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Quotes About Decay

A general flavour of mild decay, but nothing local, as one may say.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
All flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust.
~ Bible
The surest poison is time.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
See how time makes all grief decay.
~ Adelaide Proctor
All kings, and all their favourites, All glory of honours, beauties, wits, The sun itself, which makes time, as they pass, Is elder by a year now than it was When thou and I first one another saw. All other things to their destruction draw, Only our love hath no decay; This no to-morrow hath, nor yesterday; Running it never runs from us away, But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.
~ John Donne
There's a small choice in rotten apples.
~ William Shakespeare
I'll fares the land, to hastening ills of prey Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.
~ Oliver Goldsmith
I'll fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay; Princes and Lords may flourish, or may fade - A breath can make them, as a breath has made - But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroy'd can never be supplied.
~ Oliver Goldsmith
My streets, my cistern. My old house. Its beams, floorboards and staircase creaked slightly, almost imperceptibly, with a dry, uniform, almost constant cracking sound. What's wrong? Where does it hurt? It seemed to be complaining of aches in its bones, in its centuries-old joints.
~ Ismail Kadare
Šta vredi sva ta huka, kad evo do?e ovakvo vreme pa ?ovek propadne tako da ne može ni da izgine ni da živi, nego trune kao direk u zemlji i sva?iji je, samo nije svoj.
~ Ivo Andri?
Things only ferment and fester in the dark.
~ Ivy Compton-Burnett
The clock stands still yet time does not. Even as he lies here he can feel time at work on him like a wasting disease, like the quicklime they pour on corpses. Time is gnawing away at him, devouring one by one the cells that make him up. His cells are going out like lights.
~ J M Coetzee
You're still carrying Africa, but it's eroding at the edges. Great. We're destroying the Dark Continent.
~ J.D. Robb
me refiero al mundo, al ancho mundo. Pues eso es el mundo desde cierta perspectiva: una prisión en la que te vas deteriorando, te encorvas, padeces incontinencia, mueres y luego (si crees en ciertas historias en las que yo no creo) te despiertas en alguna playa desconocida donde tienes que repetir otra vez toda la función.
~ J.M. Coetzee
I sometimes wonder . . ." She shrugged. "I mean, what if everyone's lied about death? What if there is no Fade, but instead you're just stuck in your body forever, conscious but unable to move?" Great. She'd wanted to try to lighten the mood. Nice. Try. "Well, bodies do . . ." He cleared his throat. "You know, rot.
~ J.R. Ward
That was the great irony. In life, everyone was a snowflake of separate and beautiful proportion, but when death came in and grabbed hold, you were left with anonymous skin and muscle and bone, all of which cooled and decayed at predictable rates.
~ J.R. Ward
In my medicine cabinet, the winter fly has died of old age.
~ Jack Kerouac
Why did God make all this all so decayable and dieable and harmable and wants to make me realize and scream?
~ Jack Kerouac
Way far back in the beginning of the world was the whirlwind warning that we could all be blown away like chips and cry- Men with tired eyes realize it now, and wait to deform and decay- with maybe they have the power of love yet in their hearts just the same, I just don't know what that word means anymore- All I want is an ice cream cone
~ Jack Kerouac
The floors of bus stations are the same all over the country, always covered with butts and spit and they give a feeling of sadness that only bus stations have.
~ Jack Kerouac
We went to Old Bull Lee's house outside town near the river levee. It was on a road that ran across a swampy field. The house was a dilapidated old heap with sagging porches running around and weeping willows in the yard; the grass was a yard high, old fences leaned, old barns collapsed. There was no one in sight. We pulled right into the yard and saw washtubs on the back porch. I got out and went to the screen door.
~ Jack Kerouac
It was the bottom and dregs of America where all the heavy villains sink, where disoriented people have to go to be near a specific elsewhere they can slip into unnoticed. Contraband brooded in the heavy syrup air. Cops were red-faced and sullen and sweaty, no swagger. Waitresses were dirty and disgusted. Just beyond, you could feel the enormous presence of whole great Mexico and almost smell the billion tortillas frying and smoking in the night.
~ Jack Kerouac
riding freights, working as a scullion in the railroad cookshacks, stumbling, down-crashing in wino alley nights, expiring on coal piles, dropping his yellowed teeth one by one in the gutters of the West.
~ Jack Kerouac
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.
~ Jack London