Quotes About Decay

Flies are so mighty that they win battles, paralyse our minds, eat up our bodies.

Eventually we will all wither and die in the wasteland of logic and science.

We earth men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things." – The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury (1950)

It's as though a smile is ageless, or perhaps eternal, independent of the decay and collapse of the surrounding features.

When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice, you may know that your society is doomed

A society which permits anything will eventually lose everything.

A society is in decay, final or transitional, when common sense really becomes uncommon.

A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.

The obligation falls upon us to foster in ourselves the sensibilities that modernity has suppressed or even denigrated. ... Without awe, our lives are impoverished, our society decays.

To those who have been accustomed to the possession, or even to the hope of public admiration, all other pleasures sicken and decay. Of all the discarded statesmen who for their own ease have studied to get the better of ambition, and to despise those honours which they could no longer arrive at, how few have been able to succeed?

She was discrete about writing in her notebooks … This too pointed to potential derangement. What had her majesty to note down? She never used to do it. And like any change in behavior of the elderly, it was readily put down to decay. Probably Alzheimer's.

How stupid could she be to think a clean person would love her -- would risk death and decay and banishment for love!

It had come down in the storms several winters ago and he had watched it sink over time on the shattered branches beneath it, like a great gnarled monster protractedly lying down, bedding down in its own rot and wreckage.

What we call the "future" is the condition of increasing mess; what we call the "past" is increasing tidiness.

Roschach's Journal: October 12th, 1985 Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout Save us!... and I'll look down and whisper No.

The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout 'SAVE US!'...and I'll look down and whisper 'No.

This city is dying of rabies. Is the best I can do to wipe random flecks of foam from its lips?

I leave the human cockroaches to discuss their heroin and child pornography.

I no longer wish to look at dead things.

There's sex and death and human grime in monochrome for one thin dime, and at least all the trains run on time but they don't go anywhere.

I looked at this man. He was in his fifites, mostly bones inside hisblack suit, and gave off an odour, if you were as close up to him as I was, of a long-closed keyboard opened suddenly in an empty house. (73)

I looked at this man. He was in his fifties, mostly bones inside his black suit, and gave off an odour, if you were as close up to him as I was, of a long-closed keyboard opened suddenly in an empty house. (73)

It's strange to learn that in Livermore, California, one of the first light bulbs ever manufactured remains lit, over a hundred years after it was first switched on. In the earliest example of planned obsolescence, it took a group decision by light-bulb manufacturers in the 1950s to specifically limit the life of all subsequently made bulbs to a few years, in order to ensure that people would have to come back and buy more.

In lei, Laide, viveva meravigliosamente la città, dura, decisa, presuntuosa, sfacciata, orgogliosa, insolente. Nella degradazione degli animi e delle cose, fra suoni e luci equivoci, al'ombra tetra dei condominii, fra le muraglie di cemento e di gesso, nella frenetica desolazione, una specie di fiore.