Decline Quotes - Page 16

• Our pleasures in literature do not, I think, decline with age; last 1st of January was my eighty-second birthday, and I think that I had as much enjoyment from books as I ever had in my life.

  Maria Edgeworth

  Book, Thinking, Age

  Maria Edgeworth (1895). “The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth”

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• While I have no empirical evidence to back this up, I bet that the number of homosexual people per thousand has not fluctuated all that much over the centuries. I do not believe the dented wisdom my father used to extol, that homosexuality was a sure sign of a civilization in decline.

  Henry Rollins

  Father, Believe, Civilization

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• Should you happen to notice that another person is extremely tall or overweight, eats too much or declines convivial drinks, has red hair or goes about in a wheelchair, ought to get married or ought not to be pregnant -- see if you can refrain from bringing these astonishing observations to that person's attention.

  Judith Martin

  Hair, Attention, Red

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• Old France, weighed down with history, prostrated by wars and revolutions, endlessly vacillating from greatness to decline, but revived, century after century, by the genius of renewal!

  Charles de Gaulle

  War, Greatness, France

  Charles de Gaulle (1960). “War Memoirs: Salvation, 1944-1946. Translated from the French by R. Howard”

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• Ladies, stock and tend your hive,
  Trifle not at thirty-five;
  For, howe'er we boast and strive,
  Life declines from thirty-five;
  He that ever hopes to thrive
  Must begin by thirty-five.

  Samuel Johnson

  Women, Age, Strive

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1859). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Including a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”, p.87

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• It is important to remember that these are your Declining Years, in which you can jolly well decline to do what you don't feel like doing, unless not doing it would make you feel worse than doing it.

  Peg Bracken

  Years, Important, Aging

  Peg Bracken (1996). “On Getting Old for the First Time”, Bookpartners

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• Rejoice, and men will seek you;
  Grieve, and they turn and go,
  They want full measure of all your pleasure,
  But they do not need your woe.
  Be glad, and your friends are many;
  Be sad, and you lose them all,--
  There are none to decline your nectar'd wine,
  But alone you must drink life's gall.

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Friendship, Wine, Men

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox (2016). “Complete Poetical Works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox (Delphi Classics)”, p.504, Delphi Classics

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• Planet Hollywood has shrunk from seventy-five locations around the world to just over thirty-five over the past two years. No new Planet Hollywoods are opening, which in turn has caused a 100 percent decline in opportunities for Bruce Willis to play the harmonica.

  Jon Stewart

  Past, Opportunity, Years

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• But only that soul can be my friend which I encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which I do not decline, and which does not decline me, but, native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experience.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Soul, Encounters, Doe

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.315, Library of America

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• Cooperation called fraternity in the classic French formula is as much a part of the democratic ideal as is personal initiative. That cultural conditions were allowed to develop (markedly so in the economic phase) which subordinated cooperativeness to liberty and equality serves to explain the decline in the two latter.

  John Dewey

  Democratic Ideals, Two, Liberty

  John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston, Steven M. Cahn (2008). “The Later Works, 1925-1953: 1938-1939”, p.78, SIU Press

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• The signs that presage growth, so similar, it seems to me, to those in early adolescence: discontent, restlessness, doubt, despair, longing, are interpreted falsely as signs of decay. In youth one does not as often misinterpret the signs; one accepts them, quite rightly, as growing pains. One takes them seriously, listens to them, follows where they lead. ... But in the middle age, because of the false assumption that it is a period of decline, one interprets these life-signs, paradoxically, as signs of approaching death.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Pain, Doubt, Growth

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• A wound in the friendship of young persons, as in the bark of young trees, may be so grown over as to leave no scar. The case is very different in regard to old persons and old timber. The reason of this may be accountable from the decline of the social passions, and the prevalence of spleen, suspicion, and rancor towards the latter part of life.

  William Shenstone

  Friendship, Passion, Tree

  William Shenstone (1765). “Essays on men and manners. A description of the Leasowes, the seat of the late William Shenstone, esq., by R. Dodsley. Verses to Mr. Shenstone”, p.142

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• Why do so many ingenious theorists give fresh reasons every year for the decline of letter writing, and why do they assume, in derision of suffering humanity, that it has declined? They lament the lack of leisure, the lack of sentiment ... They talk of telegrams, and telephones, and postal cards, as if any discovery of science, any device of civilization, could eradicate from the human heart that passion for self-expression which is the impelling force of letters.

  Agnes Repplier

  Passion, Writing, Heart

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• A decline in the national housing price level would need to be substantial to trigger a significant rise in foreclosures, because the vast majority of homeowners have built up substantial equity in their homes despite large mortgage-market financed withdrawals of home equity in recent years.

  Alan Greenspan

  Home, Years, Levels

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• Now, on the longest day, light triumphs, and yet begins the decline into dark. We turn the Wheel for we have planted the seeds of our own changes, and to grow we must accept even the passing of the sun Set Sail See with clear eyes See how we shine!

  Starhawk

  Eye, Dark, Light

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• In my book ["Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age], I argue that we're vulnerable to technologies.There's a 40 percent decline in all markers for empathy among college students, with most of it taking place in the past years.

  Judy Woodruff

  Book, Technology, College

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• All history is the decline of war, though the slow decline. All that society has yet gained is mitigation; the doctrine of the right of war still remains.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  War, Doctrine, Stills

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1890*). “The works of Ralph Waldo Emerson...”

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• Aging nations have arteries clogged with obsolete laws, slowing blood flow and preventing oxygen from reaching all parts of the body politic. Physicians call this arteriosclerosis; historians see decline of empire.

  Jim Cooper

  Oxygen, Blood, Law

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• The U.S. dollar is in terminal decline. America is tragically bankrupt, unable to pay its lenders without printing the dollars to do so, and enmeshed in an economic depression. The clock is ticking until the dollar faces a crisis of confidence like every other bubble before it.

  Peter Schiff

  Clock Is Ticking, America, Dollars

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• The rates of taxation climb and the levels of capital decline, until the only remaining wealth beyond the reach of the regime is the very protein of human flesh, and that too is finally taxed, bound, and gagged, and brought to the colossal temple of the state - a final sacrifice of carnal revenue to feed the declining elite.

  George Gilder

  Sacrifice, Taxation, Levels

  George Gilder (2012). “Wealth and Poverty: A New Edition for the Twenty-First Century”, p.349, Regnery Publishing

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• Walking is the only way proven to stave off cognitive decline - it works.

  Dan Buettner

  Way, Walking, Proven

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• Perhaps Western civilization is in a post-decline phase, or maybe the decline is just taking a really long time, like the Roman Empire's did. The Romans had gladiators and Christian-hungry lions and that sort of thing. We have MTV.

  Tom Shales

  Christian, Civilization, Hungry Lion

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• States with high and rising tax burdens are more likely to suffer economic decline; those with low and falling tax burdens are more likely to enjoy strong economic growth.

  Lawrence Kudlow

  Strong, Fall, Growth

  "Low-Tax Tiger" by Lawrence Kudlow, www.realclearpolitics.com. January 20, 2006.

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• Bad things happen, but really bad things do not. Do buy the dips, especially the lowest quality securities when they come under pressure, because declines will quickly be reversed.

  Seth Klarman

  Quality, Pressure, Dip

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• Most people spend less than 20 hrs a year learning about freedom, yet many wonder why it's in decline. Don't fight upstream. Instead, turn it around.

  Oliver DeMille

  Fighting, Years, People

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