Decay Quotes - Page 23

• The soul of an individual; your soul and my soul, is that part of us that is immortal. Your personality is that part of you that was born into time, that matures in time, or at least grows older in time and then decays and passes away.

  Gary Zukav

  Personality, Soul, Passing Away

  Source: www.williamjames.com

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• God is neither manifest nor hidden; He is neither revealed nor unrevealed; there are no words to tell that which He is. He is without form, without quality, without decay.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  God, Quality, Form

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• In order to induce the process of decay, water is necessary. I think that, in the case of women, men are the water.

  Natsuo Kirino

  Men, Thinking, Order

  FaceBook post by Natsuo Kirino from Apr 20, 2012

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• The first thing you notice about New Orleans are the burying grounds - the cemeteries - and they're a cold proposition, one of the best things there are here. Going by, you try to be as quiet as possible, better to let them sleep. Greek, Roman, sepulchres- palatial mausoleums made to order, phantomesque, signs and symbols of hidden decay - ghosts of women and men who have sinned and who've died and are now living in tombs. The past doesn't pass away so quickly here. You could be dead for a long time

  Bob Dylan

  Sleep, Past, Men

  Bob Dylan (2011). “Chronicles”, p.157, Simon and Schuster

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• Decay is quiet but ghastly, explosion is dramatic and dreadful. There's not much to choose between the two of them in reality, and most of our lives have sufficient of both.

  Anne Roiphe

  Reality, Two, Quiet

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• And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revelers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Fall, Gay, Night

  Edgar Allan Poe (1927). “Tales by Edgar Allan Poe”, p.266, Dimitrios Spyridon Chytiris

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• Yet who can say how our souls have been stamped by witnessing such a cruel drama? All souls are hostages to their human envelopes, but souls must decay and suffer at such indignity, don't you agree?

  Gregory Maguire

  Drama, Soul, Suffering

  Gregory Maguire (2013). “The Wicked Years Complete Collection: Wicked, Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men, and Out of Oz”, p.29, Harper Collins

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• Once I am dead, there will be no lack of pious hands to throw me over the railing; my grave will be the fathomless air; my body will sink endlessly and decay and dissolve in the wind generated by the fall, which is infinite.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Fall, Air, Hands

  Jorge Luis Borges, Donald A. Yates, James East Irby (1964). “Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings”, p.52, New Directions Publishing

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• What is it that you contain? The dead. Time. Light patterns of millennia opening in your gut. Every minute, in each of you, a few million potassium atoms succumb to radioactive decay. The energy that powers these tiny atomic events has been locked inside potassium atoms ever since a star-sized bomb exploded nothing into being. Potassium, like uranium and radium, is a long-lived radioactive nuclear waste of the supernova bang that accounts for you. Your first parent was a star.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Stars, Light, Long

  Jeanette Winterson (2010). “Weight”, p.3, Canongate Books

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• Wimsey stooped for an empty sardine-tin which lay, horribly battered, at his feet, and slung it idly into the quag. It struck the surface with a noice like a wet kiss, and vanished instantly. With that instinct which prompts one, when depressed, to wallow in every circumstance of gloom, Peter leaned sadly against the hurdles and abandoned himself to a variety of shallow considerations upon (1) The vanity of human wishes; (2) Mutability; (3) First love; (4) The decay of idealism; (5) The aftermath of the Great war; (6) Birth-control; and (7) The fallacy of free-will.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  War, Kissing, First Love

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• And why does it make you sad to see how everything hangs by such thin and whimsical threads? Because you’re a dreamer, an incredible dreamer, with a tiny spark hidden somewhere inside you which cannot die, which even you cannot kill or quench and which tortures you horribly because all the odds are against its continual burning. In the midst of the foulest decay and putrid savagery, this spark speaks to you of beauty, of human warmth and kindness, of goodness, of greatness, of heroism, of martyrdom, and it speaks to you of love.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Love, Kindness, Greatness

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• Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away—an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.

  Carl Jung

  Summer, Thinking, Civilization

  Carl Gustav Jung, Meredith Sabini (2002). “The Earth Has a Soul: The Nature Writings of C.G. Jung”, p.37, North Atlantic Books

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• Of all the systems of the body - neurological, cognitive, special, sensory - the cardiological system is the most sensitive and easily disturbed. The role of society must be to shelter these systems from infection and decay, or else the future of the human race is at stake. Like a summer fruit that is protected from insect invasion, bruising, and rot by the whole mechanism of modern farming; so must we protect the heart.

  Lauren Oliver

  Summer, Heart, Race

  Lauren Oliver (2014). “Delirium: The Complete Collection: Delirium, Hana, Pandemonium, Annabel, Raven, Requiem”, p.47, Harper Collins

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• If time and space, as sages say, Are things which cannot be, The sun which does not feel decay No greater is than we. So why, Love, should we ever pray To live a century? The butterfly that lives a day Has lived eternity.

  T. S. Eliot

  Butterfly, Space, Doe

  T.S. Eliot (2015). “The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I: Collected and Uncollected Poems”, p.223, Faber & Faber

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• Ni muer ni viu ni no guaris, Ni mal no·m sent e si l’ai gran, Quar de s’amor no suy devis, Ni no sai si ja n’aurai ni quan, Qu’en lieys es tota le mercés Que·m pot sorzer o decazer.” “Not dying nor living nor healing, there is no pain in my sickness, for I am not kept from her love. I don’t know if I will ever have it, for all the mercy that makes me flourish or decay is in her power.

  Deborah Harkness

  Pain, Healing, Dying

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• Isn’t it funny to think that this magnificent piece of matter is in a state of decay? Really, can you think of any other living thing that looks this glorious as it’s dying?

  Tiffanie DeBartolo

  Thinking, Dying, Looks

  Tiffanie DeBartolo (2005). “How to Kill a Rock Star”, p.101, Sourcebooks, Inc.

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• It was like that all the time, in those years: an endless trip, a gaudy voyage. But powers decay. Time leaches the colors from the best of visions. The world becomes grayer. Entropy beats us down. Everything fades. Everything goes. Everything dies.

  Robert Silverberg

  Color, Years, Vision

  Robert Silverberg (2009). “Dying Inside”, p.116, Macmillan

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• But what force in the galaxy is stronger than she is?" "Indifference." Jerusha surprised herself with the answer. "Indifference, Gundhalinu, is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don't stand a chance against it. It lets neglect and decay and monstrous injustice go unchecked. It doesn't act, it allows. And that's what gives it so much power.

  Joan D. Vinge

  Hate, Giving, Stronger

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• Our possibilities of happiness are already restricted by our constitution. Unhappiness is much less difficult to experience. We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful to us than any other.

  Sigmund Freud

  Pain, Men, Anxiety

  Sigmund Freud, Peter (AFT) Gay, Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Civilization and Its Discontents”, W W Norton & Company Incorporated

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• All false art, all vain wisdom, lasts its time but finally destroys itself, and its highest culture is also the epoch of its decay.

  Immanuel Kant

  Art, Culture, Lasts

  Immanuel Kant (1985). “The Philosophy of Material Nature”, p.106, Hackett Publishing

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• When a society decays, it is language that is first to become gangrenous. As a result, social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings

  Octavio Paz

  Criticism, Firsts, Language

  Octavio Paz (1985). “The Labyrinth of Solitude: And the Other Mexico ; Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude ; Mexico and the United States ; The Philanthropic Ogre”, p.263, Grove Press

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• Earth has waited for them, All the time of their growth Fretting for their decay: Now she has them at last.

  Isaac Rosenberg

  Time, Growth, Earth

  Isaac Rosenberg (2015). “Delphi Complete Poetry, Plays, Letters and Prose of Isaac Rosenberg (Illustrated)”, p.203, Delphi Classics

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• The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,
  Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made.

  Edmund Waller

  Time, Dark, Light

  Edmund Waller, Sir John Denham (1857). “The poetical works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham”, p.200

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• Sad hours and glad hours, and all hours, pass over; One thing unshaken stays: Life, that hath Death for spouse, hath Chance for lover; Whereby decays, Each thing save one thing: mid this strife diurnal, Of hourly change begot, Love that is God-born, bides as God eternal, And changes not; Nor means a tinseled dream pursuing lovers, Find altered by-and-bye, When, with possession, time anon discovers, Trapped dreams must die, - For he that visions God, of mankind gathers, One manlike trait alone, And reverently imputes to Him a father's love for his son.

  James Branch Cabell

  Life, Dream, Father

  "The Certain Hour (To Robert Gamble Cabell II: In Dedication of The Certain Hour)". Book by James Branch Cabell, 1916.

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• Dropt tears have hastened your decay, And brought you one step nigher death; And you have heard, unthrilled, unmoved, The music of Love's golden breath, And seen the light in eyes that loved. You think you hold the core and kernel, Of all the world beneath your crust, Old dial? But when you lie in dust, This vine will bloom, strong, green, and proved. Love is eternal.

  Eleanor Farjeon

  Life, Strong, Lying

  "Pan-Worship: And Other Poems (Time And Love)". Book by Eleanor Farjeon, 1908.

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