Decay Quotes - Page 13

• As a youth, I sought out decadence; as an elder, I try to avoid decay.

  Mason Cooley

  Trying, Age, Youth

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• This whole which is visible in different ways in bodies, as far as formation, constitution, appearance, colors and other properties and common qualities, is none other than the diverse face of the same substance a changeable, mobile face, subject to decay, of an immobile, permanent and eternal being.

  Giordano Bruno

  Color, Quality, Substance

  "Cause, Principle, and Unity". Book by Giordano Bruno, 1584.

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• Nearly all our ills are the result of neglect in some way or other. And this truth may be said to apply to the ills of nations as well. Negligence is at the bottom of all decay. And decay always starts by showing little signs-or warnings. Then is the time to show interest and to be alert. There is nothing quite so easy as to neglect, and nothing quite so difficult as to repair that negligence. Negligence always carries a high price. It costs nothing to avoid it!

  George Matthew Adams

  Warning, May, Littles

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• Barbarisation may be defined as a cultural process whereby an attained condition of high value is gradually overrun and supersededby elements of lower quality.

  Johan Huizinga

  Quality, Elements, May

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• If you're constantly being reminded of the ways in which your history and your narrative as a people were rooted in loss and decay, then you're in deep trouble. Once you make a certain kind of peace with the past, then you should be completely oriented towards speculation about the future.

  Kerry James Marshall

  Loss, Past, People

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• There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.

  Karl Marx

  Party, Hands, Empires

  Karl Marx, David McLellan (2000). “Karl Marx: Selected Writings”, p.368, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Behold the grapes and all the fruits that Autumn gives today, As robed in red and gold, she rules, the Empress of Decay!

  Henry Abbey

  Autumn, Giving, Gold

  Henry Abbey, “Autumn Ballad”

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• Growth provides novel experiences for youth; decay the same, alas, for age.

  Mason Cooley

  Growth, Age, Youth

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• So peaceful shalt thou end thy blissful days, And steal thyself from life by slow decays.

  Homer

  Peace, Stealing, Ends

  Homer (1872). “The Iliad ...”, p.406

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• The real jewel of my disease-ridden woodlot is the prothonotary warbler. ... The flash of his gold-and-blue plumage amid the dank decay of the June woods is in itself proof that dead trees are transmuted into living animals, and vice versa.

  Aldo Leopold

  Real, Animal, Jewels

  Aldo Leopold (2013). “Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)”, p.104, Library of America

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• Beta decay was... like a dear old friend. There would always be a special place in my heart reserved especially for it.

  Chien-Shiung Wu

  Heart, Old Friends, Special

  "History of Original Ideas and Basic Discoveries in Particle Physics". Book edited by H. B. Newman and T. Ypsilantis,

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• Nature is full of teeth
  that come in one by one, then
  decay,
  fall out.

  Anne Sexton

  Nature, Fall, Teeth

  Anne Sexton (1975). “The Awful Rowing Toward God”, Boston : Houghton Mifflin

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• Nothing can be plainer, than that the motions, changes, decays, and dissolutions, which we hourly see befall natural bodies (and which is what we mean by the course of nature), cannot possibly affect an active, simple, uncompounded substance: such a being therefore is indissoluble by the force of nature, that is to say, the soul of man is naturally immortal.

  George Berkeley

  Nature, Mean, Simple

  George Berkeley (2015). “A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge”, p.82, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• Sweet death, small son, our instrument
  Of immortality,
  Your cries and hungers document
  Our bodily decay.

  Donald Hall

  Sweet, Son, Cry

  Donald Hall (1990). “Old and New Poems”, p.19, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The prosperity of a people is proportionate to the number of hands and minds usefully employed. To the community, sedition is a fever, corruption is a gangrene, and idleness is an atrophy. Whatever body or society wastes more than it acquires, must gradually decay, and every being that continues to be fed, and eases to labor, takes away something from the public stock.

  Samuel Johnson

  Hands, Numbers, People

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• My way of life
  Is fall'n into the sear and yellow leaf.

  William Shakespeare

  Fall, Yellow, Way

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• People fall in private, long before they fall in public. The tree falls with a great crash, but the secret decay which accounts for it, is often not discovered until it is down on the ground.

  J. C. Ryle

  Fall, Long, People

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• No religion is suddenly rejected by any people; it is rather gradually outgrown. None sees a religion die; dead religions are like dead languages and obsolete customs: the decay is long and - like the glacier march - is perceptible only to the careful watcher by comparisons extending over long periods.

  Charles Bradlaugh

  Long, People, Atheism

  Marsden Gibson, Charles Bradlaugh (1889*). “Has Humanity Gained from Unbelief?: Two Nights Debate Between Marsden Gibson and Charles Bradlaugh at Newcastle-on-Tyne”

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• The daily disappearance and the subsequent rise of the sun appeared to many of the ancients as a true resurrection; thus, while the east came to be regarded as the source of light and warmth, happiness and glory, the west was associated with darkness and chill, decay and death. This led to the custom of burying the dead so as to face the east when they rose again, and of building temples and shrines with an opening toward the east. To effect this, Vitruvius, two thousand years ago, gave precise rules, which are still followed by Christian architects.

  Isaac Newton

  Christian, Light, Years

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• Great nations do not succumb through lost wars, but rather through racial decay and the destruction of their internal order.

  Adolf Hitler

  War, Order, Destruction

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• Whenever a people or an institution forget its hard beginnings, it is beginning to decay.

  Carl Sandburg

  People, Forget, Institutions

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• Churches may decay and perish; riches may make themselves wings and fly away-but he who builds their happiness on Christ crucified and union with Him by faith, that person is standing on a foundation which shall never be moved, and will know something of true peace.

  J. C. Ryle

  Wings, Church, Foundation

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• All solitary enjoyments, quickly fall, or become painful, so that, perhaps, no more insufferable misery can be conceived than that which must follow incommunicable privileges. Only imagine a human being condemned to perpetual youth while all around him decay and die. O, how sincerely would he call upon death for deliverance!

  James Sharp

  Fall, Privilege, Deliverance

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• At the end of history the whole earth has become the Garden of God again. Death and decay and suffering are gone. . . . Jesus will make the world our perfect home again. We will no longer be living 'east of Eden,' always wandering and never arriving. We will come, and the father will meet us and embrace us, and we will be brought into the feast.

  Timothy Keller

  Jesus, Father, Home

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• The flowers of life are but visionary. How many pass away and leave no trace behind! How few yield any fruit,--and the fruit itself, how rarely does it ripen! And yet there are flowers enough; and is it not strange, my friend, that we should suffer the little that does really ripen to rot, decay, and perish unenjoyed?

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Flower, Yield, Suffering

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2017). “The Sorrows of Young Werther (English German Edition, illustrated): Die Leiden des jungen Werther (Englisch Deutsch Ausgabe illustriert)”, p.105, Clap Publishing, LLC.

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