Decay Quotes - Page 10

There is no reason for amazement: surely one always knew that cultures decay, and life's end is death.

Robinson Jeffers

Culture, Reason, Ends

Robinson Jeffers, Tim Hunt (1988). “The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers: 1928-1938”, p.518, Stanford University Press

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That government is best which governs the least, so taught the courageous founders of this nation. This simple declaration is diametrically opposed to the all too common philosophy that the government should protect and support one from the cradle to the grave. The policy of the Founding Fathers has made our people and our nation strong. The opposite leads inevitably to moral decay.

Ezra Taft Benson

Courage, Strong, Father

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Make new friends, but keep the old;
Those are silver, these are gold.
New-made friendships, like new wine,
Age will mellow and refine.
Friendships that have stood the test -
Time and change - are surely best;
Brow may wrinkle, hair grow gray,
Friendship never knows decay.
For 'mid old friends, tried and true,
Once more we our youth renew.
But old friends, alas! may die,
New friends must their place supply.
Cherish friendship in your breast-
New is good, but old is best;
Make new friends, but keep the old;
Those are silver, these are gold.

Joseph Parry

Friendship, Wine, Wrinkles

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The degradation of the sense of symbol in modern society is one of its many signs of spiritual decay.

Thomas Merton

Spiritual, Society, Degradation

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When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them, they show us the state of our decay.

Brian Aldiss

Love, Fear, Children

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And he who has considered all the contrasts on this earth, and is no more disturbed by anything whatever in the world, the Peaceful One, freed from rage, from sorrow, and from longing, he has passed beyond birth and decay.

Gautama Buddha

Buddhist, Freedom, Peaceful

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Let go the past, let go the future, and let go the present (front, back, middle). Crossing to the farther shore of existence, with mind released everywhere, do not further undergo birth and decay.

Gautama Buddha

Letting Go, Buddhist, Past

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When I was a young man, near the beginning of my life, I looked around with true mindfulness and saw that all things are subject to decay.

Gautama Buddha

Buddhist, Men, Mindfulness

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High quality water is more than the dream of the conservationists, more than a political slogan; high quality water, in the right quantity at the right place at the right time, is essential to health, recreation, and economic growth. Of all our planet's activities - geological movements, the reproduction and decay of biota, and even the disruptive propensities of certain species (elephants and humans come to mind) - no force is greater than the hydrologic cycle.

Richard Bangs

Dream, Rain, Elephants

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Time on its back bears all things far away - Full many a challenge is wrought by many a day - Shape, fortune, name, and nature all decay

Plato

Names, Challenges, Shapes

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Romans says the creation was 'subjected to frustration, in hope that it will be liberated from its bondage to decay.' In hope! There is hope for the earth. As Christians, we can and should have hope for the earth, as well as our hope of heaven.

Howard A Snyder

Christian, Frustration, Should Have

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To a Mistress Dying Lover. YOUR beauty, ripe and calm and fresh As eastern summers are, Must now, forsaking time and flesh, Add light to some small star. Philosopher. Whilst she yet lives, were stars decay'd, Their light by hers relief might find; But Death will lead her to a shade Where Love is cold and Beauty blind. Lover. Lovers, whose priests all poets are, Think every mistress, when she dies, Is changed at least into a star: And who dares doubt the poet wise? Philosopher. But ask not bodies doom'd to die To what abode they go; Since Knowledge is but Sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know.

William Davenant

Life, Summer, Wise

Sir William Davenant, “To A Mistress Dying”

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... I feel tired to death, paralyzed by this mysteriously wasted life's stubborn concentration on hopelessness and dissolution. It occurs to me that if I lie still like this for long enough, then I'll be dead when I finally wake again, and nothing can ever again torment me, beset me, or present me with evidence of my baseness and decay. That thought is the only one that can comfort me.

Christer Kihlman

Depression, Lying, Tired

Christer Kihlman (1990). “The blue mother”

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See how time makes all grief decay.

Adelaide Anne Procter

Time, Grief

Adelaide Anne Procter (1858). “Legends and Lyrics: A Book of Verses”, p.218

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The future of nations cannot be frozen . . . cannot be foreseen. If we are going to accomplish anything in our time we must approach our problem in the knowledge that there is nothing rigid or immutable in human affairs. History is a story of growth, decay and change. If no provision, no allowance is made for change by peaceful means, it will come anyway - and with violence.

Herbert Hoover

Peace, Future, Mean

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Probably the worst thing that has happened in America in my time is the decay of confidence in the courts. No one can be sure any more that in a given case they will uphold the plainest mandate of the Constitution. On the contrary, everyone begins to be more or less convinced in advance that they won't. Judges are chosen not because they know the Constitution and are in favor of it, but precisely because they appear to be against it.

H. L. Mencken

America, Judging, Favors

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.254, Knopf

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You making haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic.

Robinson Jeffers

Life, Long, Shining

Robinson Jeffers (1965). “Selected poems”, Vintage

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When it becomes a part of every man's thinking that a single thought can change the polarity of our entire body toward either life or death - and can likewise change its entire chemistry toward increasing alkalinity or acidity to strengthen it or weaken it - or can change the shape of every corpuscle of matter in the entire body in the direction of either growth or decay - then the medical profession will radically change both its principles and its practices with the ailment of bodies.

Walter Russell

Life, Healing, Thinking

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If there is one place on the face of the earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India. For more than 30 centuries, the tree of vision, with all its thousand branches and their millions of twigs, has sprung from this torrid land, the burning womb of the Gods. It renews itself tirelessly showing no signs of decay.

Romain Rolland

Dream, Home, Men

"Life of Ramakrishna". Book by Romain Rolland, 1928.

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Wise people are able to give themselves gracefully to seemingly contradictory experiences, because they know that they belong to different seasons of life, all of which are necessary to the whole. Spring and winter, growth and decay, creativity and fallowness, health and sickness, power and impotence, and life and death all belong within the economy of being.

Sam Keen

Wise, Wisdom, Spring

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Life is one long decay, no? There's a lot of beauty in it. Like the patina in an old city.

Urs Fischer

Cities, Long, Life Is

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Cocaine decisions that you make today, will mean nothing later on when you get nose decay.

Frank Zappa

Mean, Decision, Alcohol

Song: Cocaine Decisions, Album: The Man from Utopia

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The excrement bubbles, the century slime decays, and the brainwashing government lackeys would have us say it's under control.

Jethro Tull

Government, Politics, Slime

Song: Wond'ring Again, Album: Living In The Past

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A debt may get mouldy, but it never decays.

Chinua Achebe

Business, Debt, May

Chinua Achebe (1987). “No Longer at Ease”, p.74, Heinemann

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History gets thicker as it approaches recent times: more people, more events, and more books written about them. More evidence is preserved, often, one is tempted to say, too much. Decay and destruction have hardly begun their beneficent work.

A. J. P. Taylor

Book, People, Events

A. J. P. Taylor (2001). “English History 1914-1945”, p.602, Oxford Paperbacks

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