"Decay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to long for rest. Such is the desire implanted in the bosom of all men—rest for the mind, rest for the body, rest for the soul. In youth, when health, and vigour, and animal spirits are at their highest, it is not developed, but when age comes on, and the body begins to feel the symptoms of decay, the mind grows weary and the spirits flag. Then rest is sought for—rest is looked for as the panacea for all evils. Yet who ever found rest in this world— perfect tranquillity and joy? No one. Still that such ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... tithes, May 22, 1582, and was "excommunicated." "Of Henry Shaxper, for not labouring with teems for the amending of the Queen's Highway, 2/6." "Of Henry Shaxper for having a dich between Redd Hill and Burmans in decay for want of repair, Oct. 22nd, 1596." Probably the man was ill and dying then. He was ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... the window and strolled out. The whole taste and savour of the air was changed, and borne on the primrose-coloured sunshine came the smell of damp earth, no longer dead and reeking of the decay of autumn, but redolent with some new element, something fertile and fecund, something daintily, indefinably laden with the secret of life and restoration. The grey, lumpy clouds were gone, and instead chariots of dazzling white bowled ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... into a less-travelled, and hence rougher, side road. Through a stretch of sandy mud they breathed the horses again, and then on, on, on to the big hill whose vast bulk was beginning to tower mightily before them. Past the old school-house they dashed, without a glance for its forlorn state of decay; past one of the farm gates of the Cotswold estate; past the Baptist Bethel, indistinguishable from a school-house except for the white stones in the graveyard, upon which the ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... in the sunny road outside. We drove along a road that crossed the moor, until we came to a little village of scattered houses, with a fine old church—at one end of which an ancient sacristy seemed mouldering slowly to decay. We drove past the gates of two or three rather important houses, lying half-hidden in their gardens, and then turned sharply off into a road that went up a hill, nearly at the top of which we came to a pair of noble old carved iron gates, surmounted with a coat-of-arms, ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... quality and spirit of the performance are concerned; but the former may, nevertheless, drive the latter out of the market, and seems in a great measure to have done so, by the infinitely superior facility and rapidity of its operation. Hence the gradual decay, and almost extinction among us, of this old art, of which former ages have left us so many beautiful specimens. It is said to survive now, if at all, not among our artists by profession, whose taste is expended upon higher ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... and last vtter desolation and ruine, effected by Menelaus, and all the notable Worthies of Greece. Here also are mentioned the rising and flourishing of sundry Kings with their Realmes, as also the decay and ouerthrow of diuers others. Besides many admirable, and most rare exploites of Chiualrie, and Martiall Prowesse, effected by valourous Knights, with incredible euents, compassed for, and through the Loue of Ladies. Translated out of French into English, by W. Caxton. ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... and others have conclusively demonstrated that the micro-organic life instrumental in effecting the putrefaction or decay of organic matter of any kind, may be ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... energy sweeping through us; we hold our life to this higher understanding until the great flood tide of the universe comes sweeping along our veins and through our being, washing away in its resistless force all the lesser moorings which hold us to the thoughts of disease or decay; we have then the life more abundantly than is promised and we feel that we have entered into that place that is prepared for the people of GOD; we are healed to stay healed for the very life blood of the universe is ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... symptoms of decay in the system, sought to restore it to public confidence by conferring marks of ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... elixir, You help him straight: there you have made a friend. Another has the palsy or the dropsy, He takes of your incombustible stuff, He's young again: there you have made a friend, A lady that is past the feat of body, Though not of mind, and hath her face decay'd Beyond all cure of paintings, you restore, With the oil of talc: there you have made a friend; And all her friends. A lord that is a leper, A knight that has the bone-ache, or a squire That hath both these, you make them smooth and sound, With a bare fricace ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... last strokes were on the hundred water-colors for the 'Divina Commedia,' the 'Job' cycle, the 'Ancient of Days' drawing, or a "frenzied sketch" of his wife which he made, exclaiming in beginning it, "Stay! Keep as you are! You have ever been an angel to me. I will draw you." Natural decay and painful chronic ailments increased. He seldom left his rooms in Fountain Court, Strand, except in a visit to the Linnells, at Hampstead. He died gently in 1827, "singing of the things he saw in Heaven." His grave, to-day unknown, was a common one in Bunhill ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... have been a very considerable check to the enthusiasm of industry. It has indeed been contended that the scarcity of precious metals which, with the absence of an organised credit system, produced this result during the later Roman Empire was a very important cause of the decay into which that Empire fell. I do not feel at all convinced that this effect would necessarily have followed the cause. It seems to me that the ingenuity of enterprising man is such that the producer might, and probably would, have ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... not have been detached until the ligaments had decayed, and if it had been separated after the decay of the soft parts, the bones would have been thrown into disorder. But the egg-patches are all on the palmar surface, showing that the bones were still in their normal relative positions. No, Berkeley, that hand was thrown into the ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... stag his swiftness, the bears no longer attacked the herds. Everything languished; dead bodies lay in the roads, the fields, and the woods; the air was poisoned by them. I tell you what is hardly credible, but neither dogs nor birds would touch them, nor starving wolves. Their decay spread the infection. Next the disease attacked the country people, and then the dwellers in the city. At first the cheek was flushed, and the breath drawn with difficulty. The tongue grew rough and ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... of chimneys now hidden by the rich, dark ivy, which, in a great measure, covered the building; other indications of comfort made themselves manifest as we approached; and indeed, though the place was evidently one of considerable antiquity, it had nothing whatever of the gloom of decay about it. ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Hot Water Bottle.—Fill with air, cork tightly, and hang in a cool dry place. This keeps the walls of the bottle from coming in contact with each other and prevents deterioration and decay. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... frugal about fires; it was a cause of suffering to their inmate—walked up and down the big bare sala with his pupil. The scagliola floor was cold, the high battered casements shook in the storm, and the stately decay of the place was unrelieved by a particle of furniture. Pemberton's spirits were low, and it came over him that the fortune of the Moreens was now even lower. A blast of desolation, a portent of disgrace and disaster, seemed to ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... of the buildings however are sadly cracked, and numerous young peepul trees grow in the crevices, their insidious roots creeping farther and farther into the fissures, and expediting the work of decay, which is everywhere apparent. It is the residence of the Zemindar, the lord of the village, the owner of the lands adjoining. Probably he is descended from some noble house of ancient lineage. His forefathers, possibly, led armed retainers against ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... yet thyself deceeve not, Luv' may sink by slow decay; But by suddint wrench beleeve not 'Earts ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... a shrine of rock crystal, on, or rather behind the altar; it is stretched at full length, drest in pontifical robes, with the crosier and mitre. The face is exposed, very improperly, because much disfigured by decay, a deformity increased and rendered more hideous by its contrast with the splendour of the vestments which cover the body, and by the pale ghastly light that gleams from the aperture above. The inscription over this chapel or mausoleum, was dictated by St. Charles himself, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... picked ranks made up of raw recruits, or spirits likely to be cowed, or hands likely to shrink from the unaccustomed steel, or bodies enfeebled by wounds or decay? How shall I speak of us as the flower of Greece? Shall I bestow that name on Spartans or Eleans? or shall I rehearse the countless battles of our ancestors, the cities they sacked, the nations they spoiled? ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... time to ascertain the rout laid down by this author, on account of the changes of names. This mart of Siraff is not to be met with in any of our maps; but it is said by the Arabian geographers to have been in the gulf of Persia, about sixty leagues from Shiraz; and that on its decay, the trade was transferred ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... been one of the three witnesses. The clergy, who perceived his fall, and to whom envy is not unfamiliar, took pleasure in revenging themselves upon M. de Paris, for the domination, although gentle and kindly, he had exercised. Unaccustomed to this decay of his power, all the graces of his mind and body withered. He could find no resource but to shut himself up with his dear friend the Duchesse de Lesdiguieres, whom he saw every day of his life, either at her own house or at Conflans, where ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... of Athelhall, declared: "These wretched children romping in my park Trample the herbage till the soil is bared, And yap and yell from early morn till dark! Go keep them harnessed to their set routines: Thank God I've none to hasten my decay; For green remembrance there are better means Than offspring, who but wish their ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... to this tendency of the teeth to decay, a simple mouth wash of one of the following may be used ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... native all is silent and reposeful. And I can easily believe that a sudden cessation of din would bring an instant madness. Nor must another and an indirect result of the trains and trams which encircle New York be forgotten. The roads are so seldom used that they are permitted to fall into a ruinous decay. Their surface is broken into ruts and yawns in chasms. To drive "down-town" in a carriage is to suffer a sensation akin to sea-sickness; and having once suffered, you can understand that it is something else than the democratic love of travelling in common that persuades ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... which you find in Holbein. But do you suppose Holbein himself, or any other Northern painter, could wholly quit himself of the like accusations? I told you, in the second of these lectures, that the Northern temper, refined from savageness, and the Southern, redeemed from decay, met, in Florence. Holbein and Botticelli are the purest types of the two races. Holbein is a civilized boor; Botticelli a reanimate Greek. Holbein was polished by companionship with scholars and kings, but remains always a burgher of Augsburg in essential nature. Bewick and he are ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... the paths and lanes is not so great a matter, but the decay of the simplicity of manners, and of the habits of pedestrianism which this absence implies, is what I lament. The devil is in the horse to make men proud and fast and ill-mannered; only when you go afoot do you grow in the ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... planet. Moreover, it goes a step further in making clear the relations of man's life to the universe life. We have already seen that "mind" is but another form of "life." Dr. Meyer shows that not only animals and plants but even worlds and suns have their birth, growth, maturity, reproduction, decay and death, and that death is but the preparation for a ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... 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 ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... a vessel in distress at sea, and through the roof of which the winds found easy way. But the winds were warm now, and through the skylight the sunbeams illuminated the floor, showing all the rat-holes and wretchedness of decay. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... eight weeks of Singleton's illness, and the extreme anxiety she had experienced for the safety of her friend. But when the malady remained obstinate to his prescriptions, and other insidious symptoms set in, pointing to a gradual decay of the vital energies, he divined that the ill was a mental one which would baffle his art unless he could ascertain its cause from the patient herself. Her confession of it would be half the cure. But he did not succeed in extracting ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... cities must Decay as these, till all their crime, And mirth, and wealth, and toil are thrust Where are the ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... personally knew her. As she lived in communion with great thoughts and the widest human sympathies, so that her life, like our stillest, harvest-ripening days, passed in sunny repose, so the end was peace. With no wasting malady, no long decay of faculty, ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... is a habit. People travel along the years up the hill of life, till they reach a certain point where they begin to THINK they must be growing old. Think its time to sag. Think its time to droop. Think its time to begin the process of decay. Then begin to talk about it. To write letters about it. To feel around for it. To look for it in others. Finally the habit they inherited from the race is on, and they are old. Life is endless, but you can think it short, "The power ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft
... why he fevered me so much. Must I say it?—He had ceased to entertain me. Instead of a comic I found him a tragic spectacle; and his exuberant anticipations, his bursting hopes that fed their forcing-bed with the blight and decay of their predecessors, his transient fits of despair after a touch at my pulses, and exclamation of 'Oh, Richie, Richie, if only I had my boy up and well!'—assuming that nothing but my tardy recovery stood in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is a mouldy time we live in now; Our faith and customs from the olden days Are everywhere upon the downward path. Lucky it is that I am growing old; My eyes shall never see the North decay. But you, King Gandalf, you are young and strong; And wheresoe'er you roam in distant lands, Remember that it is a royal task To guard the ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... lessened. Fleshless indeed it was. But a parchment skin was tightly drawn over the bones, and Allan could see that its true shade was a sere yellow. It was the bluish light that had given it the green of decay. The deep-sunk eyes were kindly; they gleamed with pleasure as Allan's opened; and the ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... accomplishment of her ends. It is, therefore, for us to submit to Destiny, cultivating, as the things necessary to virtue, knowledge, temperance, fortitude, justice. We must remember that every thing around us is in mutation; decay follows reproduction, and reproduction decay, and that it is useless to repine at death in a world where every thing is dying. As a cataract shows from year to year an invariable shape, though the water composing it is perpetually changing, so the aspect of Nature is ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... girl in blue entirely unimpressed by this apocalypse in a private garden; though she was one of most prosaic and practical creatures alive. She was, indeed, no other than the strenuous niece whose strength alone upheld that mansion of decay. But as the gale swung and swelled the blue and white skirts till they took on the monstrous contours of Victorian crinolines, a sunken memory stirred in her that was almost romance—a memory of a dusty volume of Punch in an aunt's ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... sixteenth century, looked for peace, for religious toleration, for justice to the lower classes. But these dreams were destined to be realized long after More's headless body had crumbled to dust, by that learning which he himself so seduously cultivated, and by the decay, too, of some of those ideas for which he died a martyr's death. The growth of the universities, the establishment of grammar schools, the impetus given to all useful occupations during the reign of Henry VIII, were ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... choked with lumber of various kinds, to which the dust of years had imparted the greyish hue of neglect and decay, a little fair-haired boy was seated before a spinet, fingering its yellow keys with a tenderness that betokened his fondness for the instrument. The level rays of the setting sun streaming through the dimmed casement lighted up the ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... to 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, ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... Robert Fuller, was the last of the priors, and with him is ushered in the era of dissolution and decay, when— ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... speaker was not more than thirty-three, but a bald spot on the top of his head, and a slight falling-in of his mouth, caused by premature decay of the teeth, made him seem several years older. He had marked but not regular features, and a restless, dark eye, which opened and shut with a peculiar wink that kept time with the motion of his lips in speaking. His clothes were cut in a loose, jaunty ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... draws its substance largely from the atmosphere, and when returned to the earth while full of juices, is valuable. In our latitude this can usually be done by the middle of June, and if on this sod buckwheat is sown at once, it will hasten the decay, loosen and lighten the soil in its growth, and in a few weeks be ready itself to increase the fertility of the field by being plowed under. In regions where farmyard manure and other fertilizers are scarce and high, this plowing under ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... 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 ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... splendid. There appeared the voluptuous charms of her to whom the heir of the throne had in secret plighted his faith. There too was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race, the Saint Cecilia, whose delicate features, lighted up by love and music, art has rescued from the common decay. There were the members of that brilliant society which quoted, criticised, and exchanged repartees, under the rich peacock hangings of Mrs. Montague. And there the ladies whose lips, more persuasive than those of Fox himself, ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... harsher glow; And haughty love had, haughtier grown, To own 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 of ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... sun, stars, and nebulae, he may greatly widen the range of his inquiries. The sequence of phenomena seen during the growth of a sun-spot, or the observation of spots of different sizes, and the long series of successive steps that mark the rise and decay of stellar life, resemble the changes that the experimenter brings about as he increases and diminishes the current in the coils of his magnet or raises and lowers the temperature of his electric furnace, examining from time to time the spectrum ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... district, from which they might have been formerly expelled by the course of civilization. Their ears were no less disagreeably occupied than their eyes. The pensive travellers might indeed hear the screams of the raven, as if lamenting the decay of the carnage on which he had been gorged; and now and then the plaintive howl of some dog, deprived of his home and master; but no sounds which argued either labour ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... Neglecting President Washington's imperative injunction to avoid a surprise, he led his command into an ambush and lost half of it in the most disastrous battle with the redskins since the time of Braddock. In the general alarm that ensued, Fort Pitt being in a state of decay, a new fort was built in Pittsburgh at Ninth and Tenth Streets and Penn Avenue,—a stronghold that included bastions, blockhouses, barracks, etc., and was named Fort Lafayette. General Anthony Wayne was then selected to ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... patiently. But it had at length begun to eat more corrosively into my peace of mind than ever I had anticipated. The head-master was substantially superannuated for the duties of his place. Not that intellectually he showed any symptoms of decay: but in the spirits and physical energies requisite for his duties he did: not so much age, as disease, it was that incapacitated him. In the course of a long day, beginning at seven A. M. and stretching down to five P. M., he succeeded in reaching the further end ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... and rapid decay of all the ancient families of chiefs, from which alone would the people ever think of electing a king or a queen, and the notorious corruption in blood and character of the few remaining half-castes nominally belonging to those ancient ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... to Parliament—who knows? It is something of a risk, perhaps, to leave all this pretty coin here, but then it's a greater risk to carry it in the schooner"—he argued both ways—"and then, again, damp does not decay pure metal. But," thought Captain Brand, "suppose somebody should discover this little casket in the rock. Ah! that's not probable, for no soul besides myself knows of it, and even the very man who made the door did ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... mentioned the decay of trade in Ireland as insufficient to occasion the great increase of emigration, yet is it to be considered as an important ill effect, arising from the same cause. It may be said that trade is now in higher repute ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... The corporate decay, however, of the Forsytes, their dispersion rather, of which all this was symptomatic, had not advanced so far as to prevent a rally when Roger Forsyte died in 1899. It had been a glorious summer, and after holidays abroad ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Dir is of stone, but in decay; it has an ancient aspect, but this applies still more to the village of Ariankot, which occupies the flat top of a low spur detached from the fort by a small stream. The spurs fall in perpendicular cliffs of some 20 feet in height, and in these are ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... weed now withered quite, Tho' green at noon, cut down at night, Shows thy decay; All flesh is hay. ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... grand country. In all my wanderings I had seen nothing so rich; yet now it seemed poverty-stricken. That it was autumn could not account for this; for I had always found that the sadness of autumn vivified the poetic sense; and that the colours of decay had a pathetic glory more beautiful than the glory of the most gorgeous summer with all its flowers. It was winter within me—that was the reason; and I could feel no autumn around me, because I saw no spring beyond me. It had ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... date, and philosophy is soon out of fashion. Art that uses both, is neither. When it makes crutches of them and leans its whole weight on them, it will fall with them in the period of their inevitable decay. ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... preoccupation. You must read Thackeray to get the full flavor of their lives. Then the bacterium was apt to disregard class distinctions, and they were never really happy in their servants. Read their surviving books. Each generation bewails the decay of that "fidelity" of servants, no generation ever saw. A world that is squalid in one corner is squalid altogether, but that they never understood. They believed there was not enough of anything to go round, they believed that this was the intention of God and an incurable condition ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... yet been but partially built, and commanded no general approval. Considered as a social organisation, moreover, the Church throughout large parts of the country had fallen into a state not unlike decay. Richard Baxter, whose testimony there is no sufficient reason to reject, tells of its state in Shropshire during the years of his youth, from 1615 onwards:—"We lived in a country that had but little preaching at all: ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... your boyhood illusions! You seek Fiammetta in the delusive hope of finding her in the person of Mrs. Henry Boggs; there is but one Fiammetta, and she is the memory abiding in your heart. Spare yourself the misery of discovering in the hearty, fleshy Lincolnshire hussif the decay of the promises of years ago; be content to do reverence to the ideal Fiammetta who has built her little shrine in your ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... color. Some of this color is due to the action of the soil and the atmosphere, for science tells us that after glass has been buried in the earth many centuries and is then exposed to the air it begins to decay and its color often changes. We have in our museums many pieces of ancient glass which have changed color in this way and have become far more beautiful than they originally were. How these races that lived in the remote ages found out how to make glass no one knows; but certain it is that ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... amid the forest green a little village peeped out, or an old castle reared its gray and weather-beaten battlements on high, as if protesting against its impending decay. There was but one building in the whole region which yet stood strong, intact and massive, notwithstanding it ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... retention of simple and high sentiments in 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 it may please the next newspaper and a sufficient ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... see wealth and greatness; we see corruption and vice; and one seems to follow so close upon the other, that we fancy they must have always co-existed. We look more steadily, and we perceive long periods of time, in which there is first a growth and then a decay, like what we perceive in a tree of ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... is practised with the utmost faith in East Sussex. The nails are cut, the cuttings carefully wrapped in paper, and placed in the hollow of a pollard ash, concealed from the birds; when the paper decays, the warts disappear. For this I can vouch: in my own case the paper did decay, and the warts did all disappear, and, of course, the effect was produced by the cause. Does the practice ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 30. Saturday, May 25, 1850 • Various
... of the great popularity of the "Nibelungenlied", the poem was soon forgotten by the mass of the people. With the decay of courtly chivalry and the rise of the prosperous citizen class, whose ideals and testes lay in a different direction, this epic shared the fate of many others of its kind, and was relegated to the dusty shelves of monastery or ducal libraries, there to wait till a more cultured age, curious as ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... go on they bring many changes—changes that come as naturally as the seasons—that tend as naturally to anticipated growth and decay—that scarcely startle the subjects of them, till a lengthened-out period of time discloses their vitality and extent. Between the ages of twenty and thirty, ten years do not seem very destructive to life. The woman at eighteen, and twenty-eight, ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... be considered that the needful arts among them are managed with less labour than anywhere else. The building or the repairing of houses among us employ many hands, because often a thriftless heir suffers a house that his father built to fall into decay, so that his successor must, at a great cost, repair that which he might have kept up with a small charge: it frequently happens, that the same house which one person built at a vast expense, is neglected by another, who thinks he has a more delicate ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... built on the edge of the harbor, is very thickly populated and, because of its lowness, very unhealthy. Only natives, Malays, Chinese and Arabs live here and the great European houses which were once the homes of the Dutch officials and merchants have either fallen into decay or have been converted into warehouses and shops. The Europeans now live in Weltevreden, or Meester Cornelis, though they have their offices in the lower town. Both the upper and lower towns are traversed by the Jacatra—sometimes called the Tjiliwoeng—from which branch ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... these new marches which their race had won for Islam on the west, and the civilization developed in the country by fifteen centuries of intensive and undisturbed Hellenization was completely blotted out. The cities wore isolated from one another till their commerce fell into decay. The elaborately cultivated lands around them were left fallow till they were good for nothing but the pasturage which was all that the nomad required. The only monuments of architecture that have survived in Anatolia above ground are the ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... least viscid; Age by degrees breaking the viscid Parts, and rendering them smaller, makes them finer for Secretion; but this is always to be determined by their Strength, because in Proportion to that will they sooner or later come to their full Perfection and likewise their Decay, until the finer Spirits quite make their Escape, and the remainder becomes vapid and sour. By what therefore has been already said, it will appear that the older Drinks are the more healthful, so they be kept up to this Standard, but not beyond it. Some ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... stockholders. So little attention was given to efficient management that shocking catastrophies resulted at frequent intervals. A time came, however, when the old locomotives, cars and rails were in such a state of decay, that the replacing of them could no longer be postponed. To do this money was needed, and the treasury of the company had been continuously ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... I pray thee say? It is a pretty shady way As well found out by night as day, It is a thing will soon decay; Then take the vantage whilst you may: And this is love, as I hear say. Now what is love, I pray thee show? A thing that creeps, it cannot go, A prize that passeth to and fro, A thing for one, a thing for mo, And he that proves shall find it so: ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... chateau had been abandoned by the late Marquis, and, being inhabited only by an old steward and his wife, had been suffered to fall much into decay. To superintend the repairs, that would be requisite to make it a comfortable residence, had been a principal motive with the Count for passing the autumnal months in Languedoc; and neither the remonstrances, or the tears of the Countess, for, on urgent ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... melted up, and what covetous fanaticism had spared had been further ravaged by a terrible fire. At this time Bishop Bancroft had done his utmost towards reparation, and the old spire had been replaced by a wooden one; but there was much of ruin and decay visible all around, where stood the famous octagon building called Paul's Cross, where outdoor sermons were preached to listeners of all ranks. This was of wood, and was kept in moderately good repair. Beyond, the nave of the Cathedral ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this alter'd bough, So beautiful of late, with sunshine warm'd, Or moist with dews; what more unsightly now, Its blossoms shrivell'd, and its fruit, if form'd, Invisible? yet Spring her genial brow Knits not o'er that discolouring and decay As false to expectation. Nor fret thou At like unlovely process in the May Of human life: a Stripling's graces blow, Fade, and are shed, that from their timely fall (Misdeem it not a cankerous change) may grow Rich mellow bearings, that ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... pines is shown by their sound condition in California buildings that have stood for generations, many of them in regions where climatic conditions are more conducive to decay than in the middle western ...
— The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan • W.B. Laughead
... to labor unremittingly, and with the same resolute energy of mind and purpose, till the gradual decay of his strength warned him of his approaching end. He did not suffer from any particular malady, and his mind was strong and clear to the last. He died at Rome, on February 18, 1564, in the ninetieth year of his age. A few days ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... tamed the passion's strife, And fate had cut my ties to life, Here, have I thought, 'twere sweet to dwell And rear again the chaplain's cell, Like that same peaceful hermitage Where Milton longed to spend his age. 'Twere sweet to mark the setting day On Bourhope's lonely top decay; And, as it faint and feeble died On the broad lake and mountain's side, To say, "Thus pleasures fade away; Youth, talents, beauty, thus decay, And leave us dark, forlorn, and grey;" Then gaze ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... lords of the kingdom of mind! We are the stem which can never decay!" —Students' Song, by ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... Petrarch gain less by comparison with his immediate successors than with those who had preceded him. Till more than a century after his death Italy produced no poet who could be compared to him. This decay of genius is doubtless to be ascribed, in a great measure, to the influence which his own works had exercised upon the literature of his country. Yet it has conduced much to his fame. Nothing is more favourable to the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... tell them that they may die in a fit of drunkenness, and shew them how dreadful that would be, cannot fail to make a deep impression. Sir, when your Scotch clergy give up their homely manner, religion will soon decay in that country.' Let this observation, as Johnson meant ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... with which the ships lose their rigging, are wrecked, or have to put into port in distress. If they proceed on their course, inasmuch as they encounter the rigor of winter, and because of their high altitude and their departure from a warm land, many men die; their gums decay and their teeth fall out. [98] If so great severity is not exercised, this matter will ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... capable of obedience, so perfect as not only to suffice for himself, but to supply the wants of others. The corruptible put on incorruption. The bodies of the saints worked miracles, and their flesh was found unaffected by decay ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... handsome tree, sixty feet high; trunk rarely exceeds three feet in diameter; wood pale, close-grained, and excellent for planks and spars; resists decay in moist positions ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... WOOD. The composition which is the best adapted to preserve wood from the decay occasioned both by the wet and the dry rot, is as follows. Melt twelve ounces of rosin in an iron kettle, and when melted, add eight ounces of roll brimstone. When both are in a liquid state, pour in three gallons of train oil. Heat the whole slowly, gradually adding four ounces of bees' wax ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... knowledge of speech of every kind. He maketh the unreal appear as real and thereby beguileth all creatures. Possessed of such attributes, ever devoted to righteousness, and endued with divinity, the slayer of Madhu, that mighty-armed one incapable of decay, will come hither for preventing ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... that these roots sent down into the cavity of a decaying trunk may, after a time, become completely concealed within it, by the gradual formation and extension of new wood over the orifice of the cavity formed by the death and decay of the old wood. Such is presumed to be the explanation of a specimen of this kind in the possession of the writer, and taken from a cavity in an apparently solid block of rosewood; externally there were no marks to indicate the ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... But the decay and neglect everywhere manifest in its defenses extended no further, for inside the enclosure was a garden carefully tended; a trailing vine clung lovingly to a corner of the wide gallery, and even a few of the bright roses of ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... inquired after certain patients in whom she was particularly interested: since the last time she came they had suffered a relapse—the malady had changed in nature, and had shown graver symptoms. It was a kind of deadly fatigue, killing them by a slows strange decay. She asked questions of the doctors but could learn nothing: this malady was unknown to them, and defied all the resources of their art. A fortnight later she returned. Some of the sick people were dead, others still alive, but desperately ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... above, he dimly saw the curious wooden ceiling which would seem to have taken the place of the usual stone vaulting; through chinks of the plank-wall he caught glimpses of a little close; and at length, having seen the most melancholy of "Cathedrals of the Sea," in its disguise of whitewash, decay, and ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... That quiet water, the happy birds that nested in the trees and the flowering lilies seemed to be her only friends. Of the last, indeed, she would count the buds, watching them open in the morning and close again for their sleep at night, until a day came when their loveliness turned to decay, and ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... kitchen garden, on a stone bench near a meridian, the figures of which had worn away, and there he would get quite cheerful in the sunshine, calling to people over the hedge to come in and drink with him. Decay and poverty, however, made rapid strides in the chateau. There was nothing left of all the old silver but a salad-bowl, which was used for the food of a horse called Brouska, that the exile had brought with him from Germany, ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... toward, those you at one time did not like, but disliked almost to downright hatred; in silent and assenting acceptance, if not yet in actual and positive enjoyment, of another man's talents and success, gain and fame; in the decay and disappearance of party spirit, and in openness to all the good and the merit of other men; in prayerfulness; in liberality, and so on; when you cannot deny these things in yourself, then speak good of Christ, and do not ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... cottage, the vale spreading out into a level area which was one large field, without fence and without division, of a dull yellow colour; the vale seemed to partake of the desolation of the cottage, and to participate in its decay. And yet the spot was in its nature so dreary that one would rather have wondered how it ever came to be tenanted by man, than lament that it was left to waste and solitude. Yet the encircling ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... under the stars by the Ionian sea, a feeling that one thing in creation ought to be immortal on earth, the passionate, leaping flame of joyous youth, physically careless, physically rapturous, unconscious of death and of decay. Delarey seemed to him like a tarantella in repose, if such ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... inception, by virtue of its purer life and the dynamic potencies of its own interior, spiritual thought. Already, mental therapeutics is taking an advanced position among liberal, progressive minds, and nothing demonstrates so clearly and forcibly the grand, alchemical law of life-growth and decay, as the imponderable, invisible forces, which, constitute the materia medica, or remedial agents, of mental, magnetic, ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... do, what, do what you may, And wisdom is early to despair: Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done To keep at bay Age and age's evils, hoar hair, Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death's worst, winding sheets, tombs and worms and tumbling to decay; So be beginning, be beginning to despair. O there's none; no no no there's none: Be beginning to despair, to despair, ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... di lapid ate ion the state (of a building) in which the stones are falling apart: hence, demolition, decay. ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... in the society of the very middle-aged, hear from them loud and frequent complaints of the decay of courtesy and the general deterioration, both of manners and of habits, observable in the young men of the day. With many portentous shakings of the head, these grizzling censors inform those who care to listen to their wailings, that in the time of their own youth it was ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... nationall Assemblies, the generall Assembly considering the great defection of this Kirk, and decay of Religion, by the usurpation of the Prelates, and their suppressing of ordinaire judicatories of the Kirk, and clearly preceiving the benefit which will redound to the Religion by the restitution ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... be lighted before its time in some young innocent, sleeping the pure sleep of childhood! Here you have the ugly tale of little John of Saintre, pink of cherubim, and other paltry puppets of the Age of Decay. ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... three-mile walk from the gardens. There they lounge and there they chatter. Little boys come slyly to pilfer oranges, and are pelted away with other oranges; for a single orange has here no more appreciable value than a single apple in our farmers' orchards; and, indeed, windfall oranges are left to decay, like windfall apples. During this season one sees oranges everywhere, even displayed as a sort of thank-offering on the humble altars of country-churches; the children's lips and cheeks assume a chronic yellowness; and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... a large extent depends upon the teeth. Food can not be properly masticated without sound molars. The modern tendency of teeth to decay early in life clearly proves that something is wrong with our dietetic or chewing habits. Like any other part of the body, the teeth must be exercised in order to be properly preserved. Our foods are so frequently macerated to a fine consistency and they are so often cooked to a mush before they ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... of the general's daughters did. There were three of these bachelor ladies, of nicely graduated ages, who held a neighbouring farm-house in a united and more or less military occupation. The eldest warred against the decay of manners in the village children, and executed frontal attacks upon the village mothers for the conquest of courtesies. It sounds futile, but it was really a war for an idea. The second skirmished and scouted all over the country; and it was that one who pushed ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... heart to a flower, Though I know it is fading away, Though I know it will live but an hour And leave me to mourn its decay! ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... the earth, and the water. He makes himself at home in our beverages and our foods. Our mouths furnish desirable lurking places for him, our hair, and finger-nails are favorite posts of vantage; while he delights to disport himself in our blood. He is the active agent of decay, and the prime cause of disease. He is the most selfish of parasites. The world for a long time disregarded him, but now acknowledges him as one of the mightiest of conquerers; for while other devastators have slain thousands, millions have fallen beneath ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... name, with inward joy and gladness. Thou disdainest not, as well appeareth this day, To fetch to thy fold thy first sheep going astray. Most mighty Maker, thou castest not yet away Thy sinful servant, which hath done most offence. It is not thy mind for ever I should decay, But thou reservest me, of thy benevolence, And hast provided for me a recompence, By thy appointment, like as I have received In thy strong promise here openly pronounced. This goodness, dear Lord, is of me undeserved, I so declining from thy first institution, At so light motions. To ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... economic system is composed must therefore be self-motivating and self-acting. They must be "alive." If one part of the economic body is dead, the whole will eventually disintegrate and decay. ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... as the plants are fully ripe they not only take on a different hue but give evidence of decay. The leaves as they ripen become rougher and thicker, assume a tint of yellowish green and are frequently mottled with yellow spots. The tobacco grower has two signs which he regards as "infallible" in this matter. One is that on pinching the under part of the leaf together, if ripe it will ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... about the real condition of the Ottoman Empire, and thought that with ten years of peace it might again become a respectable Power. "All that we hear about the decay of the Turkish Empire and its being a dead body or a sapless trunk, and so forth, is pure and unadulterated nonsense." Bulwer's Palmerston, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... there was Praed, fresh from editing the Etonian, as a product of collective boyish effort unique in its literary excellence and variety; and Sidney Walker, Praed's gifted school fellow, whose promise was blighted by premature decay of powers; and Charles Austin, whose fame would now be more in proportion to his extraordinary abilities, had not his unparalleled success as an advocate tempted him before his day to retire from the toils of a career of whose rewards he ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... children lived. The features of the landscape were, certainly, the same; but even here was a change for the worse. The warmth of coloring which wealth and independence give to the appearance of a cultivated country, was gone. Decay and coldness seemed to brood upon everything, he saw. The houses, the farm-yards, the ditches, and enclosures, were all marked by the blasting proofs of national decline. Some exceptions there were ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... form of belief was prevalent among some persons, that the body of a suicide would not decay until the time arrived when, in the ordinary course of nature, he would have died. This was founded upon another belief, that there is a day of death appointed for every man, which no one can pass; but as man is possessed of a free will, he ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... it is idle to affect perplexity. In the earliest age of all,—the age which was familiar with the universal decay of heathen virtue, but which had not yet witnessed the power of the Gospel to fashion society afresh, and to build up domestic life on a new and more enduring basis;—at a time when the greatest laxity of morals prevailed, and the enemies of the Gospel were known to be on the look ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... not worth while considering very fully. But we have seen clearly to what extent the destruction of competition has gone on; and, with this knowledge, the question almost inevitably occurs to us: Is not this decay and death of competition, this attempt to suppress it under certain conditions, too wide and general a movement to be treated as merely a troublesome excrescence? Is it not likely that there are certain fixed laws regarding competition which determine its action and operation, and sometimes ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... appetite palled with pleasure: the insolence of the successful parvenu is only the necessary continuance of the career of the needy struggler: our mental changes are like our grey hairs or our wrinkles—but the fulfilment of the plan of mortal growth and decay: that which is snow-white now was glossy black once; that which is sluggish obesity to-day was boisterous rosy health a few years back; that calm weariness, benevolent, resigned, and disappointed, was ambition, fierce and violent, but a few ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... loud lonely decay, more sponges and more excellent angels and extreme inhalations and reasoning, ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... and hunting suits of scarlet—all faded and falling to pieces—stood the picture of Tyrrel Rawdon, with its face turned to the wall. The Squire made a motion to his descendant, and the young American tenderly turned it to the light. There was no decay on those painted lineaments. The almost boyish face, with its loving eyes and laughing mouth, was still twenty-four years old; and with a look of pride and affection the Squire lifted the picture and placed it in the hands of the Tyrrel Rawdon of ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... the group of extensive courts, buildings, and facades which surround it, all built upon the summit of a pyramid some 200 feet square. As in the Yucatan structures, the lintels over the doorway-openings in the walls were of wood, and their decay has largely been the cause of the facades having fallen into ruins, in many places. There are various interior staircases to these buildings, and the huge and unique reliefs of human figures are a remarkable feature of the interior. The beautiful ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... the openings (Fig. 2). This use of the arch began with the Assyrians, and it reappeared in the works of the early Etruscans. The round-arched series of styles embraces the buildings of the Romans from their earliest beginnings to their decay; it also includes the two great schools of Christian architecture which were founded by the Western and the Eastern Church respectively,—namely, the Romanesque, which, originating in Rome, extended itself through Western ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... sweeping down upon the farms, plundering the villages, driving off horses and herds of cattle, killing men and carrying off women and children into slavery. Mines became unworkable; farms had to be deserted; the churches, built by the Spaniards, mouldered into decay. The raiders had made themselves absolute masters, and so bold were they that at one time a certain month in the year was set apart for their plundering excursions and called "the moon of the Mexicans," a fact which did not prevent ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... degree; it had resembled a precious bud, the possible opening of which would flood his being with its fragrant flowering. He gazed with a new dread at the temporary shelters and men about him, the huts and men that resembled each other so closely in their patched decay. ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... to this subject, we are liable to serious mistakes in contrasting the present with former states of the globe. As dwellers on the land, we inhabit about a fourth part of the surface; and that portion is almost exclusively a theatre of decay, and not of reproduction. We know, indeed, that new deposits are annually formed in seas and lakes, and that every year some new igneous rocks are produced in the bowels of the earth, but we cannot watch the progress of their formation, and as they are only present to our minds ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... essential features in common with asphalt, oil, and gas. They are all composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, with minor quantities of other materials, combined in various proportions. They are all "organic" products which owe their origin to the decay of the tissues of plants and perhaps animals. They have all been buried with other rocks beneath the surface. The common geologic processes affecting all rocks have in the main determined the evolution of these organic products and the forms in ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... and he lay In all the weakness of decay. A numerous progeny, with groans, Attended ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... religiously clung to by the Patriots as being the foundation of all true liberty, as a principle of independence; and they represented the jealous adherence to the local usages and laws, which faithfully embodied the popular instincts and doctrine, to be proofs of a decay of the national authority, and the cloak of long-cherished schemes of rebellion. And this view was accepted by the leading political men of England. They held, all of them but a little band of republican- grounded sympathizers with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various |
