Quotes About Decay

Modern souls do not even become corrupted; they become rusty.

The individual who lies to himself, just like the society that does not lie to itself, soon rots and dies.

En los subterráneos del alma, como en los desvanes de las casas viejas, no se encuentran sino ratones muertos entre muebles rotos.

Al despojarse de la túnica cristiana y de la toga clásica, no queda del europeo sino un bárbaro pálido

It never again mattered to me where I lived after I saw the spacious, dilapidated homes pass away and the wide open, deserted fields of my infancy covered with industrial and human filth.

La violencia no basta para destruir una civilización. Cada civilización muere de la indiferencia ante los valores peculiares que la fundan.

Peace does not flourish except among moribund nations. Under the sun of iron hegemonies.

Ce siècle sombre lentement dans un marécage de sperme et de merde. Lorsqu'il traitera des événements actuels, le futur historien devra enfiler des gants.

Civilizations are mortal" is the greatest comfort for someone alive today.

Eradication of the Best' - we can hardly find a better explanation for decline.

When respect for tradition dies out, society, in its incessant desire to renew itself, consumes itself in a frenzy.

Everything rolls toward death, but only what lacks value rolls toward nothingness.

This was the way the world ended. Not with a bang, nor even a whimper, but with a sort of creeping paralysis of indifference.

They had an almost irresistible tendency to degenerate into a kind of lolloping amble.

Jamais la pitié ne s'empare aussi fortement de nous qu'au spectacle de la beauté atteinte par le souffle délétère de la débauche.

A sour view of things, I grant you; but one borne out by the history of our age and of the age to come, when Trinity--not the Christians' but Oppenheimer's--will turn Alamogordo sand to glass. In the future, dead cities will molder behind rusting thorns no prince can ever penetrate; dirty bombs will engender tribes of lepers--not by germs, but by deadly atoms; and radioactive isotopes will be left to cool for an age or more, sealed in burial chambers with a pharaoh's curse.

We are all so guilty at the way we have allowed the world around us to become more ugly and tasteless every year that we surrender to terror and steep ourselves in it.

Per me i cadaveri sono disgustosi. Puzzano e se sono lì da un po' sono pieni di vermi. Ma in fondo che cosa importa? Sono morti. Non soffrono più e se non ti piacevano quando erano vivi, perché turbarsi tanto ora che sono morti? Cory è rimasta sconvolta. Se la prende con me perché condivido il dolore dei vivi, ma lei cerca di condividerlo con i morti.

We all desire the future to turn out more happily than I have figured it. In particular we desire our present civilization to advance steadily toward some kind of Utopia. The thought that it may decay and collapse, and that all its spiritual treasure may be lost irrevocably, is repugnant to us. Yet this must be faced as at least a possibility.

Within our bodies disintegration inexorably advances; soon we shall fall sick and die. Our loved ones will leave us, the memory of them will dissolve in the tumult; nothing will remain. Just a few clothes in the wardrobe and someone in a photograph, no longer recognized. The most precious memories will dissipate. Everything will sink into darkness and vanish.

Change is the nobler thing than permanence; that that which is static will degenerate and decay, turn to ash, while that which is in motion is able to last for all eternity. (P4)

This was how the end must look. No deluge, no rains of fire, no Auschwitz, no comet. This is how the world will look when God has deserted it, whoever he is. Like an abandoned house, everything coated in cosmic dust, muggy and steeped in silence. Everything living will congeal and grow mold in the light that has no pulse and therefore is dead. In this spectral light everything will crumble.

I realized that—in spite of all the risks involved—a thing in motion will always be better than a thing at rest; that change will always be a nobler thing than permanence; that that which is static will degenerate and decay, turn to ash, while that which is in motion is able to last for all eternity.

Standing there on the embankment, staring into the current, I realized that – in spite of all the risks involved – a thing in motion will always be better than a thing at rest; that change will always be a nobler thing than permanence; that that which is static will degenerate and decay, turn to ash, while that which is in motion is able to last for all eternity.