"Decline" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... choice, Miss Harold," observed Mrs Proctor. "Hugh has not deserved the pains you have taken with him: and if you decline more trouble with him now he is going into other ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau
... topic of badinage. Affecting to believe that they were of General Jackson's selection, he pointed now to the portrait of some famous race-horse, and now to the print of some celebrated rat-terrier, as queer revelations of his private tastes, indicating a great decline in his moral character, which would be a grief and disappointment to the pious old ladies of the South. Jackson, with a quiet smile, replied that perhaps he had had more to do with race-horses than his friends suspected. It was in the midst ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... In Europe the decline of Rome was succeeded by a period, lasting several centuries, during which the sciences and arts were all but neglected. Political and ecclesiastical dissensions occupied the greatest intellects, and the only progress to be mcorded is in the art of computing ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the other side that an author whose original powers are beginning to decay will be very liable to repeat himself, as in conversation, so in books. He may have forgotten what he had written before; he may be unconscious of the decline of his own powers. Hence arises a question of great interest, bearing on the genuineness of ancient writers. Is there any criterion by which we can distinguish the genuine resemblance from the spurious, or, in other ...
— Laws • Plato
... judged me as I judged myself. I recalled to mind the Archbishop of Granada, and I thought I could hear Gil Blas predicting the failure of my works. We can not dismiss the public as we can our secretary; meanwhile, I surrendered to a too severe justice in order to decline others' opinions. A horrible thought suddenly came into my mind; my artistic life was ended, I was a worn-out man; in one word, to picture my situation in a trivial but correct manner, I had reached ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... history lies in the contrast between the servility with which she addressed the cardinal so long as he was in power, and the bitterness with which the Bishop of Bayonne (and, in fact, all contemporary witnesses) tells us, that she pressed upon his decline. Wolsey himself spoke of her under the title of "the night-crow,"[189] as the person to whom he owed all which was most cruel in his treatment; as "the enemy that never slept, but studied and continually imagined, both sleeping ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... You all know my position on Lecompton. Where I stand in regard to low tolls on the Ohio Canal is equally clear to you, and so with the Central American question. I believe I understand my little Biz. I decline defining my position on the Horse Railroad until after the Spring Election. Whichever way I says I don't say so myself unless I says so also. Comrades! be virtuous and you'll be happy." The Chief sat down ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... with his life, for he fell from a craggy place into a river which washed the foot of the rock. He was taken up senseless, but afterwards recovered, though he was ill of the bruises for a long time; and, at length, he fell into a decline at Lucerne, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... irresistible strength, prevented him from using either his teeth or claws in his own defence. It was not long before the struggles and violence of the wolf grew perceptibly weaker from fatigue, and he seemed to wish to decline a further combat with so formidable a foe, could he have found means to escape. Sophron then collected all his strength, and, seizing his fainting adversary by the neck and throat, grasped him still tighter in his terrible hands, ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... of the hill they scrambled, slipping and sliding down the steep decline. They came to the bottom in safety, however, and it was not long before they reached the spot where the ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... the whole plot—if of an entirely distinct character; and when, in discussion on the Greek tragedy, I hear mention made of choruses, I generally suspect the speaker's ignorance of his subject. In my view the chorus has never been reproduced since the decline of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... for her no more, and an active and judicious assistant did he find her. For six weeks the disease continued unabated; about that time it began to decline, and hopes were entertained that ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... "So you decline to talk?" said the Crown Prince. "Well, it matters not." He motioned to one of his staff. "See that this prisoner is hanged by the neck at sunrise," ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... were all his chickens, though the hen was a long time hatching them, and if it had been him that was setting on them he could have hatched them out in a week, or died a trying. But the exposure told on him, and he went into a decline, and one morning we found him dead. Do you know, I never see a hen that seemed to realize a calamity as she did. She looked pale, and her eyes looked red, and she seemed to be utterly crushed. If the chickens, which were so young they could not realize that ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... out his pocket-book to see on what days he was disengaged, and which of these many hospitable calls he could afford to accept or decline. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... these. They have in fact fluctuated in their dress. The English Quaker wore formerly a round hat. He wears it now with stays and loops. But even this fashion is not universal, and seems rather now on the decline. The American Quaker, on the other hand, has generally kept to the round hat. Black hoods were uniformly worn by the Quaker-women, but the use of these is much less than it was, and is still decreasing. The Green aprons also were worn by the females, but ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... to night, The shadows lengthening fall, And see, the deepening purple light Throws on the hills its pall;— Lord, be our Light when suns decline, And in ...
— Hymns from the Morningland - Being Translations, Centos and Suggestions from the Service - Books of the Holy Eastern Church • Various
... "I hope she may, for Bessie's sake. She could be of use to her in the future; but, if you please, do not tell her she is to meet me, or she may decline ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... had given most of this toward the support of an anti-slavery paper in New York. Two years later the same generous friend offered to pay all his expenses if he would come to England as his guest, an offer he was obliged to decline. A portrait of Sturge is appropriately placed in this room. Tappan's letter was written April 21, 1847, and the addition to the cottage was built in the summer of that year. The whole expense of the improvement was no doubt covered by Sturge's gift. Other interesting ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... At present the windows look onto the public streets, a fact which, in these days of bombs and dynamite outrages, renders it difficult to protect with any degree of efficiency. The municipality and people of Berlin, however, absolutely decline to consent to the expropriations necessary in order to enable the destruction and removal of the existing houses and buildings which interfere with the execution ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... but I think I would rather decline the pleasure of your society there at present. It's only three weeks or a month since the child began. Besides, I shall be over here again before you go. I'm always on my guard against symptoms of dropsy. I ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... starlit sky. But only his jaws clicked, and he looked at the tent in which Challoner was sleeping. He dropped down upon his belly in the snow. But his head was still alert and listening. The moon had already begun its westward decline. The fire burned out until the logs were only a dull and slumbering glow; the hand of Challoner's watch passed midnight, and still Miki was wide-eyed and restless in the thrill of the thing that was upon ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... dispose of Robert W. Chambers, who, possessing in a high degree the qualities of narrative, of costume, of dramatic effectiveness, of satire even (as witness Iole), has drifted with the fashions for a generation and has latterly allowed himself to decline to the manufacture of literary sillibub in the guise of novels about the smart set and Bohemia? How shall the stern critic dispose of Gertrude Atherton, who knows so much about California, New York, and the international scene but who somehow fails to transmute her materials to any lasting ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... real than shamed; that it was, in fact, the cause of his being left behind. It is possible that I may have been too hard on his reverence's nervousness—scarcely doing justice to his earnestness of purpose; but, as to the aforesaid infernal machines I decline to retract ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... to cope with the decline of so large a subject, the Colonel had the floor. He looked at each man in turn; then waved the hand that held his cigar airily towards the ceiling. "Just inbreeding, sir, inbreeding. That's what did it. We Americans, are profiting by the experience ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... grand, though no longer the unrivalled Memphis, that had borne away from Thebes the crown of supremacy, and worn it undisputed through so many centuries,—now, softened by the moonlight that harmonised with her decline, shone forth among her lakes, her pyramids, and her shrines, like a dream of glory that was soon to pass away. Ruin, even now, was but too visible around her. The sands of the Libyan desert gained upon her like a sea; and, among solitary columns and sphynxes, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... attitude of mind that enabled the Shah of Persia calmly to decline the invitation of the Prince of Wales to attend the Derby, on the ground that "he knew one horse could run faster than another," is foreign to that of Western civilization. The Battle of Waterloo is a flyspeck in importance contrasted with the problem ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... either damaged or dirty, their use for the manufacture of theine being permitted, only sound and genuine tea coming to the British public. The practice, very common a generation ago, of artificially colouring tea green with, a mixture of Prussian blue and turmeric, has quite vanished with the decline of the consumption of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the early times — "Their sole object, according to the commercial principles of the time, was to obtain, through arrangements with the native prince, the staple products of the country at prices below their natural cost, and to sell them above it... . The result of these (arrangements) was the decline of the trade of Banjermasin; its staple product, pepper, which had at one time been considerable, having become nearly extinct" (DICTIONARY OF THE INDIAN ISLANDS, Lond., 1865, ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... pieces the whole frame of the best instituted governments. But however, such great frenzies being artificially raised, are a perfect force and constraint upon human nature, and under a wise steady prince, will certainly decline of themselves, settling like the sea after a storm, and then the true bent and genius of the people will appear. Ancient and modern story are full of instances to illustrate what I say. In our own island we had a great example ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... seems a junior member of the firm is an angler, at least he sometimes catches pike or perch in the Medway some way from the stream where the trout rise in audacious security from artificial lures. I stipulated for a clerk to come down with any papers to be signed, and started at once for Victoria. I decline to tell the name of my find, firstly because the trout are the gamest little fish that ever rose to fly and run to a good two pounds. Secondly, I have paid for all the rooms in the inn for the next year, and I want it to myself. The glove is lying on ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... economic pressure, the Archangel government set a date when not forty-eight but fifty-six roubles might be exchanged for forty new roubles. Then a date for sixty-four, then for seventy-two and then eighty. Thus the skeptical peasant and the suspicious soldier saw his old roubles steadily decline in exchange value for the new roubles. Of course they had always grabbed all the counterfeit stuff and used it in exchange with no compunctions. That was the winning part of the game. Now they were pinched. It afforded some merriment to hear the outcries of some who had been making rolls of money ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... again. "Don't bank on me. Merton isn't in my class, and if you're her chum, I'll have to decline anything more ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... friend to life's decline, Retreats from care, that never must be mine, How blest is he who crowns, in shades like these, A youth of labor with an age of ease; Who quits a world where strong temptations try, And, since 'tis hard to combat, learns ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... and (if I may so call it) the acquaintance of the mother confirmed the view I had already taken of the son. The family blood had been impoverished, perhaps by long inbreeding, which I knew to be a common error among the proud and the exclusive. No decline, indeed, was to be traced in the body, which had been handed down unimpaired in shapeliness and strength; and the faces of to-day were struck as sharply from the mint, as the face of two centuries ago that smiled upon me from the portrait. But the ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of intelligence, he realized that Oliver's offer arose from a genuine desire to do him service. But if a friendly bull out of the fulness of its affection invited you to accompany it to the meadow and eat grass, what could you do but courteously decline the invitation? ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... of his country, the tyranny of the Excise, and the downfall of his hopes and fortunes, were now to bring forth their fruits—the poet's health began to decline. His drooping looks, his neglect of his person, his solitary saunterings, his escape from the stings of reflection into socialities, and his distempered joy in the company of beauty, all spoke, as plainly as with a tongue, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... downhill way in those days, and almost at the bottom of the decline. It was considered a post of penance by enlisted men and officers alike, nested up there in the high plateau against the mountains in its place of wild beauty and ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... that I cannot, dare not, tell you where I got those notes from. So far as I am concerned they came honestly into my hands in payment for special services rendered. It was part of my contract that I should reveal the secret to nobody. If I told you the story you would decline to believe it; you would say that it was a brilliant effort of a novelist's imagination to get ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... liked to decline, so strong was his desire to study the key to the entrance of the secret little port; but to refuse to go down was impossible, and he preceded his host through the cabin-hatch, where a swinging lamp was burning and the deadlights were closed so that not a ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... sisters were quite vexed with him for not falling in love with one of three or four of their especial friends. They had a preference for a Julia Giffard; but should Jack fail to lose his heart to Julia, or Julia decline bestowing hers on him, there were at least three others of almost equal attractions and perfections, either of whom they could love as a sister-in-law; and it would be so delightful, while Jack was away, to have some one to whom they ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... the story we feel persuaded that the Author must have exhausted his resources, and that the interest must begin to decline. As a matter of fact, this is not the case. At almost every page the weird interest of ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... whole bench of bishops was deprived in 1559. Henry VIII and Elizabeth were bent on destroying the medieval discord between the Catholic church and the national state. Catholicity had broken down in the state with the decline of the empire, and was fast breaking down in the church; nationalism had triumphed in the state, and was now ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... first inclined to decline the offer, but his mother and sisters were so pleased at having him near them that he finally accepted with thanks, being principally influenced by the general's last argument, that possibly there might be trouble with the slaves in the event of a landing in the ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... assuage soul-wearing passion so. From the white rest, the ante-natal bliss, Not loth, the wondrous wondering soul awakes; Now drawn to that illusion, now to this, With gathering strength each devious pathway takes; Till at the noon of life his aims decline; Evermore earthward bend the tiring eyes, Evermore earthward, till with no surprise They see Nirvana from Earth's bosom shine. The still kind mother holds her child again In ...
— Songs, Sonnets & Miscellaneous Poems • Thomas Runciman
... pearls of Old English poetry, full, as it is, of dramatic life, and fidelity of an eye-witness. Its deep feeling throbs in the clear and powerful portrayal." He recognizes, however, "the tokens of metrical decline, of the ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... mails and Langston came. No sooner had he been well enough to move than he asked to be sent up to the garrison. He was no longer commander of the guard, and no longer entitled to the house. What was more, he must decline to serve McPhail in any such capacity again, and had had a letter written to department head-quarters representing the facts, and one was received from the general promising that another officer should ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... philosophers, artists, financiers, soldiers, and other representative classes. The method adopted for discovering the qualities in question is to consider groups of individuals, and to compare the qualities that distinguish such groups as flourish or prosper from others of the same kind that decline or decay. This method has the advantage of giving results more free from the possibility of bias than those derived from ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... In support of this view may be urged that if the passive intellect were merely a capacity of the lower parts of the soul, we should expect it to grow weaker as the person grows older and his sensitive and imaginative powers are beginning to decline; whereas the contrary is the case. The older the person the keener is his intellect. The difficulty, however, remains that if the human intellect is a real substance independent of the rest of the soul, ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... she will comprehend the grief that seeks to be alone—yes, alone, so that it may be expiatory; and it is terrible, that expiation which fate imposes on me—terrible! for it commences, for me, at the time when the decline of life ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... to me that there are but two courses left for any agent of our government to pursue: either to take official rank as his only guide, or to decline presenting any one. It is not his duty to act as a master of ceremonies; every court has a regular officer for this purpose, and any one who has been presented himself, is permitted on proper representations ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the sun keep appearing and disappearing as though he were pursuing the fugitive earth, and ever and anon halting through weariness before his decline into the dark, shadowy vista where the snowclad peaks of the western mountains are rearing their heads, and fast-reddening clouds are reminding one of the surface of ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... many of the later years have proven disastrous in the extreme," he admitted, hesitatingly. "You will pardon me, sir, if I decline to discuss misfortune. Ah, Monsieur Kirby! I have been awaiting you. Have you met with this young man who came aboard at Fort Armstrong? I—I am ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... is this last which prevents us from seeing a way out of the present ignoble situation. We need light more than heat; intellectual alertness, faith in the reasoning faculty, accessibility to new ideas. To refuse to use the intellect patiently and with system, to decline to seek scientific truth, to prefer effusive indulgence of emotion to the laborious and disciplined and candid exploration of new ideas, is not this, too, a torpid unveracity? And has not Mr. Carlyle, by the impatience ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... suspicious of the English, having had such numbers of bad characters who at first preserved a very respectable appearance but ultimately proved to be swindlers. The higher French families, therefore, decline any association with the English, unless with persons who have come highly-recommended, or have resided many years in the town with an unimpeachable character. It so happened that circumstances brought me in contact with two or three of these ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... advanced before I approached the cottage. The amenity of a fine day in its decline surrounded me with a beneficent, a calming influence; I felt it in the silence of the shady lane, in the pure air, in the blue sky. It is difficult to retain the memory of the conflicts, miseries, temptations ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... hospitable hermit. Issuing from the grotto, he bent his steps, in obedience to the direction of Madoc, to that secret path, which had never before been discovered by any mortal unassisted by the goblins of the abyss. Before he reached it the golden sun had begun to decline from his meridian height. He passed along the winding way beneath the impending precipices, which formed a dark and sullen vault over his head. Ever and anon large pieces of stone, broken from their ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... any one; so, Footelights wants to have the opinion of a man who's really a judge of what a good weed is. I refused, because my taste has been rather out of order lately; and Billy Blades is in training for Henley, so he's obliged to decline; so I told him of you, Giglamps, and said, that if there was a man in Brazenface that could tell him what his Magnifico Pomposo was worth, that man was Verdant Green. Don't blush, old feller! you can't ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... resemblances to the drab case of the average person. You do not approach the classics with gusto— anyhow, not with the same gusto as you would approach a new novel by a modern author who had taken your fancy. You never murmured to yourself, when reading Gibbon's *Decline and Fall* in bed: "Well, I really must read one more chapter before I go to sleep!" Speaking generally, the classics do not afford you a pleasure commensurate with their renown. You peruse them with a sense of duty, a sense of doing the right thing, a sense of "improving yourself," ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... not mine. Had she wished you to know it, she would have confided it to you herself. I must decline—" ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... Dinsmore had predicted, Arthur utterly refused to go near Elsie; and, at first, seemed disposed to decline her gift; but at length, on Lora suggesting that he might require a Bible for some of his school exercises, he accepted it, as Elsie had thought he might, on account of the ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... invaded the equatorial lowlands. The inhabitants (flora and fauna) of these hot lowlands would at the same time have migrated to the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the south; for the southern hemisphere was at this period warmer. On the decline of the glacial period, as both hemispheres gradually recovered their former temperatures, the northern forms living on the lowlands under the equator would have been driven to their former homes or have been destroyed, being replaced by the equatorial forms returning ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... monistic conception of the origin of organisms to be correct, and the idea of any 'all-wise creative plan an ancient fable.'" I see no reason to suppose, or again not to suppose, an all-wise creative plan. I decline to go into this question, believing it to be not yet ripe, nor nearly ripe, for consideration. I see purpose, however, in rudimentary organs as much as in useful ones, but a spent or extinct purpose—a purpose which has been fulfilled, ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... better fencer than you, Victor; and to witness your defeat would be no less a humiliation to me than to you. You can reasonably decline." ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... cannot keep the race alive, they are always tending to decay. When first encountered by civilization, they usually tell stories of their own decline in numbers, and after that the downward movement is accelerated. They are poor, ignorant, improvident, oppressed by others' violence, or exhausted by their own; war kills them, infanticide and abortion cut them off before they reach the age of war, pestilences sweep them away, whole tribes perish ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... consequences.] The differences of condition, therefore, had widened with each successive year. Jesus Christ had been born into a liberal and progressive Roman Empire that spread from the Arctic Ocean to the Bight of Benin, and was to know no Decline and Fall, and Mahomet, instead of embodying the dense prejudices of Arab ignorance, opened his eyes upon an intellectual horizon already nearly ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... be unnecessary to ask the question twice," said Dr Plummer. "I decline to accept silence as an answer. Let the head boy ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... for some years past has himself been one of these rustic actors. From the allusion to the pace, or paschal-egg, it is evident that the play was originally an Easter pageant, which, in consequence of the decline of the gorgeous rites formerly connected with that season, has been transferred to Christmas, the only festival which, in the rural districts of Protestant England, is observed after the olden fashion. The maskers generally consist of five characters, ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... and pressing invitation,[36] I am sorry to be obliged to decline it. I cannot remain more than one day or night away from home, without considerable discomfort, and all the attractions of your celebration are, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... in almost a whisper; "his father's dead, and he's got no brothers. And his mamma—such a kind, sweet lady—almost broke her heart at leaving him this morning; and she said one of his sisters was like to die of decline, ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... all, which I felt sure he would bring with him, I should have promised him and Mary Jane an invitation. As it was, I did nothing rash. I got his affidavit, and we parted the best of friends, he urging me to call at his shanty and see Mary Jane and the kids. I had to decline, but told him perhaps I'd bring my wife to see them. What do you say? ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... of Perrault came in just when the severer manifestations of Puritanism were beginning to decline, and they have since become as much a part of English fairy lore as the old English folk and fairy tales themselves. These latter, thanks to Mr. Joseph Jacob, Mr. Andrew Lang, Mr. E.S. Hartland, and others, have been ...
— The Tales of Mother Goose - As First Collected by Charles Perrault in 1696 • Charles Perrault
... remained for some years later, but from the time of the disappearance of the buffalo, the power of the tribes was on the wane. The advance of the paleface and the curtailment of the supply of game, marked the beginning of the savage decline. The constant complaint of the tribes to General William Henry Harrison, the first military governor of Indiana, was the lack of ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... in an enlightened land it is even difficult of credence. Public opinion should severely condemn all attempts at political interference in the work of the education of the deaf, and those seeking to promote it should be dealt with befittingly. Happily, however, such conduct seems now on the decline in the schools, and it may earnestly be hoped that the end is not ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... and ashamed, and angry with himself and all the world. He had lost Graciella already; any possibility that might have remained of regaining her affection, was destroyed by his having made her name the excuse for a barroom broil. His uncle was not well, and with the decline of his health, his monomania grew more acute and more absorbing, and he spent most of his time in the search for the treasure and in expostulations with Viney to reveal its whereabouts. The supervision ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... "I altogether decline the imputation that the projected expedition has come to relieve me. It has come to save our National honour in extricating the garrisons, etc., from a position in which our action in Egypt has placed these garrisons. I was Relief Expedition No. 1; they are Relief Expedition No. 2. As for myself, ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... joyful solitude. We foolishly think in our days of sin that we must court friends by compliance to the customs of society, to its dress, its breeding, and its estimates. But only that soul can be my friend which I encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which I do not decline and which does not decline to me, but, native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experience. The scholar forgets himself and apes the customs and costumes of the man of the world to deserve ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... last two or three pages of this Sermon respecting Mary's pregnancy and parturition? Can—I write it emphatically—can such points appertain to our faith as Christians, which every parent would decline speaking of before a family, and which, if the questions were propounded by another in the presence of my daughter, aye, or even of my, no less, in mind and imagination, innocent wife, I ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... sheer impossibility to care for, was losing its soft vitality. She was still pretty, but not the beauty she had been when she was ejected from the class in which she was bred. However, she gave the change in herself little thought; it was the rapid decline of Etta's prettiness and freshness ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... wife. There had been a certain piquancy, a savour added to existence, by the country's peril, and all the public service and sacrifice it demanded. His chauffeur was gone, and one gardener did the work of three. He enjoyed-positively enjoyed, his committee work; even the serious decline of business and increase of taxation had not much worried one continually conscious of the national crisis and his own part therein. The country had wanted waking up, wanted a lesson in effort and economy; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and capable of giving tranquillity to their vast dominions. Several of them were of the purest morals, of high mental cultivation, and are still looked upon as ornaments of the human race; and while they could not check the decline of their people, these virtuous emperors prevented, for a time, the fall of the ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... at me twice under pretence of firing at a buck. Look here!"—and he took up his soft black hat, which he still wore—"here is the mark of one of your bullets! I did not know about it then; I do now, and I decline ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... been necessary to raise at least eight billion dollars by taxation payable in the year 1919; but the war has ended and I agree with the Secretary of the Treasury that it will be safe to reduce the amount to six billions. An immediate rapid decline in the expenses of the Government is not to be looked for. Contracts made for war supplies will, indeed, be rapidly cancelled and liquidated, but their immediate liquidation will make heavy drains on the Treasury for the months just ahead of us. The ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... equality of men is the point in which the extremes of democracy and despotism are confounded; since the majesty of the prince or people would be offended, if any heads were exalted above the level of their fellow-slaves or fellow-citizens. In the decline of the Roman empire, the proud distinctions of the republic were gradually abolished, and the reason or instinct of Justinian completed the simple form of an absolute monarchy. The emperor could not ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... As nations decline from their ancient simplicity, much farce and grimace are introduced. Superstition, the manners of a people, and their situation, influence the modes of salutation; as may be observed from the instances ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... daily imbroglio Amounts to a permanent brawl; Mr. BARNES has resigned a portfolio Which never existed at all; It is true he was, anyhow, going, Yet it serves (in The Times) for a sign Of the symptoms, perceptibly growing, Of GEORGE'S decline. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... Nature, too, all manner of Ideals have their fatal limits and lot; their appointed periods, of youth, of maturity or perfection, of decline, degradation, and final death and disappearance. There is nothing born but has to die. Ideal monasteries, once grown real, do seek bed and board in this world; do find it more and more successfully; do get at length too intent on finding it, exclusively intent on that. ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... to decline all office, that he might devote himself to his studies. But his reputation for wisdom was such, that he found it very difficult to persevere in this plan. Menaces of war were continually arising. The majority of the members, in the Assembly, were Quakers. It was a small ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... into decline, and she wrote in reply, "She had seen his face again and was ready to die"; And she wanted him to promise, when she was in her tomb, He would only visit that by the light ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... "That I decline to say," Ronald answered. "It seems to me that any one may be in a house by the consent of its owners, without having to give his ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... the temerity of the measure, but was unwilling to dampen the zeal of these high-spirited cavaliers, and, having chosen the post of danger in the camp, it did not become him to decline any service merely because it might appear perilous. He ordered his outposts, therefore, to be advanced within a stone's-throw of the breach, but exhorted the soldiers ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... lord,' again interrupted the Duke, 'if those proposals have any reference to von Elmur and his projects for the good of the State, I absolutely decline to hear them. What's this?' he had laid aside the upper papers after signature, and was scanning the one below with an expression of countenance which showed that he liked what ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... which I contemplated my duty required that I should renounce every pecuniary compensation. From this resolution I have in no instance departed; and being still under the impressions which produced it, I must decline as inapplicable to myself any share in the personal emoluments which may be indispensably included in a permanent provision for the executive department, and must accordingly pray that the pecuniary estimates for the station in which I am ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... were to decline the Emperorship of all South Africa—which I should make his job.... But you'd better add on that I'm a Socialist too, Rosamond, because I've become one, as you know. I think the working man is in a shamefully ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... be made by the authorities for the wholesale murder of our men I know not. Possibly those high and haughty personages will sniff contemptuously and decline to give any explanation at all. And you, who hold the remedy in your own hands, what will you do? Will you at election times put a stern question to every candidate for the Commons, and demand a straight and unqualified answer to your questions. Remember this: You supply ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... at the port of her destination from Manilla, because the terms of her pass made it compulsory for her to return there before she could accept any new engagement such as might be offered her, and of course, in such a case, frequently forced them to decline most profitable business; consequently, the colonial shipowners found that they had to sail their vessels at a great disadvantage with all others who ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... for your good intention, but I must decline your offer. I have a friend who would be uneasy were he to hear that I am hurt and away from him. The injury is but slight, and the bullet has missed the bones; but I believe, sir, you will now admit me ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... masked, her unmasking, and her handkerchief, and letter cover. To be sure, the lady, when she saw, next day, such a fine gentleman and handsome equipage, had little reason, after her other freedoms, to be so very nice with you as to decline an ensnaring conversation, calculated on purpose to engage her attention, and to lengthen out your visit. But did she not ask ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Duchess heard what was going on, they became afraid that some harm might be done the knight errant; so they ran to his chamber with all haste. The Duke rushed to the rescue of Don Quixote's nose; but in spite of the horrible pain he must have been in, the knight was brave enough to decline all aid, shouting aloud that he wished to fight the malignant enchanter alone. At last, however, the Duke could see the poor fellow suffer no longer, and he managed to separate the ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... erstwhile he had been smug and condescending, complacent, lethargic and ponderous, he now became drawn, nervous, apprehensive and obsequious. Moreover, he was markedly thinner. He was obviously on a decline, caused by sheer funk. Speak sharply to him and he would shy like a frightened pony. The Honorable Peckham was enraptured, claiming now to have a system of getting even with people that beat the invention of Torquemada. When it was represented to him that Caput might die, fade away entirely, in ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... unwieldy. A Persian poet says that when the owl would boast he boasts of catching mice at the edge of a hole. Shakespeare would have understood this. Milton would have made him talk like an eagle. His influence is not to be left out of account as partially contributing to that decline toward poetic diction which was already beginning ere he died. If it would not be fair to say that he is the most artistic, he may be called in the highest sense the most scientific of our poets. If to Spenser younger ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... would give for a successful play, mais en revanche, by selling my play to the theater it cannot be read or known as a literary work, and as to make a name for myself as a writer is the aim of my ambition, I think I shall decline his offer. My dearest H——, this quantity about myself and my pursuits will, I am afraid, appear very egotistical to you, but I rely on your unchangeable affection for me to find some interest in what ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... disappear. The hour of suspense ended for them. Las Vegas had lived up to the code of the West, had dared his man out, had waited far longer than needful to prove that man a coward. Whatever the issue now, Beasley was branded forever. That moment saw the decline of whatever power he had wielded. He and his men might kill the cowboy who had ridden out alone to face him, but that would ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... of indifference whether the public goes frantic or listens quietly and reflectively, for I give out only what I have undertaken to. If I have put my individuality, my powers, my love for the work, into a role or a song that is applauded by the public, I decline all thanks for it to myself personally, and consider the applause as belonging to the master whose work I am interpreting. If I have succeeded in making him intelligible to the public, the reward therefor is contained in that fact itself, and ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... sobered for the minute; and, giving a last hop on to the top step, she stood on her two feet before her sister and retorted, 'What do you mean by your insinuations, pray? Do you imagine I have been listening through the keyhole? because, if so, I decline to parley with you further. And as for my age, why shouldn't I do gymnastics? When I go to an English school I shall have to do far sillier things than that. And, oh Stella! do you think I shall go to that City school? I don't think I should like to be taught by ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... he displayed his old activity; and the most credible witnesses assert that his faculties showed no marked decline. Guizot, who saw a good deal of him, writes: "I perceive in the intellect and conduct of Napoleon during the Hundred Days no sign of enfeebling: I find in his judgment and actions his accustomed qualities." ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... fortnight before, the Government had made a formal application to me on the same subject. I cabled the directors, and received a prompt reply in the single word "Tootsums," which in our code meant, "Must absolutely and finally decline to entertain any applications." I communicated the contents of the cable to Senor Don Antonio de la Casabianca, the Minister of Finance, who had, of course, communicated them in turn ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... beginnings. The pecoran stock became vastly more expanded and diversified than did the camel line and was evidently more plastic and adaptable, spreading eventually over all the continents except Australia, and forming to-day one of the dominant types of mammals, while the camels are on the decline and not far from extinction. The Pecora successively ramified into the deer, antelopes, sheep, goats and oxen, and did not reach North America till the Miocene, when they were already far advanced in specialisation. To this invasion of the Pecora, or true ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others |
