Decay Quotes

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  Harmony makes small things grow; lack of it makes great things decay.

  Sallust

  Inspirational, Balance And Harmony, Harmony In Music

  103 Copy quote

• I have always looked upon decay as being just as wonderful and rich an expression of life as growth.

  Henry Miller

  Expression, Growth, Wonderful

  Henry Miller (1964). “Henry Miller on Writing”, New Directions Publishing

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• Earth knows no desolation. She smells regeneration in the moist breath of decay.

  George Meredith

  Death, Nature, Garden

  George Meredith (1862). “Modern Love and Poems of the English Roadside: With Poems and Ballads”, p.203

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• Fascism is capitalism in decay.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Political, Politics, Revolutionary

  225 Copy quote
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  A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.

  Amos Bronson Alcott

  Fall, Government, Mind Your Own Business

  54 Copy quote
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  In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.

  Ernst Fischer

  Change, Art, Society

  Ernst Fischer, Anna Bostock (1978). “The necessity of art: a Marxist approach”, Puffin

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• I shall be dumped where the weed decays, And the rest is rust and stardust

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Weed, Rust, Stardust

  Vladimir Nabokov (2016). “Lolita”, p.142, Hamilton Books

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• All things are subject to decay and change.

  Polybius

  Subjects, All Things, Monarchs

  Polybius (1812). “The General History of the Wars of the Romans”, p.401

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• He who rejects change is the architect of decay.

  Harold Wilson

  Change, Life Changing, Acceptance

  Speech to the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe, Strasbourg, France, quoted in "The New York Times", (p. 12), January 24, 1967.

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• The world is afflicted by death and decay. But the wise do not grieve, having realized the nature of the world.

  Gautama Buddha

  Wise, Buddhist, Grieving

  "The Discourse Collection. Selected Texts from the Sutta Nipata". Book by John D. Ireland, www.accesstoinsight.org. 1995.

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• There is something in the decay of nature that awakens thought, even in the most trifling mind.

  Sarah Josepha Hale

  Loss, Mind, Awakening

  Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (1828). “Ladies' Magazine”, p.537

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• Everything rises but to fall, and increases but to decay.

  Sallust

  Fall, Increase

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• What people love about life is its miraculous beauty; what they hate about death is the loss and decay around it. Yet losing is not losing, and decay turns into beauty, as beauty turns back into decay. We are breathed in, breathed out. Therefore all you need is to understand the one breath that makes up the world.

  Stephen Mitchell

  Hate, Loss, People

  Stephen Mitchell (2009). “The Second Book of the Tao”, p.55, Penguin

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• Beautiful things grow to a certain height and then they fail and fade off, breathing out memories as they decay. And just as any period decays in our minds, the things of that period should decay too, and in that way they're preserved for a while in the few hearts like mine that react to them. Trying to preserve a century by keeping its relics up to date is like keeping a dying man alive by stimulants.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Beautiful, Memories, Heart

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Echoes of the Jazz Age Collection: The Beautiful and Damned, Winter Dreams, The Great Gatsby, Babylon Revisited, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and many more”, p.308, e-artnow

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• He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.

  Harold Wilson

  Change, Life Changing, Teaching

  Speech to the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe, Strasbourg, France, quoted in "The New York Times", (p. 12), January 24, 1967.

  94 Copy quote

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• Death, is not an end, but a transition crisis. All the forms of decay are but masks of regeneration--the secret alembics of vitality.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Death, Secret, Vitality

  9 Copy quote

• Time is the speed at which the past decays.

  David Mitchell

  Past, Speed

  David Mitchell (2008). “Cloud Atlas: A Novel”, p.235, Random House

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• All things are subject to decay and when fate summons, monarchs must obey.

  John Dryden

  Death, Fate, Literature

  'MacFlecknoe' (1682) l. 1

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• Worlds on worlds are rolling ever From creation to decay, Like the bubbles on a river Sparkling, bursting, borne away.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Rivers, Rolling, World

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1853). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: Complete in One Volume”, p.317

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• Progress, this great heresy of decay.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Progress, Literature, Orthodox

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• Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

  William Shakespeare

  Memorable, Disease And Death, Political

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 1, sc. 4, l. 90

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• When urbanity decays, civilization suffers and decays with it.

  James Norman Hall

  Civilization, Suffering

  James Norman Hall (1942). “Under a Thatched Roof”

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• I just have to think of Philadelphia now, and I get ideas, I hear the wind, and I'm off into the darkness somewhere.

  David Lynch

  Thinking, Wind, Ideas

  David Lynch, Richard A. Barney (2009). “David Lynch: Interviews”, p.48, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Autumn wins you best by this its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.

  Robert Browning

  Sympathy, Fall, Autumn

  Robert Browning, John Woolford, Daniel Karlin (1991). “The Poems of Browning: 1826-1840”, p.116, Pearson Education

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• The interval between the decay of the old and the formation and establishment of the new constitutes a period of transition which must always necessarily be one of uncertainty, confusion, error, and wild and fierce fanaticism.

  John C. Calhoun

  Errors, Confusion, Transition

  JOHN C. CALHOUN (1854). “A DISQUISITION ON GOVERNMENT AND A DISCOURSE ON THE CONSTITUTIONA ND GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES”, p.90

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