Decline Quotes - Page 15

• He played with enormous energy and great fighting spirit. Offering him a draw was a waste of time. He would decline it politely, but firmly. "No, thank you," he would say and the fight would go on and on and on.

  Lubomir Kavalek

  Fighting, Offering, Energy

  "Chess Great Bent Larsen Dies" by Lubomir Kavalek, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 11, 2010.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I decline the election. It has ever been my rule through life, to observe a proportion between my efforts and my objects. I have never been remarkable for a bold, active, and sanguine pursuit of advantages that are personal to myself.

  Edmund Burke

  Effort, Election, Proportion

  Edmund Burke (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Edmund Burke (Illustrated)”, p.2600, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Most poets, most good poets even, no longer have the heart to write about what is most terrible in the world of the present: the bombs waiting beside the rockets, the hundreds of millions staring into the temporary shelter of their television sets, the decline of the West that seems less a decline than the fall preceding an explosion.

  Randall Jarrell

  Fall, Writing, Heart

  "The Third Book of Criticism". Book by Randall Jarrell, "Fifty Years of American Poetry", pp. 332 - 333, 1969.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• We cannot blame the schools alone for the dismal decline in SAT verbal scores. When our kids come home from school do they pick up a book or do they sit glued to the tube, watching music videos? Parents, don't make the mistake of thinking your kid only learns between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m.

  George W. Bush

  Mistake, Book, Home

  6 Copy quote

• The honour of physical decline is waiting, and you have to get used to that reality.

  Haruki Murakami

  Reality, Waiting, Used

  "What I Talk about When I Talk about Running". Book by Haruki Murakami, October 15, 2007.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• You may grow very quickly the first two years and then watch the business decline, unless you really start selling product at any price range with various degrees of quality.

  Narciso Rodriguez

  Selling Products, Years, Two

  8 Copy quote

• When people who earn more than the average have their 'surplus', or the greater part of it, seized from them in taxes, and when people who earn less than average have the deficiency , or the greater part of it, turned over to them in hand-outs and doles, the production of all must sharply decline; for the energetic and able who lose their incentive to produce more than the average, and the slothful and unskilled lose their incentive to improve their condition.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Average, Hands, People

  Henry Hazlitt (1971). “Man Vs. the Welfare State”, p.122, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think there's been a decline in the public's access to what's being done with their tax dollars, what's being done in their name. I hope that that will be repaired.

  Bill Keller

  Thinking, Names, Dollars

  4 Copy quote

• The investor with a portfolio of sound stocks should expect their prices to fluctuate and should neither be concerned by sizable declines nor become excited by sizable advances. He should always remember that market quotations are there for his convenience, either to be taken advantage of or to be ignored.

  Benjamin Graham

  Taken, Sound, Investing

  Benjamin Graham (1959). “The Intelligent Investor: A Book of Practical Counsel”

  35 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am studying ancient civilizations, trying to find what happened to them, finding out why they went into a decline, why they died.

  L. Ron Hubbard

  Civilization, Trying, Study

  4 Copy quote

• While farmers' markets are booming in cities, actual rural market towns are in decline.

  Jasmine Guinness

  Cities, Towns, Farmers

  11 Copy quote

• In other words, in the same way that mass incarceration surged because of a real thing, it's finally starting to ebb because of a real thing: the actual, concrete decline in violent crime that started in the early 90s and which appears to be permanent. America is simply a safer place than it used to be, and looks set to stay that way.

  Kevin Drum

  Real, America, Looks

  "Our Obsession With Mass Incarceration May Finally Be Ebbing" by Kevin Drum, www.motherjones.com. January 2, 2015.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• What I'm most pleased about is that there's no particular decline. The songs I wrote 40 years ago are no worse and no better - there's a consistency.

  Randy Newman

  Song, Years, Consistency

  "Randy Newman: 'I don't want to sing everything out of the side of my mouth'" by Tim Lewis, www.theguardian.com. May 14, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I believe... that security declines as security machinery expands.

  E. B. White

  Believe, Society, Machinery

  4 Copy quote

• I believe not only that religious faith will be victorious, but that it is vital to humankind that it shall be. We may differ in form and particulars in our religious faith. Those are matters that are sacred to each of our inner sanctuaries. It is our privilege to decline to argue them. Their real demonstration is the lives that we live.

  Herbert Hoover

  Faith, Religious, Real

  7 Copy quote

• But because we in the United States finance our current account deficit by borrowing in our own currency, we can move to a more competitive dollar without the adverse effects that followed currency declines in other countries.

  Martin Feldstein

  Country, Moving, Adverse Effects

  8 Copy quote

• To my way of thinking, the American family started to decline when parents began to communicate with their children.

  Erma Bombeck

  Family, Children, Thinking

  Erma Bombeck (2013). “The Erma Bombeck Collection: If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?, Motherhood, and The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank”, p.71, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall -- which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Fall, Inspiration, People

  Thomas Carlyle, Henry Duff Traill (2010). “The Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.76, Cambridge University Press

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• Apples taste sweetest when they're going.

  Seneca the Younger

  Apples, Taste, Sweetest

  4 Copy quote

• You can't teach people to write well. Writing well is something God lets you do or declines to let you do.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Writing, People, Teach

  4 Copy quote

• Growing old is not a gradual decline, but a series of drops, full of sorrow, from one ledge to another below it.

  Logan Pearsall Smith

  Sorrow, Age, Ledges

  Logan Pearsall Smith (1931). “Afterthoughts”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Court the society of a superior, and make much of the opportunity; for in the company of an equal thy good fortune must decline.

  Saadi

  Opportunity, Association, Fortune

  5 Copy quote

• People decline invitations when they are "indisposed" physically, and I wish they would do likewise when they feel indisposed emotionally. A person has no more right to attend a party with a head full of venom than with a throat full of virus.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Party, People, Wish

  6 Copy quote

• Attention and respect give pleasure, however late, or however useless. But they are not useless, when they are late, it is reasonable to rejoice, as the day declines, to find that it has been spent with the approbation of mankind.

  Samuel Johnson

  Respect, Giving, Attention

  Samuel Johnson (1836). “Johnsoniana; or supplement to Boswell; being Anecdotes and sayings of Dr. Johnson, etc”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Wherever there is degeneration and apathy, there also is sexual perversion, cold depravity, miscarriage, premature old age, grumbling youth, there is a decline in the arts, indifference to science, and injustice in all its forms.

  Anton Chekhov

  Art, Miscarriage, Grumbling

  Letter to A.S. Suvorin, December 27, 1889.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source