"Decline" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... taste of the public into a new channel by producing pure transcripts and faithful studies from nature, instead of conventionalities and feeble reminiscences from the Old Masters; an entire seeking after originality in a more humble manner than has been practised since the decline of Italian Art in the Middle Ages. This has been most strongly shown by the landscape painters, among whom there are many who have raised an entirely new school of natural painting, and whose productions undoubtedly surpass all others in the simple attention ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... must needs have one involving much responsibility, failure in which would involve not only himself but those who had employed him. The cry of treachery was sure to follow, and prudent officers of Southern birth found it advisable to decline employments where they foresaw that delays were unavoidable, because they felt that what might be explained in the case of a Northern man would in them be stamped by public opinion as the result of disaffection. In Hastings and its neighborhood the most grotesque suspicions were spread concerning ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... Brooklyn, where his chief fame was won. The church, one of the largest in the country, soon became inadequate to hold the crowds which flocked to hear his brilliant preaching. As a lecturer and platform orator he soon came to be in such demand that he was at last compelled to decline all such engagements. He took an active part in politics, holding that Christianity was not a series of dogmas, but a rule of everyday life, and did not hesitate to attack the abuses of the day from the pulpit. He was as facile with ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... subsided, in the light of some sudden proof of Madame Merle's remarkable intelligence; but it stood for a high-water-mark in the ebb and flow of confidence. Madame Merle had once declared her belief that when a friendship ceases to grow it immediately begins to decline—there being no point of equilibrium between liking more and liking less. A stationary affection, in other words, was impossible—it must move one way or the other. However that might be, the girl had in these days a thousand uses for ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... all, as I admit I have never been to a seance. This is all very well, but there are a good many things to which I have never been, but I have not the smallest intention of leaving off talking about them. I refuse (for instance) to leave off talking about the Siege of Troy. I decline to be mute in the matter of the French Revolution. I will not be silenced on the late indefensible assassination of Julius Caesar. If nobody has any right to judge of Spiritualism except a man who has been to a seance, the ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... Junius, and to forget the name of the author; and that, at the period of the publication, offers were made to him of legal evidence on which to convict the author of a libel; but that, as he had then treated the man with contempt, he should decline to disturb him after so great a lapse of time." From this communication it would seem, that the Duke believed that he knew the author, and also that ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... as fast as it had risen but the decline was somewhat checked when a well known Southern California medium wrote to "her old friend" J. Edgar Hoover about the situation. Hoover, the story goes, shot back an answer—lie detectors ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... (An excellent work for students. It begins with a sketch of history of the earliest times; the decline of the ancient empires, the rise of the French monarchy, and traces the causes which made the Revolution inevitable. The philosophic conclusion is unsurpassed, and the position taken, laying a foundation for the philosophy of freedom, is bound to attract the attention ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... pretty estate, uncle, if it were not the estate of matrimony. I am sorry, very sorry, to disappoint you; but I must decline taking a lease of it ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... her the last houses of Batignolles followed, with Fleur-de-Marie, a grassy footpath. The day was calm and beautiful, the sky toward the west half concealed by red and purple clouds; the sun, beginning to decline, cast his oblique rays on the heights of Colombe, on the other side of the Seine. As Fleur-de-Marie drew near the banks of the river, her pale cheeks became slightly colored; she inhaled with delight the sharp, pure air of the country, and cried, in a ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... gives to the challenged party the right to choose his weapon. As M. Merton's friends will abide by his decision, your own seconds must, I fancy, accept what is or would be usual with us. They have no choice except to decline and allow their refusal to be made public, as it will be, or to choose one of the three weapons so ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... market economy - thanks in large part to its initial economic reforms during the Communist era. The private sector now accounts for about 55% of GDP. Nonetheless, the transformation is proving difficult, and many citizens say life was better under the old system. On the bright side, the four-year decline in output finally ended in 1994, as real GDP increased an estimated 3%. This growth helped reduce unemployment to just over 10% by yearend, down from a peak of 13%. However, no progress was made against inflation, which remained stuck at about 20%, and the already-large current ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... beautiful rooms, is filled with statuary. The entrance hall is a very splendid apartment, brightly frescoed, and paved with ancient mosaics, representing the combats with beasts and gladiators in the Coliseum, curious, though very rudely and awkwardly designed, apparently after the arts had begun to decline. Many of the specimens of sculpture displayed in these rooms are fine, but none of them, I think, possess the highest merit. An Apollo is beautiful; a group of a fighting Amazon, and her enemies trampled under her horse's feet, is very impressive; a Faun, copied from that of Praxiteles, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the tenth instance a Brahmin's passion may be checked by fear of contamination with a Pariah, or a King Cophetua's pride may prevent his wedding a beggar-maid, or the titled owner of an entailed estate may decline to illegitimatise his offspring by espousing his deceased wife's sister, or betrothed lovers may be parted by some such mysterious barrier as sprang up between Talbot Bulstrode and Aurora Floyd, or an Adam Bede, in spite of the example set by George Eliot's ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... dignity of character, and never condescend to trifle. In your conversation, however, upon general subjects, you may exercise the same sociability and freedom which you would with ladies; not seeming to be sensible of any difference of sex. Indignantly repel any improper liberties; but never decline attentions which are considered as belonging to the rules of common politeness, unless there should be something in the character of the individual which would justify you in wishing wholly to avoid his society. Some men are so disagreeable ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... course, called upon for the second part, and, whether we consider the merits of the original or of the translation, the world has but little to regret in the loss. Aristaenetus is one of those weak, florid sophists, who flourished in the decline and degradation of ancient literature, and strewed their gaudy flowers of rhetoric over the dead muse of Greece. He is evidently of a much later period than Alciphron, to whom he is also very inferior in purity of diction, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... commences, Penang had acquired the monopoly of the trade of the Malayan Peninsula and Sumatra. It also had a large traffic with China, Siam, Borneo, the Celebes, and other places in the Eastern Archipelago; but after the establishment later on of Singapore it had begun to decline, and the settlement then became second only in commercial importance. But within the last quarter of a century the trade has considerably revived, owing largely to the planting of tobacco in Sumatra by European planters, and the annexation of the native states of the Malayan Peninsula, both of which ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... favoured, by protectionist measures—free trade not yet being heard of—French industry and commerce; was to the French marine what Louvois was to the army, and encouraged both arts and letters; from 1671 his influence began to decline; he was held responsible for increased taxation due to Louis XIV.'s wars, while the jealousy of Louvois weakened his credit at Court; he became so unpopular that on his death his body was buried at night, but ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... state of education which I have previously described as placing the peasantry entirely at the mercy of agitators, the total absence of any class of persons, or any organisation of authority that could counteract this mischievous influence, and the serious decline in the district of Montreal of the influence of the clergy, concur in rendering it absolutely impossible for the Government to produce any better state of feeling among the French population. It is even impossible ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... course of my travels I am ofttimes asked if I desire my meals sent to my room, presupposing, as would be naturally inferred, the possibility of great awkwardness in my manner of eating; hence I invariably decline this offer of privacy, as there need be nothing in our manner of eating ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... scattered do not grow for him. He that giveth up an afflicted creature seeking protection unto its foe, hath to see his offspring die in childhood. The ancestor of such a person can never dwell in heaven; indeed, the very gods decline to accept the libations of clarified butter poured by him into the fire. He that giveth up an affrighted creature seeking protection, unto its foe, is struck with the thunder-bolt by the gods with Indra at their head. The food that he eateth is unsanctified, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... should think so," said Sylvia, pushing the folds aside and looking down the western decline of the hill, where a wide reach of Casco Bay came in view. Small snowy sails were flying out to sea, like a flock ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... the application is without precedent, and I must decline it; but this I beg to do as courteously, as the ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... she'll be such a long while getting over it. I've had a letter from her this morning, and she says the Hastings doctor declares she must stay there a year in the warm and not come home at all, or she'll be going off in a decline. I know Lucy gets nervous about herself, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... bent his steps, in obedience to the direction of Madoc, to that secret path, which had never before been discovered by any mortal unassisted by the goblins of the abyss. Before he reached it the golden sun had begun to decline from his meridian height. He passed along the winding way beneath the impending precipices, which formed a dark and sullen vault over his head. Ever and anon large pieces of stone, broken from their ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... devoid of strength than blind ignorance? Or do they know what they should embrace, but passion driveth them headlong the contrary way? So also intemperance makes them frail, since they cannot strive against vice. Or do they wittingly and willingly forsake goodness, and decline to vices? But in this sort they leave not only to be powerful, but even to be at all. For they which leave the common end of all things which are, leave also being. Which may perhaps seem strange to some, that we should say that evil men are not at all, who are the greatest part of men: but ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... young and old alike. Youthful Rough-and-Ready and the Saints had climbed to their meridian together, and it seemed fit that they should together decline. The first shadow fell with the immigration to Rough-and-Ready of a second aged pair. The landlady of the Independence Hotel had not abated her malevolence towards the Saints, and had imported at considerable expense her grand-aunt ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... resources, and imports far exceed exports. Under the terms of the Compact of Free Association, the US has provided more than $1 billion in aid since 1986. Negotiations have continued for an extended agreement. Government downsizing, drought, a drop in construction, the decline in tourism and foreign investment due to the Asian financial difficulties, and less income from the renewal of fishing vessel licenses have held GDP growth to an average of 1% over ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... want of bread. I have numerous offers of their services made by parents who are in great distress. I make it a point to discourage all who come to me from entering the business, and am only conquered when I feel sure that, if I decline, they will be driven to other studios. I prefer only professional models, already thoroughly committed to the calling, as I shrink from the responsibility of leading any into so perilous a vocation. They are usually ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... naturally noble and frank intelligence in his bold eye and prominent features, while the bare arms and naked legs exhibited a muscle and proportion which proved that nature was rather at a stand than in the decline. He had been many moments dangling his cap, in habitual but unembarrassed respect, before his presence ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of the blessed Hope, the preaching of His imminent Coming, we have a return to other great truths, such as the teaching concerning the church. Just as the giving up of the blessed Hope affected the other great doctrines of the Bible and became in part responsible for the fearful decline, confusion and departure from the faith once and for all delivered unto the saints, so the recovery of the blessed Hope, the imminent Coming of the Lord, results in the recovery of these same blessed doctrines ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... The morning was fair, but afterwards became cloudy. Mr. Laroche the trader from the northwest company paid us a visit, in hopes of being able to accompany us on our journey westward, but this proposal we thought it best to decline. ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... indifferently for his own defence. I believe, without going beyond the page I have now before me, he is very sensible, that I have sufficient matter of further, and, if possible, of heavier charge against his friends, upon his own principle. But it is because the advantage is too great, that I decline making use of it. I wish the author had not thought that all methods are lawful in party. Above all he ought to have taken care not to wound his enemies through the sides of his country. This he has done, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the early prayer service we considered Eph. 4, the unity of the Spirit, and the means of preserving the bond of peace. In the song service many points of doctrine were discussed with the English clergyman, also the decline and loss ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... middle of September, and the woods, instead of presenting one uniform mass of green, glowed with an infinite variety of lovely tints. And yet, despite the beauty of the scene, there was something melancholy in witnessing the decline of the year, as marked by those old woods, and by the paths that led through them, so thickly strewn with leaves. Wolsey was greatly affected. "These noble trees will ere long bereft of all their glories," he thought, "and so, most likely, will it be with me, and perhaps ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... sat down to table, I looked forth from an upstairs window. The day was beginning to decline; the links were utterly deserted; the despatch-box still lay untouched where we ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on discovering that there was no immediate danger, "if that—that bloodthirsty young ruffian there would allow me to do so. I am going about in bodily fear of him, Dr. Grimstone. I want him bound over to keep the peace. I decline to be left alone ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... Gregory of Tours notes the prosperity of Catholic kingdoms and the decline of Arian in the ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... I can do for you, if you decline to supplement it with a dose of hot brandy and water at the Dolphin," said he: "and I'll see you take it, if you please. I'm bound to ease a Rendon patient out of the world. Medicine's one of their superstitions, which they cling ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Decline a bribe or interfere with the private sale of places Famous fowl in every pot Fellow worms had been writhing for half a century in the dust For his humanity towards the conquered garrisons (censured) Historical scepticism may shut its eyes to evidence Imagining that they ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... decline in the poet's appearance, Dr. Currie tells us, for upwards of a year before his death, and he himself was sensible that his constitution was sinking. During almost the whole of the winter of 1795-96 he had been confined to the house. Then follows the ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... duty to decline the proposed conference with the committee, and it being uncertain when it may be convenient to explain to the committee, and through them to the Senate, the grounds of my so doing, I think it proper to address ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson
... we were, entwined, then riven, Ever to new embracements driven, Shifting gulf-weed of the main! And how if one here shift no more, Lodged by the flinging surge ashore? Nor less, as now, in eve's decline, Your shadowy fellowship is mine. Ye float around me, form and feature:— Tattooings, ear-rings, love-locks curled; Barbarians of man's simpler nature, Unworldly servers of the world. Yea, present all, and dear to me, Though shades, or scouring ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... moreover, in defining these limits I emphatically disclaim any intention of thereby attempting to establish a single standard of value for books of travel. Darwin's "Voyage of the Beagle" is to me the best book of the kind ever written; it is one of those classics which decline to go into artificial categories, and which stand by themselves; and yet Darwin, with his usual modesty, spoke of it as in effect a yachting voyage. Humboldt's work had a profound effect on the thought of the civilized world; his trip was one of adventure and danger; and yet it can hardly be called ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... Andrew, "I have grown used to my regiment, am fond of the officers, and I fancy the men also like me. I should be sorry to leave the regiment. If I decline the honor of ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... implanted dogma. Nature and the child's pugnacity at times revolted. A cad from the Potterrow once struck him in the mouth; he struck back, the pair fought it out in the back stable lane towards the Meadows, and Archie returned with a considerable decline in the number of his front teeth, and unregenerately boasting of the losses of the foe. It was a sore day for Mrs. Weir; she wept and prayed over the infant backslider until my lord was due from Court, and she must resume that air of tremulous composure with which she always greeted him. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of her,' said one of the oldest of the good ladies; 'Phillis comes of a family as is not long-lived. Her mother's sister, Lydia Green, her own aunt as was, died of a decline just when she was about ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of rest to be observed by the whole nation. This all came about gradually as the church came into power. This early influence of the Christian religion on the legislation of the Roman government presaged a time when, in the decline of the empire, the church would exercise the greatest power of any organization, political or ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... roughly includes the seventh century, and is followed by a long decline, marked by the great iconoclastic controversy which lasted almost until the middle of the ninth century. To this period belongs S. Irene (740 A.D.). In plan it is a double-domed cross church. In the ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... Palmer—A native of New Jersey—An earnest worker, visiting and aiding soldiers' families and dispensing the charities of the Society among them and the destitute families of refugees—Her labors were greater than her strength—Her death occasioned by a decline, the result of over exertion in her ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... the ardor of his poetic and religious instincts, was a Legitimist. As the representative of the old Bourbon regime, he sought an audience with the duke, hoping to induce him to decline the crown, and to act in the interests of the expelled dynasty. In his "Memoires d'Outre Tombe," this illustrious man has given a minute account of the conversation which took place. Chateaubriand was received by the Duchess of Orleans, who very cordially invited him to take a seat near her. Rather ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... it appears to me that there are but two courses left for any agent of our government to pursue: either to take official rank as his only guide, or to decline presenting any one. It is not his duty to act as a master of ceremonies; every court has a regular officer for this purpose, and any one who has been presented himself, is permitted on proper representations to present others. The trifling disadvantage will ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... her own historians, not needing to go abroad for either history or historian. George Bancroft, with a private library larger by almost half than the ten thousand-volume library Edward Gibbon used in writing "The Decline and Fall of the Roman empire;" George Bancroft, whose literary life was dedicated to one task, and that the writing the life of his country prior to the Constitution; George Bancroft, publicist as well as student ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... with Christianity nor common justice; and, we have good reason to believe, draws down the displeasure of Heaven; it being a melancholy but true reflection, that, where slave-keeping prevails, pure religion and sobriety decline, as it evidently tends to harden the heart, and render the soul less susceptible of that holy spirit of love, meekness and charity, which is the peculiar characteristic of ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... physiologist, who speaks of him with some respect as a physician, comparing him with Theophrastus Paracelsus, reckons him among the scholastici vagantes, or fahrende Schueler, an order of men already considerably in the decline, and grown disreputable at that period. As early as the thirteenth century, we find the custom in Germany, of young clergymen who did not belong to any monkish order travelling through the land to get a living,—here by instructing in schools for a certain period,—there by temporarily ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... the adoption of the Articles of Confederation. His high ability and acknowledged statesmanship won for him in that body the distinguished honor of being elected to the office of President of Congress. But the critical situation in Edenton, and his anxiety concerning his family, decided him to decline the office and return home to share the fortunes of his townsmen and to render what aid he could to his ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... sweetness for me. Had ever a lover such misfortune? But am I a lover? No! Have I ceased to love passionately? No! Am I then a lover? Yes, if my lady would suffer my love." Guiraut's [55] moral sirventes are reprobations of the decadence of his age. He saw a gradual decline of the true spirit of chivalry. The great lords were fonder of war and pillage than of poetry and courtly state. He had himself suffered from the change, if his biographer is to be believed; the Viscount of Limoges had plundered and burnt his house. He compares the ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... cannoneers to fire. His influence was limited to inducing them to accompany him, and he turned his steps to the Hotel de Ville. The refusal of the cannoneers decided the fate of the day. From that moment the commune, which had been on the point of triumphing, saw its affairs decline. Having failed in a surprise by main force, it was reduced to the slow measures of the insurrection; the point of attack was changed, and soon it was no longer the commune which besieged the Tuileries, but ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... plain the sufferer would have preferred to decline help. It would soon pass. It was nothing. He had had such attacks before. He spoke brokenly, adding, "I thank you," in a tone ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... brief day knew no decline— 'Twas cloudless joy; Sunrise and night alone were thine, Beloved boy! This morn beheld thee blithe and gay; That found thee prostrate in decay; And ere a third shone, clay ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... actual breach was due to a woman. The Crown Prince of Titia had come a wooing of the Princess Royal of Valeria, and had been twice refused by her. King Frederick had left the question entirely in her hands. Her choice was her own, to marry or to decline. As a matter of state policy the match was greatly desired by him and his Ministers. They were becoming very weary of Murdol and the turmoil it maintained on the border, and the great force of troops required there to preserve order. Then, too, Titia had grown ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... Hellas; and Plato with prophetic insight may have seen, from afar, the great literary waste or dead level, or interminable marsh, in which Greek literature was soon to disappear. A similar vision of the decline of the Greek drama and of the contrast of the old literature and the new was present to the mind of Aristophanes after the death of the three great tragedians (Frogs). After about a hundred, or at most two hundred years if we exclude Homer, the genius of Hellas had ceased to flower ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... that she absolutely ended by assuring her it was her duty, as a deceased rector's daughter, to buy a new cap and go to the party at Mrs Jamieson's. So "we were most happy to accept," instead of "regretting that we were obliged to decline." ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... may be asked indeed to explain how, on this theory of mistaken identity which I here put forward, the work reviewed by the critics came to be displaced by the work before me, so that no traces of the original remain. But this I altogether decline to do, and I plead authority for refusing. 'The merely negative evidence that our actual [Supernatural Religion] is not the work described by [the Reviewers] is sufficient for ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... "I must decline answering your impertinent questions." said Fitzgerald, desperately. He began to entertain, for the first time, the horrible suspicion that the pedler's story might be true—that he might after all be his cousin. But he resolved that he never would admit it—NEVER! Where would ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... myself here with noting a fact, which I shall deal with more fully in another essay at the end of this book: it is the decline of musical taste in France—and, I rather think, in all Europe—since 1835 or 1840. Berlioz says in his Memoires: "Since the first performance of Romeo et Juliette the indifference of the French public for all that concerns art and literature has grown incredibly" (Memoires, ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... wish for, just as men who fail of Self-Control: I mean, they choose things which, though hurtful, are pleasurable, in preference to those which in their own minds they believe to be good: others again, from cowardice and indolence, decline to do what still they are convinced is best for them: while they who from their depravity have actually done many dreadful actions hate and avoid life, and accordingly kill themselves: and the wicked seek others in whose company to spend their time, ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... lectures in this country. It will not convince the average student of nature that people can live forever, for in nature there is constant change. The order of life is birth, development, reproduction, decline and death. It is not likely that ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... necessary to follow for a time the fortune of the Virginia colony after the departure of Captain Smith. Of its disasters and speedy decline there is no more doubt than there is of the opinion of Smith that these were owing to his absence. The savages, we read in his narration, no sooner knew he was gone than they all revolted and spoiled and murdered ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... observed to be inconstant to his plans, or perhaps to carry on his affairs without any plan at all, is marked at once, by all prudent people, as a speedy victim to his own unsteadiness and folly. His more friendly neighbors may pity him, but all will decline to connect their fortunes with his; and not a few will seize the opportunity of making their fortunes out of his. One nation is to another what one individual is to another; with this melancholy distinction perhaps, that the former, with fewer of ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... predominant in the best period of Greece; the conviction under which her institutions were formed and flourished, and whose overthrow by the philosophy of a critical age was coincident with, if it was not the cause of, her decline. ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... declined. The name of itself was sufficient to make him decline; besides Worcester and I ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... determin'd to engage in those Kinds of Poetry and those Subjects in Criticism, which the Ancients have left us most imperfect. Here, if you fail, you may be still some help to him who shall Attempt it next; and if all decline it, apprehensive of no fair success, how should it ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... thousand pounds—on no better security than a verbal understanding that the money to pay the bills should be forwarded before they fell due. Competition, it is needless to say, was at the bottom of this insanely reckless system of trading. The native firms laid it down as a rule that they would decline to transact business with any house in the trade which refused to grant them their privilege. In the ease of Turlington's house, the foreign merchants had drawn their bills on him for sums large in the aggregate, if not large in themselves; had long since turned those bills into cash ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... her!—Her memory is the shrine Of pleasant thoughts, soft as the scent of flowers. Calm as on windless eve the sun's decline, Sweet as the song of birds among the bowers, Rich as a rainbow with its hues of light, Pure as the moonshine of an autumn night: ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... this was the fate of the Romans themselves, when, in the decline of the empire, they were obliged to pay tribute to the surrounding barbarians, is shown in lively colors by Salvian:—"We call that a gift which is a purchase, and a purchase of a condition the most hard and miserable. For all captives, when they are ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... not keep pace with one-twentieth part of the demands upon me, and because you saw no internal evidence in her application to induce you to single it out for any especial notice. That the tone of this letter renders you exceedingly glad you did so; and that you decline, from me, holding any correspondence with her. Something to that effect, after what flourish your ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... the history of my country and city to its fountain heads. I devoured old books, journals, and the precious documents to which my father had ready access, that passed from the attic treasure chests of the old houses in decline to the keeping of the Historical Society. As a lad I besought every gray head at my father's table to tell me a story, so what more natural, under the circumstances, than that my father should make ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... made by Mrs. Headley to her own riper years, one might have been induced to consider her rather in the decline of life; but such was not the case. Her splendid and matronly figure might indeed have impressed the superficial observer with the belief that she had numbered more than forty summers, but the unchained ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... friend and contemporary, Mehul, to whom he dedicated Medee, and who dedicated to him the beautiful Ossianic one-act opera Uthal. The direct results of his teaching at the conservatoire were the steady, though not as yet unhealthy, decline of French opera into a lighter style, under the amiable and modest Boieldieu and the irresponsible and witty Auber; for, as we have seen, Cherubini was quite incapable of making his ideals intelligible ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... in the deal and the shares began to decline in value. He put up more margins and still more, but it continued to decline. Finally under the spur of another "tip," the last of his own savings having gone to the insatiate brokers, he sent, to bolster his account and to save him from utter ruin, some bonds belonging ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Freeth, of Northlands in the County of Berkshire, Esquire, Gent, have one failing, and I freely confess it. I cannot keep a key. Were I as other men are—which, thank Heaven, I am not—I might wear a pound or so of hideous ironmongery chained to my person. This I decline to do, with the result that, as I say, I cannot keep a key. Of all the household stowaway places under my control (and Barbara limits their number) only one is locked; and that drawer containing I know not what treasures or rubbish is likely to continue so forever and ever—for the key ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... Upon the organization of this body, 15th November, 1820, John Adams was elected its President; an office which the infirmities of age compelled him to decline. For the interesting proceedings of the Convention on this occasion, the address of Chief Justice Parker, and the reply of Mr. Adams, see Journal of Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of Delegates chosen to revise the Constitution of Massachusetts, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... "I decline to meet those gentlemen," said the Captain, with rather a disturbed air. "If it be as you say, I have been athrociously deceived by some one, and on that person I'll ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... The Pope and the Order of Jesus opposed to each other The Order of Jesus Father Petre The King's Temper and Opinions The King encouraged in his Errors by Sunderland Perfidy of Jeffreys Godolphin; the Queen; Amours of the King Catharine Sedley Intrigues of Rochester in favour of Catharine Sedley Decline of Rochester's Influence Castelmaine sent to Rome; the Huguenots illtreated by James The Dispensing Power Dismission of Refractory Judges Case of Sir Edward Hales Roman Catholics authorised to hold Ecclesiastical Benefices; Sclater; Walker The Deanery ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Complete Contents of the Five Volumes • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "who divides his party on matters of detail, beyond the range of practical politics, is an enemy of popular progress. What I should desire to know is, whether Mr. Quarrier will go in heartily for Church Disestablishment? If not—well, I for my humble self must Decline to consider him a Radical ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity. It is in their lasting witness against men, in their quiet contrast with the transitional character of all things, in the strength which, through the lapse of seasons and times, and the decline and birth of dynasties, and the changing of the face of the earth, and of the limits of the sea, maintains its sculptured shapeliness for a time insuperable, connects forgotten and following ages with each other, and half constitutes the identity, as it concentrates ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... required me justly to be both to her; and consequently the more melancholy and thoughtful; and the less fit for others, who want only in a companion or a friend to be amused or entertained. My constitution too has had its share of decay as well as my spirits, and I am as much in the decline at forty as you at sixty. I believe we should be fit to live together could I get a little more health, which might make me not quite insupportable. Your deafness would agree with my dulness; you would not want ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... once happy island. Moreover, I saw that my presence was becoming a source of serious inconvenience to my host and to his family. They were attached to me, that I could not doubt; but neither could I doubt that it was unpleasant to them to have old acquaintances decline any further intercourse with them because they had allowed a Batrachian to sit at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... relative to himself became unfortunately verified; for his constitution, after this, began to decline, till at length his mortal destiny, in the eyes of his medical attendants, was sealed. But even then, when removed by pain and sickness from the discussion of political subjects, he never forgot this cause. In his own sufferings he was not unmindful of those ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... accessories, that, by their influence, gave a solemn beauty to its very desolation. It reminded one somewhat of the light which coming death throws upon the cheek of youth when he treacherously treads in the soft and noiseless steps of decline—or rather of that still purer light, which, when the aged Christian arrives at the close of a well spent life, accompanied by peace, and hope, and calmness, falls like a glory on his bed of death. The ruin was but small, a remnant ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the cause uv the decline uv the Dimocrisy. I seed it yisterday. I wuz a wanderin on the neighborin hills, a musin onto the cussednis uv humanity ez exemplified in the person uv the grocery keeper at the Corners, who unanimusly refoozed to give me further credit ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... thus satisfied that the debtor has been faithful, does not answer the end of the act of Parliament, if he declines to assent to the debtor's certificate; nor can any creditor decline it, but on principles which no man cares to own—namely, that of malice, and the highest resentment, which are things a Christian tradesman will not ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... adapt itself to this notice, as it has done to the decline of gold from 285 to 130 in less than a year. But it is urged that we have a thousand millions of debt to fund within three years, and therefore cannot resume. Did we not fund nearly a thousand millions at par in 1865, and most of this after ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... more extraordinary than the dream is Mr. C.'s inability to remember anything whatever "outside of his business". Another witness appears to decline to be called, "as it would be embarrassing to him in his business". This it is to ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... Yeoman Prose, That such may spell as are not Readers grown, To whom He that writes Wit, shews he hath none. Brave Shakespeare flow'd, yet had his Ebbings too, Often above Himselfe, sometimes below; Thou Alwayes Best; if ought seem'd to decline, 'Twas the unjudging Rout's mistake, not Thine: Thus thy faire SHEPHEARDESSE, which the bold Heape (False to Themselves and Thee) did prize so cheap, Was found (when understood) fit to be Crown'd, At wont 'twas worth two hundred thousand ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... to be exhilarated alone," said Fergus gallantly; "and you always have the effect of champagne on me anyway. I decline to say good-bye. I can't even believe it is 'au revoir' between us. We had such delightful days ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of Trajan the Roman Empire REACHED THE SUMMIT OF ITS POWER; but the first signs of decay were beginning to be seen in the financial distress of all Italy, and the decline of the free peasantry, until in the next century they were reduced to a condition ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... decline this respectable cover for his want of familiarity with matters which were obviously vital concerns, and perhaps the subjects of daily conversation, ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... my girl," says he, "there's no good keeping this up for my benefit. I'm not going into a decline, you know. I know as well as you do that she couldn't lose ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... didn't seriously bother our defenses of two-inch relux. Now tell me: what will blow up four-foot relux?" asked Arcot, looking at the fragments. "It seems to me those fellows don't need any help from us; they may decline ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... necessary when the concrete case arose to repudiate the principle to which we had thus committed ourselves. But it was a shameful thing to have put ourselves in such a position that it had to be repudiated, and it was inexcusable of us to decline to follow the principle in the case of the Lusitania without at the same time making frank confession of our error and misconduct by notifying all the powers with whom we had already made the treaties that they were withdrawn, because in practice we ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... flourished during the latter half of the fifteenth century, mentions no less than twenty-four Norfolk men who were recognised as prominent scholars, controversialists, historians, or students of science." {1} Coincident with the decline of monastic learning in Europe were the revival of secular learning and the invention of printing, which gave a great impetus to the collection of books, especially on the continent. The sixteenth century was a dark age in the history ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... that the minister is often overburdened with secular matters, is forced to leave the word and serve tables and loses much spirituality. When a minister's success depends largely and primarily upon amount of dollars raised by him his spiritual decline is rapid. Worldliness follows when desire for position or recognition in the church overcomes the desire to save men, and when the ordinary tricks of politics are resorted to in order to gain church distinctions. It is a reversal of Christ's order, ...
— The Defects of the Negro Church - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 10 • Orishatukeh Faduma
... fortress it is, when one or other of the gross mishaps of circumstance may subject them to a shock: and this happening in the presence of gentlemen, they are sustained by the within and the without to keep a smooth countenance, however severe their affliction. Men of heroic nerve decline similarly to let explosions shake them, though earth be shaken. Dragged into the monstrous grotesque of the scene at the Gardens, Livia and Henrietta went through the ordeal, masking any signs that they were stripped for a flagellation. Only, the fair cousins were unable to perceive a comic element ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Chelsea. He lived, so far as the world was concerned, in the complete starch of rectitude. He was a pillar of Society, and whatever age he had been born in, he would have accepted its orthodoxy. He was as grave a man as Holy Willie. Stevenson has commented on the gradual decline of his primness in the later years of the Diary. "His favourite ejaculation, 'Lord!' occurs," he declares, "but once that I have observed in 1660, never in '61, twice in '62, and at least five times in '63; after which the 'Lords' may be said to pullulate ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... for a moment on the landing, calculating whether it would be well for her to have the interview, or well to decline it. Her objects were two,—or, rather, her object was in its nature twofold. She was, naturally, anxious to drive John Eames to desperation; and anxious also, by some slight added artifice, to make sure of Cradell if Eames's desperation did not have a very speedy ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... persons by judicious management to live for many years, after it was thought they were in a deep decline, by avoiding weakening medicines, taking exercise on horse-back and on foot, and never ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... brought forward, and its head was put between the lion's jaws, it was almost in a swooning condition, and excited general pity. He had to get a new sheep every month, the daily fear causing them soon to decline unto death. ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... body than by the restoration of the moral life. It is natural, then, that the sects which showed this special proof of God's presence and power would grow faster than their spiritual competitors, but that they would decline more rapidly and surely than those which espoused more ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... Milesian gentleman showed us through them. It is the correct thing to have a ruin on your place; it is a kind of patent of gentility. If a banshee could be thrown in along with a ruin, a new man would give a great price for an old place. But banshees are getting scarce and decline to be caught. This ruin has been patched over, clumsily but earnestly, so that hardly a speck of the original ruin is left. It was delightful to listen to our Milesian guide. My companion was bound to get some information out of him. He was cautious, not knowing who we were or what design we might ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... existed after all in the minds of the people. His own house and premises were now so strongly secured, and his apprehension of nocturnal attacks so strongly justified by the threats he had already received, and the disorganized state of the country around him, that he was forced to decline receiving the tithe at unseasonable hours; it being impossible for him to know whether the offer of payment might not have been a plan of the people to get into his dwelling, and wreak their vengeance upon him and his sons. Under these circumstances, ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Edward Clarke, who mentioned incidentally that he lectured at the college forty years ago, said that there was a rise from the {229} beginning of that reign to the period 1850-60, and that from the latter date there had been a very strange and lamentable decline to the end of the reign, would he thought, be amply demonstrated. A glorious galaxy of talent adorned the years 1850-60. There were two great poets, two great novelists, and two great historians. The two great poets were Alfred ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... news had arrived from them—they had acceded to all his terms, and would enter upon East Lynne as soon as it was convenient. Miss Carlyle was full of congratulations; it was off their hands, she said; but the fist letter Mr. Carlyle wrote was—to decline them. He did not tell this to Miss Carlyle. The final touches to the house were given, preparatory to the reception of its inhabitants, and three maids and two men servants hired and sent there, upon board wages, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... family, pedigree, and his present residence, he began to betray some interest. The colonel told him all the news, and would no doubt have even expatiated on his ghostly visitant, had he not prudently concluded that his guest might decline to remain in a haunted inn. The stranger had spoken of staying a week; he had some private mining speculations to watch at Wynyard's Gulch,—the next settlement, but he did not care to appear openly at the "Gulch Hotel." He was ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... knighthood was offered to Adams when Queen Victoria visited Cambridge in 1847; but then, as on a subsequent occasion, his modesty led him to decline it. The Royal Society awarded him its Copley medal in 1848. In the same year the members of St John's College commemorated his success by founding in the university an Adams prize, to be given biennially for the best treatise ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 1834, Coleridge's health began to decline. Charles had written to him (in reply) on the 14th April, at which time his friend had been evidently unwell; for Lamb says that he is glad to see that he could write so long a letter. He was indeed very ill; and no further personal ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... the dreary void of the dark ages, the "ready to die;" Philadelphia, the rise of Protestantism, "an open door, a little strength;" and Laodicea, (the riches of civilization choking the plant of Christianity,) its decline, and, but for the Founder's second coming, its fall; if, indeed, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... decline her invitation; and by changing the subject, put a stop to her entreaties. She thought it probable that as they lived in the same county, Mrs. Palmer might be able to give some more particular account of Willoughby's general character, than could be gathered from the Middletons' ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... law or custom. So far as I can ascertain, your complaints are chiefly against the action and attitude of the missionaries of the Roman Catholic faith; and, as these are under the exclusive protection and control of the Government of France, I might with great propriety decline to discuss a matter with which the Government of the United States has no direct interest or concern, for the reason that none of its citizens are charged with violating treaty or local law, ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... certain death, and I wound one arm round her waist, and held her forcibly down in her seat, while with the other I endeavoured to assist her in the hopeless task of stopping the runaway ponies. Everything was against us: the ground was slightly on the decline; the thaw had not yet reached the sheltered road we were travelling, and the wheels rung against its frozen surface as they spun round with a velocity that seemed to add to the excitement of our flying steeds. Ever and anon we bounded and bumped over some rut ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... been much in society as yet. I have many visitations, but, until I clear off the accumulated rubbish of three years which lies upon my table, I must decline seeing much of my friends. I have seen twice your sisters the Misses Delancy, and was prevented from being at their house last Friday evening by the severest snow-storm we have had this season. Our friends the Jays I have ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... Their labor has been long and their anxiety great, but their constancy and patience have equaled the emergency. The result of their life's work may even disappoint them if they judge it by the anticipation of their more sanguine years. Yet, in their decline of life, they see some of the fruits they prayed for, and they will not complain when they remember that the measure of their ...
— Speeches of His Majesty Kamehameha IV. To the Hawaiian Legislature • Kamehameha IV
... confusion arises when people decline to classify themselves as we have classified them. Prophecy would be so much easier if only they would stay where we put them. But, as a matter of fact, a phrase like the working class will cover only some of the truth for a part of the time. When you take all the ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... hear that," said the Absolute Fool; "for it makes it necessary for me to decline the kind offer of your daughter in marriage. If I marry a princess at all, she must be one who can trace back her lineage through a long line of royal ancestors." And as he spoke, his breast swelled ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... from the young girl in the same way. On his return, however, he grew more bold, and soon became openly engaged to her. The romance is a sadly beautiful one; for this fair girl who was his inspiration during the years of his hardest struggles, finally fell into a decline and died just as he was beginning to earn the money that would have made them ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... men he had patronised shut their doors upon him in the day of his poverty. As for his relations, he had turned his back upon them long ago, when first he followed in the shining wake of that gorgeous vessel, the Royal George. In this hour of his penniless decline there was none to help him. To have outlived every affection and every pleasure is the chief bitterness of old age; and this bitterness Horatio Paget suffered in all its fulness, though his years were ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... reputation is a something too mean," said Lady Esmondet indignantly; "in Mrs. Clayton's last letter to me she asks me to 'decline to receive him, unless he publicly acknowledges his hidden wife;' she says, though 'the women still will pet him, their husbands are down upon him;' she further says, 'Clayton says he has no right to run loose with ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... was made to engage. The British ships bore down on the enemy. It seemed no longer possible that he would decline to fight. On board the Terrible all stood ready at their guns, eyeing the foe. Sam Smatch had been despatched with his little charge into the hold, and ordered, unless he would incur the most dreadful pains and penalties, not to return ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... by those who have read this history thus far that the record of the Church generally was far more honourable in this struggle than in many which preceded it: the reason is not difficult to find; the decline of theology enured to the advantage of religion, and religion ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... food can be swallowed through a lumen 5 millimeters in diameter. The inability to maintain the nutrition is evidenced by loss of weight and the rapid development of cachexia. When the stenosis becomes so severe that the fluid intake is limited, rapid decline occurs from water starvation. Pain is usually a late symptom of the disease. It may be of an aching character and referred to the vertebral region or to the neck; or it may only accompany the act of swallowing. Blood-streaked, ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson |
