"Decay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... regiment was disbanded, he followed his natural bent, and betook himself to the Acadian woods. At this time there was a square bastioned fort at Pentegoet, mounted with twelve small cannon; but after the Dutch attack it fell into decay. [Footnote: On its condition in 1670, Estat du Fort et Place de Pentegoet fait en l'annee 1670, lorsque les Anglois l'ont rendu. In 1671, fourteen soldiers and eight laborers were settled near the fort. Talon au Ministre, 2 Nov., 1671. In the next year, Talon recommends an envoi de ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... sisters. But the red tobacco sheds of Malvern were only three hundred feet long—this general had left a leg at Malvern Hill—while the Brookfield sheds stretched full five hundred feet. At Brookfield, too, were the great racing-stables, of fabulous acreage; disused now and falling to decay. One hundred and sixty thoroughbreds had sheltered here of old, with an army of grooms and trainers. There had been a race-track—an oval mile at first, a kite-shaped mile in later days. Year by year now sees the stables torn down and carted away for other uses, but the strong-built paddocks remain ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... Parliament to discharge their functions in this grotesque travesty of a legislative chamber, this sombre and obscure repository of mouldering archives and forgotten records, where the constructive statesmen of to-morrow are expected to shape their Utopias in an atmosphere of disillusion and decay, in surroundings appointed to be the shameful sepulchre of the nostrums of the past." If that is what Mr. ASQUITH said, I agree with him; if he didn't say it, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... general joy throughout New Amsterdam, for the people immediately perceived that they had a very wise and equitable magistrate to rule over them. But its happiest effect was, that not another lawsuit took place throughout the whole of his administration; and the office of constable fell into such decay that there was not one of those losel scouts known in the province for many years. I am the more particular in dwelling on this transaction, not only because I deem it one of the most sage and righteous ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... there within thy heart a need That mine can not fulfill? One chord that any other hand Could better wake, or still? Speak now—lest at some future day My whole life wither and decay. ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... sacrilegious hands despoiled them, adorned with sculptures which, surviving the destruction of the people who raised them, the wanton rage of barbarous enemies, and the inroads of the elements for near two thousand years, sill remain, in their decay, the wonder and admiration of the world, the models of modern sculptors, and the greatest treasure of art a nation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... attention given to fruit at the time of ripening. The economical housekeeper takes certain foods when they are most plentiful and preserves them for use when they are not in season. Some foods require special care to keep them from decaying. The decay is caused by the action of microscopic plants called "bacteria", which get into ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education
... hastes to swift decay, As ocean sweeps the labour'd mole away: While self-dependent power can time defy, As rocks resist the billows ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... in the way of the use of the Bible in the home are: the crowded programs, or a lack of time due to the absence of any program for the days; a feeling of unnaturalness in the special reading of this book; the decay of the custom of reading aloud; parental ignorance of the Bible and especially of its beauties for the young; and the excessive amount of task-reading frequently required by the schools. The Sunday school also sometimes ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... any idea of the complete spell thus cast over thought both in Islam and Christendom, we may look at the words of European scholars of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, living far from Islam, long after its intellectual glory had begun to decay, and at a time when Christian scholastic philosophy had reached an independent position. Gerard of Cremona and Adelard of Bath (the translator of the great Arabic geographer, Mohammed Al-Kharizmy) in ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... question of the future destiny of our race. These gentlemen seemed to prefer to live in a small country. For his part, he hoped he should all his life live in a great one. No country could be stationary without becoming stagnant, or restrict its natural progress without inviting its decay. It was so in all human affairs; it was so even in ordinary business. Every man of business knew that if his enterprise ceased to grow bigger, it soon began to dwindle down; and so a country must grow greater or ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... A hot friend cooling: ever note, Lucilius, When love begins to sicken and decay, 20 It useth an enforced ceremony. There are no tricks in plain and simple faith: But hollow men, like horses hot at hand, Make gallant show and promise of their mettle; But when they should endure the bloody spur, 25 They fall their crests, and, like deceitful jades, Sink in the ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... of decay known to be at work in my frame, which lead me to believe I may not have time to grow wiser; and I must therefore leave it to others to correct the conclusions I have now formed from my life's experience. I should feel happy to discuss them personally with you; for it would be soul to soul. In ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... see the little building that is still shown as the shop which Peter occupied while he was there. It is a small wooden building, leaning and bent with age and decrepitude and darkened by exposure and time. Within the last half century, however, in order to save so curious a relic from farther decay, the proprietors of the place have constructed around and over it an outer building of brick, which incloses the hut itself like a case. The sides of the outer building are formed of large, open arches, which allow the hut within to be seen. The ground on which ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... age that a well founded decision will be given. About his fortieth year the physical constitution of Napoleon sustained considerable change; and it may be presumed that his moral qualities were affected by that change. It is particularly important not to lose sight of the premature decay of his health, which, perhaps, did not permit him always to, possess the vigour of memory otherwise consistent enough with his age. The state of our organisation often modifies our recollections, our feelings, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... as bees about the flowering thyme, Years crowd on years, till hoar decay begrime Names once beloved; but, seeing the sun the same, As birds of autumn fain to praise the prime, Our father Chaucer, here ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... The purple of heath-bloom, faded but not withered, tinged the hills. The beck wandered down to the Hollow, through a silent district; no wind followed its course or haunted its woody borders. Fieldhead gardens bore the seal of gentle decay. On the walks, swept that morning, yellow leaves had fluttered down again. Its time of flowers, and even of fruits, was over; but a scantling of apples enriched the trees. Only a blossom here and there expanded pale and delicate amidst ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... most were empty and those quiet vandals, Weather and Decay, were noiselessly at work wrecking them. Here a door swung askew; there a chimney teetered. Every such tenantless lodging was an outpost surrendered on a field scarred with human defeat; a place where a family had fought poverty and been put to flight. Once he paused and looked down ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... etc.' Dr. Knight's letter of a few months' earlier date was printed by Nichols in his Literary Anecdotes. 'I made a visit to old Father Strype when in town last: he is turned ninety, yet very brisk, and with only a decay of sight and memory.... He told me that he had great materials towards the life of the old Lord Burleigh and Mr. Foxe the martyrologist, which he wished he could have finished, but most of his papers are in "characters"; his grandson is learning to decipher them.' Under the ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... tyrannical and injurious usage proceeded to a length that was the occasion {206} of a general confusion and distraction amongst the population of the country. This continued for a long period, for nearly eighty years, when the affairs of the Moslems had arrived at the last stage of decay, ruin, poverty and wretchedness; since whilst they were too ill-practised in deceit to dissemble an obedience which was not sincere, they neither possessed the power to repel nor means to evade the evils that afflicted them. Nor did the Muhammadan princes and chieftains ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... an ideal was performed in former times by these great men and more especially by those great men whom legend, myth and superstition converted into gods. But with the decay of the old faiths the only possible fruitful ideal left is the ideal upheld by Socialism, the ideal of the Co-operative Commonwealth in which the economic conditions will give birth to the highest, purest, most altruistic ethics the world has yet seen. It ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... Richardson informed me by letter that the snow was deeper in many parts near his encampment than it had been at any time last winter near Fort Enterprise, and that the ice on Point Lake had scarcely begun to decay. Although the voyagers were much fatigued on their arrival, and had eaten nothing for the last twenty-four hours, they were very cheerful, and expressed a desire to start with the remainder of the stores next morning. ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... own property, this was not unbearable. To me, had I lived there, the incipient growth of grass through some of the stones which formed the margin of the road would have been altogether unendurable. There is no sign of coming decay which is so melancholy to the eye as any which tells of a decrease in the throng of men. Of men or horses there was never any throng now in that end of Perivale. That street had formed part of the main line of road from Salisbury to Taunton, and coaches, wagons, and posting-carriages ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... from above. But, owing to their arboreal habits, monkeys were to a great extent freed from all these dangers. Whether devoured by beasts or birds of prey, or dying a natural death, their bones would usually be left on dry land, where they would slowly decay under atmospheric influences. Only under very exceptional circumstances would they become embedded in aqueous deposits; and instead of being surprised at their rarity we should rather wonder that so many have been discovered in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... M. v. St. and he fills the dead, as it were, with his life, as the raising takes place (H in H, F against F, K against K, etc.), like the reviving of the child by Elijah (I Kings XVIII, 21). As for the necessary decay of the body before the raising ("The skin leaves," etc.) let us quote the passage, L. G. B., I, pp. 271 ff.: [the divine word speaks] "Know ... that I have not left thee without a potent and rich talent which lies in thine own keeping, although deep hidden and covered with a threefold covering ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... them, and that they should not be taken as in themselves absolutely desirable and all- sufficient. As to their probable fate in the future, their modern dress is not yet two centuries old, and the seeds of decay already appear in many places. A few questions are sufficient to demonstrate this: Can a Parliament, as understood to-day, last for any length of time and work successfully, when composed for a great part of corrupt legislators who have been returned by corrupt electors? Has not the progress ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... himself with a palm-leaf fan on Sunday afternoons, watching the surreys go by, and where his daughter listened to mandolins and badinage on starlit evenings; but, although youth still held the veranda, both the youth and the veranda were in decay. The four or five young men who lounged there this afternoon were of a type known to shady pool-parlours. Hats found no favour with them; all of them wore caps; and their tight clothes, apparently from a common source, showed ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... new phase in human experience. It characterised all the civilisations of ancient times, at the height of their prosperity, and was really the beginning of their decay. ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... society in general. Society is maintained in peace and progress by encouragement of mutual and personal virtues and gifts; but when disparagement is cast upon them, they are in danger of languishment and decay; so that a detractor is one of the worst members of society; he is a moth, a ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... was a clear proof of the great destiny of the race. He would have agreed with Patmore that "you can see the disc of Divinity quite clearly through the smoked glass of humanity, but no otherwise." He found "harmony in immortal souls, spite of the muddy vesture of decay." ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... the senses nor the intellect can give us any certain knowledge of reality.[2] He denied the possibility of studying phenomena as signs of the unknown.[3] He denied all possibility of truth, and the reality of motion, origin and decay. There was according to his teaching no pleasure or happiness, and no wisdom or supreme good. He denied the possibility of finding out the nature of things, or of proving the existence of the gods, and finally he declared that ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... you know that if a quantity of wet decaying leaves or straw is raked together into a large pile, and covered up with a thin layer of sand or earth, and then left exposed to the sun and rain, the heat given off by the decay of the vegetable matter forming the inside of the pile will be retained until, after a few weeks, the interior of the heap becomes so warm that, when the mound is broken open, a thick cloud of smoke and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... belong, and whose teachings I respect, does not recognize such a marriage. And you have, in my opinion, committed an offence against society. To recognize you by social intercourse would be to condone that offence, to open the door to practices that would lead, in a short time, to the decay ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... centuries old and crumbling to decay, was passed; and then, by other noble edifices, the wayfarers went to the village ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... Moor Park in January 1699. He appears to have suffered no intellectual decay. His heart was buried under a sundial which still stands in his favourite garden. His body was laid in Westminster Abbey by the side of his wife; and a place hard by was set apart for Lady Giffard, who long ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... now I view some free design, Where breathing Nature lives in every line: Chaste and subdued the modest lights decay, Steal into shades, and mildly melt away. And see where Anthony,[60] in tears approved, 115 Guards the pale relics of the chief he loved: O'er the cold corse the warrior seems to bend, Deep sunk in grief, and mourns his murder'd friend! Still as they press, he calls on all around, Lifts the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... times were sometimes very fine. Then came years of general depression, when the industry of weaving fell into decay. Finally the Austro-Hungarian administration was established at Bosnia, and new life was given to the work. Looms were erected by the Government, and a number of women were sent to Vienna, where they were taught the art of weaving. Returning to Bosnia, they were able to impart to ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... erroneous chemistry—nothing so insufferably dull as political orations, unless when powerfully animated by that spirit of generalisation which only gives the breath of life and the salt which preserves from decay, through every age alike. The very strongest proof, as well as exemplification of all which has been said on Grecian oratory, may thus be found in the records ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... looked graceful and vigorous, but yet in his walk there was something just perceptible which betrayed in him a being already touched by decay, weak, and on the road to ruin. And all at once there was a whiff of spirits in the wood. Marya Vassilyevna was filled with dread and pity for this man going to his ruin for no visible cause or reason, and it came into her mind that if she ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... part of the refuse it had cast out, and left to corruption and decay, the girl we had followed strayed down to the river's brink, and stood in the midst of this night-picture, lonely and still, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... remorseless enemy on which his thoughts so ran, and put into its grasp a double-handed sword. Because he knew full well, in his own breast, as he stood there, tinging the scene of transition before him with the morbid colours of his own mind, and making it a ruin and a picture of decay, instead of hopeful change, and promise of better things, that life had quite as much to do with his complainings as death. One child was gone, and one child left. Why was the object of his hope removed instead ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... curtain at the play; the statues in the garden, like fragments of the white bolster clouds that swung so lazily from tree to tree; had no meaning in that misty air beyond the background that they helped to fill. The year, thus idly, with so pleasant a melancholy, was slipping into decay. ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... races of China, who have already made their industrial and social influence felt in many distant regions, and who bid fair hereafter, when certain of their peculiar religious fancies shall have fallen into decay, to become one of the most effective of the colonising nations, and who may, as I trust, extrude hereafter the coarse and lazy Negro from at least the ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... young Shelley rioted. And evidently it is not consciously imagined; life really presented itself to him as a romance of this kind, with himself as hero—a hero who is a hopeless lover, blighted by premature decay, or a wanderer doomed to share the sins and sorrows of mankind to all eternity. This attitude found vent in a mass of sentimental verse and prose, much of it more or less surreptitiously published, which the researches of specialists have brought to light, ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... they are sitting in arm-chairs with all the ease and self- possession which mark the conscious superiority of the master; and in that maturity of age which befits the undisturbed impartial observation which is requisite for Comedy, but yet hale and active, and free from all symptoms of decay. We recognise in them that corporeal vigour, which testifies at once to equal soundness both of mind and of temper; no lofty enthusiasm, but at the same time nothing of folly or extravagance; rather does a sage seriousness dwell on a brow wrinkled ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... is human nature without God, described as 'the corruption that is in the world in lust.' It is like a fungus, foul-smelling, slimy, poisonous; whose growth looks rather the working of decay than of vitality. And, says my text, that is the kind of thing that human nature is if God is not in it. There is an 'either' and 'or' here. On the one hand we must have a share in the Divine nature, or, on the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... battlements, Newstead, the hollow winds whistle; Thou, the hall of my fathers, art gone to decay: In thy once smiling garden, the hemlock and thistle Have choked up the rose which ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... come from below to the Realm of Women. Here we abide as you behold us. Age and decay hold aloof from us, and we order our lives with wisdom and modesty. Speak, if ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... and caution had become a habit. So he had not told her that on his last visit to the city he had taken a room, instead of going to one of the men's hotels that dotted the Mission. It was in a battered, dingy house that crouched in shame-faced decay behind the shrubs and palms of a once jaunty garden. Mrs. Meeker, the landlady, was a respectable woman who had seen so complete an extinction of fortune that she asked nothing of her few lodgers but the rent in advance and a decent standard of sobriety. To ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... in internal progress and must, therefore, find an outlet in foreign aggression. Note Russia. In history you will find that the cessation of aggressiveness in an Oriental nation has always meant either the beginning of decay or, as was the case of Hungarians in the 11th century, of an evolution toward Occidentalism. In the 11th century the Hungarians were Oriental—now they are Occidental. That may follow in Russia too if she is defeated in the present war. Paradoxical as the statement seems, defeat contains brighter ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... at all comparable to that of Mr. Sydney Smith"; that he had warmed the Library and rebound the books; that he had insured the fabric against fire; and had "brought the New River into the Cathedral by mains." The Verger testified that the monuments had fallen into a dreadful state of decay and disfigurement, and that there were "twenty thousand names scratched on the font"; but that now by Mr. Smith's orders everything had been repaired, cleaned, and ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... what she said to him, half disappointed and depressed, yet also half incredulous. He had always been obstinate, and the approach of death had emphasised his few salient qualities, as decay had emphasised the bodily frame. He said to himself stubbornly that he would find some way yet of testing the matter in spite of her. He would ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... jade are the boy's rosy cheeks; To his sick temples the frost of winter clings.... Do not wonder that my body sinks to decay; Though my limbs are old, my heart is ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... philosophy, and even their social polity. And of course we must be fair in our comparisons, and not set a Chinese coolie in the concrete against an English statesman, nor any concrete example of another kind of culture in its decay with the highest bloom to which we believe our own type to be ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... would elbow them from all lucrative positions. In his own words, "every day begins with the lesson and ends with the lesson that colored men must find new employments, new modes of usefulness to society, or that they must decay under the pressing wants to which ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... John, "as if the decay of the year had ceased, in pity. It is so beautiful and so new to me. I feel sometimes when I am alone in these woods as if something was going to happen. Did you ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... which he was proud to be able to impart, in the neatest possible terms and with a pinch of snuff between finger and thumb. As a Frenchman—quite apart from Newman's napoleons—M. Nioche loved conversation, and even in his decay his urbanity had not grown rusty. As a Frenchman, too, he could give a clear account of things, and—still as a Frenchman—when his knowledge was at fault he could supply its lapses with the most convenient and ingenious hypotheses. The little shrunken financier was intensely delighted ...
— The American • Henry James
... and nothing more—leastways, nothing more that matters. What else there is to him of trunk and limbs and organs he has neglected until it has all fallen into decay. His very lack of personal cleanliness, the squalor in which he lives, the insufficient sleep which he allows himself, his habit of careless feeding at irregular intervals, all have their source in his contempt for the physical part of him. This talented ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... with ague as she came within sight of the gaunt farmhouse, and the broken windows and hanging doors gave her a sense of everlasting decay. ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... desire, of restriction and captivity, to the higher plane of Spirit, where man realizes that he is a son of God. He discovers that the Divine Spark within is his true self. He realizes also that he has always lived—in his real Spiritual Self. Beginning and end, like change and decay, belong purely to the material plane and have no place in Reality. They form part of this present three dimensional existence but have no reality. Endless being is the reality. Anything short of this is mere illusion. It is not necessary, therefore, to believe in the theory ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin
... adventures not normally within the reach of, or suited to the taste of, the citizens of an ordered state. It is little wonder that the boy regards the moral law as a nuisance and the state as a suitable refuge for those suffering from senile decay. ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... duty, my son, never to forget names and persons; I beg you to bear that in mind, my dearest Richie,' he said. We used to go to his opera-box; and we visited the House of Lords and the House of Commons; and my father, though he complained of the decay of British eloquence, and mourned for the days of Chatham, and William Pitt (our old friend of the cake and the raspberry jam), and Burke, and Sheridan, encouraged ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... over the whole of our dying Puritan civilisation. For instance, social reformers have fired a hundred shots against the public-house; but never one against its really shameful feature. The sign of decay is not in the public-house, but in the private bar; or rather the row of five or six private bars, into each of which a respectable dipsomaniac can go in solitude, and by indulging his own half-witted ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... an undertaking that reflects the highest credit on the Mongul Tartars, and which cannot fail to be regarded with admiration, as long as it shall continue to exist. The Chinese, however, say, that the Tartars only repaired the old works that were fallen into decay. ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... natural. Their interests were obviously bound up together. Unless each man did his duty the State might easily be destroyed and the population enslaved. Unless the State took thought for its citizens it might easily decay. What was still more important, there was no opposition of church and state, no fissure between political and religious life, between the claims of the secular and the spiritual, to distract the allegiance of the citizens, and ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... Since that day various eruptions have temporarily desolated portions of the territory, but only in very small fields have the ravages been irremediable. Where the ground was covered with dust, it has in most places been again tillable, and so rapid is the decay of the lavas that in a century after their flow has ceased vines can in most cases be planted on their surfaces. The city of Naples, which lies amid the vents, though not immediately in contact with any of them, has steadfastly grown and prospered from ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... decay of ecclesiastical authority during this period. The disgust which the laity had received from the numerous usurpations both of the court of Rome and of their own clergy, had very much weaned the kingdom from ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... overwhelming effects of a violent earthquake—none exceed in sublimity the primeval forests undefaced by the hand of man, whether those of Brazil, where the powers of Life are predominant, or those of Tierra del Fuego, where Death and Decay prevail. Both are temples filled with the varied productions of the God of nature. No one can stand in those solitudes unmoved and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... found some difficulty in reaching the spot, not the least part of which was caused by the necessity of threading our way, when in the immediate neighbourhood of the cliffs, among enormous masses of seaweed stacked in huge heaps and left to undergo the process of decay, which turns it into very valuable manure. The odour which impregnated the whole surrounding atmosphere from these heaps was decidedly the worst and most asphyxiating ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... and weeds. It is nearly seven months since her husband died, in the remote Welsh village to which he retired on leaving London. With him, as with many other confirmed invalids, Nature drooped to her final decay gradually and wearily; but his death was painless, and his mental powers remained unimpaired to the end. One of the last names that lingered lovingly on his lips—after he had bade his wife farewell—was the name ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... as soon as the craft was at anchor again, was to transfer our booty to the shore, where we spread them out on a large tarpaulin on the sand to die. The method pursued by the regular pearl-fishers, I believe, is to allow the fish to remain until they are in an advanced stage of decay, when the pearls are sought for amongst the putrid mass. I felt no inclination, however, for such a task, and, moreover, did not care to expend so much time as this process involved. I conjectured that, the fish once dead, they might be opened with comparatively little difficulty; and I thought ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... on," said my soul, "in the depths of thy slumber Sleep on, gentle bard! till the shades pass away; For the lips of the living the ages shall number That steal o'er thy heart in its couch of decay: Oh! thou wert beloved from the dawn of thy childhood, Beloved till the last of thy suffering was seen, Beloved now that o'er thee is waving the wild-wood, And the worm only living where ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... innumerable leaves, should cover and partly hide and partly reveal the "strange defeatures" the centuries have set on man's greatest works? I would have no ruin nor no old and noble building without it; for not only does it beautify decay, but from long association it has come to be in the mind a very part of such scenes and so interwoven with the human tragedy, that, like the churchyard yew, it seems the most ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... the same date as the keep, probably built for some retainers of the family, who sought shelter—they and their families and their small flocks and herds—at the hands of their feudal lord. Some of them had pretty much fallen to decay. They were built in a strange fashion. Strong beams had been sunk firm in the ground at the requisite distance, and their other ends had been fastened together, two and two, so as to form the shape of one of those rounded waggon-headed gipsy-tents, only very much larger. The spaces between were ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... His face was a collection of lines. When he frowned, all the lines pointed to hell, the grave, decay and damnation. ...
— The Last Place on Earth • James Judson Harmon
... grist-mill he was building still lower down the American Fork, and six miles above his fort. All of them struck for higher wages, to which Sutter yielded, until they asked ten dollars a day, which he refused, and the two mills on which he had spent so much money were never built, and fell into decay. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... had never yet seen the body of a drowned person presenting such a dreadful aspect. The corpse, moreover, looked pinched. It had a thin, poor appearance. It had shrunk up in its decay, and the heap it formed was quite small. Anyone might have guessed that it belonged to a clerk at 1,200 francs a year, who was stupid and sickly, and who had been brought up by his mother on infusions. This miserable frame, which ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... yellow-bearded Scandinavian? Do you fancy this fresh, unwrinkled face a mate to your own? and is it but the vision of a restless night,—this long-drawn life of dull routine and gradual disappointment and decay? Open those dim eyes of yours, good sir! stir those thin old legs! inflate that sunken chest!—Ha! is that cough imaginary? those trembling muscles,—are they a delusion is that misty glance only a momentary weakness There is no youth left in you, Mr. MacGentle; not so ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... an island, work hard, be wise! When thy impurities are blown away, and thou art free from guilt, thou wilt not enter again into birth and decay. ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... must fall, are all half true; but they prove nothing except this, that the industrial greatness of England can be maintained only through the barbarous treatment of the operatives, the destruction of their health, the social, physical, and mental decay of whole generations. Naturally, if the Ten Hours' Bill were a final measure, it must ruin England; but since it must inevitably bring with it other measures which must draw England into a path wholly different from that hitherto followed, it can ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... Turkish fort, absolutely useless against modern artillery upon the walls the British flag was floating. We landed upon the quay. This formed a street, the sea upon one side, faced by a row of houses. As with all Turkish possessions, decay had stamped the town: the masonry of the quay was in many places broken down, the waves had undermined certain houses, and in the holes thus washed out by the action of water were accumulations of recent filth. Nevertheless, enormous improvements had taken ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... assured that, at the period of his prime, his figure had denoted the possession of almost Herculean powers. The strongest forms, however, do not always endure the longest, the very excess of the noble and generous juices which they contain being the cause of their premature decay. But, be that as it may, the health of my father, some few years after his retirement from the service to the quiet of domestic life, underwent a considerable change; his constitution appeared to be breaking up; ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... capa [sapa]. They consider very beneficial that quantity of the juice which has gone into the stomach, for strengthening it, and for various diseases. It strengthens and preserves the teeth and gums from all inflammations, decay, and aches. They tell other wonderful effects of it. What has been seen is that the natives and Spaniards—laymen and religious, men and women—use it so commonly and generally that mornings and afternoons, at parties and visits, and even alone in their houses, all their refreshments and luxuries ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... that the dream would never be more than a dream. In the dusty little office he sat and tears came into his eyes. At such times he was convinced that mankind would go on forever along the old road, that youth would continue always to grow into manhood, become fat, decay and die with the great swing and rhythm of life a meaningless mystery to them. "They will see the seasons and the planets marching through space but they will not march," he muttered, and went to stand by the window and stare down into the dirt and ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... aware that the propriety of drawing from the oblivion of forgotten literature such a story will be questioned. The decay of the chivalrous spirit of the middle ages, and the prudish, puritanical code of morality that has superseded the simple manners of our forefathers, render it hazardous to cast into the hands of the present generation the thrilling records of sin and repentance such as they were seen ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... decay'd;— Her daughters wail their dear defence, Their fair example, prostrate laid, Chaste ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... house is very much like that of one of its human tenants. The roof is the first part to show the distinct signs of age. Slates and tiles loosen and at last slide off, and leave bald the boards that supported them; shingles darken and decay, and soon the garret or the attic lets in the rain and the snow; by and by the beams sag, the floors warp, the walls crack, the paper peels away, the ceilings scale off and fall, the windows are crusted with clinging dust, the doors drop from their rusted hinges, the ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... kindly stranger, who in so doing explained that it had been written by the last occupant of the old inn I was so nearly on the point of investigating. She had been its former landlady, and had clung to the ancient house long after decay had settled upon its doorstep and desolation breathed from its gaping windows. She died in its north room, and from under her pillow the discolored leaves were taken, the words of which I now ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... superficial earth had been scraped away and a rough stone floor laid, on which the bundled or folded remains were placed and at least partially covered with earth and gravel. Other flat rocks were then laid over them, either directly on the earth or more probably supported by poles placed across, whose decay had allowed them to fall into the confusion in ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... conception of our losses. Addressing himself to Edward VI. in 1549, John Bale, afterwards Bishop of Ossory, who had but little love for Popery of any description, writes in this strain: 'Avarice was the other dispatcher which hath made an end both of our libraries and books . . . to the no small decay of the commonwealth. A great number of them who purchased those superstitious mansions [monasteries], reserved of these Library-books, some . . . to scour their candlesticks, and some to rub their boots; some they sold to the grocers ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... had wrought in the Conde de Villabuena. His form was bowed and emaciated, his cheek had lost its healthful tinge; his hair, in which, but a short three months previously, only a few silver threads were perceptible, telling of the decline of life rather than of its decay, now fell in grey locks around his sunken temples. For himself individually, the Count grieved not; he had done what he deemed his duty, and his conscience was at rest; but he mourned the ingratitude of his ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... circuit of colonial and foreign affairs. No, it is here in our midst, close at home, close at hand in the vast growing cities of England and Scotland, and in the dwindling and cramped villages of our denuded countryside. It is there you will find the seeds of Imperial ruin and national decay—the unnatural gap between rich and poor, the divorce of the people from the land, the want of proper discipline and training in our youth, the exploitation of boy labour, the physical degeneration which seems ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... ports immediately thrown open. My meaning was that there was nothing so pressing as to require us to act without waiting for the decision of the responsible advisers of the Crown. But the danger may be upon us before we are aware of its being near; for, as I said in a former letter, the sudden decay of potatoes dug up in an apparently sound state sets all calculation at defiance. Some precautionary measures must be adopted, and adopted promptly, for ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... together: Know we not friends from foes, how know we whether Of them to fight, or which to entertain? Some have instead of foes, familiars slain. Sometimes a lust will get into the place, Or work, or office, of some worthy grace; Till it has brought our souls to great decay. Unless we diligently watch and pray, Our pride will our humility precede: By th' nose, our unbelief our faith will lead. Self-love will be where self-denial should; And passion heat, what patience sometime cool'd. And thus it will be ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and forty miles and with fifty-six pound iron west of there. As has been mentioned before, the first section was laid with cottonwood ties of local growth, treated by the burnettizing process, which was erroneously supposed would prevent decay. West of there hard wood ties from the East were used, some of them coming from far away Pennsylvania, and costing the Company two dollars and fifty cents laid down in Omaha. For the mountain section, ties of local growth were largely and satisfactorily ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey
... them an aim and an ideal beyond cigarettes, socks, and giggling "gels" or "gals" or "garls" or "gyurls" or "gurrls" according to their social sphere. Vast-stomached middle-aged men of all classes, and all crying aloud in fat-lipped silence of indulgence, physical sloth, physical decay before physical prime should have been reached, of mental, moral, and physical decadence from the great Past incredible, and who would one and all, if asked, congratulate themselves on living in these glorious modern times of 'igh civilization and not in the dark, ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... another road, there is a succession of copses, with meadows between. Birds which love trees are naturally seen flitting to and fro in the lane; the trees are at present young, but as they grow older and decay they will be still ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... who betrayed him were ever after holden in the greatest detestation, and are said to have fallen into decay, and to have never thriven afterwards. The house where she lived, which overlooked the spot, has since fallen down. It was with the greatest difficulty that any one could be made to ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 6. Saturday, December 8, 1849 • Various
... ratlin, a white noddy, a strange fowl, so called from its lethargic, somnambulistic character, being frequently caught by hand at sea. Battered and mouldy, the castellated forecastle seemed some ancient turret, long ago taken by assault, and then left to decay. Toward the stern, two high-raised quarter galleries—the balustrades here and there covered with dry, tindery sea-moss—opening out from the unoccupied state-cabin, whose dead-lights, for all the mild weather, were hermetically ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... Coal has essential features in common with asphalt, oil, and gas. They are all composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, with minor quantities of other materials, combined in various proportions. They are all "organic" products which owe their origin to the decay of the tissues of plants and perhaps animals. They have all been buried with other rocks beneath the surface. The common geologic processes affecting all rocks have in the main determined the evolution of these organic products and the forms in which we ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith |
