"Decay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had a political religion like their own, with a hierarchy, a ritual, an establishment all complete, and we violently broke with it. But it is safe to conjecture that this sort of Englishman is too old or too old-fashioned to live much longer; he suffers with the decay of certain English interests which the American prosperity imperilled before it began to imperil English ideals, if it has indeed done so. His dying out counts for an increase of favor for us; we enjoy through it a ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... never visited that neighbouring country, which still presents to the eye, even of a passing stranger, the signs of a great dissolution and renovation of society? Have they never walked by those stately mansions, now sinking into decay, and portioned out into lodging rooms, which line the silent streets of the Faubourg St Germain? Have they never seen the ruins of those castles whose terraces and gardens overhang the Loire? Have they never heard that from those magnificent hotels, from those ancient ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "I have not suffered any other damage than the loss of a tooth, and that was neither whole nor white. Time had already effected its decay." M. d'Anquetil, legs astride and arms ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... surroundings were not alone to blame for his restless state of mind. There was in him a gnawing desire for change as change; a distinct fear of being pinned for too long to the same spot; or, to put it another way, a conviction that to live on without change meant decay. For him, at least. Of course, it was absurd to yield to feelings of this kind; at his age, in his position, with a wife dependent on him. And so he fought them—even while he indulged them. For this was the year in which, casting the question of expense to the winds, he pulled ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... her enthusiasm, and stood up to try his feet, and felt sure that he walked stronger, and would soon be down-stairs once more. And Julius, whose eyes love did not blind, felt a little scorn for those who could not see such evident decay and dissolution. "It is really criminal," he said to Sophia, "to encourage hopes so palpably false." For Julius, like all selfish persons, could perceive only one side of a question, the side that touched his own side. ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Greeks, who will have it that the bodies of the excommunicated do not decay in their tombs or graves, is an opinion which has no foundation, either in antiquity, in good theology, or even in history. This idea seems to have been invented by the modern Greek schismatics, only to authorize and ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... other animals, there was no doubt a time when blood relationship was no bar to sexual intercourse. But variations here, as elsewhere, would naturally present themselves; and those of our ancestors who avoided in-and-in breeding would survive, while the others would gradually decay and ultimately perish. Thus an instinct would be developed, which would be powerful enough as a rule to prevent injurious unions. Of course it would display itself simply as an aversion on the part of individuals to union with others with whom they lived; but these as a matter of fact would be ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... which thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim. But while this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close us in, we ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... signs of the decay of art is the mixture of its various kinds. The arts themselves, as well as their branches, are related to one another, and have a certain tendency to unite, even to lose themselves in one another; ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... a half story building, with a sloping tin roof, of an archaic architecture, in a state of terrible decay and dilapidation, and quite in keeping with the neighbourhood. Nevertheless a bright gilt sign over a ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... unconsciously distorted everything. Life itself was simple enough: a biological phenomenon that had its growth, its maturity, its decay. Death was no mystery, pain no punishment, nor sin anything but the survival of lower attributes from a prior phase of evolution, or not infrequently the legitimate protest of the natural self against artificial social ethics. It was the creeds that tortured things out of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... and saw that she was beating and brushing my father's uniform, previous to hanging it over a rail, so as to guard it from decay by exposure ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... continued the favourite Serb recreation of spitting. In the centre of them was an old man on a chair, also expectorating, and by his side one older and scraggier, his waistcoat covered with snuff and medals, palpitated in a state of senile decay, holding in a withered hand a palmfull of snuff which he had forgotten to inhale. There were a lot of women saying nothing and spitting. A sour, hard-faced woman admitted that ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... and Edward IV.; but very few can be traced higher; and such has been the effect of time, still more through the advance or decline of families, and the progress of architectural improvement, than the natural decay of these buildings, that I should conceive it difficult to name a house in England, still inhabited by a gentleman, and not belonging to the order of castles, the principal apartments of which are older than the reign of Henry VII. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... bearing witness. The old prisoners could make a pet of a mouse or a beetle strayed out of a hole. Here the unpierceable walls were washed every morning by an automatic sluice. There was no natural corruption and no merciful decay by which a living thing could enter in. Then James Turnbull looked up and saw the high invincible hatefulness of the society in which he lived, and saw the hatefulness of something else also, which he told himself ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... persecuted with the most inveterate hatred by Lady Bellingham's party, and as his revenue was sequestered, no remittances could come from that quarter. At the death of Farmer Humphreys, the church-land he had occupied was taken from his widow, who was now fallen into decay, and unable to assist the necessitous pastor she so truly revered. The provision which the revolutionary government pretended to make to the ejected ministers, was at best irregularly supplied, and often totally withheld. The infirmities of Colonel Evellin engrossing the whole time of Isabel, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... in our daily experience. To describe it in one word, (and none better presents itself,) it is *bad government,* with its attendants and consequences, that is, to the best of our knowledge, the true and only foundation stone of the decay and ruin of New Netherland. This government from which so much abuse proceeds, is twofold, that is; in the Fatherland by the Managers, and in this country. We shall first briefly point out some orders and mistakes issuing from the Fatherland, ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... outside, and who rush forth rejoicing to carry the new glory over the world? (2) Why indeed? except that older than all history and all written records has been the fear and wonderment of the children of men over the failure of the Sun's strength in Autumn—the decay of their God; and the anxiety lest by any means he should not revive ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... dwelling fell to decay; and the property has now passed into the bands of a poet, who, rumour says, purposes transforming it to a villa, and whose occupancy will give to it ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... Garrick, {27a} a work which, notwithstanding Mr. Foot's ingenious defence of it, shews that Garrick's life remains to be written, and that Murphy's intellectual powers were, at the time when he composed it, in a state of decay. ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... imitation of the surrounding work an exact repetition of the old Italian process with the identical substances used by the liutaros would be absolutely necessary for perfect or near success; it must be borne in mind that old varnish near the spot with its partial decay, probably from many causes, has to be imitated, and that what would be a great success with regard to a small space, might in all probability prove a signal failure when the whole instrument ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... Pines, there are, 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, and the Heat of the Sun, the ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... Season made for Joys, Love is then our Duty, She alone who that employs, Well deserves her Beauty. Let's be gay, While we may, Beauty's a Flower, despis'd in Decay. Youth's the ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... the centre of each man's heart A longing and love for the good and pure, And if but an atom, or larger part, I know that this shall forever endure. After the body has gone to decay— Yes, after the ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... seem, implanted in the minds of almost all primitive peoples, such as the Guaranis, a solidarity, a clinging kinship, which if once broken down by competition, unrestrained after our modern fashion, inevitably leads to their decay. Hence the keen hatred to the Chinese in California and in Australia. Naturally, those whom we hate, and in a measure fear, we also vilify, and this has given rise to all those accusations of Oriental vice (as if the vice of any Oriental, however much depraved, was comparable to ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... Italian tenement. The others are inhabited by coachmen, chauffeurs, gardeners, mill-hands, and degenerate Yankees. The inn is a mere barroom. Sounds of revelry and the odor of stale beer come out of it. In front are teams of burden, abandoned, for a time, by their drivers, and sundry human signs of decay loafing in the shadow of the old lindens. Among them are the seedy remnants of a once noble race. They are fettered by 'rheumatiz' and the disordered liver. They move like boats dragging their anchors. To make life tolerable their imaginations ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... uncle Hippias to town—a delightful companion! I said to him: 'We've had a fine Spring.' 'Ugh!' he answers, 'there's a time when you come to think the Spring old.' You should have heard how he trained out the 'old.' I felt something like decay in my sap just to hear him. In the prize-fight of life, my dear Austin, our uncle Hippias has been unfairly hit below the belt. Let's guard ourselves there, and go and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... muscle to weary, no frame to decay, No bones to be laid on the shelf; And soon I intend you shall go and play, While I manage the world myself. But harness me down with your iron bands, Be sure of your curb and rein, For I scorn the strength of your puny hands, As the tempest scorns ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... of potatoes was adequate; but had they been of the finest instead of the worst quality in the market, the experiment would have failed; starvation proved preferable; we could not get them down. That soft, slimy sweetness, foul with dirt and often tainted with decay, reappearing day after day at every meal for weeks on end, outdid endurance, nor could we be stimulated by the argument that the Government was saving money by it. Had the sweet potato season lasted the year round, the warden would have lost his job from mere dearth of prisoners ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... kindly when she came and did what she could to lighten the burden which was pressing her down to the grave. But, poor child, she was never again the same light-hearted girl. She grew pale and thin and in the hectic flush and faltering tread I read the death sign of early decay, and I felt that my misguided young friend was slowly dying of a broken heart. Then there came a day when we were summoned to her dying bed. Her brothers and sisters were present; all their resentment against her had vanished in the presence of death. She was ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... material, and workmanship scarcely exceeded 30l. Upon a rough estimate, a wooden bridge of the same span would have cost from 80l. to 100l., and a high arch probably from 150l. to 200l. The piers or posts supporting the chains are of oak, but should they in ten or fifteen years decay, 10l. in money, and three days in time would set it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... which the Anglo-Saxon passed into the modern English assumed in succession two distinct types, marking two eras quite dissimilar. First came the Semi-Saxon, or transition period, throughout which the old language was suffering disorganization and decay, a period of confusion, perplexing alike to those who then used the tongue, and to those who now endeavor to trace its vicissitudes. This chaotic state came to an end about the middle of the thirteenth century, after a duration of nearly two hundred years. The second era, or period of reconstruction, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... were horribly frugal about fires; it was a cause of suffering to their inmate—walked up and down the big bare sala with his pupil. The scagliola floor was cold, the high battered casements shook in the storm, and the stately decay of the place was unrelieved by a particle of furniture. Pemberton's spirits were low, and it came over him that the fortune of the Moreens was now even lower. A blast of desolation, a portent of disgrace and disaster, seemed to draw through ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... owed her existence rather to the 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 well as of ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... such a nuisance. It is going through so much for so little. It is as bad as the campaign before a parliamentary election. It offends one's sense of proportion. In a well-regulated universe there would be no tedious process of decay, either before or after death. You would go about your daily avocation unconcerned and unwarned, and then at the moment appointed by an inscrutable Providence for your dissolution—phew!—and your clothes would remain standing for a surprised second, and then fall down in a heap without ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... on the west, and the civilization developed in the country by fifteen centuries of intensive and undisturbed Hellenization was completely blotted out. The cities wore isolated from one another till their commerce fell into decay. The elaborately cultivated lands around them were left fallow till they were good for nothing but the pasturage which was all that the nomad required. The only monuments of architecture that have survived in Anatolia above ground are the imposing khans or fortified rest-houses ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... many partes of their bodies: in such sort that my greatest feare was, least the Indians would rise vp against vs, considering that it would haue bene very hard for vs to haue defended our selues in such extreme decay of all our forces, besides the scarsitie of all victuals, which fayled vs all at once. For the very riuer had not such plentie of fish as it was wont, and it seemed that the land and water did fight against vs. (M507) Now as we were thus vpon ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... in wild confusion, doom'd to rise And drop again in horror from the skies. To heaven's midway it reel'd, and changed to blood, Then dropp'd, and light rushed after like a flood, The heaven's blue curtains rent and shrank away, And heaven itself seem'd threaten'd with decay; While hopeless distance, with a boundless stretch, Flash'd on Despair the joy it could not reach, A moment's mockery-ere the last dim light Vanish'd, and left an everlasting Night; And with that light Hope fled and shriek'd farewell, ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... thirty thousand lives per month), but the custom was too deeply rooted to be stopped all at once. In the reign of Honorius, however, it was altogether abolished. It is very marvellous how this piece of masonry should have stood through all these years with comparatively so little decay. ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... which the progressive party of the town are heartily ashamed, they are regarded as spies rather than visitors, and are tolerated rather than welcomed. To a citizen who has for a score of years regretted the decay of his town, the spectacle of a stranger gloating over its ruins and perpetuating them on canvas is calculated to excite strong doubts as to his mental capacity and his fitness to be ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... are, new forests, fringed and blossoming, new sceneries, and new races of extinct animals. We are rich every morning, and poor every noon. One day with us measures the space of two hundred years in kingdoms—a hundred years to build up, and a hundred years to decay and destroy; twelve hours to overspread the evanescent pane with glorious beauty, and twelve to extract and dissipate the pictures.... Shall we not reverently and rejoicingly behold in these morning pictures, wrought without ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... On the morning, when Mr. O'Brien appeared in Carrick, that crop was the most abundant, promising and healthy that had been seen for years. Then it appeared from sea to sea one mass of unvaried rottenness and decay. Notwithstanding this, I spent hours looking down on the landscape, and mourning more over the mental and moral blight, which shed its influence on the public heart, than the plague spot whose dark circumference embraced ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... incongruous article of furniture for what seemed to be a dining-room—as being the nearest and best lighted object received most of my attention. It was a fine old chest of nearly black mahogany, very battered and in the last stage of decay, but originally a piece of some pretensions. Regretful of its fallen estate, I looked it over with some interest and had just observed on its lower corner a little label bearing the printed inscription "Lot 201" when I heard footsteps descending the stairs. A moment later the door ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... poured out at this time in his happiest moods. Although he looked much older than he was, his hair being silvered all over, and his person tending to corpulency, there was about him no trace of bodily sickness or mental decay, but rather an air of voluptuous repose. His benignity of manner placed his auditors entirely at their ease; and inclined them to listen delighted to the sweet low tone in which he began to discourse on some high theme. At first his tones were conversational: he seemed ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... occupied for less laudable objects than the mere protection of commerce. Whatever might have been the original intention of its erection and its subsequent use, the massive towers and turreted walls had long since been disused, and had fallen into the decay of years, unheeded and unknown, except by a few families of fishermen who had from generation to generation followed the same occupation. I call them fishermen, because such was the designation they ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... all agree to call them, are very many in number in this county, and very obvious, having suffered very little decay. These are large hillocks of earth cast up, as the ancients agree, by the soldiers over the bodies of their dead comrades slain in battle; several hundreds of these are to be seen, especially in the north part of this county, ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... came to Harrow, the Manor was showing unmistakable signs of decay. A new Head Master, recognizing "dry-rot," realizing the necessity of cutting it out, was confronted with that bristling obstacle—Tradition. He possessed enough moral courage to have told Rutford to resign, because in a thousand ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... to this place 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 ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... with me to the south of France." For this fellow, who knows nothing of disordered liver or high-strung nerves, goes regularly to a great nerve specialist with the periodical belief that his nervous system is beginning to decay. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... of it may pass one another without interference. In the thickness there should be set a very close succession of ties made of charred olive wood, binding the two faces of the wall together like pins, to give it lasting endurance. For that is a material which neither decay, nor the weather, nor time can harm, but even though buried in the earth or set in the water it keeps sound and useful forever. And so not only city walls but substructures in general and all walls that require a thickness like that of a ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... used in the construction of our Government, no division of powers, no distribution of checks in its several departments, will prove effectual to keep us a free people if this spirit is suffered to decay; and decay it will without constant nurture. To the neglect of this duty the best historians agree in attributing the ruin of all the republics with whose existence and fall their writings have made us acquainted. The same causes will ever produce the same effects, and as ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings; Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... decay'd, Her daughters wail their dear defence; Their fair example, prostrate laid, 35 Chaste Love and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of Jeroboam's family would have appeared to be a vaticinium post eventum, inasmuch as it took place very soon after Jeroboam's death. The same applies to what was said by him regarding the total decay of the kingdom which was so flourishing under Jeroboam; for, from the moment of Jeroboam's death, it hastened with rapid strides towards its destruction. If, therefore, it was to be seen that future things lie open before God and His servants "before they spring forth" (Is. xlii. ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... city thou can'st see. For Lima has taken the white veil; and there is a higher horror in this whiteness of her woe. Old as Pizarro, this whiteness keeps her ruins for ever new; admits not the cheerful greenness of complete decay; spreads over her broken ramparts the rigid pallor of an apoplexy that fixes ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... more immediate utilization of the nitrogen gathered from the soil air in the root nodules, as these die and undergo nitrification during the same season, while the crops are yet on the ground, and so far as phosphorus and potassium compounds are liberated by this decay, they too would become ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... Providence of God the race is soon to be extinct, let not injustice, oppression, or war, increase their woes or hasten their decay. ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... are you doing in London? Are you ripening as fast for the grave as I am? How should we lay out every moment for God? For some days I have had the symptoms of an inward consumptive decay—spitting of blood, etc. Thank God! I look at our last enemy with ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... his Yesterdays, the man found, already, many changes. The houses and buildings were a little more weather-beaten, with many of the boards in the porch floors and steps showing decay. The trees in the orchard were older and more gnarled with here and there gaps in their ranks. The fences showed many repairs. The little schoolhouse was almost shabby and, with the wood cleared away, looked naked and ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... figures they illustrate hardly look as if the nation were on the verge of decay, ruined by German cheap goods. If such be the signs of national collapse, no country in the world can be called prosperous. For there is this feature about our railway development which entirely differentiates it from the railway ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox
... it stood, conveyed the impression of a habitation falling into senility, tired with centuries of existence. Houses grow old like the race of men; the process is not less inevitable, though slower; in both, decay is hastened by events as well as by the passage ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... for him, should long to see him again, and enjoy the pleasure of his company; yet death must sooner or later have separated you, and longer life might have been a scene of suffering. Would it not have been inexpressibly painful to you all to have seen his mental and bodily powers decay and fade away? Such a spectacle would have been distressing and mortifying. Now his memory is associated with no humiliating recollections; but you remember him as one always admired, respected and loved. Death has set his seal upon him, and although he is removed from you to return no more ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... twelve years' imprisonment in a wretched jail, nor the consequent effects it must have upon his robust frame, well calculated to stand all weathers, but easily sapped and undermined by a damp dungeon. Symptoms of decay, after having enjoyed his liberty for about a year, led him to close his Affectionate Advice to his Beloved Flock, on their Christian Behaviour; with these words, 'Thus have I written to you, before I die, to provoke you to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... nurslings of the vernal skies. Bathed in soft airs and fed with dew, What more of magic in you lies To fill the hearths fond view? In childhood's sports, companions gay In sorrow, on life's downward way, How soothing! In our last decay. Memorials ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... carried away and destroyed, but the old chests still remain. There are seven in all, and they bear traces of great antiquity. Many have been strongly bound with iron, but all are now in a state of decay. This lonely cheerless room, strewn with antique fragments and suggestive of the boy-poet's day-dreams, is certainly the most interesting relic in Bristol. Its comfortless neglect is a true epitome of the life of him who first shaped his course from ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... 10-ft. intervals, and embedded in concrete under the paving of the platform. As the elevation of the top of the platform is 21.83, and the top of the piles is 14.54 above mean tide, the piles will, of course, decay; but, as the embankment has been completed for some time and is well packed and settled, the concrete being deposited directly on the embankment, very little trouble from settlement is anticipated when the piles decay. The surface of the platforms, ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • E. B. Temple
... as I can gather," he said, coughing above the spirit, "you call it decay of the optic nerve, or something, and therefore hopeless. What is my time-limit, avoiding ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... possession of it. An ark of pure gold, chased and ornamented with the surpassing grace of that period of perfect taste, had received the royally robed corpse, which Churchmen averred lay calm and beautiful, untainted by decay; and this was now uplifted by the arms of King Henry himself, of Richard King of the Romans his brother, and of the two ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... organization, community interest, the centralized state. We have created a machine to serve us, and have become servants of the machine. When we thank God unctuously that we live not as our ancestors lived and as the "uncivilized" live today, we are displaying the decay of our mental faculties. Is it the Arab at his tent door, looking with dismay and dread at the approach of the Bagdad Railway, who is the fool, ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... to forecast the decline of Roman power and supremacy. In the next hundred years there were twenty-three emperors, thirteen of whom were murdered by their own soldiers or servants—a tragic period of cruelty, licentiousness, and decay. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... Old, and the further division of these beyond any precedent in history. It begins to look as if in this "strange work" God had been grinding up material for a nobler manifestation of the unity of his people. The sky of the declining century is red with promise. Hitherto, not the decay of religious earnestness only, but the revival of it, has brought into the church, not peace, but division. When next some divine breathing of spiritual influence shall be wafted over the land, can any man forbid the hope that from village ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... characteristic faults, of his earlier productions; but one cannot help "reading into it" the poet's after-life of disappointment and disillusion—estrangement from the "beloved woman" in whose affection he was then reposing; decay and disappearance of those "flitting phantasies" with which he was then so joyously trifling, and the bitterly ironical scholia which fate was preparing for such ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... myself, because I am convinced that a practical monogamy is a psychological necessity to the mass of civilised people. But even if I did believe it I should still keep to my present line, because it is the only line that will prevent a highly organised civilisation from ending in biological decay. The public Endowment of Motherhood is the only possible way which will ensure the permanently developing civilised state at which all constructive minds are aiming. A point is reached in the life-history ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... alive still. Now what's to be done? what's to be done?" he said in despair. He lighted a candle, got up cautiously and went to the looking-glass, and began looking at his face and hair. Yes, there were gray hairs about his temples. He opened his mouth. His back teeth were beginning to decay. He bared his muscular arms. Yes, there was strength in them. But Nikolay, who lay there breathing with what was left of lungs, had had a strong, healthy body too. And suddenly he recalled how they used to go to bed together as children, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... added that the body had been buried at once, and by that means preserved from decay. It was practically incorrupt. It might have ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... excite sensations of horror"—that is the kind of stuff in which the imagination of the young Shelley rioted. And evidently it is not consciously imagined; life really presented itself to him as a romance of this kind, with himself as hero—a hero who is a hopeless lover, blighted by premature decay, or a wanderer doomed to share the sins and sorrows of mankind to all eternity. This attitude found vent in a mass of sentimental verse and prose, much of it more or less surreptitiously published, which the researches ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... under his uplifted arm and sought the keyhole. A few minutes' fumbling until the prongs of the skeleton key had found its corresponding wards, and then the door swung open, emitting a scent of mustiness and decay. ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... 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 changest ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... one indication of the decay of chivalry. There were many others, and at last it was swept away altogether in a new fashion that shortly broke out. Jessie Robertson's uncle from Vancouver came home, bringing all the Robertsons presents, Jessie's being ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... came with creation, and constitute an inflexible, irrepealable law of the universe. In stir and push we have light and life, but in idleness, and superstitious clinging to fossilized ideas and bygones, we have demoralization, decay ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... it be so that a man, by the experience that he hath of himself, perceiveth that in wealth and authority he doth his own soul harm, and cannot do the good that to his part appertaineth; but seeth the things that he should set his hands to sustain, decay through his default and fall to ruin under him, and seeth that to the amendment thereof he leaveth his own duty undone; then would I in any wise advise him to leave off that thing—be it spiritual ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... accumulating experience, the higher intellectual development, and the further growth of sociable habits, secure the maintenance of the species, its extension, and its further progressive evolution. The unsociable species, on the contrary, are doomed to decay. ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... At Weston she had kept tolerable health, but certainly her constitution was not strong, and the slavery of Walworth Road threatened her with premature decay. Her sisters counselled wisely. Coming to London was a mistake. She would have had better chances at Weston, notwithstanding the extreme discretion with which she was obliged ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... painted most realistically, even to the old horse and shaggy donkey hobbled to the trunk of a tree, with a thin yellow cur near them. When completed it would be a striking picture: the smoky sunset tints of a November afternoon were faithfully depicted; and a woodman's hut, just falling into decay, with golden lichen on the rotting roof, was marvellously painted. Malcolm stood before it in a rapt mood of ecstasy, then he struck himself dramatically on ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... parapet, finding rest in a mild melancholy, his thoughts chiefly occupied with the decay of Prepimpin who sat by his heels gazing at the roadway, occupied possibly by the same sere reflections. Presently the flea-catching antics of a ragged mongrel in the middle of the roadway disturbed Prepimpin's sense of the afternoon's decorum. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... Affection, mournful in its gushing tears; And midst the crowd that at the funeral wait, A widowed mother's heart made desolate O'er a war-honor'd Sire's low place of rest; These are the tales that Memory may relate: They have a moral for the aspiring breast, A lesson of Decay on earthliness impress'd. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... being in the bosom of public order. On the other hand, that public order alone which cherishes the true liberty of the individual is strong in the approbation of God and in the moral sentiments of mankind. All else is weakness, and death, and decay. ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... gives rise to dampness in the form of rime on meeting the warmth of the body. These thin patches remain damp whenever one is in the bag, and in a short time they lose their hair. The damp spreads, like decay in wood, and continually attacks the surrounding skin, with the result that one fine day you find yourself with a hairless sleeping-bag. One cannot be too careful in the choice of skins. For the sake ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... everything indicates that winter will soon be here. The seared leaves are falling from their homes in the waving forests; the earth has thrown aside her gay mantle of green, and one scene of desolation presents itself to the eye. The decay of nature brings with it sad and solemn reflections, how much more the decay of the human form—of which autumn seems so striking an emblem. The days of man are few. Like the flower of the field he perisheth, and yet how ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... which being opened were full of goodly pearls, though somewhat brown (for the Spaniards used to damage the color in their haste and greediness, opening the shells by fire, instead of leaving them to decay gradually after the Arabian fashion); with which prize, though they could not guess its value very exactly, they went off content enough, after some malicious fellow had set the ship on fire, which, being laden with hides, was no ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... hastily pulled down; the new government offices that were to replace it had as yet been but partially built, and commanded no general approval. Considered as a social organisation, moreover, the Church throughout large parts of the country had fallen into a state not unlike decay. Richard Baxter, whose testimony there is no sufficient reason to reject, tells of its state in Shropshire during the years of his youth, from 1615 onwards:—"We lived in a country that had but little ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... different minds, just as the first century after Christ looked differently, according as men looked with faith towards the future, or with regret towards the past. Some rejoice in the present era as one of progress. Others lament over it as one of decay. Some say that we are on the eve of a Reformation, as great and splendid as that of the sixteenth century. Others say that we are rushing headlong into scepticism and atheism. Some say that a new era is dawning on humanity; others that the world and the Church are coming to an end, and the last ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... vellum nor illumination shows the least sign of decay. The writing is exquisitely beautiful, and points to a degree of refinement and cultivation which we do not usually associate with a rough life, such as was led by the monks of sea-girt Lindisfarne. There are to be seen wonderful ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... in the centre of the large entrance hall where his father had left him, a neat, slim little figure in an Eton suit and straw hat, and the walls were lined by big lads in kilts, knickers, tweed suits, and tailless Highland bonnets in various stages of roughness and decay. ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... them any others in their place. It does not appear to be the aim of the missionaries to improve the Indians by making citizens of them. Hence, in most cases, anarchy and confusion are the results. Nothing has more effectually contributed to the decay of several tribes than the course pursued by their missionaries. Let us look back to the first of them for proofs. From the days of Elliott, to the year 1834, have they made one citizen? The latter ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... do not use me As you have used others. Better you did refuse me: You have refused others. Better, far better hope to banish A small child than, grown old, Hope should decay, his vigour vanish, And I be left ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... after some hesitation, granted them permission to visit Botissa and the neighbourhood, and said he would dispatch a messenger to the neighbouring princes, to facilitate the progress of the travellers through their dominions. The city had a melancholy and cheerless aspect; the walls had fallen to decay, and the streets were ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... in the white drapery, and completed Felix's surprise and amusement by producing a needle and thread, and setting to work on various needful repairs of his own buttons and his brother's, over which he shook his head in amusement as he chuckled at the decay which had befallen the garments of so neat a personage as Felix, and which had been ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unfilled lamp had gone out, leaving a trail of smoke in the air. The sprigs of mignonette and rosemary, with which the room was sprinkled every day, were unrenewed, and scented the gloom with a close odor of decay. A costly manuscript of Theocritus was tumbled in disorder on the floor. Hermas sank into a chair like a man in whom the very spring of being is broken. Through the darkness some one drew near. He did not even lift his head. A hand touched him; a soft arm ...
— The Lost Word - A Christmas Legend of Long Ago • Henry Van Dyke
... treatise on political philosophy and constitutional law in the language. But these works hardly belong to pure literature, and are remarkable only as early, though not very good, examples of English prose in a barren time. The 15th century was an era of decay and change. The Middle Age was dying, Church and State were slowly disintegrating under the new intellectual influences that were working secretly under ground. In England the civil wars of the Red and White Roses were ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... and cracks. To repair it would be too irksome, nor would that restore the original solidity of the shaky foundation. Better protected by the covering of a roof, the city of the sheds resists longer, without however escaping eventual decay. The storeys which each generation adds to those in which it was born increase the thickness and the weight of the edifice in alarming proportions. The moisture of the tile filters into the oldest layers, wrecks the foundations and threatens the nest with a speedy fall. It is time to abandon ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... a constant Weariness, and one would think should make Existence it self a Burthen. The indolent Man descends from the Dignity of his Nature, and makes that Being which was Rational merely Vegetative: His Life consists only in the meer Encrease and Decay of a Body, which, with relation to the rest of the World, might as well have been uninformed, as the Habitation of a ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... in almost every case carried out all at one time, designed and finished from the drawings of one architect, and bears traces but rarely of those deviations from the earlier plans which sometimes make the comprehension of the Theban temples so difficult a matter: if the state of decay of certain parts, or more often inadequate excavation, frequently prevent us from appreciating their details, we can at least reinstate their general outline with ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... additional knowledge; and the historian might begin at a beginning. The traveller there seeks in vain for the remains of cities, temples, or towers; but he is amply compensated by objects that tell not of decay but of healthful progress and hope;—of a wonderful past, and of a promising future. Curiosity alone may attract us into the mysterious recesses of regions still unknown; but a still deeper interest attaches to those regions, now that ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... in the words of the "good grey poet," only an immodest and brazen shamelessness. But these are mental perverts and are to be pitied; they see "through a glass darkly" and everything looks black with decay; they are trying to build an eternal future upon a foundation of tissue paper; they are seeking to encompass immortal life by denying the very beginning and source of all life—Sex; they are attempting the impossible feat of foisting upon the world an ideal of Heaven from which ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... warm and oozy soil. The vines were laden with dark purple grapes, and the slender twigs of the maple, then tasseled with their clusters of small red flowers, now hung out a gorgeous display of leaves stained by the frost with burning crimson. On every side we saw the tokens of maturity and decay where all had before been fresh and beautiful. We entered the forest, and ourselves and our horses were checkered, as we passed along, by the bright spots of sunlight that fell between the opening ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... be their mother once"; with old Gandolf, whom he fancies leering at him from his onion-stone tomb; and with all those strong desires of the time for the delight of being envied, for marble baths and horses and brown Greek manuscripts and mistresses, the seeds of human decay planted in the plot of Time, known as the Central Renaissance, by the same lingering fleshliness and self-destroying self-indulgence as was at home in pagan days, are livingly exposed to the ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... their brilliancy. The once beautiful lamp of Venice glass hanging from the ceiling, which Ali had filled and lighted, was also tarnished and its delicately shaped globe was cracked from top to bottom. Monte-Cristo sadly contemplated this scene of ruin and decay, but he contemplated it only for a moment. Then he turned ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... was seventy-nine; Madame Recamier seventy. The former was tottering on the brink of the grave. He had lost the use of his limbs, and his mind was visibly failing. Madame Recamier was keenly sensible of the decay of his faculties, though she succeeded so well in concealing the fact from others that few of the habitual visitors at the Abbaye recognized its extent. The reason she gave to her friends for refusing him was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of the trees sweeps like a huge sickle across space. An acrid smell of cold decay rises on the night. The wind wails its threnody ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... candles in the place where Antoine smiled on in his frozen silence; and masses were said for his soul—the masses Love murmurs for its dead. The earth could not receive him; its bosom was adamant; but no decay could touch him; and she dwelt alone with this, that was her husband, until one beautiful, bitter day, when, with no eye save God's to see her, and no human comfort by her, she gave birth to a man-child. And yet that night she lighted the candles at the dead man's head and feet, dragging ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of a profligate court, and they are all clasping one another's hands in true brotherly love. Society was falling to pieces. We know the tragic spectacle that the empire presented then. Amidst universal decay of all that held men together, here was a new uniting principle; everywhere else dissolution was at work; here was again crystallising. A flower was opening its petals though it grew on a dunghill. What was it that drew slaves and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... sovereign, and which, were he in private life, would undoubtedly have made him an {62} eminent man. But the truth is that the old feeling of blind unconditional homage to the sovereign was dying out; it was dying of inanition and old age and natural decay. Other and stronger forces in political thought were coming up to jostle it aside, even before its death-hour, and to occupy its place. A king was to be in England, for the future, a respected and honored ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... one of the new hotels near by. Mrs. Thornton had the habit of spending her mornings in the flat with her mother and the baby. Thornton could find no reasonable grounds for the rebellion he felt over this tie, this close proximity to decay in which he was compelled to live. Yet he loathed the thought that his child, unimportant as she was now, should begin her life by ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... power and goodness to this western world. The graceful monument which the wife of Follen thus reared to his memory was crowned by the hand of Channing with a garland that as yet has shown no trace of decay. ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... which ultimately triumphed, after you had spent upon it half a century of agonising struggle. And now what are you going to do? You have arrived at the division of the century. Are you going to repeat Penelope's process, but without the purpose of Penelope? Are you going to spend the decay and the dusk of the nineteenth century in undoing the great work which with so much pain and difficulty your greatest men have been achieving during its daybreak and its youth? Surely not. Oh, recollect the functions you have to perform in the face of ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... 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 ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... irrevocable, so that it infects the ideal also, which in this very avoidance submits to recognize it. The statue is not less, but more, a thing than the natural body. Life is not mere exclusion of decay, but organization of it, so that the fury of corruption passes into fresh vital power. It is a cycle of changes, the type and show of which are the circulation, constantly removing effete particles and building up new, and therein giving its hue to the flesh. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... believe"—like teeth which decay if not used upon hard food, or muscles which grow flabby if they have not hard work to perform—must be given something for its proper exercise. In a chapter on "The Duty of Lying," in his brilliant book Disenchantment, Mr. C. E. Montague shows what ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... out of date, and philosophy is soon out of fashion. Art that uses both, is neither. When it makes crutches of them and leans its whole weight on them, it will fall with them in the period of their inevitable decay. ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... the close of the audience, said to me; 'If it were not for the interference of the church, the republic of Florence and certain other Italian states might hope for the accomplishment of great things. What the Pope wants is the peace of decay and temporal and spiritual supremacy for the church throughout the land. Experience has taught me that adversity is a great teacher. It tolerates no compromises and rewards only patience and strength. ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... specially adapted to their mode of life and the part they are destined to perform in the economy of nature. The sloth is formed to pass its time in trees, and to feed on the superabundant leaves, which would otherwise impede the circulation of the air, retard their growth, or bring on premature decay. This duty it shares with numberless other animals of the luxuriant forests of Tropical America. Place the sloth out of its natural position, and, as would be the case with other animals, it finds itself ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... he was far removed from her who could have made him forget that, although the heart may wither and die, while self-esteem and an approving conscience remain to us, the soul shares not in the same decay—confesses not the same sting. Could he even have divined that in the temple to which his curiosity had led him, he should have beheld the being on whose image he doted, even while he shunned it, he would have avoided her ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... at Camille. He had never yet seen the body of a drowned person presenting such a dreadful aspect. The corpse, moreover, looked pinched. It had a thin, poor appearance. It had shrunk up in its decay, and the heap it formed was quite small. Anyone might have guessed that it belonged to a clerk at 1,200 francs a year, who was stupid and sickly, and who had been brought up by his mother on infusions. This miserable frame, which had grown to maturity between warm blankets, ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... honor's cost, His pristine dignity has lost, Is the fool's jest and coward's scorn, When once deserted and forlorn. With years enfeebled and decay'd, A Lion gasping hard was laid: Then came, with furious tusk, a boar, To vindicate his wrongs of yore: The bull was next in hostile spite, With goring horn his foe to smite: At length the ass himself, ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... length my vigour's flown, I have years to bring decay; Few the locks that now I own, And the few I have are grey. Yet, old Jerome, thou mayst boast, While thy spirits do not tire; Still beneath thy age's frost Glows a spark of ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... ministers and captains existed who really deserved the name. When they were no more, the machine kept moving some time by impulsion, and from their influence. But soon afterwards we saw beneath the surface; faults and errors were multiplied, and decay came on with giant strides; without, however, opening the eyes of that despotic master, so anxious to do everything and direct everything himself, and who seemed to indemnify himself for disdain abroad by increasing fear and ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... conducted after the Shinto rite,—is religious defilement. The ancient legend of Izanagi's descent to the nether world, in search of his lost spouse, illustrates the terrible beliefs that once existed as to goblin-powers presiding over decay. [41] Between the horror of death as corruption, and the apotheosis of the ghost, there is nothing incongruous: we must understand the apotheosis itself as a propitiation. This earliest Way of the Gods was a religion of perpetual fear. Not ordinary homes only were deserted after a death: ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... with great rapidity, and plant tissue, when not protected, soon decays. This decay is essentially oxidation, since its final result is the restoration to the atmosphere of carbonic acid, which is broken up in plant-growth by the appropriation of its carbon. Hence it is a kind of combustion, although this term is more generally applied to very rapid oxidation, with the evolution ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various |
