. In them you are in a maze, in a weltering world of woods; you can see neither the earth nor the sky, but a confusion of the growth and decay of centuries, and must traverse them by your compass or your science of woodcraft,—a rift through the trees giving one a glimpse of the opposite range or of the valley beneath, and he is more at sea than ever; one does not know his own farm or settlement when framed in these ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... avail; when any one was arrested, he was rescued by his companions, and the officers of police sometimes killed. Louis XIII, ever feeble in mind, and probably in constitution, died at the age of 42; it was supposed from a premature decay. ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... an arm that never tires When human strength gives way— There is a love that never fails When earthly loves decay." ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... scenes may be, the evil is less than would result from the undisturbed decay of the dead: were that to take place, the air would hang heavy with pestilence, and the winds of heaven laden with noisome exhalations would carry death and desolation far and near, rendering still more terrible the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... and, comparatively speaking, unspotted from the world; but I say I would sooner see any of you struck down in the flower of his youth than living on to lose, long before death comes, all that makes life worth the living. Better death, a thousand times, than gradual decay of mind and spirit; better death than faithlessness, indifference, and uncleanness. To you who are leaving Harrow, poised for flight into the great world of which this school is the microcosm, I commend the memory of Henry Desmond. It stands ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... out your seedling flowers as they are ready, and sow again for succession larkspur, mignonette, and other spring flowers. Pot out tender annuals. Remove auriculas to a north-east aspect. Take up bulbous roots as the leaves decay. Sow kidney beans, brocoli for spring use, cape for autumn, cauliflowers for December; Indian corn, cress, onions to plant out as bulbs next year, radishes, aromatic herbs, turnips, cabbages, savoys, lettuces, &c. Plant ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... of feeling upon cases such as those now proceeding in Ireland, should be one of mere summary indignation. Not that scurrility and the basest of personalities from Mr O'Connell are either novelties, or difficult to bear. To hear an old man, a man whose own approach to the period of physical decay, is the one great hope and consolation of all good subjects in Ireland, scoffing at grey hairs in the Duke of Wellington—calling, and permitting his creatures to call, by the name of "vagabonds" or "miscreants," the most eminent leaders of a sister nation, who are also the chosen servants ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... of the following subjects:— 1. The Stuart kings were arbitrary rulers. 2. The climate of our country is changing. 3. Gutenberg did not invent the printing press. 4. The American Indians have been unjustly treated by the whites. 5. Nations have their periods of rise and decay. ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... withering tangles; lilac and locust had already shed foliage too early blighted, but the huge and forbidding maples were all aflame in their blood-red autumn robes. Here the year had already begun to die; in the clear air a faint whiff of decay came from the rotting heaps of leaves—decay, ruin, and the taint of death; and, in the sad autumn stillness, something ominous, something secret and ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... dynasty and her warrior caste, and was still one of the wealthiest and most cherished lands of that Empire. Having secured these points of vantage in Northern China, the Muscovites could await with confidence further developments in the decay of that once ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... lost his nerve for riding, and a sight which gets daily weaker will have caused him to abandon even the pretence of handling his gun; but he will seek a recompense by becoming a sporting authority, and will pass a doddering old age in lamenting over the decay of all those qualities which formerly made a sportsman a sportsman, and a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... 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 branches which years of neglect had allowed to cover ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... seated on an old grave (doubtless of a century since at least) on the burial hill of the Whitmans of many generations. Fifty or more graves are quite plainly traceable, and as many more decay'd out of all form—depress'd mounds, crumbled and broken stones, cover'd with moss—the gray and sterile hill, the clumps of chestnuts outside, the silence, just varied by the soughing wind. There is always the deepest eloquence of sermon or poem in any of these ancient ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the fashion has been to contrast the stability and rejuvenescence of nature with the evanescence and unreturning decay of humanity:— ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... for Joys, Love is then our Duty, She alone who that employs, Well deserves her Beauty. Let's be gay, While we may, Beauty's a Flower, despis'd in Decay. Youth's ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... will be said, not everything contained in an organism ministers to its good. There is refuse material, only good to get rid of: there are morbid growths; there is that tendency to decay, by which sooner or later the organism will perish. First, then, a word on diseases. Diseases are the diseases of the individual; not of the race. The race, as such, and that is what the philosopher studies, is healthy: all ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... year of decay and decline (1819) belongs a small slip of yellow paper, inscribed with the following lines in a tremulous and feeble handwriting, which is jealously preserved by ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... about 40 feet in height, forming the centre of the group of extensive courts, buildings, and facades which surround it, all built upon the summit of a pyramid some 200 feet square. As in the Yucatan structures, the lintels over the doorway-openings in the walls were of wood, and their decay has largely been the cause of the facades having fallen into ruins, in many places. There are various interior staircases to these buildings, and the huge and unique reliefs of human figures are a remarkable feature ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... English counties, elegant and almost piquant in its design. The arch is flanked by slight hexagonal tourelles, each capped by a pinnacle decorated with niches in front. Within is a little courtyard, and fragments of the building running round in the same Tudor style, but given up to squalor and decay, evidently let out to poor lodgers. This charming fragment excites a deep melancholy, as it is a neglected survival, and may disappear at any moment—the French having little interest in these English monuments, ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... the face in every street of London, and hoots at the gates of her palaces more ominous a note than ever was that of owl or raven in the portentous times when empires and races have crumbled and fallen from inward decay. ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Christ willed to suffer while yet young, for three reasons. First of all, to commend the more His love by giving up His life for us when He was in His most perfect state of life. Secondly, because it was not becoming for Him to show any decay of nature nor to be subject to disease, as stated above (Q. 14, A. 4). Thirdly, that by dying and rising at an early age Christ might exhibit beforehand in His own person the future condition of those who rise again. Hence it is written (Eph. 4:13): "Until we all ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... provinciall and nationall Assemblies, the generall Assembly considering the great defection of this Kirk, and decay of Religion, by the usurpation of the Prelates, and their suppressing of ordinaire judicatories of the Kirk, and clearly preceiving the benefit which will redound to the Religion by the restitution of the said judicatories, remembring also that they stand obliged ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... time the deep sadness of beauty had entered my heart like a stroke; for all this mystery and loveliness, I realized poignantly was utterly independent and careless of me, as me; and that while I must pass, decay, grow old, these manifestations would remain for ever young and unalterably potent. And thus gradually had I become permeated with the recognition of a region hitherto unknown to me, and that I had always depreciated in others ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... Government investigators made comparative tests of the keeping qualities of carefully handled raspberries and commercially handled raspberries. Several lots of each kind were held in an ice car for varying periods and then examined for the percentage of decay. Other lots were held a day after being withdrawn from the refrigerator car and then examined. ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... been thinking, Bob, of the possibility of getting the ship safely down as far as this island. Could we but place her to leeward of that last reef off the weather end of the island, she might lie there years, or until she fell to pieces by decay. If we are to attempt building a decked boat, or anything large enough to ride out a gale in, we shall want more room than the ship's decks to set it up in. Besides, we could never get a craft of those dimensions off the ship's decks, ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... ripened rapidly under the new influences during her bodily decay; and, as the days lengthened, and the stern hold of winter relaxed upon the mountains, Christina looked with strange admiration upon the expression that had dawned upon the features once so vacant and dull, and listened with the more depth of reverence to the sweet words of faith, hope ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... waste and emaciation. In consequence, however, of the wasting of Soma, the deciduous herbs failed to grow. Their juices dried up and they became tasteless, and all of them became deprived of their virtues. And, in consequence of this decadence of the deciduous herbs, living creatures also began to decay. Indeed, owing to the wasting of Soma, all creatures began to be emaciated. Then all the celestials, coming to Soma, O king, asked him, saying, 'Why is it that thy form is not so beautiful and resplendent (as before)? Tell us the reason whence hath proceeded ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... steps slipping from their places at the bottom of a narrow ditch of mud. It has gone the way of the aqueducts, and bridges, and post-houses, the gardens and the llama-flocks of that strange empire. In the mad search for gold, every art of civilization has fallen to decay, save architecture alone; and that survives only in the splendid cathedrals which have risen upon the ruins of the temples ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... another proof of my present state of remoteness from English manners. The party consisted of an old nobleman, who could trace his genealogy unblemished up to one of the old Roman emperors, but whose fortune is now in a hopeless state of decay:—his lady, not inferior to himself in birth or haughtiness of air and carriage, but much impaired by age, ill health, and pecuniary distress; these had however no way lessened her ideas of her own dignity, or the respect of her cavalier servente and her son, who waited on her with an ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... which mark the conscious superiority of the master; and in that maturity of age which befits the undisturbed impartial observation which is requisite for Comedy, but yet hale and active, and free from all symptoms of decay. We recognise in them that corporeal vigour, which testifies at once to equal soundness both of mind and of temper; no lofty enthusiasm, but at the same time nothing of folly or extravagance; rather does a sage seriousness dwell on a brow wrinkled indeed, though not with care, but with the exercise ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... growth in output has been held back because of protracted antigovernment strikes and demonstrations for political reform. Since 1993, corruption and political instability have caused the economy and infrastructure to decay further. Since April 1994, the government commitment to economic reforms has been erratic. Enormous obstacles stand in the way of Madagascar's ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... on the mountain, and none are interred, another dead-house stands quite near the convent for the reception of the bodies. It is open to the air, and contained forty or fifty corpses in every stage of decay apart from putrescency, and was a most revolting spectacle. When the flesh disappears entirely, the bones are cast into a small enclosure near by, in which skulls, thigh-bones, and ribs were lying in a sort ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... last long after the trunk has been cut away. Our forefathers in clear land used to set the uprooted stumps of the pine up in rows for fencing, unsightly barricades that would persist for a century with little sign of decay. On the other hand, wood from the trunk set in ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... of decay goes on with the toes; in some cases the whole foot had dropped away; and in many the hands and feet were healed over, the fingers and toes having first dropped off. But the healing of the sore is but temporary, for the disease presently ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... fanciful and erroneous: I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... of the Vestiges is prone to do—extending our views from our solar system to other systems—other suns and revolving planets—it is fair to conclude that they are not less perfect in arrangement—subject to like conditions of permanency, and alike exempt from mutation, decay, collision, or extinction. ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... both 'marsh gas' caused by the decay of the huge ferns and plants of the carboniferous age. Some of them hardened into coal and others rotted when they were buried, and the gas was caught in huge pockets. It is gas from these great pockets that people use ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... deserve addition. Fini, which might have been mentioned in the last group, is a very perfect thing. A well-preserved dandy in middle age meets, after many years, an old love, and sees, mirrored in her decay, his own so long ignored. Nobody save a master could have done this as it is done. Julie Romain is a quaint half-dream based on some points in George Sand's life, and attractive. The title of L'Inutile Beaute has also always been so to me (the story is worth little). It would be, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... The diadem shall wane, The tribes of earth shall humble The pride of those who reign; And War shall lay his pomp away;— The fame that heroes cherish, The glory earned in deadly fray Shall fade, decay, and perish. Honour waits, o'er all the Earth, Through endless generations, The art that calls her harvests forth, ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... on the very banks of the stream there was no jungle, but open and well-wooded country that seemed well able to support a population of natives, had there been any to support. An hour after inspanning they came to another and larger village, which had fallen to decay as had the first. Monkeys were everywhere, grinning and chattering among the ruined huts, and in the center of the old village, fastened to a still sturdy post, they came upon a pair of heavy iron hand-cuffs, which were simply a ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... injuring each other in every possible way, that they neglected their farms and grew poorer and poorer. One of them became intemperate; and everything about their premises began to wear an aspect of desolation and decay. At last, one of the farms was sold to pay a mortgage, and John Tatum, who was then about to be married, concluded to purchase it. Many people warned him of the trouble he would have with a quarrelsome ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... unwilling 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 future to which her star ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... better than a coffin to me? Does not my heart feel its decay, without power to escape it? Here is only my corpse: ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... which exhibits the pride of ancestry in a curious point of view. His house was in such a state of dilapidation that the proprietor was in danger of perishing under the ruins of the ancient mansion, which he venerated even in decay. A stranger, whom he accidentally met at the foot of the Skyrrid, made various enquiries respecting the country, the prospects, and the neighbouring houses, and, among others, asked—"Whose is this antique mansion before us?" "That, sir, is Werndee, a very ancient house; ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... mine to him, and so depart in peace, Be thou as lightning in the eies of France; For ere thou canst report, I will be there: The thunder of my Cannon shall be heard. So hence: be thou the trumpet of our wrath, And sullen presage of your owne decay: An honourable conduct let him haue, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... with steadiness and method, and in spite of every discouragement which could be thrown in his way by the power, craft, fraud, and corruption of the farmer-general, Debi Sing, by the collusion of the Provincial Chief, and by the decay of support from his employers, which gradually faded away and forsook him, as his occasions for it increased. Under all these, and under many more discouragements and difficulties, he made a series of able, clear, and well-digested reports, attended with such evidence as never before, and, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... it is the work of Satan to invest death with its chief terrors. We shrink indeed from the humiliating prospect of corruption and decay; we cling fondly to those companionships, associations, and pleasures, from which death for ever separates us; we deprecate and dread the blighting of our earthly hopes, and the ruthless frustration ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... that your Pleasures may meet with no Interruption; your Charms know no Decay; and may ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... it was marvellously fine—one of those days in August when heat possesses the world and holds it tranced and still, but has in the very strength of its possession some scent of the decay and chill of autumn that is to follow so close upon its heels. There was no breeze, no wind from the sea, only a sky utterly without cloud and a world ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... staggered out of his own doorway, clenched his fists, and looked with a vindictive scowl at the strangers. A second glance induced him to unclench his fists and reel round the corner on his way to a neighbouring grog-shop. Whatever other shops may decay in that region, the grog-shops, like noxious ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... force includes 10,000 officers and men, together with 2,000 marines. The number of vessels of the United States Navy when all the ships now authorized are completed, excluding those which by the process of decay and the operation of law will by that date have been condemned, will comprise 11 armored and 31 unarmored vessels. The five stations maintained are the Asiatic, European, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, and Pacific. The chief matter of present public interest concerning this ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... become rich in the day of her prosperity. Men lived among her islands in that state of incipient lethargy, which marks the progress of a downward course, whether the decline be of a moral or of a physical decay. ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Malluch, acting for Ben-Hur, who could not longer endure the emptiness and decay of his father's house, had bought it from Pontius Pilate; and, in process of repair, gates, courts, lewens, stairways, terraces, rooms, and roof had been cleansed and thoroughly restored; not only was there no reminder ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... harvest in the autumn, and again at the season of sowing in the spring, the shepherds, the vintagers, and the people in general, were accustomed to observe certain sacred festivals, the autumnal sad, the vernal joyous. These undoubtedly grew out of the deep sympathy between man and nature over the decay and disappearance, the revival and return, of vegetation. When the hot season had withered the verdure ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... no happier. The healthy animal treads under his feet the helpless and the weak, who suffer that he may grow fat and kick. The attractive warmth and color and richness are found to be but rottenness and decay. ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... light-draught steamboats from Cedar Keys, on the Gulf of Mexico. The building of railroads in the south has diverted trade from one locality to another, and many towns, once prosperous, have gone to decay. ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... produce a lively yellow. The boiling of any kind of woodwork or household furniture in an iron cauldron, with a solution of vitriol, will prevent the breeding of bugs, and preserve it from rottenness and decay. Sulphur made into a paste, or arsenic dissolved in water, and applied in the same manner, will also be found an effectual remedy for the bugs. But if these do not completely succeed, take half a pint of the highest rectified ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... pushing their gentle way through the dead leaves of autumn. The Squire's beechwoods were famous in the neighbourhood, and he was still proud of them; though for many years past they had gone unnoticed to decay, and were ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... showed a more flourishing return on paper. To the external view all was still fair and prosperous when Kiaking died; under his successor, who was in every sense a worthier prince, the canker and decay ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... war increased as the journey lengthened. The potreros were lush with grass, but no herds grazed upon them; villages were deserted and guano huts were falling into decay, charred fields growing up to weeds and the ruins of vast centrales showing where the Insurrectos had been at work. This was the sugar country, the heart of Cuba, whence Spain had long drawn her life blood, ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... Gilgamesh proceeds to upbraid the goddess, instancing, in addition, her cruel treatment of a shepherd, and apparently also of a giant, whom she changed to a dwarf. The allusions, while obscure, are all of a mythological character. The weeping of Tammuz symbolizes the decay of vegetation after the summer season. The misfortunes that afflict the bird, lion, and horse similarly indicate the loss of beauty and strength, which is the universal fate of those who once enjoyed those attributes. ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... are theirs; Even age itself seems privileged in them With clear exemption from its own defects. A sparkling eye beneath a wrinkled front The veteran shows, and gracing a gray beard With youthful smiles, descends towards the grave Sprightly, and old almost without decay. ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... as Europe breeds in her decay: Such as she bred when fresh and young, When heavenly flame did animate her clay, By future poets ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... rosy cheek, Or a coral lip admires, Or from star-like eyes doth seek Fuel to maintain his fires,— As old Time makes these decay, So his flames ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... atoms (like those of Lucretius' "anima"), which inhabits the earthly body of the Christian like a kernel within its husk, and will one day (at the resurrection) slough off its muddy vesture of decay, and thenceforth exist in a form which can defy the ravages of time. Of the two views, Matthew Arnold's is much the truer, even though it should be proved that St. Paul sometimes pictures the "spiritual body" in the ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... and view God's lordly universe: On Freedom it is founded, and how rich Is it with Freedom! He, the great Creator, Has giv'n the very worm its sev'ral dewdrop; Ev'n in the mouldering spaces of Decay, He leaves Free-will the pleasures of a choice. This world of yours! how narrow and how poor! The rustling of a leaf alarms the lord Of Christendom. You quake at every virtue; He, not to mar the glorious form of Freedom, Suffers ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... in the time of Charlemagne, it became a question, whether there were any monks at all who were not Benedictines. The order, it is true, has degenerated from time to time, through the increase of its wealth and the decay of its discipline, but its fostering care of religion, of humane studies, and of the general civilization of Europe, from the tilling of the soil to the noblest learning, has given it an honorable place in history and ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... ran through his veins. The two rows of cottages separated by the common, which was the whole of Beverly Stoke, became too small a theatre for his parental pride. He bewailed the loss of his automobile that had perished of senile decay at Aix-en-Provence. If he only had it now he could exhibit Jean to the astonished eyes of ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... the examples it holds up to all those who have eyes to see with? I have learned from history that dynasties dry up like trees, and that it is better to uproot the hollow, withered-up trunk rather than permit it, in its long decay, to suck up the last nourishing strength from the ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... the little building that is 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 to be ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... to fame up through the hearts of a million children whose ages ranged from seven to seventy. Brocades and ginghams; tailor suits and peignoirs; puffed sleeves and tight—dramatic history, all, they spelled failure, success, hope, despair, vanity, pride, triumph, decay. Tragic ghosts, over which Josie Fifer held ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... are now forbidden by the Government. Nowhere is anything done for their education, except by the missionaries, who, however, receive some little assistance from the two Colonial Governments. The ancient rites and beliefs gradually decay wherever the whites come, and, except beyond the Zambesi, intertribal wars and raids have now practically ceased. Yet the tribal hatreds survive. Not long ago the Zulus and the Kosa Kafirs employed as platelayers on the Cape Government Railway fought ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... men in the decline of life, to contrast the scenes which are then being exhibited, with those through which they passed in the days of youth; and not unfrequently, to moralize on the decay of those virtues, which enhance the enjoyment of life and give to pleasure its highest relish. The mind is then apt to revert to earlier times, and to dwell with satisfaction on the manners and customs ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... shuddered as the metallic sounds floated in from the belfries. Although startled by the dropping of the leaf, he closed the volume, leisurely placing it between the pages as a marker—it, so brittle! so yellow! so typical of decay and mortality! The book comprised the writings of Sir Cornelius Agrippa. Having tossed the old alchemist from him with an air of overwhelming dejection, the student abandoned himself to the most ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... kingdom would be at an expense 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 Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to see that an orchestra thus constituted would be better adapted for making a great noise than for music, while the pantomime itself was of such a brutal nature that the degradation of art may be said to have been complete. As the decay of art in Egypt culminated under Ptolemy Auletes, so in Rome it culminated in the time of Caligula (12-41 ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... a rock, or hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you would a piece of bronze. But you cannot hammer a girl into anything. She grows as a flower does,—she will wither without sun; she will decay in her sheath, as the narcissus will, if you do not give her air enough; she may fall, and defile her head in dust, if you leave her without help at some moments of her life; but you cannot fetter her; she must take ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... and, kissing her lips, imbibed a part of her spirit. Were I to leave it behind me, cats, and other good for nothing creatures, would teach it again to be shy, and suspicious; and the present charming exertion of its little faculties would decay. The development of mind, even in a bird, has something in ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... a spiteful one, I would not eat them. Instead, I should have the same cluster served me every morning that I might say to mine enemies, with truth, that I have Cretan grapes for breakfast daily. They will keep," he added presently, "for it is tradition that stores laid up for siege never decay." ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... the raw, cold green of the adventurous grass on the borders of the sopping sidewalks gave, as it peered through its veil of melting snow and freezing rain, a peculiar cheerfulness to the landscape. Here and there in the vacant lots abandoned hoop-skirts defied decay; and near the half-finished wooden houses, empty mortar-beds, and bits of lath and slate strewn over the scarred and mutilated ground, added their interest to the scene. A shaggy drift hung upon the trees before our own ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... Smith, one of the greatest authorities of his country's old records, documents, etc. "They have been overridden by justices of the peace, county lieutenants, and other functionaries.... From this general decay of local institutions ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... competition in foreign markets, and that wages must fall, are all half true; but they prove nothing except this, that the industrial greatness of England can be maintained only through the barbarous treatment of the operatives, the destruction of their health, the social, physical, and mental decay of whole generations. Naturally, if the Ten Hours' Bill were a final measure, it must ruin England; but since it must inevitably bring with it other measures which must draw England into a path wholly ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... throttled Austria into compliance, had he been as prompt in executing them;—which he by no means was. And there lies his error and failure; very lamentable, excusable only by decrepitude of body producing weakness and decay of mind." This is emphatically and wearisomely Schmettau's opinion, [F. W. C. Graf van Schmettau (this is the ELDER Schmettau's Son, not the DRESDENER'S whom we used to quote), FELDZUG DER PREUSSISCHEN ARMEE IN BOHMEN ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... today, but blackened with smoke, half choked with mouldering humanity, strewn with charred timbers, broken roof tiles and the wreck of much household furniture; a sorrowful confusion reeking with vapours of death, and pestilential with decay. It was no wonder that the poor plebeians lost heart and would have chosen to go back to the clear streets and cleaner air of Veii. Their little houses were lost and untraceable in the universal chaos. But the rich man's ruins stood out in bolder ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... indulging personal joy at such a moment; and indeed it was true that her father had over-lived the first pangs of change and separation, had formed new and congenial habits, saw the future hope before him; and since poor Margaret had been at rest, had been without present anxiety, or the sight of decay and disappointment. Her only answer was a mute smoothing of his bowed shoulders, as she said, 'If I could be of any use or comfort to poor Averil Ward, I could go to-night. Mary is enough ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... caught her enthusiasm, and stood up to try his feet, and felt sure that he walked stronger, and would soon be down-stairs once more. And Julius, whose eyes love did not blind, felt a little scorn for those who could not see such evident decay and dissolution. "It is really criminal," he said to Sophia, "to encourage hopes so palpably false." For Julius, like all selfish persons, could perceive only one side of a question, the side that touched his own side. It never entered his mind that the squire was trying ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... step, feeling Thee close beside me, Although unseen, Through thorns, through flowers, whether the tempest hide Thee, Or heavens serene, Assured Thy faithfulness cannot betray, Thy love decay. ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... to Roe, "has furnished his lordship (the diocesan) with intelligence from foreign parts for two or three years, and has not yet got any consideration. Perhaps his lordship knows not how Hartlib has fallen into decay for being too charitable to poor scholars, and for undertaking too freely the work of schooling and education of children. If Hartlib and Roe were not in England, Durie would despair of doing any good." The diocesan referred to is probably Juxon, Bishop of London; but, two years ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... how she did, and hearing her complaints of shortness of breath, (which she attributed to inward decay, precipitated by her late harasses, as well from her friends as from you,) he was for advising her to ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... inquired after certain patients in whom she was particularly interested: since the last time she came they had suffered a relapse—the malady had changed in nature, and had shown graver symptoms. It was a kind of deadly fatigue, killing them by a slows strange decay. She asked questions of the doctors but could learn nothing: this malady was unknown to them, and defied all the resources of their art. A fortnight later she returned. Some of the sick people were dead, others still alive, but desperately ill; living skeletons, all that seemed ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... breaths, of wood and lawn. Night's eastern curtains still were closely drawn; No roseate flush predicted pomps to be, Or spoke of morning loveliness to me. But for those happy birds the night was gone! Darkling they sang, nor guessed what care consumes Man's questioning spirit; heedless of decay, They sang of joy and dew-embalmed blooms. My doubts grew still, doubts seemed so poor while they, Sweet worshippers of light, from leafy glooms Poured forth ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... it up in order to come to me in the Champs-Elysees; I acquired more confidence in the vitality, in the future of a friendship which could remain so much alive amid the torpor, the solitude, the decay of our surroundings; and while she dropped pellets of snow down my neck, I smiled lovingly at what seemed to me at once a predilection that she shewed for me in thus tolerating me as her travelling companion in this new, this wintry land, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... and gurgling sounds which came from out of the darkness, before and behind; while now, to fully prove what was wrong, they noticed the peculiar odour of the sea-water when impregnated with seaweed in a state of decay, and directly after Gwyn had called attention to the ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... sat there, but it is as I tell you: the latest image recorded by my eyes in that desolating hour was Joan of Arc with the grace of her comely youth still unmarred; and that image, untouched by time or decay, has remained with me all my days. Now ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... given to his king and his country. He had no great love for the monks; but he sought out the good and noble ones, put power into their hands, and gave them his support in ruling wisely and well. The Abbey of Waltham had fallen into almost complete decay; he chose two humbly born men, renowned for the purity and benevolence of their lives, and gave to them the charge of selecting a new brotherhood there, which ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... 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
... surface had many bowl-like depressions, at the bottom of which was, generally, considerable water. Springs and streams were scarce. The Confederates on retiring drove their disabled, diseased and broken-down horses, mules, etc., into these ponds and shot them, leaving them to decay and thus render the water unfit for use by the Union Army.(24) The troops had no choice but to use the water from the befouled ponds. We shall hear of ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... Cynthia fill her silver Horn, But lost, dissolv'd in thy superior Rays; One Tide of Glory, one unclouded Blaze O'erflow thy Courts: The LIGHT HIMSELF shall shine Reveal'd; and God's eternal Day be thine! The Seas shall waste, the Skies in Smoke decay; [15] Rocks fall to Dust, and Mountains melt away; But fix'd His Word, His saving Pow'r remains: Thy Realm for ever lasts! thy ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... treatise on political philosophy and constitutional law in the language. But these works hardly belong to pure literature, and are remarkable only as early, though not very good, examples of English prose in a barren time. The 15th century was an era of decay and change. The Middle Age was dying, Church and State were slowly disintegrating under the new intellectual influences that were working secretly under ground. In England the civil wars of the Red and White Roses were breaking up the old feudal society by decimating and impoverishing ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... were a pair of spurred military boots, green and rotten with decay. In them were the leg bones of a man. Among the tiny bones of the hands was an ancient fountain pen, as good, apparently, as the day it was made, and a metal covered memoranda book, closed over the ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... latter years of the history of the Company of Royal Adventurers the factories including Cape Corse fell into great decay, on account of the failure of the company to send out ships and supplies. Nearly all the English trade was carried on in the vessels of private traders, who in return for their licenses, agreed to take one-tenth ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... supported, because the people can suffer nothing from the failure of publick measures, or even from the dissolution of the government itself, which will be equally to be dreaded or avoided with an universal depravity of morals, and a general decay of corporeal vigour. Even the insolence of a foreign conqueror can inflict nothing more severe than the diseases which debauchery produces; nor can any thing be feared from the disorders of anarchy more dangerous or more calamitous, than the madness of sedition, or the miseries which must ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson |
