"Decline" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on the table was home-made jam. It was a farm-house tea, and to Philip very quaint and charming in that Jacobean house. Athelny for some fantastic reason took it into his head to discourse upon Byzantine history; he had been reading the later volumes of the Decline and Fall; and, his forefinger dramatically extended, he poured into the astonished ears of the suitor scandalous stories about Theodora and Irene. He addressed himself directly to his guest with a torrent of rhodomontade; and the young man, reduced to ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... the grass returns! When golden days decline, the meadow burns; Yet autumn suns no hidden root have slain, The spring winds blow, and there is ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... came to their hands. He being by King James (and as it is thought by the Viscount's Counsel) nominated to be sent Embassador to the Emperor of Russia, was by the said Viscount, whom he especially trusted, persuaded to decline the employment, as no better than an honourable Grave; Better lie some days in the Tower, than more months in a worse Prison; a Ship by Sea, and a barbarous cold Country by Land. You are now (Said he) in credit at home, and ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... class? Are not the effects of over-work and long hours in the household as great as are those of the factory or the office? Is the birth-rate less among women who are engaged in the occupations unknown to women of the past? Or is the decline alike marked among those who are pursuing the ancient occupations but under different conditions?... If conditions surrounding their employment are such as to make it a "social question of the first importance" it is unfortunate ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... a way exists, the wise opine, If she quits her palace twice this year, To avert the flower of life's decline." ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... command a good price for his work. He has always one resource open to him when he has finished a job according to contract (catching say 40 or 50 Rats), should there be a dispute about the price and the people decline to pay the bill, then he has the expedient of letting the Rats at liberty again in the place where he had caught them. Most people will pay the price you send in rather than have ...
— Full Revelations of a Professional Rat-catcher - After 25 Years' Experience • Ike Matthews
... decline to answer that question. Very well, I will make a note of this." He did so. "And now," said he, "what were you ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... it was sad to look on the evident though slow decline of Catherine Weir. It seemed as if the dead season was dragging her to its bosom, to lay her among the leaves of past summers. She was still to be found in the shop, or appeared in it as often as the bell suspended over the door rang to announce the entrance of a customer; but she was terribly worn, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... his lecture, according to the newspaper report, thus:—"History bears witness that the declension of religion has ever been the decline of nations, because it has ever brought the decay of their moral life; and people have achieved noble things only when strongly animated by religious faith." All this is very poor stuff indeed to come from a learned professor. What nation has declined because of a relapse from religious ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... conquered them than a disgrace to have confronted them in equal strife for years. Little more than a century had elapsed since the Hannibalic war; it must have brought a blush to the cheek of the honourable Roman, when he reflected on the fearfully rapid decline of the nation since that great age. Then the Italian slaves stood like a wall against the veterans of Hannibal; now the Italian militia were scattered like chaff before the bludgeons of their runaway serfs. Then every plain captain acted in case of need ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... a great executive, they'll never miss you. But I shall. I decline to take my honeymoon or live my married ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... dissolved and new Diets elected, in none of which, however, could the supporters of the Cabinet secure a majority; the Cabinet was, therefore, incapable of carrying out any of its distinctive measures. Several times the opposition went so far as to decline to pass the budget proposed by the Cabinet, unless so reduced as to cripple the government, the reason constantly urged being that the Cabinet was not competent to administer the expenditure of such large sums of money. There were no direct charges ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... notwithstanding the fact that she was one of the loveliest women I ever saw in my life. But it would require a woman to describe her dress with accuracy, and I am afraid any woman who was on board the steamer that trip would decline to help me. Women were in the habit of sniffing when Mrs. Tremain's name was mentioned. Much can be expressed by a woman's sniff. All that I can say about Mrs. Tremain's dress is that it was of some dark material, brightly ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... to write to Noah Webster (February 13, 1788): "From the impudent conduct of Mr. Dallas in misrepresenting the proceedings and speeches in the Pennsylvania Convention, as well as from his deficiency of matter, the Columbian Magazine, of which he is editor, is in the decline." ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... yards, would turn and canter leisurely away. As the herd neared the summit of the low-lying ridge, I tried to make a reasonable guess at their numbers, by counting a part and estimating the rest, but could come to no satisfactory conclusion. As they passed the summit and loped down the gentle decline toward heavy timber, they began to scatter, and soon not a flag was in sight. It was a magnificent cervine army with white banners, and I shall never look upon its like again. The largest drove of deer I have seen in twenty years consisted of ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... which Alo (whoever she was) suffered. The secret of this catastrophe Mrs. Falchion, as I believe, held. There was a parting, a lapse of years, and then the meeting on the 'Fulvia': with it, partial restoration of Mrs. Falchion's influence, then its decline, and then a complete change of position. It was now Mrs. Falchion that cared, and Roscoe that shunned. It perplexed me that there seemed to be behind Mrs. Falchion's present regard for Roscoe some weird expression of vengeance, as though somehow she had been wronged, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of no great merit from a constructive or literary point of view. We hear a good deal nowadays of the "decline of the drama," but perhaps in no civilised country has it declined so far as it had descended in Rome by the year A.D. 64. The regular and classical drama—that is to say, literary tragedy and comedy—was not likely to appeal to any ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... the Morning Call at the time I was doing a little reporting on the same paper. It happened that a benefit was arranged for some charity. "Nan, the Good-for-Nothing," was to be given by a number of amateurs. The Nan asked me to play Tom, and I had insufficient firmness to decline. After the play, when my face was reasonably clean, I dropped into the Call office, yearning for a word of commendation from Harte. I thought he knew that I had taken the part, but he would not give me the satisfaction of referring to it. Finally I mentioned, casually like, that I was ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... if buried in fertile ground, would grow into a plant, through the life which they retained, and as this plant waxed in size it would absorb more and more of the original owner's life, which would consequently wane and decline. The worship of relics, such as the bones or hair of saints, is based on the same belief that they retain a part of the divine life and virtue of him to whom they ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... side, where strong stone pillars carry heavy chains across the entrance. A "Mail" takes about two hundred years to mature, remains in perfection for about a hundred more, and then, for all I know, begins to go off. But neither the exact moment at which it fails nor the length of its decline is yet fixed, for all "Mails" date from the seventeenth century at earliest, and the time when most were constructed was that of Charles II's youth and Louis XIV's maturity—or am I wrong? Were these two men not much of ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... monuments of national religious sentiment suggested the certain future increase in ethical power and value of that sentiment, concomitantly with the increase of national prosperity. Temporary poverty is the real explanation of the apparent temporary decline of Buddhism. But an era of great wealth is beginning. Some outward forms of Buddhism must perish; some superstitions of Shinto must die. The vital truths and recognitions will expand, strengthen, take only deeper root in the heart of the race, and potently prepare it for the trials of that ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... archipelago was divided into two territorial units, one English and the other Danish. Sugarcane, produced by slave labor, drove the islands' economy during the 18th and early 19th centuries. In 1917, the US purchased the Danish portion, which had been in economic decline since the abolition of slavery ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... excessive reluctance, discussing the Horse Show. As he had given himself a good deal of trouble in order to cross on this particular evening, and as any one who was even slightly acquainted with Miss Fitzroy must have been aware that she would decline to talk of anything else, sympathy for him is not altogether deserved. The boat swung softly in a trance of speed, and Miss Fitzroy, better known to a large circle of intimates as Fanny Fitz, tried to ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... first declaration which refers to general peace, and which states this to be the second time in which the Consul has endeavoured to accomplish that object. We thought fit, for the reasons which have been assigned, to decline altogether the proposal of treating, under the present circumstances; but we, at the same time, expressly stated that, whenever the moment for treaty should arrive, we would in no case treat but in conjunction with our allies. Our general ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... own desire unbandaged. The fire-king forthwith turned to Mr. Smith and offered him the other glass of phosphorus. Mr. Smith started back in infinite alarm—'Not for worlds, Sir, not for worlds; I beg to decline it.' ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... Indeed, the structure of the whole Mosaic polity, was a virtual bounty offered to those who would become permanent servants, and merge in the Jewish system their distinct nationality. None but the monied aristocracy among them, would be likely to decline such offers. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Warwick Castle. The neighbourhood of Leamington, a watering-place of some celebrity, has obliged the family to decline showing the Castle after ten o'clock. I tried the virtue of an old acquaintance with Lord Warwick and wrote to him, he being in the Courthouse where the assizes were sitting. After some delay we were admitted, and I found my old friend ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... death-bed, as regards my membership with the Anglican Church, though at the time I became aware of it only by degrees. I introduce what I have to say with this remark, by way of accounting for the character of this remaining portion of my narrative. A death-bed has scarcely a history; it is a tedious decline, with seasons of rallying and seasons of falling back; and since the end is foreseen, or what is called a matter of time, it has little interest for the reader, especially if he has a kind heart. Moreover, it is a season when doors are closed and curtains drawn, and ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... with domestic, internal evils, absorb a great part of every nation's life. Such struggles constitute its development, are the landmarks of its progress and decline. ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... machinery, and some defense items. The breakup of the USSR in December 1991 and the collapse in demand for Kazakhstan's traditional heavy industry products resulted in a short-term contraction of the economy, with the steepest annual decline occurring in 1994. In 1995-97, the pace of the government program of economic reform and privatization quickened, resulting in a substantial shifting of assets into the private sector. Kazakhstan enjoyed ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the basis of representation, thus increasing our political power when we re-enter Congress beyond that which we enjoyed before we rebelled, and beyond that which white men in the North shall ever enjoy. We decline to give any guarantee for the validity of the public debt. We decline to guarantee the sacredness of pensions to soldiers disabled in the War for the Union. We decline to pledge ourselves that the debts incurred in aid of the Rebellion shall not in the future be paid by ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... your answer is judged the best, you only get half the credit you deserve. Or, to take one more example, supposing one day, being utterly sick of Ebenezer's society, and longing to get a little time by yourself, you decline the tempting offer of a cricket match in which you know he also is likely to play. You mean to read this afternoon, you say. Well, isn't it too bad when next moment you hear that wretched Ebenezer saying, in answer ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... freemen to-morrow, the wonder is that the race has not suffered more physically than it has. I do not believe that statistics can be so marshalled as to prove that the Negro as a race is physically or numerically on the decline. On the other hand, the Negro as a race is increasing in numbers by a larger percentage than is true of the French nation. While the death-rate is large in the cities, the birth-rate is also large; and it is to be borne ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... to decline, to sink and save and have the water pour, all this and more, there is no sight that has not every vestige sold in pieces. There is no interval between mentioning. There is a tropical misuse. There is the same. ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... the public not without a keen sense of its inadequacy, I have tried to show in as clear a manner as was at my command, what Ravenna really was in the political geography of the empire, and to explain the part that position allowed her to play in the great tragedy of the decline and fall of the Roman administration. If I have succeeded in this I am amply repaid for all the labour the ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... We may decline to attempt a solution and merely give the original word, we may make a purely arbitrary rendering, or we may accompany the original word with an approximate indication of what is known of its nature. In neither case do we translate, for that is clearly ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... shade. The great black oak near the east end of the porch is a tower of strength and beauty, which is "seen and known of all men," while the three white oaks farther to the west form a clump which casts a grateful shade when the sun begins to decline. The seven acres of forest to the east is left severely alone, save where the carriage drive winds through it, and Polly watches so closely that the foot of the Philistine rarely crushes her wild flowers. Its sacredness recalls the schoolgirl's definition of a virgin ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... Bloomfield, I must leave you to judge of that for yourself. I think them both agreeable men; but there is so much caprice in a woman's tastes, that I decline ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... of our men decline going any further—W. D. Ritchie, A. Brueheim, and James Curtis. Only seven men being left, the party was somewhat discouraged. We consulted together, and under existing circumstances I took it upon myself to insure every man who persevered to the end, five dollars per day from the time they ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... together on the 27th instant, to ask for indemnity and a sanction of the Order by law. To propose to Parliament no other measure than that during the sitting before Christmas. To declare an intention of submitting to Parliament immediately after the recess, a modification of the existing law, but to decline entering into any details in Parliament with regard to such modification. Such modification to include the admission at a nominal duty of Indian corn and of British Colonial corn—to proceed with regard to other descriptions of grain upon the ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... threatened to carry his presence of mind and recollection along with it, Alan frankly told his father, that unless he was relieved from the infliction of his client's personal presence and instructions, he must necessarily throw up his brief, and decline pleading ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... reason why a city is just where it is. Nothing is more controlled by law than the planting, the growth, and the decline of cities. Even the particular site is not a thing of chance, as we can see in the sites of Paris, London, Constantinople, and every other great city of the world. A town exists by supplying to the country about it the commodities ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... the theories of development. This empiricism existed in competition with a declining, richly vitalistic Aristotelian rationalism which had virtually eliminated empiricism during the scholastic period. However, the decline of this vitalistic rationalism coincided with the rise of a mechanistic rationalism which had its roots in ancient Greek atomistic theories of matter. The empiricism comprising the leitmotif of the macro-iconographic movement then became blended with, or, more often, submerged ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... is a laughing stock, which is fatal in China. But the government isn't inactive; they have appointed a new Minister of Education and a new Chancellor of the University, both respectable men, with no records and colorless characters. It is likely the Faculty will decline to receive the new Chancellor unless he makes a satisfactory declaration—which he obviously can't, and thus the row will begin all over again, with the Faculty involved. If the government dared, it would dissolve the University, but the scholar has ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... upon the matter. Mr. Deane was in favor of demanding from the French court a direct answer to the question, whether or not France would come openly to the aid of the colonies; and he advised that de Vergennes should be distinctly told that, if France should decline, the colonies would be obliged to seek an accommodation with Great Britain. But Dr. Franklin strenuously opposed this course. The effect of such a declaration seemed to him too uncertain; France might take it as a menace; ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... Brutus I mean you: for as to me, I have already done all, I was capable of doing. Would you, then, plead every cause in the same manner? Or is there any sort of causes which your genius would decline? Or even in the same cause, would you always express yourself in the same strain, and without any variety? Your favourite Demosthenes, whose brazen statue I lately beheld among your own, and your family images, when I ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... engaged to come two hours every morning to attend to the housework, his wife not having strength enough to put on a child's shoes or to set a pot on the fire. At first Euphrasie had offered furious resistance to this intrusion of a stranger, but, her physical decline progressing, she had been obliged to yield. And then things had gone from bad to worse, till Madame Joseph became supreme in the household. Between times there had been terrible scenes over it all; but the wretched ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... perineal cloth, it actually began to be a nuisance, as its former free contact with the air had retained it in a state of vigorous and disease-resisting health which was now fast departing. As Montesquieu observes, in the causes that led to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, those seasons of trials, tribulations, and struggle for existence are those of health and progress and healthy life, and the periods of luxury and idleness are those of degeneracy and decay. So ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... and comfort. The old people who knew the early pioneers of the Mission flocked to see her, and her sojourn was one long reception. A "command" invitation also came from the Commissioner, but this she had the temerity to decline, saying that she was not visiting. It is doubtful whether she had the attire fit for the occasion. He, however, came to see her, and was ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... the decline of the business. A new apprentice had been taken into the workshop, but Pelle, as before, had to do all the delicate jobs. He borrowed articles when necessary, and bought things on credit; and he had to interview impatient customers, and endeavor to pacify them. He got plenty of exercise, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... what it had cost Scott and his four companions to get to the Pole, and what they had still to suffer in returning until death stopped them. Much of that risk and racking toil had been undertaken that men might learn what the world is like at the spot where the sun does not decline in the heavens, where a man loses his orbit and turns like a joint on a spit, and where his face, however he turns, is always to the North. The moment Scott saw the Norwegian tent he knew that he had nothing to tell that was not already known. His achievement ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... in consternation to this frightful profession of fatalism by which Surajah Dowlah sought to decline the responsibility of his wicked acts. In the meantime he read the letter which I ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... drive the two had planned, Joyce found Lucy's promised call a sufficient excuse to decline going. Her neighbors would not be so ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... days of Herod," called "the Great," a monster of cruelty, a vassal of Rome, who ruled the Jews with savage tyranny. The political slavery of the people was only less pitiful than their spiritual decline, for religion had become an empty form, a mere system of ceremonies and rites. However, God is never without his witnesses and his true worshipers. Among these were "a certain priest named Zacharias" and his wife Elisabeth, ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... enable man to make himself understood. At last this development was checked; what we may call the natural occupation of the face culminated. Civilization began, and as soon as civilization began, the decline in natural expressiveness began with it. Gradually civilization supplanted primeval needs; it contrived other means for doing what the face alone had done frankly, marvelously. When you can print news on paper, you may cease to print news on the living countenance. Moreover, the aim ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... the waters, and the serenity became less brilliant but more profound. The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... occupation, and little sense of the worth of work in itself. There was nothing surprising in this, and the blacks were little to be blamed for it. But the world will not advance, unless men work; and any country where there is not a sufficient stimulus for labor is in the course of decline. The inevitable results followed in the West Indies from the difficulty of obtaining labor. In Jamaica, the largest and most important of these British islands, other and widely different causes—mistakes in legislation, previous financial embarrassment, and especially ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of Nancy at this period is not so easily drawn. The decline of the family fortunes seemed to have had as little effect upon her as upon her father, although their characters differed sharply. Something of that spontaneity, of that love of life and joy in it she had possessed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... report to Captain Page that you decline heaving the lead, Mr Kydd?" I said at length, seeing that he made no movement to obey ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... Queen had remarked "How sorry she was she could not ask him to be seated." Subsequently, Disraeli, after an attack of gout and in a moment of extreme expansion on the part of Victoria, had been offered a chair; but he had thought it wise humbly to decline the privilege. In her later years, however, the Queen invariably asked Mr. Gladstone and ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... historian, born in Boston; his writings valuable, particularly in their bearing on the dominion of the French in America, its rise, decline, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... wealth, resources and tools of the country; the workers their labor power only. As it stood, it was an uneven contest, with every advantage in favor of capital. The workers could decline to work, but capital could starve them into subjection. These, however, were but the apparent differences. The real and immense difference between them was that capital was in absolute control of the political governing power of the nation, and this power, strange to ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... his grandfather did not immediately decline. He looked at Aunt Ruth, her rosy, smiling face beaming with hospitality, ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... of her parents, that she may fly to oblige them. If they are going out to ride in the coach, and there is not room enough for all the children, she will give up her place, that one of her brothers or sisters may go. She will at all times leave play, or decline paying a visit, to attend on Emma, her sick sister. She sits whole hours by her bed-side to watch her while she sleeps, and is careful to stir neither hand or foot, lest she should disturb her slumbers. When awake, she reads to her, talks to her, or sings to her, if ...
— The Bad Family and Other Stories • Mrs. Fenwick
... and not the less because this period has been an object of scorn to the times which have followed it. They are drawn towards the enemy of their enemy, and they fancy that it must be in all points their enemy's opposite. And if the faults of its last decline are too palpable to be denied, they ascend to its middle and its earlier course, and finding that its evils are there less flagrant, they abandon themselves wholly to the contemplation of its good points, and end ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... no cause of quarrel or of feud Between the Earl Politian and himself. He doth decline ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Secretary of the Royal Institution, wrote to me two weeks back asking me very strongly to give them a lecture at their opening meeting (third week in January) appropriate to the Jubilee of the "Origin of Species." I was very unwell at the time—could eat nothing, etc.—and was going to decline positively, having nothing more to say! But while lying down, vaguely thinking about it, an idea flashed upon me of a new treatment of the whole subject of Darwinism, just suitable for a lecture to a R.I. audience. I felt ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... Its decline began when the professional armies became nothing more than armed militia, and from the moment that it became apparent that a soldier might be improvised from a countryman with ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... provinces amid the vicissitudes to which they are subject, pass from order into confusion, and afterward recur to a state of order again; for the nature of mundane affairs not allowing them to continue in an even course, when they have arrived at their greatest perfection, they soon begin to decline. In the same manner, having been reduced by disorder, and sunk to their utmost state of depression, unable to descend lower, they, of necessity, reascend; and thus from good they gradually decline to evil, and from evil again return to good. The reason ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... of much that has been thus urged against spiders as a class, I must decline, or at least defer, conforming to custom in speaking of the particular variety which we are about to consider, and I believe that it will need only a glance at the insect and its silk, and a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... by, Colonel, that's a little too close! I see the gentlemen smile; but they know I must beg to decline answering that question—-not that it matters much. We have all sown our wild oats in our time—myself as well ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... moneyed interest, a new description of men had grown up, with whom that interest soon formed a close and marked union: I mean the political men of letters. Men of letters, fond of distinguishing themselves, are rarely averse to innovation. Since the decline of the life and greatness of Louis the Fourteenth, they were not so much cultivated either by him, or by the Regent, or the successors to the crown; nor were they engaged to the court by favors and emoluments so systematically as during the splendid ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of the Spanish monarchy dates from his death which took place in his magnificent palace of the Escurial, in 1598. Under his son Philip III., decline became very marked, and future ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... a sum and ratified by him, with the advice of the Senate, would not be good under the constitution, and obligatory on the Representatives to furnish the money. I answered, it certainly would, and that it would be the duty of the Representatives to raise the money; but that they might decline to do what was their duty, and I thought it might be incautious to commit himself by a ratification with a foreign nation, where he might be left in the lurch in the execution: it was possible too, to conceive a treaty, which it ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... father's unkind references to two-edged compliments, Miss Stair. I entirely decline to see any but one meaning to your speech—and that ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... Aristodemus having left twin sons, Eurysthenes and Procles. This division of the royal power naturally tended to weaken its influence and to produce jealousies and dissensions between the two kings. The royal power was on the decline during the whole historical period, and the authority of the kings was gradually usurped by the Ephors, who at length obtained the entire control of the government, and reduced the kings to a ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... further about the matter, instead of going along and supervising as was his wont with most of the others. "If he's good enough for Stannard, he'll do for me," was the colonel's comment, and when Billings sought to decline the appointment offered, hinting, with well-meant but awkward delicacy, that perhaps it ought to go to some man of more established reputation and record in the regiment, the colonel cut him short with, ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... said I (for I am younger than he), "can the animals in the poem show you that the poem belongs to a decline?" ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... yet thine eyes! And to what purpose think'st thou he has called us 130 Hither to Pilsen?—to avail himself Of our advice?—O when did Friedland ever Need our advice?—Be calm, and listen to me. To sell ourselves are we called hither, and, Decline we that—to be his hostages. 135 Therefore doth noble Galas stand aloof; Thy father, too, thou would'st not have seen here, If higher duties had not held ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... in lives like thine, Calista! 'Tis the Saints' procession, shown In Dante's vision, near Lord Jesus' throne, In greatening splendor, never to decline. Ah, if our minds grow dark, our hearts repine, How, from sweet lives, dear Sister, like thine own, Be-Mothering with mercy all who moan, A light comes, and a warmth is ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... history has not received the attention it deserves; and the future investigator will find a rich field in his researches for the causes of the expansion of the novel in the nineteenth century simultaneous with the decline of the drama in the literature of almost ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... the balance his yearning for service over against his passion for a fellow creature. Inclination, alas, outweighed duty. Prayer lost its power and for the time was almost discontinued, with corresponding decline in joy. His heart was turned from the foreign field, and in fact from all self-denying service. Six weeks passed in this state of spiritual declension, when God took a strange way to reclaim ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... is very singular. All clever boys are. He knows already his five declensions, and the four conjugations, active and passive. Come, Master Rattlin, decline for the lady the adjective felix—come, begin, nominative hic et haec et ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... you? Well, then; in the heyday of youth, under the pressure of penury, what have you done? You are not in the front rank, and you have not a thousand francs of your own. That is the sum-total of the situation. Can you, in the decline of your powers, support a family by your pen, when your wife, if she is an honest woman, will not have at her command the resources of the woman of the streets, who can extract her thousand-franc note from the depths where milord keeps it safe? ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... outside of his specialty or dissipates his individuality. It is an Edison, a Morse, a Bell, a Howe, a Stephenson, a Watt. It is Adam Smith, spending ten years on the "Wealth of Nations." It is Gibbon, giving twenty years to his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." It is a Hume, writing thirteen hours a day on his "History of England." It is a Webster, spending thirty-six years on his dictionary. It is a Bancroft, working twenty-six years on his "History of the United States." It is a Field, crossing the ocean ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... trouble to clear myself of a senseless charge? My respect for you inclines me to the belief that you are laboring under a momentary excitement; for when you reflect that I am a prominent, not to say famous, author, you will realize how absurd it is that I should be an embezzler, and why I decline to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... "But, sir," I cried in painful confusion, "there is here some great mistake. I am no Ojibbeway, but an Agnostic; the after-life of spirits is only (as one of our great teachers says) 'an hypothesis based on contradictory probabilities;' and I really must decline to accompany you to a place of which the existence is uncertain, and which, if it does anywhere exist, would be uncongenial in the extreme to a ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... which they attend is but a fallen University; it has doubtless some remains of good, for human institutions decline by gradual stages; but decline, in spite of all seeming embellishments, it does; and what is perhaps more singular, began to do so when I ceased to be a student. Thus, by an odd chance, I had the very last of the very best of ALMA MATER; the same thing, I hear (which makes it the more strange), ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... own expectation, above narrated, he was brought before the council, October 1st, where he disowned the king's authority, refused them as his judges, and on the 7th was brought before the Justiciary, and indicted, "That he did before the council, on the 1st of October, decline the authority of the king and council, and called the king and council tyrant, murderers, perjured and mansworn, declaring it was lawful to rise in arms against them;—And gave in a most treasonable paper, termed, A protestation and testimony against parliamenters, wherein he terms ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... smiles and civilities. Alas! no one was found any longer to cut it voluntarily. The new comers seemed to decline the honor. The "old favorites" reappeared one by one like dethroned princes who have been replaced for a brief spell in power. Then, the chosen ones became few, very few. For a month (O, prodigy!) M. Anserre cut open the cake; then he looked as if he were getting tired of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... quartered with the eighth corps in Florence added largely to the zest of speculation. Oh, the nobility and the military, which are one and the same thing, would be present at the ball; they were altogether too inquisitive to decline. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... variations arising out of local considerations and the state of society in various colonies, subject to which that principle may be carried into practice; and it is anxiously hoped that the same wise forbearance which has led the House of Assembly to decline the unnecessary discussion of subjects of so much delicacy, may lead them also to regard the practical decision now announced as the final close of the controversy, and to unite in the promotion, not of ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... that they should delay the march on a visit to his cabin near the clouds. They were forced to decline his invitation to the gentle lion's mouth; as did Mr. Rumford, very briskly and thankfully. Mr. Rockney was taken away by Mr. and Mrs. Marbury Dyke. So the party separated, and the Englishmen were together, and the Irishmen together; and hardly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... been the object of a dozen love affairs, and been jilted twice, report went, though I had my suspicion from the first that it was the other way. Certainly Miss Peggie Stuart (and he had once been engaged to her) went into a decline immediately after our marriage—but in affairs of the heart, as I have mentioned often before, the only reliable witnesses are those who never tell what they know. Now, as for Christopher, are you quite sure he is as handsome as you say?" "Quite, quite, he's splendid—like the picture of ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... and the removal of an enormous decaying fish (F3). The diminutive hero receives the hand of the king's daughter in return for this last service,—an honor which the heroes of our other versions decline. The incident of the small hero being swallowed by an animal and ultimately emerging into the light of day alive, at once suggests Tom Thumb's adventure in the cow and the wolf. For "swallow" tales in general, see Macculloch, 47-51; Bolte-Polivka, ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... besides Hagan mistrusted the queen, and advised King Guenther and his brothers to decline the invitation. But the princes grew angry at their advice; and Hagan, who could not endure to be laughed at, set forth with them, accompanied with a ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... am, back again here, dear master, and not very happy; my mother worries me. Her decline increases from day to day, and almost from hour to hour. She wanted me to come home although the painters have not finished their work, and we are very inconveniently housed. At the end of next week, she will have a companion ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... schoolhouse very late, owing to attendance upon the funeral of an acquaintance and neighbor, with whose sad decline in health I had been familiar, and whose last days both the doctor and Mrs. Todd had tried in vain to ease. The services had taken place at one o'clock, and now, at quarter past two, I stood at the schoolhouse window, ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... I keep and I hope to see shine The day when the Idea prevails over might; When after the fray and death's slow decline, Some other voice sounds, far happier than mine, To raise the glad song of the ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... decline in the poet's appearance, Dr. Currie tells us, for upwards of a year before his death, and he himself was sensible that his constitution was sinking. During almost the whole of the winter of 1795-96 he had been confined to the house. Then follows the ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... arrived from Bavaria, the fine Court of France was on the decline: it was at the commencement of Maintenon's reign, which spoilt and degraded everything. It was not, therefore, surprising that the poor Dauphine should regret her own country. Maintenon annoyed her immediately after her marriage in such a manner as must have excited pity. The Dauphine had made ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... (if, as I am assured, I may answer for them) will decline to waste time on mere darkenings of counsel of this sort; but to those Anglicans who accept his premises, Dr. Newman is a truly formidable antagonist. What, indeed, are they to reply when he puts the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... nature of a paradox that the brilliant success of the packet ships in dominating the North Atlantic trade should have been a factor in the decline of the nation's maritime prestige and resources. Through a period of forty years the pride and confidence in these ships, their builders, and the men who sailed them, was intense and universal. They were a superlative product of the American genius, which still displayed ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... year. He had spent some weeks with him at Dorking in the summer of 1858, and had taken a little expedition with him in the spring of 1859. My father injured himself by a walk on his seventieth birthday (January 3, 1859), and his health afterwards showed symptoms of decline. In the autumn he was advised to go to Homburg; and thence, on August 30, he wrote his last letter, criticising a draft of a report which Fitzjames was preparing for the Education Commission, and suggesting a few sentences which ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... night, who had nothing to lose. At last, at Christmas, the agent wrote over to stop the drafts, for he could raise no more money on bond or mortgage, or from the tenants, or any how, nor had he any more to lend himself, and desired at the same time to decline the agency for the future, wishing Sir Kit his health and happiness, and the compliments of the season, for I saw the letter before ever it was sealed, when my son copied it. When the answer came, there was a new turn in affairs, and the agent was turned out; and my son Jason, who had ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... first professor of Greek teaching alpha, beta, gamma to hundreds of eager young men, begging their way to the city of the Arno, living in stables and in dingy attics that they night learn how to decline the verb [gr paidenw paideneis paidenei] and enter into the companionship of Sophocles ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... a maiden lady who did dressmaking in a small way; she fell ill, and although attended by all the physicians in the neighborhood, was sinking slowly into a decline when her cousin Cyrus asked her to come and keep house for him in Lewiston. She went, and in a year grew into a robust, hearty, cheerful woman. Returning to Riverboro on a brief visit, she was asked if she meant to end her days ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... reign, but that the sense of mine own defects hath put me in mind of a most necessary suit, so beg forgiveness for that part which is here written. Those great actions of Edward III. are the arguments of this poem, which is here ended, where his fortune began to decline, where the French by revolts, and private practices regained that which had been won from them by eminent and famous victories; which times may afford fitter observations for an acute historian in prose, than strains of heighth for an heroic poem." ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... he waited for the officer's reply. He was afraid he would decline the invitation—Jack knew he would have done so if he had been in the midshipman's place, and that nothing short of an overpowering force would have taken him from the deck so long as he was prize-master of the brig. But the young officer's fears had not ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... and the southern city Aden, with its refinery and port facilities, is the economic and commercial capital. Future economic development depends heavily on Western-assisted development of the country's moderate oil resources. Former South Yemen's willingness to merge stemmed partly from the steady decline in Soviet economic support. The low level of domestic industry and agriculture has made northern Yemen dependent on imports for practically all of its essential needs. Once self-sufficient in food production, ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... late disbursements, and allso that M^r. Allerton was y^e first occasioner of bringing them upon these new designes, which at first seemed faire & profitable unto them, and unto which they agreed; but now, seeing them to turne to loss, and decline to greater intanglments, they thought it more meete for y^e plantation to bear them, then them selves, who had borne much in other things allready, and so tooke advantage of such comission & power as M^r. Allerton had formerly had as their ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... home and spend the day with me. Ma begs that you will not refuse to dine with her; and, as you are engaged all the week, Uncle Guy expects you also; that is, he told me to insist on your coming, but thought you would probably decline. Will you ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... the downfall of the country from its position as one of the world's great powers before the close of the twentieth century, is a mathematical certainty. That M. Zola, in order to combat those evils, and to do his duty as a good citizen anxious to prevent the decline of his country, should have dealt with his subject with the greatest frankness and outspokenness, was only natural. Moreover, absolute freedom of speech exists in France, which is not the case elsewhere. Thus, when I first perused the original proofs of M. Zola's work, I came ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... and write a record of their glorious supremacy, then pass away, forgotten perhaps save by a record of their deeds or history of their decline. Nature plans not for one season, but for all time. The years as they came to the painted Iroquois will come with never-ending delight to generations yet to be. Our faith in Nature's grandeur and beauty becomes stronger ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... practices; theft, sedition, and treason flourished as they have never flourished since. The very disproportion and hideousness of the penalty inflamed men's minds to the commission of wrong. On the contrary, the birth of lenience and humanity was immediately rewarded by a decline of crime. These are lessons which we do well to recollect to-day when statesmen advocate the death penalty for the anarchist, irrespective of his exact crime; when city councils propose the same penalty for those guilty of outrages on women; when indignant ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... such a weed as this on any one; so, Footelights wants to have the opinion of a man who's really a judge of what a good weed is. I refused, because my taste has been rather out of order lately; and Billy Blades is in training for Henley, so he's obliged to decline; so I told him of you, Giglamps, and said, that if there was a man in Brazenface that could tell him what his Magnifico Pomposo was worth, that man was Verdant Green. Don't blush, old feller! you can't help ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... will to decline. She would see whether it were possible when she reached the street. It finished by their being the last to leave. Pauline and Jeanne already stood on the opposite pavement awaiting them. But a tearful voice brought them ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... understood to wait for no man; we therefore decline to wait either for time or tide, but, sweeping onward in advance of both, convey our readers at once to the sea coast near Vancouver's Island, where our adventurers arrived after an unusual share of toil and trouble, and found a small craft about to sail for California—took ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... I'm kinder thin and some changed, so ye didn't know me," said Reuben, with a feeble smile. "Ye see I've been here a year, and am going into a decline. I sent word home to have father ask Deacon Nash if he wouldn't let me go home to be nussed up by mother. I should get rugged again if I could have a little o' mother's nussin. P'raps ye've come to ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... the city in person. He had heard that the new sheriffs were good and trusty men, and he expressed a hope that at the approaching election of a mayor they would choose one of whom he could approve, otherwise he would decline to receive the mayor-elect at his presentation. He not only forbade any further entreaties to be made to him touching Northampton, More and Northbury, but commissioned enquiry to be made as to their property in the city. He was especially ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... Slashem regret to be obliged to decline with thanks the MSS. of M. Shirley Roseleaf, and request to be informed what disposition he desires made of ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... broken-winded. That fate is sure to overtake the best of them sooner or later. The career of a great opera-singer is rarely more than half as long as that of a great tragedian, and even when a primadonna or a tenor makes a fortune, the decline of their glory is far more sudden and sad than that of actors generally is. Lady Macbeth is as great a part as Juliet for an actress of genius, but there are no 'old parts' for singers; the soprano dare not turn into a contralto with advancing years, nor does the unapproachable ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... Rome," says Gibbon, "on the 15th of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the Decline and Fall of the City first started to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... secular power, could not any longer be recognised; but no thing or things contained in the act should be afterwards "interpreted or expounded, that his Grace (the king), his nobles and subjects, intended by the same to decline or vary from the congregation of Christ's church in anything concerning the articles of the Catholic faith of Christendom, or in any other things declared by the Holy Scripture and the Word of God necessary for salvation; ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... your own heart, Sir Thomas, and see whether you are not willing to risk her peace of mind for the miserable ambition of seeing her one day a countess. Alas! my friend," he continued, "there is no talisman in the coronet of a countess to stay the progress of sorrow, or check the decline of a breaking heart. If Miss Gourlay be, as I fear she is, averse to this union, do not sacrifice her to ambition and a profligate. She is too precious a treasure to be thrown away upon two objects so utterly worthless. ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... reports of the law cases that were tried before the official judges, all set before us a state of society which changed but little down to the Persian era. Behind it lie centuries of slow development and progress in the arts of life. The age of Amraphel, indeed, is in certain respects an age of decline. The heyday of Babylonian art lay nearly two thousand years before it, in the epoch of Sargon and his son Naram-Sin. It was then that the Babylonian empire was established throughout western Asia as far as ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... to statements made by her on a different occasion, and which were rather different from the statements she made here: did she make any different statement to you at any time from what she made here yesterday?-Unless compelled, I would decline to say anything that would criminate myself or her; but give it as my opinion generally that the witnesses, without naming any of them, gave a statement which I won't call untruthful, but which I say was not at statement in accordance with what my convictions are that they should have ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... magnificent Protestant cathedral; it has little industry, but considerable trade, and is a favourite tourist resort; here took place the disputation between Calvin, Farel, and Viret, and here Gibbon wrote the "Decline ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... In reply to your note of this date, summoning me to surrender my forces at discretion, I beg leave to say that I decline acceding ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... parts of the continent the Xanthorrea affords an inexhaustible supply of fragrant grubs, which an epicure would delight in, when once he has so far conquered his prejudices as to taste them; whilst in proceeding to the northward, these trees decline in health and growth, until about the parallel of Gantheaume Bay they totally disappear, and even a native finds himself cut off from his ordinary supplies of insects; the same circumstances taking place with regard to the roots and other kinds ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... straightened himself. But he still continued to look out, gazing at the bare sward below the window, at the sparkling sheet of water beyond and beneath it, at the pitiless blue sky above, in which the sun was still high, though it had begun to decline. ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... forces that hold these material things together are not iron bands, but thoughts and beliefs. Destroy the life-nerve running up through the tree, and the rings of wood will soon fall apart. Destroy the thoughts and beliefs of our people, and its homes, colleges and institutions will decline and decay. Thrust a million Mohammedans into our land, and their inner thoughts will realize themselves in mosques, minarets, and harems. But thrust a million Americans into Asia Minor and straightway their thoughts will take on these visible shapes ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... I need not apprehend much doubt as to the fact of the decline of science in England: how far I may have pointed out some of its causes, must be left ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... after. And when the Senator from Ohio asks me to vote against proceeding to the consideration of any measure, either because I distrust my own fitness to consider it, or distrust the fitness of my associates about me, I must respectfully decline, not because I care particularly whether we take up this measure to-day or another day, but because I ask the Senate to vindicate their own course as individual men, and to say that they are not to be swept from the seat of judgment by what is said, or can be said, by the first magistrate ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... Although we decline to give specific directions about what varieties of furniture should constitute the furnishings of a house, or to illustrate its style or fashion by drawings, and content ourself with the single remark, that it should, in all cases, be strong, plain, and durable—no sham, ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... receive food, and the quantity he could consume when he was unfettered was so great that a crew made up of men proportionately as great eaters would have made a captain wince when stores were running out, and shipowners decline to take them ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... untroubled there to live, And there to die, may meet the archer's shaft When next it spreads the wing. The tempest folds O'er the smooth forehead of the summer noon Its undiscover'd purpose, to emerge Resistless from its armory, and whelm In floods of ruin, ere the day decline. ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... with the problem of Mrs. Turpin's husband. From her clerical friend of St. Luke's she had learnt that Turpin was at bottom a decent sort of man, rather intelligent, and that it was only during the last year or two that he had taken to passing his evenings at the public-house. Causes for this decline could be suggested. The carpenter had lost his only son, a lad of whom he was very fond; the boy's death quite broke him down at the time, and perhaps he had begun to drink as a way for forgetting his trouble. Perhaps, ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... needle of Mavra's embroidery work would slacken its motion, and for long hours her eyes remain fixed on the face of the sleeping young count. Daylight would decline, and no candles be brought, lest the healing rest ...
— The Little Russian Servant • Henri Greville
... concluded that something had happened to detain her expected visitor at home, and that she might be disappointed of the visit altogether. Still she could not but hope that Mary would come in the course of the afternoon. The hours of the afternoon, however, passed tediously away, and the sun began to decline toward the west; still there was no Mary Bell. The cause of her detention will ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... Trade decline to interfere on the ground that the Crown had no interest in the kind of whale that was driven ashore?-Yes; they said the Crown had no interest in that kind of whales. We thought, as the Government claim the foreshores ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... path thou nobly dost decline Of tracing word by word, and line by line. Those are the labored births of slavish brains, Not the effect of poetry but pains; Cheap, vulgar arts, whose narrowness affords No flight for thoughts, but poorly ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... which we have record, except the Chinese, have decayed after growing and flourishing a few centuries, usually about a thousand years or less. Many reasons are given for the decline and fall of nations. Rome especially furnishes food for much thought. However, look into the history of each known nation that has risen to prominence, glory and power, and you will find that so long as they kept in close contact with the soil they flourished. With the advance of civilization the ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... Journal was commenced, Hogg was asked by his former schoolfellow, Mr Robert Chambers, to undertake the duties of assistant editor, on a salary superior to that which he then received; but this office, from a conscientious scruple about his ability to give satisfaction, he was led to decline. He was an extensive contributor, both in prose and verse, to the two first volumes of this popular periodical; but before the work had gone further, his health began to give way, and he retired to his father's ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... for the generality of purchasers, not caring for comparative excellence in art, will be well pleased to give one franc, for what, before, they could not obtain under three or five. Hence we may date the decline and downfall of art itself. I was surprised, the other day, at hearing DENON talk so strongly in favour of lithography. I told him "it was a bastard art; and I rejoiced, in common with every man of taste or feeling, that that art had not made its appearance before the publication ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... prestige—which represents physical force in the background—that a nation protects itself against foreign interference, upholds its rule over subject populations, and enforces its own laws. And nothing could in the end more certainly lead to war and revolt than the decline of the military spirit and loss of prestige which would inevitably follow if man admitted woman into ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... the tyranny of the Excise, and the downfall of his hopes and fortunes, were now to bring forth their fruits—the poet's health began to decline. His drooping looks, his neglect of his person, his solitary saunterings, his escape from the stings of reflection into socialities, and his distempered joy in the company of beauty, all spoke, as plainly as with a tongue, of a sinking heart and a declining body. Yet though he was ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... away, had not only heard of Ernest, but had meditated much upon his character, until he deemed nothing so desirable as to meet this man, whose untaught wisdom walked hand in hand with the noble simplicity of his life. One summer morning, therefore, he took passage by the railroad, and, in the decline of the afternoon, alighted from the cars at no great distance from Ernest's cottage. The great hotel, which had formerly been the palace of Mr. Gathergold, was close at hand, but the poet, with his carpet-bag on his arm, ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... theory, gave new heart to Christendom, and so dispirited the Turks that in the next year they dared not meet the Christians at sea, though they were commanded by the daring dey of Algiers. The beginning of the decline of the Ottoman empire may be said to date from the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... possessions of those families, whose ancestors had become rich in the day of her prosperity. Men lived among her islands in that state of incipient lethargy, which marks the progress of a downward course, whether the decline be of a moral or of a ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... do," the Mayor answered quickly, comprehending on the instant the quality of this antagonist, feeling his own insolence in the tone. "I merely decline the conditions." ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... the writings of Ibsen, his huge double drama on the rise and fall of Julian is the most extensive and the most ambitious. It is not difficult to understand what it was about the most subtle and the most speculative of the figures which animate the decline of antiquity that fascinated the imagination of Ibsen. Successive historians have celebrated the flexibility of intelligence and firmness of purpose which were combined in the brain of Julian with a passion for abstract ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... countrymen, it was extremely difficult for him to think of relinquishing this flattering distinction, and humble himself under the mighty hand of God. But at length the time came when this once dreaded chieftain must lose his influence. His bodily vigour began to decline, and he saw and feared an enemy in every one of those whose relations he had murdered. He began to grow poor, and his numerous wives either deserted him or were carried away by force; of the whole number one only clave to him in his adversity. Amid this extraordinary change ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... however, that they must be near the Union outposts. With these considerations they concluded to make their journey now by day, and in a road. In truth, Rowan had lost all care as to how they went and what became of them, and his companion's energy and decision were on the decline. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... course of my narrative has carried me were the days of pugilism; it was then at its height, and consequently near its decline, for corruption had crept into the ring; and how many things, states and sects among the rest, owe their decline to this cause! But what a bold and vigorous aspect pugilism wore at that time! and the great ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow |
