"Decay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... agriculture. Every furrow that is plowed is plowed for her; every tree that is planted is planted for her; every crop that is harvested is harvested for her; and every trainload of grain is moving toward her as its destination. But for her, farm machinery would be silent, orchards would decay, trains would cease to move, and commerce would be no more. She it is that causes the wheels to turn, the harvesters to go forth to the fields, the experiment stations to be equipped and operated, the markets to throb with activity, and ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... men used to bring into the field enormous bodies of cavalry, raised by themselves, forming the staple of the Ottoman armies; and Mr. Slade, in his book on Turkey, places the alterations of Mahmoud with respect to these Beys among the prominent causes of the decay of the Ottoman empire. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... reader that the secretion [page 88] appears to be to a certain extent antiseptic, as it checks the appearance of mould and infusoria, thus preventing for a time the discoloration and decay of such substances as the white of an egg, cheese, &c. It therefore acts like the gastric juice of the higher animals, which is known to arrest putrefaction by ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... behind and through all things. Then there are those connected with the joy of life, the throbbing of the great life spirit, the gladness of being, the desire of the sexes; and also those connected with the sadness and mystery of death and decay, &c. ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... 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 ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... breathed out Against our God-wrought souls by the world's furnace. No new thing, this camp about the city: Nebuchadnezzar and his hosted men But fearfully image, like a madman's dream, The fierce infection of the world, that waits To soil the clean health of the soul and mix Stooping decay into its upward nature. Soul in the world is all besieged: for first The dangerous body doth desire it; And many subtle captains of the mind Secretly wish against its fortune; next, Circle on circle of lascivious world Lust round ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... malady which indeed may often be observed to affect the whole system. It is caused by decay of tissue from old age and is generally aggravated by repeated brushing. A peculiar feature of the complaint is the lack of veracity on the part of the patient in reference to the cause of his uneasiness. Another invariable ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... Valley the dead were the eternal citizens, their homes were immortal. The dead have no abiding cities here, and even the palaces of the living will be crumbled into powder before Egypt's tombs show any signs of wear and decay." ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... number that were in ruins, the officer replied that it was considered so much more meritorious an action to build a pagoda than to repair one that, after the death of the founder, they were generally suffered to fall into decay. ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... do this permanence and durability of the corner-stone, in contrast with the decay and ruin of the building in whose foundations it was placed, remind the mason that when this earthly house of his tabernacle shall have passed away, he has within him a sure foundation of eternal life—a corner-stone of immortality—an emanation from that Divine ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... there is a general Decay of Moisture in the Globe of the Earth. This they chiefly ascribe to the Growth of Vegetables, which incorporate into their own Substance many fluid Bodies that never return again to their former Nature: But, with Submission, they ought to throw into their Account those innumerable ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to the said Herdegen Schopper, my dear brother, Margery's book of memorabilia right truly shows forth the manner of his life and mind in the bloom of his youth, and verily it is a sorrowful task for me to set forth the decay and end of so noble ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... city, the mind tends to be immersed in a restricted and specialised round of duties and pleasures, and loses "natural" tone. While, on the one hand, there is over-stimulation of certain modes of sensation, others are largely or wholly atrophied. The finest susceptibilities decay. The eye and ear, the most delicate avenues of the soul, are deprived of their native stimulants. In short, city conditions unduly inhibit the natural development of many ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... repairs and improvements, are allowed gradually to succumb to the tooth of time and the beating of the elements. This process is so slow and insidious that those who live in the midst of it scarcely notice the decay that is taking place. Hence it continues to grow worse until the farm premises assume an unattractive and dilapidated appearance. Weeds grow up around the buildings and along the roads, so slowly, that they remain unnoticed ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... 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 ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... head, he proceeded into the town straight to his own house. He found it sadly fallen to decay. Before it lay a strange herd-boy in tattered garments, and near him an old worn-out dog, which growled and showed his teeth at Peter when he called him. He entered by the opening, which had formerly been closed by a door, but found ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... moral lies too plain below, We view well pleased at distance all the sights Of arms and palfreys, battles, fields and fights, And damsels in distress and courteous knights, But when we look too near, the shades decay And all the pleasing landscape ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Glebychev Ravine, close to the old Cathedral guarded by one of Pugachev's guns, stands a mansion with a facade of ochre-coloured-columns. In olden days, when it was the residence of the princely Rastorovs' balls were held there, but decay had set in during the last twenty years, and Kseniya Davydovna—the mistress—old, ill, a spinster, was drawing to the end ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... the centre of each man's heart A longing and love for the good and pure, And if but an atom, or larger part, I know that this shall forever endure. After the body has gone to decay— Yes, after the ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... all the delights which Ogier enjoyed for more than a hundred years. Time flew by, leaving no impression of its flight. Morgana's youthful charms did not decay, and Ogier had none of those warnings of increasing years which less favored mortals never fail to receive. There is no knowing how long this blissful state might have lasted, if it had not been for an accident, by which Morgana one day, in a ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... white marble, with its tower leaning at one end, and the blue mountains far away in the background, looking, however, much nearer than is actually the case. Distance is almost annihilated in this clear, dry, Italian atmosphere, which also to a great extent prevents decay, the most ancient buildings looking often singularly fresh. "Antiquity refuses to look ancient in Italy; it insists on ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... present work. "Ethology" would be a convenient term for the study of manners, customs, usages, and mores, including the study of the way in which they are formed, how they grow or decay, and how they affect the interests which it is their purpose to serve. The Greeks applied the term "ethos" to the sum of the characteristic usages, ideas, standards, and codes by which a group was differentiated and individualized in character from other ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... followed the Peace of Utrecht are a period of decadence and decay; a depressing period exhibiting the spectacle of a State, which had played a heroic part in history, sinking, through its lack of inspiring leadership and the crying defects inherent in its system of government, to the position of a third-rate power. The commanding abilities of the great stadholders ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... that in our decay of trade. I have seen, for these hundred years, that religion and ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... presented me to myself, on awaking this morning, so lack-lustre and trite. But I must needs take my petulance, contrasting it with my accustomed morning hopefulness, as a sign of the ageing of appetite, of a decay in the very capacity of enjoyment. We need some imaginative stimulus, some not impossible ideal such as may shape vague hope, and transform it into effective desire, to carry us year after year, without ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... previous chapter we considered certain aspects of the attitude assumed by our Aryan forefathers towards the great processes of Nature in their ordered sequence of Birth, Growth, and Decay. We saw that while on one hand they, by prayer and supplication, threw themselves upon the mercy of the Divinity, who, in their belief, was responsible for the granting, or withholding, of the water, ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... bare fields. A wild back-end had followed on the tracks of a marvellous summer. Though it was still October the leaves lay heaped beneath the hedgerows, the bracken had yellowed to a dismal hue of decay, and the heather had turned from the purple of its flower to the grey-blue of its passing. Rain had fallen, and the long road-side pools were fired by the westering sun. Glenavelin looked crooked and fantastic ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... aimed at. He says that there is in the Vatican a compartment of which the middle portion has been painted by Giulio Romano[107] in fresco, and at each of the ends there is a figure painted by Raphael in oil. The fresco painting has been so often repaired in consequence of decay, that not a vestige of the original work remains; while the two figures painted by Raphael in oil still stand out in all their original freshness, and even improved from what they were when ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... crawl over the festering black ooze. The water in the labyrinth of channels between the mangroves was thick and discoloured; there was not a breath of air, the heat was unbearable, and the whole place steamed with decay ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... behold and cross are not picturesque,—they are wild and inhuman as the sea. In them you are in a maze, in a weltering world of woods; you can see neither the earth nor the sky, but a confusion of the growth and decay of centuries, and must traverse them by your compass or your science of woodcraft,—a rift through the trees giving one a glimpse of the opposite range or of the valley beneath, and he is more at sea than ever; one does not know his own farm or settlement when framed in these ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... the Netherlands town life had been, as we have seen, slower of development.[13] Hence for these Northern cities the period of decay had not yet come. In fact, the fourteenth century marks the zenith of their power. Their great trading league, the Hansa, was now fully established, and through the hands of its members passed all the wealth of Northern ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... little holes where the alkalis have worked their way out. It is as fragile and tender as an old oil-painting that needs to be taken off a rotten canvas and re-lined. If you examine a piece of old glass whose lead has had time to decay, you will find that the glass itself is often in an equally tender state. The painting would remain for years, probably for centuries yet, if untouched, just as dust, without any attachment at all, will hang on a vertical ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... vain—the all-composing hour Resistless falls; the Muse obeys the pow'r. She comes! she comes! the sable throne behold Of Night primeval, and of Chaos old! Before her fancy's gilded clouds decay, And all its varying rainbows die away. Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires, The meteor drops, and in a flash expires. As one by one, at dread Medea's strain, The sick'ning stars fade off the ethereal plain; As Argus's eyes, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... course in this measuring, the elasticity of the yarn is not regarded, nor repetitions tried as a test of accuracy" (244. 108). Moreover, "the string with which the determination was made must be hung on the hinge of a gate on the premises of the infant's parents, and as the string by gradual decay passes away, so passes away the 'go-backs.' But if the string should be lost, the ailment will linger until a new test is made and the string once more hung out to decay. Sometimes the cure is hastened by fixing the string so that ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... permanently maintained by the carbon cycle. Thus the carbon of coal that is burned in the stove returns to the air in carbon dioxid; and all combustion of coal and wood, grass and weeds, and all other vegetable matter returns carbon to the atmosphere. All decay of organic matter, as in the fermentation of manure in the pile and the rotting of vegetable matter in the soil, is a form of slow combustion and carbon dioxid is the chief produce of such decay. Sometimes an appreciable amount of heat is developed, as in the steaming pile of stable refuse ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... posthumous justice. The embalmed body of Duke Adolphus of Gueldres, last of the Egmonts, who had reigned in that province, was dragged from its sepulchre and recognized. Although it had been there for ninety years, it was as uncorrupted, "Owing to the excellent spices which had preserved it from decay," as upon the day of burial. Thrown upon the marble floor of the church, it lay several days exposed to the execrations of the multitude. The Duke had committed a crime against his father, in consequence of which the province which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sandy margin of a stream, where the thick bushes bore a bloom that looked like a long caterpillar, they reached an iron spring, deep red, a running wound on the face of the earth. They came to an old water mill, long ago fallen into decay and halted to listen to the water pouring over the ruined dam. They turned into a broader road, and now saw numerous vehicles, bright with calico and dun with home-spun, all moving in one direction, toward the old Mt. Zion meeting house on a ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... of that stately place, long since passed into other hands, and fallen to decay, but then (if old Prince speaks true) one of the noblest ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... would have mentioned several which we are not now generally accustomed to consider in such a light. They would have pointed not merely to the building of churches, the founding of schools, the spread of peace, the decay of slavery; but to the importation of foreign literature, the extension of the arts of reading, writing, painting, architecture, the improvement of agriculture, and the introduction of new and more successful methods of the cure of diseases. They might have expressed ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... first putting the Rand mines on a sound footing as far as their water supply is concerned, would have constituted me a bigot. Ten acres of irrigable land in the Mooi or Klip river valleys, with Johannesburg in the full tide of prosperity, will yield as good a rent as forty acres with Johannesburg in decay." ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... the earth has been geologically explored, and no part with sufficient care, as the important discoveries made every year in Europe prove. No organism wholly soft can be preserved. Shells and bones decay and disappear when left on the bottom of the sea, where sediment is not accumulating. We probably take a quite erroneous view, when we assume that sediment is being deposited over nearly the whole bed ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... its uniforms and national costumes were. There were domed and pillared structures of white stone and marble, there were great arches, and city gates, and churches. But many of them were half in ruins through war, and neglect, and decay. They passed the half-unroofed cathedral, standing in the sunshine in its great square, still in all its disaster one of the most beautiful structures in Europe. In the exultant crowd were still to be seen ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... proud, and complain as little as possible; but the decay inside this house, already so modest, is manifested in many ways. Two beautiful engravings, the last of their father's souvenirs, had been sold in an hour of extreme want; and one could see, by the clean spots upon the wall, where ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... anticipation of her doctors. There are constant references to her state in my brother's letters. The old serenity remained unchanged to the last. She suffered no pain and was never made querulous by her infirmities. Slowly and gradually she seemed to pass into a world of dreams as the decay of her physical powers made the actual world more indistinct and shadowy. The only real subject for regret was the strain imposed upon the daughter who was tenderly nursing her, and doing what could be done to soothe her passage through the last troubles she was to suffer. It was as impossible ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... quicken the almost dead patriotism of the masses, and to educate them anew in the high and pure sentiments they had suffered to be forgotten, and, in forgetting which, many another ration has gone to irretrievable decay ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... soldier, and the wife pined in the lonely cottage—growing every year more careless and desponding, as her anxiety and fears for her absent husband, of whom no tidings ever reached her, accumulated. Her children died, and left her cheerless and alone; and at last she died also; and the cottage fell to decay. We must say, that there is very considerable pathos in the telling of this simple story; and that they who can get over the repugnance excited by the triteness of its incidents, and the lowness of its ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... presence. She has not craved permission, it has come by tacit consent. Mitsha has felt that Say was approaching the point when the soul breaks loose and flits to another realm, and she wishes to remain with her to the last. If that soul should drop like a shrivelled fruit, to decay and perish forever, nobody would bend to gaze fondly at it. But if it flutter upward, we follow it with our eyes as long as we can, unconsciously thinking, "How happy you are, free now; and how much I wish to be with you." The very grief caused by the separation, ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... cooling fountains roll through flow'ry meads, Here woods, Lycoris, lift their verdant heads; Here could I wear my careless life away, And in thy arms insensibly decay. Instead of that, me frantick love detains, 'Mid foes, and dreadful darts, and bloody plains: While you—and can my soul the tale believe, Far from your country, lonely wand'ring leave Me, me your lover, barbarous ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... feeling they raise. In all the relations of mortality to immortality, of body to soul, there are painful and even ugly things, things to which, by common consent, we refer only upon dire necessity, and with a sense of shame. Happy they in whom the mortal has put on immortality! Decay and its accompaniments, all that makes the most beloved of the appearances of God's creation a terror, compelling us to call to the earth for succour, and pray her to take our dead out of our sight, ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... young and smiling in the first delight of spring. The piety or interest of the community, which guards the entrance to the theatre by a fee of certain centesimi, may be concerned in keeping the wall free from the grass and vines which are stealing the half-excavated arena back to forgetfulness and decay; but whatever agency it was, it weakened the appeal that the wall made to ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... Weston she had kept tolerable health, but certainly her constitution was not strong, and the slavery of Walworth Road threatened her with premature decay. Her sisters counselled wisely. Coming to London was a mistake. She would have had better chances at Weston, notwithstanding the extreme discretion with which she was obliged to ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... depot of the North-West Company falling rapidly to decay, presenting in its present ruinous state but a shadow of departed greatness. It is now occupied as a petty post, a few Indians and two or three old voyageurs being the sole representatives of the crowded throngs of former times. It must have ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... November—the Earthquake day— 5 There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay, A general flavor of mild decay, But nothing local, as one may say. There couldn't be—for the Deacon's art Had made it so like in every part 10 That there wasn't a chance for one ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... water. The face of the rock had been levelled too, and upon it there were remains of a rough kind of inscription, while, upon examining the dressed stones which lay here and there, several, in spite of their decay, still retained the shape which showed that they had formed ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... lock came the smell of stagnant water, of old decay. The mold that proliferated over the ramp did not extend into the wreck. But other things grew inside, pale and oily tendrils festooning the walls. Dasinger removed his night glasses, brought out a pencil light, let the beam fan out, and moved ...
— The Star Hyacinths • James H. Schmitz
... if his services can be useful to his country; holding that to be false pride, which postpones the public good to any private or personal considerations. But I am past service. The hand of age is upon me. The decay of bodily faculties apprizes me that those of the mind cannot be unimpaired, had I not still better proofs. Every year counts by increased debility, and departing faculties keep the score. The last year it was the sight, this it is the hearing, the next something else ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... their commerce. There is also a further contrast in the fact that in the early days the advantages of frugality and simple habits of life were on the side of the missionaries. Roman society especially was beginning to suffer that decay which is the inevitable consequence of long-continued luxury, while the Church observed temperance in all things and excelled in the virtues which always tend to moral and ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... us, however, be too prodigal of our pity upon Pegasus. There is no reason why this animal should be exempt from labour, or illness, or decay, any more than any of the other creatures of God's world. If he gets the whip, Pegasus often deserves it, and I for one am quite ready to protest my friend, George Warrington, against the doctrine which poetical sympathisers are inclined to put forward, viz., that of letters, and what is called ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... door, shaking hands and greeting one another with the plain but cordial courtesy of the country. Gregory heard one russet-apple-faced man say that "Betsy was better," and an old colored woman, with a visage like that apple in black and mottled decay, said in cheerful tones that "little Sampson was gittin' right peart." A great raw-boned farmer asked a half-grown boy, "How's yer mare?" and the boy replied that the animal was better also. All seemed better that bright day, and from a group near came the expression, "Crops were good this year." ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... were a pair of spurred military boots, green and rotten with decay. In them were the leg bones of a man. Among the tiny bones of the hands was an ancient fountain pen, as good, apparently, as the day it was made, and a metal covered memoranda book, closed over the ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... hundred and sixty years is eminently the history of physical, of moral, and of intellectual improvement. Those who compare the age on which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in their imagination may talk of degeneracy and decay: but no man who is correctly informed as to the past will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... been steeled in the armoury of experience), are as useful as any that can be employed by his opponents. If, accordingly, we have assumed, from a non-speculative point of view, the immaterial nature of the soul, and are met by the objection that experience seems to prove that the growth and decay of our mental faculties are mere modifications of the sensuous organism—we can weaken the force of this objection by the assumption that the body is nothing but the fundamental phenomenon, to which, as a necessary condition, all sensibility, and consequently all thought, relates ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... was in these that the Christian slaves taken by the corsairs were confined. For many years previous to the French invasion, however, the number of prisoners had been so trifling, that many of these terrific buildings had fallen to decay, and presented, when the French army entered Algiers, little more than piles of mouldering ruins. The inmates of the Bagnio when taken by the French were the crews of two French brigs, which a short time before had been wrecked off Cape ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... those of the material senses; [1] for instance, intelligent matter, or mortal mind, material birth, growth, and decay: they are the forever-existing realities of divine Science; wherein God and man are perfect, and man's reason is at rest in God's wisdom,— [5] who comprehends and reflects all real mode, form, indi- ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... the honey-moon illuminates the chamber of a young couple, all goes along of itself. So long as the husband hastens to anticipate every wish, we have merit and sense enough to let him do it. But at a later moment, the scene changes. How, then, are we to retain our sway? Youth and beauty decay, and the charm of wit and intelligence is not sufficient. In order to remain mistresses of our homes, we must practice the most divine of all the virtues—gentleness—a blind, dumb, deaf gentleness of demeanor, that pardons everything ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... young dogs of the day are all either unprincipled heathen, like yourself, or Amadisses, like our worthy host." The old gentleman's face and manners were like those of a patriarch, regretting the general decay of virtue, not the imaginary diminution of a single vice. He concluded with a sigh that, "The true preux des dames went out with the full ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... consciousness; he roused himself sharply, straightened his shoulders, glanced about to see if his tacit surrender had been noticed—this lassitude creeping over him, the indifference, was, at last, the edge of the authentic shadow of age, of decay; it was the deadening of the sensibilities preceding death. He banished it immediately, and all his desire, his need, his sense of the horror of the past day, surged back, reanimated him, sent the blood ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... tower had rung out, filling the valley with their sweet silver clamour; but as the boys approached and skirted the wall, some distance to the right, the Mission might have been as lifeless as it is this year, in its desertion and decay. ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... had been lying for several months. A black wooden tablet, bearing the words 'Caries tuberculosa', hung at the head of the bed, and shook at each movement of the patient. The poor fellow's leg had had to be amputated above the knee, the result of a tubercular decay of the bone. He was a peasant, a potato-grower, and his forefathers had grown potatoes before him. He was now on his own, after having been in two situations; had been married for three years and had a baby son with a tuft of flaxen hair. ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... the case of Keats, awakes little emotion in him. He will fly to the past for his subjects. Moreover, it is perhaps worth saying that when the poets cease to write well about women, the phase of poetry they represent, however beautiful it be, is beginning to decay. When poetry is born into a new life, women are as living in it as men. Womanhood became at once one of its dominant subjects in Tennyson and Browning. Among the new political, social, religious, philosophic and artistic ideas which were then borne like torches through England, the idea of the ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... reign of the degenerate Commodus was such as surely to forecast the decline of Roman power and supremacy. In the next hundred years there were twenty-three emperors, thirteen of whom were murdered by their own soldiers or servants—a tragic period of cruelty, licentiousness, and decay. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... which is in the spring. The flowers of this sort are produced singly, and at their first appearance have a fine Carnation colour on their outside, but this fades away to a pale or almost white before the flowers decay. This plant is so hardy as to thrive in the open air in England, provided the roots are planted[B] in a warm situation and on a dry soil; it may be propagated by offsets from the roots, which they put out pretty plentifully, ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 7 - or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... wouldst not deem me wise, should I contend With thee, O Neptune, for the sake of men, Who flourish like the forest leaves awhile, And feed upon the fruits of earth and then Decay ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... to servitude for a generation, of degrading the lives of millions of human beings, and of depriving a whole nation of happiness should be abhorrent and detestable,—abhorrent and detestable, even if it were possible, even if it enriched ourselves, even if it did not sow the decay of the whole civilized life of Europe. Some preach it in the name of Justice. In the great events of man's history, in the unwinding of the complex fates of nations Justice is not so simple. And if it were, nations are not authorized, by religion or by natural morals, ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... I cannot denay Yet prayse your selfe so muche ye may For welth oftentimes doth decay 30 ...
— The Interlude of Wealth and Health • Anonymous
... are in the imperial system two causes of decay and of rot silently at work. They may not be the faults of the Emperor, but they are such misfortunes as may cause the fall of the Empire. The first is an absolute divorce between the political system and the intellectual culture ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... they have in common with us, the most grievous sins, because they do not follow their calling, but concern themselves with their honors and emoluments. They neglect the churches and suffer them to miserably decay. They condemn the true doctrine and teach idolatry. In short, in public life they are wise, but in their own sphere they are utterly foolish. This is the most destructive evil ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... but open and well-wooded country that seemed well able to support a population of natives, had there been any to support. An hour after inspanning they came to another and larger village, which had fallen to decay as had the first. Monkeys were everywhere, grinning and chattering among the ruined huts, and in the center of the old village, fastened to a still sturdy post, they came upon a pair of heavy iron hand-cuffs, which were simply a ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... surprise, 'Are these the people who stand at the top of pagan civilization, and who look upon all men as barbarous, except themselves?' Besides, everything looks old. Buildings, temples, even the rocks and the hills have a peculiar appearance of age and seem to be falling into decay. I am happy to say, however, that as we become better acquainted with the country and the people, many of these unfavorable impressions are removed. After passing a little to the north of Amoy, the appearance of the coast entirely changes. Even in this mountainous ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... reserved for sowing must be put into the ground quite fresh, as it soon loses its power of germination. Clean, well-formed berries, free from injury by insects, or the decay of ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... to act at all. No one counted on your awakening. No one dreamt you would ever awake. The Council had surrounded you with antiseptic conditions. As a matter of fact, we thought that you were dead—a mere arrest of decay. And—but it is too complex. We dare not suddenly—-while you are ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... white and that was stained by the smoke of years almost to a monochrome of dirty brown. From the lofty cross-beams, on long sennit strings, hung the heads of enemies taken aforetime in jungle raid and sea foray. The place breathed the very atmosphere of decay and death, and the imbecile ancient, curing in the smoke the token of death, was himself palsiedly shaking into the disintegration ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... up at night what thou hast done by day And in the morning what thou hast to do: Dress and undress thy soul: mark the decay And growth of it; if with thy watch that too Be dowl, then wind up both; since we shall be Most surely judged, ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... habits, monkeys were to a great extent freed from all these dangers. Whether devoured by beasts or birds of prey, or dying a natural death, their bones would usually be left on dry land, where they would slowly decay under atmospheric influences. Only under very exceptional circumstances would they become embedded in aqueous deposits; and instead of being surprised at their rarity we should rather wonder that so many have been discovered in a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... by sudden death. Misfortune had struck them gracefully, cutting off their erratic histories with a catastrophic dash, instead of, as with many, attenuating each life to an uninteresting meagreness, through long years of wrinkles, neglect, and decay. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... rather than action," she wrote—exactly what Miss Anthony had feared. She was now in her seventy-seventh year and naturally her children desired that she should give up public work; but Miss Anthony knew that inaction meant rust and decay and, as her fellow-worker was in the prime of mental vigor, she was determined that the world should continue to profit by it. Her address this year was entitled "The Solitude of Self," considered by many one ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... face over the stable roof opposite, as though at a lamp which did not burn as well as it used to do. In the dusty golden light she was like a figure in a tapestry. Perhaps in its early days it had been a trifle crude, a trifle harsh in colour, but now worn and threadbare, trembling on decay, it had attained a rare and ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... ranks of citizens are always oppressed and miserable. Indeed this must necessarily be the case, otherwise trade and manufactures, which flourish principally by the low price of labour and provisions, must decay. In Carolina, though exposed to more troubles and hardships for a few years, such industrious people had better opportunities than in Europe for advancing to an easy and independent state. Hence it happened ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... rapidly melting away. The intellectual superiority of the oppressed people only rendered them more keenly sensible of their political degradation. Literature and taste, indeed, still disguised with a flush of hectic loveliness and brilliancy the ravages of an incurable decay. The iron had not yet entered into the soul. The time was not yet come when eloquence was to be gagged, and reason to be hoodwinked, when the harp of the poet was to be hung on the willows of Arno, and the right hand of the painter to forget its ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... shade, only served to bring out the shabbiness of broken plaster and paintless window; a shamefaced yet aggressive shabbiness, where high-arched doorways and wide entries spoke to better days, and also to a subsequent decay, now openly admitted in the little placards which dotted them here and there, bearing the bold-typed words GARCON LOGIS, and dangling bravely yellow from the windows of the cheap lodgings they proclaimed vacant. It was very still; the hoarse voice of a fruit-seller crying his wares in the adjoining ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... tender mercies of the weakest creature in the household, that is, his grandchild, Valentine; a dumb and frozen carcass, in fact, living painlessly on, that time may be given for his frame to decompose without his consciousness of its decay." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... battered, so broken, that its raison d'etre had come to be a matter of speculation. Into this seat I now inducted our visitor. He was as shabby as the funeral coach itself, but had kept up more gentility in his decay. I had not seen him for four years, and the lack of any change in his appearance surprised me. There he was, as well shaven, as threadbare, as jaunty and well-mannered, as in the old days when we used to play the siege ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... in preference to rum, of which spirit also there was plenty on board. This circumstance is here noticed, because a very general but erroneous opinion was found to prevail on the Victory's arrival in England, that rum preserves the dead body from decay much longer and more perfectly than any other spirit, and ought therefore to have been used: but the fact is quite the reverse, for there are several kinds of spirit much better for that purpose than rum; and as their appropriateness ...
— The Death of Lord Nelson • William Beatty
... may goe out divers wayes: first by subtraction of fewell; if a man forbeare his accustomed meales, will not his naturall heat decay? The Levites that kept Gods watch in the Temple, were charged expressely, morning & evening, if not oftner, to looke to the lights and the fire. Hee that shall forget (at the least) with the Curfeau-bell in the evening to rake uppe his zeale by prayer, ...
— A Coal From The Altar, To Kindle The Holy Fire of Zeale - In a Sermon Preached at a Generall Visitation at Ipswich • Samuel Ward
... Universities than elsewhere; of whom, though you see them alive, and feel certain enough that they must have a History, no History seems to be discoverable; or only such as men give of mountain rocks and antediluvian ruins: That they have been created by unknown agencies, are in a state of gradual decay, and for the present reflect light and resist pressure; that is, are visible and tangible objects in this phantasm world, where so much ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... child who had been recently buried there. Eli Bruce, hearing of the circumstance, proposed to Mr. H. that they should repair to the spot, with suitable instruments, and endeavor to find some relics. The soil was a light loam, which would be dry and preserve bones for centuries without decay. A search enabled them to come to a pit but a slight distance from the surface. The top of the pit was covered with small slabs of the Medina sandstone, and was twenty-four feet square, four and a half feet deep, planes ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... every hole and crevice in the uneven pavement was filled with rotting organic matter washed down from the higher levels by the frequent rains, and when the sea-breeze died away at night the whole atmosphere of the city seemed to be pervaded by a sickly, indescribable odor of corruption and decay. I had expected, as a matter of course, to find Santiago in bad sanitary condition, but I must confess that I felt a little sinking of the heart when I first breathed that polluted air and realized that for me there was ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... half-won, the lover passionate; He hath no grace for weakness and decay: The tender Wife, the Widow bent and gray, The feeble Sire whose footstep faltereth,— All these he leadeth by the lonely way ... There is no ...
— The Dance of Death • Hans Holbein
... centuries even to this time and day—and a little further; for these monarchies are not yet wholly destroyed, and the stone-kingdom does not yet fill the world. Of this fifth, or stone kingdom, there is to be no end by conquest, or decay, or succession. Daniel says that this kingdom shall not be left to other people—that is, it shall never ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... reign of Asoka did not last very long; and the Hindus had the support of very powerful kings before and after the commencement of the Christian era. Moreover, the author says, in p. 132 of his book, that Buddhism was in a state of decay in the seventh century. It is hardly to be expected that the reaction against the Buddhists would commence when their religion was already in a state of decay. No great religious teacher or reformer would waste his time and energy in demolishing a religion already ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... the section on the north side the main business and residential quarter. This was not to be; though the old business blocks still stand across the Broadway bridge, and many of the finer homes of that period, now falling into decay, remain on the hills along the ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... The Judge-Governors (Alcalde Mayor). The Reforms of 1886. 213 Cost of Spanish Insular Government. The Provincial Civil Governor's duties. 214 The position of Provincial Civil Governor. Local Funds. Provincial poverty. 216 Highways and Public Works. Cause of national decay. 218 Fortunes made easily. Peculations. Town Local Government. 220 The Gobernadorcillo (petty-governor). The Cabeza de Barangay (Tax-collector). 222 The Cuadrillero (guard). The Fallas (tax). ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... their abode, and had ever since retained for Mazin the purest affection, ran with eagerness to inquire after his health. Great was her affliction on beholding him upon his bed, pale, and apparently in a state of rapid decay. After many kind questions, to which he returned no answers, she entreated earnestly, by the vow of brotherly and sisterly adoption which had past between them, that he would inform her of the cause of his unhappy dejection; assuring him that she would ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... the spirit of the whole machine, I discovered the other day that the conductors upon the South-Eastern trams at Hythe start their morning with absolutely no change at all. Recently the roof of the station at Charing Cross fell in—through sheer decay.... A whole rich county now stagnates hopelessly under the grip of this sample of private enterprise, towns fail to grow, trade flows sluggishly from point to point. No population in the world would stand ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... in the churchyard. It measured about 17 feet in circumference at 5 feet from the ground, and was called the Bell Tree, because the church bell which summoned the villagers to worship was suspended from one of its branches. The tree began to show signs of decay, so eventually the bell had to be taken down and a belfry built ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor |
