Quotes About Deterioration

The only question that really counts, must be this one: are things getting better or are they getting worse?

to the West the trains are falling apart like Marilyn Monroe

There was a market opportunity there, I felt. Go ahead, someone. Embrace "less is more" for those who need simplicity. Was my deterioration starting to affect my judgment? Was I getting wise—or just cranky? I didn't know. I just wanted an easy-to-use cell phone. One without a damn camera.

There are times when I feel that the only real aptitude of our species is that we can ruin anything.

The outer stairs and walkway terraces were made of rotting wood. The cement walls had that unfinished, swirling look that could cut your hand if you leaned against it wrong. Small chunks of concrete lay on the ground. An unplugged Pepsi machine guarded the door like one of the Queen's guards.

When the juices of trees have no means of escape, they clot and rot in them, making the trees hollow and good for nothing.

Inch by inch, they chipped away until soon there would be nothing left to salvage.

Astute observers of corporate balance sheets are often the first to see business deterioration

A price decline is of no real importance to the bona fide investor unless it is either very substantial- say, more than a third from cost- or unless it reflects a known deterioration of consequence in the company's position. p25

I had never realized before how quickly men deteriorate without razors and clean shirts. They are like potted plants that go to weed unless they are pruned and tended daily.

I thought about the current contamination of beaches, raw sewage spilling into oceans and streams, the hole in the ozone, forests being stripped, the toxic-waste dumps, the merry plunder of mankind added to the drought and the famine that nature dishes up annually as a matter of course. It's hard to know what's actually going to get us first. Sometimes I think we should just blow the whole planet and get it over with. It's the suspense that's killing me.

You know a relationship has deteriorated past the point of salvage when one person detests another's gestures.

Growing up in an old city, you learn history's one true lesson: that history fades. Nothing sticks together for very long without immense effort. His own strong house is in a constant process of disintegration. He calls workmen to come repair the roof, paint the porches, replace sills; but even this work has no permanence, it will have to be done again in four or five years. Is this noble activity for a man? Patching, gluing, temporizing, begging for time?

Das Leben beginnt nun einmal auf der Höhe seiner Kraft, um sich von diesem Punkt aus, immer abwärts führend, seinem Ende zu nähern. Ein grober dramaturgischer Fehler.

I was glad to hear of that determination as I detest the practice of cousins marrying or any marriage between persons in which there can be traced the most distant relationship. I go for the improvement instead of the deterioration of our race.

That clock's a lot like the town, she decided. Looks good, sounds great, pretends to be some sort of masterpiece. But it's broken. It's rotten and broken right down inside where its heart's cogs meet. That's Toll.

Man is not growing better! Man is not climbing upward. Instead of progress in man himself there is degeneracy—degeneracy of body, mind, and spirit. Man is going downhill.

The rust on the fire escape was so thick that tetanus seemed a far greater threat than smoke inhalation.

Each and every moment, our bodies are on a one-way journey to collapse and deterioration, unable to turn back the clock. I close my eyes, I open them again, only to realize that in the interim so many things have vanished. Buffeted by the intense midnight winds, these things—some with names, some without—disappear without a trace. All that is left is a faint memory. Even memory, though, can hardly be relied on. Can anyone say for certain what really happened to us back then?

It's the same as a hereditary disease, weakness. No matter how much you understand it, there's nothing you can do to cure yourself. It's not going to go away with a clap of the hand. It just keeps getting worse and worse

He was going to die soon, you knew when you saw those eyes. There was no sign of life in his flesh, just the barest traces of what had once been a life. His body was like a dilapidated old house from which all furniture and fixtures have been removed and which awaited now only its final demolition. Around the dry lips sprouted clumps of whiskers like so many weeds. So, I thought, even after so much of his life force had been lost, a man's beard continued to grow.

I was in Nashville, Tennessee, and I saw - we talk about crumbling bridges - I saw one, concrete literally falling onto the underpass below, threatening auto traffic.

There is tragic evidence to show that the paintings at the French prehistoric art sites are deteriorating.

the ruin insufficiently ruined