"Decline" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... "I decline your invitation, Herr von Gondremark; and my sovereign, as I continue to observe with regret, is still absent from the board," replied the Doctor calmly; and he resumed the perusal of the paper, the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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
... 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 ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... 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
... decline of Nature-worship, and when through the constantly increasing power gained by the ruder elements in human society a knowledge of the scientific principles underlying ancient religion had been partially lost ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... 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
... decline of the merchant marine of the United States is greatly to be deplored. In view of the fact that we furnish so large a proportion of the freights of the commercial world and that our shipments are steadily and rapidly increasing, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... 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 |
