Decay Quotes - Page 6

• On every thing are traced decay and change. Look! how the shifting seasons slip away.

  Isaac McLellan

  Change, Looks, Shifting

  Isaac McLellan (1830). “The Fall of the Indian: With Other Poems”, p.22

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• The ensouled is distinguished from the unsouled by its being alive. Now since being alive is spoken of in many ways, even if only one of these is present, we say that the thing is alive, if, for instance, there is intellect or perception or spatial movement and rest or indeed movement connected with nourishment and growth and decay. It is for this reason that all the plants are also held to be alive . . .

  Aristotle

  Soul, Perception, Growth

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• Things exalted then decay. This is going against the Way. What goes against the Way meets an early end.

  Laozi

  Taoism, Way, Ends

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• Incrementalism: In the first generation, the goal of the movement was wholesale social and cultural transformation. Small, incremental victories were too little given the magnitude of America's moral decay. Since 1988, the new leaders have recognized that incrementalism is the surest path to success in political competition. The current movement is committed to securing small victories now, postponing for the long-term more fundamental changes in society and politics.

  Kenneth D. Wald

  America, Goal, Long

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• The process of transformation consists mostly of decay.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Transformation, Process

  Rebecca Solnit (2010). “A Field Guide To Getting Lost”, p.93, Canongate Books

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• Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining, Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day, Tremulous leaves, with soft and silver lining, Buds that open only to decay.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Eye, Shining, Bud

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1848). “Poems”, p.10

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• Genuine philosophical problems are always rooted outside philosophy and they die if these roots decay.

  Karl Popper

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Roots

  Karl Popper (2014). “Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge”, p.95, Routledge

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• Without death and decay, how could life go on?

  John Burroughs

  Goes On, Life Goes On

  John Burroughs, Charlotte Zoë Walker (2001). “The Art of Seeing Things: Essays”, p.233, Syracuse University Press

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• But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags that time cannot decay, I'm junk but I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

  Leonard Cohen

  Democracy, Junk, Bags

  Song: Democracy, Album: The Future, 1992

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• The essence of decay is inactivity.

  Jack LaLanne

  Essence, Inactivity

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• There can be no reasonable right to live on sidewalks. Society needs order, and hence has a right to a minimally civilized ambience in public spaces. Regarding the homeless, this is not merely for aesthetic reasons because the anesthetic is not merely unappealing. It presents a spectacle of disorder and decay that becomes a contagion.

  George Will

  Order, Space, Needs

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• The constant abrasion and decay of our lives makes the soil of our future growth.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Growth, Soil

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.251, Xist Publishing

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• For ivy climbs the crumbling hall To decorate decay.

  Philip James Bailey

  Ivy, Crumbling, Halls

  Philip James Bailey (1857). “Festus: a poem”, p.277

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• Autumn teaches us that fruition is also death; that ripeness is a form of decay. The willows, having stood for so long near water, begin to rust. Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.

  Gretel Ehrlich

  Autumn, Long, Water

  Gretel Ehrlich (1986). “The Solace of Open Spaces”, Penguin Group USA

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• A debt may get mouldy, but it never decays.

  Chinua Achebe

  Business, Debt, May

  Chinua Achebe (1987). “No Longer at Ease”, p.74, Heinemann

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• When the mind's eye rests on objects illuminated by truth and reality, it understands and comprehends them, and functions intelligently; but when it turns to the twilight world of change and decay, it can only form opinions, its vision is confused and its beliefs shifting, and it seems to lack intelligence.

  Plato

  Confused, Twilight, Eye

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• Grass is the forgiveness of nature - her constant benediction. Forests decay, harvests perish, flowers vanish, but grass is immortal...Its tenacious fibers hold the earth in place and prevent its soluble components from washing to the wasting sea.

  John James Ingalls

  Nature, Flower, Sea

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• All Kings, and all their favorites, All glory of honors, beauties, wits, The sun itself, which makes times, as they pass, Is elder by a year, now, than it was When thou and I first one another saw: All other things, to their destruction draw, Only our love hath no decay; This, no tomorrow hash, nor yesterday, Running, it never runs from us away, But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

  John Donne

  Running, Kings, Elderly

  John Donne (2012). “Selected Poems”, p.25, Courier Corporation

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• How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night Become the touches of sweet harmony. Sit, Jessica: look, how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold; There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins. Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

  William Shakespeare

  Sweet, Sleep, Angel

  'The Merchant of Venice' (1596-8) act 5, sc. 1, l. 54

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• A fiery soul, which working out its way,
  Fretted the pygmy-body to decay:
  And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.
  A daring pilot in extremity;
  Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high
  He sought the storms...

  John Dryden

  Work Out, Soul, Storm

  John Dryden, “Absalom And Achitophel”

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• The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Honesty, Integrity, War

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• One trait in the philosopher's character we can assume is his love of the knowledge that reveals eternal reality, the realm unaffected by change and decay.

  Plato

  Character, Reality, Words Of Wisdom

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• One trait in the philosopher's character we can assume is his love of the knowledge that reveals eternal reality, the realm unaffected by change and decay. He is in love with the whole of that reality, and will not willingly be deprived even of the most insignificant fragment of it - just like the lovers and men of ambition we described earlier on.

  Plato

  Ambition, Character, Reality

  Plato, Henry Desmond Pritchard Lee (1987). “The Republic”

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• There is an Eye that never sleeps, Beneath the wind of night. There is an ear that never shuts, When sinks the beams of light. There is an Arm that never tires, When human strength gives way. There is a Love that never fails, When earthly loves decay.

  George Matheson

  Love, Failure, Sleep

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• Oh, ever thus, from childhood's hour, I 've seen my fondest hopes decay; I never loved a tree or flower But 't was the first to fade away. I never nurs'd a dear gazelle, To glad me with its soft black eye, But when it came to know me well And love me, it was sure to die.

  Charles Lamb

  Love, Hope, Flower

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