"Decline" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... terms of office, to the creation of innumerable checks and balances, to the organisation of this or that powerful interest or party as a state within the state. But the morbid pathology of the communes in their last stage of decline is a subject with which we need not here concern ourselves. These intricate expedients, which are best exemplified in the constitution of fourteenth-century Florence, weakened the government but could not make it more impartial or more tolerant. By ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... I did not mean to-night,' Elfride responded, with a slight decline in the firmness of her voice. 'It is not light as you think it—it troubles me a great deal.' Fearing now the effect of her own earnestness, she added forcedly, 'Though, perhaps, you may think it ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... prouder beauties of the field In gay but quick succession shine, Race after race their honours yield, They flourish and decline. ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... preserve peace at home or to unite the nation against a foreign invader. The oath he had sworn to William, although obtained partly by force partly by fraud, weighed upon him, but he was powerless to keep it. Did he decline the crown it would fall upon some other Englishman, and not upon the Norman. The vote of England had chosen him, and it was clearly his duty to accept. The die had been cast when Edith had bade him sacrifice her and himself for the good of England, and it was too ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... life-aims. Again and again he was shown where in whole districts it was utterly impossible to secure young men for ordination to the Protestant ministry. And he was furnished with statistics setting forth the ominous fact that within a few years, were the present decline unchecked, there would be no students in the Protestant ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the nerve and the grit to work and wait, whether the world applaud or hiss. It wants a Bancroft, who can spend twenty-six years on the "History of the United States;" a Noah Webster, who can devote thirty-six years to a dictionary; a Gibbon, who can plod for twenty years on the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire;" a Mirabeau, who can struggle on for forty years before he has a chance to show his vast reserve, destined to shake an empire; a Farragut, a Von Moltke, who have the persistence to work and wait ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... if I decline to go into particulars. I can only say that I was sure your steamer was another, and I had no suspicion that I was wrong till that man mounted the rail of the Bronx, and began to tell us to the contrary," ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... deficient in that species of merit which appeals directly to the senses, the Arch of Hadrian attracts comparatively little notice. It is, however, a highly interesting monument, bearing unmistakable marks of the decline of art; yet distinguished for much of that quality of beauty which gives so peculiar a character to the architecture of the Greeks. The inscriptions on the sides of the entablature have given rise to much learned discussion, and have ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... taking the arm of a white-gloved, swallow-tailed cavalier, made the round of the wedding guests, begging money of them. In fact, there seemed no end to the giving. Small wonder that marriages are on the decline in France! We left the bridal party still on their crimson velvet fauteuils—twelve being the number allotted to a wedding of the third class, the remaining guests being accommodated on rush-bottomed chairs—and next visited the ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... old bed is just where you wish, and has been prepared in the thorough manner described, it can be renewed in the following manner: When the old plants begin to decline in vigor—say the third or fourth spring—a line of well-decayed compost and manure from the cow-stable a foot wide may be spread thickly down between the rows, dug under deeply, and young plants set out just over the fertilizer. The old plants can be treated as has already ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... lofty port of protection and superiority, no longer satisfies my heart or gratifies my pride. I try to avoid her. She follows me about meekly, confused by my coldness. Her long-lashed eyes look at me distrustfully and are suffused with tears when I decline to play. What do I care? My heart is harder than a stone. Moreover, I have transferred my affections; I am in love with a woman of twenty-three, seventeen years older than myself. To be with her makes me perfectly happy; ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... the advocates of other malefactors against whom overwhelming evidence is produced, generally decline all controversy about the facts, and content themselves with calling testimony as to character. He had so many private virtues! And had James the Second no private virtues? Was Oliver Cromwell, his bitterest enemies themselves being judges, destitute of private virtues? And what, after all, are ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... Pelle fought against the decline of the business. A new apprentice had been taken into the workshop, but Pelle, as before, had to do all the delicate jobs. He borrowed articles when necessary, and bought things on credit; and he ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... can happen to our machines here. For one, I decline to stay out of the rescuing party. Besides, perhaps I may get a chance to snap off a lovely picture of the Good Samaritans ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... here simply remark, that this was no arrangement of mine nor our party, as such at the time; and whatever of success the visit was attended with, and benefit thereby accrued mutually to us in Africa, I as frankly decline any authority in the matter and credit to myself, as I should had the result proved what it might have done otherwise. I am only willing to claim that which is legitimately mine, and be responsible ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... put him in command of the department, and he offered me the place. I told him I had once offered my services, and they were declined; that I had made business engagements in St. Louis, which I could not throw off at pleasure; that I had long deliberated on my course of action, and must decline his offer, however tempting and complimentary. He reasoned with me, but I persisted. He told me, in that event, he should appoint Lyon, and ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... valuing annually the property it was difficult to secure an appraisement that was satisfactory to anybody and, what was more, as the years went by the local governments found their assessed values decreasing and the burden of government materially increasing with the decline in amount of standing timber. The annual taxation of the land upon which the timber stands meets this difficulty, while the taxation of the product at the time of harvesting provides a plan that is fair both to the local government and to ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... great executive, they'll never miss you. But I shall. I decline to take my honeymoon or ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... the proposed protective policy involved a decline of commerce, and that steadiness and uniformity, the most essential requisites in any policy, were endangered. He then with great power dealt with the various points summarized by Mr. Atkinson, and concluded with a detailed ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... charge might be defrayed out of the offertory or other voluntary collections for Church purposes in any parish or ecclesiastical district. I am happy to say that the cases are, comparatively speaking, rare in which the Churchwardens decline to pay this charge, reduced by voluntary action as it has been from the legal figure of eighteen shillings to either five shillings or in some years six shillings, the extra shilling being added when an election of a Proctor for the ...
— Churchwardens' Manual - their duties, powers, rights, and privilages • George Henry
... here, dear master, and not very happy; my mother worries me. Her decline increases from day to day, and almost from hour to hour. She wanted me to come home although the painters have not finished their work, and we are very inconveniently housed. At the end of next week, she will have a companion who will ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... of joy in virtue, for attention to beauty by some measure of joy in works of art. Between the artist and the Philistine is no great gulf fixed, in the sense that the witty "master of the butterfly" pretends to assume, but an infinite and gentle decline of persons representing every possible blend of the virtues and faults of these two types. Again, an artist is miscalled "master of art." "Where he is, there she appears," is airy impudence. "Where she wills to be, there she chooses a man to serve her," would not only have been ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... but will rather bring all more closely together. Commerce tends to unite countries which a jealous policy has long separated. It is the nature of civilization to go forward without any tendency to decline in the spot that gave it birth. Its progress from east to west, from Asia to Europe, proves nothing against this axiom. A clear light loses none of its brilliancy by being diffused over a wider space. Intellectual cultivation, that fertile source of national wealth, advances by degrees ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... has not made for national cohesion. The bourgeois, the mechanic, and the farmer, in so far as they have accumulated property, are exhibiting an extremely calculating individualism, of which the most dangerous symptom is the decline in the birth-rate. Frenchmen are becoming more than ever disinclined to take the risks and assume the expense of having more than one or two children. The recent outbreak of anti-militarism is probably merely another illustration of the increasing desire of the French bourgeois ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... not lawful to particular churches, or, as commonly they are called, parochial, either to decline the authority of classes or synods, where they are lawfully settled, or may be had (much less to withdraw themselves from that authority, if they have once acknowledged it), or to refuse such lawful ordinances ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... but Lady Elmwood fell sick and languished—possessed of youth to struggle with her woes, she lingered on, till ten years decline brought her to that period, with which the reader is now going to ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... Russia, thus ravaged by interminable wars, desolated by famine and by flame, was rapidly on the decline, and was fast lapsing into barbarism. Davidovitch had hardly ascended the throne ere he was driven from it by Rostislaf, whom Georges had dethroned. But the remote province of Souzdal, of which Moscow was the capital, situated some seven hundred miles north-east of Kief, was now emerging ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... change came over the waters, and the serenity became less brilliant but more profound. The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the venerable stream not ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... ingredient in the food of every Irish peasant from this season forward; and yet the ministers never once alluded to the great quantity of oats which they must know to be in the country, nor to the fact that there has been, as the season advanced, a steady and progressive decline in its price. In the Dublin market, on the 18th November 1845, oats brought from fourteen to sixteen and sixpence the barrel; on the 28th of March 1846, it sold from twelve to fifteen shillings; while at the same period in the last year, when no famine was anticipated, it fetched twelve ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... served at our mess-table, though it be returned to the kitchen untouched. But at least he is consistent; for neither will he take medicine from the hand of a Sahib, however ill he may be; nor have I ever known him to decline or postpone the performance of this or that duty because it was Sunday,—as many knavish bhearers do when they have set their hearts on a cock-fight. To compound for sins one is inclined to, by damning those one has no mind to, it is not indispensable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... the counsellor with great earnestness, "the art of eating, the skill men may attain in it, has its epochs, its classical ages, and its decline, corruption, and dark ages, just as much as every other art; and it seems to me that we are now again verging to a kind of barbarism in it. Luxury, profusion, rarities, new dishes, overpeppering, overspicing, all these, my good sirs, are the artifices now commonly made ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... wish to have any thing to do with you. Your accursed Cossacks have allowed a messenger from Macdonald to pass through your lines, and he has brought me orders to march upon Piktupohnen, and there join him. All doubts are at an end. Your troops do not arrive; you are too weak; I decline continuing negotiations which would cost me my head.'" [Footnote: York's own words.—Vide Droysen, vol. ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... to another landlord," he said, "and make the same request of him. If he should also decline complying with it, go to a third. In short, go and find a landlord who is willing to send bedding and ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... I desire to avoid unnecessary slaughter, and I therefore demand the immediate surrender of the garrison, subject to such conditions only as are imposed by the usages of civilized warfare." To this Gardner replied: "My duty requires me to defend this position, and therefore I decline to surrender." ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... same dull round from week to week in the paved streets of London, feels proud to think as he surveys the scene before him, that he belongs to the country which has selected such a spot as a retreat for its oldest and best defenders in the decline ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Sparrows perched on the gallery steps. I glanced at him again during the first soprano solo, and saw him in the same position, his eyes fixed on the singer. Rehearsal over, he coolly walked up to her to proffer his escort. I verily believe she was too startled to decline it. She accepted his arm with a look of blank amazement, and the two set off together through the April slosh, followed by the inevitable juvenile guard. Judging from the bespattered condition of Timothy's overcoat that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... expected, therefore, that he should enter into an explanation of the reasons whereby he was provoked into a necessity of altering his intention. But he is willing to decline saying any thing upon so well-known ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... presentiments. 'Then she is going to be married?' said Greuze. Gretry did not answer. Soon, however, seeking to blind himself, he continued: 'She will be the staff of my old age; like Antigone, she will lead her father into the sun at the decline ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... ages complaints are heard of the prolific writers who have been seized by the scribbling demon, and made to pour forth page after page which the public decline to read, and bring grief to the publishers. Pasquier's Letters contains the following passage, which applies perhaps quite as forcibly to the present age as to his own time: "I cannot forbear complaining ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... ab illis solo contemptu, I lie still and sleep, vindicate myself by contempt alone. [4025]Expers terroris Achilles armatus: as a tortoise in his shell, [4026]virtute mea me involvo, or an urchin round, nil moror ictus [4027]a lizard in camomile, I decline their ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... tradesman in these days. It was not that he never paid. He did pay something; but as he ordered more than he paid, the sum-total against him was always an increasing figure. But then he was a most engaging, civil-spoken young man, whose order it was almost impossible to decline. It was known, moreover, that his prospects were so good! Nevertheless, it is not pleasant for a breeches-maker to see the second hundred pound accumulating on his books for leather breeches for one gentleman. "What does he do with 'em?" old Neefit would say to himself; but he didn't dare ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... measles, pneumonia, and smallpox are witchcraft. Winnenap' was medicine-man for fifteen years. Besides considerable skill in healing herbs, he used his prerogatives cunningly. It is permitted the medicine-man to decline the case when the patient has had treatment from any other, say the white doctor, whom many of the younger generation consult. Or, if before having seen the patient, he can definitely refer his disorder to some supernatural ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... decline your offer," Albert said. "My father is detained at the Tower, and my mother and sister are alone, and will be ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... spinning was done by hand, was the staple trade of Knaresbro' and its vicinity, but which, of late years has been much on the decline, perhaps owing ...
— Report of the Knaresbrough Rail-way Committee • Knaresbrough Rail-way Committee
... decline to answer, sir. I've lost the plans and must take the consequences; but I don't see why my private friends, who have nothing to do with it, should ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... as to expect that one day I might be entertained by the aristocracy of New York. No, I do not expect to be entertained by you, nor do I want you to expect me to entertain you and your friends to-night, for I decline to keep the engagement." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... clergyman, of my own faith, declined to be present and open with prayer. A resident Universalist clergyman present, declined to pray. A young Methodist licentiate in the audience, not feeling at liberty to decline, tried. His ideas stumbled; his words hitched, and when he prayed: "Bless thy serv—a'hem—thy handmaid, and a'hem—and let all things be done decently and in order;" we in the committee pew felt as relieved as did the young Timothy when he ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Cabinet stepped forward with the infant in his arms, and moved that this infant be elected king. "Courtiers, peasantry, and all with one accord responded, 'Amen.'" This was the first general diet held in Sweden, and it showed a marked decline in the people's rights. From beginning to end the proceedings of this diet were regulated by the Cabinet, and the people were practically forced to acquiesce. Even had the people possessed a real voice in the election, ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... much younger man, was employed in the Royal Irish Constabulary Office in Dublin Castle. The arc of his social rise intersected the arc of his friend's decline, but Mr. Kernan's decline was mitigated by the fact that certain of those friends who had known him at his highest point of success still esteemed him as a character. Mr. Power was one of these friends. His inexplicable debts were a byword in ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... As she was married from their house, and as, of course, they will only be too glad to keep up her acquaintance, they will doubtless appear to-day. In that case, much as we should regret it, your sister and myself must decline being present. We can not possibly admit such people into our society. ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... appeared the remarkable "Letter to Liszt in Regard to the Goethe Memorial," wherein he confidently asserted that painter as well as sculptor would decline to compete with the poet acting in harmony with the musician, and that they would with reverential awe bow before an art-work in comparison with which their own productions would seem but lifeless fragments. ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... bewildered, and, unless he has a decided taste of his own, is apt to get something which will prove a white elephant on his hands. One must have some standard of comparison, and the best and simplest way is to study the great work of the past. To study its rise and climax rather than the decline; to know the laws of its perfection so that one can recognize the exaggeration which leads to degeneracy. This ebb and flow is most interesting: the feeling the way at the beginning, ever growing surer and surer until the high ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... from whence they sprung. The lips, nostrils, eyelids, and other parts of the body are sometimes affected with sores; but these evidently arise from their being heedlessly rubbed or scratched with the patient's infected fingers. No eruptions on the skin have followed the decline of the feverish symptoms in any instance that has come under my inspection, one only excepted, and in this case a very few appeared on the arms: they were very minute, of a vivid red colour, and soon died away without advancing to maturation; ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... details received his personal attention. He was conscious of the difficulties of the task which lay before him; he believed, so he told Patrick Henry, that from the day of his appointment his reputation would begin to decline. The congress was an unorganised body without any constitutional status, conducting its business by means of constantly changing and irresponsible committees, and was utterly unfit to exercise executive functions; it had no means of enforcing its decrees, no revenue, and no munitions of ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... truth at once, Mary. I shall go over myself with it, and see the earl. Then I will decline it or not, according to what passes between me and him. I ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... to back it; and let me assure you that a woman without business education and with cramped means could have no chance whatever in the arena of experts. Her defeat would be inevitable. I would gladly serve you, Miss Trigillgus, and I think, pardon me, that my surest way of doing this is to decline making the loan you ask, and to advise you, as your mother's old friend, to abandon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... received you into their protection, had not your aunt Rossville claimed you as her sister's last bequest. She soon after became a protestant, and persisted in educating you in that faith, which naturally gave offence to your paternal relatives; and to that cause alone I attribute the decline of their interest. But, if you return to France, and as the ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... that you could ask questions about himself. A year ago last winter he had gone up to the city and taken all his things with him. He had never stayed away so long before. In the spring the Ledoux had gone to Europe; Claire seemed to be falling into a decline; her sight seemed to be failing, and her father said she must see a famous doctor and have a change ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... architecture. The low condition into which that has fallen has been long felt. Mr. Ruskin has undertaken to lead us back to the first principles of the art, and, in doing so, to enable every reader who will bestow the necessary attention to his exposition, to discover for himself the causes of this decline, and to master the principles, by attention to which, the significance and dignity of the art may be restored. The subject is one of the widest interest; but it has been so hedged about with technical difficulties ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... prevalent deficientcy of the eyes except it be their exposure to the reflection of the sun on the water to which they are constantly exposed in the occupation of fishing. Capt. C. enquired of the Nechecole the cause of the decline of their village. an old man who appeared to be of some note among them and the father of his guide brought forward a woman who was much marked with the small pox, and made signs that the inhabitants of those ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... evident decline in the poet's appearance, Dr. Currie tells us, for upwards of a year before his death, and he himself was sensible that his constitution was sinking. During almost the whole of the winter of 1795-96 he had been confined to the house. Then follows ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... time that the decline in the fortunes of Assyria set in. Esarhaddon and his successor, Ashurbanipal, preserved a semblance of holding the empire together; but it was not for long. Built up by mercenaries, whose fighting was ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... Canal is our carotid artery, Great Britain's navy is her jugular vein. It is her jugular vein in the mind of her people, regardless of that new apparition, the submarine. I was not shocked that Great Britain should decline Mr. Wilson's invitation that she cut her jugular vein; it was the invitation which kindled my emotions; but these were of ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... as fast as it had risen but the decline was somewhat checked when a well known Southern California medium wrote to "her old friend" J. Edgar Hoover about the situation. Hoover, the story goes, shot back an answer—lie detectors are ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... of the king's household select their own husbands, and no man dare decline; and no man would ever be so rude or presumptuous as to ask for the hand ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... to private ownership. Some important market-oriented laws were also passed, including a commercial code governing business relations and an arbitration court for resolving economic disputes. But in 1998, the Asian financial crisis swept through the country, contributing to a sharp decline in russia's earnings from oil exports and resulting in an exodus of foreign investors. Matters came to a head in August 1998 when the government allowed the ruble to fall precipitously and stopped payment on $40 billion in ruble bonds. Ongoing problems include ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... garment and a girdle on, and perfectly DRESSED if she has two. There is a difference in features and expression—much exaggerated, however, by Japanese artists—between the faces of high-born women and those of the middle and lower classes. I decline to admire fat-faces, pug noses, thick lips, long eyes, turned up at the outer corners, and complexions which owe much to powder and paint. The habit of painting the lips with a reddish-yellow pigment, and of heavily powdering the face and throat with ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... to suffering. I am afraid to lose life or estate. I hold it a duty not to abandon those honest ministers that have stuck to the Reformation. And if the Lord would strengthen me, I would desire to confess the truth like them. . . . I questioned whether I might not safely use means to decline the cross and to ward off the wrath of the Lords and the Magistrates. Shall I begin to hear Mr. William Falconer? Shall I write to Seaforth and Argyll to ask them to clear and vindicate me? Shall I forbear to hear that honest minister, James Urquhart, for a time, seeing the storm is like to ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... at Rome," says Gibbon, "on the 15th of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the Decline and Fall of the City ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... his wounds to such marked effect that by the evening of the Governor's Reception—upon the morning following which the mooted bill was to come up—he offered an impression so haggard and worn that an actor might have studied him for a makeup as a young statesman going into a decline. ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... art, having arrived at its culminating point, or that which is generally acknowledged to be its period of greatest beauty and perfection in the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries, again began to decline. With this decline the Equilateral Triangle was almost lost sight of, and then a mode of setting out work by diagonal squares was taken up, for such is the basis found exactly applicable to the work of the fifteenth century, since which time mathematical proportions ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... blest retirement, friend to life's decline, Retreats from care, that never must be mine, How happy he who crowns in shades like these A youth of labor with an age of ease; 100 Who quits a world where strong temptations try, And, since 't is hard to combat, learns to fly! For him no wretches, ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... years, and yet more infantine In figure, she had something of sublime In eyes, which sadly shone, as seraphs' shine: All youth—but with an aspect beyond time; Radiant and grave—us pitying man's decline; Mournful—but mournful of another's crime, She look'd as if she sat by Eden's door, And grieved for those who could return ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... living result of two corroding vices; the man is a sot, but something beside the lust for liquor has helped to make him one. He has followed after sin in the shape of his neighbour's wife, and perhaps the latter's decline may be traced to the working of remorse and the futile ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... his couch, he avoided the society of mankind, he courted sequestered shades where he could indulge his melancholy; there his mind brooded over his calamity until his imagination became familiar with all the ravages of death; it contemplated the gradual decline of Monimia's health, her tears, her distress, her despair at his imagined cruelty; he saw, through that perspective, every blossom of her beauty wither, every sparkle vanish from her eyes; he beheld her faded lips, her pale cheek, and her inanimated ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... continual source of anxiety and vexation. It mortified the Roman pride, too, to find that the greatest armies they could raise, and the ablest generals they could choose and commission, proved wholly unable to cope with the foe. The most sagacious of them, in fact, had felt it necessary to decline ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... that you have been worried by gout, and that Vichy did you no good. I am inclined to speak well of Wiesbaden, for the glorious weather I had there (94 deg. in the shade always) made the waters effective, and somehow I felt younger; but that pleasant sensation is now rather on the decline. ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... the sight of a sunset does not beget as much meditative melancholy as contemplative pleasure, the human decline and death that it illustrates being too obvious to escape the notice of the simplest observer. The sketcher, as if he had been brought to this reflection many hundreds of times before by the same spectacle, showed that he did not wish to pursue it just now, by turning away his ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... "I decline to be regarded as the hero of the adventure, as you call it; and it was not so stupid as you suggest," replied Christy, with the ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... whole, his work may prove suggestive as well as amusing, to those Spacelanders of moderate and modest minds who—speaking of that which is of the highest importance, but lies beyond experience—decline to say on the one hand, "This can never be," and on the other hand, "It must needs be precisely thus, and ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... Government from a belief that the substitution of a river for a highland boundary would be useful in preventing territorial disputes in future; but although the President coincided in this view of the subject he was compelled to decline the boundary proposed as inconsistent with the known wishes, rights, and decisions ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... seventeenth century was the Golden Age of the yeoman who owned and farmed his land; even at the end of the Stuart period, when their decline had already begun, Gregory King estimated their numbers at 160,000 families, or about one-seventh of the population. The class included all those between the man who owned freehold land worth 40s. a year and the ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... landscape was golden, the sea was silver, on that October morning. It was the brilliant decline of the year. Edith stood with Jack on the veranda. He had his grip-sack in hand and was equipped for town. Both were silent in the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... no feather moulted between us. But as to operating between you and Harry, with the view of keeping you apart, I decline the commission. It is my assured belief that sooner or later he will be your husband. Now we will go up to Janet, who will begin to think herself a Penelope, if we ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... 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 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... know why I like you so much, for in the main you incarnate one of those vices of mind which inspire me with the most horror, that dilettanteism set in vogue by the disciples of Monsieur Renan, and which is the very foundation of the decline. You will recover from it, I hope. You are so young!" Then becoming again jovial and mocking: "May you enjoy yourself in your descent of Courtille; I almost forgot that I had a message to give to you for one of the supernumeraries of your troop. Will you tell Gorka that ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... only at the distance of a quarter of a league from the farm, yet we continued walking more than an hour without reaching it. We perceived too late that we had taken a wrong direction. Having left it at the decline of day, before the stars were visible, we had gone forward into the plain at hazard. We were, as usual, provided with a compass, and it might have been easy for us to steer our course from the position of Canopus ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... who generally look'd upon every thing in a light very different from all mankind, would, after all, never allow this to be an original.—He considered rather Ernulphus's anathema, as an institute of swearing, in which, as he suspected, upon the decline of swearing in some milder pontificate, Ernulphus, by order of the succeeding pope, had with great learning and diligence collected together all the laws of it;—for the same reason that Justinian, in the decline of the empire, had ordered his chancellor Tribonian to collect the Roman or civil ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... I decline. From yourselves have I not heard That he's fiercer than the pard? If by him I were accosted He would ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... rumbled the everlasting inter-borough traffic; to the right, on rising ground, were haunts of roaring type-mills grinding an endless grist of news; to the left, through a sudden dip and down a long decline, a world of sober-sided warehouses, degenerating into slums, circumscribed by sleepy South Street; all, this afternoon, warm and languorous in the lazy breeze of ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... more write in a fine style,' he said, 'than wear a fine coat.... I should purposely decline what ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... your life decline, Though youth may fade upon your brow, May Truth and Virtue radiant shine, E'en like yon sinking ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... society of his kind. Having no other company, he sought ours in frank and friendly manner. Occasionally he would accompany me on indefinite excursions in the bush, and would oft tempt me to play. With the fable of the frogs and the boys in mind, I had to decline participation in his sportful moods, for what would have proved pure frolic to him might have been fraught with disaster to me. At this period of the dairy herd, he spent most of his leisure moments in the paddock where poultry congregates, and where many of the domestic rites ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... reasonably believed to be incapable of taking the field; Italy was accounted wholly unfitted to bear the weight of the financial burden which a conflict with Germany would lay upon her shoulders; Roumania, it was calculated, would decline to exchange material gains for political returns purchased at a heavy cost; Bulgaria could not afford to estrange Austria's sympathies and need never fear that she might forfeit those of Russia; Sweden, saturated with German ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... religion: The Arian controversies: The Zenith of monasticism: The final struggle of Paganism: The decline of Alexandria. ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... of my own favour," he was going to say, but it was painful to him to utter the words, and he had a superstitious dread, common to courtiers, of speaking of their decline of favour, Besides, he knew that reproaches for want of address in managing Lord Oldborough's humour would immediately follow from Mrs. Falconer, if he gave any hint of this kind; and on his address the commissioner piqued himself, not without reason. Abruptly changing his tone, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... go out one morning to make faggots, this friend spoke to me as follows, in a voice scarcely audible: "All illusion is at an end; from this moment I will no more flatter myself with the hope of ever again seeing my native country. I feel my strength gradually decline. This night, yes, this night, my friend, (for surely you deserve that name, after what you have done for me), you will find nothing here, but a corpse cold and dead. Fly, my dear Brisson, fly this hated abode. Try every scheme ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... minded it so much but for mother fretting and worrying herself sick at home, and all along o' Jim, the eldest boy, who had gone away mad and never come back. Many were the dollars he had paid the doctor and the druggist to fix her up, but it was no use. She was worrying herself into a decline, it ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... tents, and on his buffalo robes; the savage Australian covers the side of caverns, and the faces of rocks with coarse drawings of animals. We thus find an independent evolution of the art of design, and distinct and separate cycles of its development through the stages of rise, progress, maturity, decline and decay, in many countries the most remote and unconnected with one another. The earliest mode of representing men, animals and objects was in outline and in profile. It is evidently the most primitive style, and characteristic of the commencement of the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks'; even so far, 'till the dart struck through his liver, and knew not that it was for his life. Hearken unto me now therefore,' saith he, 'O ye children, and attend to the words of my mouth, let not thine heart decline to her ways, go not astray in her paths, for she hath cast down many wounded, yea, many strong men have been slain by her,' that is, kept out of heaven by her, 'her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death.' Soul, take this ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "I decline to discuss this disgraceful matter with you any further," said the sister coldly. "Perhaps my good husband can bring you to your senses," and the lady left the room in a fever ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... will no doubt be interested to learn the occasion of this reprimand. The concluding portion invests it with a somewhat general character, and may be interpreted as pointing to a lamentable decline from a previous high standard of piety and learning, which only incessant preaching was calculated to rectify. Neglecting this postscript, it is pretty evident that the scandal arising from the observance of vigils was produced by the inconsiderate carousals of craftsmen included in the Privilege, ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... I understand—yes, I think I get the idea. You have no blame for the lucky few who naturally decline to vacate the pleasant nest they were born into, you only despise the all-powerful and stupid mass of the nation for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Dickenson was right in his surmise, for the time glided on, with the stars rising to the zenith and beginning to decline. The heavens had never seemed more beautiful, being one grand dome of sparkling incrustations. The atmosphere was so clear that it seemed to those who lay back watching as if the dazzling points of light formed by the stars of the first magnitude stood out alone in ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... enough to hazard the conjecture (I trust he will forgive me) that Mr. Harrison's life may be quoted against Mr. Harrison's theory. I entirely decline to believe, without further evidence, that the writings whose vigor of style and of thought have been the delight of us all are the product of his own system. I hope I do him no wrong, but I cannot help thinking that if we knew the truth, we should find that he followed ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Milesian gentleman showed us through them. It is the correct thing to have a ruin on your place; it is a kind of patent of gentility. If a banshee could be thrown in along with a ruin, a new man would give a great price for an old place. But banshees are getting scarce and decline to be caught. This ruin has been patched over, clumsily but earnestly, so that hardly a speck of the original ruin is left. It was delightful to listen to our Milesian guide. My companion was bound to get some information out of him. He was cautious, ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... great regret, I am obliged to decline your invitation, my dear friend,' said Talma. 'This is my last night here, and I must set off ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... "Memoirs of Johnson," ascribes the decline of literature to the ascendancy of frivolous Magazines, between the years 1740 and 1760. He says that they render smatterers conceited, and confer the superficial glitter of knowledge instead of ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... retiring in despair from their determination to be well. Fat parties, who ought to have been dropsical, were not so at all—they grew fatter, and flourished like green bay trees; lean persons, threatening to go off in a decline, declining to do so, remained. Adventurous little boys, falling from the tops of high trees to the stony ground, sustained no injuries beyond the maternal chastisement and brandy-and-brown-paper of home; babies defied croup and colic ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... she, coolly, but respectfully; "and indeed, I should not, at another time, have refused to answer your question so far as I could, however harshly it was put to me; but I must still decline to do so in this presence!" she added, glancing towards the abashed Peters, with an air of scorn to which her usually serene and benignant countenance never ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... 'Decline and Fall' Jones? He never reads any book excepting Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Always declines a drink when offered, but he's sure to fall a moment ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... you mean this very kindly," she said. "I have tried to listen to your offer patiently, though, of course, the moment you began, I knew that I must entirely emphatically, decline it. I will NEVER leave ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... the victors who have reached success, to stand As targets for the arrows shot by envious failure's hand. I'm sorry for the generous hearts who freely shared their wine, But drink alone the gall of tears in fortune's drear decline. ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... them up and made them face all hardships smilingly. Then she had watched sorrowfully the gradual deterioration of the man under the constant disappointment; she had met him more and more frequently in the saloons, less and less at his home. She had seen day by day the rapid decline of the bright, beautiful young creature he had brought with him into this poor faded wraith dragging herself about in the ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... conscience by a secular power, could not any longer be recognised; but no thing or things contained in the act should be afterwards "interpreted or expounded, that his Grace (the king), his nobles and subjects, intended by the same to decline or vary from the congregation of Christ's church in anything concerning the articles of the Catholic faith of Christendom, or in any other things declared by the Holy Scripture and the Word of God necessary for salvation; but only to make an ordinance, by policies ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... nutritious, grateful to the taste, 320 Nor yet, her latest gift, a gentle gale And manageable, which Ulysses spread, Exulting, all his canvas to receive. Beside the helm he sat, steering expert, Nor sleep fell ever on his eyes that watch'd Intent the Pleiads, tardy in decline Bootes, and the Bear, call'd else the Wain, Which, in his polar prison circling, looks Direct toward Orion, and alone Of these sinks never to the briny Deep. 330 That star the lovely Goddess bade him hold Continual on his left through all his course. Ten days ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... Advertiser, and was the suggestion of Mr. Grant, a master printer, was an immediate success. Down to 1850 the Morning Advertiser circulated chiefly in public-houses and coffee-houses at the rate of nearly 5,000 copies a day. But in 1850, the circulation beginning to decline, the committee resolved to enlarge the paper to the size of the Times, and Mr. James Grant was appointed editor. The profits now increased, and the paper found its way to the clubs. The late Lord Brougham and Sir David Brewster contributed to the Advertiser; and ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... "Whatever the influences have been which have checked the outward development of Homoeopathy, it is plainly evident that the Homoeopathic school, as regards the number of its openly avowed representatives, has attained its majority, and has begun to decline both in this country ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... got back he was gone and the letters with him. Whatever it was, it has had an awful effect upon him, though he won't give us any satisfaction, you know how provoking he is. It is my belief he is going into decline, and I have such a horror of ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... far as literature was concerned, because the fashionable costume of the day hampered the free exercises of his powers, and because the only creeds to which he could attach himself were in the phase of decline and inanition. A century earlier or later he might have succeeded in expressing himself through books as well as through his talk; but it is not given to us to choose the time of our birth, and some very ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... of morality, if there are few rare books in the stalls. The decay of affection, the breaking of friendship, the decline of ambition, are all illustrated in these fourpenny collections. The presentation volumes are here which the author gave in the pride of his heart to the poet who was his "Master," to the critic whom he feared, to the friend with whom he was on terms of mutual ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... Egypt, the civilization of Greece, the universal dominion of Rome? They founded empires of conquest, which have perished by the sword by which they rose. Is it to be with us as with them? I hope not—I think not. But if the day of our decline should arise, we shall at least have the consolation of knowing that we have left behind us a race which shall perpetuate our name and reproduce our greatness. Was there ever parent who had juster ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... sharply. It was just what might have been expected for Esmeralda to picture her own tragic death as the result of a passing squall. Quite possibly she had been sitting for the last hour picturing the stages of her own decline and the grief of the survivors. Strong common sense was the best remedy she could have. "I hope to have my own home to look after. And they are too spoiled. I wouldn't undertake ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... doctrine of taxation without representation, and the first to introduce religious toleration. While Maryland has produced many of the most eminent soldiers, statesmen, and jurists, her relative decline in power, wealth, and population has been deplorable, and is attributable exclusively to the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... approached Pushkara, becoming the principal die called Vrisha. And appearing before the warlike Nala, that slayer of hostile heroes, Pushkara, repeatedly said, 'Let us play together with dice.' Thus challenged in the presence of Damayanti, the lofty-minded king could not long decline it. And he accordingly fixed the time for the play. And possessed by Kali, Nala began to lose, in the game, his stakes in gold, and silver, and cars with the teams thereof, and robes. And maddened at dice, no one amongst his friends could succeed in dissuading that represser ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Dict. art. Bridge. On the decline of the Roman Empire, travelling became dangerous, and robberies and murders were frequently committed. To check this system, and protect travellers, several religious persons associated in fraternities, and formed an order called ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... his wish to decline obtaining popularity by being present upon such an occasion, and suggested the idea of his calling upon the offender, and endeavouring to effect an amicable ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... too clear that in some wild rush of the waters the ground had yielded a trifle. We could not find that the foundations had sunk more than six inches, but that was enough. In that fatal six inches' decline of the centring, the MOON had been launched upon the ways just as George had intended that it should be when he was ready. But it had slid, not rolled, down upon these angry fly-wheels, and in an instant, with all our friends, it had been hurled ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... British Museum, and of uniting it with the pictures of the National Gallery, do you comprehend the whole range of the sculpture in the British Museum, commencing with the Egyptian, and going down through its regular series of gradation to the decline of the art?—Yes, because my great hope respecting the National Gallery is, that it may become a perfectly consecutive chronological arrangement, and it seems to me that it is one of the chief characteristics of a National Gallery that it ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... finds a political consideration of so much importance for getting rid of the tenures, let the State tax itself to do so, and make a liberal offer, in addition to what the tenants will offer, and I'll answer for it the landlords will not stand so much in their own way as to decline ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... upon the final accomplishment of a work, that must constitute one of the greatest ornaments of the present age. We have now before us, in one view, and described by the uniform pencil of one historian, the stupendous and instructive object of the gradual decline of the greatest empire; circumscribed by degrees within the narrow walls of a single city; and at length, after the various revolutions of thirteen centuries, totally swallowed up in the empire of the Turks. Of this term, the events of more than nine hundred years are described in that ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... eagerly into my face. "Very well, then; I will answer in a few words, if facts were as you so confidently state them to be, I might possibly be induced to cast in my lot with yours; but, fortunately for humanity, they are not so, and I must therefore most emphatically decline." ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... call The Pot Boils (CONSTABLE) a "provocative" book, and certainly the title at least deserves this epithet. But I decline to be drawn into the obvious retort. Besides, with all its faults, the story exhibits an almost flaunting disregard of those qualities that make the best seller. About the author I am prepared to wager, first, that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... purchase of only two thousand barrels of flour at five dollars a barrel, the profit on which, at an advance of twenty-five cents per barrel, would be very small,—by risking all my money upon a single venture, and leaving myself a 'margin' of fifty cents to cover the greatest probable decline in price per barrel, I may purchase 'on time' all of twenty thousand barrels, the profit upon which, at the same rate, would be equal to fifty per cent of my entire capital. This is the legitimate system by which ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Blaize; "but I won't decline the offer. I heard a man crying a new anti-pestilential elixir, as he passed the house yesterday. I must find him out and buy a bottle. Besides, I must call on my friend Parkhurst, the apothecary.—You are a good ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Charlotte Bronte was born, on the 21st of April, 1816. Fast on her heels followed Patrick Branwell, Emily Jane, and Anne. After the birth of this last daughter, Mrs. Bronte's health began to decline. It is hard work to provide for the little tender wants of many young children where the means are but limited. The necessaries of food and clothing are much more easily supplied than the almost equal necessaries of attendance, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... strolled along, enjoying the beautiful rural scenery. Having had a kind invitation to visit Labouchere Park that day, which we were obliged to decline for want of time, we were pleased to discover that we had two more hours, in which we could easily accomplish a stroll there. By a most singular infelicity, our party became separated; and, misunderstanding each other, we remained waiting for W. till ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... no! I decline to mix myself up in the matter at all. Dick's a grown man and Mrs. Ballantyne ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... already eaten one egg and two biscuits, was obliged to decline. His hostess seemed to think his appetite ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... business was now on the irretrievable decline, though it still maintained a nominal existence, and received the encouragement of Parliament. The special bounty which had hitherto been paid on cocoons, over and above their merchantable value, was suspended, and by a statute of 9 Geo. III., c. 38, a ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... sentiments in my bosom, I need not dwell on the anxiety I feel in being obliged, in this instance, to decline a favor which is rendered no less flattering by the manner in which it is conveyed, than it is affectionate in itself. In explaining this I pass over a comparison of my endeavors in the public service, with the many honorable testimonies of approbation which ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... have appealed to a calculating mind as a procedure likely to lead to fruitful results. Its certain issue was war; but war could be had without the trouble of a journey to Rome. He had but to stay where he was and decline the people's request, and this policy of passive resistance would have the further merit of saving his dignity as a king. It may seem strange that he never adopted the bold but simple plan of standing up in Rome and telling the whole truth, or at least such portions of the ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... from him sleep the Plantagenet kings, his patrons, Edward III. and Richard II. wrapped in their golden robes. With them an epoch has drawn to its close; a new century begins, and this century is, for English thought, a century of decline, of repose, and ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... at present made by the Spanish Gypsies. Gypsyism is certainly on the decline in both countries. In England, a superabundant population, and, of late, a very vigilant police, have done much to modify Gypsy life; whilst in Spain, causes widely different have produced a still greater change, as ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... enough to storm a battery; I have seen you under fire before now. What avails your courage in the field, if you have not presence of mind in the drawing-room? Besides, everything else out of the question, it is a breach of etiquette towards your chief to decline ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... letter dated May 31, 1864, his captain states that he can but think that the disability of the claimant was the result of his folly and indiscretion, and that he feels it his duty to decline giving him a certificate. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... say, when the chronic struggles of races necessitate perpetual wars there is evolved an ideal of life adapted to the requirements. We have changed all that in modern civilized societies, especially in England and still more in America. With the decline of militant activity and the growth of industrial activity the occupations once disgraceful have become honorable. The duty to work has taken the place of the duty to fight; and in the one case as in the other the ideal of life has become so well established that scarcely anybody dreams ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... at last her crimes, reacting, wrought Their curse upon herself, to her, supine And helpless, the barbarian spoiler brought, With fire and sword, new life to her decline. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... usually contains a portion of the muriates over which it has been wafted. It is a curious fact, but well ascertained, that the air best adapted to vegetables is pernicious to animal life, and vice versa. Now, upon the sea-coast, accordingly, animals thrive, and vegetables decline.—Hurwood's Southern Coast. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... assumption, of course, that both parties are honorable men. To the seller I advise the purchase money being received before the dog is shipped, and express charges guaranteed, if the buyer is not known or unable to supply absolutely reliable references. Decline to receive any order where the object sought is to obtain a dog to use to breed to a bitch, or several, as the case may be, and then be returned as unsatisfactory. We have had no experience in this line, but are informed ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell |
