"Decay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be said of those who die little by little, who outlive themselves, and watch the slow decay of ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... until exposure and decay had weakened his hand. In his first week at Dublin he carried off L1000, and it was only his fateful interview with Sir John Fielding that gave him poverty for a bedfellow. Even at the end, when he slunk from town to town, a notorious outlaw, he had inspirations of his ancient magnificence, and—at ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide—abide, because there is no portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... sample of the book into carbon dioxide to geigercount the radioactivity in the carbon. You see, all living things like the cotton in the rags the paper is made of absorb the radioactive carbon fourteen that is formed in the upper atmosphere by cosmic radiation. Then it begins to decay and we can measure very accurately the amount, which gives us an absolute ...
— The House from Nowhere • Arthur G. Stangland
... insolence of the successful parvenu is only the necessary continuance of the career of the needy struggler: our mental changes are like our gray hairs or our wrinkles—but the fulfillment of the plan of mortal growth and decay: that which is snow-white now was glossy black once; that which is sluggish obesity to-day was boisterous rosy health a few years back; that calm weariness, benevolent, resigned, and disappointed, was ambition, fierce and violent, but a few years since, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to the utmost hazard for the public interest. What though monarchy, the ancient government of England, be impaired, during these contests, in many of its former prerogatives: the laws will flourish the more by its decay; and it is happy, allowing that matters are really carried beyond the bounds of moderation, that the current at least runs towards liberty, and that the error is on that side which is safest for the general interests ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... of decay, Stand my gaunt columns in a tragic line, The shattered relics of a glorious day, Mute guardians of the lost Athena's shrine. The flame of hope, that faded to despair Ere Hellas burst her chains, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various
... close at hand in the vast growing cities of England and Scotland, and in the dwindling and cramped villages of our denuded countryside. It is there you will find the seeds of Imperial ruin and national decay—the unnatural gap between rich and poor, the divorce of the people from the land, the want of proper discipline and training in our youth, the exploitation of boy labour, the physical degeneration which seems to follow so swiftly on civilised poverty, ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... never seen her before the day she planted herself in his studio; but he knew her and classified her as if he had made her. He was acquainted with the London female model in all her varieties—in every phase of her development and every step of her decay. When he entered his house that September morning just after the arrival of his two friends there had been no symptoms whatever, up and down the road, of Miss Geraldine's reappearance. That fact had ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... to decay up here in sober and gracious fashion. I am delighted, Count, with your Old Town. There is an autumnal flavour about the place. It is a poet's dream. Some philosopher might dwell here—some sage who has grown weary of disentangling ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... skinnes pierced thorow with them in many partes of their bodies: in such sort that my greatest feare was, least the Indians would rise vp against vs, considering that it would haue bene very hard for vs to haue defended our selues in such extreme decay of all our forces, besides the scarsitie of all victuals, which fayled vs all at once. For the very riuer had not such plentie of fish as it was wont, and it seemed that the land and water did fight ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... imitators of Nicander. One of these, a younger contemporary of Virgil called Gratius, or Grattius, was the author of a poem on hunting, still extant in an imperfect form. In its tame and laboured correctness it is only interesting as showing the early decay of the Virgilian manner in the ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... life of all organisms is terminated by other organisms. In the order of nature, life destroys life, and compounds destroy compounds. When the air and soil and water hold no invisible living germs, organic bodies never decay. It is not the heat that begets putrefaction, but germs in the air. Sufficient heat kills the germs, but what disintegrates the germs and reduces them to dust? Other still smaller organisms? and so on ad infinitum? Does the sequence of life have no end? The destruction ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... of possess- ing her. One was a neighbor, Henry Reed, a tall, spare young man, with sandy hair, and blue, sinister eyes. He seemed to appreciate her wants, and watch with interest her improvement or decay. His kindness she received, and by it was almost won. Her mother wished her to en- courage his attentions. She had counted the acres which were to be transmitted to an only son; she knew there was silver in the purse; she would ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... in youthful prime, Nor thought that pale decay Would steal before the steps of time, And waste thy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... occurs on most of the early maps of Peru. The solidity of the stone houses was due to the prosperity of the gold diggers. The present air of desolation and absence of population is probably due to the decay ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... sun! thy everlasting light? Thou comest forth in thy awful beauty; the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the western wave; but thou thyself movest alone. Who can be a companion of thy course? The oaks of the mountains fall; the mountains themselves decay with years; the ocean shrinks and grows again; the moon herself is lost in heaven, but thou art for ever the same, rejoicing in the brightness of thy course. When the world is dark with tempests, when thunder rolls and lightning ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... La Corriveau, "is the milk of mercy. It brings on painless consumption and decay. It eats the life out of a man while the moon empties and fills once or twice. His friends say he dies of quick decline, and so he does! ha! ha!—when his enemy wills it! The strong man becomes a skeleton, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... speak, to this very spot. Any removal or change would be hazardous and more likely to impair than consummate his happiness. After the growth of years, the tree cannot be transplanted into another soil and air without long exhibiting symptoms of languishing, and sometimes a total decay. ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... inhabited by people of a certain social standing, being neglected by him entirely. Smells of pomace, and the hiss of fermenting cider, which reached him from the back quarters of other tenements, revealed the recent occupation of some of the inhabitants, and joined with the scent of decay ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... drip the forest trees; The stores of wine and mead shall never fail. Nor pain nor sickness knows the dweller there, Death and decay come ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... enjoyable convalescence, and the attentive reader with the suggestion of a psychological problem that is both unnecessary and unconvincing. The best of the tale is its picture of Miss Fingal herself, rescued from premature decay and gradually recovering her youth under the stimulus of new interests and opportunities. Whether the now rather too familiar Kaiser-ex-machina solution was needed in order to rid the stage of a superfluous character ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... disciplined him to bear disaster and insult, as few happier men could have borne them; but it had not prepared him to feel the master-passion of humanity, for the first time, at the dreary end of his life, in the hopeless decay of a manhood that had withered under the double blight of conjugal disappointment and parental sorrow. "Oh, if I was only young again!" murmured the poor wretch, resting his arms on the wall and touching the flower with his dry, fevered lips in a stealthy ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... ampler world of London. Few figures in literary history are more pathetic than that of the old Dean of St. Patrick's, broken in spirit, failing in health, his noble faculties gone into premature decay, forsaken, bitter, and remorseful. At the time of Addison's stay in Ireland, the days of Swift's eclipse were, however, far distant; both men were in their prime. That Swift loved Addison is clear enough; ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... bird-cages, together with a detailed account of the manner in which the occupants had effected their escape, and a bullfinch that seemed to be suffering from torpid liver. The condition of the geraniums was ascribed to worms in the pots, frost, and premature decay. ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... of this memorable scene. The impression it has left upon my understanding is indelible. The figure and appearance of Mr. Falkland, his death-like weakness and decay, his more than mortal energy and rage, the words that he spoke, the motives that animated him, produced one compounded effect upon my mind that nothing of the same nature could ever parallel. The idea of his misery thrilled through my frame. How weak in comparison of it is the imaginary ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... her with one arm while with the other he unlocked the low door. Swinging heavy on strong hinges, it opened into a narrow hall, mildewed with the dampness of decay, the dust of disuse. He carried Pauline up the stairs, which groaned and bent under his steps and pushed open a door. There was a broken chair, a table, a cot, a washstand, with pitcher and bowl, and a small oil lamp set in a bracket ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... death ere I have reached my prime, Or drunk the strengthening cordial of life's gall. The lightning's stroke or the fierce tempest blast Which fells the green tree to the earth to-day Is kinder than the calm that lets it last, Unhappy witness of its own decay. May no man ever look on me and say, "She lives, but all her usefulness ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... value of the different forces that advance or retard civilization, but we believe the weight of historic evidence goes to prove that religious skepticism was the actual cause, as it has always been the inevitable precursor, of national decay. Coleridge in The Friend quotes the historian Polybius as attributing the strength of the Roman republic to the general reverence of the invisible powers, and the consequent horror in which the breaking of an oath was held. This he thought the causa ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... saint, that Totila would leave Rome a heap of stones, and that it would be no longer inhabited, he answered "No: but it shall be beaten with storms and earthquakes, and shall be like a tree which withers by the decay of its root." Which prediction St. Gregory observes to ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... forsook, And from our native soil have marched so far: Nor us to dangerous seas have we betook, Exposed to hazard of so far sought war, Of glory vain to gain an idle smook, And lands possess that wild and barbarous are: That for our conquests were too mean a prey, To shed our bloods, to work our souls' decay. ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... blindly followed wherever Barclay led, and before he entered his twenty-first year he returned to his early home, with a constitution completely broken by the reckless life he had led, and the symptoms of early decay in his flushed cheek and hollow cough. Vain had been the entreaties and remonstrances of his mother and sister; under the influence of his tempter, they were utterly disregarded—until the hand of disease was laid upon him, and he felt that ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... Dexter, smiling, "call it only the appearance of a hand; it is the real hand that vitalizes and gives it power. This will decay—this appearance fade—but the real hand of my spirit will live on, immortal in its power as the human soul of which ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... knowledge of speech of every kind. He maketh the unreal appear as real and thereby beguileth all creatures. Possessed of such attributes, ever devoted to righteousness, and endued with divinity, the slayer of Madhu, that mighty-armed one incapable of decay, will come hither for preventing the slaughter of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... nigh completed, but the hand that began it will never finish it, nor will man or woman ever sleep within its walls. The place is accursed, and will stand accursed till it is consumed by God's lightning or falls piecemeal to the ground from natural decay. Though its stones are fresh, I see ruin ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... unity and intimate friendship with our spiritual fathers and patrons, and their true successors in London and Halle, as also with the other united congregations in this country, and their lawful pastors, and to make known any failure or decay in this respect. ...
— The Organization of the Congregation in the Early Lutheran Churches in America • Beale M. Schmucker
... their mode of disposing of their dead is different, and analogous rather to the practice of the South-sea islanders, the corpse, being deposited on a sort of stage in a place appropriated for the purpose, and with a few leaves strewed over it, is left to decay. Inheritance is by male descent; the house or plantation, the weapons and tools of the father, become the property of the sons. Their chiefs are but little distinguished from the rest of the community by authority or possessions, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... belong to the history of mankind; they have left their trace on our minds and our imagination by their splendour, by their culture, by their art, by the exploits of great conquerors. The record of their rise and decay has an intellectual value; they are in their origins and their course the manifestations of human needs, the instruments of racial temperament, of catastrophic force, of faith and fanaticism. The Russian autocracy as we see it now is a thing apart. It is impossible to assign ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... little building that is still shown as the shop which Peter occupied while he was there. It is a small wooden building, leaning and bent with age and decrepitude and darkened by exposure and time. Within the last half century, however, in order to save so curious a relic from farther decay, the proprietors of the place have constructed around and over it an outer building of brick, which incloses the hut itself like a case. The sides of the outer building are formed of large, open arches, which allow the hut within to be seen. The ground on which ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... awry; and in one ancient garden the imagination of a child found wings for many an airy flight. The town itself bore the name of the English nobleman, well known in Revolutionary days. Not far away his mansion sturdily defied the touch of time and decay, and admonished the men of a degenerate present to remember their glorious past. The house that sheltered me that summer was known in colonial days as the Black-Horse Tavern. Its walls had echoed to the tread of patriot and tory, who gathered here to drink a health to General Washington ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... and the foundations of the world were discovered at thy rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils" (Psa 18:14,15). "And God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged." That is, in New Testament language, the afflictors and afflictions of the church did cease and decay, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... one seems to follow so close upon the other, that we fancy they must have always co-existed. We look more steadily, and we perceive long periods of time, in which there is first a growth and then a decay, like what we perceive in a tree ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... next day, I lingered again at Tuttletown. There is a strange attraction about the place—it would hold you apart from its associations, The old hotel, fast going to decay, surrounded by splendid trees whose shade is so dense as to be impenetrable to the noon-day sun, is a study for an artist. And as I gazed in a sort of day-dream at the ruins of what once was one of the liveliest camps in the Sierras—with four faro tables running ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... Plato's philosophy of history was typical: the course of cosmic life is divided into cycles, each seventy-two thousand solar years in length; during the first half of each cycle, when creation newly comes from the hands of Deity, mankind's estate is happily ideal, but then decay begins and each cycle's latter half sinks from bad to worse until Deity once more must take a hand and make all things new again. Indeed, so far from reaching the idea of progress, the ancient Greeks at the very center of their thinking were incapacitated for such an achievement ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... so full and so delightful, that Sydney Smith's immortality, now that the generation which actually heard him talk has all but disappeared, is still secured without the slightest fear of disturbance or decay. With a few exceptions (the Mrs. Partington business, the apologue of the dinners at the synod of Dort, "Noodle's Oration," and one or two more), the things by which Sydney is known to the general, all come, not from his works, but from his Life or Lives. No one with any sense of fun can read ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... me. The path was unpaved; the road rough and uneven, as if it had never been properly made. Houses were few and far between. Those which I did encounter, seemed, in the imperfect light, amid the general desolation, to be cottages which were crumbling to decay. ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... Beaumont River, crossed by a little stone bridge. Of the town there is not much to be said. It is a long, straggling place, on the road between Morbuttle and Kelso, from which latter place it is distant about seven miles. It is comparatively modern, and sprang up when the Kirk town began to fall into decay. Kirk Yetholm derives the first part of its name from the church, which serves for a place of worship not only for the inhabitants of the place, but for those of the town also. The present church is modern, having been ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... this. I did not now think of death very clearly but only of the uselessness of trying to bear up against anything when that was all one came to in the end. I felt my very bones crumble and my flesh decay on my body, as I stood there. I felt as though I had really been caught at last after a silly aimless flight and that even if I had the strength or cleverness to escape I had not the desire to try. I had been mocked ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... historical resurrection. Notice will be drawn only to those incidents in which the history of France is concerned, and which give a good idea of Henry IV.'s character, the effectiveness of his government, and the rapid growth of his greatness in Europe, contrasted with his rival's slow decay. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... yours," said his friend, glancing at him. "If he had been a countryman of mine there would have been less marvel. But here is none of the sadness of decay none of the withering if the tokens of old age are seen at all it is in the majestic honours that crown a glorious life the graces of a matured and ripened character. This has nothing in common, Rossitur, with those dull moralists who are always dinning decay and death ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... of this sort none will protest but the politicians in power, under whose lax administration of a great trust there has arisen one of the saddest spectacles of human history, the decay of the great American principles of liberty and fair play. The criminals of our city are bold, because they, if not ourselves, know of this decay. They, if not ourselves, know the weakness of that political system to which we have, in carelessness equaling that of the California miners ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... of morals, it would be in comparing the black, blood-stained history of Egypt with the fair record of the Larthian people. Beauty is its own moral and its own redeemer, and a mind that loves it may be corrupted to decay, but cannot be led into brutality or sunk into obscurity. Of the magnificence of the living people we can scarcely judge, since all we have now is the gorgeous array of those who were robed for the eternal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... folly of painting them to imitate stone, not only these window-caps, but all horizontal belts having any considerable projection are essentially unfit for brickwork. The mortar is almost sure to fail at the upper side, giving the whole a look of premature decay, even if well done at first. A level course of long stone, running through a wall of small stones or brick, gives greater strength by binding the whole together. This has not always a good excuse for extending beyond the wall-face. But a projecting belt of brick adds nothing either ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... despotism and corruption found their way into regions so much renowned for the wild freedom of nature: a power which was the terror of every effeminate province is disarmed, and the nursery of nations is itself gone to decay. [Footnote: See the History ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... had been one of the three witnesses. The clergy, who perceived his fall, and to whom envy is not unfamiliar, took pleasure in revenging themselves upon M. de Paris, for the domination, although gentle and kindly, he had exercised. Unaccustomed to this decay of his power, all the graces of his mind and body withered. He could find no resource but to shut himself up with his dear friend the Duchesse de Lesdiguieres, whom he saw every day of his life, either at her own house or at Conflans, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... raindrop answered—"Give praise where praise is due, The earth indeed were lonely without a smile from you; But without my visits, also, its beauty would decay, The flowers droop and wither, and ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... require us to act without waiting for the decision of the responsible advisers of the Crown. But the danger may be upon us before we are aware of its being near; for, as I said in a former letter, the sudden decay of potatoes dug up in an apparently sound state sets all calculation at defiance. Some precautionary measures must be adopted, and adopted promptly, for there is ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... its southern meanderings and its larger tributaries their lingering signs of former habitation are frequently visible, informing us here they once flourished in their simple avocations and enjoyments of the forest, and now excite our commiseration in their gradual decay and probable ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... these oratorical machines, in place as well as dignity, is the Pulpit. Of pulpits there are in this island several sorts, but I esteem only that made of timber from the Sylva Caledonia, which agrees very well with our climate. If it be upon its decay, it is the better, both for conveyance of sound and for other reasons to be mentioned by and by. The degree of perfection in shape and size I take to consist in being extremely narrow, with little ornament, ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... Ages were therefore a period when the production of wealth was looked upon as a salutary and honourable vocation. The wonderful artistic monuments of that era, which have survived the intervening centuries of decay and vandalism, are a striking testimony to the perfection of production in a civilisation in which work was considered to be but a form of prayer, and the manufacturer was prompted to be, not ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... been hastily pulled down; the new government offices that were to replace it had as yet been but partially built, and commanded no general approval. Considered as a social organisation, moreover, the Church throughout large parts of the country had fallen into a state not unlike decay. Richard Baxter, whose testimony there is no sufficient reason to reject, tells of its state in Shropshire during the years of his youth, from 1615 onwards:—"We lived in a country that had but little preaching at all: In the Village where I was born there was ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... through ages of slavery and shame. But the world is a world of progress. A nation cannot remain stationary; she must advance or retrograde. Turkey is not what she was, while Russia, with the rest of Christendom, has advanced; her faults grew with her strength, but did not die with her decay. It will not be sufficient for her merely to regain her former power; she must overtake Christendom in the progress made during her decadence. Her spirit of vitality is not yet extinct; it wants guidance and development ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... were lodged in a palace. As soon as circumstances permitted after her return, she took occasion to revisit the chapel she attempted to build before her departure, and found to her sorrow what she had foreseen, that the greatest part of the lumber was in a state of decay, and quite worthless. Yet, as she could not yield to despair, she collected from the debris sufficient material to build a sort of shed, to be used alternately as a chapel and a class-room until they could do better. The piety and ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... ruined grey palace, with still some traces left of its former stately grace, and of the fountain playing in the moss-encrusted courtyard, gleaming like silver in the sunlight as it rose and fell into the worn stone basin. Here, where the very air seemed full of the records of a magnificent decay, everything seemed to form a fitting framework in his memory for that one face. It had been an artist's dream—or had it been the man's? Never the latter; he told himself sadly. Such were not for him. It had been better far that he had never seen her again. Before, the memory had been ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... is not near so old as VANHOVE; but the decay of his person is such that, when he plays, he seems a skeleton bestirring itself, or that is set in motion. It is a misfortune for him that his physical means betray his talents. MONVEL is a man of genius. Thus gifted, it is not astonishing ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... All spoke of decay and abandonment; and when, through my daughter, M. Zola began to make inquiries about the place, he was told a fantastic tragic story. A murder, it was said, had been committed there many years previously; a poor little girl had been killed ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... stretched on a litter, and was borne toward the spot. It was Helen, brought from the adjoining nunnery, where since her return to these once dear shores, now made a desert to her, she had languished in the gradual decay of the fragile bonds which alone fettered her mourning spirit, eager ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... nonsense of GEORGE FRANCIS, sinks into the most melancholy and insufferable wisdom. He looks forward to the future with a fear lest he may descend to the depths of serious and slow solemnity. When he has arrived at that deplorable stage of decay, he wishes it to be understood that his drum and trumpet are at the service of Mr. GEORGE ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... man in general as the cause of all this misery. This recruiting is not only immoral in the highest degree, but also very harmful to the race, and it is to-day one of the principal reasons for its decay. ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... Ben Meeker, who also had been not merely a farmer, as certain records proved. Captain Ben may have built the shop, though I think it was older, for when we examined the picturesque little building, with a view to restoration, it proved to be too far gone—too much a structure of decay. So we tore down "the shop," and, incidentally, Old Pop, who did the tearing, found a Revolutionary bayonet in the loft; also a more recent, and particularly hot, hornets' nest which caused him to leap through the window and spring into the air ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... forth in an elaborate memoir that the Hollanders were making rapid progress in commerce, arts, and manufactures, while the obedient provinces were sinking as swiftly into decay. The Spanish Netherlands were almost entirely shut off from the sea, the rivers Scheldt and Meuse being hardly navigable for them on account of the control of those waters by Holland. The Dutch were attracting to their dominions all artisans, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... passing from Cattaro I followed the coast road by Spizza, the impregnable (if defended) fortress which had surrendered to Montenegro towards the close of the war, and was, without the shadow of a right, taken possession of by Austria in the settlement, and made a halt at Antivari. Here all was decay and ruin; the damages by the bombardment years before had not been repaired, the former Albanian inhabitants, mainly Mussulmans, had not returned, and the Montenegrins had not come. I could not even pass the night there, but took a boat from the port (there is no harbor) to ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... of spectacles the eye, so to say, escapes from the decay of age, which troubles almost all the ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... curiosities of nature. A minute marine insect builds up from the bottom of the sea the solid foundation. The waves break the summit into sand. The birds of the air come and rest there, and bring seeds, which in time spring up and decay, till a soil is formed to give nourishment to more lofty trees, such as we now saw before us. We shot in between a narrow opening with the water of the deepest blue on either side. All hands were at their stations. Fairburn acted as quarter-master, ready to repeat our pilot's signals. ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... many things, is most grossly mistaken in his notion of the Gods. He lays down four natures[84] as divine, from which he thinks that all things were made. Yet it is evident that they have a beginning, that they decay, and that they are void ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... produced upon my mind; the sunbeams were falling with a rich and melancholy tint upon the fine old trees, which stood in lordly groups, casting their long, sweeping shadows over rock and sward. There was an air of neglect and decay about the spot, which amounted almost to desolation; the symptoms of this increased in number as we approached the building itself, near which the ground had been originally more artificially and carefully ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Better see my nerve doctor, and then come with me to the south of France." For this fellow, who knows nothing of disordered liver or high-strung nerves, goes regularly to a great nerve specialist with the periodical belief that his nervous system is beginning to decay. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... August, 1881. At this season the tree was covered with foliage so luxuriant, from the ground upwards, that it was impossible to distinguish the stem, and in every respect it presented the appearance of a tree in its prime, without a sign of decay. It belongs to the botanical class Prunus Spinosa, or blackthorn, and it was covered with berries at the time of our visit. These, however, were the evidence of a second efflorescence in the spring. The celebrity of the tree arises from the fact that every year at Christmas ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming
... the air was close and heavy, the pale glimmer of the lantern showed piles of moldering coffins in the niches, and everywhere lay tokens of decay and death. The man drew his hat lower over his eyes, pulled the muffler closer about his mouth, and surveyed the spot with an undaunted aspect, though the beating of his heart was heard in the deep silence. Nearest the door stood a long casket covered with black ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... left without effect, and another to the right, but everywhere they were faced by the precipitous wall of cliff, carved-out and terraced, and here and there offering facilities for climbing up more or less high, the stones from above having fallen from the weakening and decay of time till a glacis-like slope had been formed; but after the reptiles that had been started in the less likely places, there was no present temptation for ascending the stony slopes, bathed in the hot sunshine and looking thoroughly suited ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... limits of those phenomena he may speculate and prove; he may trace the operation of the laws of matter through periods of time; he may penetrate into the past, and anticipate the future; he may recount the changes which they have effected upon matter, and the rise, growth, and decay of phenomena; and so in a certain sense he may write the history of the material world, as far as he can; still he will always advance from phenomena, and conclude upon the internal evidence which they supply. He will not come near the questions, what that ultimate ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... in existence before the Conquest[2]. The body of St. Edmund, K. & M., had been preserved in it during the Danish invasions, before it was carried to Bury St. Edmunds by Cnut for burial. It shared the decay of the cathedral, and in the last days it was repaired, as was the west end, by Inigo Jones in his own style, as will be seen by the illustrations. Of the tombs and chantries which had by this time been set up, it will be more convenient to speak hereafter, as also of the ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... Constantine, and completed by his immediate successors, may not only amuse the fancy by the singular picture of a great empire, but will tend to illustrate the secret and internal causes of its rapid decay. In the pursuit of any remarkable institution, we may be frequently led into the more early or the more recent times of the Roman history; but the proper limits of this inquiry will be included within a period of about one hundred and thirty years, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... California pines is shown by their sound condition in California buildings that have stood for generations, many of them in regions where climatic conditions are more conducive to decay than in the middle ...
— The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan • W.B. Laughead
... where Sir Thomas Lucy resided at the time of the trespass. The tradition went that they hid the buck in a barn, part of which was standing a few years ago, but now totally decayed. This park no longer belongs to the Lucys. The house bears no marks of decay, but seems the abode of ease and opulence. There were some fine old books, and I was told of many more which were not in order. How odd if a folio Shakspeare should be found amongst them! Our early breakfast did not prevent my taking ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... brought her round here, called in Dr. Horsom, of 13 Firbank Villas—mind you take the address, Mr. Holmes—and had her carefully tended, as Christian folk should. On the third day she died—certificate says senile decay—but that's only the doctor's opinion, and of course you know better. We ordered her funeral to be carried out by Stimson and Co., of the Kennington Road, who will bury her at eight o'clock to-morrow morning. Can you ...
— The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that I seldom follow it. And so you think I had better employ a professional companion—a decayed gentlewoman—than save this young girl from going out as a governess and beginning to decay at twenty-three?" ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... have ever since declined in the trade they so happily possessed; you shall find (if I am rightly informed) towns without one loom in them, which subsisted entirely upon the woollen manufactory before the passing of this unhappy bill; and I will try if I can give the true reasons for the decay of their ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... retreats, running through all the limbs, as if asking permission to depart from them. From his naked sword fall three drops: one pales the countenance, one destroys the vitality, one causes the body to decay. Some Rabbins say he bears a cup from which the dying one drinks, or that he lets fall from the point of his sword a single acrid drop upon the sufferer's tongue: this is what is called "tasting the bitterness of death." Here again, we ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... it would not last— 'Twas hard, 'twas hopeful, but 'tis past. Ah! ever thus, from boyhood's hour, I've seen my fondest hopes decay. I never trusted Jack Frost's power, But Jack Frost did my trust betray. I never bought a pair of skates On Friday—I am in the law— But, ere I started with my mates On Saturday, 'twas sure to thaw! Now, too—the prospect seemed divine— They ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various
... Union soldiers were anything but civilized beings, and were stricken with terror when their approach was heralded. Of six churches seen in one day, in only one had there been religious services held within six months. One half at least of the dwelling houses are unoccupied, and fast going to decay.' ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... would have become hard and musty. They have a pleasant restorative scent, something like that of green tea. When we think how many poor people lie on musty mattresses, or have none at all, whilst the beech-leaves lie in the woods and go very slowly to decay, we see one more of the many instances of people remaining uncomfortable when they need not be so, because of their ignorance. The fact that beech-leaves are very slow to rot makes them useful in the garden for mulching and protecting ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Learning.—The decay of asceticism was to some extent brought about by the opening of new careers into which energetic men might throw themselves. They were needed as judges, as administrators, as councillors. A vigorous literature sprung up in the reign of Henry II., but at the ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... 1830, he proposed that a committee should be chosen by ballot to take a review of all boroughs and cities in the kingdom, and report to the Secretary of State for the Home Department those among them which had fallen into decay, or had in any manner forfeited their right to representation on the principles of the English constitution as anciently recognised by national and parliamentary usage. The Home Secretary was to be bound ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... the wish cannot induce belief! For now I remember another thing which Nature said—that earthly excellence can come in no way but one, and the ending of passion and strife is the beginning of decay. It is indeed a hard saying, and the hardest lesson we can learn of her without losing love and bidding good-by forever ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... ever that he was caught in a monstrous trap from which there could be no ordinary means of escape. He could never climb over such a wall even with a ladder. He walked out a little way and noticed the rank weeds growing in patches in the corners; decay and neglect left everywhere their dismal signs; the yard, in spite of the sunlight, seemed as gloomy and cheerless as the ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... his relatives and friends, whom, now, he had not seen for over sixteen years. The scenes of his boyhood days, he found to be magically changed. New faces met him on all sides. The old log-cabin where his father and mother had resided was deserted and its dilapidated walls were crumbling with decay. The once happy inmates were scattered over the face of the earth while many of their voices were hushed in death. Kit Carson felt himself a stranger in a strange land—the strong man wept. His soul could not brook either the change or the ways of the people. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... I confess," said I. "Come; what is the joke? What method have you discovered of producing the decay of centuries on this unfortunate banjo in a few months? And why did you do it? I have heard of an elixir to counteract the effects of time, but your recipe seems to work the other way—to make time ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... are to-day following the lead of the most powerful group of financial imperialists in the world. The trail is a long one leading to world conquest, unimagined dizzying heights of world power, riches beyond the ken of the present generation, and then, the slow and terrible decay and dissolution that sooner or later overtake those peoples that follow the paths of empire. The rulers will wield the power and enjoy the riches. The people will struggle and suffer and ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... at their widest point. Before them it lay covered with huge level ice-fields, broken only where tide and storm had caused an upheaval of their edges, or a berg, degraded and lessened of its once lordly majesty, it is true, but still grand even in its decay, rose like a Gothic ruin amid a snow-covered ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... carefully observe whether any considerable number of the calcareous organisms are more or less friable, or corroded, or scaling; so that one might form some crude notion whether the deposition is so rapid that the foraminifera are preserved from decay and thus are forming strata at this profound depth. This is a subject which seems to me to have been much ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... intrinsic energy, without any foreign influence: the attempts to bring them back to an imitation of the ancients, or even of the French, have either been attended with no success, or not been made till a late period in the decay of the drama. The formation of these two stages, again, is equally independent of each other; the Spanish poets were altogether unacquainted with the English; and in the older and most important period ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... winter's moonlight. But the sound of other days had died away. The creek bed had long since yielded up its treasure and lay neglected, exposed to the heat and frost. The old brick buildings rambling up the street were still left, but were fast tottering to decay. Side by side with the occupied buildings, stood half-fallen adobes and shattered blocks filled only with ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... it has filled books and booklets beyond count. By the miracle of Penicillium Roqueforti a new cheese was made. It is placed historically back around the eighth century when Charlemagne was found picking out the green spots of Persille with the point of his knife, thinking them decay. But the monks of Saint-Gall, who were his hosts, recorded in their annals that when they regaled him with Roquefort (because it was Friday and they had no fish) they also made bold to tell him he was wasting the best part of the cheese. So he tasted again, found the advice excellent ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... from the sacristy I was shown by a smiling custodian Lorenzo the Magnificent's coffin, crumbling away, and photographs of the skulls of the two brothers: Giuliano's with one of Francesco de' Pazzi's dagger wounds in it, and Lorenzo's, ghastly in its decay. I gave the man half ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas |
