"Decadency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... knew, would have no cause to grumble at the interloper and the substitution of new brains and push in the place of decadence, craziness and sloth. The day when he had changed places with Rochester was the best day that ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... thought, the taste and temper of the literary school of which he was, and, in so many of his sympathies, is still a pupil, a school which regards M. Zola as one of its leading lights. En Route, and its sequels, portray in the colours of realism, in the language of decadence, the conversion of a realist, nay, of a decadent, to mysticism and faith. "The voice indeed is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau," and according as the critic centres his attention too exclusively on one or the other, such ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... smiling and fitting his fingertips together. "Now attend my simile, Captain. Unlike those feathered Romans of the Decadence, we moderns settle for one meal at a sitting, and let it digest in peace. We have instead our more sophisticated greeds, whetted by subtle persuasions and an assurance that it's really quite moral to ransom our future ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang
... established in a language by the fixing of case particles, or, having been established, it may change by the increase or diminution of the number of cases. A tense system also has a beginning, a growth, and a decadence. A mode system is variable in the various stages of the history of a language. In like manner a pronominal system undergoes changes. Particles may be prefixed, infixed, or affixed in compounded words, and which one of these methods will finally prevail can be determined ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell
... chance of a second." From him "Pride and Prejudice" got a chance of three readings at least. This generous universality of taste, in addition to all his other qualities of humour and poetry, enabled Scott to raise the novel from its decadence, and to make the dry bones of history live again in his tales. With Charles Edward at Holyrood, as Mr. Senior wrote in the "Quarterly Review," "we are in the lofty region of romance. In any other hands than those of Sir ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... of how she should govern other people is an anachronism. This idea, which I have heard voiced all over Germany, was aptly set forth before the war by a speaker on "The Decadence of the British Empire," when he sought to prove such decadence by citing the fact that there was only one British soldier to every 4,000 of the people of India. "Why," he concluded, "Germany has more soldiers in Alsace-Lorraine alone than Great ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... we are the wreckage of the Empire. Usually, we turn away with contempt from those wretched centuries which underwent the descents of the Barbarians. For us, that is the Lower-Empire, a time of shameful decadence which deserves nothing but our scorn. However, it is out of this chaos and this degradation that we have arisen. The wars of the Roman republic concern us less than the outlawry of the Barbarian chiefs who separated our Gaul from the Empire, and ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... assurance of any help I may need, for it's quite likely that I may have to call upon you. If a ring of government speculators can come out here and refuse service, or dictate to my office, then old Keith County is certainly on the verge of decadence. Now, I'll be all ready to start for the North Fork in fifteen minutes, and I'd admire to have you ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... the use of hoping for a decadence of the craze for historical romances so long as the public is fed on books like this? Such a story has zest for the most jaded palate; nay, it can hold the interest even of a book reviewer. From the first page to the last there is not a moment when one's desire to finish the book ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... have been omitted on the ground that as regards the general character of their writings they belong rather to the Augustan period than to the subsequent age of decadence. Manilius indeed composed a considerable portion of his work during the lifetime of Augustus, while Phaedrus, though somewhat later in date, showed a sobriety of thought and an antique simplicity of style ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... General William Heath, is a striking example of the decadence of the New England hill towns, its population having fallen from eleven hundred and ninety-nine in the year 1830, to five hundred and sixty-eight at present. The site of old Fort Shirley is in the township. ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... tent and his old wife, of an evening, and thrust himself into society which could well dispense with him. "Brother," said Mr. Petulengro the other day to the Romany Rye, after telling him many things connected with the decadence of gypsyism, "there is one Gorgiko Brown, who, with a face as black as a teakettle, wishes to be mistaken for a Christian tradesman; he goes into the parlour of a third-rate inn of an evening, calls for rum and ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... and works according to inward laws, while the present, too, imposes its own drastic obligations. No one need passively submit to the pressure of circumstances; even States stand, like the Hercules of legend, at the parting of the ways. They can choose the road to progress or to decadence. "A favoured position in the world will only become effective in the life of nations by the conscious human endeavour to use it." It seemed to me, therefore, to be necessary and profitable, at this parting of the ways of our development where we now ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... deliberately chosen the country to which he felt the greatest attachment. He remembered his long travels in Germany, he remembered on his return his growing disapproval of English slackness, her physical and moral decadence. Her faults had inspired him not with the sorrow of one of her real sons, but with the contempt of one only half bound to her by natural ties. The ground had been laid ready for the poison. He had started honestly enough. His philosophy had satisfied himself. He had felt no moral ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... directness, in the "Various Epistles". It must be regarded as a misfortune for Theodoric that his maxims of statesmanship, which were assuredly full of manly sense and vigour, should have reached us only in such a shape, diluted with the platitudes and false rhetoric of a scholar of the decadence. Still, even through all these disguises, it is easy to discern the genuine patriotism both of the great King and of his minister, their earnest desire that right, not might, should determine every case that came before them, their true ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... rise, culmination, and decadence of Art in Italy, and the Violin as connected therewith—The Italians far in advance of other nations in the manufacture—The five Schools of Italian makers—Roger North on the demand for Italian Violins—Brescia the cradle of the manufacture . . . . . . ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... is the decadence of the German Army. That it is decadent he has no doubt at all, and he is a close, careful and not unfriendly observer. But the writer who deals boldly and broadly with the German Army is in reality dealing with a much larger ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... Bernadotte set foot on its soil, was in a helpless state of decadence, having become little better than a dependency of France. If ever it needed a strong ruler then was the time, but Charles XIII. was incapable as a monarch, and from the time of his landing the new crown prince ruled the country as though there were ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... the Persians be blotted out of existence as a nation, even though Tehran, and Meshed, and Shiraz were to share the fate of Persepolis and Susa, it would yet remain as a portrait of unrivalled humour and accuracy of a people who, though now in their decadence, have played an immense and still play a not wholly insignificant part in the complex drama of Asiatic politics. It is the picture of a people, light-hearted, nimble-witted, and volatile, but subtle, hypocritical, and insincere; metaphysicians and casuists, courtiers ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... and the Biblical Movement in France—The Commentary on the Pentateuch by Samuel ben Meir-His Disciples-Joseph Kara and Joseph Bekor-Shor-Their Rational Exegesis-Decadence of Biblical Exegesis-The Tossafot on the Pentateuch; Chief Collections; their Character-Rashi and Christian Exegesis- Nicholas de Lyra and Luther-Decadence of French Judaism from the Expulsion of 1181 to ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... circuit. I cannot say why he obtained no great success till he was nearer fifty than forty years of age. At that time I fancy that barristers did not come to their prime till a period of life at which other men are supposed to be in their decadence. Nevertheless, he had married on nothing, and had kept the wolf from the door. To do this he had been constant at his work in season and out of season, during the long hours of day and the long hours of night. Throughout his term times he had toiled in court, and during ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... secret of the present decadence of Religion in the world of Science. For Science can hear nothing of a Great Exception. Constructions on unique lines, "portions cut off by an insurmountable barrier from the domain of scientific inquiry," it dare not recognize. ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... insist upon his masculinity even to his mother. But this Frenchman has left barbarism so far behind that he is not afraid of effeminacy; nor does he need to remind himself that he is a male. There is a philosophy to which this forgetfulness of masculinity is decadence. According to that philosophy, man must remember always that he is an animal, a proud fighting animal like a bull or a cock; and the proudest of all fighting animals, to be admired at a distance by all women unless he condescends to desire them, is the officer. No one could be further from ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... from savagism into barbarism, seems to have at that stage exhausted its energies. This is but an illustration of the fact that a race, like an individual, has a period of growth, a maturity of healthful powers, and an old age of slow decadence. After thus dispersing over the world, carrying with them the culture of the Neolithic Age, they seem to have halted in their progress. It remained for a new people, starting, perhaps, from the same state of culture, but with new energies, to discover and employ metals in the ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... always be taken into consideration along with chinquapin questions. According to authorities on the subject of decadence, we do not care very much about the children in these days. If some old-fashioned folks still remain, and if these old-fashioned folks do not take any particular personal interest in the beautiful garden and ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various
... supports," said Madame de Stael; and what more sure support in the decadence which threatens us, than a positive science deduced from irrefragable law! I say irrefragable with conviction. Though human laws be subject to change, the laws of nature are shown to be immutable, at least so far as the observations of learned men of all ages have ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... days for its execution, he showed no change from his customary cheerfulness, passing his time in conversation with his friends. So far from regretting his fate he rather congratulated himself that he would escape the decadence that attends upon old age; and he had, if we may trust Plato, a fair and confident assurance that a happy life awaited him beyond. He died, according to the merciful law of Athens, by drinking hemlock; "the wisest and justest and best," in ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... alike on the Pacific and the Indian Oceans. Her warriors were adventurous and brave; her soldiers inherited the gallantry of the followers of Charles V. She was the court of Europe, the acknowledged leader of chivalry. How rapid has been her decadence! As in the plenitude of her power she was ambitious, cruel, and perfidious, so has the measure which she meted to others been in turn accorded to herself. To-day there are none so humble ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... country might be free? the name of her people great? In the former they lost, as the ends for which they fought and died were never consummated. To-day, after nearly a half century has passed, when we look around among the young and see the decadence of chivalry and noble aspirations, the decline of homage to women, want of integrity to men, want of truth and honor, individually and politically, are we not inclined, at times, to think those men died in vain? We gained the shadow; have ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... of finite and progressive being, or finite and mortal being, or finite and variable nature. With us there are mutations arising from physical nature. The material must needs be subject to laws of growth and decadence. Our spiritual nature is subject to changes arising from the advancement in knowledge. Our moral nature is subject to fluctuations; circumstances play upon us, and 'nothing continueth in one stay.' Change is the condition of life. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Dujardin-Beaumetz, Under-Secretary for the Fine Arts, in his address to the students made pointed allusion to the difference of results between the instrumental classes and those for singing. Said the orator: "It is claimed that singing is in a state of decadence, and that the cause is largely due to the style of modern music. It is rather owing to the fact that this art is not studied at present with the same methodic diligence that formerly obtained. I would remind the students of singing that they gain nothing by ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... of decadence was in progress in England, which Alfred's wise reign was powerless to arrest, and which his greatness may even have tended to hasten. The distance between the king and the people had widened from a mere step to a gulf. When the Saxon kings began to be clothed with a mysterious dignity as ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... art whose value was proved beyond question by a long succession of masterpieces. After having exhausted every manifestation of strength and vigor, this art had arrived at expressions of extreme refinement and profound and appealing charm, closely verging on the disquieting dreams of decadence. ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... and there, excrescent individuals who, through stock decadence, or their inability to comprehend republican conditions, are not assimilated by the body of the country; but many of these are imports, while some are exports. Our foreign-born agitators now and then find themselves removed by the police to institutions of routine, while the ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... outwards. Art is the expression of sincere and vital feeling; the material thing, picture, statue, poem, which the artist conjures into being is only a means. The moment art is worshiped for its own sake, that moment decadence begins. "No one," says Leonardo, "will ever be a great painter who takes as his guide the paintings of other men." In general the history of art exhibits this course. In the beginning arises a man of deep and genuine feeling, the language at whose command, however, has not been developed ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... scribe of the Yellow Book has compressed the latter part. It is not, however, usual, in primitive story-telling, to linger over scenes of pathos. Such lingering is, like the painted tears of late Italian masters, invariably a sign of decadence. It is one of the marks of romance, which recognises tragedy only when it is voluble, and prodigal of lamentation. The older version of the Tain is throughout singularly free from pathos of the feebler sort; the humorous side is always uppermost, ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... disfigure, occasionally, the pages, even of good writers. These are not errors that betoken or lead to general final corruption, and the great Anglo-Saxo-Norman race is many centuries distant from the period when it may be expected to show signs of that decadence which, visible at first in the waning moral and intellectual energies of a people, soon spots ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... of 'em—dragging my idleness and viciousness and my stupidity and my money at my heels. I tell you, Kathleen, this is no good. There's a stench of money everywhere; there's a staler aroma in the air, too—the dubious perfume of decadence, of moral atrophy, of stupid recklessness, of the ennui that breeds intrigue! I'm deadly tired of it—of the sort of people I was born among; of their women folk, whose sole intellectual relaxation is in pirouetting along the danger mark without overstepping, and in concealing it when they do; of ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... her sing "Mon cher amant, je te jure" in the quavering voice of eighty-five; it would be wonderful to hear her sing it because she doesn't know how wonderful she is; the old light of love requires an interpreter, and she has had many; many great poets have voiced her woe and decadence. ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... extinguished. Whole families were destroyed; and the empire was a scene of anarchy and wild contention. He, who felt himself capable of the most atrocious deeds, declared himself a BLUE, and the GREENS were massacred with impunity. Montesquieu, Grandeur et Decadence des ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... even of the elite, who have ever done it, and they belong to the Moral Aristocracy—the smallest and most rigid in the world. This thing that you're just opening your eyes to, is the rage against restraint that goes with decadence. But the phlegmatic Englishman won't ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... be reduced to a mere question of money, and a nation which has grown tired of the responsibilities of empire, and careless of the acquisitions of its past and of its greatness in the future, would indeed have entered into a period of inevitable decadence. Happily we have not yet come to this. I believe the overwhelming majority of the people of these islands are convinced that an England reduced to the limits which the Manchester school would assign to it would be an England shorn of the chief elements of its dignity in the ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... not spoken, but sung, in order to avoid interference with the patent-rights of Drury Lane and Covent Garden. In our days, this edifice was known as the Olympic. When I knew this theatre first, it had fallen into a state of seemingly hopeless decadence. Nobody succeeded there. To lease the Olympic Theatre was to court bankruptcy and invite collapse. The charming Vestris had been its tenant for a while. There Liston and Wrench had delighted the town with their most excellent fooling. There many of Planche's most sparkling burlesques ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... education on the younger generation of Indians:—"It is widely admitted by the thoughtful Indians that there are signs of the weakening of parental influence, of the loss of reverence for authority, of a decadence of manners and of growing moral laxity. The restraining forces of ancient India have lost some of their power; the restraining forces of the West are inoperative in India. There has thus been a certain moral loss without ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... It was an entirely perverted ingenuity which sought a generation ago to find mystic meaning in the representations on Greek vases. Attempts to portray the Deities of the Mysteries scarcely count as works of art. Such figures as Sabazius, Isis, Mithras, only come into ancient art in its decadence. I would not maintain that the modern world, with its infinitely varied emotions, or the higher aspirations of religions like the Christian or the Buddhist, could be satisfied with such simple schemes as those of Greek sculpture, which appeal to human instinct and human intelligence ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... Everington met Geoffrey at the theatre, she took him severely to task for treachery, secrecy and decadence. He, was very humble and admitted all his faults except the last, pleading as his excuse that he could not get Asako out of ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... of this decadence natural selection may in time bring forward better strains, and with normal conditions of security and peace nature may begin again her ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... the decadence of religion, has a bearing upon the number of suicides. The fear of "God," of judgment, of eternal pain will stay the hand, and people so believing will suffer here until relieved by natural death. A belief in the eternal agony beyond the grave will cause such believers to suffer the pangs ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... heart is sound if its judgments fall short of acuteness and if its standards of achievement are low. It needs but a quickening spirit upon the throne, always the traditional centre of its respect, to rise from even the appearance of decadence. There is a new quality seeking expression in England like the rising of sap in the spring, a new generation asking only for such leadership and such emancipation from restricted scope and ungenerous hostility as a King ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... Homer and the dramatists, of Thucydides and Herodotus, and most momentous perhaps for the age to come, of Plato and Demosthenes and of the New Testament in its original Greek. The quick and vivid intellect of Italy, which had been torpid in the decadence of mediaevalism and its mysticism and piety, seized with avidity the revelation of the classical world which the scholars and their manuscripts brought. Human life, which the mediaeval Church had taught them ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... of the following short treatise is to give an account of some of those superstitions, now either dead or in their decadence, but which, within the memory of persons now living, had a vigorous existence, at least in the West of Scotland. A secondary object shall be to trace out, where I think I can discover ground for so doing, the origin of any particular ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... middle of the century, Montesquieu was the dominating figure in French thought. His second book—Considerations sur la Grandeur et la Decadence des Romains—is an exceedingly able work, in which a series of interesting and occasionally profound historical reflections are expressed in a style of great brilliance and incisiveness. Here Montesquieu definitely freed history from the medieval fetters which it ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... London Quarterly, sets of which are still occasionally to be found in booksellers' catalogues at a high price, though the American millionaire collector has made it one of the rarest of finds. These were the days of his youth, the golden age of 'decadence.' For is not decadence merely a fin de siecle literary term synonymous with the 'sowing his wild oats' of our grandfathers? a phrase still surviving in agricultural districts, according to Mr. Andrew Lang, Mr. Edward Clodd, ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... this room one can trace the development of American engraving and etching from the beginnings to the present day. Starting on wall D one finds steel engraving illustrated from the days of Paul Revere to its decadence; then the history of wood-engraving to its flowering in Cole and Wolf; early and recent American etching; and a few modern ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... a Contrat Social; explaining the whole mystery of Government, and how it is contracted and bargained for,—to universal satisfaction? Theories of Government! Such have been, and will be; in ages of decadence. Acknowledge them in their degree; as processes of Nature, who does nothing in vain; as steps in her great process. Meanwhile, what theory is so certain as this, That all theories, were they never so earnest, painfully elaborated, are, and, by the very conditions ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... looseness of conduct between the sexes such as is shown to exist in New Zealand is destructive to the high ideals of family life associated with the finest types of British manhood and womanhood, and if not checked must lead to the decadence of the nation. ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health
... of a lofty but expiring family tree. The Penwicks had come over in the Mayflower, or at a period yet more remote, and the acme of the prosperity and social distinction of the name was coincident with the second administration of President Washington. Since that time its decadence had been steady; at first slow, but later with the accelerating motion common to falling bodies, until nothing remained of the family revenues, little but a tradition of the family greatness, and none of the race but this frostbitten old lady, ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... (1733-1813) the Italian painter and engraver, called the Venetian Hogarth, in one of his pictures presenting life and manners in Venice during the years of her decadence, shows Goldoni, the dramatist, as a visitor in a cafe of the period, with a female ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... surprising that an American House of Representatives should have been so ignorant of the meaning of a common word as to apply the term "commerce" to the carrying trade, when in the session of 1869 it commissioned Hon. John Lynch, of Maine, and his associated committee "to investigate the cause of the decadence of American commerce," and to suggest a remedy by which it might ...
— Free Ships: The Restoration of the American Carrying Trade • John Codman
... vain. They were crushed and subjugated. The king of the Goths, Hermanric, in chagrin and despair, committed suicide, that he might escape slavery. Thousands of the Goths, in their terror, crowded down into the Roman province of Thrace, now the Turkish province of Romania. The empire, then in its decadence, could not drive them back, and they obtained a permanent foothold there. The Huns thus attained the supremacy throughout all of northern Europe. There were then very many tribes of diverse names peopling these vast realms, and incessant wars were waged between ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... all of the real men were off at the front fighting. Instead of being scowled at and ordered about by managers and orchestra leaders, or brow-beaten by hotel-clerks and head-waiters, she met with nothing but the most servile politeness,—due, she was prone to argue, to the unquestioned decadence of the French and English races. They were a bloodless lot, those ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... knew that old blood was usually bad blood, that in a thousand years it became a poisonous stream, for the want of fresh springs to purify it. But the head of the young peasant was lowered a little, and the last representative of ten centuries of decadence did not see the gleam of defiance, even of ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the decadence of the industry of weaving fine shawls, which was so long a feature of Kashmir, the wool of which they were woven was gradually transferred to the rug industry, and the weavers turned their attention from the shawls ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... the monuments of the fifteenth century and of the Renaissance, which are to be seen in such splendid profusion in Florence, these tombs seem so inferior that it is impossible not to wonder how the decadence was brought about. It is not at Florence alone that this feeling manifests itself; for at Venice, in the splendid temple of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, beside the tombs of doges and condottieri of the fifteenth century there stands that wretched monument upon which ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... Trans-Neptunian planet, and Lowell did try to have accepted heretical ideas as to marks on Mars, attention is now minutely focused upon such technicalities as variations in shades of Jupiter's fourth satellite. I think that, in general acceptance, over-refinement indicates decadence. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... of Rose Cormon, who now saw with something like despair her white skin assuming the yellow tones which proclaim maturity. A slight down on her upper lip, about the corners, began to spread and darken like a trail of smoke; her temples grew shiny; decadence was beginning! It was authentic in Alencon that Mademoiselle Cormon suffered from rush of blood to the head. She confided her ills to the Chevalier de Valois, enumerating her foot-baths, and consulting him as to refrigerants. On such occasions the shrewd old gentleman would pull out his ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... against the missionaries, as in October, 1880, five intelligent Ojibwas from Petoskey, Mich., told the writer that they had never heard of gesture language. An interesting letter from Mr. B.O. Williams, sr., of Owasso, Mich., explains the gradual decadence of signs used by the Ojibwas in his recollection, embracing sixty years, as chiefly arising from general acquaintance with the English language. Further discouragement came from an Indian agent giving the decided statement, after four years of intercourse with the Pai-Utes, that ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... summarized in Pope; and the easy neatness of his verses is quaintly representative of the Georgian peace. Defoe and Swift had both done their work; and the latter had withdrawn to Ireland to die like a rat in a hole. Bishop Berkeley, indeed, was convinced of the decadence of England; but his Essay towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain (1721) shows rather the effect of the speculative mania which culminated in the South Sea Bubble upon a noble moral nature than a genius for political ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... my family unites, to the sacred character of kings who are the most powerful amongst men, the awful majesty of the gods who have even kings in their keeping." Thus, by birth as well as nature, Caesar felt called to dominion; and at the same time he was perfectly aware of the decadence of the Roman patriciate, and of the necessity for being popular in order to become master. With this double instinct he undertook the conquest of the Gauls as the surest means of achieving conquest at Rome. But owing either to his own vices or to the difficulties ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... de Whichehalse before, and was not at all afraid of him, having been at school with his son as he knew, and it made him very kind to me. And indeed he was kind to everybody, and all our people spoke well of him; and so much the more because we knew that the house was in decadence. For the first De Whichehalse had come from Holland, where he had been a great nobleman, some hundred and fifty years agone. Being persecuted for his religion, when the Spanish power was everything, he fled to England with all he could save, and ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... days of Burke, Fox, Pitt and Sheridan; but they often excel them in statesmanlike qualities; and a perusal of them reveals the fact that the ablest of the Lords were, not those of the old governing families, which at that period showed signs of decadence, but those for whose creation Pitt was mainly responsible. Malmesbury, Buckingham, Grenville, Auckland, Carrington, Minto, and at a later period, Sidmouth and Castlereagh, excelled in ability and weight the representatives of the older nobility. Far from degrading and weakening the peerage, Pitt ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... things, with their alcoved outlooks upon the lovely and inspiriting water. They contain two or three hundred queer old pictures, by old Swiss masters—old boss sign-painters, who flourished before the decadence of art. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to be remembered is that these German tribes saved Europe by their love of liberty, and by their virility, from the decadence of an orientalized Rome. Rome, and all Rome meant, was not destroyed by these ancestors of ours; on the contrary, they saved what was best worth saving from the decline and fall of Rome, and made out of it with their own vigorous ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... "inferior and decaying nations would easily choke the growth of healthy and budding elements, and universal decadence would follow. ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... men, we risk poverty and loss. If, on the other hand, seized by the brutal afterthought, we debauch the race thus caught in our talons, selfishly sucking their blood and brains in the future as in the past, what shall save us from national decadence? Only that saner selfishness which, Education teaches men, can find the rights of all in the ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... with the tiresome asceticism it eternally preached. The Christian ideal had grown to be one of penance and mortification of the flesh, and to a few ardent souls these sensuous delights were an open highway to death eternal. Eulogius became the leader of this band of zealots. In lamenting the decadence of his people, he wrote, "hardly one in a thousand can write a decent Latin letter, and yet they indite excellent Arabic verse!" Filled with despairing ardor this man aroused a few kindred spirits to join him in a desperate attempt to awaken the benumbed conscience of the Christians. They ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... Confucius removed those which were only repetitions of others, and selected those which would be serviceable for the inculcation of propriety and righteousness. Ascending as high as Hsieh and Hu-k, and descending through the prosperous eras of Yin and Ku to the times of decadence under kings Y and L, he selected in all 305 pieces, which he' sang over to his lute, to bring them into accordance with the musical style of the Sho, the W, the Y, ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... grounds it is now held with growing certainty that fetishism cannot be the original form of religion, and that the higher stages of it are not to be derived from that one. The races among whom fetishism is found exhibit a well-known feature of the decadence of religion, namely that the great god or gods have grown weak and faint, and smaller gods and spirits have crowded in to fill up the blank thus caused. Worship is transferred from the great beings who ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... American family originally from the town of Elberfeld, Prussia, he can better understand the gravity of the problem which weighed upon his mind, as upon that of so many others. Must we admit, it was asked, that the Council of the Vatican has affixed its seal upon the decadence of Catholicity, binding the Church to the failing fortunes of the Latin races? Must Protestantism finally triumph with the Saxon races? And here Father Hecker's faith did not halt an instant, but grasped the difficulty ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... Portraiture of this period is so rare that it seemed that, failing a likeness of the author himself, this authentic representation of his father might have interest, as giving the consular dress and insignia of the time, and also as illustrating the decadence of contemporary art. The consul wears a richly-embroidered cloak; his right hand holds a staff surmounted by the Roman eagle, his left the mappa circensis, or napkin used for starting the races in the circus; at his feet are palms and bags of money—prizes for the victors in the ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... Debilitate, debonair, debutante, decadence, decapitate, deciduous, declivity, decompose, decorous, dedicatory, deduction, deferential, deficiency, deglutition, dehiscence, delectable, delete, deleterious, delineate, deliquescent, demarcation, demimonde, demoniac, denizen, denouement, deprecate, depreciate, derelict, derogatory, despicable, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the invention of the "greater seal" character in 827 B.C. practically coincides with the first signs of imperial decadence; this is only another piece of evidence in favour of the proposition that enlightenment and patriarchal rule could not exist comfortably together. When Ts'in conquered the whole of modern China 600 years later, ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... this prosperity and intellectual pre-eminence was due to the Jews. The cruel edicts of Philip Augustus against the race proved no less disastrous here than the expulsion of Huguenots elsewhere later. The decadence of Narbonne as a port is due to natural causes. Formerly surrounded by lagoons affording free communication with the sea, the Languedocian Venice has gradually lost her advantageous position. The transitional stage induced such unhealthy climatic conditions that at one period ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... revolutions are in this case of no avail; for what happens is that either the broken fragments of the chain are pieced together again and the past resumes its empire without change, or the fragments remain apart and decadence soon ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... sights, and exhausted them all, real and alleged, in less than half a day (for in addition to a lust for ready-cut building stone the Turks have never cherished monuments that might accentuate their own decadence). After that we fossicked in the manner of prospectors that we are by preference, if not always by trade, eschewing polite society and hunting in the impolite, amusing places where most of the facts have teeth, sharp and ready to ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... from a compagnon de voyage, who had resided for two years at Port-au-Prince, the capital. "Unless you are compelled to land there," said he, "I advise you to avoid Hayti." He fully confirmed the reports of its barbarous condition, and declared it to be in a rapid decadence, as regarded every desirable element of civilization. In the country, a short distance from either Gonaives, Jacmel, or Port-au-Prince, where the mass of the negro population live, Voudou worship and cannibalism are quite common at the present time. ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... from this year we may date both the disruption of the Empire and the decadence of the free Italian commune. What he had failed to effect, with the united power of Sicily and Germany behind him, was accomplished by a score of petty local dynasties. At Milan the Visconti completed the enslavement which the Delia Torre had first planned; at Verona it was the Scaligeri who entered ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... occasionally, at supper in smart restaurants, at first nights, riding in the Park. Now, as he looked at her name, he realized that he had not even seen her for a long time, perhaps for a couple of years. He had heard the rumours of her decadence, and taken little heed of them, not being specially interested in her. Nevertheless, this morning, as he shut up his book and got up to go downstairs to his work, he was aware of a desire to hear the clock strike the half-hour after five, and to see Henry opening the ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... Vatican, and the Farnese Bull, now at Naples. The former was the work of three artists, given by Pliny as Agesandros, Athanodorus, and Polydorus. It has been accepted as one of the masterpieces of the world, but as we shall see, it is manifestly a work of a time of decadence. ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... Henry murmured. "It is the motto of decadence. It means that the moment the Union Jack is unfurled, the voice of criticism, the intellect, and the first principles of justice and honest ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... space. It may be that in the larger design of the universe this invasion from Mars is not without its ultimate benefit for men; it has robbed us of that serene confidence in the future which is the most fruitful source of decadence, the gifts to human science it has brought are enormous, and it has done much to promote the conception of the commonweal of mankind. It may be that across the immensity of space the Martians have watched the fate of these pioneers ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... handsome book and a new English book were synonymous terms, but that now the production of really fine books is becoming one of England's lost arts. He indulges in a fling at "the efforts of certain recent printers to retrieve this decadence by throwing on to the already overburdened trade several big, heavy, and voluminous works of standard authors termed 'editions de luxe.'" He assures his hearers that his judgments were not formed on the spur of the moment, but were based partly on long personal observations—Stevens was the ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... skipped the parliamentary intelligence and turned to the "By the Way" column. I remember distinctly there was only one amusing paragraph therein, and I was about to throw the paper aside, with the customary lament as to the decadence of British humour, when my attention was arrested by a paragraph at the bottom of the next column. The heading was "Strange Highway ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... power which prepares a grave for its possessor, for there is not a prophet who hath not in his lifetime witnessed the decadence of four kings; as it is said (Isa. i. 1), "The vision of Isaiah ... in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah" (see ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... afternoon wore on, the details of the preparations for the barbarous sepulture of the young Briton. Now and then the cracking of rifle-shots betokened the shooting of his horses and cattle and all the living things among his possessions—a practice already in its decadence among the Cherokees, and later, influenced by the utilitarian methods of civilization, altogether abandoned. Swift steps here and there throughout the town intimated errands to gather all his choicest effects to be buried with him, for his future use. To ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... have been propounded as to the decadence of the church, which has become painfully apparent when great moral issues have been at stake. That the church could stamp out the liquor traffic has often been said, and yet although general conferences and assemblies have met year after year, and passed resolutions ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... the growth of serious doubts as to the practicability of democratic institutions on a great scale; and in an endless variety of ways it introduces into our political life more elements of demoralization, debasement, and decadence than any other agency of evil I know of, aye, perhaps more than all ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... psychological interest to ascertain whether the change which has taken place in a peaceful direction is progress or decadence. Notwithstanding all the interest which the honesty, peaceableness, and innocent friendliness of the Polar tribes have for us, it is my belief that the answer must be—decadence. For it strikes us as if we witness here the conversion of a savage, coarse, and cruel ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... Althusius the doctrine of the inalienability of citizenship. Where Locke was content to maintain that the people collectively had the right to change the form of government, Rousseau would give the community continual exercise in sovereignty, while voting and representation are signs of democratic decadence in Rousseau's eyes. The sovereign people governing, not through elected representatives but by public meeting, has only been found possible ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... great precision, sounded natural to my ears. That first night he praised Walter Pater's 'Essays on the Renaissance:' 'It is my golden book; I never travel anywhere without it; but it is the very flower of decadence. The last trumpet should have sounded the moment it was written.' 'But,' said the dull man, 'would you not have given us time to read it?' 'Oh no,' was the retort, 'there would have been plenty ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... much at home here in Memphis," he observed, when the old man had expressed his surprise at the decadence and melancholy change in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... on and extinguish foreign trade; foreign representatives would find Pekin too hot to hold them; arsenals would gradually languish and cease to work; native-owned steamers would leave off plying the waters; and the whole country would eventually fall back into a condition of even more rapid decadence than that in which it was found when England first interfered to prop it up. What is perhaps more melancholy to contemplate, there would be few, if any, of her most ardent patriots but would congratulate ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... talked about many things—of life at the convict station, for Kalaza was the nephew of Jim's father's second wife, and Jim consequently knew all about his companion; of the decadence of the times, in which it was so difficult for a poor man to live without working; of the strictness with which the locations were managed; of how the inspectors inquired inconveniently as to strangers therein sojourning, and chiefly about the decline ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... he continued, "that before sailing you had expressed the hope that something really exciting and adventurous would befall the party—that you were tired of the monotonous humdrum of twentieth-century existence—that you regretted the decadence of piracy, and the expunging of romance from ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... minutes later, Andreas Doederlein was sitting at the table in the musicians' waiting room. He looked like Emperor Barbarossa in Kyffhaeuser. He had well founded reason to express his contempt for the decadence and impiety of the youth of to-day. It was superfluous for him to remark that a man who would conduct himself as Daniel had done should be eliminated from the ranks of those who lay claim to the help and consideration of sane people. The dignified gentlemen of the Orchestral Union were of the same ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... five years Ferrero, an Italian, has demonstrated that others besides Germans are equal to the work by writing an interesting history of Rome, which intelligent men and scholars discuss in the same breath with Mommsen's. Courageously adopting the title "Grandeur and Decadence of Rome" which suggests that of Montesquieu, Ferrero has gleaned the well-reaped field from the appearance of Julius Caesar to the reign of Augustus[40] in a manner to attract the attention of the reading public in Italy, France, ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... productions."... "Nay, Michelangelo himself, looking at them one day while Giovanni Vasari was present, remarked that the hour for the death of the art had arrived, for it was not possible that better work could be seen!" Michelangelo proved a prophet, in this case surely, for the decadence followed swiftly. ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... have high courage and fine senses, and highly-strung, nervous force, and chivalry and good taste, and broad and noble aims in the higher half and that in the lower portion you would run to the decadence of all those things—the fine turned to vices—yet even so I would not look for vulgarity, or bad taste, or cowardice in ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... decadence of the vigour, the enterprise and the courage which, since the occupation of the Cape Peninsula by the early Dutch settlers, have resulted in the extension of European control and occupation to the limits ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... opening months of the year 1776 saw many vessels on the ocean to support the cause of the Colonies. To man these vessels, there were plenty of sailors; for even at that early day New England had begun to develop that race of hardy seamen for which she is still noted in this day of decadence in the American marine. There was, however, a sad lack of trained officers to command the vessels of the infant navy. Many Americans were enrolled on the lists of the ships flying the royal banner of England, but most of these remained in the British service. The men, therefore, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... card, which I happened to have in my pocket.—'Are you the person here addressed?' he said, staring at me.—'I am'.—'I beg your pardon, there is a mistake: I meant it for your father, the painter of the "Decadence des Romains."'—'I am the painter of the "Decadence," but I am not my father.'—'You ought to be an older man.'—'I should have been, monsieur, had I been born sooner.'—At that moment a friend, overhearing the conversation and divining the cause, came and explained to my wonder-struck ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... interest in such things is merely academic—you will then lead me hither and yon, as your whim lists, and show me how Paris amuses itself in these days of its nocturnal decadence. You will dutifully pretend to drink much more champagne than is good for you and to be enjoying yourself as you seldom have before. If I discover an interest in people I may chance to see, you will be good enough to tell me who they are and—other details ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... outrage, havoc, inroad, ravage, scath[obs3]; perversion, prostitution, vitiation, discoloration, oxidation, pollution, defoedation|, poisoning, venenation|, leaven, contamination, canker, corruption, adulteration, alloy. decline, declension, declination; decadence, decadency[obs3]; falling off &c. v.; caducity[obs3], decrepitude. decay, dilapidation, ravages of time, wear and tear; corrosion, erosion; moldiness, rottenness; moth and rust, dry rot, blight, marasmus[obs3], atrophy, collapse; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... cause of the materialistic spirit. Science, which really involves an infinite hope, has been misinterpreted by Socialists in the most foolish way, until we get a miserable languid fatalism, leading to decadence and despair. The essential of progress is Faith, and Faith can only be established ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... was much the same as now; twenty years from now the garish newness will be worn off and it will return to its appearance of gloomy decadence. ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... held relentlessly before him; he wished to live for himself a little, and not wholly for Venice. He was an embodiment of that late time of Venetian culture when its magnificence, its artistic and intellectual development had touched their height, and the hint of decadence shadowed its splendor with a pathos unguessed except by the ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... horrible, not solely because of the hideous fate to which I was condemned, but from the contemplation it engendered of the sad decadence of a once enlightened race. To these depths of ignorance, brutality, and superstition had the vaunted civilization of twentieth century England been plunged, and by what? War! I felt the structure of our time-honored militaristic arguments crumbling ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... with a pleasant sketch of the history of chariot racing. One marvels at the man who, in such a period, preserved this mood of liberal leisure. His style is perfectly suited to the matter; diffuse, ornate, amusingly affected; altogether a precious mode of writing, characteristic of literary decadence. When the moment demands it, he is pompously grandiloquent; in dealing with a delicate situation, he becomes involved and obscure. We perceive in him a born courtier, a proud noble, a statesman of high purpose and no little sagacity; therewith, many gracious and attractive qualities, ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... art, therefore, was never struck with decadence as was the Byzantine art. It did not live solely upon itself, but profited by all that was brought from the Orient. So, when the Eastern Empire fell during the Fifteenth Century, leaving only a pale trace of the last expressions of its ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... talking, first of all, of the present rottenness of the federal politics of the United States—not argumentatively or with any heat, but with the reflective sadness that steals over an elderly man when he sits in the leather armchair of a comfortable club smoking a good cigar and musing on the decadence of the present day. The rottenness of the federal government didn't anger ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... a usual caution, I lamented to my friend F—— of the neglect in which readers held me, to which the above experience in a library was a rare exception. F—— offered me such consolation as he could, deplored the general taste and the decadence of the times, and said that as praise was sweet to everyone, he, as far as he himself was able, offered it anonymously to those who merited it. He was standing recently in a picture gallery, when a long-haired man ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... The present decadence of Berberah is caused by petty internal feuds. Gerhajis the eldest son of Ishak el Hazrami, seized the mountain ranges of Gulays and Wagar lying about forty miles behind the coast, whilst Awal, the cadet, established himself ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... of religion as the people are capable of receiving, teaching ever the same morality, inculcating the use of similar means, employing the same significant symbols. The savage religions—animism and the rest—are degenerations, the results of decadence, distorted and dwarfed descendants of true religious beliefs. Sun-worship and pure forms of nature-worship were, in their day, noble religions, highly allegorical but full of profound truth and knowledge. The great Teachers—it is alleged ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... days of Cartagena's greatness, when, under the protection of the powerful mother-country, her commerce extended to the confines of the known world, her streets and markets presented a scene of industry and activity wholly foreign to her in these latter days of her decadence. From her port the rich traffic which once centered in this thriving city moved, in constantly swelling volume, in every direction. In her marts were formulated those audacious plans which later took shape in ever-memorable expeditions up the Magdalena ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Gian Giacomo de' Medici laid the country of Siena waste, levelled her luxurious suburbs, and delivered her famine-stricken citizens to the tyranny of the Grand Duke Cosimo, this town has gone on dreaming in suspended decadence. Yet the epithet which was given to her in her days of glory, the title of "Fair Soft Siena," still describes the city. She claims it by right of the gentle manners, joyous but sedate, of her inhabitants, by the grace of their pure ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... has hitherto been able, and probably it is impossible, to define madness, or to give a clearly marked indication of the boundary line between sanity and insanity. Mental soundness is merged in unsoundness by degrees of decadence which are so small as to be practically inappreciable. It is with the mind-state which precedes the development of recognized form of insanity the therapeutist and the social philosopher are chiefly ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... only suppose such a state of Civic imbecility was due to the decadence of the times in which they had the misfortune to live. It was the first indication that the downfall of London, like that of Rome, and—er—other cities he could not at the ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... of the black or African race, since the decadence and destruction of the cities of North Africa and the Nile Delta and the loss of prestige of the peoples who held sway in them, has been shrouded and obscured, and hence gratuitous arguments are made in regard to the savagery and bestiality (which ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... as men in the work of the world. Except where the work is peculiarly adapted to women or there is a special individual aptitude, such work will, for the reasons we have set forth, operate dysgenically and therefore bring about the decadence of the race ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... of any special virtue in that date, but because Athens was then architecturally almost perfect, her civic and her social life seemed at their best, the democratic constitution held its vigor, and there were few outward signs of the general decadence which was to set in ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... to endure 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 ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... see what is plain to all others; at last it becomes clear to you. But you are dying, and it is too late for wisdom to come to the Jivros. Once you set your feet on the path to greatness; but when you did evil, your feet naturally turned to the downward path of decadence. Evil is not a way of life, it is ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... intent upon the profits of the day and the pleasures of next Sunday, one has a vision of what perhaps may be our own lot. For the Dutch are very near us in kin, and once were nigh as great as we have been. Are we, in our day of decadence, to shrivel thus? "There but for the grace of God goes England"—is that ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... that masterpiece? Who could rival Arthur Golding's rendering of the Metamorphoses of Ovid, or Francis Hicke's masterly rendering of Lucian's True History? But eternal life means endless change and in nothing is this truth more strikingly manifest than in the growth and decadence of living languages and in the translation of dead tongues into the ever changing tissue of the living. Were it not for this, no translation worthy of the name would ever stand in need of revision, except in instances where the discovery and ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... sons to your house when they cannot marry your daughters were to solicit awkward complications. In business, in civic affairs, in politics, the Jew has mixed freely with his fellow-citizens, but indiscriminate social relations only become possible through a religious decadence, which they in turn accelerate. A Christian in a company of middle-class Jews is like a lion in a den of Daniels. They show him ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... is wholly meaningless unless humanity's supposition of a life beyond this life, and of the existence of spiritual powers and beings to whom we are related, holds good. No nation has ever conducted its life on the basis of pure materialism, save in those last stages of its decadence which preluded its downfall. ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... illness. She lingered until the following year (1730), when she died at the age of eighty. For several years Handel struggled to build up the fortunes of Italian opera in London, but the persistent rivalry and opposition of his enemies, combined with the decadence of musical taste on the part of the public, caused his losses to accumulate, until, in 1737, he found himself, after repeated failures, deeply in debt, and with his health broken down by overwork and anxiety. The whole of his fortune of L10,000 had been swallowed up in this disastrous ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... the question and decided that, unless the farmer and his family can be confined on the land and be compelled to do better work than they have been doing, the balance of the population must starve to death. The bug-aboo of impending decadence raised by such talk is based upon a wrong assumption, inadequate statistics, and a failure to comprehend ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... ever hope to make up their losses by rigid surveillance in later years." "The sins of youth are expiated in age," is a proverb which daily examples illustrate. In proportion as puberty is precocious, will decadence be premature; the excesses of middle life draw heavily on the fortune of later years. "The mill of the gods grinds slow, but it grinds exceedingly fine," and though nature may be a tardy creditor, she is found at last to be an ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... is one striking thing to be noticed. If men behaved in that way in our time, we should, as we have said, regard them as symbols of the 'decadence.' But the men who did these things were not decadent; they belonged generally to the most robust classes of what is generally regarded as a robust age. Again, it will be urged that if men essentially sane performed such insanities, ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... comparison, the noble abstraction of Flaxman. Talleyrand resembles a keen, selfish, humorous and gentlemanly man of the world, in an unexceptionable white wig. Richelieu is piquant and Madame de Stael impassioned and Amazonian. What decadence even in the warlike notabilities is hinted by glancing from Soult to Oudinot! I thought of the French fleet in the memorable storm off Newport, as I recognized the portrait of the Count d'Estaing; and realized anew the military instinct of the nation in the preponderance ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... suggestions that may be gathered from the title. The younger set comes into our society fresh and unspoiled with each generation, and in its way contributes something of freshness, something of vigor to keep the social world from going down hill on a grade of decadence. The story deals with a man who, although still young, feels that his life is practically over because his marriage, through no fault of his own, has proved a failure and ended in divorce. He meets a young girl just introduced ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... had changed this. Even should the decrease go on, the colored people bade fair to be at least eight or ten per cent. of our total population in 1900. As a matter of fact the proportion was in 1900 11.6 per cent. These decreasing proportions did not, of course, necessarily imply any positive decadence in the black race, as they might be accounted for by greater prolificacy or vitality on the part of the whites, or in part by immigration. The subject will be resumed in Chapter IX. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... whole life; and was, he said, as willing to disclaim the university for a mother, as she could be to renounce him for a son. Oxford, as judged by these men, was remarkable as an illustration of the spiritual and intellectual decadence of a body which at other times has been a centre of great movements of thought. Johnson, though his experience was rougher than any of the three, loved Oxford as though she had not been a harsh stepmother to his youth. Sir, he said fondly of his college, ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... amounted to more than 3000. Confucius removed those which were only repetitions of others, and selected those which would be serviceable for the inculcation of propriety and righteousness. Ascending as high as Hsieh and Hau-ki, and descending through the prosperous eras of Yin and Kau to the times of decadence under kings Yu and Li, he selected in all 305 pieces, which he' sang over to his lute, to bring them into accordance with the musical style of the Shao, the Wu, ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... this fact proof of an instinct capable of modification, either making for decadence and gradually neglecting what was the ancestors' safeguard, or making for progress and advancing, hesitatingly, towards perfection in the mason's art? No inference is permissible in either direction. The Labyrinth Spider has simply taught us that instinct possesses resources which are employed or ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... poems, of Bourget's romances, and Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal. It is the spiritual bond that connects Wagner's operas with Turgenieff's novels, Amiel's journal with Marie Bashkirtseff's diary. Naturalism in fiction, "decadence" in poetry, realism in art, tragedy in music, scepticism in religion, cynicism in politics, and pessimism in philosophy, all spring from the same root. They are the means by which the age records ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various |
