Decay Quotations

Harmony makes small things grow; lack of it makes great things decay.

Life is one long decay, no? There's a lot of beauty in it. Like the patina in an old city.

I always believed 'The Fly' to be a classic opera story. It's a tale of love and death, true love surviving in the face of physical decay and ultimate sacrifice.

Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone.

The interval between the decay of the old and the formation and establishment of the new constitutes a period of transition which must always necessarily be one of uncertainty, confusion, error, and wild and fierce fanaticism.

No government can be strong and flourishing while the national character is weak and degraded. A government must flourish and decay with its subjects; and, when a prince makes a law or performs an action which has a tendency to injure the character or prosperity of the nation, he injures himself.

Connection between life and radioactive nuclei is straightforward. No life without tectonic activity, without volcanic activity. And we know very well that geothermal energy is mostly produced by decay of uranium, thorium, and potassium.

We know that our senses are subject to decay, that from our middle years they are decaying all the time; but happily it is as if we didn't know and didn't believe.

Decay is quiet but ghastly, explosion is dramatic and dreadful. There's not much to choose between the two of them in reality, and most of our lives have sufficient of both.

There is a rising generation in this country who do not know God because of a general decay of religion.

We must act swiftly in order to halt the rate of decay our planet faces.

Governments everywhere that are unable to guarantee equitable growth and social welfare have suffered a fatal decay of legitimacy.

Miami, in many ways, is a quintessentially American city. The juxtaposition of showy wealth with dire pennilessness, the tussle of glitz and decay doesnt come any more marked than here.

I'm trying to photograph an old offshore oil city that is lying in decay in the Caspian Sea, but I've been having a hard time getting there.

The older I get, the more I want to do. It beats death, decay or golf in unfortunate trousers. Peace and quiet depress me.

One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is when we see its separate forms jumbled together.

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

All satire is blind to the forces liberated by decay. Which is why total decay has absorbed the forces of satire.

The deterioration of a government begins almost always by the decay of its principles.

Seriously, 'Honey Boo Boo' is the decay of Western civilization. Just because so many people watch the show doesn't mean it's good.

I am in an adolescence in reverse, as mysterious as the first, except that this time I feel it as a decay of the odds that I might live for a while, that I can sleep it off.

But I believe there is a decay that is eroding America, and as a result, God begins to disappear from our society.

The first thing you have to do is accept that decay sets in and there's nothing you can do about it.

Age is not all decay; it is the ripening, the swelling, of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk.

For an adult, the world is constantly trying to clamp down on itself. Routine, responsibility, decay of institutions, corruption: this is all the world closing in.

I have always looked upon decay as being just as wonderful and rich an expression of life as growth.

Reality TV to me is the museum of social decay.

Among the many reasons assignable for the sad decay of true Christianity, perhaps the neglecting to assemble ourselves together, in religious societies, may not be one of the least.

Fundamentalists are panicked by the apparent disintegration of the family, the disappearance of certainty and the decay of morality. Fear leads them to ask, if we cannot trust the Bible, what can we trust?

If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.

Admiration is a very short-lived passion, that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object.

All things are subject to decay and when fate summons, monarchs must obey.

The human body is constantly undergoing a process of decay and of reconstruction. First builded into the astral form in the womb of the mother, it is built up continually by the insetting of fresh materials. With every moment tiny molecules are passing away from it; with every moment tiny molecules are streaming into it.

Political chaos is connected with the decay of language... one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.

Unfortunately, moral beauty in art -- like physical beauty in a person -- is extremely perishable. It is nowhere so durable as artistic or intellectual beauty. Moral beauty has a tendency to decay very rapidly into sententiousness or untimeliness.

Time is the speed at which the past decays.

Expansion means complexity and complexity decay.

I will not dwell on, nor mourn over, our untimely decay, nor reproach my paleface brothers with hastening it, as we too may have been somewhat to blame.

Progress, this great heresy of decay.

My forces are not enfeebled, I find no decay in my strength; my provisions are not cut off, I find no abhorring in mine appetite; my counsels are not corrupted nor infatuated, I find no false apprehensions to work upon mine understanding; and yet they see that invisibly, and I feel that insensibly, the disease prevails.

Bond investors are the vampires of the investment world. They love decay, recession - anything that leads to low inflation and the protection of the real value of their loans.

Setting is preliminary to brighter rising; decay is a process of advancement; death is the condition of higher and more fruitful life.

Death, is not an end, but a transition crisis. All the forms of decay are but masks of regeneration--the secret alembics of vitality.

That is why we dread children, even if we love them. They show us the state of our decay.

Aging is a staircase - the upward ascension of the human spirit, bringing us into wisdom, wholeness and authenticity. As you may know, the entire world operates on a universal law: entropy, the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy means that everything in the world, everything, is in a state of decline and decay, the arch. There's only one exception to this universal law, and that is the human spirit, which can continue to evolve upwards.

There is a red sandy beach in the Minas Basin in Nova Scotia that is unlike any other shore landscape I have ever seen. The world's highest tides wash its shores, and the soft cliffs of Blomidon Provincial Park are constantly crumbling away; whole trees will occasionally slide down to the sea to decay slowly in the wind and brine.

Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short; And done, we straight repent us of the sport: Let us not rush blindly on unto it, Like lustful beasts, that only know to do it: For lust will languish, and that heat decay, But thus, thus, keeping endless Holy-.

It could become an issue for the French economy if we're losing talent. That would be another sign of decay in how French society is preparing for the future.

Our guess now is that there will be some incremental decay of consumers' expectations, especially in the New York area, but it will not be sufficient to upset our basic recovery story,

reconstructing Iraq's infrastructure would require enormous resources beyond what the Congress appropriated -- after 30 years of neglect, decay and corruption.

National studies are showing that early decay is on the increase, and that's shocking, actually. It's really a silent epidemic.

I think Morris has a fantastic zest for life. He's hit upon something, and that is this central question: 'I'm full of life now, but what do I see in the future? A slow, steady disintegration into paralysis. Do I go out while I'm on top, or do I want to hang around, inch by inch, watching myself decay and have my family watch me decay?' He approaches this subject with tremendous humor, and he's never depressing -- he's always way ahead of everybody else, and full of life. He's a fantastic character.

The downfall of civilized states tends to come not from the direct assaults of foes, but from internal decay combined with the consequences of exhaustion in war.

The natural world operates by its own set of rules. The animal world, all the places that are feral and ungovernable, that's where I find a lot of inspiration. There is just as much beauty there, but there is also decay and violence.

Mutability is written upon all things.

Water looks so innocent much of the time, but with a flood it's not over when it's over. Its consequences go on for months. When people see their homes wrecked, and then the mildew and decay set in and they realize that life as they've known it is turned upside down, this can simply be overwhelming.

Much of the economic decay of southeast Asia (as of many other parts of the world) is undoubtedly due to a heedless and shameful neglect of trees.

When profit diminishes, merchants are very apt to complain that trade decays; though the diminution of profit is the natural effect of its prosperity, or of a greater stock being employed in it than before.

Spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time.

Systems, scientific or philosophic, come and go. Each method of limited understanding is at length exhausted. In its prime each system is a triumphant success: in its decay it is an obstructive nuisance.

Without adventure civilization is in full decay.

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall...

Great nations do not succumb through lost wars, but rather through racial decay and the destruction of their internal order.

See how time makes all grief decay.

I don't do anything with my life except romanticize and decay with indecision.

Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation's moral decay.

Sweet death, small son, our instrument Of immortality, Your cries and hungers document Our bodily decay.

Nature is full of teeth that come in one by one, then decay, fall out.

He reflected on the decay of mankind-the decline of the human race into folly and weakness and rottenness. 'Be a good animal, true to your animal instinct' was his motto.

When a wall is slowly covered over by earth, the materials it's made from decay and become part of the soils around and above it, sometimes causing vegetation above and next to the wall to grow faster or slower. Satellite imagery helps archaeologists to pick up these subtle changes.

To be of the 'fallen' is to surrender to this material realm and all that it has to offer which is doomed to decay and die, but to be of the 'Light' is to surrender to the spirit and that it has to offer which is endless and eternal. Jesus Christ is the Light and the Way. Trust in Him and only Him.

Cultivating mushrooms is a great way to accelerate the decay of the stump.

This is a big challenge. There's been more than 30 years of decay and neglect that has run down the infrastructure tremendously.

For as we abolish the ills and pains of the flesh we multiply those of the mind, so by the time mankind are finally delivered from disease and decay - all pasteurised, their genes counted and re-arranged, filled with new replaceable plastic organs, a

If maintenance is deferred, these buildings and structures decay to the point that major capital outlay is required.

In order to de-Anglicize ourselves, we must at once arrest the decay of the language. We must teach ourselves not to be ashamed of ourselves.

In fact, the book shows that language is in a rough state of equilibrium: some words disappear and some structures are eroded, but new ones are created at the same time, and these do the job just as well as the old ones, ... It is true, of course, that decay is one prominent force in the course of language evolution. But there are also forces of creation and generation operating at the same time.

The essence of decay is inactivity.

The first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence.

...[the photographer] can be considered a kind of disembodied burrowing eye, a conspirator against time and its hammers. His work, print after print of it, seems to call to be shown before the decay which it portrays flattens all... Here are the records of the age before an imminent collapse.

Churches may decay and perish; riches may make themselves wings and fly away-but he who builds their happiness on Christ crucified and union with Him by faith, that person is standing on a foundation which shall never be moved, and will know something of true peace.

Earth has waited for them, All the time of their growth Fretting for their decay: Now she has them at last.

Abandon the secret chamber and the spiritual life will decay.

That's the van? It looks like a rotting banana." This was undeniable - Eric had painted the van a neon shade of yellow, and it was blotched with dings and rust like splotches of decay.

He that plots to be the only figure among ciphers [zeros], is the decay of the whole age.

He that seeketh to be eminent amongst able men hath a great task; but that is ever good for the public. But he that plots to be the only figure amongst ciphers is the decay of a whole age.

Earth knows no desolation. She smells regeneration in the moist breath of decay.

The excrement bubbles, the century slime decays, and the brainwashing government lackeys would have us say it's under control.

She seemed to belong to that pagan, primitive kingdom of birds and forests where everything was infinitely abundant, wild, blooming, and royal in its perpetual decay, death, and rebirth; illicit and clashing with the human world.

If movies are causing moral decay, then crime ought to be going up, but crime is going down.

In a well governed state, there are few punishments, not because there are many pardons, but because criminals are rare; it is when a state is in decay that the multitude of crimes is a gaurantee of impunity.

The beginning is always so fine!! But decay soon follows. A degeneration into the tired old situation. The rot sets in ... there is only the beauty of the start!

Natural religion itself, seems to decay very much. Many will have human souls to be material: others make God himself a corporeal being.

All false art, all vain wisdom, lasts its time but finally destroys itself, and its highest culture is also the epoch of its decay.

So peaceful shalt thou end thy blissful days, And steal thyself from life by slow decays.

Well, the family always was bright, and brightness, as you know, decays brilliantly.

This has ever been the fate of energy in security; it takes to art and to eroticism, and then comes languor and decay.

I was realizing, for the first time, that everything goes on, turns gray, is ruined in the living. That there is no end to our story until death comes and the body decays...

There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.

Sometimes death is proof of life. Sometimes decay points out a certain verve.