Quotes About Decay

Yet the same gradual decay to which, after a certain age, all the language of psychology seems liable, has been at work even here. If you call virtue an entity, you are indeed somewhat less strongly suspected of believing it to be a substance than if you called it a being; but you are by no means free from the suspicion.

All Demosthenes' eloquence could never revive a body that luxury and the arts had enervated

The search for a material paradise is a flight away from humanity into the sterile nonlife of mechanisms where everything is perfect until it becomes junk.

river burial had a certain rustic poetry, but Ophion cared not at all about preserving the decency of the dead. The river deposited Psaltery on a mud flat three kilometers downstream. When they passed her ruined body, the Titanides did not even glance at it. Chris could not look away. The corpse crawling with scavengers haunted his sleep for a long time. 28.

I saw him now going the way of all flesh.

Now they were in the earth to which they had given their lives; and slowly, year by year, the earth would take them. Slowly the damp and rot would infest the pine boxes which held their bodies, and slowly it would touch their flesh, and finally it would consume the last vestiges of their substances. And they would become a meaningless part of that stubborn earth to which they had long ago given themselves.

Though he was only twenty-six, he felt that he had watched the decay and dissolution of a hundred years. Nothing of the past remained untouched. Not the old buildings,

As they witnessed in drooping flower and falling leaf the first signs of decay, Adam and his companion mourned more deeply than men now mourn over their dead. The death of the frail, delicate flowers was indeed a cause of sorrow; but when the goodly trees cast off their leaves, the scene brought vividly to mind the stern fact that death is the portion of every living thing.

A civilization begins to decline the moment Life becomes its sole obsession.

I would like to explode, flow, crumble into dust, and my disintegration would be my masterpiece.

The "west"-what curse has fallen upon it that at the term of its trajectory it produces only these businessmen, these shopkeepers, these racketeers with their blank stares and atrophied smiles... is it with such vermin as this that a civilization so delicate and so complex must come to an end?

In mijlocul unor peisaje prea frumoase, ne simÅ£im întreaga putreziciune ÅŸi ne este lehamite de cadavrul pe care-1 tîrîm dup? noi.

Arbori masacraÅ£i. R?sar case. Mutre, mutre pretutindeni: omul e cancerul P?mântului.

Ieri, duminica 3 iunie, in trenul ce ma ducea de la Compiègne la Paris. In fata mea, o fat? (nouasprezece ani?) si un tanar. Incerc sa-mi reprim interesul pe care mi-l trezeste fata, farmecul ei, si, ca sa izbutesc, mi-o imaginez moart?, in stare de cadavru descompus, cu ochii, obrajii, nasul, buzele, totul in plina putrefactie. Niciun efect. Vraja pe care o degaja ma stapanea in continuare. Acesta e miracolul vieÈ›ii.

L'uomo emana un odore speciale: fra tutti gli animali, soltanto lui puzza di cadavere

Chaque pensée devrait rappeler la ruine d'un sourire

Nero would be long since forgotten without his outbursts of bloody clowning. ~ Emil Cioran, A Short History of Decay

The West: a sweet-smelling rottenness, a perfumed corpse.

By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing; but instead of nonchalantly promenading our corruption, we exude our sweat and grow winded upon the fetid air. All History is in a state of petrification; its odours shift toward the future: we rush toward it, if only for the fever inherent in any decomposition.

Once my body gives me the slip, how, I wonder, with such carrion on my hands, will I combat the capitulation of my organs?

In each man I passed I discerned a cadaver, in each odor a rot, in each joy a last grimace.

Man gives off a special odor: of all the animals, he alone smells of the corpse.

De ceux qui ne diffusent pas autour d'eux un relent d'échec, on peut difficilement dire qu'ils ont vécu. La décomposition est la seule trace que laisse la marche de la vie, cet étrange pourrissement de la matière. Création et destruction sont les différentes directions d'une même substance qui s'affirme en s'effilochant.

Les ravages de la "civilisation" sont si évidents qu'on a honte de les signaler encore.