Decay Quotes - Page 25

• 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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• Love begets courage, moderation creates abundance and humility generates power. Courage without love is brutish. Abundance without moderation leads to over-indulgence and decay. Power without humility breeds arrogance and tyranny.

  B.K.S. Iyengar

  Yoga, Humility, Love Is

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• No longer mourn for me when I am dead than you shall hear the surly sullen bell give warning to the world that I am fled from this vile world with vilest worms to dwell: nay, if you read this line, remember not the hand that writ it, for I love you so, that I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot, if thinking on me then should make you woe. O! if, I say, you look upon this verse when I perhaps compounded am with clay, do not so much as my poor name rehearse; but let your love even with my life decay; lest the wise world should look into your moan, and mock you with me after I am gone.

  William Shakespeare

  Wise, Sweet, Love You

  Sonnet 71

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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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• 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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• 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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• The fertility cycle is a cycle entirely of living creatures passing again and again through birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay.

  Wendell Berry

  Maturity, Growth, Fertility

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• 'Content' is a word that has never sat well with me. Like 'maturity'. They are two words I've never liked. I think they imply some sort of decay. A settling.

  Elvis Costello

  Maturity, Thinking, Two

  "Elvis Costello: 'I've never liked the word maturity. It implies decay'" by Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. October 16, 2010.

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• The familiarities of the gaming-table contribute very much to the decay of politeness ... The pouts and quarrels that naturally arise from disputes must put an end to all complaisance, or even good will towards one another.

  Mary Wortley Montagu

  Gambling, Tables, Disputes

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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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• Allowing for exceptions, there is still one basic difference between the traditional arts and the mass-media arts: in the traditional arts, the artist grows; in a mass medium, the artist decays profitably.

  Pauline Kael

  Art, Media, Differences

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

  Madame de Stael

  What Is Love, Ifs

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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