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More "Decline" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... making signs to them that on board they would find something to eat, each man's fears suggested the probability of a certain convocation, not where he eats, but where he is eaten, and induced him to decline standing treat upon ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... this way," said I, "I shall decline taking any more tea with you. Will you decline an ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... indemnity and a sanction of the Order by law. To propose to Parliament no other measure than that during the sitting before Christmas. To declare an intention of submitting to Parliament immediately after the recess, a modification of the existing law, but to decline entering into any details in Parliament with regard to such modification. Such modification to include the admission at a nominal duty of Indian corn and of British Colonial corn—to proceed with regard to other descriptions ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... but at the one and twentieth, the signs promised victory to defenders. He then vowed a hecatomb and solemn sports to Hercules, and commanded his captains to make ready for battle, staying only till the sun should decline and come round to the west, lest, being in their faces in the morning, it should dazzle the eyes of his soldiers. Thus he whiled away the time in his tent, which was open towards the plain where his ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... love, for cats are philosophical, sedate, quiet animals, fond of their own way, liking cleanliness and order, and not apt to bestow their affection hastily. They are quite willing to be friends, if you prove worthy of their friendship, but they decline to be slaves. They are affectionate, but they exercise free will, and will not do for you what they consider to be unreasonable. Once, however, they have bestowed their friendship, their trust is absolute, ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... the officer, sending the fellow back to his place. "Remember, I have offered you a fair chance to act as a government witness, but you decline." ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... cultivating the first rudiments of civility, policy, religion, and learning. But they do not observe that the private interests of many, the prejudices, affections, and passions of all, have a large share in the work, and often the largest. These put a sort of bias on the mind, which makes it decline from the straight course; and the further these supposed improvements are carried, the greater this declination grows, till men lose sight of primitive and real nature, and have no other guide but custom, a second and a false nature. The author of one is divine wisdom; of the ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... With knavish publicans and boatmen folk. This portion of our route, which most get through At one good stretch, we chose to split in two, Taking it leisurely: for those who go The Appian road are jolted less when slow. I find the water villanous, decline My stomach's overtures, refuse to dine, And sit and sit with temper less than sweet Watching my fellow-travellers while they eat. Now Night prepared o'er all the earth to spread Her veil, and light the stars up overhead: Boatmen and slaves a slanging-match ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... have to decline," Bert said, after a pause; "but your offer seems a good one, and I have no doubt you will easily get ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... Charles Martel kings and emperors; the grateful Frankish princes defended the Popes against all their enemies, imperial and barbarian, and dowering them with cities and provinces, laid the basis of their temporal sovereignty, which continued for more than a thousand years." After the decline of the Carlovingian power the imperial authority was again revived by Otto the Great (962), who was crowned Emperor of the Romans by the Pope. Henceforth the empire of the West was termed the Holy Roman Empire. ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... moneys, subsidies, ye Sea-Powers!" But the Sea-Powers stand obtuse, arms not open at all, hands buttoning their pockets: "Sorry we cannot, your Imperial Majesty. Fleury engages not to touch the Netherlands, the Barrier Treaty; Polish Elections are not our concern!" and callously decline. The Kaiser's astonishment is extreme; his big heart swelling even with a martyr-feeling; and he passionately appeals: "Ungrateful, blind Sea-Powers! No money to fight France, say you? Are the Laws of Nature ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... all the religious fads that spring up and are kept going in a state of prosperity because some woman or other has not been instructed as to the proper use of her cheque-book. I foresee a positive decline ahead of us, if this state of affairs is allowed to go on. We must club together, we reasonable men, and put an end to the scandal. These women need trimmers; an army of trimmers. I have done a good deal of trimming in my day. Of course it involves some trouble and a close degree of intimacy, ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... thanks for your kindness and consideration; but I do not think that I could enter the castle with pleasure; there are so many more painful than agreeable remembrances connected with it, that I had rather decline going there— the more so as I consider it ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... a great exaggeration, I could not help smiling seriously; but I could not accept their sage opinion that, before I went to see my kinsman, I ought to write and ask his leave to do so. For that would have made it quite a rude thing to call, as I must still have done, if he should decline beforehand to receive me. Moreover, it would look as if I sought an invitation, while only wanting an interview. Therefore, being now full of money again, I hired the flyman who had made us taste the water, and taking train at Newport, and changing at two or three places as ordered, crossed ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... hundred and thirty thousand pounds; and it is already worth double that sum. The directors have kindly offered us three places for the opening, which is a great favor, for people are bidding almost anything for a place, I understand; but I fear we shall be obliged to decline them, as my father is most anxious to take Henry over to Heidelberg before our season of work in London begins, which will take place on the first of October. I think there is every probability of our having a very prosperous season. London will ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... offered Quentin permission to attend their devotions, but his clothes were in such a wet condition that the young Scot was obliged to decline the opportunity, and request permission, instead, to sit by the kitchen fire, in order to his attire being dried before morning, as he was particularly desirous that the Bohemian, when they should next meet, should observe no traces of his having been abroad during the night. The friar not only ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... the downfall of the country from its position as one of the world's great powers before the close of the twentieth century, is a mathematical certainty. That M. Zola, in order to combat those evils, and to do his duty as a good citizen anxious to prevent the decline of his country, should have dealt with his subject with the greatest frankness and outspokenness, was only natural. Moreover, absolute freedom of speech exists in France, which is not the case elsewhere. Thus, when I first perused the original proofs ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... second place it must be remembered that there can be practically no limits within the habitable globe of the distance which must be traveled to reach all parts of the British Empire and that it would be very difficult to visit one important part and decline to visit the other. In spite of the many and strong inducements which prompt him to gratify the loyal wishes of his Canadian subjects, I am to say that the King feels unable at present to entertain the idea of a ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... beautiful places on one of the most beautiful rivers in the world is Medmenham on the Thames, hard by Marlow. In the awakening of spring, in the tranquillity of summer, or the rich decline of August, the changing charm of the spot appeals with the special insistence that association lends to nature. Medmenham is a haunted place. Those green fields and smiling gardens have been the scenes of the strangest idyls; those shining waters have mirrored the fairest of ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of my journey I had limited my party to six individuals; and although many young men volunteered their services, I was obliged to decline their offers, and confine myself to the stated number, as it was intimately connected with the principles and the means ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... shunned it, perhaps then I would have given L500 again that I had seen him. Thus fluctuating and unconcluding were my thoughts, what I so earnestly desired I declined when it offered itself; and what now I pretended to decline was nothing but what I had been at the expense of L40 or L50 to send Amy to France for, and even without any view, or, indeed, any rational expectation of bringing it to pass; and what for half a year ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... wound through a rugged and hilly country, which was divided into nine principal parts or districts, each under a different governor; and these again were reduced into endless subdivisions. Some of them we were obliged to decline. It was not a little puzzling to perceive the intricate ramifications of the paths in these parts. Here the natives spoke several dialects, which rendered our intercourse with them very perplexing. However, it must be confessed that every step we set in this country was less fatiguing and ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... kind of statement which it is only respectable to receive with horror, but if the secrets of feminine hearts could be known it might prove that a goodly amount of this horror is assumed. I decline to commit my sex either way. Mr Maugham is evidently a gentleman very deeply experienced in feminine hearts, and I daresay he knows what he is talking of. He is, moreover, safely unmarried, but even ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... struggle for its liberties, the light in which I contemplated my duty required that I should renounce every pecuniary compensation. From this resolution I have in no instance departed; and being still under the impressions which produced it, I must decline as inapplicable to myself any share in the personal emoluments which may be indispensably included in a permanent provision for the executive department, and must accordingly pray that the pecuniary estimates for the station in which I am placed may during my continuance in it ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... decline, and had been at Lisbon for some time, but she was now sent home by the physicians, as they send people from one country to another to die. The captain of the ship in which she was mistook the lights upon the coast, and ran the ship ashore near ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... her six thousand dollars for a book, but she was obliged to decline, for she was writing the Mill on the Floss, in 1860, for which Blackwood gave her ten thousand dollars for the first edition of four thousand copies, and Harper & Brothers fifteen hundred dollars for using it also. Tauchnitz ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... The decline in the value of what may be termed ordinary editions of the classics during the present century has unquestionably been very great. Even the editiones principes have scarcely maintained their former values; whilst their appearance in the ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... again conscious of the recurrence of the day, but had forgotten it by the time he came home to dinner. The crisis of the disease came a few days later, with a rapid decline of fever, and the little girl was pronounced out of danger. In the rejoicing which ensued the thought of Haskett passed out of Waythorn's mind and one afternoon, letting himself into the house with a latchkey, he went straight to his ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... "Then allow me to decline it for my son," replied Mr. Huntley. "He will not need it; and therefore should not stand in the light of any other boy. I deemed it well, sir, to state ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... reasons for which a physician can decline the title of Doctor of Medicine, because he supposes himself disgraced by the doctorship, or supposes the doctorship disgraced by himself. To be disgraced by a title which he shares in common with ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... in perfection of beauty, tho less in endurance of dominion, is still left for our beholding in the final period of her decline: a ghost upon the sands of the sea, so weak—so quiet—so bereft of all but her loveliness, that we might well doubt, as we watched her faint reflection in the mirage of the lagoon, which was ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... in that of Jupiter, and the ferzin and zarafah in that of Venus; and all these pieces have their accidents, corresponding with the trines and quadrates, and conjunction and opposition, and ascendancy and decline—such as the heavenly bodies have; and the eclipse of the sun is figured by shah caim or stale mate;' and much more to the same purport. We question whether the astronomer-royal ever suspected he was illustrating his own science when engaged ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... envy, or anger against another, always seems to me incomprehensible. All these are unpleasant sensations, and I sweep them out of my mind as quickly as I possibly can, not from any exalted motives, but simply as useless, cumbering lumber, for which I decline to use my brain at a storehouse. Howard ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... old he could perfectly read any of ye English, Latine, French, or Gothic letters, pronouncing the first three languages exactly. He had before the 5th yeare, or in that yeare, not onely skill to reade most written hands, but to decline all the nouns, conjugate the verbs regular, and most of ye irregular; learn'd out "Puerilis," got by heart almost ye entire vocabularie of Latine and French primitives and words, could make congruous syntax, turne English into Latine, and vice versa, construe and ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... so weary of controversy that I must decline to take part, directly or indirectly, in any more. Possibly, in the heat of annoyance, I may have said harsh things about Mr Scott, but if so, I have forgotten them, and I think all harsh things are better forgotten. I am sorry, therefore, to hear that you are on the war-path, and wish ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... the violence with which he endeavoured to escape, he declared, that it was not his design to fly from justice, or decline a trial, but to avoid the expenses and severities of a prison; and that he intended to have appeared at the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... chosen test of moral worth, and perhaps our judgment of the decline and rise of social virtue is as easily swayed by personal predilection as was that of Marie-Joseph. To me the persistence of the same cruel and stupid customs throughout the centuries is a source of perplexed pessimism. I cannot ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... calls it (p. 96) "one of the pearls of Old English poetry, full, as it is, of dramatic life, and fidelity of an eye-witness. Its deep feeling throbs in the clear and powerful portrayal." He recognizes, however, "the tokens of metrical decline, of the dissolution ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... covered with a luxuriant vegetation. Next we have a comparatively brief period of volcanic disturbance, (when the conglomerate was formed.) Then the causes favourable to the so abundant production of limestone, and the large population of marine acrita, decline, and we find the masses of dry land increase in number and extent, and begin to bear an amount of forest vegetation, far exceeding that of the most sheltered tropical spots of the present surface. The climate, even in the latitude of Baffin's Bay, was torrid, and perhaps the atmosphere ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... that my boots were muddy, and my coat of the morning sort. But as it was quite impossible to go to Paris and back again in a quarter of an hour, and as a man may dine with perfect comfort to himself in a frock-coat, it did not occur to me to be particularly squeamish, or to decline an old friend's invitation upon a ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ideal ones he has depicted would have resulted. It is probable that he did not know Mary Hogarth until after his marriage, when she came to live in his house, and when his youthful fancy for his wife had begun to decline. Miss Hogarth died instantly of heart-disease, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... must proceed along practical, peaceful lines. But the mere fact that we rightly decline to intervene with arms to prevent acts of aggression does not mean that we must act as if there were no aggression at all. Words may be futile, but war is not the only means of commanding a decent respect for the opinions ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... covering acres of ground. This state of things continued until the period when Mexico underwent a change in its political form of government, which so disheartened the feelings of the loyal missionaries, that they became regardless of their establishments, and suffered them to decline for want of attention to their interests. At length, civil discord and anarchy among the Californians prepared a more effective measure for their destruction, and they were left to the superintendence of individuals who plundered them of all that was desirable ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... Union—you can't get over that. We are faced with a plain fact. Seven of the Southern States have already declared for secession. The President feels—and I may say that I and my colleagues are with him—that to break up the country like that means the decline ...
— Abraham Lincoln • John Drinkwater
... Esquire, Gent, have one failing, and I freely confess it. I cannot keep a key. Were I as other men are—which, thank Heaven, I am not—I might wear a pound or so of hideous ironmongery chained to my person. This I decline to do, with the result that, as I say, I cannot keep a key. Of all the household stowaway places under my control (and Barbara limits their number) only one is locked; and that drawer containing I know not ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... of the decline of Athens, the centre of thought to Greece, there roamed about the streets of that city a delicate, sickly lad, so feeble in frame that, at his mother's wish, he kept away from the gymnasium, lest the severe exercises there required should do him more ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the same. As to that I will not admit any question. Can you undertake to fight this matter on my behalf,—and on hers? If you feel absolutely hostile to me you had better decline. For myself, I cannot understand why ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... the taste for poetry is on the decline—that it is no longer relished—that the public will never again purchase it as a luxury. But it must be some consolation to our modern poets to know (as no doubt they do, for it is by this time notorious) that their productions really do a vast deal of service—that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
... a joyous rest in a hospital with the fair Aline nursing me back to health and strength and cooing fond words in my rapacious ear the while I reflected on the noble endowments of a nature that heretofore had been commonplace and meek. But, no! None of these things happened and I decline to perjure myself for the privilege of getting into the ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... Walton has got well learnt, I don't need another workman. I shall respectfully decline ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the oath. The agent who shipped the coal for this firm, and who wrote the above-quoted certificate, could only know, of course, that he had shipped them by order of his principal. Why, then, did Wilson, Holt, Lane, & Co., decline to make the necessary oath to protect the cargo? They should have taken the necessary steps to protect either themselves or the insurers, but they did no such thing. It would seem, probably, that they were the agents of some American house, and that they could not, in conscience, ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... took a long time to fill, and patience seemed a harder virtue than ever. Perhaps the last fact had something to do with the rapid decline of Monsieur the Viscount's health. He became paler and weaker, and more fretful. His prayers were accompanied by greater mental struggles, and watered with more tears. He was, however, most positive in his assurances to Monsieur Crapaud that he knew the ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... is the desperate situation of his affairs that has brought him to it. The friends of Clay (allowing Adams more strength than he may have), have no hopes of getting him (Clay) into the house, unless they get a part of this State. The certain decline of Adams in other parts & the uncertainty of his strength in the east alarm his friends on the same point. Thus both parties are led to the adoption of desperate measures. Out of N. England Adams has now no reason to expect more than his three or four votes in Maryland. A partial discomfiture ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... these men to the neglect of important public duties. The bonded indebtedness of these States began to increase, the State paper to depreciate, the burden of taxation to grow intolerable, bad laws to find their way into the statute-books, interest in education and industry to decline, the farm Negroes to grow idle and gravitate to the infectious skirts of large cities, and the whole South went from bad ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... combat the clear conviction. She began thinking the obvious drama—Owen discovering her with Ulick, declining ever to see her again, her suicide or his, etc. But she could not believe that Owen would decline ever to see her again even if—but she was not going to go wrong with Ulick, there was no use supposing such things, And again her thoughts paused, and like things frightened by the dark, withdrew silently, not ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... you for your good intention, but I must decline your offer. I have a friend who would be uneasy were he to hear that I am hurt and away from him. The injury is but slight, and the bullet has missed the bones; but I believe, sir, you will now admit ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... course of ages e'en the Holy House shall crumble, And the broad and stately steeple one day bend to its decline, And high arches, ancient arches bowed and decked in clothing humble, Creeping moss shall round ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... mighty reasonable, squire," remarked Bagby, with a grin. "Lastly, we don't want to be represented in Assembly by such a king's man, and so you're to decline a poll." ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... since he takes so much interest in my affairs, I will now tell Aemilianus why I have examined so many fishes already and why I am unwilling to remain in ignorance of some I have not yet seen. Although he is in the decline of life and suffering from senile decay, let him, if he will, acquire some learning even at the eleventh hour. Let him read the works of the philosophers of old, that now at any rate he may learn that I am not the first ichthyologist, ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... no longer an exempt—that is a freshman —has remained a sophomore some little time without volunteering to fight; some day, the president, instead of calling for volunteers, will APPOINT this sophomore to measure swords with a student of another corps; he is free to decline—everybody says so—there is no compulsion. This is all true—but I have not heard of any student who DID decline; to decline and still remain in the corps would make him unpleasantly conspicuous, and properly so, since ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... our old bullock began to lag behind, and at last lay down incapable of walking any farther. In the hope of finding water, I continued my journey until the decline of day compelled me to encamp. We watched our bullocks as usual during the night, and I was distressed to find that another of them, a young but heavy beast, had suffered so much, that I feared he would soon have to be slaughtered, and the number ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... fifteen books), invitations to lecture or talk about birds kept pouring in. I was talking this over with Marion Harland (Mrs. Terhune), declaring I could never appear in public, that I should be frightened out of my wits, and that I must decline. My voice would all go, and my heart jump into my mouth. She exclaimed, 'For a sensible woman, you are the biggest fool I ever met!' This set me thinking, and with many misgivings ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... pretty scene. After the slope was a level of beautiful sward, with a circle of magnificent trees. Then another varying decline that ended at the river's edge, where rocked two or three gayly painted boats. There were two young fellows in the attire of the gallant of the day lolling on the grass, and a young man in Quaker ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... have been serviceable not only to their friends, but have made themselves terrible both to friends and enemies; but being without powder and shot, and yet in a condition that they could not in reason decline to go out with their landlords to their wars; so when they came into the field of battle they were in a worse condition than the savages themselves, for they had neither bows nor arrows, nor could they use those ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... what was the most rapid, if not the greatest money inflation that had occurred since the sixteenth century. The substitution of gold for silver by some countries at that time, by making a great additional market for gold, helped to check the fall in its value. Indeed, a considerable decline in the output of gold after 1870 combined with its widening use to cause in 1873 the beginning of a great fall of gold prices. The resulting increase in the burden of outstanding debts was felt by all debtors, but particularly by great numbers of the agricultural classes ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... such mismanagement as he deplores. He gave a most touching account of a young fellow who lay mortally wounded, where he had lain uncared-for with his companions the five days, and whom they were obliged to decline removing, as they had only room for a portion of the hopeful cases. After beseeching Mr. H. to see that he was removed, and entreating to know when and how he was ever to get home if they left him, he was ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... thing. But that is not quite the case. They were at first synonymous, so far as I can see; and after Albert's time, they again became so; but at the date where we now are, and for a long while back, they represent different entities, and indeed oftenest, since the Prussian DECLINE began, antagonistic ones. Teutschmeister, Sub-president over the GERMAN affairs and possessions of the Order, resides at Mergentheim in that Country: Hochmeister is Chief President of the whole, but resident at Marienburg in Preussen, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... faded. I think they will look better after a time. I had not the cruelty to decline to bring them, as Edith Linder and Teresa Peterson rose up this morning and gathered them in the dew to send you. I have brought our camp ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... I had had no further sight of him. I think I was at bottom rather ashamed—I hated to remind him that, though I had irremediably missed his point, a reputation for acuteness was rapidly overtaking me. This scruple led me a dance; kept me out of Lady Jane's house, made me even decline, when in spite of my bad manners she was a second time so good as to make me a sign, an invitation to her beautiful seat. I once became aware of her under Vereker's escort at a concert, and was sure I was seen by them, but I slipped out without being caught. I felt, as on that occasion I splashed ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... course, had never smoked in my life; and, humiliating though it was, found myself obliged to decline a "prime Havana," proffered in the daintiest of embroidered cigar-cases. My companion looked as if he pitied me. "You'll soon learn," said he. "A man can't live in Paris without tobacco. Do you stay ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... the gentlemen to the New House had been frequent. The saloon of the Grand Duke was open every evening, and in spite of his great distaste for the fatal amusement which was there invariably pursued, Vivian found it impossible to decline frequently attending without subjecting his motives to painful misconception. His extraordinary fortune did not desert him, and rendered his attendance still more a duty. The Baron was not so successful as on his first evening's venture at the Redoute; ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... time and leisure, it is possible to polish and rewrite your ideas until they are expressed in clear, concise terms. Pope sometimes spent a whole day in perfecting one couplet. Gibbon consumed twenty years gathering material for and rewriting the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Although you cannot devote such painstaking preparation to a speech, you should take time to eliminate useless words, crowd whole paragraphs into a sentence and choose proper illustrations. Good speeches, like plays, are not written; ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... can set him free. The first step in debt is like the first step in falsehood; almost involving the necessity of proceeding in the same course, debt following debt, as lie follows lie. Haydon, the painter, dated his decline from the day on which he first borrowed money. He realized the truth of the proverb, "Who goes a-borrowing, goes a-sorrowing." The significant entry in his diary is: "Here began debt and obligation, out of which I have never been and never shall be extricated as long as I live." His Autobiography ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... backsliding courses in principle and practice, from that reformation purity, both in church and state (which, as the attainment of the nations of Britain and Ireland, was by them accounted their chief ornament and glory), that have taken place, especially in this kingdom, since our woful decline commenced: whereby the witnesses for Scotland's covenanted reformation, have been deprived of any legal benefit, as well, since as before the late revolution; in which the reformation, neither ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... that he had not two legs. A man who is obliged to occupy a cobbler's bench day after day has no special need of legs at all. Everybody brought jobs to his door, and Dutton had as much work as he could do. At times, indeed, he was forced to decline a commission. He could hardly credit his senses when ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... independent and maintain the style to which you have been accustomed. With your frail health and need of exemption from care and toil, you must marry wealth. Your father is well satisfied that whoever allies himself to this Jocelyn family may soon have them all on his hands to support. We decline the risk of burdening ourselves with these unknown, uncongenial people. Is there anything unreasonable in that? Because you are fascinated by a pretty face, of which there are thousands in this city, must we be forced into intimate ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... the ambassadors nodded assent, and Dalberg continued, in a loud and solemn voice: "I have to inform the Diet that, as I am growing old and feel a sensible decline of my strength, I have deemed it indispensable for the welfare of Germany and myself to choose already a successor and coadjutor. Having long looked around among the noble and worthy men who surround me in so great numbers, ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... supplied. English is the language of the freest peoples in the world. It is only to be expected, therefore, that with the spread of English education in India the idea of individual freedom and the feeling of nationality should grow and the caste idea decline. The beginning of the process is often witnessed among the boys in Secondary Schools in India. You lay your hand upon the arm of a boy, a new-comer to the school, and you ask him in English, "What class?" He answers "Brahman," giving you his ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... that they made attempts at coitus which only differed from those of normal males by the failure of erection and ejaculation, though, occasionally, there was imperfect erection. This lasted for a year, and then their sexual inclinations began to decline, and they showed signs of premature age. These manifestations of sexual sense Steinach compares to those noted in the human species ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... hidden by the branches about him, and nothing but the snow and the tree trunks was forced upon his eye, except now and then a bit of blue seen through the branches—a blue that had lost much depth of colour with the decline of day, and come nearer earth—a pale cold blue that showed exquisite tenderness of contrast as seen through the dove-coloured grey ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... it was that indeed, and not any irresistible fate, which had been the cause of her ruin. To complete the misery, she herself was suspected of having stolen the silver cup which Rachel had pocketed. Her master, however, would not prosecute her, as she was falling into a deep decline, and she died in a few months of a broken heart, a sad warning to all ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... whom I speak," continued the magistrate, "is still young, and is rich. He will be only too happy to receive Mademoiselle Claire without a dowry. Not only will he decline an examination of your accounts of guardianship, but he will beg you to invest your fortune ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... last for ever, applied to the owner of the brig for employment; but he was decidedly refused. The loss of the vessel had soured his temper against any one who had belonged to her. He replied that he considered Newton to be an unlucky person, and must decline his sailing in any of his vessels, even ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and to make me the mother of many children; as if that was the highest attainment for a spiritual being; while still another offers me money, good things to eat and drink and wear, only what this body of mine seems in his eyes. No, I will have to decline all your offers, because you are under the illusion that I am ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... two or three weeks there was a decline in the energy of the volcano, but on the afternoon of Sunday, August 26th, and all through the following night, it was evident that the period of moderate eruptive action had passed, and that Krakatoa had now entered upon the paroxysmal stage. From ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... but only half-whispered ejaculations of "exquisite!" "sweet!" "beautiful!" Then came earnestly expressed wishes for another and another song, until the sisters, feeling at length that many must be wearied with their long continued occupation of the piano, felt themselves compelled to decline further invitations to sing. No one else ventured to touch a key of ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... Parliament. He at length repeated, in an emphatic tone, 'As many as are of opinion that this Bill do pass, say aye.' The affirmative was languid but indisputable; another momentary pause ensued; again his lips seemed to decline their office; at length, with an eye averted from the object which he hated, he proclaimed, with a subdued voice, 'The Ayes have it.' The fatal sentence was now pronounced; for an instant he stood statue-like; then indignantly, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... Thuggee reached its zenith during the anarchic period of the decline of the Mughal Empire, when only the strongest and most influential could obtain any assistance from the State in recovering property or exacting reparation for the deaths of murdered friends and relatives. Nevertheless, the Thugs could hardly have ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... he grew more bold, and soon became openly engaged to her. The romance is a sadly beautiful one; for this fair girl who was his inspiration during the years of his hardest struggles, finally fell into a decline and died just as he was beginning to earn the money that would have made ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... by any freight she might be offered at the port of her destination from Manilla, because the terms of her pass made it compulsory for her to return there before she could accept any new engagement such as might be offered her, and of course, in such a case, frequently forced them to decline most profitable business; consequently, the colonial shipowners found that they had to sail their vessels at a great disadvantage with all others who ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... years to his estate of La Brede, enjoying that solitude which a life in the tumult and hurry of the world but makes the more agreeable. He lived with himself, after having so long lived with others; and finished his work 'On the Cause of the Grandeur and Decline of the Romans,' which appeared ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... In Upper Egypt there is a widespread belief in the existence of a monstrous serpent, who dwells at the bottom of the river, and is the genius of the Nile. It is he who brings about those falls of earth (batabit) at the decline of the inundation which often destroy the banks and eat whole fields. At such times, offerings of durrah, fowls, and dates are made to him, that his hunger may be appeased, and it is not only the natives who give themselves ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... had been half talking and half shouting, now came stumbling and panting up over the edge of the wooded decline where the thick brush had played havoc with his scout suit but not with ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... itself. He could not understand the curious nature of his mistrust of this woman, nor could he understand the pleasure which her suggestion gave him. He wanted to refuse, and yet he was glad to be able to tell himself that he was, after all, but an employee of his firm and not in a position to decline business ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Uli begged his bride to go with him to the pastor, to get the certificate. Abashed, Freneli tried to decline, under the pretext that she did not know him, that it was unnecessary, and so on. But she went none the less, and no longer timorous, like a thief in the night, but as well becomes a happy woman at the side of an honest man. Freneli knew how ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... composed of the lowest characters, and could only be brought together by payment, they quickly retreated across the frontier at the first show of resistance. It is significant that these bands were in nearly all cases led by Montenegrins, a fact which indicates the decline of that spirit of military adventure to which the Haiduks of old (robbers) could at least lay some claim. Discreditable as these ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... physical force in the background—that a nation protects itself against foreign interference, upholds its rule over subject populations, and enforces its own laws. And nothing could in the end more certainly lead to war and revolt than the decline of the military spirit and loss of prestige which would inevitably follow if man admitted woman ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... the disease. A black spot then occurred, but without marks of inflammation, on one of the cheeks or lips. The whole cheek was sometimes destroyed, and the lower jaw fell down upon the breast. Muriatic acid, infusion of roses, the effervescing draught, and, in the decline of the disease, bark, broths, jellies, and wine, besides magnesia or rhubarb, to remove the putrid matters swallowed, were the internal remedies employed. The parts were washed and injected with muriatic acid, diluted with chamomile or sage tea; and afterwards dressed with the ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... Statesmen, the wise and great and good who were admitted to the Mysteries, long postponed their ultimate self-destruction, and restrained the natural tendencies of the Priesthood. And accordingly Zosimus thought that the neglect of the Mysteries after Diocletian abdicated, was the chief cause of the decline of the Roman Empire; and in the year 364, the Proconsul of Greece would not close the Mysteries, notwithstanding a law of the Emperor Valentinian, lest the people should be driven to desperation, if prevented from performing them; upon which, as they believed, the welfare of mankind wholly depended. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... did as in their subtle reactions to the civilization about them. In Gloria had been born something that she had hitherto never needed—the skeleton, incomplete but nevertheless unmistakable, of her ancient abhorrence, a conscience. This admission to herself was coincidental with the slow decline of ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... need not decline; you will have to know Terpy. I am virtue itself; in fact, I am Joseph—nowadays. You know, I belong to the cloth?" Keith's expression indicated that he had heard this fact. "But even I have yielded to her ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... of trustful expectation he does not again decline. Prayer has brought its chiefest blessing—the peace that passeth understanding. The foe is lost to sight, the fear conquered conclusively by faith; the psalm which begins with a plaintive cry, ends in praise for deliverance, as if it had ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... latter part of the afternoon, to view its antipodes. The circumstances and the hour were not inappropriate. Sated with the most perfect display of luxury and taste which the present age can boast, and somewhat weary with the toil of sight-seeing, a six-mile drive, the gradual decline of the summer day, the shadows gathering over the landscape, all acted as a gentle narcotic, and were a fit preparative for our approach to that old, deserted homestead, the first glimpse of which set my fancy roaming, and carried me away into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... was published, and at the end of this month, laid aside by sickness of the vague kind called locally "a decline," she took to her bed, rising only to lay a few sticks upon the fire from her store gathered in the autumn, or to brew herself a cup of tea. She waited for the tokens of her book's conquests in the great ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... leviathan, died out of the minds of the whalemen as a body. There are those this day among them, who, though intelligent and courageous enough in offering battle to the Greenland or Right whale, would perhaps—either from professional inexperience, or incompetency, or timidity, decline a contest with the Sperm Whale; at any rate, there are plenty of whalemen, especially among those whaling nations not sailing under the American flag, who have never hostilely encountered the Sperm Whale, but whose sole knowledge of ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... his whole family as well as himself. It would also serve his son, who was blessed with a third property of his own which he had already managed to burden with debt. The father could not bear to be refused; and he feared that his son would decline. 'But Adolphus wants money as much as any one,' Lady Pomona had said. He had shaken his head, and pished and pshawed. Women never could understand anything about money. Now he walked down sadly from Mr Melmotte's office ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... righteousness had one weakness, the love of gambling, which was one of the besetting sins of the monarchs of the day. Sakuni was an expert at false dice, and challenged Yudhishthir, and Yudhishthir held it a point of honour not to decline such a challenge. ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... we made. Some biscuit was given them which they pretended to eat, but on our looking aside were observed to spit it out. They wished much to take us to their huts; but, the day being much advanced without our having made any progress, we were obliged to decline their invitation; and as soon as the boat was reloaded we took leave of these friendly Indians, whose voices we heard until a turn of the river hid their persons from our view. About two miles higher, at King's River,* Lieutenant ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... represented at Manchester out of all proportion to its worth, in comparison with the earlier and greater schools of Italy. It is essentially the school of decline, and, after the time of Francia, very few pictures proceeded from it dignified by noble thought, or exhibiting either purity or power of imagination. Its very method condemned it to inferiority. But debased as it is, it has been during the last two centuries the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... labours. Sir, I hope to see you presently after Candlemas; about which time will fall my Lent Sermon at Court, except my Lord Chamberlain believe me to be dead, and so leave me out of the roll: but as long as I live, and am not speechless, I would not willingly, decline that service. I have better leisure to write, than you to read; yet I would not willingly oppress you with too much letter. God so bless you and your son, as ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... come fast enough after a while. We are all tired of the sea just now," said Jack. "What about Captain Bonnet and meeting him at Sullivan's Island to pass the word that we must decline his courteous invitation?" ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... head; and the librarian proceeded to tell the tale as he had heard it from his predecessor in the same post, who had been his patron and instructor, and whom he seemed to trust implicitly. Up to a certain point it was a common enough tale of the decline of a great family's fortunes—the tale of a family lawyer. His lawyer, however, had the sense to cheat honestly, if the expression explains itself. Instead of using funds he held in trust, he took advantage ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... what woman has not?) desire to see him married. As he showed no sign of doing so, they tried to console themselves by pretending that he had some secret romance. Old ladies hoped he had a broken heart for some fiancee who was lying under the daisies, having died of decline in the classical middle-Victorian way. Young ladies thought that he was probably fixed up in some way that would be sure in time to dissolve, and that he would marry later on. Far the most popular theory ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... the same paper. It happened that a benefit was arranged for some charity. "Nan, the Good-for-Nothing," was to be given by a number of amateurs. The Nan asked me to play Tom, and I had insufficient firmness to decline. After the play, when my face was reasonably clean, I dropped into the Call office, yearning for a word of commendation from Harte. I thought he knew that I had taken the part, but he would not give me the satisfaction of referring to it. Finally I mentioned, casually like, that I was ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... home-made jam. It was a farm-house tea, and to Philip very quaint and charming in that Jacobean house. Athelny for some fantastic reason took it into his head to discourse upon Byzantine history; he had been reading the later volumes of the Decline and Fall; and, his forefinger dramatically extended, he poured into the astonished ears of the suitor scandalous stories about Theodora and Irene. He addressed himself directly to his guest with a torrent of rhodomontade; and the young man, ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... thou the young year's blossoms and the fruits of its decline, And all by which the soul is charmed, enraptured, feasted, fed? Would'st thou the Earth and Heaven itself in one sole name combine? I name thee, O [S']akoontala! and all ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... that. To begin in unclouded promise of happiness, to decline to searching and unusual experience of sorrow, and then, by self-discipline and obedience, to attain your present altitude of tranquillity and assurance of faith, is surely a greater trial, a greater triumph, than to begin with difficulties, with much, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... lakes and rivers, extend in stately grandeur along the plains, and stretch proudly up to the very summits of the mountains. It is impossible to exaggerate the autumnal beauty of these forests; nothing under heaven can be compared to its effulgent grandeur. Two or three frosty nights in the decline of autumn transform the boundless verdure of a whole empire into every possible tint of brilliant scarlet, rich violet, every shade of blue and brown, vivid crimson, and glittering yellow. The stern, inexorable fir tribes alone maintain their eternal somber green. ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... When a tree stops growing, our foresters tell us, it is ripe for the ax. When a man stops in his physical and intellectual growth he begins to decay. When a business stops growing it is in danger of decline. When a nation stops growing it has passed the meridian of its course, and its ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... reason I have stated, gentlemen, I decline to resign," he said. "I stand upon my ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... returning Cesare an offer of accommodation for his men with victuals, artillery, etc., but without the concession of Castel Bolognese. With this Cesare was forced to be content, there being no reasonable grounds upon which he could decline so generous an offer. It was a cunning concession on Bentivogli's part, for, without strengthening the duke's position, it yet gave the latter what he ostensibly required, and left no cause for grievance and no grounds upon which to molest Bologna. So much was this the case that on February ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... of mine he appeared somewhat ashamed, and answered me: 'It is true that such a thought passed through my mind one day, when the king offered to show me his fleet. I answered that I hoped to see it some day, and then quietly retired, in order to escape from the embarrassment of being obliged to decline, point blank, the offer, should ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... &c.; Sardis, the dreary void of the dark ages, the "ready to die;" Philadelphia, the rise of Protestantism, "an open door, a little strength;" and Laodicea, (the riches of civilization choking the plant of Christianity,) its decline, and, but for the Founder's second coming, its fall; if, indeed, this ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... judged me as I judged myself. I recalled to mind the Archbishop of Granada, and I thought I could hear Gil Blas predicting the failure of my works. We can not dismiss the public as we can our secretary; meanwhile, I surrendered to a too severe justice in order to decline others' opinions. A horrible thought suddenly came into my mind; my artistic life was ended, I was a worn-out man; in one word, to picture my situation in a trivial but correct manner, I had reached the end ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... voluminous. But I may venture to say, in general terms, that no man hath written in our language so much, and so various matter, and in so various manners so well. Another thing I may say very peculiar to him, which is, that his parts did not decline with his years, but that he was an improving writer to his last, even to near seventy years of age, improving even in fire and imagination, as well as in judgment; witness his Ode on St Cecilia's Day, and his ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... with him only his own squadron, consisting of forty-four ships of the line. But he had received positive orders to protect the descent on England, and not to decline a battle. Though these orders had been given before it was known at Versailles that the Dutch and English fleets had joined, he was not disposed to take on himself the responsibility of disobedience. He still remembered with bitterness the reprimand which his ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... himself putting us somewhat on our guard concerning his feelings towards England; for, not only does he decline to forgive her the occupation of Cape Colony, but also her triumph over ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... and sat watching the tape as the ticker champed it out and soon he saw Navajoa. It had been quoted at thirty-two and a half, but this sale was made at thirty. He watched it decline to twenty-eight, and twenty-five, and soon it was down to ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... to animal productions; for example, in the southern parts of the continent the Xanthorrea affords an inexhaustible supply of fragrant grubs, which an epicure would delight in, when once he has so far conquered his prejudices as to taste them; whilst in proceeding to the northward, these trees decline in health and growth, until about the parallel of Gantheaume Bay they totally disappear, and even a native finds himself cut off from his ordinary supplies of insects; the same circumstances taking place ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... brief halt for refreshment, and about an hour before midday advantage was taken of a great mango tope for another halt; but as soon as the sun began to decline we were off again, with the track ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... lives of reformers, Tolstoy found himself more often in affinity with strangers than with his own kin. The estrangement of his ideals from those of his wife necessarily affected their conjugal relations, and the decline of mutual sympathy inevitably induced physical alienation. The stress of mental anguish arising from these conditions found vent in pages of his diaries (much of which I have been permitted to read), pages containing matter too sacred and intimate to use. The diaries ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... assumed on Fast Day that one should criticise only what he saw. I have never understood that Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" is any the less good because he did not live in the first few centuries of the Christian era, or that Jomini could write any less well of Frederick than of Napoleon. Service certainly helps a man in his researches or work, but it only helps. The best critic ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... anything but a temporary, passing state, due to a little over-production and soon to end, is not a cheerful task, and it is made less so by those who, having never looked for themselves, pronounce all such statements either sensational or the work of a morbid and excited imagination. The majority decline to take time to see for themselves. The few who have done so need no further argument, and are ready to admit that no words can exaggerate, or, indeed, ever really tell in full the real wretchedness that is plain for all who will look. But, ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... grounds, and I do not wish to interfere with your plans; but I must ask you to obtain another gardener. I have a reputation at stake, and this work, if I do it even at your direction, will be considered as a specimen of my taste and of my planning, so that I must in justice to myself, decline remaining in your employment." This too, would be right, though probably, both in the business of gardening and of teaching, the case ought to be a strong one, to ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... was not the end. Among other spoils, Lige had made capture of a Comanche mustang; and as his own war-horse had been for a long time on the decline, this afforded him an excellent opportunity for a remount. Some duty of the day had called him forth, and he now appeared in the piazza leading the mustang, to which he had transferred his own saddle and bridle. A fine handsome horse it appeared. More than one ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... that Jud shut his lips tight together as though making up his mind on the spot to decline absolutely to pay a cent for what had been a sheer accident, and which had already cost ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... always a grateful employment; but to leave his home for months, and to be engaged in the monotonous routine of deliberative bodies, was most distasteful to him; but, true to the great maxim of his life—never to seek or to decline a public trust—he accepted the appointment; and took his seat in the early part of January, 1825. A casual view of his career in that body, which extended from 1825 to 1833—a period of nearly eight years—during which he held, at least in the estimation ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... dated his decline from the hour of his son's defection. He had not been brought to this pass by any rashness in speculation, or by any flaw whatever in his original scheme. But his original scheme had taken for granted Keith's collaboration. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... But, though we decline painting the scene, it is not our intention to conceal from the world the frailty of Mr. Booth, or of his fair partner, who certainly past that evening in a manner inconsistent with the strict rules of ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... children, for they had heard the melancholy news. After that, he had to tell them all the particulars about the accident, which caused him to shed tears, to repel all the proffered attentions which they sought to thrust upon him merely because he was wealthy, and to decline even the breakfast they wanted him to partake of, thus wounding ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... have both praised them, and praised them coldly, on this very account, that they have travelled half-way, and only half-way, towards the region of "high a priori" speculation. With M. Cousin's permission, the Scotch come of quite another house. His praise we should beg leave to decline: he may carry it to Alexandria, if he will. The method of philosophising pursued in Germany is fundamentally different from that which happily obtains in Scotland. No two schools of philosophy could resemble each other ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... long. Every change of this sort requires to be made cautiously, and by degrees. In general, all clothes should be light and easy, and in no instance ought health and comfort to be sacrificed to pride and vanity. In the early part of life it is not necessary to wear many clothes: but in the decline of life, when many diseases proceed from a defect of perspiration, plenty of warm clothing is required. Attention should also be paid to the constitution, in this as well as in other cases. Some persons can endure either cold or heat better than others, and may therefore ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... principal scholarship. He was extremely well read in English poetry; and he would in his walk review a poem or a poet with admirable precision and fairness. He did not intrude his own poetry or himself, but he did not decline to talk about either; and he spoke of both simply, unboastingly, and yet with a manly consciousness of their worth. It was clear he thought he had achieved a high place among poets: it had been the aim of his life, humanly ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... asked what will be the result of the arrangement that we have made. I decline to speculate or prophesy on that point. It would be indecent and improper. I cannot even tell in this country at the next election how large the Liberal majority will be. Still less would I recommend hon. gentlemen here to forecast the results of contests in which they will not be candidates. ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... struggled, and which, notwithstanding the assurances given to me, and the efforts of its partisans to conceal it, is day by day gaining strength, to the despair of every enlightened Turkish statesman, to the prejudice of our relations with this country, and to the visible decline of those improvements which, in my humble judgment, can alone avert the dissolution ...
— Correspondence Relating to Executions in Turkey for Apostacy from Islamism • Various
... had just been taunting the old gentleman with being afraid to sleep on his own domain, and as the eyes of all the tavern loungers were on him he could hardly decline so flattering a proposition, so, after some hemming and hawing, he said he would take the Quaker at his word. He played but two or three more tunes that evening, did Peter Matthews, and played them rather sadly; then, as Quidd had finished ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... are strongly brought out in our material. The first, and apparently most important, is the necessity of offering liquor and food, both to strangers and to guests (p. 58). Refusal is so keenly resented that in one instance a couple decline to allow their daughter to marry a man whose emissaries reject this gift (p. 73). Old quarrels are closed by the tender of food or drink, and friendships are cemented by the drinking of basi [24] (p. ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... though not at all anxious for fame, but modestly willing to decline it, had not been successful—though he worked so much by night—in preserving sweet obscurity. His character was public, and set on high by fortune, to be gazed at from wholly different points of view. From their narrow and lime-eyed outlook the coast-guard ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... eagerly into my face. "Very well, then; I will answer in a few words, if facts were as you so confidently state them to be, I might possibly be induced to cast in my lot with yours; but, fortunately for humanity, they are not so, and I must therefore most emphatically decline." ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... "poor girl—poor girl—deep decline, wasted, terribly wasted," said he, as he returned from the railing of the altar—piece, where he had been to look down upon the body; and then, as if there never had been such a being as poor Maria Olivera in existence, he continued, "Pray, Mr Bang, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... us hear him decline it!" cried Harry, in an ecstasy. "Oppossum, opottis, opposse, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... three greatest producers—South Africa, United States, and Australia,—reached the acme of its production, and output then fell off. Simultaneously there was a marked decrease of production in many of the less important districts. This general decline was due in considerable part to the fact that during the war the price of gold was fixed and its use restricted to monetary purposes. The price of gold, which is itself the standard of value, could not rise to offset ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... then said I had better just name a hint of her death to you, and away they went. Her death might have been brought on by biding in the night wind, you know, ma'am; for people used to say she'd go off in a decline: she used to cough a good deal in winter time. However, 'tisn't much odds to us about that now, for ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... exportations, the once flourishing trade of Kingston has, of course, decreased. But it marks the eagerness of some to turn everything to the discredit of emancipation, that this decline is commonly attributed entirely to that event, no notice being taken of the fact that Kingston was once the entrepot of a flourishing trade between Europe and the Spanish Main, which, having, in 1816, shipping to the amount of 199,894 tons, and having risen in 1828 to 254,290 tons, had in 1830, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... their brethren were scandalized by this equitable and generous criticism. Spanheim and L'Enfant attempted to save this poor engine of controversy, and even Mosheim condescends to cherish some doubt and suspicion."—The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. xlix. Spanheim's work, Joanna Papissa Restituta, was printed at Leyden ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... me with her winsome ways, and I learned to look on her as the blithe spirit whose artless wiles won me to forget a bitter past and a regretful present." I paused; and then added, with a smile, "But, in our wise schemes, we have overlooked one point: Effie does not love me, and may decline the future you desire me to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... thousands and tens of thousands of hand-bills at the ferries. No task was ever more welcome. I went to the trustees man by man. The majority of the trustees very cheerfully accorded the permission. One or two of them were disposed to decline and withhold it. I made it a matter of personal friendship. "You and I will break, if you don't give me this permission." And they signed. So the meeting glided from the Graham Institute to this house. ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... survived. They saw the Egyptians go, the Assyrians go, the Greeks go, the late Romans go, the Moors in Spain go—all the artistic peoples perish. They remained triumphing over all. Now at last their long-belated apogee is here; their decline is at hand. I am told that in this present generation in Europe the Jews are producing a great lot of young painters and sculptors and actors, just as for a century they have been producing famous composers and musicians. That means the end ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... very kind; but my time is so occupied that I have long since made it a rule to decline all private invitations out of my own home. At my years, Mr. Mayor, one may be excused for taking leave of society and its forms; but you are comparatively young men. I presume on the authority of these gray hairs, and I shall expect you this evening,—say ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his Cabinet about money; they declaring they would advance no more, it being discoursed of in the House of Parliament for the King to issue out his privy-seals to them to command them to trust him, which gives them reason to decline trusting. But more money they are persuaded to lend, but so little that (with horrour I speake it), coming after the Council was up, with Sir G. Carteret, Sir W. Coventry, Lord Bruncker, and myself, I did lay ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... literary history has not received the attention it deserves; and the future investigator will find a rich field in his researches for the causes of the expansion of the novel in the nineteenth century simultaneous with the decline of the drama in the literature of almost every modern language ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... not decline to answer before the throne of God. For you and Tom will meet yonder. Good God, man, did you ever think of that? Did it ever occur to you that you and Tom will take your last ride in the same conveyance, and have the same upholstery in the tomb? And somebody else's filly will be making ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... from God to say, "Karl, thou shalt summon thine empire's host, And march in haste to Bira's coast; Unto Impha city relief to bring, And succor Vivian, the Christian king. The heathens in siege have the town essayed, And the shattered Christians invoke thine aid." Fain would Karl such task decline. "God! what a life of toil is mine!" He wept; his hoary ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... during the recumbent state of the body, the fluid, that was accumulated in the cellular membrane, or in the lungs, is more readily absorbed, as it is less impeded by its gravity. I have seen more than one instance of this disease. Mr. D. a man in the decline of life, who had long accustomed himself to spirituous liquor, had swelled legs, and other symptoms of approaching anasarca; about once in a week, or ten days, for several months, he was seized, on going to bed, with great general uneasiness, which ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... lust for the bowl decline, Nor my love for my good long bow; For as bow to the shaft and as bowl to the wine, Is a maid to ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... the standard for prose writing from 1745 onward. This century saw the beginnings of the modern novel, in Fielding's Tom Jones, Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe, Sterne's Tristram Shandy, and Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. Gibbon wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Hume his History of England, and Adam Smith ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... as Sancho Panza said, there cometh in the end satiety. The neighbours, after several years of refreshing colloquial combat, felt an alarming decline of virility and the approach of an anaemic peace. Their arguments grew monotonous, remote, repetitious, amounting to little more than a bald statement of position: "Here I stand"—"There you stand"—"There ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... remained with him. Captain Sayres engaged in this enterprise merely as a matter of business. I, too, was to be paid for my time and trouble,—an offer which the low state of my pecuniary affairs, and the necessity of supporting my family, did not allow me to decline. But this was not, by any means, my sole or principal motive. I undertook it out of sympathy for the enslaved, and from my desire to do something to further the cause of universal liberty. Such being the different ground upon which Sayres and myself stood, I did not think it necessary ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... raged as usual in the Holy Roman Empire. There was, of course, a section of German nobles who opposed Charles and who on the death of King Louis offered the imperial crown to the victor of Crecy. Edward III was wise enough to decline, influenced, it is said, by a mission which Charles had sent to England; what is more, a treaty of alliance was arranged between these two countries, and this, to my thinking, had far-reaching effects on their future relations, intermittent but ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... singularly adaptable one or we wouldn't have survived so long, Jim, or gone so far in our particular direction. It's lack of fertility, not lack of enterprise, that's responsible for our decline. And I think your species must be an adaptable one, too; you just haven't really tried. Oh, James, let us reverse the classical roles—let me be the Apollo to your Daphne! Don't let Phyllis stand in our way. The Greek gods never let a little thing ...
— The Venus Trap • Evelyn E. Smith
... had laid the basis of his fortune in steamboats, he was the first man to appreciate the fact that these two methods of transportation were about to change places—that water transportation was to decline and that rail transportation was to gain the ascendancy. It was about 1865 that Vanderbilt acted on this farsighted conviction, promptly sold out his steamboats for what they would bring, and began buying railroads despite the fact that his friends warned him that, in his old age, ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... being able to take the public affairs of the country as seriously as the incidental atrocity of methods deserved. She saw in them a comedy of naive pretences, but hardly anything genuine except her own appalled indignation. Charles, very quiet and twisting his long moustaches, would decline to discuss them at all. Once, however, he observed ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... he lay at Death's door for a week with resulting cholera-morbus, she relented not. So the experiment went on, till a list of casualties that numbered in it fatal accidents to three kittens, two hens and a rooster, and at last Pink himself, who was pent into a decline by repeated drenchings from the watering-pot, put an end to her forbearance, and she instituted in her viziership the old man who had now kept his office so long,—a queer, withered, slow, humorous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... adjutant, who, owing to the exigencies of duty, was obliged to decline the Colonel's offer of a seat at table, the luncheon-party broke up, and the Colonel made apologies to his guest for being unable, under existing circumstances, to devote more time to him. His officers accompanied him, and soon after Mrs. Baird was also called ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... and I have been asked to treat it as transcendentalism, and—I am inclined to think—in a perverted sense of that term. Can I be expected to hold my religion up for ridicule? I do not refuse the appointment to write a paper; it is the subject that I decline." ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... plain truth at once, Mary. I shall go over myself with it, and see the earl. Then I will decline it or not, according to what passes between me and him. I wish ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... and we submit to the gloomy inevitable fact of decay and death. But to see our rose of roses, the pride and glory of the garden, fade and perish in its midsummer prime, is a calamity inexplicable and mysterious. Diana watched her father's decline with a sense of natural sorrow and pity; but there was neither surprise nor horror in the thought that for him the end of all things was drawing nigh. How different was it with Charlotte—with that happy soul for whom life and love wore ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... firm, energetic resolve, she took the roll of parchment and handed it back to Catharine. "Queen, take this parchment back again; return it to my father, and tell him that I thank him for his provident goodness, but will decline the brilliant lot which this act offers me. I love freedom so much, that even a royal crown cannot allure me when I am to receive it with my hands bound ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... his decline, and the evening remarkably serene, when he entered a hollow part of the road, which winded between the surrounding banks, and seamed the sward in different lines, as the choice of travellers had ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... that my maternal interest in your welfare, and my devoted efforts to serve you, are only rewarded with furious looks. The less we see of each other the better. Permit me to thank you for your invitation, and to decline accompanying you when you leave Mount Morven tomorrow." Mrs. Linley answered the note in person. The next day Kitty's grandmother—ripe for more mischief—altered her mind, and thoroughly enjoyed her journey to ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... of pique and disappointment, when she realised that Denis Quirk was impervious to her attractions, Sylvia Jackson suddenly awoke to a new interest in life. At the moment she was hesitating between an interesting decline and a fearful vendetta. But this did not deter her from attending the Grey Town Intellectual Society's lecture on Art and Artists, which was delivered by George Custance, R.A., nor did it prevent the lecturer from fascinating ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... kinder thin and some changed, so ye didn't know me," said Reuben, with a feeble smile. "Ye see I've been here a year, and am going into a decline. I sent word home to have father ask Deacon Nash if he wouldn't let me go home to be nussed up by mother. I should get rugged again if I could have a little o' mother's nussin. P'raps ye've come to take me home, Perez?" And a faint gleam of ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... "I decline to give an opinion upon the gentleman's part in the business," answered Clementina, laughing, but glad there was so little light in the room, for she was painfully conscious of the burning of her cheeks. "Besides, ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... to apply at the nearest town here, to the first respectable solicitor you could find, he would tell you as a stranger what I tell you as a friend. He would inform you that it is against all rule to abandon the lady's money entirely to the man she marries. He would decline, on grounds of common legal caution, to give the husband, under any circumstances whatever, an interest of twenty thousand pounds in his ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... interrupted Trujano, with a smile, "it is a bad plan to borrow from one for the purpose of paying another. I could not think of accepting a loan. It is not from pride, but a sense of duty that I decline your generous offer; and I hope you will not be offended. The sum I owe is not a very heavy one—a few hundred dollars. Since it has pleased God that my mules should find a shelter in the stables of Don Mariano, and thus escape the inundation, I can now take the road through the mountains ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... Crati valley and the Ionian; thenceforward my walk would be a descent along the Trionto river, the Traeis of old, as far as Longo-bucco which overlooks its flood. It was cool here at last, from the altitude and the decline of day; and hay-making was going on, amid the pastoral din of cow-bells and a good deal ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... the cottage which we are going to visit has never got over the death of one of his children. The eldest boy, he was only a lad, would try to do a man's work last harvest-tide; it was beyond his strength, and before the autumn was out he died of a decline. This is the first case of really strong fatherly love that has come under my notice. As a rule, when their children die, the peasant's regret is for the loss of a useful chattel, and a part of their stock-in-trade, and the older the child, the heavier their sense of loss. A ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... misspend, fritter away, dissipate, dawdle; desolate, devastate, despoil, sack, pillage, ravage, strip; decline, decay, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... of Shalmaneser the Assyrian prestige was maintained at a high level by dint of the same lavish bloodshed and truculent energy; but towards the eighth century it began to decline. There was then a period of languor and decadence, some echo of which, and of its accompanying disasters, seems to have been embodied by the Greeks in the romantic tale of Sardanapalus. No shadow of confirmation for the story of a first destruction of Nineveh is to be found in ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... the Great Lakes and the Mississippi, ruled by priests in the interest of Catholicity and of France. Their habits of agriculture would have been developed, and their instincts of mutual slaughter repressed. The swift decline of the Indian population would have been arrested; and it would have been made, through the fur-trade, a source of prosperity to New France. Unmolested by Indian enemies, and fed by a rich commerce, she would have put ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... in Marston's feelings observed and provided against,—every stage of the crop carefully watched. Graspum, however, had secured himself in the real estate, and gave little heed to the epidemic that was carrying off the negro property. Finally, to pass over several stages in the decline of Marston's affairs, the ravages of the disease continued until but forty-three negroes, old and young, were left on the old homestead. The culminating point had arrived. He was in the grasp of Graspum, and nothing could save him from utter ruin. It had lately been proved that the Rovero family, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... myself laughing, singing, praying, apostrophising the sun, the clouds, the distant land, and even the spirits of my drowned companions, whom I imagined to be crowding round me and trying to drag me off the floating hatch. I was aware, in a vague, impersonal fashion, of the gradual decline of the sun toward the west, of his disappearance beneath the horizon, and of the fact that just as the outlines of the land ahead were fading into the gathering darkness a small spark of light sprang into view somewhere in the direction that I was ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... quotations of theirs, however brief, as their practical endorsement of all the twelve verses: to infer from their general recognition of the passage, that the Church in her collective capacity accepted it likewise. As I have shewn, the Fathers decline, almost to a man, to return any answer. But,—Are we then without the Church's authoritative guidance on this subject? For this, I repeat, is the only thing of which we are in search. It was only in order to get at this that we adopted the laborious expedient of watching for ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... for you both. I merely asked you for the sake of politeness, und I wass glad to hear you decline. But as for me, I am old enough to be your father, und I will ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... might, if he could, hire another to aid him; otherwise, he must remain in his place till the work was done. ] These festins manger tout were much dreaded by many of the Hurons, who, however, were never known to decline them. ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... days passed by, and no answer came. At length two appeared by the same post. One was from the orphans' uncle, stating that he had children of his own, and that he had long ceased to have any communication with his brother. He must therefore decline interfering in the matter. The other contained the words:—"Lord Heatherly presents his compliments to Mr Davenport, and not having been personally acquainted with the late Mr Heathfield for many years, must decline in any way interfering ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... widow, mother, relatives, mates of the fire department, and his other friends, (I was one, only lately it is true, but our love grew fast and close, the days and nights of those eight weeks by the chair of rapid decline, and the bed of death,) gather'd to the funeral of this young man, who had grown up, and was well-known here. With nothing special, perhaps, to record, I would give a word or two to his memory. He seem'd ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... and remote, and indisposed to be of service to an alien sister. Roads are infrequent and most bridges have broken down. No bridge has been repaired since the later seventeenth century, and no new bridge has been made since the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. There are no shops at all. The scenery is magnificent but precipitous, and many of the high roads are difficult to trace. And there is rain. In Albania there is sometimes ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... the Gentleman who left the enclosed to forward it the earliest opportunity, as he said it was of consequence. Mr. P—— called the day after you left town. My mother and myself are much obliged by your kind offer of tickets to the play, but must decline accepting it. My family send their best respects, in which they ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... of the profession. In the hour of battle it was not these, but the tone and efficiency of the officers, that chiefly told. A false pattern of action had been accepted at a moment favorable to its perpetuation, when naval warfare on the grand scale had ceased, owing to the decline of the principal enemy, the navy of France; while the average competency of naval officers had been much lowered through want of professional incentive, and the absence of any sifting process by which the unfit could be surely eliminated. That plenty of good material existed, was sufficiently ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... thus for an hour before dinner, and then for three hours in the evening, and produced a very legible copy of half a chapter of the 'Decline ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... their correct selection and arrangement for the purpose of promulgation by speech or writing, and which is very properly termed composition. When we reflect, that from our infancy to the natural decline of our intellectual powers, we are employed, during our waking hours, in the exercise of language;[8]—by conversation, often desultory, where we range through a variety of topics, as the bird sports from branch to twig; to the more deliberate act of composition, where ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... being under the law of growth, is, in all its parts, subject to the consequent necessity of decline. And very swiftly does the direction change from ascending to descending. At first, and for a little while, the motion of the dancing stream, which broadens as it runs, and bears us past fields each ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... me, Bishop; but you are asking too much. I ran away from the Boers because I was a snob. I run away from the Beadle for the same reason. I absolutely decline ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... met with great cordiality; and Johnson soon gave him the same sad account of their school-fellow, Congreve, that he had given to Mr. Hector; adding a remark of such moment to the rational conduct of a man in the decline of life, that it deserves to be imprinted upon every mind: 'There is nothing against which an old man should be so much upon his guard as putting himself to nurse. Innumerable have been the melancholy instances of men once distinguished for firmness, resolution, and spirit, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... were built everywhere, and before the end of the thirteenth century, the most splendid Gothic buildings were begun or completed. With the end of the thirteenth century Gothic architecture began to decline, lured by the "fascination of the statical tour de force, the craving to bring down to an irreducible minimum the amount of material that would suffice to the stability of a building ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... present dared to cope with the decline of so large a subject, the Colonel had the floor. He looked at each man in turn; then waved the hand that held his cigar airily towards the ceiling. "Just inbreeding, sir, inbreeding. That's what did it. We Americans, are profiting by the experience of the ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... education of women. George Page knew her at the time of his marriage. I do not mean that he paid her serious attention then, but he had the opportunity to ask her instead of the other. Now, when she has become absorbed in her life-work, she would naturally decline to give it up unless she felt sure that she could not be ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... wish. The Minister who founded these pensions intended them, I believe, to be marks of honour which even proud men might accept without compromise of independence. When, however, the intimation first reached Faraday in an unofficial way, he wrote a letter announcing his determination to decline the pension; and stating that he was quite competent to earn his livelihood himself. That letter still exists, but it was never sent, Faraday's repugnance having been overruled by his friends. When Lord Melbourne came into office, he desired to see Faraday; and probably ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... Zack found words in which to express himself, and used them pretty freely to praise his new friend's unexampled generosity, and to decline taking a single farthing. Mat deliberately lit his pipe, in the first place, and then bluntly answered ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... straw-thatched cabins upon the lands of masters who paid no wage. When there was rebellion, these masters knew how to deal punishment swift and sure; when there was submission, they gave kindness and reward. Had Rome not been as strong as even in her decline she was, Romans could not have held Britain as long as they did. For on sea and land, on the verge of the civilization they maintained, were restless tribes, Scots, Picts, and Saxons, seizing every pretext, every moment of ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... made up it should, within a few days, warm to a temperature of 110 deg. to 120 deg.. Carefully observe this, and never spawn a bed when the heat is rising, or when it is warmer than 100 deg., but always when it is on the decline and under 90 deg.. In this there is perfect safety. Have a ground thermometer and keep it plunged in the bed; by pulling it out and looking at it one can know exactly the temperature of the bed. Have a few straight, ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... log-drivers. His wife and daughters make extensive visits to Europe, his sons go to some university, and he himself is likely to acquire political position, or to devote his energies to saving the town from industrial decline, as the timber is cut away, by transforming it into a manufacturing center for more finished products. Still others continue their activity among the forests of the South. This social history of the timber areas of Wisconsin has left clear indications in the development of the peculiar political ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... suppression of the monasteries tended in no slight degree to hasten the decline and fall of our ancient church architecture, to which other causes, such as the revival of the classic orders in Italy, also contributed. The churches belonging to the conventual foundations, which had been built at different periods ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... can depend upon Fran Van der Werff too. At first she wanted to decline, but when I proposed a pretty madrigal, yielded and took ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... hasty, that her scheme involved too great a risk and that, after all, she had better abandon it. But each time she changed her mind and at last fell asleep determining not to think any more about it, but to wait until Mr. Cobb came to accept or decline the mortgage. Then she ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... I do not see any very serious inconvenience likely to arise from it, sir," said the doctor: "only I maintain that the cure is not so complete as it might have been, and, on this subject, I decline all responsibility for ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... proportions, and qualities, according to which they act for a time, after a given mode; these are afterwards taken from them, to make them act after a different manner. It is thus that Nature makes them expand and change, grow and decline, augment and diminish, approximate and remove, forms and destroys them, according as she finds it requisite to maintain the whole; towards the conservation which this Nature is herself essentially necessitated ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... worshiping the same Jehovah, are disputing with each other, and indeed, amongst themselves, with regard to the various attributes, amorous pursuits, and lineal descendants of the Godhead. Jehovah himself appears to be on the decline and his unity is steadily disintegrating into a paradoxical trinity. But we are progressing, for in 1300 years no new prophet has arisen, and no new divine revelation is perturbing our race; the old ones, however, are causing quite ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... the observance of the ordinances of religion is the cause of the greatness of a State, so their neglect is the occasion of its decline; since a kingdom without the fear of God must either fall to pieces, or must be maintained by the fear of some prince who supplies that influence not supplied by religion. But since the lives of princes are short, the life of this prince, also, and with it his influence, must soon come to an ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... Royal Service School for Officers' Daughters having been designed by the authorities to fit the girls for the next world only, Beth could not dance. She had had some lessons at Miss Blackburne's, but not enough to give her confidence, so she was obliged to decline. Another and another would-be partner, and some quite important people, as Dan said, offered, but in vain; ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... of the Ducal Palace, then, represents the state of Gothic work in Venice at its central and proudest period, i. e. circa 1350. After this time, all is decline,—of what nature and by what steps, we shall inquire in the ensuing chapter; for as this investigation, though still referring to Gothic architecture, introduces us to the first symptoms of the Renaissance influence, I have considered it as properly belonging to the third division ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... neglect of important public duties. The bonded indebtedness of these States began to increase, the State paper to depreciate, the burden of taxation to grow intolerable, bad laws to find their way into the statute-books, interest in education and industry to decline, the farm Negroes to grow idle and gravitate to the infectious skirts of large cities, and the whole South ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... and packer of pork and beef. For a time it was up-hill work, but his native perseverance overcame all difficulties, and in the season of 1862-3, his business had grown to seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. From that time there was a steady decline in the amount of packing done in Cleveland, the supply of cattle and hogs decreasing until but a very small quantity, in proportion to the facilities for packing, could be depended on. The slaughter-houses ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... hospitable to see people so near her house without inviting them in, now came forward to give the invitation, and as they were obliged to decline on the score of lateness, she called Almira to bring some cool spring water for them. Seeing Freddie approaching dangerously near one of the horses, Marty cried, "Freddie, Freddie, come away from the horse!" and he gravely inquired, "What's the matter ...
— A Missionary Twig • Emma L. Burnett
... Alfars' chief, or prince, applied to Volund, who, as we learn from the prose introduction, was a son of a king of the Finns, may perhaps be accounted for by the circumstance that the poem itself hardly belongs to the Odinic Mythology, and was probably composed when that system was in its decline and giving place to the ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... awakening attention to the subjects of his calling in the village, was marked, and of a kind which brought pleasure to his own heart. But, like all other excitement, it tends to exhaustion, and it was not long before he sensibly felt the decline of the powers of life. To the best regulated mind there is something bitter in the relinquishment of projects for which we have been long and laboriously preparing, and there is something far more bitter in crossing the long-cherished expectations of friends. ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... afraid I was rude enough to decline to go into the scheme on the ground that I did not care twopence whether the Rothschilds and Oppenheims went back to Palestine or not. This was felt to be an obstacle; but then he began to try and make me care, whereupon, of course, I had to get ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... Two men of his tribe, who witnessed these circumstances, persuaded the women to fly in their company. One of these men had formerly been dangerously stabbed by I-e-tan. Actuated by hatred, calculating the chief's power was on the decline, and depending on the strength of their connections, which were influential, the seducers became tired of living out in hunting-camps and elsewhere, and determined to return to the village and face it out. Such cases of elopement are ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... understand, but measles, pneumonia, and smallpox are witchcraft. Winnenap' was medicine-man for fifteen years. Besides considerable skill in healing herbs, he used his prerogatives cunningly. It is permitted the medicine-man to decline the case when the patient has had treatment from any other, say the white doctor, whom many of the younger generation consult. Or, if before having seen the patient, he can definitely refer his disorder to some supernatural cause wholly out of the medicine-man's jurisdiction, ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... countenance is one of calmness, or, it may be, resignation—for the tranquility has evidently been taught and learnt as the world's lesson, and is not native there. Near her sits a man benign of aspect, advanced in years; his hair and eyebrows white from the winter's fall; his eye and mien telling of decline, easy and placid as the close of softest music, and nothing harsher. Care and trouble he has never known; he is too old to learn them now. His dress is very plain. The room in which he sits is devoid of ornament, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... perfectly free, of course, to do as you please. If you please to decline a good offer, merely because you won't promise not to drink what you say you don't drink, and not to sell what you say you don't want to sell, why that is your own matter, of course, and I can ...
— Three People • Pansy
... intrinsically deficient in that species of merit which appeals directly to the senses, the Arch of Hadrian attracts comparatively little notice. It is, however, a highly interesting monument, bearing unmistakable marks of the decline of art; yet distinguished for much of that quality of beauty which gives so peculiar a character to the architecture of the Greeks. The inscriptions on the sides of the entablature have given rise to much learned discussion, and ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... contemptu, I lie still and sleep, vindicate myself by contempt alone. [4025]Expers terroris Achilles armatus: as a tortoise in his shell, [4026]virtute mea me involvo, or an urchin round, nil moror ictus [4027]a lizard in camomile, I decline their ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... to the civil affairs of the heathen Roman Empire. So long the Apostolic traditions prevailed, and preserved the Church in its purity: and therefore the affairs of the Church do not begin to be considered in this Prophecy before the opening of the fifth seal. She began then to decline, and to want admonitions; and therefore is admonished by these Epistles, till the Apostacy prevailed and took place, which was at the opening of the seventh seal. The admonitions therefore in these ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... over the waters, and the serenity became less brilliant but more profound. The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... peach-stone, that old central nuisance of the island. The little monster still crowed, and flapped his wings on his dunghill, as had been his custom always in the afternoon for certain centuries. But nothing on earth is immortal: even mighty bantams must have their decline and fall; and omens began to show out that soon there would be a dust with the new master at Columbo. Seven years after our debut on that stage, the dust began. By the way, it is perhaps an impertinence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... are growing bare before they can see all in a landscape that they have the capability of seeing; and, even then, it will be only for one little moment of consummation before the faculties are again on the decline, and they that look out of the windows begin to be darkened and restrained in sight. Thus the study of nature should be carried forward thoroughly and with system. Every gratification should be rolled long under the tongue, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... public utility is held to justify the outlay. Nor does the Deptford Cattle market, of thirty acres, maintained on the banks of the Thames to deal with live cattle imported from abroad, pay its way. But there has been a serious decline in imported stock in late years, especially from America. At this market extreme precautions are taken to prevent the entry of cattle disease that might spread infection to British flocks and herds. All animals ...
— A Terminal Market System - New York's Most Urgent Need; Some Observations, Comments, - and Comparisons of European Markets • Mrs. Elmer Black
... shop proved to be closed, in accordance with the law, which permits trading—in buildings—only between twelve and three o'clock on Sundays. On our way home the count expressed his regret at the rapid decline of the republican idea in America, and the surprising growth of the baneful "aristocratic"—not to say snobbish—sense. His deductions were drawn from articles in various recent periodical publications, and from the general tone of the American works which had come ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... my friends," said the counsellor with great earnestness, "the art of eating, the skill men may attain in it, has its epochs, its classical ages, and its decline, corruption, and dark ages, just as much as every other art; and it seems to me that we are now again verging to a kind of barbarism in it. Luxury, profusion, rarities, new dishes, overpeppering, overspicing, all these, my good sirs, are ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... Spain's rise and decline were not primarily a result of sea power, still, taking the term to include the extension of shipping and maritime trade as well as the employment of naval forces in strictly military operations, there are lessons ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... than the constitution; however, he would do his duty, and oppose the business totally; and if it was referred to a committee, as mentioned yesterday, consisting of a member from each State, and he was appointed, he would decline serving. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... she began almost to fear that if she went back to her aunt, her aunt would prevail, and that in very truth Peter Steinmarc would become her lord and master. Then there was another plan, as impracticable as that scheme of running away. What if she were to become sullen, and decline to speak at all? She was well aware that in such a contest her aunt's tongue would be very terrible to her; and as the idea crossed her mind, she told herself that were she so to act people would treat her as a mad woman. But even that, she thought, would ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... does not concern me. Your courts tried their best to hang the man who was responsible for his cousin's death, and failed. I take it you decline this proffered duel?" ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... riders having descended a decline were no longer visible, but they reappeared a few minutes later. In front, at a weary gallop and using his leather whip, rode an officer, disheveled and drenched, whose trousers had worked up to above his knees. Behind him, standing in the stirrups, trotted a ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... old to learn new tricks, what were you going to do? Get sent to the printer's home, that was all! The new printer drank heavily to assuage his gloom, even to a degree that caused Herman Vielhaber to decline his custom, so that he must lean the gloomy hours away on the bar of Pegleg McCarron, where they didn't mind such things. Sam Pickering warned him that if this kept on there would no longer be jobs for ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... l'espiegle. "I take that to mean you would fain brush the morning dew off, as your bashful companion calls it; well then, excuse me, 'tis customary, but not prudent. I decline. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... delusion. If production should be quadrupled,—a thing which does not seem to me at all impossible,—it would be labor lost: if the additional product was not consumed, it would be of no value, and the proprietor would decline to receive it as interest; if it was consumed, all the disadvantages of property would reappear. It must be confessed that the theory of passional attraction is gravely at fault in this particular, and ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... be made by the authorities for the wholesale murder of our men I know not. Possibly those high and haughty personages will sniff contemptuously and decline to give any explanation at all. And you, who hold the remedy in your own hands, what will you do? Will you at election times put a stern question to every candidate for the Commons, and demand a straight and unqualified answer to ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... of such experience, the Hindu has a certain right to decline the offers made to correct his annals by Western history and chronology. On the contrary, he would respectfully advise the Western scholar, before he denies point-blank any statement made by the Asiatics with reference to ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... silence all Drop in the dark the fatal ball? What though no overt voice or sound Amidst the voting throng be found? In reason's ear they speak of choice, And utter forth a boding voice, Saying, as silent they recline, "Your company we must decline!" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... and the people born to refinement who were his associates, his friends. That phase of feeling was rather strong in him just now; disguising itself in the form of sundry plausible motives, it had induced him to decline Mrs. Tyrrell's invitation, and was fostering his temporary distaste for the society in which he had always found much pleasure. What if in strictness he belonged to neither sphere? What if his life were to be a struggle between inherited sympathies and the affinities of ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... to me that with the decline of my active force I am becoming more purely spirit; everything is growing transparent to me. I see the types, the foundation of beings, the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... high: "Did ye read of that sin in a book?" said he; and Tomlinson said, "Ay!" The Devil he blew upon his nails, and the little devils ran, And he said: "Go husk this whimpering thief that comes in the guise of a man: Winnow him out 'twixt star and star, and sieve his proper worth: There's sore decline in Adam's line if this be ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... it was, in fact, the cause of his being left behind. It is possible that I may have been too hard on his reverence's nervousness—scarcely doing justice to his earnestness of purpose; but, as to the aforesaid infernal machines I decline to retract one word.] ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... found to sustain such a publication as L'Art. In six years it has not abated by one tittle the perfection with which it first burst upon the world. Its standard is as high, its subjects are as inexhaustible, as ever. We hear now and then of a decline in French art: the great artists who carried it to the high-water mark of modern times have all, or nearly all, passed away, but there is certainly no sign of a vacuum. The activity of production is as great as ever, the interest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... and be wonderful careful on the ballicaders,"[7] cautioned Mrs. Twig, as Toby broke the komatik loose and the dogs dashed away down the decline to ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... singing that song for many a day to come. Not that there's any sense in it. But it's just because there's no sense in 'em that such songs oughtn't to be sung. See that young woman go out just now? Well, she's in a decline, and knows as she can't last very long. And she's got a young man in India—in the same battery as our Bill—as nice and straight a lad as ever ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... determination. Some exclude the seeking of pleasure as a permissible motive, some the love of beauty; some insist upon one's "being oneself" and prohibit or limit responses to exterior opinions. Most of such selections strike me as wanton and hasty. I decline to dismiss any of my motives at all in that wholesale way. Just as I believe I am important in the scheme of things, so I believe are all my motives. Turning one's back on any set of them seems to me to savour of the headlong actions of stupidity. To suppress a passion ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... this sense of profound significance for him, while he turned away with indifference or disgust from the whole doctrinal apparatus of the Atonement, which, however closely bound up with the popular conception of God's love, had nothing to do with his conception of it, and he could thus consistently decline the name of Christian, as some witnesses aver that he did.[42] It was thus in entire keeping with his way of approaching Christianity that he imagined this moving episode,—the dying apostle whose genius had made that way so singularly persuasive, the ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... well acquainted with all these facts, and in preparing everything for May's escape, his only fear was lest the murderer might decline to profit of the opportunity. Hence, it was necessary to offer every possible inducement for flight. The plan the young detective had eventually decided on consisted in sending an order to Mazas for May to be despatched to the Palais de Justice. He could be placed in one of the prison vans, and ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... thirty-three years in July, I believe, since I first saw her, and her conversation and faultless manners gave assurance of a good and happy future. As I have not witnessed any decline, I can hardly believe in any, and still recall vividly the youthful wife, and her blithe account of her letters and homages from Goethe, and the details she gave of her intended visit to Weimar, and its disappointment. Her goodness to me and ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... on Stock Exchange's steep With nought to do but sell and buy To Bull and Bear we need not keep Our classics up; that's all my eye. Ho! for the Factory, Mart, and Mine The toils of Greek our souls decline. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... originally formed a town distinct from this Greek city, once the great seaport of Calabria, but retaining little of its former greatness since its partial destruction in the Punic wars.[649] Its Hellenism was on the wane, and this decline in its native civilisation may account for the fact that the new and the old foundations seem eventually to have been merged into one, and that Tarentum could receive a purely Latin constitution after the close of the Social War.[650] Its purple fisheries and rich wine-producing ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... for a moment it rested on myself, that the position had developed a new horror. What if he chose to begin by fighting me? What chance should I have against a desperate savage six feet five high, and broad in proportion? I might as well commit suicide at once. Hastily I made up my mind to decline the combat, even if I were hooted out of Kukuanaland as a consequence. It is, I think, better to be hooted than to be quartered with ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... practice, from that reformation purity, both in church and state (which, as the attainment of the nations of Britain and Ireland, was by them accounted their chief ornament and glory), that have taken place, especially in this kingdom, since our woful decline commenced: whereby the witnesses for Scotland's covenanted reformation, have been deprived of any legal benefit, as well, since as before the late revolution; in which the reformation, neither in civil nor ecclesiastical constitutions, ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... mouths of the cutaneous absorbents are exposed to the cool air or bedclothes; whilst those of the capillary glands, which secrete the perspirable matter, are exposed to the warmth of the circulating blood; the former, as soon as the fever-fit begins to decline, lose their increased action first; and hence the absorption of the sweat is diminished, whilst the increased secretion of it continues for some hours afterwards, which occasions it to stand in drops upon ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... which, as you correctly informed me at the time, he had the becoming taste and perception," observes Sir Leicester, "to decline. I cannot say that I by any means approve of the sentiments expressed by Mr. Rouncewell when he was here for some half-hour in this room, but there was a sense of propriety in his decision which I am glad ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... history of my country and city to its fountain heads. I devoured old books, journals, and the precious documents to which my father had ready access, that passed from the attic treasure chests of the old houses in decline to the keeping of the Historical Society. As a lad I besought every gray head at my father's table to tell me a story, so what more natural, under the circumstances, than that my father should make ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... fame; Gray was becoming popular; Smollett had written most of his novels; Goldsmith was about to present the world with his exquisite Vicar of Wakefield; Gibbon had returned to England from Rome with the idea of The Decline and Fall floating in his ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... much in society as yet. I have many visitations, but, until I clear off the accumulated rubbish of three years which lies upon my table, I must decline seeing much of my friends. I have seen twice your sisters the Misses Delancy, and was prevented from being at their house last Friday evening by the severest snow-storm we have had this season. Our friends the Jays I have met several times, and have had much conversation with ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... just written recalls to me, by some link of association, the words I once heard a simple old Scotch-woman utter by her son's deathbed. He was a young man of twenty-two, a pious and good young man, and I had seen him very often throughout his gradual decline. Calling one morning, I found he was gone, and his mother begged me to come and see his face once more; and standing for the last time by him, I said (and I could say them honestly) some words of Christian comfort ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... a success in literature it is difficult for me to tell; indeed, I would give a good deal to anyone who would explain the reason. The Publishers, and Editors, and Literary Men decline to tell me why they do not want my contributions. I am sure I have done all that I can to succeed. When my Novel, Geoffrey's Cousin, comes back from the Row, I do not lose heart—I pack it up, and send it off again to the Square, and so, I may say, it goes the round. The very manuscript ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... by asking him to preside at this meeting; but Colonel Giguet requests me to present his thanks, and express due gratitude for a desire in which he sees a reward for his services to the country. We are in his house; he thinks he ought, therefore, to decline those functions, and he desires to propose in his stead an honorable merchant on whom your suffrages have already bestowed the chief magistracy of ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... during the greatest part of the year, the orb of the sun appeared pale and without splendour. This season of obscurity, which cannot surely be compared with the preternatural darkness of the Passion, had been already celebrated by most of the poets and historians of that memorable age" (Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," vol. ii., pp. ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... peat burns brimming from their cups of stone Glow brown and blood-red down the vast decline As if Christ stood on yonder clouded peak And turned its ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... it is obvious what conclusion I must come to," said Lord Stamfordham. "That it is not that you cannot give any explanation, but that you decline to give it." ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... and little vistas of bright things, to make it seem a joyous home. In this latter end of autumn, with a sparse remnant of yellow leaves falling slowly athwart the dark evergreens in a stillness without sunshine, the house too had an air of autumnal decline, and Mr. Casaubon, when he presented himself, had no bloom that could be thrown into ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... have before remarked, sensibly to decline, and his appetite, which had always been good and uniform, very considerably diminished. Even foreign countries became aware of this. Bets were laid in London that his life would not last beyond the first of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... crime, where one's mother's life is at stake; and the Border theory of independence only reminds one of Pitt's definition of an independent statesman, "a statesman not to be depended on". How sad has been the decline of Virginia! How strange, that in 1790, of the ten American post-offices yielding more than a thousand dollars annually, that stately old commonwealth held five! Now "a poverty-stricken State", by confession of her own newspapers,—beleaguered, blockaded,—with no imports ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... girl, can I be franker? Call it anything you like, theft, if you fancy the word; but the money is mine. I decline to go into the ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... eighteen months in prison. When she came out she was very angry, and set about making an image of the woman whose sheep she had taken. When the image was made she burned it and put the ashes in a burn. And it is a very curious thing, but the woman she made it on fell into a decline, ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... the heavy wagon trains toil to the place of rest. All through the evening prevails that peculiar, cheerful din of a camp, as peculiar and characteristic as the roar of a great city; gradually the noises decline, the bugles and drums sound the tattoo, the fires grow dim, and the vast mass of hardy, resolute humanity is asleep—all except the two or three score of sick and dying men, wasted by fever, who have ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... long while getting over it. I've had a letter from her this morning, and she says the Hastings doctor declares she must stay there a year in the warm and not come home at all, or she'll be going off in a decline. I know Lucy gets nervous about herself, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... She also explained that her dear mother in England, as well as their old father in Java, must be filled with deepest anxiety on account of herself and her brothers by that time, and that, therefore, she was obliged, most unwillingly, to decline the honour proposed ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... of adventure and speculation, which embraces States as well as individuals, the other causing a fall in prices and accomplishing an entire change in the aspect of affairs. Stocks of all sorts rapidly decline, individuals are ruined, and States embarrassed even in their efforts to meet with punctuality the interest on their debts. Such, unhappily, is the condition of things now existing in the United States. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... uncalled for. Over the delicate beauty of Sybilla Rothesay had crept a spiritual charm, that increased with life's decline—for her life was declining—even so soon. Not that her health was broken, or that she looked withered and aged; but still there was a gradual change, as of the tree which from its richest green melts ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... most arresting figure in the Cambrian sea, and its fortunes deserve a paragraph. It reaches its climax in the Ordovician sea, and then begins to decline, as more powerful animals come upon the scene. At first (apparently) an eyeless organism, it gradually develops compound eyes, and in some species the experts have calculated that there were 15,000 facets to each eye. As time goes on, also, the eye stands ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... With the decline of organic matter, new problems with plant and animal health gradually developed while insect predation worsened and profits dropped because soils declining in humus need ever larger amounts of fertilizer ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... before him in full armour to announce their ultimatum, and his signing the Magna Carta was partly due to the influence of the then Master of the Temple. Henry III. at one time intended to be buried in the Temple Church. His subsequent change of mind perhaps marks some decline in the popularity of the Templars. But their downfall in England (1308) was mainly owing to Papal pressure. Edward II. resisted as long as he could, and the more serious charges against them, which were based on confessions extracted by torture, ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... covered by the present chapter reaches from the close of the tenth century to the middle of the sixteenth, from the first full establishment of the Roman Catholic theology and the last general expectation of the immediate end of the world to the commencing decline of mediaval faith and the successful inauguration of the Protestant Reformation. The principal mental characteristic of that age, especially in regard to the subject of the future life, was fear. "Never," says Michelet, "can we ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... "who divides his party on matters of detail, beyond the range of practical politics, is an enemy of popular progress. What I should desire to know is, whether Mr. Quarrier will go in heartily for Church Disestablishment? If not—well, I for my humble self must Decline to consider him a Radical ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... sanction to this whole branch of moral mythology, and in the sacred canon, as it was settled in the third century before Christ, many a fable received, and holds to the present day, its recognized place. After the fall of Buddhism in India, and even during its decline, the Brahmans claimed the inheritance of their enemies, and used their popular fables for educational purposes. The best known of these collections of fables in Sanskrit is the Pacatantra, literally the Pentateuch, or Pentamerone. From it and from ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... with reluctance that we go on to notice the religion of these books; but since religion appears so largely in them, we must not decline the task. To us, at least, the theory of the writer's "High-Church tendencies" could never have appeared plausible; for even in the "Scenes of Clerical Life" the chief religious personage is the "evangelical" curate Mr. Tryan, and whatever good ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... the comma, and the words will describe the prism as a peculiar kind of solid; because whose will then be taken in the restrictive sense. This sense, however, may be conveyed even with a comma before the relative; as, "Some fictitious histories yet remain, that were composed during the decline of the Roman empire."—Blair's Rhet., p. 374. This does not suggest that there are no other fictitious histories now extant, than such as were composed during the decline of the Roman empire; but I submit it to the reader, whether the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... General Election, and Sir Robert Peel came to power as champion of the Corn Laws. The Whigs had fallen between two stools, for the country was not in a humour to tolerate vacillation. The Melbourne Cabinet had, in truth, in the years which had witnessed its decline and fall, spoken with the voice of Jacob, but stretched forth the hands of Esau. The Radicals shook their heads, scouted the Ministry's deplorable efforts at finance, and felt, to say the least, lukewarm about their spirited foreign policy. 'I don't thank a man ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... land of Freedom. In all the glitter, the seeming disorder, the parade, the abandon, I saw this law, unobtrusive, yet like iron, prevail. Therefore, in Manhattan you must obey these unwritten laws, and then you will be freest of the free. If you decline to be bound by them, you put ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... recover his self-possession. He came back to the demands of the strike—but only to find that he had used up the superintendent's self-possession. "I have given you my answer," declared Cartwright, "I absolutely decline any further discussion." ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... submarines to work together, but this was not as successful as it might have been. During May, June and July the submarine warfare was practically given up as the losses of ships during those months will show. There was a steep decline from a quarter of a million tons in April to less than 140,000 tons in May, about 125,000 tons in June and not much more ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... and that one thing will insensibly influence them to speak to the disadvantage of others, even where there is no formed malice or ill-design. Since therefore it is so hard to enter into this subject without offending, the first thing to be observed is that people should learn to decline it; to get over that strong inclination most have to be talking of the concerns ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... with another riddle, to drive our womanly curiosity still more distracted. He was requested to call immediately—so a note, he had just received, read—at Mr. —— & Co's, and "accept the head clerkship, at a salary of $1,400 a year; being highly recommended by a person whose name his new employers decline giving." ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... to finish the translation, and to instruct a young lady in German, came to take leave of me. She said she now purposed to return to Wirtemberg. Though I was very weak, yet, under these circumstances, I could not decline seeing her, as it would be in all human probability the last time that I should do so. I therefore besought the Lord to strengthen me for this service (which I soon perceived He had done), and, after a short conversation with her about her circumstances, ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller
... wanting men of integrity and true patriotism, and of great ability, as Isocrates and Phocion, who accepted as inevitable the decline of the power of Athens, and advocated a policy of passive non-interference in foreign affairs, unless it were to take part in a united effort against Persia. But the mass of the people, instead of offering their own means and their bodies ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... Kromitzki's affairs in a doubting spirit, it had always caused me some uneasiness. The prospect that at some time or other he might want me to assist him or take a share in his transactions had made me consider what I should do in such a case; and I always vowed that I would decline and have nothing to do with any of his affairs; so repugnant to me was the thought of mingling money matters with my relations to Aniela. I remember that I saw in this another proof of the nobility and refinement of my feelings. To-day I grasp that weapon as if I were a banker and had lived by money ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Russell assembled his Whigs and Radicals at the Foreign Office yesterday morning, and announced to them the course he proposed to adopt with regard to the Corporation Bill, the amendments he would accept, those he would modify, and those he would decline. Hume made a violent speech, deprecating any concessions, but O'Connell made a very moderate one, recommending a compromise, and saying that great alarm prevailed among many well-meaning and conscientious persons lest Reform should proceed too far; that it was highly expedient to quiet these ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... which brought rejoicing indeed. So is Pheidippides happy forever,—then noble strong man Who could race like a god, bear the face of a god, whom a god loved so well, He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and was suffered to tell Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as he began, So to end gloriously—once to shout, thereafter be mute: "Athens is saved!"—Pheidippides dies in the ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... is very singular. All clever boys are. He knows already his five declensions, and the four conjugations, active and passive. Come, Master Rattlin, decline for the lady the adjective felix—come, begin, nominative hic ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... take our pilot on board, and shortly after, my German friends rouse me with the intelligence that we are alongside the wharf. I am now, however, getting an "old bird;" my enthusiasm about novelty has gone down considerably; and I decline the pleasure of accompanying them on shore at this early hour. Honolulu will doubtless wait for me ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... your letter of January 1, offering to my perusal a Memoir of part of your life. I decline to inspect it. I consider the publication or circulation of such a composition at any time as prejudicial to Ada's future happiness. For my own sake, I have no reason to shrink from publication; but, notwithstanding ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... she did is the more to be admired when account is taken of the feeble condition of her health and of her many serious illnesses. She inherited weakness of the chest from her mother, who died of decline in early life. When on the point of first going out into society, she was fearfully burned, and lay for six months wrapped in cotton-wool, unable to feed herself. In the early years of our married life we ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... Old 'Decline and Fall' Jones? He never reads any book excepting Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Always declines a drink when offered, but he's sure to fall a moment later!" ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... time started back to shirt-sleeves, through a sudden decline in the sugar-market, and it had already unbuttoned its vest, so to speak, when Samuel went to work. His mind was that exquisite TABULA RASA that a university education sometimes leaves, but he had both energy and influence, ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... church, there is a panel by his hand, and in the Murate there is a picture of S. Sigismund, the King. For Girolamo Federighi, in that part of S. Pancrazio where he was afterwards buried, he painted a Trinity in fresco, with portraits of him and of his wife on their knees; and here he began to decline into pettiness of manner. He also made two figures in distemper for the Monks of Cestello, a S. Rocco and a S. Ignazio, which are in the Chapel of S. Sebastiano. And in a little chapel on the abutment of the Ponte Rubaconte, on the side towards the Mills, he painted a Madonna, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... weighed with me in my marriage; how, once having felt the inclination to marry her, I should have married my wife all the same if she had been, say, the daughter of William Day. It is because I remember that I decline any longer to interfere, or to take upon my shoulders any responsibility ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... square at Memphis, strongly attracted the admiration of Darius. Darius asked Syloson if he would sell him the cloak. Syloson said that he would not sell it, but would give it to him. He thought, probably, that Darius would decline receiving it as a present. If he did entertain that idea, it seems he was mistaken. Darius praised him for his generosity, and ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... moulted between us. But as to operating between you and Harry, with the view of keeping you apart, I decline the commission. It is my assured belief that sooner or later he will be your husband. Now we will go up to Janet, who will begin to think herself a Penelope, if we desert her ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... signori! ma——." At the end, we find that he has some medallions of lava to sell: there is Victor Emanuel, or, if we are of the partito d'azione, there is Garibaldi; both warm yet from the crater of Vesuvius, and of the same material which destroyed Herculaneum. We decline to buy and the custodian makes the national shrug and grimace (signifying that we are masters of the situation, and that he washes his hands of the consequence of our folly) on the largest scale that we have ever seen: his mighty hands are rigidly thrust forth, his great ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... returned to all invitations to evening entertainments, large or small. Mr. Ridley very well understood why his wife, who was social and naturally fond of company, was so prompt to decline. He knew that the excuse, "We are not able to give parties in return," was not really the true one. He knew that she feared the temptation that would come to him, and he was by no means insensible to the perils that would beset him whenever he found himself in the midst of a convivial ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... need of our services in that place. You and I have seen this sort of thing before in the West. Young Lloyd of the Park Church, too, was eloquent in opposing—the old story, funds overlapping, denominational rivalry. These young men, who decline to face the frontier, would show better taste in seeking to learn something of the West than in hampering those who are giving their lives to this work. The upholstered seat of the Park Church pulpit does not induce the liveliest sympathy with the Western conditions. ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... since you decline to haul our logs, after the expiration of our present contract, and in view of the fact that we are not financially able to build our own logging railroad, that the wisest course my father and I could pursue would be to sell our timber in Township Nine ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... child's pugnacity at times revolted. A cad from the Potterrow once struck him in the mouth; he struck back, the pair fought it out in the back stable lane towards the Meadows, and Archie returned with a considerable decline in the number of his front teeth, and unregenerately boasting of the losses of the foe. It was a sore day for Mrs. Weir; she wept and prayed over the infant backslider until my lord was due from Court, and she must resume that air of tremulous composure with which she always ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out of the present ignoble situation. We need light more than heat; intellectual alertness, faith in the reasoning faculty, accessibility to new ideas. To refuse to use the intellect patiently and with system, to decline to seek scientific truth, to prefer effusive indulgence of emotion to the laborious and disciplined and candid exploration of new ideas, is not this, too, a torpid unveracity? And has not Mr. Carlyle, by ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... of a very short duration, so in those days were human fashions, upon which it entirely depends. Shoulder-knots had their time, and we must now imagine them in their decline, for a certain lord came just from Paris with fifty yards of gold lace upon his coat, exactly trimmed after the court fashion of that month. In two days all mankind appeared closed up in bars of gold lace. Whoever durst peep abroad without his complement of gold lace was as scandalous as a ——, ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... At the "decline and fall" of Bullock's Museum, Mr. Gwennap purchased the Crusader for, it is said, 200 guineas; and after being put in thorough repair, it was placed in the "Aplotheca," Brook Street, Mr. Gwennap, jun. adding ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.15 • Various
... with a strip of gauze. The "narse furnicher" wasn't there. There was a chest of drawers whose previous owner had apparently been in the habit of tumbling into bed by candle-light and leaving it to splutter its decline and shed its pale blood where it would. The ceiling was picked out with fly-spots. It smelt—how shall I give it to you? The outgoing tenant had obviously used the hearth as a spittoon. He had obviously supped nightly ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... adequate; being modernized to provide improved international capability and better residential access domestic: rapid expansion of mobile-cellular services has resulted in a steady decline in the number of main line subscriptions; mobile-cellular teledensity has increased to about 135 per 100 persons while fixed-line teledensity has dropped to 22 per 100 persons international: country code - 370; major international connections to Denmark, Sweden, and ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... as he grew older, M. Violette became mournful. He was more than forty years old now. What a decline! Does grief make the years count double? The widower was a mere wreck. His rebellious lock of hair had become a dirty gray, and always hung over his right eye, and he no longer took the trouble to toss it behind his ear. His hands trembled ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... coarse cloaks or mantles, and one of them enveloping himself in these, stretched himself before the fire on the ground, to intimate to me that in such a manner I must pass the night. Another offered me a pipe of opium, which I knew it would be a great discourtesy, according to their ideas, to decline, although I was quite unaccustomed to the drug. I therefore took it and affected to smoke, and as I lay down, they left the little room in which they had placed me, and I heard ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... mother, "if I had a son he would be king, and you would be regent. In your stead, did you decline, the King of Poland would be regent; and in his stead, D'Alencon. But I have no son, and therefore the throne belongs to D'Anjou, who is absent. To make D'Alencon regent is to invite civil war. I have therefore chosen the fittest person for regent Salute ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the Volga and the Caspian Sea, across the Caucasian isthmus and the peninsula of Taurida, as far as to Moldavia and Walachia. Several Slavic tribes were tributary to them; but about the middle of the ninth century, at the time of Cyril's mission, their power began to decline; their vassals became their enemies, and gradually their conquerors; until towards the end of the tenth and at the beginning of the eleventh century, their empire became entirely extinct.[12] Constantine converted and baptized their Khan, whose example was followed by ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... fretted and fumed till her husband had no peace in his house, and Ziska almost wished that he might hear no more of the Jew and his betrothal. She could not even commence her system of persecution, as Nina did not go near her, and had already told Lotta Luxa that she must decline to discuss the question of her marriage any further. So, at last, Madame Zamenoy found herself obliged to go over in person to the house in the Kleinseite. Such visits had for many years been very rare with her. Since her sister's ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... and sheen of day With youthful hours have faded all away; What though the fresh and roseate bloom of spring A fragrance in our path no more shall fling; Yet there's a foretaste pure of joys divine, A quiet, holy calm in life's decline, A moonlight of the soul in mercy given To light the pilgrim to ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
... The Decline of the Reign of Protoplasm.—Hardly had this extreme chemical theory of life been clearly conceived before accumulating facts began to show that it is untenable and that it must at least be vastly modified before it can be received. The foundation of the chemical theory of ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... and often has ever been something of an art, and it becomes more of an art with the general decline of spirit. For it takes two to make a quarrel. Time was when you turned to the handiest human being, and with small care or labour had the comfortable warmth you needed in a minute or so. There was theology, even in the fifties it was ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... sent away, for I thought she and her mother were acting in collusion; But I afterwards found that I had blamed her wrongfully. Poor woman! she knew that I loved your mother, and feeling herself forsaken, she grew melancholy and died in a decline three ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... with music and great threnes Idolatrous, as on soft gorgeous wings, If Time's least kiss had subtly disallowed Their beauty's sacred unisons?—Fair things Desire their revel-raiment be their shroud. Yet, fierce insurgent, cease vain wars to wage! Art thou so pure as to decline, forsooth, These penitential usages of age That expiate proud cruelties of youth, And bring thee to the last and perfect art, To love the lovely with ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... Time, the decline of the fur-trade, and the influence of the Canadian Church gradually diminished this erratic spirit, and at the same time impaired the qualities that were associated with it. The Canadian became a more stable colonist and a steadier farmer; but for forest journeyings and forest warfare ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... had suffered, how much error and anger he had known before doing what all men ought to do! That eager, glowing love which had contended against his reason, which had bled at sight of the arrant absurdities of the miraculous grotto of Lourdes, which had bled again too in presence of the haughty decline of the Vatican, had at last found contentment now that he was husband and father, now that he had confidence in work and believed in the just laws of life. And thence had come the indisputable truth, the one ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... of Northern mythology was therefore a drama, every step leading gradually to the climax or tragic end, when, with true poetic justice, punishment and reward were impartially meted out. In the foregoing chapters, the gradual rise and decline of the gods have been carefully traced. We have recounted how the AEsir tolerated the presence of evil, personated by Loki, in their midst; how they weakly followed his advice, allowed him to involve them in all manner of difficulties from which they could be extricated only ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... nails fiercely, and looking askant at his ally, with angry eyes. "I wonder you don't wind up by saying that the man who could trade upon a virtuous woman's affection for the advancement of his fortune, deserves to—get it hot, as our modern slang has it. Then I am to understand that you decline to ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... All the world took the contagion of the life of nature and of the senses. And now it was seen that the medieval spirit too had done something for the new fortunes of the antique. By hastening the decline of art, by withdrawing interest from it and yet keeping unbroken the thread of its traditions, it had suffered the human mind to repose itself, that when day came it might awake, with eyes refreshed, to those ancient, ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... adaptable one or we wouldn't have survived so long, Jim, or gone so far in our particular direction. It's lack of fertility, not lack of enterprise, that's responsible for our decline. And I think your species must be an adaptable one, too; you just haven't really tried. Oh, James, let us reverse the classical roles—let me be the Apollo to your Daphne! Don't let Phyllis stand in our way. The Greek gods never let a little ...
— The Venus Trap • Evelyn E. Smith
... just to mention that it was not true I was going to be married to him," she murmured, with a slight decline in ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... Ildefonso might have attracted more attention in other times; but it occurred at a peculiar period in Spanish-American history. Just then the Spanish power, all over the American continent, was hastening to its decline; and the fall of San Ildefonso was but one episode among many of a character equally dramatic. Near the same time fell Gran Quivira, Abo, Chilili, and hundreds of other settlements of note. Each has its story—each its red romance—perhaps far ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... names, sir; and, although I may happen to know his right one, you will excuse me if I decline to tell it," answered Dillon, the dark frown still resting on his brow as he spoke.—"His present followers know him as Manuel Bermudez; but he has not a drop of Spanish blood in his veins, I can answer ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... fifty pounds a year. Criticize this arrangement; and, if you dispute its justice, state in pounds, dollars, francs and marks, what their relative time wages ought to have been." Your answer may be that the question is in extremely bad taste and that you decline to answer it. But you cannot object to being asked how many minutes of a bookmaker's time is worth two hours ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... Bluewater. Her second son, Geoffrey, did more to remove her scruples than all the rest united; and when Sir Gervaise Oakes, in person, condescended to make a journey to the Park, to persuade her to examine the proofs, she could not well decline. As soon as one of her really candid mind entered into the inquiry, the evidence was found to be irresistible, and she at once yielded to the feelings of nature. Wycherly had been indefatigable in establishing his wife's claims—more so, indeed, than in ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... see how a man could speak or act better to an impecunious friend who would not face his own troubles squarely. It is sad that the "ever your affectionate brother" of the earlier letters declines to "yours sincerely" in the last; but it is an honest decline of affection, for the man had proved to be cheating his mother, and Abraham had had ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... monopoly of machinery, of improvement, of invention both in agriculture, in manufactures, and in self-defence. They devised weapons far more destructive than those possessed by the old regime, and still more superior to such as, after centuries of anarchy and decline, the Communists were able to procure. Finally, when assailed by the latter, vast superiority of numbers was annulled by immeasurable superiority in weapons and in discipline. The secessionists were animated, too, by a bitter resentment against their assailants, as the authors of the general ruin ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... sultry summer, making the trudge from door to door, under the ever-swelling sack, almost intolerable. And a little thing occurred to bring home cruelly to Natalya the decline of all her resources, physical and financial. The children's country holiday was in the air at Daisy's Board School, throwing an aroma and a magic light over the droning class-room. Daisy was to go, was to have a fortnight with ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... at this period, as although from her subsequent manoeuvres it became evident that her principal object in life was to obtain a rich husband, from the manner in which she humiliated herself to him it is evident that she was passionately in love with the author of The Decline and Fall of ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... Parkhurst said, in a tone that was half in earnest, "that I feel so anxious as I did for sport in the forest; and certainly I should decline to take part ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... part Isaac dated his decline from the hour of his son's defection. He had not been brought to this pass by any rashness in speculation, or by any flaw whatever in his original scheme. But his original scheme had taken for granted Keith's collaboration. He had calculated to a nicety what it would ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... "And if I decline to permit you to sign?" asked the Prime Minister blandly. "This is not a Cabinet meeting, and we have no power to commit the Government ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... worrying than sitting up for somebody, especially if that somebody be at a party. You cannot help thinking how quickly the time passes with them, which drags so heavily with you; and the more you think of this, the more your hopes of their speedy arrival decline. Clocks tick so loud, too, when you are sitting up alone, and you seem as if you had an under-garment of cobwebs on. First, something tickles your right knee, and then the same sensation irritates your left. You have no sooner changed your position, than it comes again in the arms; when you have ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... remark, that after the decline of the Saxon literature, Bede remained for centuries, both in the original Latin and in the Saxon translations, a sealed and buried book; but in the later days, students of English literature and history began to look back with eager pleasure to that formative period prior ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Islanders speak of dying as 'following the sun's track.' The Maoris talk of 'going down with the sun' (ii. 574). No more is said here about savage myths of 'the first who died.' I therefore offer some additions to the two instances in which savages use a poetical phrase connecting the sun's decline ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... a year. The industrious cottar, with two, three, or four acres, would be exceedingly glad to have his time to himself, and have such an annual addition of land as he was able to manage, paying a fair rent for it; none would decline it but the ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... ayre comming Southwest, we held our course Northwest: and were vnder 17. degrees and 2/3 partes: There we found the compasse to decline three quarters of a strike or line North eastward, after noone we had a Southeast wind, and our ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... the Castle the privilege of hearing Mass from the tribune; and she wished me to invite you in her name hereafter to hear Mass from there with us. But I suppose, in view of your 'lesson,' that is an invitation which you will decline?" The glint of laughter shone brighter in her eyes, and her mouth had a tiny pucker, ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... galloping on merry hunters through the frost and snow of Piccadilly and Park, instead of enjoying the roaring fires of piled logs in the evening, at the first approach of winter steal away to the Land of the Sun, and decline to die, like honest Britons, on British soil. And then they know nothing of the Egyptians and are horrified at "bakshish," which they really ought to pay for the privilege of shocking the straight-limbed, naked-footed ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... energetic resolve, she took the roll of parchment and handed it back to Catharine. "Queen, take this parchment back again; return it to my father, and tell him that I thank him for his provident goodness, but will decline the brilliant lot which this act offers me. I love freedom so much, that even a royal crown cannot allure me when I am to receive it with my hands bound and my heart ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... was again conscious of the recurrence of the day, but had forgotten it by the time he came home to dinner. The crisis of the disease came a few days later, with a rapid decline of fever, and the little girl was pronounced out of danger. In the rejoicing which ensued the thought of Haskett passed out of Waythorn's mind and one afternoon, letting himself into the house with a latchkey, he went straight to his library without noticing ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... intend to rule over them, but you make negroes your allies, and desire to place over us an inferior race, which we have raised from barbarism to its present position, which is the highest ever attained by that race, in any country, in all time. I must, therefore, decline to accept your statements in reference to your kindness toward the people of Atlanta, and your willingness to sacrifice every thing for the peace and honor of the South, and refuse to be governed by your decision in regard to ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... often happens in the history of states and races, in which there is found first a rise and then a decline, that the greatest glories take place just then when the reverse is beginning or begun. Thus, for instance, in the history of the Ottoman Turks, to which I have not yet come, Soliman the Magnificent is at once the last and greatest of a series of great Sultans. So ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... a fearful strain; but it is a stout old ship, and has weathered many a hard blow, and "the stars in their courses," aye, an invisible Power, greater than the puny efforts of men, will fight for us. But we ourselves must not decline the burden of responsibility, nor take counsel of unworthy passions. Whatever duty urges us to do or to omit must be done or omitted; and the recklessness with which our adversaries break the laws, or counsel their violation, should afford no example for us. Therefore, let ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... do business," says Dutch. "Human nature is slow to decline and there are people who still realize that if you got a handsome watch what do you want to do to it? Engrave it, ain't it? And if you got a handsome skin, what then? Tattoo, naturally. And we tattoo in seven colors now where it used to be three, and use electricity. Do you think it's crazy? ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... by his side on the track that she had claimed for her own, and he thought of her singular threat or promise, whichever it were to be held, that he should have a companion there in future. In the decline of the day, when he met the schoolmistress coming home from her little seminary, he snatched the first opportunity to mention the apparition of the morning, and ask Rose if she knew anything ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the universal brotherhood of man, the most that can be said is this: The old ideas about race as something hard and fast for all time are distinctly on the decline. Plasticity, or, in other words, the power of adaptation to environment, has to be admitted to a greater share in the moulding of mind, and even of body, than ever before. But how plasticity is related ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... the minister is often overburdened with secular matters, is forced to leave the word and serve tables and loses much spirituality. When a minister's success depends largely and primarily upon amount of dollars raised by him his spiritual decline is rapid. Worldliness follows when desire for position or recognition in the church overcomes the desire to save men, and when the ordinary tricks of politics are resorted to in order to gain church distinctions. It is a reversal of Christ's order, "Seek first ...
— The Defects of the Negro Church - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 10 • Orishatukeh Faduma
... of the case, it was impossible to decline this request. I wrote to say that time should be made, and the notes were forwarded to me at Robin Hood's Bay. I began by reading carefully and twice over, so as to get a grip of the story and the novelist's intention, the part that had ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... frivolous flying-fish. A little town, whose life stands still, or rather goes backward, whose ships have sailed away to other ports, whose inhabitants have followed the ships, and whose houses seem to be going after the inhabitants; but a town in its decline, not in its decay. Everything is clean and in good repair; everybody well dressed, healthy, and cheerful. Paupers there are none; and the new school-house would be an ornament to any town in Massachusetts. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... ministers—if not, then this was another mistake that he had made. So long as it was true that they could not live without him, he was content with his title. He patronized the church, and the church was too weak to decline his ostentatious courtesy. He humiliated every man who came into his presence, seeking a subscription for a religious or charitable purpose, but his subscription was always sought, and as regularly obtained. Humbly to seek his assistance for any high purpose was a concession ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... provincial towns. A loose localism was the result rather than any conscious intellectual mutiny. There was anarchy, but there was no rebellion. For rebellion must have a principle, and therefore (for those who can think) an authority. Gibbon called his great pageant of prose "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." The Empire did decline, but it did not fall. It remains to ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... mind it is. This were lovely as the morning light, but for the shade it gathers thence, from the thought of decline and the vanishing day. 'Tis a ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... the rich volumes of antiquities which she formerly tendered to the keeping of our Scottish fathers. But though, unhappily, our predecessors, like King Tarquin, rejected and scorned the rich antiquarian treasures which existed in their days, let us not now, on that account, despise or decline to secure the three books of them that still perchance remain. On the contrary,—like the priests appointed by the Roman authorities to preserve and study the Sibylline records which had escaped destruction,—let this Society carefully guard and cherish those antiquities of our country which ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... you his in a few striking lines. But George Eliot is not content until she has minutely explained the motives of her characters and the moral lesson to be learned from them. Moreover, it is the development of a soul, the slow growth or decline of moral power, which chiefly interests her. Her heroes and heroines differ radically from those of Dickens and Thackeray in this respect,—that when we meet the men and women of the latter novelists, their characters are already formed, and we are reasonably sure what they will do under given ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... declined he bade them consider themselves asked to dine with him later on that evening, but Cuthbert saw an opportunity to put in an entering wedge and reluctantly said that they would have to decline, since they had a comrade and would not feel ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... had cultivated his friendship by letters and presents, which I had sent to him from Aleppo, and by which he was so much gratified, that he would have loaded me with presents in return, had I not thought proper to decline every thing of that kind, contenting myself with some very strong letters of recommendation from him to the authorities in those places which I intended to visit. Shybely is the kindest and most generous Turk I have known in Syria: and his reputation for these qualities has become so general, ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... monophysite to think that it does not matter much how a man lives in this world of shadows, provided he holds communion with the world of unseen realities. The same motive accounts for the rapid decline of missionary activity in their communion. The Nestorians were far more active propagandists. Worship is a very high type of service; but worship becomes selfish and sickens into sentiment, if it neglects the inspiring tonic of contact with human need. The monophysite Christology encouraged ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... poor that he had not been able to take flight, as the other medical men had done. At such a time as this it was out of the question to send for an European physician; a person thus summoned would be sure to suppose that the patient was ill of the plague, and would decline to come. I therefore rode to the young doctor’s residence. After experiencing some little difficulty in finding where to look for him, I ascended a flight or two of stairs and knocked at his door. No one came immediately, but after some little delay the medico himself opened the door, and admitted ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... but returned on the following day. The people were kind and friendly. They informed me there was no other colored family in the city, but my step-mother was continually crowded with friends and customers without distinction. My step-mother had buried her only son, who returned from the war in a decline. The white friends were all in deep sympathy with them. I felt immediately at home among such kind and friendly people, and have never felt homesick, except when I think of my poor mother's farewell embrace when she accompanied us to the cars. As soon as my step-mother had arrived, and our ...
— The Story of Mattie J. Jackson • L. S. Thompson
... I in answer, "in a spirit very different from that by which Monsieur de Chatellerault appears to have been actuated. He made it incumbent upon me to afford proof of my courage. That proof I have afforded; I decline to do more. Moreover, as Monsieur de Chatellerault himself must perceive, the light is failing us, and in a few minutes it will ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... hopes decrease, Dick," he said. "Remember that at least twenty per cent of the decline is due to the darkness and inaction. In the morning, when the light comes once more, and we're up and doing again, you'll get back all the twenty per cent ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... came another telegram—this time from Mr. A. Fisscher, a member of the Executive Council, and a man whom I respected greatly on account of his official position. He urged me not to decline the appointment, but to proceed at once to the Western borders. I did not know what to do. However, after deliberating for a short time, and with great difficulty overcoming my disinclination to ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... and that he "had discretionary power to accept or to refuse acceptance of an appeal for clemency." He thereupon left the representative of the American Legation and apparently called upon von Bissing, and after half an hour he returned with the statement that not only would von Bissing decline to revoke the sentence of death, but "that in view of the circumstances of this case, he must decline to accept your plea for clemency or any representation in regard ...
— The Case of Edith Cavell - A Study of the Rights of Non-Combatants • James M. Beck
... he was so polite as to decline a drink outside, you must treat us to one here. Ah! you certainly ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... prose. But, when we speak of Arnold's criticism, it is necessary to widen the scope of one's observation; for he was never more essentially the critic than when he concealed the true character of his method in the guise of poetry. Even if we decline to accept his strange judgment that all poetry "is at bottom a criticism of life," still we must perceive that, as a matter of fact, many of his own poems are as essentially critical as ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... looked eagerly into my face. "Very well, then; I will answer in a few words, if facts were as you so confidently state them to be, I might possibly be induced to cast in my lot with yours; but, fortunately for humanity, they are not so, and I must therefore most emphatically decline." ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... notion easily fixes itself fast, which may be regarded as a mental disease. To such a fixed view he always came back again, and was thus in the long run excessively tiresome. He would bitterly complain of the decline of his memory, especially with regard to the latest events, and maintained, by a logic of his own, that all virtue springs from a good memory, and all vice, on the contrary, from forgetfulness. This doctrine he ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... rejection, repudiation, exclusion; refusal &c. 764; declination V. reject; set aside, lay aside; give up; decline &c. (refuse) 764; exclude, except; pluck, spin; cast. repudiate, scout, set at naught; fling to the winds, fling to the dogs, fling overboard, fling away, cast to the winds, cast to the dogs, cast overboard, cast away, throw ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... On being asked why the dative of the relative had been his limit, he explained that his teacher had not been able to pronounce it and so he could go no further. He was put through some questions and could not answer them but if asked to decline any word he would do it in this fashion: Mensa mensae mensam mensas mensae mensarum mensae mensis mensa mensis and so on all through the Grammar until he came to the relative and at the dative he failed. Mr. Style considering ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... themselves gentlemen. Not a few on whom Lady Margaret had never called, and whom she would never in any way acknowledge again, were invited; nor did the knowledge of what it meant cause many of them to decline the questionable honor—which fact carried in it the best justification of which the meanness and insult were capable. Mrs. Wardour accepted for herself and Letty; but in their case Lady Margaret did call, and in person give the invitation. Godfrey positively refused to accompany them. He would ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... suppose a girl may do what she likes with herself in that way. If I choose to decline to take anything that is pleasant, and nice, and comfortable, nobody has a right to scold me. And I won't ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... security, and imposing but few taxes upon them. As the island grew rich with the wealth brought in by the raids of the Knights, the condition of the Maltese also improved, and while the Order flourished it was not an excessive burden to the natives. But when the Knights started upon their decline the condition of the islanders deteriorated. They had always suffered from the occasional scarcity due to the ill-humour of the Spanish King or the natural failure of the Sicilian harvest. But now the taxes became heavier and heavier, and ...
— Knights of Malta, 1523-1798 • R. Cohen
... thrusting his head forward, by no means redeemed, one would not have been disposed (unless Mr Pecksniff said so) to consider him a bad fellow by any means. He was perhaps about thirty, but he might have been almost any age between sixteen and sixty; being one of those strange creatures who never decline into an ancient appearance, but look their oldest when they are very young, and get it over ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... flash he saw what he had, all unknowingly, lived by since the decline of his powers had fallen upon swiftness, and he saw it as what alone makes life bearable. He had lived by the knowledge of death, by the blessed certainty that life could not go on for ever, that there must be an end to all the wanderings and pain, to all ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... of his religion. It was the controlling force in his life, yet it had not been in any way obtrusive. It had grown with his growth, and strengthened with his expanding strength; and although there had of course been many slips and falls—for what was he but an impulsive boy?—there had been no decline, but steadfast progress as the years of his boyhood glided past. It stood him in good stead when death waited for him in the depths of Halifax harbour, and it was with him now, as hour by hour he drew nearer the dark valley of ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... position west of the Mississippi, in which the Indian tribes have been placed, will tend to promote their civilization, arrest their deterioration in morals, or their decline in numbers, we think extremely problematical. Should such, however, be the happy result, it may be anticipated that the tribe which has produced a Logan, a Cornstalk and a Tecumseh, will be among the first to rise above the moral degradation ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... Lord Rokesle observed; "I begin to fear these heroics are contagious. Possibly I, too, shall begin to rant in a moment. Meanwhile, as I understand it, you decline to perform the ceremony. I have had to warn you before this, Simon, that you mustn't take too much gin when I am apt to need you. You are very pitifully drunk, man. So you defy me and my evil courses! ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... keenly watched Congress, and marked its sure and not very gradual decline. He did what he could to bring about useful measures, and saw them one after the other come to naught. He urged the impost scheme, and felt that its failure was fatal to the financial welfare of the country, on which so much depended. He always was striving ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... that our years are approaching their decline; our health also is failing every minute, and the Creator alone can foresee what is ahead. So we have proposed, while we're still living, to give in marriage our only daughter; and in regard to her settlement we may hope also that she'll not bring into ill repute our ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... Ernest, but had meditated much upon his character, until he deemed nothing so desirable as to meet this man, whose untaught wisdom walked hand in hand with the noble simplicity of his life. One summer morning, therefore, he took passage by the railroad, and, in the decline of the afternoon, alighted from the cars at no great distance from Ernest's cottage. The great hotel, which had formerly been the palace of Mr. Gathergold, was close at hand, but the poet, with his carpet-bag on his arm, ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... hire, she'd enough left to adorn the horse wi' white favours an' give the rider a crown, large as my lord. Aye, an' at the Work'us door she said to the fellow, said she, 'All my life I've longed to ride in a bridal chariot; an' though my only lover died of a decline when I was scarce twenty-two, I've done it at last,' said she; 'an' now heaven an' airth can't ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... been times in France when the study of color produced artistic effects in costume worthy of attention, and resulted in styles of dress of real beauty. But the present corrupted state of morals there has introduced a corrupt taste in dress; and it is worthy of thought that the decline of moral purity in society is often marked by the deterioration of the sense of artistic beauty. Corrupt and dissipated social epochs produce corrupt styles of architecture and corrupt styles of drawing and painting, as might easily be illustrated ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... would boast he boasts of catching mice at the edge of a hole. Shakespeare would have understood this. Milton would have made him talk like an eagle. His influence is not to be left out of account as partially contributing to that decline toward poetic diction which was already beginning ere he died. If it would not be fair to say that he is the most artistic, he may be called in the highest sense the most scientific of our poets. If to Spenser younger poets have gone to be sung-to, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... be stripped off twice during the season, to feed to cows or other stock, without injury to the crop. Cows will give more milk for fifteen days, fed on this root alone, than on any other feed; they then begin to get too fat, and decline in milk: hence, they should be fed beets and hay or other food in about equal parts, on which they will do better than in any other way. Horses do better on equal parts of beet and hay than on ordinary hay and ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... would seem that this was well understood in Paris; for the day on which the 'Moniteur' published the reply of his Majesty to the senate, stocks increased in value more than two francs, which the Emperor did not fail to remark with much satisfaction; for as is well known, the rise and decline of stocks was with him the real thermometer ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... have gone too far in attributing these evils to the influence of the works and the fame of Petrarch. It cannot, however, be doubted that they have arisen, in a great measure, from a neglect of the style of Dante. This is not more proved by the decline of Italian poetry than by its resuscitation. After the lapse of four hundred and fifty years, there appeared a man capable of appreciating and imitating the father of Tuscan literature—Vittorio Alfieri. Like ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of Alexander the Great was followed by a visible decline in all the fine arts; but the fatal blow to their existence was given by the success of the conquering Romans, who reduced Greece to a ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... the commencement of the civil dissensions, to interpose their mediation, which they knew would be so little favorable to the king: and the king for that very reason had ever endeavored, with the least offensive expressions, to decline it.[*] Early this spring, the earl of Loudon, the chancellor, with other commissioners, and attended by Henderson, a popular and intriguing preacher, was sent to the king at Oxford, and renewed the offer of mediation; but with the same success as before. The commissioners were also ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... present Atlas will help to illustrate, editions of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," and of Merivale's Roman History which leads up to it, are already in preparation; it is hoped to publish in the series also an edition of Herodotus, the father of the recorders of history ...
— The Atlas of Ancient and Classical Geography • Samuel Butler
... answered you, I should only lead to other questions, and I should be obliged to decline replying to them. I am sorry to disappoint you. I repeat what I said on the beach—I have no other feeling than a feeling of sympathy toward you. If you had consulted me before your marriage, I should willingly have admitted ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... energy to lift the ship up from one planet to another. If your trip was, say, twenty billions of miles to the next planet, you'd be fighting a gravity as bad as the solar gravity at Earth here all the way—no decline with a ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... Nancy at this period is not so easily drawn. The decline of the family fortunes seemed to have had as little effect upon her as upon her father, although their characters differed sharply. Something of that spontaneity, of that love of life and joy in it she had possessed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... speak," continued the magistrate, "is still young, and is rich. He will be only too happy to receive Mademoiselle Claire without a dowry. Not only will he decline an examination of your accounts of guardianship, but he will beg you to invest your ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... the topic of many of these monodies: either the virtues of the loyal slave are extolled[140], or the knavery of the cunning slave[141]. The parasite is "featured" too, when Ergasilus bewails the decline of his profession[142], or Peniculus and Gelasimus indulge in haunting threnody on their perpetual lack of food[143]. Bankers, lawyers and panders come in for their share of satire[144]. Our favorite topic today, the frills and furbelows ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... already performed by men highly skilled in science and languages, and as I do not myself possess a knowledge of Greek sufficiently exact for the task; lastly, as we have lost the originals of those books which were written in Hebrew, I prefer to decline the undertaking. (106) However, I will touch on those points which have most bearing on my ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... kind of labour can be mentioned, not even the chase, which can be pursued without money in hand. And, as for ourselves, what would become of us? What! we are not to be allowed to borrow, in order to work in the prime of life, nor to lend, that we may enjoy repose in its decline? The law will rob us of the prospect of laying by a little property, because it will prevent us from gaining any advantage from it. It will deprive us of all stimulus to save at the present time, and of all ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... This decline in American tonnage is, it must be added, only relative, whether the comparison be made with other countries or with our own past. The returns show a carrying capacity in our ships more than twentyfold that of 1789, and three times that of 1807; when, on the other hand, it exceeded in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... Full many a corse lay ghastly pale, beneath the setting sun. And midst the dead and dying, were some grown old in wars,— The death-wound on their gallant breasts, the last of many scars! But some were young,—and suddenly beheld life's morn decline,— And one there came from ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... thou must hence, or I shall be depos'd. But I will reign to be reveng'd of them; And therefore, sweet friend, take it patiently. Live where thou wilt, I'll send thee gold enough; And long thou shalt not stay; or, if thou dost, I'll come to thee; my love shall ne'er decline. Gav. Is all my hope turn'd to this hell of grief? K. Edw. Rend not my heart with thy too-piercing words: Thou from this land, I from myself am banish'd. Gav. To go from hence grieves not poor Gaveston; But to forsake you, in ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... whole Iliad in due sequence. "But the unity existed before the mangling. That this has been so long and so stubbornly misunderstood is no credit to German scholarship: blind uncritical credulity on one side, limitless and arbitrary theorising on the other!" We are not solitary sceptics when we decline to accept the theory of Mr. Leaf. It is neither bottomed on evidence nor does it account for the facts in the case. That is to say, the evidence appeals to Mr. Leaf as valid, but is thought worse than inadequate by other great scholars, such as Monro and Blass; while the fact ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... products, but the boycotts did not have a significant impact on the overall Danish economy. Because of high GDP per capita, welfare benefits, a low Gini index, and political stability, the Danish living standards are among the highest in the world. A major long-term issue will be the sharp decline in the ratio ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... resumed his attacks on Judaism. In 1816 he published an article under the title "Concerning the Causes of the Obnoxiousness of the Jews," in which he asserted that the Jews were responsible for Poland's decline. They multiplied with incredible rapidity, forming now no less than an eighth of the population. Should this process continue, the Kingdom of Poland would be turned into a "Jewish country" and become "the laughing-stock of the whole of Europe." The Jewish religion ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... ship owning. She will protect that, by leaving it free, and every Englishman who desires to buy a ship will come for that purpose to the Delaware. Mr. Roach objects to our buying British ships now; will he decline to sell ...
— Free Ships: The Restoration of the American Carrying Trade • John Codman
... came over the waters, and the serenity became less brilliant but more profound. The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the venerable ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... do. She could not decline to know the Prince without making some explanation to Millicent. She also could not flatter him so much. She must just be icily cold, and if he should be further impertinent she ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... ancestors by their study and industry have imported all their other arts which were worth having. Thus the praise of oratory, raised from a low degree, is arrived at such perfection that it must now decline, and, as is the nature of all things, verge to its dissolution in a very short time. Let philosophy, then, derive its birth in Latin language from this time, and let us lend it our assistance, and bear patiently to be contradicted and refuted; and although those ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... in the County of Berkshire, Esquire, Gent, have one failing, and I freely confess it. I cannot keep a key. Were I as other men are—which, thank Heaven, I am not—I might wear a pound or so of hideous ironmongery chained to my person. This I decline to do, with the result that, as I say, I cannot keep a key. Of all the household stowaway places under my control (and Barbara limits their number) only one is locked; and that drawer containing I know not what treasures or rubbish is likely to continue so forever ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... committed forgery, and, being apprehended, took a dose of prussic acid. Mr. Archer came with the stomach-pump, and asked the patient how much prussic acid he had taken. "Sir," he replied, attorney-like, "I decline answering that question!" He recovered, and afterwards arrived at great ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... revulsion from new-born hope to despair had been too much for it. Poor Mr. Lee! what did his heart say now? Did it yet upbraid him? Dr. Kent, who had set out on a course of visits, could not at once be found, and the wretched father sat gazing in agonizing helplessness on his suffering child until the decline of the day. What would he have given to live over again the last few hours! At length the physician appeared: 'Now,' said he, on accosting Mr. Lee, 'do you think I know my own business or not? Do I make mountains of mole-hills or not? I knew what I was about, ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... assault upon Fort Sumter; but it was not the cue of Southern partisans to admit that this internal action of certain sovereign States of the Union was of a nature to justify coercive war on the part of the North, while the fact that it rested with the North to decline or accept the challenge was patent to the friends of both belligerents. Thus, when the enormous magnitude and horrors of the war startled English onlookers, the odium, in the opinion of many, attached to the North: ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... nationally considered, is in a state of decline. The very efforts which the more enlightened amongst her statesmen are now making towards rescuing her from the collapse which threatens show how desperate they consider her case, and how anxious they ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... fear, sir; I did of purpose humble myself against your coming, to decline the pride ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... suit brings me luck. I earn enough. And I have begun to save; for I feel that one's powers decline. I am tired frequently; sometimes I have pain. I shall also become fat and old. I don't like to put make-up on-I am no longer being supervised. Kuno Kohn has made me free. ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... care of her,' said one of the oldest of the good ladies; 'Phillis comes of a family as is not long-lived. Her mother's sister, Lydia Green, her own aunt as was, died of a decline just when she ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of the dark ages, the "ready to die;" Philadelphia, the rise of Protestantism, "an open door, a little strength;" and Laodicea, (the riches of civilization choking the plant of Christianity,) its decline, and, but for the Founder's second coming, its fall; ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Egypt, looking towards Arabia. It took four days to go up this canal, and it was so wide that two triremes could go abreast. It was carried on by Darius, the son of Hystaspes, and probably finished by Ptolemy II. Strabo saw it navigated: but its decline from the point of departure, near Bubastes, to the Red Sea was so slight that it was only navigable for a few months in the year. This canal answered all commercial purposes to the age of Antonius, when it was abandoned and blocked up with sand. Restored by order of the ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... is dormant. If the branch is large I do not cut quite close in, and recut close in June, when the wound heals more readily. I do not approve of rigorous pruning of old trees showing signs of feebleness. Such operations would increase decline—only the dead wood should be removed, the loss of live wood depriving old trees of the supply of sap which they need for support. Grafting-wax is good to cover the wounds of trees, or a thick paint of the color of the bark answers well. Trees also may be pruned in ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... never steps outside of his specialty or dissipates his individuality. It is an Edison, a Morse, a Bell, a Howe, a Stephenson, a Watt. It is Adam Smith, spending ten years on the "Wealth of Nations." It is Gibbon, giving twenty years to his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." It is a Hume, writing thirteen hours a day on his "History of England." It is a Webster, spending thirty-six years on his dictionary. It is a Bancroft, working twenty-six years on his "History ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... and that, at the period of the publication, offers were made to him of legal evidence on which to convict the author of a libel; but that, as he had then treated the man with contempt, he should decline to disturb him after so great a lapse of time." From this communication it would seem, that the Duke believed that he knew the author, and also that ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... September, 1908, the superintendent of the Department of Public Safety issued an order to the effect that the "red-light district" would no longer be tolerated, and that the common prostitute and street-walker would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. From that date on a gradual decline was noticeable in the emergency work, and the calls for shooting and cutting affrays were few. At this time I can safely say that emergency work coming from this source has decreased ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... was cast, the decision made. It was with no regret that I wrote to Trevanion to decline his offers. Nor was the sacrifice so great—even putting aside the natural pride which had before inclined to it—as it may seem to some; for restless though I was, I had labored to constrain myself to other views of life than ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... outrage or pillage upon the inhabitants. The general was aware of your opinion, that colored men will not fight. You have failed to show, by the conduct of these free men, so far, anything to sustain that opinion. And the general cannot see why you should decline the command, especially as you express a willingness to go forward to meet the only organized enemy with your brigade alone, without farther support. The commanding general cannot see how the fact that they are guarding your line of communication by railroad, can weaken ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... prodigal of smiles and civilities. Alas! no one was found any longer to cut it voluntarily. The new comers seemed to decline the honor. The "old favorites" reappeared one by one like dethroned princes who have been replaced for a brief spell in power. Then, the chosen ones became few, very few. For a month (O, prodigy!) M. Anserre cut open ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... in a country that is not yours; or the delusion which makes you hope for ampler privileges in that country hereafter. Tell us; which is the white man, who, with a prudent regard to his own character, can associate one of you on terms of equality? Ask us which is the white man who would decline such association with one of our number, whose intellectual and moral qualities are not an objection? To both of these questions we unhesitatingly make the same answer: there ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... company would receive any benefits from a contemplated road. As its representative he must decline to contribute fifty thousand pesos. But he would assume the ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... in this remarkable trilogy of novels relating to Southern Reconstruction. It is a thrilling story of love, adventure, treason, and the United States Secret Service dealing with the decline and fall of the Ku ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... have lungs and what not, and instead of galloping on merry hunters through the frost and snow of Piccadilly and Park, instead of enjoying the roaring fires of piled logs in the evening, at the first approach of winter steal away to the Land of the Sun, and decline to die, like honest Britons, on British soil. And then they know nothing of the Egyptians and are horrified at "bakshish," which they really ought to pay for the privilege of shocking the straight-limbed, naked-footed Arab in ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... stern and unyielding morality, supported as it was by such visible policy, there was no appeal. From that moment the yells in the forest once more ceased, the fire was suffered to decline, and all eyes, those of friends as well as enemies, became fixed on the hopeless condition of the wretch who was dangling between heaven and earth. The body yielded to the currents of air, and though no murmur or groan escaped the victim, there ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... said to show that the goodness of action must be determined with reference to nothing less than the totality of all affected interests. For this highest principle I have reserved the honored term, good-will. Neither you nor I can reasonably decline to consider the bearing of our actions on any interest whatsoever. Right conduct, since it is inconsistent with the least ruthlessness, must inevitably in the end assume the form of humanity ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... inwardly under the sense of his own helplessness. What in God's name could he do? Could he denounce Wardour to Captain Helding on bare suspicion—without so much as the shadow of a proof to justify what he said? The captain would decline to insult one of his officers by even mentioning the monstrous accusation to him. The captain would conclude, as others had already concluded, that Crayford's mind was giving way under stress of cold and privation. No hope—literally, no hope now, but in the numbers of the expedition. Officers ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... the seventeenth century some of the old austerity and rudeness was sensibly modified under the influence of the great neighbouring monarchy. One striking illustration of this tendency was the rapid decline of the Savoyard patois in popular use. The movement had not gone far enough when Rousseau was born, to take away from the manners and spirit of his country their special quality ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... that, for my own part, I felt a bit puzzled; I did not quite know what to make of the weather indications. It might be that nothing worse than a violent thunderstorm was brewing; but against this theory there was to be set the sudden and ominous decline of the barometric pressure. We had fulfilled our task, and were preparing to get under way, when Takebe, who was in command of the torpedo flotilla, came aboard to consult with our skipper as to the advisability of going to sea, in the ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... my heart this day, And make it always thine, That I from thee no more may stray, No more from thee decline. ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... baron accepted—Athalie would not have allowed him to decline had he wished to—so we all three went there and have been residing there ever since. On the night after our arrival an alarming, a horrifying, thing occurred. It was while we were at dinner that the conversation turned upon the supernatural, upon houses and ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... address himself to the task of portraying the rise, progress, and decline of the American union, the year 1850 will arrest his attention, as denoting and presenting the first marshalling and arraying of those hostile forces and opposing elements which ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... the Queen had remarked "How sorry she was she could not ask him to be seated." Subsequently, Disraeli, after an attack of gout and in a moment of extreme expansion on the part of Victoria, had been offered a chair; but he had thought it wise humbly to decline the privilege. In her later years, however, the Queen invariably asked Mr. Gladstone and Lord Salisbury to ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... her into unexpected perplexity. She thought it would not become a princess of her rank to undeceive the king, and to own that she was not prince Kummir al Zummaun, whose part she had hitherto acted so well. She was also afraid to decline the honour he offered her, lest, being so much bent upon the conclusion of the marriage, his kindness might turn to aversion, and he might attempt something even ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... went down the steps, a gentleman ascended them, and made his entrance into the shop. It was the portly, and, had it possessed the advantage of a little more height, would have been the stately figure of a man, considerably in the decline of life, dressed in a black suit of some thin stuff, resembling broadcloth as ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... the sad decline Which takes this form of futile prattle? That pious feat might yet be mine If I could only win a battle; Cases are known of mental crocks Restored by sharp ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 6, 1917 • Various
... (B) the appropriate course of action to be taken by the ammonium nitrate facility owner with respect to such a purchase or transfer or attempted purchase or transfer, including— (i) exercising the right of the owner of the ammonium nitrate facility to decline sale of ammonium nitrate; and (ii) notifying appropriate law enforcement entities; and (C) additional subjects determined appropriate to prevent the misappropriation or use of ammonium nitrate in an act of terrorism. (2) Use of ...
— Homeland Security Act of 2002 - Updated Through October 14, 2008 • Committee on Homeland Security, U.S. House of Representatives
... honesty, it is the opinion of all with whom I have conversed on the subject that there has been a great decline in the honesty of the common people. In feudal days thefts and petty dishonesty were practically unknown. To-day these are exceedingly common. Foreign merchants complain that it is impossible to trust Japanese to carry out verbal or written promises, ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... that case, it is said, Mr. Loring, who has no Curtis blood in his veins, did not wish to steal a man; and proposed to throw up his commission rather than do such a deed; but he consulted his step-brother, Charles P. Curtis, who persuaded him it would be dishonorable to decline the office of kidnapping imposed upon him as a United States Commissioner by the fugitive slave bill. Benjamin R. Curtis, it is said, I know not how truly—himself can answer, aided Mr. Loring in forming the "opinion" by which he attempted to justify the "extradition" of Mr. Burns; that is ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... were dissolved and new Diets elected, in none of which, however, could the supporters of the Cabinet secure a majority; the Cabinet was, therefore, incapable of carrying out any of its distinctive measures. Several times the opposition went so far as to decline to pass the budget proposed by the Cabinet, unless so reduced as to cripple the government, the reason constantly urged being that the Cabinet was not competent to administer the expenditure of such large sums of money. There were no direct charges of fraud, but simply of incompetence. ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... invitation to prepare a weekly column under the caption of "What Women Wear;" a summary of passing usages in clothes. The woman reporter in charge of it had just died. Selma's first impulse was to decline the work as unworthy of her abilities, yet she was in immediate need of employment to avoid running in debt and she was assured by Mrs. Earle that she would be very foolish to reject such an offer. Reflection caused her to think more highly of the ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... going themselves needing explanation. This, it is true, might be found in very slight changes of figure,[964] not altogether unlikely to occur. But into this cloudy and speculative region astronomers for the present decline to penetrate. They prefer, if possible, to deal only with calculable causes, and thus to preserve for their "most perfect of sciences" its special ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... are about to decline my offer?" demanded the Count sharply. "Have a care, Mr. Edestone. I am not merely trying to frighten you, as you may suppose. The facts are just as I have stated them, and I shall ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... water-meads with Proserpine Plucked no fire-hearted flowers, but were content Cool fritillaries and flag-flowers to twine, With lilies woven and with wet woodbine; Till once they sought the bright AEtnaean flowers, And their bright mistress fled from summer hours With Hades, down the irremeable decline. And they have sought her all the wide world through Till many years, and wisdom, and much wrong Have filled and changed their song, and o'er the blue Rings deadly sweet the magic of the song, And whoso hears must listen till he die Far on ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... O Cheronean Sage, is thine. '(Why should this praise to thee alone belong!) 'All else from Nature's moral path decline, 'Lured by the toys that captivate the throng; 'To herd in cabinets and camps, among 'Spoil, carnage, and the cruel pomp of pride; 'Or chaunt of heraldry the drowsy song, 'How tyrant blood, o'er many a region wide, 'Rolls to a thousand ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... as the one supreme poetess of Hellas, and the poets, if so they must be called, of the decline of Greek dramatic art were never weary of loading her name with every most disgraceful reproach they could invent. It is hardly worth while to discuss a subject so often discussed with so little profit, or it would be easy to show that these gentlemen, Ameipsias, Antiphanes, Diphilus, and the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... religious movement, of which we know, has depended on a personal impulse, and has behind it some real, living and inspiring personality. It is true that at a comparatively late stage of Hinduism a personal devotion to Shri Krishna grew up, just as in the hour of decline of the old Mediterranean paganism we find Julian the Apostate using a devotional language to Athena at Athens that would have astonished the contemporaries of Pericles. But Jesus, Buddha, and Muhammad stand on a very different footing ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... Fairly Park, I did not know you. I can give you a medical certificate that since then I have been in the doctor's hands. I know you now. I call upon you to meet me, with what weapons you like best, to prove that you are not a midnight assassin. The place shall be where you choose to appoint. If you decline I will make you publicly acknowledge what you have done. If you answer, that I am not a gentleman and you are one, I say that you have attacked me in the dark, when I was on horseback, and you are now my equal, if I like to think ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... But the leader disapproved of this arrangement; and having reminded Henry that he owed him obedience, as having taken wages at his hand, he commanded him to occupy the space in the third line immediately behind himself—a post of honour, certainly, which Henry could not decline, though he accepted ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... of its shows of power, pride, and ostentation, a tableau vivant of European rule in the darker ages, when, on the decline of Roman dominance, the principles of feudal dependence were established by barbarians from the North. Under such a system, it is impossible to ascertain, or to represent by any standards of currency, the amount of the royal revenues and treasures. But it is known that the riches of the Siamese ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... purchased was that which every consumer must pay, and was not increased for my advantage. The transaction was satisfactory to buyer and seller, and was concluded when payment was made. I am now tendered a commission which I am at liberty to accept or to decline. If I decline it, I lose something, my client gains nothing, and the remaining profit to the seller is greater than he expected by that amount. If I accept it, I do my client no wrong. If it is the custom of manufacturers ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... distance of a quarter of a league from the farm, yet we continued walking more than an hour without reaching it. We perceived too late that we had taken a wrong direction. Having left it at the decline of day, before the stars were visible, we had gone forward into the plain at hazard. We were, as usual, provided with a compass, and it might have been easy for us to steer our course from the position of Canopus and the Southern Cross; but ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... school—that does not necessarily mean that the new tendency is bad and wrong. Any change in fundamentals is apt to be upsetting, for the time being. The new way, in the end, may really be better than the old, and represent progress. Or it may mean deterioration and decline. It will be time enough to discuss that phase of the question, after we have made sure that we thoroughly understand what it is, ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... and his signing the Magna Carta was partly due to the influence of the then Master of the Temple. Henry III. at one time intended to be buried in the Temple Church. His subsequent change of mind perhaps marks some decline in the popularity of the Templars. But their downfall in England (1308) was mainly owing to Papal pressure. Edward II. resisted as long as he could, and the more serious charges against them, which were based on confessions ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... Rise, Progress, and Decline of Secession; with a Narrative of Personal Adventures among the Rebels. By W. G. Brownlow, Editor of the "Knoxville Whig." Philadelphia. G. W. Childs. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... afraid of Montriveau; they respected him, but he was not very popular. Men may indeed allow you to rise above them, but to decline to descend as low as they can do is the one unpardonable sin. In their feeling towards loftier natures, there is a trace of hate and fear. Too much honour with them implies censure of themselves, a thing forgiven neither to the living ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... individual who is observed to be inconstant to his plans, or perhaps to carry on his affairs without any plan at all, is marked at once, by all prudent people, as a speedy victim to his own unsteadiness and folly. His more friendly neighbors may pity him, but all will decline to connect their fortunes with his; and not a few will seize the opportunity of making their fortunes out of his. One nation is to another what one individual is to another; with this melancholy distinction ...
— The Federalist Papers
... her if she would allow him to come to her." On receiving this she pondered for some time before she could make up her mind as to what answer she should give. She would have been most anxious to do as she had already heard that Lord Hampstead had done, and decline to meet him at all. She could not analyze her own feelings about the man, but had come during the last few days to hold him in horror. It was as though something of the spirit of the murderer had shown itself to her in her eyes. She had talked glibly, ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... mechanical labour—a demand that was far in excess of the supply. Employers began to outbid each other, and wages rapidly rose. At the same time the disposition to steady exertion on the part of the workmen began to decline. ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... land, form the coast; but the latter Cape itself consists of a lofty group, with several peaks, the highest of which is visible from the sea at twenty leagues. The heights from thence towards the north decline gradually, as the mountainous ranges approach the shore, which they join at Cape Weymouth, about latitude 12 degrees; and from that point northward, to Cape York, the land in general is comparatively low, nor do any detached ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... noisy disputants and intemperate intriguers of the mess-room; and again during the Reign of Terror, and even later,[3321] in the persecution or dismissal of so many patriotic and deserving officers, which led Gouvion-Saint-Cyr and his comrades, through disgust, to avoid or decline accepting high rank, in the scandalous promotion of club brawlers and docile nullities, in the military dictatorship of the civil proconsuls, in the supremacy conferred on Lechelle and Rossignol, in the subordination forced on Kleber ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... would, believe me, boys, if I only knew the gentleman, which I don't, never having been properly introduced. Must have been out of town when he gave his little show the other day. So I respectfully but firmly decline the honor you want to pay me. Now, it's sure up to Smithy to get busy, and make up with his old chum again. Here's his chance to win immortal glory, and the thanks of the whole Silver Fox Patrol as ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... time, the same appertains to all that depend upon God and His promises. And, therefore, however we are assaulted by Satan, our adversary, within the Word of God is armor and weapons sufficient. The chief craft of Satan is to trouble those that begin to decline from his obedience, and to declare themselves enemies to iniquity, with divers assaults, the design whereof is always the same; that is, to put variance betwixt them and God into their conscience, that they should not repose and rest themselves in His assured promises. And to persuade this, ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... assaults of the Norwegian and Danish rovers by whom those seas were infested, and by them it was repeatedly pillaged, its dwellings burned, and its peaceful inhabitants put to the sword. These unfavorable circumstances led to its gradual decline, which was expedited by the subversion of the Culdees throughout Scotland. Under the reign of Popery the island became the seat of a nunnery, the ruins of which are still seen. At the Reformation, the nuns were ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... has been a decline and degradation in these things. First came the old drinking days which are always described as much more healthy. In those days men worked or played, hunted or herded or ploughed or fished, or even, in their rude way, wrote or spoke, if only expressing the simple minds of ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... still "Rejoice!"—his word which brought rejoicing indeed. So is Pheidippides happy forever,—then noble strong man Who could race like a god, bear the face of a god, whom a god loved so well, He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and was suffered to tell Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as he began, So to end gloriously—once to shout, thereafter be mute: "Athens is saved!"—Pheidippides dies in ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... favour (I have brought out fifteen books), invitations to lecture or talk about birds kept pouring in. I was talking this over with Marion Harland (Mrs. Terhune), declaring I could never appear in public, that I should be frightened out of my wits, and that I must decline. My voice would all go, and my heart jump into my mouth. She exclaimed, 'For a sensible woman, you are the biggest fool I ever met!' This set me thinking, and with many ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... spectators, who accompanied me down to that point, which I reached about eight o'clock in the evening. The town was illuminated, and the citizens tendered me a polite invitation to land and take supper; but of course I was obliged to decline, accepting in lieu a drink and a sandwich. Of the sandwich I ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... somewhat indignant at the very sudden manner in which Mr. Peter Magnus had conjugated himself into the imperative mood, 'I decline answering ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... obliged to change its name. I felt there was a gap in the story. The high-water mark of Greek religious thought seems to me to have come just between the Olympian Religion and the Failure of Nerve; and the decline—if that is the right word—which is observable in the later ages of antiquity is a decline not from Olympianism but from the great spiritual and intellectual effort of the fourth century B.C., which culminated ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... compromise the matter by returning Cesare an offer of accommodation for his men with victuals, artillery, etc., but without the concession of Castel Bolognese. With this Cesare was forced to be content, there being no reasonable grounds upon which he could decline so generous an offer. It was a cunning concession on Bentivogli's part, for, without strengthening the duke's position, it yet gave the latter what he ostensibly required, and left no cause for grievance ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... the national Constitution, let any man who would nullify its laws, stand forth and tell us what he would wish. What does he propose? Whatever he may be, and whatever substitute he may hold forth, I am sure the people of this country will decline his kind interference, and hold on by the Constitution which they possess. Any one who would willingly destroy it, I rejoice to know, would be looked upon with abhorrence. It is deeply intrenched in the regards of the people. Doubtless it may be undermined by artful ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... "failing them for fear and for looking after those things that were coming on the earth." And Christianity was called to meet the argument drawn from the fact that the visible declension seemed to date from the time when the new religion was introduced into the Roman world, and that the most rapid decline had been from the time when it had been accepted as the religion of the State. It fell to the Bishop of Hippo to write in reply one of the greatest works ever written by a Christian. Eloquence and learning, argument and irony, appeals to history and earnest entreaties, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... and riant land, rich in trees and streams, with gazelles pacing daintily over the plains; whereat he fell a-musing and said to himself, "Would I knew the name of yon town and in what land it is!" And he took to circling about it and observing it right and left. By this time, the day began to decline and the sun drew near to its downing; and he said in his mind, "Verily I find no goodlier place to night in than this city; so I will lodge here and early on the morrow I will return to my kith and kin and my kingdom; and tell my father and family what hath passed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... impossible not to be moved at this spectacle. We know not the subject of their prayers; we hear not their secret groanings; but they are old, they precede us in the journey to the tomb. When we in our turn pass into that terrible advance guard, may God by his grace so ennoble our age, that the decline of life may be ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... her cordially, but must decline this offer; her daughters, she said, must learn betimes to moderate their ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... Hotel Conde. The prince was good enough this morning to ask me to establish myself there while I remained in Paris, and I could not very well decline ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... sucking at his thighs, and the sinews in his arms burning like fire. There followed a swift descent through cellars of dwindling depth, till he floated into the long, spume-flecked swells at the foot of the decline, where the canoe drifted sluggishly, full nearly to the gunwale. And here Belding leaned forward with his hands on her curved thwart, and pumped great gulps of air into his empty lungs. Presently ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... were now so strongly secured, and his apprehension of nocturnal attacks so strongly justified by the threats he had already received, and the disorganized state of the country around him, that he was forced to decline receiving the tithe at unseasonable hours; it being impossible for him to know whether the offer of payment might not have been a plan of the people to get into his dwelling, and wreak their vengeance upon him and his sons. Under ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... others have fallen in the battledore-and-shuttlecock process to which they have been subjected. Then, when the subject is settled, comes the consideration of the details—what should the grouping be? what the accessories? how many figures?—(during the hunting season John Leech would decline to introduce more than two, as his week-end would otherwise be spoiled)—and other minor yet still important considerations; and then each man's opinion has its proper weight in the Council of Punch. In this year of grace Mr. ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... gigantic tusk, as may well be supposed, is considered an affair of almost national importance, and the bargain can only be adjusted through the medium of a "big palaver." The trade in ivory is now on the decline; the demand in England and France not being so great as formerly, and America never having presented a good market ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... a slave to the white man's passions, and the white man a slave to his own. The present West Indian society in its worst forms is probably a mere dilution of the utter profligacy of those days. Greek or Roman decline produced nothing more debilitating or destructive than the ordinary life of a Surinam planter, and his one virtue of hospitality only led to more unbridled excesses and completed the work of vice. No wonder that Stedman himself, who, with all his peculiarities, was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... the less have I an idea that it will become the Canadas to rebel and assert their independence at some future period, unless it be conceded to them without such rebellion. Who, on looking back, can now refuse to admire the political aspirations of the English Puritans, or decline to acknowledge the beauty and fitness of what they did? It was by them that these States of New England were colonized. They came hither, stating themselves to be pilgrims, and as such they first ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... Dr. Little, "how wretchedly ill that young Graystone woman is looking? The doctor was saying, only this morning, that he thought she was in a decline." ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... hour. In all probability, we shall be discovered at once. At the very moment that our friends are eagerly awaiting us on board the ship we may be lying dead on the island. The notion is preposterous. Be guided by me, Dom Corria, and decline to have anything to do with it. Better still, let these English boors promise to forget that we are alive; then Marcel can guide them to the landing-place, where they will be shot speedily and comfortably. There is no sense in sacrificing the girl. She must be kept here ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... "I must decline to answer, sir. I've lost the plans and must take the consequences; but I don't see why my private friends, who have nothing to do with it, should be involved ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... There have been times in France when the study of color produced artistic effects in costume worthy of attention, and resulted in styles of dress of real beauty. But the present corrupted state of morals there has introduced a corrupt taste in dress; and it is worthy of thought that the decline of moral purity in society is often marked by the deterioration of the sense of artistic beauty. Corrupt and dissipated social epochs produce corrupt styles of architecture and corrupt styles of drawing and painting, as might easily be illustrated by the history of art. When the leaders ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... periods of the world have been remarkable for some distinctive or characteristic trait. The feature of the period of Louis XIV was the splendour of the court and the centralization of power in Paris. The year 1789 marked the decline of the power of courts and the evolution of government by the people. So, by the spread of republican ideas and the great advance in science, education has become universal, for women as well as for men, and this is more than ever a mechanical age. "With increased knowledge we are constantly ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... London Bridge, east Portcullis, Ludgate, Temple Bar, and other places of public resort, according to the then bloody-minded custom, and the statute in that case made and provided. But after Colonel Guido Faux, Back, Thumbscrews, boots, and wedges, and Scavenger's daughters fell into a decline, from which, thank God, they have never, in this fair realm of England, recovered. I question even if the Jesuit Garnett and his fellows, albeit most barbarously executed, were tortured in prison; but it is certain that when Felton killed the Duke of Bucks at Portsmouth, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... Brown's wife lay clutched in the tentacles of pain; Then came the doctor, grave and grey; spoke of decline, of nervous strain; Hinted Egypt, the South of France — Brown with terror was tiger-gripped. Where was the money? What the chance? Pitiful God! . . . the manuscript! A thousand dollars! his only hope! he gazed and gazed at the garret ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... which the Mayor declared to be too much, and my father too little. Both, however, were agreed that Erewhon would before long be compelled to enter into relations with foreign countries, in which case the value of gold would decline so much as to make 2000 pounds worth little more than it would be in England. The Mayor proposed to buy land with it, which he would hand over to George as a gift from himself, and this my father at once acceded to. All sorts of questions such as will occur to the reader were raised ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... make. In the morning the scouts came in, saying that the enemy were rapidly advancing. The column was immediately put in motion, moving toward the enemy, but it was Colonel Morgan's intention to decline battle until more positively informed of the enemy's strength, and when he reached the junction of the Hartsville and Scottsville turnpikes, at the eastern edge of the town, he turned off on the Scottsville pike, which runs nearly at right angles ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... Didn't I ride horseback with her? But they are all gone now and as the poet says: 'Good riddance.' Come along, Kitten, and eat grub. That's a function I decline to omit, Dol Vin or any other threat hanging over my poor bobbed head. Come on, dear, cheer up! The worst is ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... You must note beside, That we have tried the utmost of our friends, Our legions are brim-full, our cause is ripe: 215 The enemy increaseth every day; We, at the height, are ready to decline. There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life 220 Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat; And we must take the current when it ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... may be easily conceived, sufficiently favourable; but of the six young ladies, his taste unfortunately determined him in favour of Lady Emily, the youngest, who received his attentions with an embarrassment which showed at once that she durst not decline them, and that they afforded her ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... again here, dear master, and not very happy; my mother worries me. Her decline increases from day to day, and almost from hour to hour. She wanted me to come home although the painters have not finished their work, and we are very inconveniently housed. At the end of next ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... library, and again wondered why she had sent for him instead of telephoning what she wanted. He wasn't going to do it. That is, if it were one of the old pleadings that he would come to her parties or go to some one else's he would decline to do it, and usually the important matter on which she must see him proved something of that sort. Five years ago he had cut out ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... left behind her the last houses of Batignolles followed, with Fleur-de-Marie, a grassy footpath. The day was calm and beautiful, the sky toward the west half concealed by red and purple clouds; the sun, beginning to decline, cast his oblique rays on the heights of Colombe, on the other side of the Seine. As Fleur-de-Marie drew near the banks of the river, her pale cheeks became slightly colored; she inhaled with delight ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... any vital truth is incapable of being applied to another case: the essential is unique. Perhaps that is why it is so neglected: because it is useless. What we learned about that Spaniard is incapable of being applied to any other Spaniard, or even recalled in words. With the decline of orthodox theology and its admirable theory of the soul, the unique importance of events has vanished. A man is only important as he is classed. Hence there is no tragedy, or no appreciation of tragedy, which is the same thing. We had been talking of young Bistwick, who three ...
— Eeldrop and Appleplex • T.S. Eliot
... hunger with which he ate the good things which these kind friends placed upon his plate would betray the necessary frugality of the dear "Muddie's" house-keeping, which was one of the sacred secrets of the sweet home. Sometimes his pride would make him go so far as to decline delicious morsels in the hope of correcting such an impression, ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... much wish for a little time to reconsider it, and to try whether condensation here and there would enable us to get it say into four parts. I am not sanguine of this, for I observed the difficulties as I read it the night before last; but I am very unwilling, I assure you, to decline ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... who left the enclosed to forward it the earliest opportunity, as he said it was of consequence. Mr. P—— called the day after you left town. My mother and myself are much obliged by your kind offer of tickets to the play, but must decline accepting it. My family send their best respects, in which they ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... shall my lust for the bowl decline, Nor my love for my good long bow; For as bow to the shaft and as bowl to ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... come here to listen to school-boy nonsense," said the lady Dewbell, with a haughty and impatient motion of the head. "I came to get a glass of geranium-water. But, as you decline obliging me to that extent, I suppose I must e'en get it for myself. Good-night to you, Sir Timothy! Pleasant ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... tempted to stop by the music of the birds, which the heat had assembled in the shade, and sometimes amused himself with picking the flowers that covered the banks on each side, or the fruits that hung upon the branches. At last, the green path began to decline from its first tendency, and to wind among the hills and thickets, cooled with fountains, and ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... most to death, an' sayin' they'd heard wolves and other beasts sufficient for a caravan. Poor creatur's! they 'd strayed at last into a kind of low place amongst some alders, an' one of 'em was so overset she never got over it, an' went off in a sort o' slow decline. 'T was like them victims that drowns in a foot o' water; but their minds did suffer dreadful. Some folks is born afraid of the woods and all wild places, but I must say they 've always been like ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... of the day in its heat and light, would gradually decline; and again the golden water would be dancing on ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Hastings being expressly ordered by the Court of Directors to restore to them their estates, in case the charges made upon them should not be found true, he, the said Hastings, did contumaciously and cruelly decline any compliance with the said orders until his journey to Lucknow, in ——, when he did, as he says, "conformably to the orders of the Court of Directors, and more to the inclination of the Nabob Vizier, restore to them their jaghires, but with the defalcation, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... that I could show, if necessary, that Lady Mary W. Montague was also greatly to blame in that quarrel, not for having rejected, but for having encouraged him; but I would rather decline the task—though she should have remembered her own line, 'He comes too near, that comes to be denied.' I admire her so much—her beauty, her talents—that I should do this reluctantly. I, besides, am so attached ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... no one could possibly understand that a prima donna just on the edge of decline could possibly wish to advertise a rising light. ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... not always harsh and deadly sin: If it be love of loveliness divine, It leaves the heart all soft and infantine For rays of God's own grace to enter in. Love fits the soul with wings, and bids her win Her flight aloft nor e'er to earth decline; 'Tis the first step that leads her to the shrine Of Him who slakes the thirst that burns within. The love of that whereof I speak, ascends: Woman is different far; the love of her But ill befits a heart all ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... Sometimes their cuts are neater than common listeners apprehend. I've seen Rupert and Will, in fencing, make their swords flash in the sun at every parry and thrust; agayn, owing to some change in mine owne position, or the decline of y^e sun, the scintillations have escaped me, though I've known their rays must have been emitted in some quarter alle ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... the young and impressionable minister, is the living result of two corroding vices; the man is a sot, but something beside the lust for liquor has helped to make him one. He has followed after sin in the shape of his neighbour's wife, and perhaps the latter's decline may be traced to the working of remorse and the futile longing after a ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... interested in your criticism of "Queen Mary." I have not read it, but the choice of subject is entirely morbid and wrong, and I am sure all you say must be true. The form of decline which always comes on mental power of Tennyson's passionately sensual character, is always of seeing ugly things, a kind of delirium tremens. Turner had it ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... great beauty in decline. Her day of glory had been fairly long, but now it seemed to be over. She was past forty. She said she was thirty-eight, but she was over forty. Goodness, some say, keeps women fresh. Mrs. Chepstow had ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... expect them to," he answered, tartly. "If they asked me I'd decline. I simply don't enjoy that sort of thing ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... present times. Even the new religions which were born from time to time—always at epochs when the mutual-aid principle was falling into decay in the theocracies and despotic States of the East, or at the decline of the Roman Empire—even the new religions have only reaffirmed that same principle. They found their first supporters among the humble, in the lowest, downtrodden layers of society, where the mutual-aid principle is the necessary foundation of every-day life; and the new forms of union ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... I did not wish to see his brother, the king, as I should perhaps be again deceived and be introduced to some impostor like himself; and that as I did not choose to be made a fool of, I should decline the introduction. This distressed him exceedingly. He said that the king was really so great a man that he, his own brother, dared not sit on a stool in his presence, and that he had only kept in retirement as a matter of precaution, as Debono's people had allied ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... during tumults or in the event of hostilities, I think the sooner the remaining five tumble down the better; for the European powers will certainly not brook such an insult from the Turks, now in the day of their decline. ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... felt clearly that I was about to act like a brute and a traitor toward a human being who had given herself to me in full confidence.—But everything seemed more desirable—not only for me, but for her also—than a slow, miserable, unworthy decline. And all my scruples were submerged in a monstrous longing to go on with my life as before, without duties or ties. There wasn't much time left for consideration. And I was glad of it. I had made up my mind. I didn't wait for the morning. Before ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... of the Dutch War the reign of Louis XIV enters on a period of manifest decline. The cost of the war had been tremendous. In 1677 the expenditure had been one hundred ten millions, and Colbert had to meet this with a net revenue of eighty-one millions. The trade and commerce of the country had also suffered much during ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... Remsen," Joel answered. "I hadn't thought of their doing such a thing. I don't see why they should want me. But if it's offered you may be sure I'll decline. I'd be totally unfitted for it; and, besides, I haven't ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... and by prestige—which represents physical force in the background—that a nation protects itself against foreign interference, upholds its rule over subject populations, and enforces its own laws. And nothing could in the end more certainly lead to war and revolt than the decline of the military spirit and loss of prestige which would inevitably follow if man admitted ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... far better informed than I; we discussed possible combinations and possible developments, and the chances of some great constructive movement coming from the heart-searchings the Boer war had occasioned. We would sink to gossip—even at the Suetonius level. Willersley would decline towards illuminating anecdotes that I capped more or less loosely from my private reading. We were particularly wise, I remember, upon the management of newspapers, because about that we knew nothing whatever. We perceived that great things were to be done through newspapers. We talked ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... assumed metropolitan importance in their densely populated districts. Only Plymouth in the south-west is now of first-class consequence to the nation; and Plymouth is a parvenu compared with Looe and Fowey. The actual decline of these two little towns may not be great, but relatively it is enormous. Yet it deserves a milder term than decay, for the present-day life here is still wholesome and in a certain sense prosperous. It is a gentle and placid prosperity, very largely the happiness of places that have no history. ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... Just as she had pulled herself together to begin, Madame Poyet mentioned casually, without any attempt at an apology, that they were very sorry but they had to go out at half-past nine: they had an invitation which they had been unable to decline. The Jeannins were at a loss, and got up at once to go. The Poyets made some show of detaining them. But a quarter of an hour later there was a ring at the door: the footman announced some friends of the Poyets, neighbors ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... laboring under the delusion that his guests would not drink unless he kept his eye on them, and forced them to do so. Lieutenant-Colonel Ducat, an Irishman of the Charles O'Malley school, insisted upon introducing me to the ladies, but fortunately I was sober enough to decline the invitation. Harker, late in the evening, thought he discovered a disposition on the part of others to play off on him; he felt in duty bound to empty a full tumbler, while they shirked by taking only half of one, which he affirmed was unfair and inexcusable. General Thomas, ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... has actually knocked them; and Orientals are imitating the tweeds of the tourist more than they imitated the stripes of the squire. It is a curious and perhaps melancholy truth that the world is imitating our worst, our weariness and our dingy decline, when it did not imitate our best and the high moment ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... from their own, observes: "It is not that our reason absolutely rejects the possibility of the existence of the Nesnas (see vol. i. p. 206) or of the 'Angka, and other beings of that rare and wondrous order; for there is nothing in their existence incompatible with the Divine Power; but we decline to believe in them because their existence has not been manifested to ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... he has no parallel except his friend and contemporary, Mehul, to whom he dedicated Medee, and who dedicated to him the beautiful Ossianic one-act opera Uthal. The direct results of his teaching at the conservatoire were the steady, though not as yet unhealthy, decline of French opera into a lighter style, under the amiable and modest Boieldieu and the irresponsible and witty Auber; for, as we have seen, Cherubini was quite incapable of making his ideals intelligible by any means more personal than his music; and the crude ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... had some honest and open differences in the year past. But they didn't keep us from joining hands in bipartisan cooperation to stop a long decline that had drained this nation's spirit and eroded its health. There is renewed energy and optimism throughout the land. America is back, standing tall, looking to the eighties ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... directed and controlled man's destiny was a doctrine inconsistent with the traditional faith in the divine authority of the "son of heaven." Hence from the sixth century the prestige of the Crown began to decline, and the puissance of the great uji grew to exceed that of the sovereign. During a short period (645-670) the authority of the Throne was reasserted, owing to the adoption of the Tang systems of China; but thereafter the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... your tears. My best bonnet is very unbecoming. I even heard it said the other day, striking horror to my soul, that it looked literary! And I'm afraid it does! Moreover, my only silk dress that is presentable begins to show awful symptoms of decline and fall; and though you may suppose literature to be a lucrative business, between ourselves it is not so at all, (very likely the "Atlantic" gentlemen will omit that sentence, for fear of a libel-suit from the trade,—but it's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... of his amour he shall decline to take a wife, that, in the first place, is an offense on his part to be censured. And now for this am I using my endeavors, that, by means of the pretended marriage, there may be real ground for rebuking him, if he should refuse; at ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... calmly, "you are perfectly well aware that the right, not only to interfere between you and the estate, but to invest me with full power over it and you, was sought to be given me by Mrs. Verner at my uncle's death. For reasons of my own I chose to decline it, and have continued to decline it. Do you remember what I once told you—that one of my first acts of power would be to displace you? After what I have seen and heard to-day, I shall deliberate whether it be not my duty to reconsider ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... largely during her illness. For several days her voice was noticeably lacking in quality and volume, and "There is a Happy Land," which was her favorite hymn during that period, was rendered so subduedly that Wade was worried, and had to have the Doctor's assurance that Zephania was not going into a decline. ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... something above eighty years, and then, as Piso writes, was not taken out of the world by a sudden or acute disease, but died of old age and by a gradual and gentle decline. At his funeral all the glories of his life were consummated, when all the neighboring states in alliance and amity with Rome met to honor and grace the rites of his interment with garlands and public presents; the senators carried the bier on which his corpse was laid, and the priests ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... invulnerable." In Sicily it is customary, on Midsummer Eve, to fell the highest poplar, and with shouts to drag it through the village, while some beat a drum. Around this poplar, says Mr. Folkard,[4] "symbolising the greatest solar ascension and the decline which follows it, the crowd dance, and sing an appropriate refrain;" and he further mentions that, at the commencement of the Franco-German War, he saw sprigs of pine stuck on the railway carriages bearing the German ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... is the age of leaders, when individual thought has so far departed that they begin to look to others not yet as governors, but directors. This, to a superficial view the noblest age, marks the beginning of a decline. Its great power of invasion, as under Pericles or Caesar, comes from the fact that, while strength enough is left to carry out the details, there is not enough of independence in thought to mar the unity in the plan of its leader. Its brilliant literature springs ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... literature of his day, but here again he was beset with misgivings and haunted by forebodings. He felt that the State had reached its zenith both in material prosperity and intellectual achievement, and that all the future held in reserve was decline and decay. This thought was ever present with him; in the vast extension of empire he foresaw the inevitable disintegration, and he wondered in a melancholy fashion what would be the fate of mankind when the Empire, dismembered and rotten, ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... have tried to decline, pleasantly, fearing the acceptance of the use of the automobile might seem to bind him to extend courtesies on one of his boats. But Mr. Hodges was so gently, firmly insistent that, in a very short time, the submarine party found themselves ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... 355-275 B.C.), nephew of Demosthenes, Athenian orator and statesman, was one of the few distinguished Athenians in the period of decline. He is first heard of in 322, when he spoke in vain against the surrender of Demosthenes and the other anti-Macedonian orators demanded by Antipater. During the next fifteen years he probably lived in exile. On the restoration of the democracy by Demetrius Poliorcetes in 307 he occupied ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government. It is time for us to realize that we are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We are not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing. So, with all the creative energy at our command, let us begin an era of national renewal. Let us renew our determination, our courage, and our strength. ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... and warm feeling"; and ten Brink, with more enthusiasm, calls it (p. 96) "one of the pearls of Old English poetry, full, as it is, of dramatic life, and fidelity of an eye-witness. Its deep feeling throbs in the clear and powerful portrayal." He recognizes, however, "the tokens of metrical decline, of the ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... tendency to base conclusions upon authority. It takes much more knowledge of a subject and much greater skill in its presentation to make the reasons for facts clear. Furthermore, it requires a good degree of energy and moral courage on the part of teachers to decline the compliment that young people confer upon them in preferring to trust them rather than evidence; and it also requires a good degree of energy on the part of students to rely upon their own study of ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... findings of the superior jury as conclusive in all cases excepting those in which fraud or misconduct amounting to fraud was charged. Under these circumstances, for the apparent purpose of avoiding such investigation and for no other reason known to the Commission, the company elected to decline agreement upon the matter to be arbitrated and to withhold all of the awards from the Commission. At the time of writing this report the Commission is not advised of any award made by the superior jury, nor does any award seem to ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... my aunt spoke of Kromitzki's affairs in a doubting spirit, it had always caused me some uneasiness. The prospect that at some time or other he might want me to assist him or take a share in his transactions had made me consider what I should do in such a case; and I always vowed that I would decline and have nothing to do with any of his affairs; so repugnant to me was the thought of mingling money matters with my relations to Aniela. I remember that I saw in this another proof of the nobility and refinement of my feelings. To-day I grasp that weapon as if I were a banker ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... respite left me. I have committed a crime, it is true, and I do not attempt to justify it; but who laid the foundation of it, if not yourself? Now, you do me the favor of offering me a pistol. Thanks. I must decline it. This generosity is not through any regard for me. You only wish to avoid the scandal of my trial, and the disgrace which cannot fail to ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... himself became unfortunately verified; for his constitution, after this, began to decline, till at length his mortal destiny, in the eyes of his medical attendants, was sealed. But even then, when removed by pain and sickness from the discussion of political subjects, he never forgot this cause. In his own sufferings he was ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... spiritual whistle is familiar to Glanvil and to Homer. Mr. Wesley, at Epworth (1716), noted it among all the other phenomena. The Mrarts are next heard 'jumping down,' like the kenaimas. Questions are put to them, and they answer. They decline, very naturally, to approach a bright fire. The medium (Birraark) is found entranced, either on the ground where the Mrarts have been talking, or at the top of a tree, very difficult to climb, 'and up which there are no marks of any one having ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... retirement of the republican Dutch; and finally the Cape Colony and Natal were linked together with the Free State in a Customs Union. But the development of the mineral resources of the country led to the appearance of a new factor in South African politics. The comparative decline in the activity of the High Commissioner had been accompanied by the establishment and growth of powerful industrial corporations. It is easy to understand how a man like Rhodes, with the wealth and influence of De Beers ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... was a good defense as long as Roman soldiers remained to guard it. But in process of time—about two centuries after Severus's day—the Roman empire itself began to decline, even in the very seat and center of its power; and then, to preserve their own capital from destruction, the government were obliged to call their distant armies home. The wall was left to the Britons; but they could not defend it. The Picts and Scots, finding out the change, renewed ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... inthralls two young students at the college: one of whom is Edward Wolcott, a wealthy, handsome, generous, healthy young fellow from one of the seaport towns; and the other, Fanshawe, the hero, who is a poor but ambitious recluse, already passing into a decline through overmuch devotion to books and meditation. Fanshawe, though the deeper nature of the two, and intensely moved by his new passion, perceiving that a union between himself and Ellen could not be a happy one, resigns the hope of it from the beginning. But circumstances bring ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... army administration he was excellent; his industry was unwearying; the smallest details received his personal attention. He was conscious of the difficulties of the task which lay before him; he believed, so he told Patrick Henry, that from the day of his appointment his reputation would begin to decline. The congress was an unorganised body without any constitutional status, conducting its business by means of constantly changing and irresponsible committees, and was utterly unfit to exercise executive functions; it had ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... elucidated by Lenormant, in The Beginnings of History (1882). The Book of Joshua relates the history of the conquest of Canaan; Judges, the tale of the heroic age of Israel prior to the monarchy; the Books of Samuel and of Kings, of the monarchy in its glory and its decline; the Books of Chronicles treat of parts of the same era, more from the point of view of the priesthood; Ruth is an idyl of the narrative type; Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther have to do with the return of the Jews from exile, and ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... that she might be disappointed of the visit altogether. Still she could not but hope that Mary would come in the course of the afternoon. The hours of the afternoon, however, passed tediously away, and the sun began to decline toward the west; still there was no Mary Bell. The cause of her detention ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... Mavra's embroidery work would slacken its motion, and for long hours her eyes remain fixed on the face of the sleeping young count. Daylight would decline, and no candles be brought, lest the healing ...
— The Little Russian Servant • Henri Greville
... motivated by severe illness to withstand the discomfort and boredom. However, it is possible to finish a healing process initiated by one long water fast by repeating the fast later. My husband's healing is a good example of this. His health began to noticeably decline about age 38 and he started fasting. He fasted on water 14 to 18 days at a time, once a year, for five consecutive years before most of his ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... house near by. An extremely good house I found it to be, well placed in the most interesting quarter of the town. Having it in my mind to drive on from Youghal to Lismore, there to make an early dinner, see the castle of the Duke of Devonshire, and return to Cork by an evening train, I had to decline Father Keller's cordial hospitalities, but he gave me a most interesting hour with him in his comfortable study. Father Keller stands firmly by the position which earned for him a sentence of imprisonment last year, when he refused ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... room, with its subtile fragrance of flowers and mysterious light, would be with him then. Such an hour as this would be a crowning triumph to the apex of life. Better that life should end than lengthen out to witness a decline from ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... year 43. Some circumstances I recollect, make me almost certain he was in London that year; but I will not be so certain of the time he died, which I did not hear of till long after it happened. When his health and faculties began to decline, he went to France, and after to Bath, in hope his health might be restored, but without success. I never saw him after his sister removed him from M'Donald's madhouse at Chelsea to Chichester, where he soon sunk into a deplorable state of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... it is regularly paid, and that there is no excuse for his being in debt. And now take into consideration that he has an appearance to maintain; that he has a family to support; and then what becomes of the opportunity of laying by a modicum even, to guard against the decline of life when the 'winter daisies' shall crown his head, and a new race of performers have started up and driven the others from their posts? We have some rare instances of very large fortunes being made and retained by ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... Strict was the Lion-King's command, That none, who rode in Marmion's band Should sever from the train: "England has here enow of spies In Lady Heron's witching eyes:" To Marchmount thus, apart, he said, But fair pretext to Marmion made. The right hand path they now decline, And trace against ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... explorer observed, "made night 'ideous." The only muss now common to them is the mus tribe, comprising the mus ratus, or ordinary rat (so called from its haunting ordinaries, we suppose), and the timid mouse, with which the Bird of Wisdom is contented to put up when the sparrows decline ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... branches about him, and nothing but the snow and the tree trunks was forced upon his eye, except now and then a bit of blue seen through the branches—a blue that had lost much depth of colour with the decline of day, and come nearer earth—a pale cold blue that showed exquisite tenderness of contrast as seen through the ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... overwhelming growth during past years was one of the conspicuous phenomena in the business life of the nation. I love to watch their operations spread over the map, and I love to watch the growth of American cities, the shifting of their shopping centers, the consequent vicissitudes, the decline of some houses, the rise of others. American Jews of German origin are playing a foremost part in the retail business of the country, large or small, and our people, Russian and Galician Jews, also ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... "we find it very difficult to understand your attitude toward our company. We do not see why you decline our proposition. Your own report gives every reason in the world why you should accept and you suggest no reason at all for declining. Frankly, it looks strange to us and I have come out to have a little talk with you over the matter and to ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... the decline of religious feeling among the people . . ." he sighed. "I should rather think so! They'd better foist a few more priests like this ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Galbraith was large-minded enough still to hold out to him the former offer? Should he wish to accept it? Would it not be almost charity? No, if he refused Cynthia's hand—and that was what, in bald terms, it would amount to—he must decline the other favor as well and be independent of the Galbraiths for good and all. Otherwise his position would be unendurable. It was an odious situation, the one in which he found himself. Only a cad cast a woman's heart back at her feet. The ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... showed no sign of doing so, they tried to console themselves by pretending that he had some secret romance. Old ladies hoped he had a broken heart for some fiancee who was lying under the daisies, having died of decline in the classical middle-Victorian way. Young ladies thought that he was probably fixed up in some way that would be sure in time to dissolve, and that he would marry later on. Far the most popular theory was that he didn't marry simply because he was married, ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... thinking about the world," Northrup was intent upon the fire, "it's how the fact is affecting me. The world can accept or decline, but I am made helpless. You see my work is the only real, vital thing I have clawed out of life, by my own efforts, Manly; that means a ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... The Major would have been materially assisted by a sight of that document; it would have narrowed the necessary area of inquiry and given a definiteness to his assertions which must have carried added weight with Mr Iver. As it was, he began to be convinced that Mina would decline to remember any dates even approximately, and this was all she had professed to do in her first disclosure. Duplay acknowledged that, as matters stood, the betting was in ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... It is true that since then England has made surprisingly sweeping concessions; concessions so large as to increase the amazement that the refusal should have been so long. But unfortunately the combination of the two rather clinches the conception of our decline. If the concession had come before the terror, it would have looked like an attempt to emancipate, and would probably have succeeded. Coming so abruptly after the terror, it looked only like an attempt to tyrannise, and an attempt that failed. It was partly an inheritance ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... new government, and the commerce gradually passed into the hands of other nations. The climate appears also to have changed; and the lessened industry and want of perseverance in the inhabitants have brought agriculture completely into decline. ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... think no more of the error, but told her that to avoid its renewal, she must decline calling upon her again till her brother was gone. She begged therefore to see her in Portman- square whenever she had leisure, repeatedly assuring her of her good opinion and regard, and of the pleasure with which she should seize ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... within the borders of the existing German Empire for the whole population, however favourable our international relations. We shall soon, therefore, be faced by the question, whether we wish to surrender the coming generations to foreign countries, as formerly in the hour of our decline, or whether we wish to take steps to find them a home in our own German colonies, and so retain them for the fatherland. There is no possible doubt how this question must be answered. If the unfortunate course of our history has hitherto prevented us from building ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... Gibbon might be an able writer, it was not safe for young men to study his works, simply because he had thrown doubt or derision on the Christian miracles. So when it was reported that a growing liberality of sentiment was being manifested at Cambridge, and that Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" was to be used, doubtless no little excitement was roused; and hence the notice. Before this time doubts concerning many cherished doctrines had been openly expressed in Boston, Cambridge, Salem, and ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... Tiberius, the decay of agriculture had been felt in Italy; and it was a just subject of complaint, that the life of the Roman people depended on the accidents of the winds and waves. [138] In the division and the decline of the empire, the tributary harvests of Egypt and Africa were withdrawn; the numbers of the inhabitants continually diminished with the means of subsistence; and the country was exhausted by the irretrievable losses of war, famine, [139] and pestilence. St. Ambrose has deplored the ruin of a ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... without ceasing, no attempt appears to have been made to explore the rocks themselves, in the debris of which the gems have been brought down by the rivers. Dr. Gygax says: "I found at Hima Pohura, on the south-eastern decline of the Pettigalle-Kanda, about the middle of the descent, a stratum of grey granite containing, with iron pyrites and molybdena, innumerable rubies from one-tenth to a fourth of an inch in diameter, and of a fine rose ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... and that Lawrence might misunderstand it. Connolly said he thought I must take the place. The President himself afterwards talked with me about it. I hesitated. He urged me, insisting that I could not very well afford to decline. Finally I said that if he insisted, I would accept. He nominated us to the Senate for confirmation. This precipitated considerable debate in the Senate, for, by the member of the Committee on the Judiciary, the appointment ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... this setting part of time, are providentially taken off from such imaginations; and being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of futurity, are naturally constituted into thoughts of the next world, and cannot excusably decline the consideration of that duration, which maketh pyramids pillars of snow, and all ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... planting himself firmly behind the garden seat]. Well, the long and the short of it is, O'Flaherty, I must decline to be a party to any attempt to deceive your mother. I thoroughly disapprove of this feeling against the English, especially at a moment like the present. Even if your mother's political sympathies are really what you represent them to be, I should think that her gratitude to Gladstone ...
— O'Flaherty V. C. • George Bernard Shaw
... while, with respect to amplifications and embellishments, anything rather than, with the good farmer, experience that most signal of mortifications, 'to gape for AEschylus and get Theognis.' I should especially decline,—what may appear to brighten up a passage,—the employment of a new word for some old one—[Greek: phonos], or [Greek: megas], or [Greek: telos], with its congeners, recurring four times in three lines.... Further,—if I obtained a mere strict bald version of thing by thing, or at least word pregnant ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... two parties were equally successful, and at times Banks was able to employ himself in trading with the natives, with whom he soon got on friendly terms; in fact, he had to decline further purchases as he had as much as they could take away with them. He was also successful in his botanical enquiries, obtaining several plants he had ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... younger now than we. They are as incalculable a factor in a political forecast as another Chosen Race, the Jews. Their past is the world's glory: the present in the Near East is theirs more than any people's: the future—despite the laws of corporate being and decline, dare we say they will have no part in it? Of Rumania what are we to think? Her mixed people has had the start of the Balkan Slavs in modern civilization, and evidently her boundaries must grow wider yet. But the limits of her possible expansion are easier to set than ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... nights, without eating a morsel of food. The poor Princess Helena, almost prostrated by the blow, mourned alone, or with Boris, in her own apartments. Her influence, no longer kept alive by her constant presence, as formerly, began to decline. When the old Prince aroused somewhat from his stupor, it was not meat that he demanded, but drink; and he drank to angry excess. Day after day the habit resumed its ancient sway, and the whip and the ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... looking up from the wheel. "If you mean me, I decline to act except as your lieutenant. You have captained us admirably; and if I decline the honour, you will hardly suggest promoting Harry, ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... the lands of masters who paid no wage. When there was rebellion, these masters knew how to deal punishment swift and sure; when there was submission, they gave kindness and reward. Had Rome not been as strong as even in her decline she was, Romans could not have held Britain as long as they did. For on sea and land, on the verge of the civilization they maintained, were restless tribes, Scots, Picts, and Saxons, seizing every pretext, every moment of unguardedness, for ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... Accordingly Goldsmith, who appears to have been a most good-natured and compliant youth, did make application to the Bishop of Elphin. There is some doubt about the precise reasons which induced the Bishop to decline Goldsmith's application, but at any rate the Church was denied the aid of the young man's eloquence and erudition. Then he tried teaching, and through the good offices of his uncle he obtained a tutorship which he held for a considerable time—long enough, indeed, to enable him to amass a ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... to touch it, say loudly, "I cannot understand how any animal can decline such delightful bread-and-butter." He can then openly dispose of it in the grate or the waste-paper-basket on the ground that the dog's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... the poisonous things stored up by her jailers, for him who should daily show his face in their parlour to await an interview with Cadiere. The defence in that case would devolve on M. Chaudon, syndic of the Aix bar. He did not decline so hard a duty. And yet he was so uneasy as to desire a settlement, which the Jesuits refused. Thereupon he showed what he really was, a man of unswerving honesty, of amazing courage. He exposed, with the learning of ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... [Decline of colony.] The downfall of Portugal occasioned the loss of her colonies once more. Spanish policy, the government of the priests, and the jealousy of the Spanish merchants and traders especially, did everything that remained to be done to prevent the development of agriculture and commerce—perhaps, ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... To their place what new objects should enter: 'twas Saul as before. I looked up and dared gaze at those eyes, nor was hurt any more Than by slow pallid sunsets in autumn, we watch from the shore, At their sad level gaze o'er the ocean—a sun's slow decline Over hills which, resolved in stern silence, o'erlap and entwine Base with base to knit strength more intensely; so, arm folded arm O'er the chest ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... trade of the Malayan Peninsula and Sumatra. It also had a large traffic with China, Siam, Borneo, the Celebes, and other places in the Eastern Archipelago; but after the establishment later on of Singapore it had begun to decline, and the settlement then became second only in commercial importance. But within the last quarter of a century the trade has considerably revived, owing largely to the planting of tobacco in Sumatra by European planters, and the annexation of the native states of the ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... English into the interior. The new comers were surrounded by a dense crowd of natives, offering stuffs and mats in exchange for nails as long as the walk lasted. The natives often even carried their liberality so far as to decline any return for these presents. Tai-One conducted his new friends to his dwelling, agreeably situated in a beautiful valley, in the shade of some "sadhecks." He served them with a liquor extracted from the juice of the "eava," the use of which is common ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... for a moment, consulted together, and then said, "No, monsieur, it is useless to tempt us. A will more powerful than our own compels us to decline. You understand, no doubt, that it is not we who refuse. We only obey the orders of one greater than any ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... much the worse for what had happened to him, and had refused to make any complaint against the man who had beaten him. John Crumb shook hands cordially with the policeman who had had him in charge, and suggested beer. The constable, with regrets, was forced to decline, and bade adieu to his late prisoner with the expression of a hope that they might meet again before long. 'You come down to Bungay,' said John, 'and I'll show you ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... age; he was already feeling the weight of isolation from the Royal Family; he was beginning to suffer the insults of the king. But, beneath all this, his gaiety still ran like a river under ice, and in the ageing of a poet, humour and physical decline combined make a ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... hydraulic monitor would have done in a few days, while the rocks seem bursting with riches and the valleys with fertility; but they can get neither produce out nor mining plant in. Their greatest hero now is a certain enterprising director, and they'd decline an angel's visit at any time for that ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... among his associates. He had read everything, and when his key was not busy, there was in his hand a copy of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall." ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... his duty not to delay a moment longer than was necessary, he was compelled to decline Madame Paskiewich's invitation to remain for breakfast, and, accompanied by Herr Groben, who wished to bid farewell to Green, he hurried to the boats. In a few minutes they were again pulling down towards the mouth ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... although I have the honour to be the representative of my sovereign at this Court, I am not authorized to appear in that character towards yourself. It is possible that your Majesty has the intention of entrusting me with some message, in which case I entreat of you to excuse me when I decline to undertake its transmission. I have express orders not to interfere in anything connected either with the person or with the ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... because nothing is so incalculable as the evolution of genius. Still we perceive now that his latest manner, both as regards style and feeling, and also as regards the method of execution by assistants, shows him to have been upon the verge of intellectual decline. While deploring Michelangelo's impracticability—that solitary, self-reliant, and exacting temperament which made him reject collaboration, and which doomed so much of his best work to incompleteness—we must remember that to the very end of his long life he produced nothing (except perhaps in ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... dark as any nigger's, I should have been just as happy and as useful, and as much respected by those whose respect I value; and as to the offer of bleaching me, I should, even if it were practicable, decline it without any thanks. As to the society which the process might gain me admission into, all I can say is, that, judging from the specimens I have met here and elsewhere, I don't think that I shall lose much by being excluded from ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... of Charles, like the advocates of other malefactors against whom overwhelming evidence is produced, generally decline all controversy about the facts, and content themselves with calling testimony as to character. He had so many private virtues! And had James the Second no private virtues? Was Oliver Cromwell, his bitterest enemies themselves being judges, destitute of private virtues? And what, after all, ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... glad to hear it; because I should have had to decline it, if I had been. That's enough—as your mother says—and more than enough of such matters on a Sabbath night. Affery, woman, have you ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... happy for ever,—the noble strong man Who would race like a God, bear the face of a God, whom a God loved so well: He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and was suffered to tell Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as he began So to end gloriously—once to shout, thereafter to be mute: 'Athens is saved!' Pheidippides dies in the shout ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
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