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

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• 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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• Fascism is capitalism in decay.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Political, Politics, Revolutionary

  221 Copy quote

• 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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• 

  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

  49 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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• 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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• 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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• 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.

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

  Sallust

  Fall, Increase

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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.

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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

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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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• EACH DAY OF HUMAN life contains joy and anger, pain and pleasure, darkness and light, growth and decay. Each moment is etched with nature’s grand design-do not try to deny or oppose the cosmic order of things.

  Morihei Ueshiba

  Pain, Order, Light

  Morihei Ueshiba, John Stevens (2010). “The Art of Peace”, p.125, Shambhala Publications

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• False friendship, like the ivy, decays and ruins the walls it embraces; but true friendship gives new life and animation to the object it supports.

  Richard Burton

  Friendship, Fake Friends, Fake People

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• When one tears away the veils and shows them naked, people's souls give off such a pungent smell of decay.

  Octave Mirbeau

  Smell, People, Giving

  Octave Mirbeau (2007). “The Diary of a Chambermaid”, Harper Collins

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• Expansion means complexity and complexity decay.

  C. Northcote Parkinson

  Mean, Focus, Expansion

  In-Laws and Outlaws (1962)

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• If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.

  Ezra Pound

  Literature, Rehabilitation, Decline

  Ezra Pound, Michael Dirda (2010). “ABC of Reading”, p.32, New Directions Publishing

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• Among the many reasons assignable for the sad decay of true Christianity, perhaps the neglecting to assemble ourselves together, in religious societies, may not be one of the least.

  George Whitefield

  Religious, Together, May

  George Whitefield (2013). “Sermons of George Whitefield”, p.48, Hendrickson Publishers

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• Great effort is required to arrest decay and restore vigor. One must exercise proper deliberation, plan carefully before making a move, and be alert in guarding against relapse following a renaissance.

  Horace

  Moving, Exercise, Effort

  "The Molecular Biology of Cancer: A Bridge from Bench to Bedside". Book by Stella Pelengaris, p. 376, March 5, 2013.

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• Of course the French are making very credible movies and it is still one of the greatest nations in terms of world cinema but the real problem is the decay in film criticism.

  Wim Wenders

  Movie, Real, Criticism

  "'The culture of independent film criticism has gone down the drain'". Interview with Richard Phillips, www.wsws.org. January 10, 2000.

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