"Decay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... affirmed that, in their essence, these are infinite and eternal, but that the forms they assume may be of a limited order, and consequently may belong to the domain of mere nature and be subject to the sway of chance; they are therefore perishable and exposed to decay and corruption. Religion and morality—in the same way as inherently universal essences—have the peculiarity of being present in the individual soul, in the full extent of their Idea, and therefore truly and really; although ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... the beginning of a period of actual and inhibited non-extension of slavery as a rival system of labor in the Union would mark the termination of its period of growth and the commencement of its industrial decay. The peril of the slave system was certainly extreme, and the dread of the slave power ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke
... the wing, occupied by the caretaker, nothing had been disturbed since the family, seeking new fortunes in the city, had left the old homestead to decay among the desolate fields that yielded now a meagre living for Mrs. Brand and her ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... art. I agree with Monsieur Laird, if I understand him right; but I agree also with Madame Laird, if I understand her. You see, I think mind and matter are one, or perhaps there is no such thing as either mind or matter, only growth and decay and growth again, for ever and ever; but always conscious growth—an artist expressing himself in millions of ever-changing forms; decay and death as we call them, being but rest and sleep, the ebbing of the tide, which must ever ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of the Weald (That in their heavy breasts had long their griefs concealed), Foreseeing their decay each hour so fast come on, Under the axe's stroke, fetched many a grievous groan. When as the anvil's weight, and hammer's dreadful sound, Even rent the hollow woods and shook the queachy ground; So that the trembling nymphs, oppressed through ghastly fear, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... political development was delicate. A formed free government in a homogeneous nation may have a strong executive; but during the transition state, while the republic is in course of development and the monarchy in course of decay, the executive is of necessity weak. The polity is divided, and its action feeble and failing. The different orders of English people have progressed, too, at different rates. The change in the state of the higher classes since the ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... Navy developed by Henry VIII. was allowed perforce to decay under his two immediate successors. According to the most authentic lists, [Footnote: Sir W. Laird Clowes, The Royal Navy, vol. i., pp. 419 ff. Throughout this chapter, the figures for tonnage are adopted from this work.] in 1548 there were 53 ships in the Fleet, with ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... which I found portions of the skeletons of many bodies,—skulls, bones, and matted hair,—most of which, on examination, I concluded to be those of men. Three hundred and fifty yards further on another assembly of human remains was found, which, by all appearance, had been left to decay upon the surface; skulls and bones, most of which I believed to be those of women, some also of children, probably ranging from six to twelve years of age. Here, too, were found masses of women's hair, children's bonnets, such as are generally used upon the plains, and pieces of lace, muslin, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... self-inflicted torture seeking bliss, And by self-murder seeking higher life; On one foot standing till the other pine, Arms stretched aloft, fingers grown bloodless claws, Or else, impaled on spikes, with festering sores Covered from head to foot, the body wastes With constant anguish and with slow decay.[12] "Can this be wisdom? Can such a life be good That shuns all duties lying in our path— Useless to others, filled with grief and pain? Not so my father's god teaches to live. Rising each morning most exact in time, He bathes the earth and sky with rosy light And fills ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... all was utter dark. And then the moon arose, and in a moment John Oxenham's ship was close aboard; her sails were torn and fluttering; the pitch was streaming from her sides; her bulwarks were rotting to decay. And what was that line of dark objects dangling along the mainyard?—A line of hanged men! And, horror of horrors, from the yard-arm close above him, John Oxenham's corpse looked down with grave-light eyes, and beckoned and pointed, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... the danger lies in that bolted cloud which flashes in the Southern horizon. There is decay, and change, here in the North. Old New-England, that suckled American liberty, is now suckling wolves to ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher
... of vegetative propagation is widely spread. When artificially divided small fragments of the gametophyte are found to be capable of growing into new individuals. Apart from the separation of branches by the decay of older portions, special gemmae are found in many species. In Aneura the contents of superficial cells, after becoming surrounded by a new wall and dividing, escape as bi-cellular gemmae. Usually the gemmae arise by the outgrowth of superficial cells, and become free ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... present to their smal powers many well learned gentlemen of them do) labour and trauell in shewing of themselues thankefull, to reuerence and honour your lordship, and honest their owne names: whose studies certeinly would suddenly decay and fall flat, if they were not held vp by such noble proppes, and had not some sure ankerholds in their distresse to leane vnto. How ready dayly your trauell is, and hath long beene besides to benefit all other persons, in whom any sparke of vertue or honesty remaineth, I need not ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... There is permanent water here, but, unlike the Mount Olga springs, it lies all in standing pools. There is excellent grazing ground around this rock, though now the grass is very dry. It might almost be said of this, as of the Pyramids or the Sphinx, round the decay of that colossal rock, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away. This certainly was a fine place for a camp. The water was icy cold; a plunge into its sunless deeps was a frigid tonic that, further west in the summer heats, would have been almost paradisiacal, while now ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... he said, "we used often to talk about the decay of joy in the world. Many impulses, we settled, had contributed to this decay, some of which were good in themselves, others that were quite completely bad. Among the good things, I put what we may call certain Christian virtues, renunciation, resignation, sympathy with suffering, and the desire ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... and wavering to and fro, The brightsome flower of beauty fades away, Reason retires, and Pleasure brings in Woe, And Wisdom yieldeth place to black decay. Counsel, and fame, and friendship are condemned, And bashful shame, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... sake of existence, but of living happily. And the procreation of children is a means not only of subserving nature, but also of solid benefit; for the labor which they expend during their season of vigor upon their helpless young is given back to them in the decay of age, from their children ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... Notre-Dame, it represents the pointed style of the middle of the thirteenth century, and is singularly pure and uniform throughout. Secularized at the Revolution, it fell somewhat into decay; but was judiciously restored by Viollet-le-Duc and others. The "Messe Rouge," or "Messe du St. Esprit," is still celebrated here once yearly, on the re-opening of the courts after the autumn vacation, but no other religious ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... arguments are pursued to prove that despite the evil plight of men, life was still, by some slight preponderance of considerations, probably better worth living than leaving. Despising themselves, they despised their Creator. There was a general decay of religious belief. Pale and watery gleams, from skies thickly veiled by doubt and dread, alone lighted up the chaos of earth. That men should doubt Him whose breath is in their nostrils, or dread the hands that moulded them, seems to us indeed a pitiable insanity; but we must remember ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... judge from this event. Chaf'd by the speed, it fir'd; and, as it flew, A trail of following flames ascending drew: Kindling they mount, and mark the shiny way; Across the skies as falling meteors play, And vanish into wind, or in a blaze decay. The Trojans and Sicilians wildly stare, And, trembling, turn their wonder into pray'r. The Dardan prince put on a smiling face, And strain'd Acestes with a close embrace; Then, hon'ring him with gifts above the rest, Turn'd the bad omen, ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... also a new vision of the destiny of the French people as not only defenders of their own country but as champions of the rights of all nationalities. German writers have not failed to notice this, and have been inclined to regard this spirit of France as a sign of degeneration and decay of the national life. We see now that generosity and justice are far from being evidences of weakness, and also that in the larger logic of history these weaknesses generate strength; at least they bring powerful friends in time ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... poor Laura was unfolding before herself was rendered less dreary by the thought, 'I have my sister still, and she knows sorrow too.' Then she half envied Amy, who had lost her dearest by death, and held his heart fast to the last; not, like herself, doomed to see the love decay for which she had endured so long—decay at the very moment when the suspense ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he was tolerant of their crotchets. Irascibility indicates force of character, at least so he believed, and old folks are apt to accept too meekly the approach of decay. Here was a spirit that time had not dulled—it was like wine soured in an old cask. At any rate, wine it had been, not water, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... their very constitution; and in so mending the ancient and beggarly garments of others that they reassumed a venerable respectability. Through love, he passed from an artisan to an artist. His reverence for the inner reality, the book itself, in itself beyond time and decay, had roused in him a child-like regard for its body, for its broken inclosure and default of manifestation. He would espy the beauty of an old binding through any amount of abrasion and laceration. ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... Beginning with the struggle for restriction or extension of slavery, I have striven to record, in the spirit of honest and impartial historical inquiry, all the events of this period belonging properly to my subject. The development and decay of anti-slavery sentiment at the South; the pious efforts of the good Quakers to ameliorate the condition of the slaves; the service of Negroes as soldiers and sailors; the anti-slavery agitation movement; the insurrections ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... The face of the rock had been levelled too, and upon it there were remains of a rough kind of inscription, while, upon examining the dressed stones which lay here and there, several, in spite of their decay, still retained the shape which showed that they ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... laurels and sombre firs, that had cracked with their roots the grey garden wall and sprawled down to the beach below—the stained and yellow frontage looked down towards the busy harbour, as it seemed with a sense of serene decay, haunted but without disquietude, like the face of an old lady who has memories and lives in them, though she deigns to contemplate a life from which her hopes, with her old friends and lovers, have dropped out. Perhaps Mr. Fogo had some sympathy with this mood; for Caleb, after waiting some ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... here, out in the Chace, his mind would be almost poetical. While wandering among the forest trees, he became susceptible of the tenderness of human nature: he would listen to the birds singing, and pick here and there a wild flower on his path. He would watch the decay of the old trees and the progress of the young, and make pictures in his eyes of every turn in the wood. He would mark the colour of a bit of road as it dipped into a dell, and then, passing through a water-course, ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... Chaldean ascetic, who is said to have lived about 2000 B.C., is reported to have earnestly rebuked those who tried to preserve the body from decay by artificial resources. "Not by natural means," he said, "can man preserve his body from corruption and dissolution after death, but only through good deeds, religious exercises and offering of sacrifices,—by invoking the gods by ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... by the arquebusiers. But no force was required, for the lid was not nailed down; and when it was removed, a human body in the last stage of decay was discovered. ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... beauty, not created, not made; exempt from increase or decay; not beautiful in one part and deformed in another, beautiful in such a time, such a place, such a relation; not beauty which hath any sensible parts or anything corporeal, or which may be found comprised in any one thought ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... peat bog of about twelve square miles in extent. Unlike the bogs or swamps of Cambridge and Lincolnshire, which consist principally of soft mud or silt, this bog is a vast mass of spongy vegetable pulp, the result of the growth and decay of ages. The spagni, or bog-mosses, cover the entire area; one year's growth rising over another,—the older growths not entirely decaying, but remaining partially preserved by the antiseptic properties peculiar to peat. Hence the remarkable fact that, although a semifluid mass, ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... through, as in English we say, "the fire goes out") is oftenest used of death by privation or exposure; as, "I perish with hunger," Luke xv, 17; sometimes, of death by violence. Knowledge and fame, art and empires, may be said to perish; the word denotes utter destruction and decay. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... is seen in his work, as described generally in verse 16. Only such a man can effect such a change, in a time of religious decay, as to turn many to God. It needs a strong arm to check the downward movement and to reverse it. No one who is himself entangled in sense, and but partially filled with God's Spirit, will wield great influence for good. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to wisdom, his heart swelled When his fixed eye beheld his soul's belief Fulfilled in Western twilight. Thou my land! Shalt thunder to the ages evermore That dreams and hopes are holy. Thou shalt still The croaking voice of souls that shake at dawn, Loving the dimness of their own decay,— The lone desire, entreaty and despair, The wasting weariness that breeds disgust, All woes but Doubt that, wasp-like, stings Hope back, There are ye justified. And never Time Goldening this page can slip its moral too: And never ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... claiming the best. Suppose it was bounded by a "stake and stones" as of old here, minus the stones which are absent; suppose some of the claimants think best to set up a new stake where one has gone to decay, and suppose they are not over exact in placing it; or suppose, as is more than likely, their neighbor thinks the new stake encroaches on him and pulls it up entirely, stamping on the hole and putting ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... achievement came with creation, and constitute an inflexible, irrepealable law of the universe. In stir and push we have light and life, but in idleness, and superstitious clinging to fossilized ideas and bygones, we have demoralization, decay and death. ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... reigning family. There were thirteen principalities of greater note, and a large number of smaller dependencies. During the vigorous youth of the dynasty, the sovereign or lord paramount exercised an effective control over the various chiefs, but with the lapse of time there came weakness and decay. The chiefs —corresponding somewhat to the European dukes, earls, marquises, barons, &c. — quarrelled and warred among themselves, and the stronger among them barely acknowledged their subjection to the sovereign. A similar condition of things prevailed ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... in the sixteenth century, and one very frequently adopted at that time. This text is treated in a manner characteristic of the age. It is exemplified by a series of visions. The poet represents himself as seeing at Verulam an apparition of a woman weeping over the decay of that ancient town. This woman stands for the town itself. Of its whilome glories, she says, after a ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... sorrows with the fled December, But let each pleasant cheek appear Smooth as the childhood of the year, And sing a carol here. 'Twas brave, 'twas brave, could we command the hand Of youth's swift watch to stand As you have done your day; Then should we not decay. But all we wither, and our light Is spilt in everlasting night, Whenas your sight Shows like the heavens above the moon, Like an eternal noon That sees no ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... the bright scales of an unearthly armour shrivel to rottenness and dust. The dazzling robes are turning blank and colourless, the emerald rays waning to a pale, sad light, the flashing diadem is dulled and dim. Yet on the fairy queen there lowers no shadow of change, there threaten no symptoms of decay. ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... thirty years of love the Countess's beauty remained unimpaired; she was as young and as fresh at the finish as at the outset; whereas certain secondary personages, introduced into the story, wives and mothers of a neighboring little town, sank into physical and mental decay, and monstrous decrepitude. Mathieu considered the author's theory that all physical beauty and moral nobility belonged to virgins only, to be thoroughly imbecile, and he could not restrain himself from hinting ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... with the same prodigality of vital force, the same struggle for existence and mutual havoc that mark all organized beings, from men to mushrooms. Young seedlings in millions spring every summer from the black mould, rich with the decay of those that had preceded them, crowding, choking, and killing one another, perishing by their very abundance,—all but a scattered few, stronger than the rest, or more fortunate in position, which survive by blighting ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... up spirits from the infernal world; and they made an image of wax, which they slowly consumed before a fire, expecting that, as the image gradually wasted away, so the constitution and life of the poor king would decay ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... about accusing acquaintances of every variety of unnatural vice, it must be pointed out that such accusations were regarded at Rome as mere matter for laughter. The traditions of the old Fescennina locutio survived, and with the decay of private morality its obscenity increased. Caesar's veterans could sing ribald verses unrebuked at their general's triumph, verses unquotably obscene and casting the foulest aspersions on the character of one whom they worshipped almost as a god. ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... decay, But we read of a house not made with hands, Whose firm foundation forever stands; And there is a twilight soft and sweet. Will she not stand with outstretched hands My homesick eyes to meet— To welcome her boy as in days before, To home, ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... tie-periwig, which all the flour in his dredging-box had not been able to whiten; his eyes were sunk, his jaws lengthened beyond their usual extension; and he seemed twenty years older than he looked when he and our hero parted at Rotterdam. In spite of all these evidences of decay, he accosted him with a meagre affectation of content and good-humour, struggled piteously to appear gay and unconcerned, professed his joy at seeing him in England, excused himself for having delayed so long to come and present his respects; ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... little middy on board, so delicate and fragile, that the sea was clearly no fit profession for him; but he or his friends thought otherwise; and as he had a spirit for which his frame was no match, he soon gave token of decay. This boy was a great favorite with everybody; the sailors smiled whenever he passed, as they would have done to a child; the officers patted him, and coddled him up with all sorts of good things; and his messmates, ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... nations march in the van of the world's progress—prolonged peace has ever meant putrefaction. The civilizations of Greece and Rome were brightest when their blades were keenest. When the sword was sheathed there followed social degradation and intellectual decay. When all Europe trembled at the haughty tread of her matchless infantry, Spain was empress in the realm of mind. The Elizabethan age in England was shaped by the sword. America's intellectual preeminence followed the long agony of the Revolution, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... in his studio; but he knew her and classified her as if he had made her. He was acquainted with the London female model in all her varieties—in every phase of her development and every step of her decay. When he entered his house that September morning just after the arrival of his two friends there had been no symptoms whatever, up and down the road, of Miss Geraldine's reappearance. That fact had been fixed in ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... modern statesmen are confronted is very simple: can Europe continue in her decline without involving the ruin of civilization? And is it possible to stop this process of decay without finding some form of civil symbiosis which will ensure for all men a more human mode of living? In the affirmative case what course should we take, and is it presumable that there should be an immediate change for the better in the situation, given the national ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... it. He told them of the crumbling palaces, beautiful in their perfect Venetian architecture, but still more beautiful now in their slow, grand decay, in which was all the majesty of deep repose teeming with suggestions of past glories. He spoke of the still, clear air, the delicate tints of the softened landscape, the dark cool green of the olive ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hearts which wait for the strife to be done and for him to return! The field-hands sleep more honored in their separate mounds beneath the pine trees. The landlady's daughter may come sometimes to fasten a flower upon his cross; but, like that cross, her sorrow will decay, and Master Lees will mingle with common dust, passing out of the memory of Europe—ay! even of the ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... 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, which during our century has diffused itself widely, has invaded the domain ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... possibly escape? Is not the wall built strong enough, and is not the tower sufficiently strong and high? There was no hole or crevice in it, through which he could pass, unless he was aided from outside. I am sure his hiding-place was revealed. If the wall were worn away and had fallen into decay, would he not have been caught and injured or killed at the same time? Yes, so help me God, if it had fallen down, he would certainly have been killed. But I guess, before that wall gives away without being ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... considerations, and he formulated his information, which he was proud to be able to impart, in the neatest possible terms and with a pinch of snuff between finger and thumb. As a Frenchman—quite apart from Newman's napoleons—M. Nioche loved conversation, and even in his decay his urbanity had not grown rusty. As a Frenchman, too, he could give a clear account of things, and—still as a Frenchman—when his knowledge was at fault he could supply its lapses with the most convenient and ingenious hypotheses. The little shrunken financier was intensely delighted ...
— The American • Henry James
... man, past middle age, undoubtedly, and there was no evidence that he came to his death by any wound which effected a fracture of any of his bones. The cot on which the skeleton reposed was made of pieces of wood, in a complete state of decay, and there was not a vestige of clothing, jewelry or pocket articles at or ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... than a coffin to me? Does not my heart feel its decay, without power to escape it? Here is only my corpse: my soul is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... above his fort. All of them struck for higher wages, to which Sutter yielded, until they asked ten dollars a day, which he refused, and the two mills on which he had spent so much money were never built, and fell into decay. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... brightest ornament was Captain Hind—it was something of a distinction to be decently plundered. A century later there was none so humble but he might be asked to empty his pocket. In brief, the blight of democracy was upon what should have remained a refined, secluded art; and nowise is the decay better illustrated than in the appreciation of bunglers, whose exploits ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... rain or damp above a century still hissed with the heat and distilled streams of water from each end, as if the tree had been cut down within a week or two. Next there were large sticks, sound, black and heavy, which had lost the principle of decay and were indestructible except by fire, wherein they glowed like red-hot bars of iron. On this solid basis Tabitha would rear a lighter structure, composed of the splinters of door-panels, ornamented mouldings, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the S. H. & P. R. R. resembles it somewhat; and that, although there is a "general flavor of mild decay" about it in some respects, it will not be in danger of wearing out from high rate of speed; but who cares about time ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... cure for the sickly in the mind is reality. Something real has to be felt or experienced. Life that is over-delicate and remote through something unbalanced in the mind is not life but decay. The knife, the bludgeon, the practical joke, and the many-weaponed figure of Sorrow are life's remedies for those who fail to live. We are the earth's children; we have no business in limbo. Living in limbo is like living in ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... alone for years, and supported himself by raising geese and selling the tiles from the mission roof. When he died, ten years ago, no one was left to care for his beloved mission, which is rapidly falling into utter decay. ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... obscure duties is hardening the character to that temper which will work with honor, if need be, in the tumult, or on the scaffold. Whatever outrages have happened to men may befall a man again; and very easily in a republic, if there appear any signs of a decay of religion. Coarse slander, fire, tar and feathers, and the gibbet, the youth may freely bring home to his mind, and with what sweetness of temper he can, and inquire how fast he can fix his sense of duty, braving such penalties, whenever ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... "We have never," says Dr. Hunt, "seen but a single suggestion that it could so act, and this a promiscuous guess. One writer (Hammond) thinks it possible that it may 'somehow' enter into combination with the products of decay in tissues, and 'under certain circumstances might yield their nitrogen to the construction of new tissues.' No parallel in organic chemistry, nor any evidence in animal chemistry, can be found to surround this guess with the areola of ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... and the punishment for their folly was not delayed long. God caused the sea to transgress its bounds, and a portion of the earth was flooded. This was the time also when the mountains became rocks, and the dead bodies of men began to decay. And still another consequence of the sin of idolatry was that the countenances of the men of the following generations were no longer in the likeness and image of God, as the countenances of Adam, Seth, and Enosh had been. They resembled centaurs ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... 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 is a lithographic reproduction ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Goldenrod in such great profusion that it seemed the very sunshine of the skies was imprisoned in flower form, stag-horn sumac with its grape-like clusters of red adding brilliancy to the landscape—everywhere was manifest the dawn of autumnal glory, the splendor that foreruns decay, the beauty that is but the first step in nature's transition from blossom and harvest to ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... and even the most secret and central of those living and hidden parts, the pulsing arteries, the throbbing nerves, the ganglionic centres, that no eye, save for the surgeon's knife has ever seen or ever will see until they coagulate in decay. So far I am not my body; and then as clearly, since I suffer through it, see the whole world through it and am always to be called upon where it is, I am it. Am I a mind mysteriously linked to this ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... double-handed sword. Because he knew full well, in his own breast, as he stood there, tinging the scene of transition before him with the morbid colours of his own mind, and making it a ruin and a picture of decay, instead of hopeful change, and promise of better things, that life had quite as much to do with his complainings as death. One child was gone, and one child left. Why was the object of his hope removed instead ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... is here within sight, is, as each of you knows, a city of immense antiquity, and was aforetime great, though now 'tis fallen into complete decay; which notwithstanding, it always was, and still is the see of a bishop. Now there was once a gentlewoman, Monna Piccarda by name, a widow, that had an estate at Fiesole, hard by the cathedral, on which, for that she was not in the easiest circumstances, she lived most part ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... active and valiant soldiers they still remained. A quick succession of encounters occurred at various parts of the seat of war, the general tendency of which was not entirely in favour of the British arms, though the weekly export of prisoners reassured all who noted it as to the sapping and decay of the Boer strength. These incidents must now be set down in the order of their occurrence, with their relation to each other so far as it is possible to ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... second, it gives plenty of time for the opening and germination first mentioned. But early planting must be in ground which is loamy and light rather than heavy, because if the soil is so heavy as to become water-logged the kernel is more apt to decay than to grow. Where there is danger of this, the seed can be kept in boxes of sand, continually moist, but not wet, by use of water, and planted out, as sprouting seeds, after the coldest rains are over, say in February. Cherry and plum seeds should ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... of the stormy Atlantic; they lie among walls which, tho they may be loosened for years, seem as tho they never could decay, for they are of the red granite of which the rocks and islets around are composed, and defended only by low enclosures piled up of the same granite, rounded into great pebbles by the washing of the sea. But perhaps the most ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... ploughshare and the yellow grain; And rising ports along the busy shore Protect the vessel from old Ocean's roar— All, all must perish. But, surviving last, The love of letters half preserves the past: True,—some decay, yet not a few survive, Though those shall sink which now appear to thrive, As custom arbitrates, whose shifting sway Our life and language must ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... respecting the past by a more elaborate and entertaining narrative. He begins his work thus: "These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, which he publishes, in the hope of thereby preserving from decay the remembrance of what men have done, and of preventing the great and marvelous actions of the Greeks and the barbarians from losing their due meed of glory, and withal to put on record what were the grounds of their hostility." In Herodotus, history, owing to the inquiry made into the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... include one admiral, one vice-admiral, six rear-admirals, and ten commodores. The naval 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 ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... with fond hope and learning's sacred flame, To Granta's bowers the youthful Poet came; Unconquer'd powers the immortal mind display'd, But worn with anxious thought, the frame decay'd: Pale o'er his lamp, and in his cell retired, The martyr student faded and expired. Oh! genius, taste, and piety sincere, Too early lost 'midst studies too severe! Foremost to mourn, was generous Southey seen, He told the tale, ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... All things decay with time: the forest sees The growth and downfall of her aged trees; That timber tall, which threescore lusters stood The proud dictator of the state-like wood,— I mean (the sovereign of all plants) the oak— Droops, dies, and falls without ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... 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
... Visit to Mansolah. Customs of the Court of Katunga. Mansolah's Visit to the Landers. Intended Route of the Landers. The Master of the Horse. Decay of Katunga. The Markets of Katunga. Visit from Ebo. Intrigues of the Wives of Ebo. Visit of Houssa Mallams. Presents to the Head Men. Their Affluence. Site of Katunga. Character of the Natives. Political Constitution ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... between the divisions, forming bowers shaded by vines and sweet-scented blossoms. These are diffusing their fragrance through the spacious halls and corridors beneath. The stately old pile wears a romantic appearance; but it has grown brown with decay, and stands in dumb testimony of that taste and feeling which prevailed among its British founders. The garden in which it stands, once rich with the choicest flowers of every clime, now presents an area overgrown with rank weeds, decaying hedges, dilapidated walks, and sickly shrubbery. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... Holcomb. And I can understand poor Chick. He is a very brave man. It's a strange jewel and of terrible potency; that much I know. It devitalises; it destroys. I can feel it already. It covers life with a fog of decay. The same solitude has come upon myself. Nevertheless I am certain it has much to do with the Blind Spot. It is a key of some sort. The very interest of the Rhamda and the Nervina tells us that. I think it was through this stone that your ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... intestinal canal Waste matter lay, and sad to tell, Was left from day to day; And while it was neglected there It undermined that structure fair, And caused it to decay. ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... content themselves with playing on the ground floor and in the outhouses. There was a mystery hanging about the old place which added to its attractions, for they had heard that it had fallen into this decay and been uninhabited so long because it was "in Chancery." A mysterious expression, which might mean anything, and was more than enough to clothe it with all the terrors which belong ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... the green maple whine and moan! Still more wide in expanse than even the heavens is the dead vegetation which covers the graves! The moral is this, that the burden of man is poverty one day and affluence another; that bloom in spring, and decay in autumn, constitute the doom of vegetable life! In the same way, this calamity of birth and the visitation of death, who is able to escape? But I have heard it said that there grows in the western quarter a tree called the P'o So (Patient Bearing) which ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... wrought on the spectator's mind with an influence like that of some enchanting poem, filling his soul with dreamy fancies. A poet must have lingered there in deep and melancholy musings, marveling at the harmony of this wilderness, where decay had a ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... it with her rich and luxuriant verdure. For example, as soon as the fires went out over the clearing, she began, with her sun and rain, to blanch the blackened stumps, and to gnaw at their foundations with her tooth of decay. If Albert made a road or a path she rounded its angles, softened away all the roughness that his plow or hoe had left in it, and fringed it with grass and flowers. The solitary and slender trees which had been left ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... company; at another, 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 ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... pre-occupied, but now they were all vacant. There would be nine empty beds in the school when it met again after the holidays; and the Doctor well understood that nine beds remaining empty would soon cause others to be emptied. It is success that creates success, and decay that produces decay. Gradual decay he knew that he could not endure. He must shut up his school,—give up his employment,—and retire altogether from the activity of life. He felt that if it came to this with him ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... good humour. But the excuse is merely local; it cannot apply to similar bodies in America and France; and what are we to say of these? President Cleveland's letter may serve as a picture of the one; a glance at almost any paper will convince us of the weakness of the other. Decay appears to have seized on the organ of popular government in every land; and this just at the moment when we begin to bring to it, as to an oracle of justice, the whole skein of our private affairs to be unravelled, and ask it, like a new Messiah, to take upon itself our frailties ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... namely root stem and leaf 2. when the world is dark with tempests when thunder rolls and lightning flies thou lookest in thy beauty from the clouds and laughest at the storm 3. the oaks of the mountains fall the mountains themselves decay with years the ocean shrinks and grows again the moon herself is lost in heaven 4. kennedy taking from her a handkerchief edged with gold pinned it over her eyes the executioners holding her by the arms led her to the block and the queen kneeling down said repeatedly with a firm voice ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... west side of the chamber there were two openings, perhaps four feet by six, each leading into a chamber 20x30 feet in size. Before entering these rooms, which held an odor of dampness and decay, the recently arrived Black ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... six to eighteen and by improved methods of extraction became finally as pure and palatable as the sugar of the cane. An acre of German beets produces more sugar than an acre of Louisiana cane. Continental Europe waxed wealthy while the British West Indies sank into decay. As the beets of Europe became sweeter the population of the islands became blacker. Before the war England was paying out $125,000,000 for sugar, and more than two-thirds of this money was going to Germany and Austria-Hungary. Fostered by scientific study, protected ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... The decay of folk-song is the more regrettable, since Holland is rich in old ballads, some of which, handed down just as the people used to sing them centuries ago, are quaint, naive, and exceedingly pretty. The melodies have all been put to modern harmonies by able composers, and published ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... very grand; but I have not the least idea what it means. The pictures drawn in the poem of simple rural pleasures, and of gaudy city delights, are very pleasing; and the moral drawn from it all, viz., that nations sunk in luxury are hastening to decay, may be true enough; but what strikes one most is that, if Goldsmith thought that England was hastening to decay when he wrote, what would he think if he were ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... you doing in London? Are you ripening as fast for the grave as I am? How should we lay out every moment for God? For some days I have had the symptoms of an inward consumptive decay—spitting of blood, etc. Thank God! I look at our last enemy ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... and effort. In the spring of 1623 when forty new men reported to the settlement things were not good. "Of all Mr. Gookins men which he sent out the last year we found but seven, the rest being all killed by the Indians, and his plantation ready to fall to decay." At the time of the Indian massacre he refused to take refuge in a stronger place deeming his settlement strong enough to withstand attack. With thirty-five men he succeeded in this and, it seems, was the first to reach England with news of the massacre. His son ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch
... Since September, sickness has not quitted the house. It is strange it did not use to be so, but I suspect now all this has been coming on for years. Unused, any of us, to the possession of robust health, we have not noticed the gradual approaches of decay; we did not know its symptoms: the little cough, the small appetite, the tendency to take cold at every variation of atmosphere have been regarded as things of course. I see them in ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... Earthquake-day,— There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay, A general flavor of mild decay, But nothing local as one may say. There couldn't be,—for the Deacon's art Had made it so like in every part That there wasn't a chance for one to start. For the wheels were just as strong as the thills, And the ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... with great freedom, except of politics, on which he never utters a word in their presence, and he always sends them away when he sees anybody or speaks on business of any kind. Batchelor thinks that this new disorder is a symptom of approaching decay, and that the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Young, fit to toy, Gay Delights we enjoy, And have Crouds of new Lovers wooing; When were old and decay'd, We procure for the Trade, Still in ev'ry ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... far better for the Southern slaves, if our institution, as regards them, were left to 'gradual mitigation and decay, which time may bring about. The course of the Abolitionists, while it does nothing to destroy this institution, greatly adds to its hardships.' Tell me that 'man-stealing' is a sin, and I will agree ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... mission work somewhere every Sunday; so when the day came, he was there. Less than a score of hearers sat in the moldy old pews. The windows were broken and but illy repaired by the curtaining cobwebs. The hand of time and decay had torn off the ceiling plaster in irregular and angular patches. The old stove had rusted out at the back, and the crumbling stove-pipe was a menace to those who sat within range of its fall. The pulpit was what Mr. Conwell called a 'crow's perch,' and one can imagine the ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... plate-glass windows, iron fronts often five or six stories high. You can purchase anything in St. Louis (in most of the big western cities for the matter of that) just as readily and cheaply as in the Atlantic marts. Often in going about the town you see reminders of old, even decay'd civilization. The water of the west, in some places, is not good, but they make it up here by plenty of very fair wine, and inexhaustible quantities of the best beer in the world. There are immense establishments for slaughtering beef and ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... bodies, we have several instances of it. For this very king's grandfather, Herod, surnamed the Great, is said to have labour'd under this disease a long time, till at length it threw him into a decay, of which he died.[149] Likewise Herodotus relates of Pheretima, the mother of Arcesilaus, king of Cyrene, that she was rotted alive by worms.[150] And it is recorded of the Roman emperor Galerius Maximianus, that this same loathsome ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... lived here for a brief period when Prince of Wales; to Richard III.; to the College of Heralds; and to Henry VIII. Finally, it was burned in the Great Fire, but during the last hundred years of its life the old Palace fell into decay and was let out in tenements to poor people. The City Brewery now stands on the ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... "Bocca bacciata non perde ventura, anzi rinuova come fa la luna." If there is any meaning about the phrases of decadence, autumn, and the like, it is derived from the idea of approaching death and cessation. There is no death, no cessation, in literature; and the sadness and decay of certain periods is mere fiction. An autumn day would not be sad if the average human being did not (very properly) take from it a warning of the shortness of his own life. But literature is not short-lived. There was no sign of poetry dying ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... at the hour of her walk, Kirstie interfered. Kirstie took this decay of her mistress very hard; bore her a grudge, quarrelled with and railed upon her, the anxiety of a genuine love wearing the disguise of temper. This day of all days she insisted disrespectfully, with rustic fury, that Mrs. Weir should stay at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... deserted "place," on whose pavement drops almost as large as a five-franc piece were now slowly darkening, I saw, in its whole expanse, no symptom or evidence of life, except what was given in the figure of an infirm old priest, who went past, bending and propped on a staff—the type of eld and decay. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... neighbourhood of Philippi was the scene of conflict between him and Pompey, and afterward between his assassinators, Brutus and Cassius, and his partizans, Antony and Octavius. It is said still to retain some monuments of its former splendour, although it is much depopulated and sunk to decay." Bevan's Life of the Apostle Paul, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... time the state embalmers were called in and the body was handed over to them that they might at once begin the long and elaborate process by means of which the subject is rendered practically impervious, for all time, to the influences of decay. ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... giving them any others in their place. It does not appear to be the aim of the missionaries to improve the Indians by making citizens of them. Hence, in most cases, anarchy and confusion are the results. Nothing has more effectually contributed to the decay of several tribes than the course pursued by their missionaries. Let us look back to the first of them for proofs. From the days of Elliott, to the year 1834, have they made one citizen? The latter date marks the first instance of such ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... kings. The family agreement between Louis XV. and Charles III., in 1761, had guaranteed the thrones, and all the possessions of the different branches of the house of Bourbon. But this political compact had been unable to guarantee this many-branched dynasty against the decay of its root, and that degeneracy that gives effeminate and weak princes as successors to mighty kings. The Bourbons became satraps at Naples, and in Spain crowned monks, and the very palace of the Escurial had assumed the appearance and the gloom of ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush is "the Honourable Algernon Percy Deuceace, youngest and fifth son of the Earl of Crabs," and in The Masquerade (Act III. Sc. i) Mr. Ombre says: "Did you not observe an old decay'd rake that stood next the box-keeper yonder ... they call him Sir Timothy Deuxace; that wretch has play'd off one of the best families in Europe—he has thrown away all his posterity, and reduced 20,000 acres of wood-land, ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... melt into a harmonious murmur when compared to the one great speciality of the village,—stone-cutting in the open streets. Whenever one of the picturesque old houses is crumbling into utter decay, a pile of stone is dumped before it, and the easy-going masons of Amboise prepare to patch up its walls. No particular method is observed, the work progresses after the fashion of a child's block house, and the principal labour lies in dividing the lumps of stone. This ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... widow's cap and weeds. It is nearly seven months since her husband died, in the remote Welsh village to which he retired on leaving London. With him, as with many other confirmed invalids, Nature drooped to her final decay gradually and wearily; but his death was painless, and his mental powers remained unimpaired to the end. One of the last names that lingered lovingly on his lips—after he had bade his wife farewell—was the name of ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... judged to have been of a singularly high and stable type. While the position of women and children in the early Roman family was one of subjection, the family itself was nevertheless of a high type. But it was inevitable that it should decay, and this decay began comparatively early. Inasmuch as the early Roman family was based upon ancestor worship, a religion which was fitted for relatively small isolated groups, it was inevitable that the family life should decay with this ancestor worship. How early the decay of ancestor worship ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... ago. Well, the Georges became our defenders of the faith, and they hated 'boets and bainters.' English comedy was thrown back upon the patronage and the inspiration of average England, and up to the time of writing has shown few signs of recovery. Of course, the decay was gradual: you may see it at a most interesting stage in The School for Scandal, a comedy of manners with a strong dash of common sentimentality. It would be just possible, one conceives, to play The School for Scandal as Charles Lamb says he saw it played, ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... maintain itself, to serve the Church at all times, and to furnish it with saints. It has even often renewed itself with features which bring to mind its primitive beauty; by which it may be said to be a type of the mystical body of Jesus Christ, which notwithstanding the decay of ages, does not cease to have vigorous and healthy members who are as fervent as ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... dark, there were so many wreaths upon the graves, embroidered, as it might be, "To my mother," "To my daughter," "To my father," "To my brother," "To my sister," "To my friend," and those many wreaths were in so many stages of elaboration and decay, from the wreath of yesterday, all fresh colour and bright beads, to the wreath of last year, a poor mouldering wisp of straw! There were so many little gardens and grottos made upon graves, in so many tastes, with plants and shells ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... a few household implements scattered about, indicated the "ranch." Like most pioneer clearings, it was simply a disorganized raid upon nature that had left behind a desolate battlefield strewn with waste and decay. The fallen trees, the crushed thicket, the splintered limbs, the rudely torn-up soil, were made hideous by their grotesque juxtaposition with the wrecked fragments of civilization, in empty cans, broken bottles, battered hats, ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... seen since. After I had looked long at it, and passed on, the image of that perfect flower remained so persistently in my mind that on the following day I went again, in the hope of seeing it still untouched by decay. There was no change; and on this occasion I spent a much longer time looking at it, admiring the marvellous beauty of its form, which seemed so greatly to exceed that of all other flowers. It had thick petals, and at first gave me the idea of an artificial flower, cut by a divinely ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... winters. Mr S's implication, that because negroes have perfect teeth, therefore so should the whites, is another error. The negroes were born for, and in, a torrid clime, and there is some difference between their strong ivory masticators and the transparent pearly teeth which so rapidly decay in the eastern states, from no other cause than the variability of the climate. Besides, do the teeth of the women in the western states decay so fast? Take a healthy situation, with an intermediate climate, such as Cincinnati, and ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... will agitate not only for the highest possible efficiency in the Navy and Army; but, with no less resolve and sincerety, for the best possible conditions obtainable for all women-workers, that the Empire may not later sink suddenly to decay, in spite of her defences, through the impoverished, feeble, sickly off-spring who are all ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... but the sea remains the same; and all our empires and literatures, arts and towns, crumble and decay, and are proved toys. Our consolation lies in our unconquerable souls, our glorious after-life beyond this world. But the sea has an immortality in the here and now. I shall ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... muscular, so large. "And Helen weeps when in her glass she views "Her aged wrinkles, wondering to herself "Why she was ravish'd twice. Consuming time! "And envious age! all substance ye destroy; "All things your teeth decay; and you consume "By gradual progress, but by certain death. "These also, which the elements we call, "Their varying changes know: lo! I explain ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... their base, and stretched along the narrow vallies. The rich pomp of these woods was particularly delightful to Emily; and she viewed with astonishment the fortifications of the castle spreading along a vast extent of rock, and now partly in decay, the grandeur of the ramparts below, and the towers and battlements and various features of the fabric above. From these her sight wandered over the cliffs and woods into the valley, along which foamed a broad and rapid stream, seen falling among ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... to a series of increasingly destructive outbreaks, to stresses and disorder culminating in revolution. It is useless to dream of going on now for much longer upon the old lines; our civilisation, if it is not to enter upon a phase of conflict and decay, must begin to adapt itself to the new conditions of which the first and foremost is that the wages-earning labouring class as a distinctive class, consenting to a distinctive treatment and accepting life at a disadvantage is going to disappear. ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... horrid shock. I was brought down with a crash from my high sentiment to something earthly and devilish. I was fairly well used to Boche filthiness, but this seemed too grim a piece of the utterly damnable. I wanted to have Ivery by the throat and force the stuff into his body, and watch him decay slowly into the horror he had ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... flower, which is in the spring. The flowers of this sort are produced singly, and at their first appearance have a fine Carnation colour on their outside, but this fades away to a pale or almost white before the flowers decay. This plant is so hardy as to thrive in the open air in England, provided the roots are planted[B] in a warm situation and on a dry soil; it may be propagated by offsets from the roots, which they put out pretty plentifully, ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 7 - or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... indifference, our lukewarm attitude to such deeds, to such signs of the times, ominous of an unenviable future? Is it our cynicism, is it the premature exhaustion of intellect and imagination in a society that is sinking into decay, in spite of its youth? Is it that our moral principles are shattered to their foundations, or is it, perhaps, a complete lack of such principles among us? I cannot answer such questions; nevertheless they are ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... tower a human skull peered whitely. That is rather unusual. Years later now you still see more dead bodies with the meat on them than skeletons. Intense radiation has killed their bacteria and preserved them indefinitely from decay, just like the packaged meat in the last advertisements. In fact such bodies are one of the signs of a really hot drift—you avoid them. The vultures pass up such poisonously hot carrion ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... is a strange and complex one. In this breath of decay rising to his nostril, Cairn found something fearsome. He opened the door, stepped out on to the landing, and closed the door ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... its close ebbs out life's little day; Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away: Change and decay in all around I see; O thou, who changest not, ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... than the blackest night in the thickest wood—a pause—then, a sound as of the heavy air being cleft asunder; and then, an apparition of two figures coming on out of the shadow—two monsters stretching forth their gnarled yellow talons to grasp at us; leaving on their track a green decay, oozing and shining with a sickly light. Beyond and around me, as I stood in the midst of them, the phantom troop dropped into formless masses, while the monsters advanced. They came close to me; and I alone, of all the ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... the story of the changing seasons by their growth, blossom, and decay, nothing can seem more artificial than the modern show-beds of full-grown plants which are removed by assiduous gardeners as soon as they have flowered, to be replaced by others, only in turn to bloom and disappear. These seem to form a real garden no more than does a child's posy-bed stuck with ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... are not engaged in the fishery. In the earlier ages of the Duchy, the inhabitants of the Pays de Caux found a more effectual and important employment in the salt-works which were then very numerous on the coast, but which have long since been suffered to fall into decay. Ancient charters, recorded in the Neustria Pia, trace these works on the coast of Dieppe, and at Bouteilles on the right of the valley of Arques, to as remote a period as 1027; and they at the same time prove the existence of a canal between Dieppe ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... the rest is a series of pillars and arches from which the roof has long vanished. In the photographs (which may be bought at the inn) there is some appearance of order even in the midst of the decay, but this was probably carefully effected prior to the artist's visit; for when we were there the whole space was overgrown completely with weeds, among which a rose-bush and a few other flowers struggled to bloom, untended ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... corridor, flagged with black-and-white pavement, presented a cheerless aspect of bare walls discolored by damp, and adorned alternately by stags' heads and family portraits in a crumbling state of decay. The floor was thus divided: on the right, the dining-room and the kitchen; on the left, drawing-room and a billiard-hall. A stone staircase, built in one of the turrets, led to the upper floors. Only one of these rooms, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... was a peaceful place, a long, grey-gabled house set under the shelter of a hill and surrounded by a high wall. Within this wall lay also the great garden—neglected enough—and the chapel, a building that still was beautiful in its decay. ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... blushing flow'r! my bosom grieves, To view thy sadly drooping leaves: For, while their tender tints decay, The rose of Fancy fades away! As pilgrims, who, with zealous care, Some little treasur'd relic bear, To re-assure the doubtful mind, When pausing memory looks behind; I, from a more enlighten'd shrine, Had made this sweet memento mine: But, lo! its fainting head ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... November [1878], the place [the farm] having been going to decay for fourteen months, Mr Palmer [the tenant] called to demand that Mr Borrow should put it in repair; otherwise he would do it himself and send in the bills, saying, 'I don't care for the old farm or you either,' ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... 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, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... country to another road, there is a succession of copses, with meadows between. Birds which love trees are naturally seen flitting to and fro in the lane; the trees are at present young, but as they grow older and decay they will be still more ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... her breast his fairest throne. The eye that once behold her, ne'er Could lose her image;—firm and bright, All-beautiful, and pure, and clear, 'Twas stamped upon th' enamoured sight; Unchangeable, for ever fair, Above decay, it lingered there! As it has lingered on mine own, These many years, till it has grown, In its mysterious strength, to be A portion ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... first acquaintance with the Carnatic it was a well-cultivated and populous country, and as such consumed many articles of merchandise; that at his departure he left it much circumscribed in trade, greatly in the decline as to population and culture, and with a correspondent decay of the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... 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 ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... portal had stood two nymphs, now almost classic with decay. One of them, toppling helplessly, quenched her bronze torch in weeds. Her sister stood erect in grief like a daughter of Niobe wept ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... to be much inferior to lifeboats in a rough sea, and collapsible boats made of canvas and thin wood soon decay under exposure to weather and are danger-traps ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... 1660, there began to appear Decay, And this increased to 1670, when it grew very visible and threatening, and was generally complained of and bewailed bitterly by the pious among them (the colonists): and yet more to 1680, when but few of the first Generation ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... candles in the place where Antoine smiled on in his frozen silence; and masses were said for his soul—the masses Love murmurs for its dead. The earth could not receive him; its bosom was adamant; but no decay could touch him; and she dwelt alone with this, that was her husband, until one beautiful, bitter day, when, with no eye save God's to see her, and no human comfort by her, she gave birth to a man-child. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Conquest, while others thought they had originally formed one of the sacred groves connected with Druidical worship, since legend stated that living men had been nailed to them and their bodies left there to decay. The trees were stunted and only about double the height of an average-sized man, but with wide arms spread out at the top twisted and twined in all directions. Their roots were amongst great boulders, where adders' nests abounded, so that it behoved visitors to be ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... was never finished, and neglect has taken place of time in rendering it a most ruined structure, though, as it bears no marks of antiquity, it has rather the appearance of owing its destruction to a fire than to the natural decay of age. It is so spacious, however, and stands so magnificently to overlook the city, that I wish it to be completed for an hospital or infirmary. I have written Mrs. Schwellenberg an account of its appearance ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... monastic establishments, and, mutatis mutandis, he thought something of the kind might be very useful. He thought it unfair to judge of what these monasteries were in their periods of youth and vigor, from the rottenness of their decay. Modern missionary stations, indeed, with their churches, schools, and hospitals, were like Protestant monasteries, conducted on the more wholesome principle of family life; but they wanted stability; they had ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... virgin rapture that was June, And cold is August's panting heart of fire; And in the storm-dismantled forest-choir For thine own elegy thy winds attune Their wild and wizard lyre: And poignant grows the charm of thy decay, The pathos of thy beauty, and the sting, Thou parable of greatness vanishing! For me, thy woods of gold and skies of grey With speech ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... There 's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins. Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... to-morrow, he would leave no permanent record of his sojourn there—only a few outposts and forts, several far-scattered independent traders' stores, one or two missions and fishing-stations, all of them built of wood, which within a decade would have crumbled to decay, over which the tangled forest would silently close up. Instinctively he knows himself for an impudent intruder on something which is sacred; he hears continually what Adam heard when he stole of the fruit which was forbidden, God walking in ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... 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 |
