Decay Quotes - Page 2

• When one tears away the veils and shows them naked, people's souls give off such a pungent smell of decay.

  Octave Mirbeau

  Smell, People, Giving

  Octave Mirbeau (2007). “The Diary of a Chambermaid”, Harper Collins

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• It is sad
  To see the light of beauty wane away,
  Know eyes are dimming, bosoms shrivelling, feet
  Losing their springs, and limbs their lily roundness;
  But it is worse to feel the heart-spring gone,
  To lose hope, care not for the coming thing,
  And feel all things go to decay within us.

  Philip James Bailey

  Spring, Heart, Eye

  Philip James Bailey, “Festus - XXIII”

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• Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Fall, Writing, Hair

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.77, Macmillan

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• Where there is no strife there is decay: 'The mixture which is not shaken decomposes.'

  Heraclitus

  Mixtures, Strife

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• Jude has a very different character. It is not the cradle of Christianity, or of the assembly on earth: it is its decay and its death here below. It does not keep its first estate.

  John Nelson Darby

  Character, Doe, Different

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• There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Country, Philosophical, Religion

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• Show me one thing here on earth which has begun well and not ended badly. The proudest palpitations are engulfed in a sewer, where they cease throbbing, as though having reached their natural term: this downfall constitutes the heart's drama and the negative meaning of history.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Drama, Heart, Age

  Emile M. Cioran (1975). “A short history of decay”, Viking Books

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• The first thing you have to do is accept that decay sets in and there's nothing you can do about it.

  Francesca Annis

  Firsts, Accepting, Can Do

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• Without adventure civilization is in full decay.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Travel, Adventure, Civilization

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.279, Simon and Schuster

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• Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Men, Land, Wealth

  1770 The Deserted Village, l.51-6.

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• And in the afternoon they entered a land - but such a land! A land hung in mourning, darkened by gigantic cypresses, submerged; a land of reptiles, silence, shadow, decay.

  George Washington Cable

  Land, Silence, Mourning

  George Washington Cable (1988). “The Grandissimes: A Story of Creole Life”, p.9, University of Georgia Press

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• We know that our senses are subject to decay, that from our middle years they are decaying all the time; but happily it is as if we didn't know and didn't believe.

  William Henry Hudson

  Believe, Years, Middle

  William Henry Hudson (1923). “The Collected Works of W. H. Hudson: A traveller in little things”

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• One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washèd it away: Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide and made my pains his prey. Vain man (said she) that dost in vain assay A mortal thing so to immortalise; For I myself shall like to this decay, And eke my name be wipèd out likewise. Not so (quod I); let baser things devise To die in dust, but you shall live by fame; My verse your virtues rare shall eternise, And in the heavens write your glorious name: Where, when as Death shall all the world subdue, Our love shall live, and later life renew.

  Edmund Spenser

  Pain, Writing, Men

  'Amoretti' (1595) sonnet 75

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• All satire is blind to the forces liberated by decay. Which is why total decay has absorbed the forces of satire.

  Theodor Adorno

  Blind, Satire, Force

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.211, Verso

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• Political chaos is connected with the decay of language... one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.

  George Orwell

  Political Language, Chaos, Improvement

  George Orwell (1986). “The complete works of George Orwell”

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• Age is not all decay; it is the ripening, the swelling, of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk.

  George MacDonald

  Reality, Age, Aging

  George MacDonald (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)”, p.5832, Delphi Classics

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• I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime.

  Lee Atwater

  Country, Eye, Ambition

  Life Interview, January 1991.

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• Our works decay and disappear but God gentlest works stay looking down on the ruins we toil to rear.

  Walter Smith

  Work, Toil, Ruins

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• An age that melts in unperceiv'd decay, And glides in modest innocence away.

  Samuel Johnson

  Age, Innocence, Modesty

  Samuel Johnson (1811). “The Poetical Works of Samuel Johnson: Collated with the Best Editions”, p.27

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• Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay. Princes and lords may flourish or may fade,- A breath can make them, as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroy'd, can never be supplied.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Country, Pride, Men

  The Deserted Village l. 51 (1770)

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• We cannot rest and sit down lest we rust and decay. Health is maintained only through work. And as it is with all life so it is with science. We are always struggling from the relative to the absolute.

  Max Planck

  Struggle, Hard Work, Health

  Max Planck (1933). “Where is science going?”

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• As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed as ignorant as you were at twenty-two, you'd always be twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, it's the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.

  Mitch Albom

  Life, Positive, Learning

  "Tuesdays with Morrie". Book by Mitch Albom, 1997.

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• I sorrow that all fair things must decay.

  Fitz-Greene Halleck

  Sorrow, Fairs

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• Mutability is written upon all things.

  Antoine Rivarol

  All Things, Mutability, Written

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• [H]istory assures us that civilizations decay quite leisurely.

  Will Durant

  Civilization, Apathy

  Will Durant, Ariel Durant (2012). “The Lessons of History”, Simon and Schuster

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