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Decay   Listen
noun
Decay  n.  
1.
Gradual failure of health, strength, soundness, prosperity, or of any species of excellence or perfection; tendency toward dissolution or extinction; corruption; rottenness; decline; deterioration; as, the decay of the body; the decay of virtue; the decay of the Roman empire; a castle in decay. "Perhaps my God, though he be far before, May turn, and take me by the hand, and more May strengthen my decays." "His (Johnson's) failure was not to be ascribed to intellectual decay." "Which has caused the decay of the consonants to follow somewhat different laws."
2.
Destruction; death. (Obs.)
3.
Cause of decay. (R.) "He that plots to be the only figure among ciphers, is the decay of the whole age."
Synonyms: Decline; consumption. See Decline.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Decay" Quotes from Famous Books



... is not abruptly strangled, but merely dreams of evil, and fights with gradually stifling shadows. When the last convulsions come they are not terrific; the frame has been weakened for dissolution; love dies like natural decay. It seems the kindest way of doing a cruel thing. But Dahlia wrote, crying out her agony at the torture. Possibly your nervously organized natures require a modification of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... occupied this grassy dead solitude during the flush times of twelve or fifteen years before, and where our cabin stood had once been the heart of the teeming hive, the centre of the city. When the mines gave out the town fell into decay, and in a few years wholly disappeared—streets, dwellings, shops, everything—and left no sign. The grassy slopes were as green and smooth and desolate of life as if they had never been disturbed. The mere handful of miners still remaining, had seen the town spring up spread, grow and flourish ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... microbes die, decay ceases, the iron in the blood becomes chemically strong; ozone is manufactured from the dirt and dust, which are also destroyed; the perspiration becomes active and carries off waste from the muscles and cleanses the skin; dead tissues are purified and the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay

... may be in a state of decay," replied Campbell; "consider the case of the Turkish Empire at this moment. The Union between its separate portions is so languid, that each separate Pasha may almost be termed a separate sovereign; still it ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... moss and lichens so o'erspread, Nothing is legible but the name alone. And is it so with them? After long years, Do they remember me in the same way, And is the memory pleasant as to me? I fear to ask; yet wherefore are my fears? Pleasures, like flowers, may wither and decay, And yet ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... will Caesar's pride A prior rival in his triumphs brook; Which had the right 'twere impious to enquire; Each for his cause can vouch a judge supreme; The victor, heaven: the vanquished, Cato, thee. (7) Nor were they like to like: the one in years Now verging towards decay, in times of peace Had unlearned war; but thirsting for applause Had given the people much, and proud of fame His former glory cared not to renew, But joyed in plaudits of the theatre, (8) His gift to Rome: his triumphs in the past, Himself the shadow of a mighty name. ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... They are clothed with the protection of law.[477] In my judgment, Mr. President, the day that the floodgate of female suffrage is opened upon this country, the social organism will have reached the point at which decay and ruin begin.... Why, sir, what is the advantage? If the head of the family votes he is apt to reflect the views of the family. It is more convenient than to have all the family going out ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... to be found for even more than twice that period. All this, however, had captain Willoughby escaped, in consequence of limiting his clearing, in a great measure, to that which had been made by the beavers, and from which time and natural decay had, long before his arrival, removed every ungainly object. It is true, here and there a few acres had been cleared on the firmer ground, at the margin of the flats, where barns and farm buildings had been built, ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... times, we should still be enjoying Pigeon pie as freely as we did in my boyhood. But as the population of the country increased, these great flocks were cruelly slaughtered, for the mere greed of killing them; thousands were often left to decay upon the ground, and now I do not believe that any one of you has ever seen a ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... statue of George II. stuck in the middle of it. The principal entrance to the ground is described as "decorated with four piers of black stone crowned with globes of mountain granite, once respectable, but exhibiting shameful symptoms of neglect and decay." There had been a gravel walk called the "Beaux' Walk," from its having been a fashionable resort, "but," says Whitelaw, "the ditch which bounds it is now usually filled with stagnant water, which seems to be the appropriate receptacle of animal bodies in a disgusting state of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... that even in decay there's life," the painter murmured. "The falling apart of rotten wood breeds sentiency, there's force and motion in the falling of a dying leaf, in the breaking up and crumbling of everything indeed. And take an inert ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood

... firs, a rambling Manor House, ivy-covered and ancient, stood; and behind it, some distance away, the red tiling of a farm-cottage, with its steading clustering near, could be seen. About the old Manor House the lawn and garden told of neglect and decay, but at the farmhouse order reigned. The trim little garden plot, the trim lawn, the trim walks and hedges, the trim thatch of the roof, the trim do'-cote above it, the trim stables, byres, barns and yard of the steading, proclaimed ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... in love so much less than they used to do is largely due to the decay of the imaginative faculty. As for women, although they are in the main as anxious to marry as ever, although it is universally acknowledged that the modern young woman does cultivate the modern young man unduly, their reasons for doing so are less and less concerned with ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby

... with purple berries, and the ash is hung with scarlet beads, so bright, so many, and so beautiful, that the swallows are hovering round them all day impatient to begin, and improvident of the future. Nature even in its decay is beautiful, and what was it in spring? Remember the primroses out on every bank, and the anemones in the wood, and the blue flush of wild hyacinths in the coppice! Verily, we are in Nain, a pleasant and beautiful place. Alas! alas! my brother! my sister! Behold there will ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould

... resorted to in such a case; and if I could but obtain my brother's consent and assistance, I should not doubt of its success. The old hall where he and I were born, and where our mother died, is not now inhabited, nor yet quite sunk into decay, as I believe. Now, if I could persuade him to have one or two rooms made habitable, and to let them to me as a stranger, I might live there, with my child, under an assumed name, and still support myself by my favourite art. He should lend me the money to begin ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... terror and obedience, the other is government based on such a highly developed system of information, analysis, and self-consciousness that "the knowledge of national circumstances and reasons of state" is evident to all men. The autocratic system is in decay, the voluntary system is in its very earliest development; and so, in calculating the prospects of association among large groups of people, a League of Nations, industrial government, or a federal union of states, the degree to which the material ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... Ladies, too (I know you do not like him, And, if a fan could end him, you would strike him), Will with as little gallantry devour From your fair faces their bewitching pow'r; Then, like these ruins, beauteous in decay, Still shall you charm, and men shall still obey: Then, with remembrance soft, and tender smile, Perchance you'll think upon this mossy pile; And, with a starting tear of joy declare, "Oh! how we laugh'd, how merry ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr

... their American dependencies, have been involved in a contest unusually bloody, exhausting, and calamitous, in which the evils of foreign war have been aggravated by domestic convulsion and insurrection, in which many of the arts most useful to society have been exposed to discouragement and decay; in which scarcity of subsistence has embittered other sufferings; while even the anticipations of a return of the blessings of peace and repose are alloyed by the sense of heavy and accumulating burdens, which press upon all the departments of industry, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... been allowed more slowly and naturally to unfold itself; and his body meanwhile being strengthened by a life in the open air of the mountains, and by such athletic sports as well supplied the place of the games of the ancient Greeks and Romans, this fine spirit was saved from premature decay, to the honor of his country, ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie

... doctor's appearance. He had his death-warrant written legibly upon his face. The rosy man had grown pale; his flesh had fallen away; he was visibly balder and older; and yet it was not so much these tokens of a swift physical decay that arrested the lawyer's notice, as a look in the eye and quality of manner that seemed to testify to some deep-seated terror of the mind. It was unlikely that the doctor should fear death; and yet that was what Utterson was tempted to suspect. "Yes," he thought; "he is a doctor, he must ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old or middle-aged or young, but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression. Thus, by preserving the method of Nature in the conduct of the state, in what we improve we are never wholly new, in what we retain we are never wholly obsolete. By adhering in this manner and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the other can destroy, which survives triumphant over death; so, lads, when you mourn the loss of a friend, think of him as living in that essence, not in the mortal frame you see torn to pieces or mouldering in decay." A new light seemed to burst on me as the doctor said this. The idea aided me to get over the horror I had felt at seeing the fate of the missionary captain, and enabled me better to bear the first remark which the pirate leader deigned to make us: "Well, youngsters, if you don't behave ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... established, and luxury prevails, the poorest ranks of citizens are always oppressed and miserable. Indeed this must necessarily be the case, otherwise trade and manufactures, which flourish principally by the low price of labour and provisions, must decay. In Carolina, though exposed to more troubles and hardships for a few years, such industrious people had better opportunities than in Europe for advancing to an easy and independent state. Hence it happened that few emigrants ever returned to their native country; on the contrary, the success ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt

... and it was affirmed by the natives that Taylor had destroyed them. The tribes are rapidly diminishing. The 'Coligans,' once a numerous and powerful people, inhabiting the fertile region of Lake 'Colac,' are now reduced, all ages and sexes, under forty, and these are still on the decay. The Jarcoorts, inhabiting the country to the west of the great lake 'Carangermite,' once a very numerous and powerful people, are now reduced to under sixty. But time would fail, and I fear it would be deemed ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... islands. The moss has grown greener and thicker on the roofs of the solid old wooden houses that are relics of Russian days, the paint has worn thinner everywhere, and a few more houses tumbling into ruins complete the scenes of picturesque decay. Twenty years ago there were one hundred and twenty-five buildings in the town proper, and it is doubtful if a dozen have ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various

... already observed, the courtyard in which they were standing was considerably larger than any they had yet entered. Like the others, however, it had fallen sadly to decay. The jungle had crept in at all points, and gorgeous creepers had wreathed themselves round the necks of ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby

... a great angel," he said. "The reason we hated him in the old days was because he tended to death and decay; but when it is towards life he leads, we fear him no more. The welcome thing of all in the land of darkness is when you see him first and know who he is; for by this you are aware that ...
— A Little Pilgrim - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

... "The Scarlet Letter." Certainly this story of old Salem is impeccably written and its subtle handling of tone and atmosphere is beyond dispute. An ancestral curse, the visitation of the sins of the fathers upon the children, the gradual decay of a once sound stock, are motives that Ibsen might have developed. But the Norseman would have failed to rival Hawthorne's delicate manipulation of his shadows, and the no less masterly deftness ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... year since I had seen Knockowen. But all seemed changed. Weeds and grass were on the paths, the flower-beds were unkempt, the fences were broken in places, damp stains were spread over the house front. Everywhere were signs of neglect and decay. Had I not known his honour to be a wealthy man, I should have supposed him an impecunious person with no income to maintain his property. As it was, there was some other cause to seek, and that cause I set down to ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed

... speculation Greece was well on the way of discovery. Then the mists of philosophy fell between the mind of Greece and nature, and the notions of Democritus were rejected with disdain; and then, very speedily, the decay of the brilliant nation put an end to its feverish search for truth. Greek culture passed to Alexandria, where it met the remains of the culture of Egypt, Babylonia, and Persia, and one more remarkable effort was made to penetrate the outlying universe before the night of the Middle ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... for his drink. The road was an institution, the ring was an institution. Men rallied round them; and, not without a kind conservatism, expatiated upon the benefits with which they endowed the country, and the evils which would occur when they should be no more:—decay of English spirit, decay of manly pluck, ruin of the breed of horses, and so forth, and so forth. To give and take a black eye was not unusual nor derogatory in a gentleman; to drive a stage-coach the enjoyment, the emulation of generous youth. Is ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... her; to imitate her in all she did could only lead to honor and happiness, could only be right and good and wise. Thus by degrees, and without the exertion of any compulsion, the temples and shrines on the Martyr's inheritance were voluntarily abandoned, and fell into ruin and decay. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... merely local; it cannot apply to similar bodies in America and France; and what are we to say of these? President Cleveland's letter may serve as a picture of the one; a glance at almost any paper will convince us of the weakness of the other. Decay appears to have seized on the organ of popular government in every land; and this just at the moment when we begin to bring to it, as to an oracle of justice, the whole skein of our private affairs to be unravelled, and ask it, like a new Messiah, to ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... future, then, if there is to be any future but one of decay, will work more or less for its living from an early age; and in doing so it will not shock anyone, provided there be no longer any reason to associate the conception of children working for their living with infants toiling in a factory for ten hours a day or boys drudging from nine to ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... thoughts as these; and that these are what are called its beauties; these are what young poets try more and more daily to invent—conceits, false analogies. Be it remembered, that the affectation of such conceits has always marked the decay and approaching death of a reigning school of poetry; that when, for instance, the primeval forest of the Elizabethan poets dwindled down into a barren scrub of Vaughans, and Cowleys, and Herberts, and Crashawes, this was the very form in which the ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... while he thinks of the missions. He bows in prayer. Neglected vineyards and general decay reign over the deserted ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... and winding streets. The front walls had been pulled down, the roofs carried away, only the bare inner walls were left standing, so that Feversham when he wandered amongst them vainly at night seemed to have come into long lanes of five courts, crumbling into decay. And each court was only distinguishable from its neighbour by a degree of ruin. Already the foxes made their burrows beneath ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason

... those who had been buried within them was thus preserved, the catacombs themselves and the churches at their entrances were falling more and more into decay. Shortly after Gregory's death, Pope Boniface IV. illustrated his otherwise obscure pontificate by seeking from the mean and dissolute Emperor Phocas the gift of the Pantheon for the purpose of consecrating it for a Christian church. The glorious temple of all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... now withered quite, Tho' green at noon, cut down at night, Shows thy decay; All flesh is hay. Thus thank, and ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... Fiammetta in the delusive hope of finding her in the person of Mrs. Henry Boggs; there is but one Fiammetta, and she is the memory abiding in your heart. Spare yourself the misery of discovering in the hearty, fleshy Lincolnshire hussif the decay of the promises of years ago; be content to do reverence to the ideal Fiammetta who has built her little shrine in ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... tramp, tramp, tramp, the beat, beat, beat, the roll of drums, the call of bugles, the boom of cannon in the dark, the lightnings of hell flaring across the midnight skies, the thunder and chaos and torture and death and pestilence and decay—the hell of war. It is not sublime. There is no glory. The sublimity is in man's acceptance of war, not for hate or gain, but love. Love of country, home, family—love of women—I fought for women—for Helen, whom I imagined my ideal, breaking her heart over me on the ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... silently resuming the now wasted district, from which they might have been formerly expelled by the course of civilization. Their ears were no less disagreeably occupied than their eyes. The pensive travellers might indeed hear the screams of the raven, as if lamenting the decay of the carnage on which he had been gorged; and now and then the plaintive howl of some dog, deprived of his home and master; but no sounds which argued either labour or ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... 'organs of thought,' the four central instruments of mental activity." [3] But if our inner life was merely the counterpart of certain changes in the grey matter of the brain, how could the function be expected to persist after its organ had undergone decay? ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... Precinct and a "Big Pipe" contractor owned the other two-thirds—was what was left of an old colonial mansion. There are dozens of them scattered up and down the Bronx, lying back from the river; with porches falling into decay, their gardens overrun with weeds, their spacious rooms echoing only the hum of the sewing-machine or the buzz ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... to jade are the boy's rosy cheeks; To his sick temples the frost of winter clings.... Do not wonder that my body sinks to decay; Though my limbs are old, my heart is ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various

... taken out of the town and suburbs; two or three scoundrels abused the persons of as many colored women; and this was the extent of the "ruin" inflicted upon Athens. I visited it more than a month ago. I saw no sign of "ruin," dissolution, or decay, and I am too good a friend of the Athenians not to say that I consider their beautiful town as being to-day the most flourishing in all North Alabama; and if a citizen from any other place, especially from Huntsville, should go to Athens and say ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... crawled from his burrow into the moonlight of a calm, clear autumn night, and lay in the shadow of the stone where the old male vole had watched and listened for the cruel "vear." A big blow-fly, attracted, with countless thousands of his kind, to the place of slaughter and decay, had gone to sleep on the side of the stone, and Kweek, in a last desperate effort to obtain a little food, moved forward to secure his prize; but at that moment his strength failed him, his weary limbs relaxed, and the dull, grey film of death ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... seemed to take her death very heavelye, remayning euer synce in a deepe melancholye, w^{th} conceipte of her own death, and complayneth of many infirmyties, sodainlye to haue ouertaken her, as impost[u]mecon in her head, aches in her bones, and continuall cold in her legges, besides notable decay in iudgem^t and memory, insomuch as she cannot attend to any discourses of governm^t and state, but delighteth to heare some of the 100 merry tales, and such like, and to such is uery attentiue; at other tymes uery impatient, and testye, so as ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various

... is the announcement, audible enough, that the old Empire of Routine has ended; that to say a thing has long been, is no reason for its continuing to be. The things which have been are fallen into decay, are fallen into incompetence; large masses of mankind, in every society of our Europe, are no longer capable of living at all by the things which have been. When millions of men can no longer by their utmost ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... blue pill, and with mercurial medicine in other forms, and also with digitalis; and finally filled my stomach to overflowing with diuretic drinks. However, in spite of them all, I recovered during the next year; except that a foundation was laid for premature decay of the teeth, and for a severe eruptive disease. This last, and the weakness of the eyes, were, ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... worthy of her who has been styled the Old Queen of the water! May thou sink, if thou dost sink, amidst blood and flame, with a mighty noise, causing more than one nation to participate in thy downfall! Of all fates, may it please the Lord to preserve thee from a disgraceful and a slow decay; becoming ere extinct a scorn and a mockery for those self-same foes who now, though they envy and abhor thee, still fear thee, nay, even against their will, honour ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... that he found the way to his own house, which he approached with silent awe, expecting every moment to hear the shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. He found the house gone to decay—the roof fallen in, the windows shattered, and the doors off the hinges. A half-starved dog that looked like Wolf was skulking about it. Rip called him by name, but the cur snarled, showed his teeth, and passed on. This was an ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... that a Cobham and Ralegh—I will forbear others for their places' sakes—should have such credit and favour with your Majesty, when they wish the ill success of your Majesty's most important action, the decay of your greatest strength, and the destruction of your faithfullest servants?' His fury against Ralegh seems too excessive to have been genuine. In part it may be explained by his knowledge, on which Sir John Pope ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... at large, And God's right hand can all its wrath discharge. Mark how those radiant lamps inflame the pole, Call forth the seasons, and the year control: They shine thro' time, with an unalter'd ray: See this grand period rise, and that decay: So vast, this world's a grain; yet myriads grace, With golden pomp, the throng'd ethereal space; So bright, with such a wealth of glory stor'd, 'Twere sin in heathens not to have ador'd. How great, how firm, how sacred, all appears! How worthy an immortal round of years! Yet all must drop, as autumn's ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... pines is shown by their sound condition in California buildings that have stood for generations, many of them in regions where climatic conditions are more conducive to decay than in the middle western and ...
— The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan • W.B. Laughead

... the stalk, rub the warts with the wheat's beard or bristles at the end of the ear, take these to four crosses or roads that cross each other, bury the straw, and the warts will decay with ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... notice, that the decay of the liberties of the Dutch republic proceeded from three causes. 1. The perfect unanimity requisite on all occasions. 2. Their obligation to consult their constituents. 3. Their voting by provinces. This last destroyed the equality of representation, and the liberties of Great Britain ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... great luxuriance. I saw also many other plants found at the Illawarra, on the eastern coast of the colony of New South Wales. The summit was full of wombat holes and, unlike that side by which I had ascended, it was covered with the dead trunks of enormous trees in all stages of decay. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... a decayed tree, beside a decayed cottage, the vale spreading out into a level area which was one large field, without fence and without division, of a dull yellow colour; the vale seemed to partake of the desolation of the cottage, and to participate in its decay. And yet the spot was in its nature so dreary that one would rather have wondered how it ever came to be tenanted by man, than lament that it was left to waste and solitude. Yet the encircling hills were so exquisitely formed that it was impossible to conceive ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth

... a fetish may give a sounder faith its chance. In the time of decay and disintegration which lies before us, more persons will seek consolation where it can be found. 'Happiness and unhappiness,' says Spinoza, 'depend on the nature of the object which we love. When a thing is not loved, no quarrels will arise concerning ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... advanced to prove the immortality of the soul is drawn from the nature of the mind itself. It has (say the supporters of this theory) no composition of parts, and therefore, as there are no particles, is not susceptible of divisibility and cannot be acted upon by decay, and therefore if it will not decay it ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... of a drive to the ancient town of Killala, accompanied by the wife of the Rev. Mr. Armstrong, who superintends the orphanage and the mission schools in connection with the Presbyterian Church of Ballina. Killala is an old town with a gentle flavor of decay about it. It has a round tower in good preservation, and an ancient church. I was shown the point where the French landed at the stirring time of war ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... by Henry VIII. was allowed perforce to decay under his two immediate successors. According to the most authentic lists, [Footnote: Sir W. Laird Clowes, The Royal Navy, vol. i., pp. 419 ff. Throughout this chapter, the figures for tonnage are adopted from this work.] in 1548 there were 53 ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... 16th of January we went on to Horal, ten miles over a plain, with villages numerous and large, and in every one some fine large building of olden times—sarai, palace, temple, or tomb, but all going to decay.[16] The population much more dense than in any of the native states I have seen; villages larger and more numerous; trade in the transit of cotton, salt, sugar, and grain, much brisker. A great number of hares ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... library, but is very destructive when it does come, and, if long continued, the substance of the paper succumbs to the unhealthy influence and rots and rots until all fibre disappears, and the paper is reduced to a white decay which crumbles ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades

... town life had been, as we have seen, slower of development.[13] Hence for these Northern cities the period of decay had not yet come. In fact, the fourteenth century marks the zenith of their power. Their great trading league, the Hansa, was now fully established, and through the hands of its members passed all the wealth of Northern ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... tender complicity with the two little lamps on the dressing table, and the sweet, thick perfume of magnolias modulated into acrid decay as day dawned. Below, the two men anxiously awaited the message from the dead. And they saw again upon the marble tablet above the fireplace ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... various parts of the seat of war, the general tendency of which was not entirely in favour of the British arms, though the weekly export of prisoners reassured all who noted it as to the sapping and decay of the Boer strength. These incidents must now be set down in the order of their occurrence, with their relation to each other so far as it is possible ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... throat. I wink, sneeze, and cough. The clerk sneezes: the clergyman winks; the unseen organist sneezes and coughs (and probably winks); all our little party wink, sneeze, and cough. The snuff seems to be made of the decay of matting, wood, cloth, stone, iron, earth, and something else. Is the something else the decay of dead citizens in the vaults below? As sure as death it is! Not only in the cold, damp February day, do we cough and sneeze dead citizens, all through the service, but dead citizens have got into the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... is as solitary now as it was thronged and bustling on the evenings of the festival; and in broad daylight one is surprised at the deathlike decay of the sacred surroundings which at night had seemed so full of life. Not a creature to be seen on the time-worn granite steps; not a creature beneath the vast, sumptuous porticoes; the colors, the gold-work are dim with dust. To reach the temple one must ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... my arms, That almost I could repine That your transports are not mine, That I do not wholly fare Even as ye do, thoughtless Pair! 110 And I will have my careless season Spite of melancholy reason, Will walk through life in such a way That, when time brings on decay, Now and then I may possess Hours of perfect gladsomeness. —Pleas'd by any random toy; By a Kitten's busy joy, Or an infant's laughing eye Sharing in the extacy; 120 I would fare like that or this, Find my wisdom in my bliss; Keep the sprightly soul ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth

... in this criticism of the absent that jarred upon my feelings. I had no love indeed for Captain Trent or any of his vanished gang; but the desertion and decay of this once habitable cabin struck me hard. The death of man's handiwork is melancholy, like the death of man himself; and I was impressed with an involuntary and irrational sense ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... poem, 1 to 26—to his friend, persuading him to marry. Second poem, 27 to 55—to his friend, who had robbed the poet of his mistress, forgiving him. Third poem, 56 to 77—to his friend, complaining of his coldness, and warning him of life's decay. Fourth poem, 78 to 101—to his friend, complaining that he prefers another poet's praises, and reproving him for faults that may injure his character. Fifth poem, 102 to 126—to his friend, excusing himself ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... ornithologists and geographers, supported them and illustrated them by a few more examples. He mentioned sone of the species of falcons which have "an almost ideal organization for robbery," and nevertheless are in decay, while other species of falcons, which practise mutual help, do thrive. "Take, on the other side, a sociable bird, the duck," he said; "it is poorly organized on the whole, but it practises mutual support, and it almost invades the earth, as may ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin

... think that all the danger lies in that bolted cloud which flashes in the Southern horizon. There is decay, and change, here in the North. Old New-England, that suckled American liberty, is now suckling wolves ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher

... wide, and Balor comes Borne in his heavy car, and demons have lifted The age-weary eyelids from the eyes that of old Turned gods to stone; Barach, the traitor, comes And the lascivious race, Cailitin, That cast a druid weakness and decay Over Sualtem's and old Dectera's child; And that great king Hell first took hold upon When he killed Naisi and broke Deirdre's heart, And all their heads are twisted to one side, For when they lived they ...
— The Countess Cathleen • William Butler Yeats

... sea since Wednesday has been very rough, blowing in straight upon the land. Yesterday, the shore was strewn with hundreds of oxen, sheep, and pigs (and with bushels upon bushels of apples), in every state and stage of decay—burst open, rent asunder, lying with their stiff hoofs in the air, or with their great ribs yawning like the wrecks of ships—tumbled and beaten out of shape, and yet with a horrible sort of humanity ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens

... and constant in dependence upon him who is and must be their life, first and last. And hence learn a necessity of living always near to Christ, and depending constantly upon him by faith; for he being their life, they cannot be without him, but they must die and decay. ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)

... of the very best hotels in provincial France—the hotel with the queer name—another inducement for us to idle on the way. The town itself is in no way remarkable, but it abounds in magnificent old churches of various epochs—some falling into decay, others restored, one and all deserving attention. St. Jean is especially noteworthy, its beautiful interior showing much exquisite tracery and almost a fanciful arrangement of transepts. It is very rich in good modern glass. But the gem of gems ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... something more protects her; a certain common sense, which now and then very nearly achieves wit. For an instance—But yesterday a certain pompous lady lamented to her in my hearing (and with intention, as it seemed to me, who am grown suspicious), the rapid moral decay of Boston society. "Alas!" sighs my heroine; "but what a comfort, ma'am, to think that neither of us belongs to it!" Add to this that she has learning enough to equip ten precieuses—and hides it: has read Plato and can quote her Virgil ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... of force leads to outward decay, Spiritual existence means inward fulness. Let us revert to Nothing and enter the Absolute, Hoarding up strength for Energy. Freighted with eternal principles, Athwart the mighty void, Where cloud-masses darken, And the wind blows ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles

... curates amongst them, for that these livings of cure, being most part appropriated benefices in the queen's majesty's possession, are let by leases to farmers with allowance or reservation of very small stipends or entertainments for the vicars or curates, besides the decay of the chancels, and also of the churches universally in ruins, and some wholly down. And out of their said dioceses, the remote parts of Munster, Connaught, and other Irish countries and borders thereof order cannot yet so well be taken with the residue till the countries ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... air seemed clear and mellow; there was no November chill. It was a brown world, however, through which the two walked; life and freshness all gone from vegetation; the leaves in most cases fallen from the trees, and where they still hung looking as sear and withered as frost and decay ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner

... prepared first attack upon the American army, repulsed with a slaughter that has moved deeply the sympathies of our statesmen opposed to the administration of our Government the growth of the country and the public honor. The fact is they are sentimentalists in decay or degenerates running ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... doubt, when I consider all thy past tender vows, when I reflect how thou hast loved and sworn. Methinks I hear the music of thy voice still whispering in my bosom; methinks the charming softness of thy words remains like lessening echoes of my soul, whose distant voices by degrees decay, till they be heard no more! Alas, I've read thy letter over and over, and turned the sense a thousand several ways, and all to make it speak and look like love—Oh I have flattered it with all my heart. Sometimes I fancied my ill reading spoiled it, and then I tuned my voice to softer notes, and ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... begun to harden or decay. Always can as soon as possible after gathering. Some vegetables are best cooked before putting in jars; among these are beets, pumpkins and turnips, but most of them may be packed while raw in jars ...
— The Community Cook Book • Anonymous

... hour! My fondest hopes would not decay: I never loved a tree or flower Which was the first to fade away! The garden, where I used to delve Short-frock'd, still yields me pinks in plenty: The peartree that I climb'd at twelve I see still blossoming, ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley

... God's creatures, just as you live and others have lived before you. And there are other worlds whose life-cycle has been run; where intelligent life has ceased: where world-disintegration has set in. For this is in accordance with the universal law of Growth and Decay—a law that exempts neither the one-celled amoeba, nor the complex Solar system whirling ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon

... lasting than that in the spirits of the mourners. The paths, if any paths had been, were long obliterated; trees of a considerable size had been permitted to grow up from the graves and thrust aside with root or branch the inclosing fences. Over all was that air of abandonment and decay which seems nowhere so fit and significant as in a ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... to its close ebbs out life's little day, Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away, Change and decay in all around I see, O Thou, who ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith

... turned. Enraged thereat, the warriors met, With force combined my town beset. Stung to the heart with scorn and shame, With war and threats they madly came, Besieged my peaceful walls, and long To Mithila did grievous wrong. There, wasting all, a year they lay, And brought my treasures to decay, Filling my soul, O Hermit chief, With bitter woe and hopeless grief. At last by long-wrought penance I Won favour with the Gods on high, Who with my labours well content A four-fold host to aid me sent. Then swift the baffled heroes fled To all the winds ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... produced the year after the death of Euripides, and laments the decay of Greek tragedy which Aristophanes attributed to that writer. It is an admirable example of the brilliance of his style, and of that mingling of wit and poetry with rollicking humor and keen satirical point which ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes

... a-bloom and the palm-tree seemed perfect; yet more was to learn, E'en the good that comes in with the palm-fruit. Our dates shall we slight, When their juice brings a cure for all sorrow? or care for the plight Of the palm's self whose slow growth produced them? Not so! stem and branch Shall decay, nor be known in their place, while the palm-wine shall staunch Every wound of man's spirit in winter. I pour thee such wine. Leave the flesh to the fate it was fit for! the spirit be thine! By the spirit, when age shall o'ercome thee, thou still shalt enjoy More indeed, than ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... rod of the enchanter, than the fear of the fugitive; that the waters which encircled her had been chosen for the mirror of her state, rather than the shelter of her nakedness; and that all which in nature was wild or merciless,—Time and Decay, as well as the waves and tempests,—had been won to adorn her instead of to destroy, and might still spare, for ages to come, that beauty which seemed to have fixed for its throne the sands of the hour-glass as ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... occurrences of our time, it is almost impossible to discern what will pass away with the revolution itself, and what will survive its close. The world which is rising into existence is still half encumbered by the remains of the world which is waning into decay; and amidst the vast perplexity of human affairs, none can say how much of ancient institutions and former manners will remain, or how much will completely disappear. Although the revolution which is taking place in the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... thou newest of sciences, All the old landmarks are ripe for decay; Wars are but shadows, and so are alliances, Darwin the great is the ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... races of man the last molar or wisdom tooth is almost as large as the molars in front of it, in the higher races the wisdom tooth is much smaller and frequently does not develop at all, or begins to decay very soon after its appearance. If the process of extinction of lower races were to proceed much further, so that civilised white races became the only human inhabitants of the earth, then the ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... gaily filled the street; parade and exercise, evening dance and the continuous sound of pipe and drum left no room for any other interest in life. Heretofore there was ever for the boy in his visions of the Army a background of unable years and a palsied hand, slow decay in a parlour, with every zest and glamour gone. But here in the men who stepped always to melody there was youth, seemingly a singular enjoyment of life, and watching them he was filled ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... winter, but will live here, and next summer will astonish you with their richness. Nor is it cold for you; it is dry as dust; you can walk over it in moccasins, and not be damp: and it has covered away all the decay of autumn, conserving for you in the air such pure oxygen that it will be like new life in your veins, causing you ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... share in the invariable fate of my race. For I had already lived long enough to be aware that the existence of a doll, like that of every thing else, has its limits. Either by sudden accidents, such as loss of limbs, or by the daily wear and tear of life, decay gradually makes its progress in us, and we fade away as surely as the most delicate of the ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown

... nothing. This, which when writ large maddens and kills, writ small is our meat and drink; it attends each minutest and most impalpable detail of the ceaseless fusion and diffusion in which change appears to us as consisting, and which we recognise as growth and decay, or as ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... the situation of a villa on the banks of the Garonne, within a few leagues of the city. It was an old chateau, with fine gardens bordering the blue waters of the river, and commanding a multitude of enchanting prospects. The house, which had in part gone to decay, was inhabited by an aged couple, who had formerly been servants to an English family, the members of which had thus provided for them on their return to their own country. I inquired the name. Conceive my astonishment to find that this chateau had been the residence of ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... favor still, Though cruel yet, my boy, When the unwelcome dawn shall chill Your pride and youthful joy, The hair which round your shoulder grows Is rudely cut away, Your color, redder than the rose, Is changed by youth's decay,— ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field

... reason, the noblest faculty of man, would be of no service to the common people: but to tell them that they may die in a fit of drunkenness, and shew them how dreadful that would be, cannot fail to make a deep impression. Sir, when your Scotch clergy give up their homely manner, religion will soon decay in that country.' Let this observation, as Johnson meant it, be ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... the ordinary course of events would have been the going on of the party until it died of dry rot and decay, as the Liberals had already died in Ontario; but fortunately, both for the party and for Laurier's subsequent fame—though it may not have seemed so at the time—emergence of the reciprocity question gave it an opportunity ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe

... there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old woodwork which has rotted for years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... bring us all to such an old age, that, as our mortal bodies decay, our souls may be renewed day by day; that as the life of our bodies grows cold and feeble, the life of our souls may grow richer, warmer, stronger, more useful to all around us, for ever and ever; that as the light ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... pass away, but the sea remains the same; and all our empires and literatures, arts and towns, crumble and decay, and are proved toys. Our consolation lies in our unconquerable souls, our glorious after-life beyond this world. But the sea has an immortality in the here and now. I shall ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... unbounded heritage of a future that no sage can conjecture, no prophet divine, lies afar in the golden promise—light of Time!—destined, perchance, from the sins and sorrows of a civilization struggling with its own elements of decay, to renew the youth of the world, and transmit the great soul of England through the cycles of Infinite Change. All climates that can best ripen the products of earth or form into various character and temper the different families of man ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... No uplift of her spirit came this time—no intimations—no whisperings. How horrible it all was! To long to be good and noble—to realize that she was neither—to sink lower day by day! Must she decay there like one of these rotting logs? Worst of all, then, was the insinuating and ever-growing hopelessness. What was the use? What did it matter? Who would ever think of Ellen Jorth? "O God!" she whispered in her distraction, "is there ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... man is the incessant walk of nature, wherein every moment is a step towards death. Even our growing to perfection is a progress to decay. Every thought we have is a sand running out of the glass ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston

... was most pressing; he cleared out the fosses which were choked up with ruins; he repaired the greater portion of the walls which, through the security engendered by a long peace, had been neglected, and had fallen into decay, and raised them again to the height of lofty towers, devoting himself zealously to the work of building. In this way the work was speedily completed, because he found that the sums which some time ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... that such a system was distinctly evil, but it must be confessed our uncertainty regarding the whole matter of "Protection" does not justify us in assigning it a definite place among the causes of national decay. That in some way it produced an enormous revenue is certain, and that the method was dishonest is no less so; for this revenue—known as a "surplus"—was so abhorred while it lay in the treasury that all were agreed upon the expediency of getting rid of it, two great political ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... gates hung ajar, and one of them was off its hinges. The grass on the lawn was tall and rank. The gardens, or as little of them as they could see, were full of tall weeds, and everything was going to decay. ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn

... prefer to say simply how things are, without occupying ourselves with the thousand aspects in which the ignorant see them! To explain the laws under which societies prosper or decay, is virtually to destroy all sophistry at once. When La Place had described all that can, as yet, be known of the movements of the heavenly bodies, he had dispersed, without even naming them, all ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat

... separation. The united province was not even in a condition to maintain a good system of government. Oppressed by the tyranny of officials, industry and improvement had been neglected, and a state of languor and depression prevailed. The public buildings were even falling into a state of ruin and decay. There was not a Court House in the province, nor a sufficient prison nor house of correction. Nor was there a school house between Tadousac and Niagara. The country upon the Great Lakes was a wilderness. Lymburner did not, however, prevail. The British ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... bloom, and the fruit hung purple and russet-red upon the boughs. The woods about Beaminster had put on a gorgeous mantle, and the gardens were gay with color, and yet over all there hung the indefinable brooding melancholy that comes of the first touch of decay. It was of this that Janetta Colwyn was chiefly conscious, as she walked in the Red House grounds and looked at the yellowing leaves that eddied through the still air to the gravelled walks and unshorn lawns below. Janetta was thinner and paler than in days of yore, and yet there was a peaceful ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... the depth of the pit, far below me. Across the pit on its farther lip, flat and vast and strange, lay the great flying-machine with which they had been experimenting upon our denser atmosphere when decay and death arrested them. Death had come not a day too soon. At the sound of a cawing overhead I looked up at the huge fighting-machine that would fight no more for ever, at the tattered red shreds of flesh that dripped down upon ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... weep, seeing gentle youths and maidens, and men and women, whom the singing of Angus Ogue's birds have made mad, led away by my orders to be devoured by flame. But so it is best, for without chastity valour faileth in a nation, and lawlessness in this respect begetteth sure and rapid decay, and I give not this forth as an opinion but as a thing that I know, seeing it as clearly with my mind, O Fergus, as I see with my eyes thy countenance and form and the foldings of thy fuan [Footnote: Mantle.] and the shape and ornamentation of the ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady

... best done by a regular attention to cleanliness, especially during and after illness. "Prevention is always better than cure," and the operation of scaling often leaves the teeth weak and liable to decay. ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore

... aerial living sound, the only reply is a disconnected buzzing from different parts of the deserted hive. From the alighting board, instead of the former spirituous fragrant smell of honey and venom, and the warm whiffs of crowded life, comes an odor of emptiness and decay mingling with the smell of honey. There are no longer sentinels sounding the alarm with their abdomens raised, and ready to die in defense of the hive. There is no longer the measured quiet sound of throbbing activity, like the sound of boiling water, but diverse discordant sounds of disorder. In ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... specimen, we require, as a matter of course, to anoint the inside of the skin with some preservative, for the purpose of arresting decomposition and general decay, and also defending it from the ravages of insects for an indefinite period. Many things will partially cure a skin; for instance, rubbing it with dry earth and exposing it to the sun, as I have done with some success when hunting abroad; chalk also will do, if nothing else can be procured. ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... Virginia. The road I was travelling, following "the ridge" for miles, had just struck me as most significant of the character of the race whose only avenue of communication with the outside world it had formerly been. Their once splendid mansions, now fast falling to decay, appeared to view from time to time, set back far from the road, in proud seclusion, among groves of oak and hickory, now scarlet and gold with the early frost. Distance was nothing to this people, time was of no consequence to them. They desired but ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... up, and flowers, and bears no seed, And feeds the green earth with its swift decay, Leaving it richer for the ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... Turkish but the city of Malvasia. Morosini threw his men into Lepanto, Patras, and pushed on to Athens; but there they had six days' fighting, during which more harm was done to the beautiful old buildings and sculptures than had befallen them in nearly two thousand years of decay. The Turks had shut themselves up in the Acropolis, and made a powder magazine of the Parthenon. A shell from Morosini's batteries fell into it, and blew up the roof, which had remained perfect all these years, and much more damage was done; but the city was won at ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge

... One cannot dine off a recipe, however good and ingenious it may be. It is like reading a guide-book at home instead of travelling. Dear me, it is too hot! I shall go and lie down and read Oscar Wilde's 'Decay of Lying.' That always sends me to sleep. It is like himself, ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens

... been said that every organism carries in {410} itself the seeds of its own decay. The premature corruption [Sidenote: Decay of Jesuits] of the order was noticed by its more earnest members quite early in its career. The future general Francis Borgia wrote: [Sidenote: 1560] "The time will come ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... constellations? No theory of evolution can be formed to account for the similarity of the molecules throughout all time, and throughout the whole region of the stellar universe; for evolution necessarily implies continuous change, and the molecule (as known to science) is incapable of growth or decay, of generation or destruction." ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner

... hospitals—and all with her money. Kill her, take her money and with the help of it devote oneself to the service of humanity and the good of all. What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds? For one life thousands would be saved from corruption and decay. One death, and a hundred lives in exchange—it's simple arithmetic! Besides, what value has the life of that sickly, stupid, ill-natured old woman in the balance of existence! No more than the life of a louse, of a black-beetle, less in fact because the old woman is doing ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... around you to know that this picture has been drawn with the pencil of truth. What has made desolate and sterile one of the loveliest regions of the whole earth? What mean the signs of wasteful neglect, of long improvidence around you: the half-finished mansion already falling into decay, the broken-down enclosures, the weed- grown garden the slave hut open to the elements, the hillsides galled and naked, the fields below them run over with brier and fern? Is all this in the ordinary ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... On Whitsunday, which happened that year about the middle of May, mass was said on shore and two crosses erected, at which the king appeared so much pleased that he engaged to restore them if they happened to fall or decay. During the holidays they discovered an island in lat. 18 deg. S. to which they gave the name of Espirito Santo[8], and half a degree farther they were in some danger from a sand bank 9 leagues long. On Trinity Sunday, still in danger from sand banks, they anchored ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... flew. There were clouds, to be sure. The sky was even blue, though a darker blue than Earth's, because there was no vegetation to break stone down to dust, or to form dust by its own decay. ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... many bunds [river-banks formed for purposes of irrigation] which were kept in repair under former governments, have, under ours, fallen to decay; nevertheless, not only has the population increased considerably under our rule, but in 1846 or 1847, the collector was obliged to grant remission of land tax, 'because the abundance of former years lay stagnating in the province, ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... Were it later—for example, were it the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and forty-five, we should be deprived of this extraordinary spectacle. In the nineteenth century Antioch is—that is to say, Antioch will be—in a lamentable state of decay. It will have been, by that time, totally destroyed, at three different periods, by three successive earthquakes. Indeed, to say the truth, what little of its former self may then remain, will be found in so desolate and ruinous a state that the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... call life is the only sustaining force; when it takes its flight, that which remains falls back to the earth and becomes dust. And so the spiritual in man is the only force that can give him a moral nature and preserve it from decay; when his spiritual life departs the mind as well as ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan

... loved ones my life would have nourished Are foodless, and bare, and cold. My flocks by their fountain that flourished Decay on the ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others

... hardest part was the knowledge that she had never recovered the health she had previous to the terrible shock which his revelation of Donald's guilt had been to her. He forgot his own share in the shock and threw the whole blame of her early decay on Donald. "And if she dies," he kept saying in his angry heart, "I will make him ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... morals as distinct from Christian doctrines, insensibly gained strength. Thus the peculiar doctrines of Christianity went more and more out of sight; and, as might naturally have been expected, the moral system itself also began to wither and decay, being robbed of that which should have supplied it with life and nutriment. At length, in our own days, these peculiar doctrines have almost altogether vanished from the view. Even in many sermons, ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... the development of disease, moisture is a contributing factor and, therefore, in cavities or underneath bandages where there is likely to be an accumulation of moisture, decay will do more damage than in places that are dry and exposed to ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison

... to restore to the enemy prizes lawfully taken in war? Is it possible that the victors can be compelled to make humiliating terms with the vanquished? Certainly not—unless the means by which victory was obtained are insanely sacrificed, by permitting the squadron to go to ruin and decay. The results which have been obtained could not have been accomplished by any other measures than those adopted by the wisdom of His Imperial Majesty. Is it then justifiable, to suffer the engagements which produced such results to be ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... may I follow When friendships decay, And from love's shining circle The gems drop away. When true hearts lie withered, And fond ones are flown, Oh! who would inhabit ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... the sickly in the mind is reality. Something real has to be felt or experienced. Life that is over-delicate and remote through something unbalanced in the mind is not life but decay. The knife, the bludgeon, the practical joke, and the many-weaponed figure of Sorrow are life's remedies for those who fail to live. We are the earth's children; we have no business in limbo. Living in limbo is like living in the smoke ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield

... sterility created by the enemy of Ormazd. [Footnote: The belief of the Zoroastrians in the sacredness of the elements,—earth, water, fire, and air,—created a difficulty in regard to the disposal of dead bodies. They could neither be burned, buried, thrown into the water, nor left to decay in a sepulchral chamber or in the open air, without polluting one or another of the sacred elements. So they were given to the birds and wild beasts, being exposed on lofty towers or in desert places. Those whose feelings would not allow them thus to dispose of their dead, were permitted to bury ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... rocky layers. When again the rocks are lifted to form land the process will begin anew; again they will crumble and creep down slopes and be washed by streams to the sea. Let us begin our study of this long cycle of change at the point where rocks disintegrate and decay under the action of the weather. In studying now a few outcrops and quarries we shall learn a little of some common rocks and how ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... head to foot, that I was looking at the corpse of a man—a corpse that had apparently once had a sheet spread over it, and that had lain rotting on the trestles under the open sky long enough for the linen to take the livid, light-blue tinge of mildew and decay which now ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins

... the sinking here. This was so long ago that the rubbish which had formed a mound round the mouth of the shaft had been long covered with vegetation, and a fence placed round the pit had fallen into decay. ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty

... antiquities, galleries, ceremonies, and manners, but hardly any, that I remember, of the organization of the Papal Government,—that wonderful power which long played the chief part in the social and political revolutions of Europe, which, even in its decay, preserves so much of its original grandeur, and still clings to its traditions with a tenacity of conviction that commands our respect, although the remembrance of the evil that it has done compels us, as men and as Christians, to rejoice at ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Barcelona was organized, in 1390. The kings of Aragon endowed it with funds, and with a library valuable for that day, presiding over its meetings in person, and distributing the poetical premiums with their own hands. During the troubles consequent on the death of Martin, this establishment fell into decay, until it was again revived, on the accession of Ferdinand the First, by the celebrated Henry, marquis of Villena, who transplanted it to ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... external walls which inclosed the area belonging to his palace and other buildings still remain, with three of the gates, as well as a temple, which is now a church at Spalatro, or Spalato, in Dalmatia, a comparatively modern town, grown out of the decay of the ancient Salona, and built in great part within the walls of Diocletian's residence, from the name of which, "Palatium," it is believed that ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... The instinct becomes more powerful than any other, and can override any other, even fear itself."[2] Wherever the power of the parental instinct has waned, as in Greek and Roman society, the civilization in which that degeneration occurred was subjected to rapid decay.[3] ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... in Carolina, at least, four sorts. The Pitch-Pine, growing to a great Bigness, most commonly has but a short Leaf. Its Wood (being replete with abundance of Bitumen) is so durable, that it seems to suffer no Decay, tho' exposed to all Weathers, for many Ages; and is used in several Domestick and Plantation Uses. This Tree affords the four great Necessaries, Pitch, Tar, Rozin, and Turpentine; which two last are extracted by tapping, ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson

... Hutton, "for a soil is necessary to the growth of plants, and a soil is nothing but the material collected from the destruction of the solid land. Therefore the surface of this land inhabited by man, and covered by plants and animals, is made by nature to decay, in dissolving from that hard and compact state in which it is found; and this soil is necessarily washed away by the continual circulation of the water running from the summits of the mountains towards the general receptacle ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... one o' dem is lef' to tell de story; Dey have lef' de deah ole place to fall away. Could n't one o' dem dat seed it in its glory Stay to watch it in de hour of decay? ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar



Words linked to "Decay" :   crumble, decrease, decrement, activity, rot, cavity, moulder, physics, organic phenomenon, spoil, alpha decay, action, nuclear reaction, dilapidation, exponential decay, wear away, dental caries, disintegration, exponential return, wear out, fall apart, erode, rust, decadent, decomposition, decompose, ruin, gnaw, go bad, gnaw at, beta decay



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