Decay Quotes - Page 25

• Most human organizations that fall short of their goals do so not because of stupidity or faulty doctrines, but because of internal decay and rigidification.

  James A. Garfield

  Fall, Patriotic, Organization

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• We might make a public moan in the newspapers about the decay of conscience, but in private conversation, no matter what crimes a man may have committed or how cynically he may have debased his talent or his friends, variations on the answer Yes, but I did it for the money, satisfy all but the most tiresome objections.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Money, Men, Variation

  Lewis H. Lapham (1989). “Money and Class in America: Notes and Observations on the Civil Religion”

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• Our conflict is not likely to cease so soon as every good man would wish. The measure of iniquity is not yet filled; and unless we can return a little more to first principles, and act a little more upon patriotic ground, I do not know when it will-or-what may be the issue of the contest. Speculation-peculation-engrossing-forestalling-with all their concomitants, afford too many melancholy proofs of the decay of public virtue; and too glaring instances of its being the interest and desire of too many, who would wish to be thought friends, to continue the war.

  George Washington

  War, Patriotic, Men

  George Washington, John Clement Fitzpatrick, David Maydole Matteson, United States George Washington Bicentennial Commission (1779). “The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799”, p.312

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• A coquette is one that is never to be persuaded out of the passion she has to please, nor out of a good opinion of her own beauty: time and years she regards as things that only wrinkle and decay other women, forgetting that age is written in the face, and that the same dress which became her when she was young now only makes her look older.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Passion, Wrinkles, Years

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• Can we wonder that men perish and are forgotten, when their noblest and most enduring works decay? Death comes even to monumental structures, and oblivion rests on the most illustrious names.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Death, Men, Names

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• Too great carelessness, equally with excess in dress, multiplies the wrinkles of old age, and makes its decay still more conspicuous.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Wrinkles, Age, Dresses

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• The soul of man is not a thing which comes and goes, is builded and decays like the elemental frame in which it is set to dwell, but a very living force, a very energy of God's organic will, which rules and moulds this universe.

  James Anthony Froude

  Men, Soul, Energy

  James Anthony Froude (1879). “The Nemesis of Faith”

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• Every day His servants are dying modestly and peacefully--not a word of victory on their lips; but Christ's deep triumph in their hearts--watching the slow progress of their own decay, and yet so far emancipated from personal anxiety that they are still able to think and plan for others, not knowing that they are doing any great thing. They die, and the world hears nothing of them; and yet theirs was the completest victory. They came to the battle field, the field to which they had been looking forward all their lives, and the enemy was not to be found. There was no foe to fight with.

  Frederick William Robertson

  Death, Heart, Fighting

  Frederick William Robertson (1873). “Sermons Preached at Brighton”, p.585

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• Our thoughts are boundless, though our frames are frail,
  Our souls immortal, though our limbs decay;
  Though darken'd in this poor life by a veil
  Of suffering, dying matter, we shall play
  In truth's eternal sunbeams; on the way
  To heaven's high capitol our cars shall roll;
  The temple of the Power whom all obey,
  That is the mark we tend to, for the soul
  Can take no lower flight, and seek no meaner goal.

  James Gates Percival

  Play, Goal, Car

  James Gates Percival (1821). “Poems by James G. Percival ...”, p.322

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• All that in this world is great or gay,
  Doth, as a vapor, vanish and decay.

  Edmund Spenser

  Gay, World, Vapor

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• Yet reason frowns in war's unequal game,
  Where wasted nations raise a single name;
  And mortgag'd states their grandsire's wreaths regret,
  From age to age in everlasting debt;
  Wreaths which at last the dear-bought right convey
  To rust on medals, or on stones decay.

  Samuel Johnson

  Regret, War, Hero

  Samuel Johnson (1820). “The Poems of Dr. Samuel Johnson. To which is Prefixed, a Life of the Author”, p.36

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• The signs that presage growth, so similar, it seems to me, to those in early adolescence: discontent, restlessness, doubt, despair, longing, are interpreted falsely as signs of decay. In youth one does not as often misinterpret the signs; one accepts them, quite rightly, as growing pains. One takes them seriously, listens to them, follows where they lead. ... But in the middle age, because of the false assumption that it is a period of decline, one interprets these life-signs, paradoxically, as signs of approaching death.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Pain, Doubt, Growth

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• States, like men, have their growth, their manhood, their decrepitude, their decay.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Men, Growth, States

  'Imaginary Conversations' 'Pollio and Calvus' in 'The Works of Walter Savage Landor' (1876) vol. 2, p. 441

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• What money creates, money preserves: if thy wealth decays, thy honor dies; it is but a slippery happiness which fortunes can give, and frowns can take; and not worth the owning which a night's fire can melt, or a rough sea can drown.

  Francis Quarles

  Night, Fire, Sea

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• By the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young; but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression.

  Edmund Burke

  Moving, Fall, Race

  Edmund Burke (1999). “The Portable Edmund Burke”, p.405, Penguin

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• What sort of tree is there which will not, if neglected, grow crooked and unfruitful; what but Will, if rightly ordered, prove productive and bring its fruit to maturity? What strength of body is there which will not lose its vigor and fall to decay by laziness, nice usage, and debauchery?

  Plutarch

  Nice, Fall, Maturity

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• irony is an indispensable ingredient of the critical vision; it is the safest antidote to sentimental decay.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Vision, Ingredients, Sentimental

  Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (1938). “Works”

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• nations decay from within more often than they surrender to outward assault.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Surrender, Assault, Nations

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• What is love, if it can calculate and provide against its own decay?

  Madame de Stael

  What Is Love, Ifs

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• ... it is a matter of civilizing everyone or not being civilized at all: the decay has always come from a partial civilization.

  Freya Stark

  Civilization, Matter, Civilized

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• All political institutions are manifestations and materializations of power; they petrify and decay as soon as the living power of the people ceases to uphold them.

  Hannah Arendt

  Power, People, Political

  Hannah Arendt (1972). “Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics; Civil Disobedience; On Violence; Thoughts on Politics and Revolution”, p.150, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• For no matter what learned scientists may say, race is, politically speaking, not the beginning of humanity but its end, not the origin of peoples but their decay, not the natural birth of man but his unnatural death.

  Hannah Arendt

  Men, Race, Humanity

  Hannah Arendt (1968). “Imperialism: Part Two Of The Origins Of Totalitarianism”, p.49, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Quantum events have a way of just happening, without any cause, as when a radioactive atom decays at a random time. Even the quantum vacuum is not an inert void, but is boiling with quantum fluctuations. In our macroscopic world, we are used to energy conservation, but in the quantum realm this holds only on average. Energy fluctuations out of nothing create short-lived particle-antiparticle pairs, which is why the vacuum is not emptiness but a sea of transient particles. An uncaused beginning, even out of nothing, for spacetime is no great leap of the imagination.

  Taner Edis

  Average, Sea, Imagination

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• There is a story of some mountains of salt in Cumana, which never diminished, though carried away in much abundance by merchants; but when once they were monopolized to the benefit of a private purse, then the salt decreased; till afterward all were allowed to take of it, when it had a new access and increase. The truth of this story may be uncertain, but the application is true; he that envies others the use of his gifts decays then, but he thrives most that is most diffusive.

  Herbert Spencer

  Envy, Generosity, Mountain

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• If anything is endemic to Wyoming it is wind. This big room of space is swept out daily, leaving a bone yard of fossils, agates, and carcasses in every stage of decay. Though it was water that initially shaped the state, wind is the meticulous gardener, raising dust and pruning the sage.

  Gretel Ehrlich

  Dust, Wind, Wyoming

  Gretel Ehrlich (1986). “The Solace of Open Spaces”, Penguin Group USA

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