"Declension" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at the mouth of an entry with several men in moleskin, three parts drunk, and his old black raiment daubed with mud. I fancy that I still can hear him laugh. There was something heart-breaking in this gradual declension at so advanced an age; you would have thought a man of sixty out of the reach of these calamities; you would have thought that he was niched by that time into a safe place in life, whence he could pass quietly and honourably into ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the Latine Tongue, by a method of Vocabulary and Grammar; the former comprising the Primitives, whether Noun or Verb, ranked in their several Cases; the latter teaching the forms of Declension and Conjugation, with all possible plainness: To which is added the Hermonicon, viz. A Table of those Latin words, which their sound and signification being meerly resembled by, the English are the sooner learned thereby, for the use of Merchant ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... character, manners, and customs, and in the curious philosophical traits of the Indian language. It is refreshing to find a person who, in reference to this language, knows the difference between the conjugation of a verb and the declension of a noun. There is a prospect, at least, of getting at the grammatical principles, by which they conjoin and build up words. It has been intolerable to me to converse with Indian traders and interpreters here, who have, for half their lives, been using a language without ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... whatever else might be said, it was in direct antagonism to the principle elaborately expounded by him only six years before, as the sacred rule and obligation between a Christian state and Christian churches. He had marked any departure from that rule as a sign of social declension, as a descent from a higher state of society to a lower, as a note in the ebb and flow of national life. Was it not inevitable, then, that his official participation in the extension of the public endowment of Maynooth would henceforth give ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... salvation. Upon this second reason I now am, and am shewing how it comes to pass that they that are under the power of the things that we have afore discoursed, should notwithstanding that, return to their vomit again. One cause of this declension, or going back to iniquity, I have just now touched upon, and we have some ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was concocted, she had had ample leisure, had as yet incurred none of her later domestic sorrows, and was assured of lavish recompense for her (it must be said) absolutely worthless labours. Why this steady declension, with which, considering the character of Cecilia, the court sojourn can have had nothing to do? And admitting it, why still uphold, as the present writer does uphold, Evelina as one of the points de repere ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... one of the most remarkable epochs in the whole of that thousand years which we may roughly reckon as constituting the history of Britain. In the commencement of that period, we may see, if not the setting, at any rate the declension of that system of personal rule which had existed under previous sovereigns, and which, after a brief and spasmodic revival in the time of George the Third, has now sunk, let us hope, into the limbo of forgotten things. The latter part of that 100 ...
— William Harvey And The Discovery Of The Circulation Of The Blood • Thomas H. Huxley
... their members end in nouns which are of the same declension this is properly called Homoioptolon, as ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... this particular season, is now no longer peculiar to it, having been already dissipated and exhausted. Another cause he assigns is, "the too general desertion of the country, the great scene of hospitality." Now this was written just fifty-three years ago, and as all the causes assigned for the declension of this grand national festivity up to that period are incontrovertible, and have been operating even more powerfully ever since, they will sufficiently account for the still greater declension observable in our days. And the declension appears to me to consist in this,—there is more gastronomy ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction - Vol. X, No. 289., Saturday, December 22, 1827 • Various
... sentiment of relief, commensurate with the contempt inspired by such an explanation, that I was given to understand that it was the great author's unselfish effort in behalf of his old college comrade and life-long friend, that was supposed to imply a state of moral declension fitly indicated by the ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... required considerable time to send a messenger the necessary distance, and to bring the two white men to the spot where they were to embark. Encouraged by these reflections, a new stock of patience was gathered, and the declension of the sun was viewed with ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... books, which is much the same as OFFERING advice. That will probably take some of the shine off them, and put a few thumb-marks in them, which both are very wholesome towards the arresting of the furniture declension. For my part, thumb-marks I find very obnoxious—far more so than the spoiling of the binding.—I know that some of my readers, who have had sad experience of the sort, will be saying in themselves, "He might ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... experiment, let us see that we have got the fishes. That tench was in the Gyndis we have no authority for denying; but, if its Anglian or Saxon name was such as the dictionary exhibits, we have no trace of it {400} in the text of Alfred; for under no form of declension, acknowledged in grammar, will tynce ever give tyncenum. We have no need, then, to spend time in calculating the chance of success, when we have not the means of making ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... Lesson 124.—What is Declension? Decline girl and tooth. Decline the several personal pronouns, the relative and the interrogative. What adjective pronouns are declined wholly or ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... almost word by word out of the dictionary, for the bookbinder's English was rather scanty at the best, and was not literary. As for the grammar, I was getting that up as fast as I could from Ollendorff, and from other sources, but I was enjoying Heine before I well knew a declension or a conjugation. As soon as my task was done at the office, I went home to the books, and worked away at them until supper. Then my bookbinder and I met in my father's editorial room, and with a couple of candles ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... beyond four volumes, and if I did not agree to the first four being published separately, he threatened to decline the article. (Oh, ignorance! as if the vernacular article of our mother English were capable of declension.) Whereupon, somewhat moved by his remonstrances, and more by heavy charges for print and paper, which he stated to have been already incurred, I have resolved that these four volumes shall be the heralds or avant-couriers of the Tales which are yet in my possession, nothing doubting that ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... she was not a very learned nor judicious school-mistress, had a heart and affections of her own. She had once, it is true, taken the word legibus (dative plural of lex, a law) for an adjective of the third declension, legibus, legiba, legibum; and Margaret had criticised this grammatical subtlety with an unsparing philological acumen, as if she had been Professor Moritz Haupt and Miss Marlett, Orelli. And this had led to the end of Latin lessons at the Dovecot, wherefore Margaret was honored as a goddess ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... moment's notice, to leave their farms and homes, their standing crops . . . all to be taken possession of by natives, but that the Government is more powerless than ever to vindicate its assumed rights or to resist the declension that is threatening its existence." It then recites how all the other colonies and communities of South Africa have lost confidence in the State, how it is in a condition of hopeless bankruptcy, and its commerce annihilated whilst the inhabitants are divided into factions, ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... anti-ministerial spirit" and the growth of worldliness and lax living among the people. "What are the reasons that have provoked the Lord to bring his judgments upon New England?" Such was the primary question which the Synod of 1679 was called upon to answer. "Declension from the primitive foundation work, innovation in doctrine and worship"—this, according to a committee of the deputies, was the true cause. "A spirit of division, persecuting and oppressing of God's ministers and precious saints," said Mr. Flint of Dorchester, ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... it is righteousness thus to fuse together our divisive impulses and march with one mind through life, there is plainly one thing more unrighteous than all others, and one declension which is irretrievable and draws on the rest. And this is to lose consciousness of oneself. In the best of times, it is but by flashes, when our whole nature is clear, strong, and conscious, and events conspire to leave us free, that we enjoy communion with our soul. At the worst ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... distinguish similar sounds. So that, at the present day, anyone who says ma will mean either an exclamation, hemp, horse, or curse according to the quality he gives to the sound. The language remains in a primitive state, without inflexion, declension, or distinction of parts of speech. The order in a sentence is: subject, verb, complement direct, complement indirect. Gender is formed by distinctive particles; number by prefixing numerals, etc.; cases by position or appropriate ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... us to know, by what methods those empires were founded; by what steps they rose to that exalted pitch of grandeur which we so much admire; what it was that constituted their true glory and felicity; and what were the causes of their declension and fall. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... I am puzzled by human greatness. A century hence what will he matter, this Pevensey? His ascent and his declension will have been completed, and his foolish battles and treaties will have given place to other foolish battles and treaties, and oblivion will have swallowed this glistening bluebottle, plumes and fine lace and stately ruff and all. ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... Fell into sadness, then into a fast, Thence to a watch, thence into a weakness, Thence to a lightness; and, by this declension, Into the madness wherein now ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... the rescue, from kidnappers and others, of such persons as are really free by the laws, but who have been reduced to slavery. Of the old Abolition societies, organized in the time, and under the influence of Franklin and Rush and Jay, and the most active of their coadjutors, but few remain. Their declension may be ascribed to this defect,—they did not inflexibly ask for immediate emancipation.—The PENNSYLVANIA ABOLITION SOCIETY, formed in 1789, with DR. FRANKLIN, president, and DR. RUSH, secretary, is ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... already, with much sadness of heart," said Endicott, "a declension in that strictness of regimen which marked the earlier time. Have ye not heard of the godly man who, long time, had been prisoner at Norwich for the cause, and was by Judge Cook set at liberty? Now, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... with a sudden declension in his high spirits; for he had been Tim's blood horse all the 30 way from church and had come home rampant. "Not ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... expected from the pen of a young author. However, we must remark some rather awkward examples of grammatical construction. The correct plural of "eucalyptus" is "eucalypti", without any final "s", the name being treated as a Latin noun of the second declension. "Slowly and dignified—it pursues its way" is hardly a permissible clause; the adjective "dignified" must be exchanged for an adverb. Perhaps Mr. Held sought to employ poetical enallage, but even so, the adjective does not correspond with "slowly"; besides, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... remains at magnitude three and seven tenths. The difference, one magnitude and a half, corresponds to an actual difference in brightness in the ratio of 3.75 to 1. The entire loss of light during the declension occupies only four hours and a half. The star remains at its faintest for a few minutes only before a perceptible gain of light occurs, and the return to maximum is as rapid as was the preceding decline. The period from one minimum to the next is two days ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... overshot the mark—and to-day the sight of all this brisk life, going on just as it used to do, with the same insouciance and the same merriment, makes me wish to reflect, to gather up the fragments, to see if it is all loss, all declension, or whether there is something left, some strength ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... That first declension has been a valley of humiliation to many a sturdy boy—to many a bright one, too; and often it is, that the more full of thought and vigor the mind is, the more difficult it is to narrow it down to the single dry issue of learning those sounds. Heinrich Heine said the Romans would ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Canaries; France humbled, England menaced, settlements made in Asia and Northern Africa—Spain in America become possessed of a vast continent and of more than one archipelago of splendid islands. Yet before a century was over the sovereign majesty of Spain underwent a huge declension, the territory under her sway was contracted, the fabulous wealth of the mines of the New World had been wasted, agriculture and industry were ruined, her commerce passed into the ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... almost universal declension, there was ever the remnant—Jew and Gentile—who "endured, seeing the invisible," and strengthening their souls in the special tribulation promise "He that shall endure unto the end, ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... its energies have been a little divided; faction has reigned in it; there have been too many Raynerites and Adamites and sadly too few Christians in it; pious snarling and godly backbiting have been too industriously exercised; and one consequence has been weakened power and a declension of progress. But the brethren are getting more cheerful, much old spleen has subsided, and, we hope, they will all kiss and get ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... foremost place among the Doctors of the Western Church. But his greatest work, without any doubt, is the treatise on the 'City of God.' The Roman empire, as Augustine's life passed on, was hastening to its end. Moral and political declension had doubtless been arrested by the good influence which had been brought to bear upon it; but it was impossible to avert its fall. "Men's hearts," as well among the heathen as among the Christians, were "failing ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... case cannot well be related, but must stand isolated in our thoughts, have their interest. Even lists of exceptions have their interest. If we are studying Greek accents it is interesting to know that pais and pas, and some other monosyllables of the same form of declension, do not take the circumflex upon the last syllable of the genitive plural, but vary, in this respect, from the common rule. If we are studying physiology, it is interesting to know that the pulmonary artery carries dark blood and the pulmonary vein carries bright ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... scientific grammarian, and to the systematizing influence which Greek exerted upon literary Latin, most verbs were made deponent or active once for all, a given noun was permanently assigned to a particular declension, a verb to one conjugation, and the slight tendency which the language had to the analytical method of forming the moods and tenses was summarily checked. Of course the common people tried to imitate their betters in all these matters, but the old variable ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... General Assembly. In the year 1828, the Synod gave its sanction and lent its patronage to the Colonization Society, which was continued till the year 1836, when its patronage was transferred to the cause of Abolition. The spirit of declension became manifest at the session of Synod in 1831, when some of the most prominent and practical principles of the Reformed Church were openly thrown into debate, in the pages of a monthly periodical, under the head of "Free Discussion." Through the pernicious influence ...
— 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
... by gentle degrees, be committed to memory, and when once got by heart, should be assiduously preserved in the recollection. After the preparation which we have recommended, the singular number of a declension will be learnt in a few minutes by a child of ordinary capacity, and after two or three days repetition, the plural number may be added. The whole of the first declension should be well fixed in the memory before a second ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... in strange words under his breath and put on a quicker pace and went through the town, even past the schoolhouse, where old Brooks stood at the door in his long surtout saying a Latin declension over to himself as if it were a song, and into the Crosshouses past the tanned women standing with their hands rolled up in their aprons, and up to Jean Clerk's door. He rapped loudly with his rattan. He rapped so loudly that the inmates knew this was no common messenger, and instead of ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... been thrown into one, and forced into a semblance of eternal unity by means of a coat of stucco. And there was a fountain at the north end which was new to her. No other constructional change! But the moral change, the sad declension from the ancient proud spirit of the Square—this was painfully depressing. Several establishments lacked tenants, had obviously lacked tenants for a long time; 'To let' notices hung in their stained and dirty upper windows, and clung insecurely ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... constituted him the most influential advocate and political orator of his time. He took up the key-note first struck by Manius Curius, his ideal among Roman statesmen;(50) throughout his long life he made it his task honestly, to the best of his judgment, to assail on all hands the prevailing declension; and even in his eighty-fifth year he battled in the Forum with the new spirit of the times. He was anything but comely—he had green eyes, his enemies alleged, and red hair—and he was not a great man, still less a far-seeing statesman. Thoroughly narrow in his political and moral ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... a day of great spiritual darkness, Whitefield and the Wesleys appeared as light-bearers for God. Under the rule of the established church, the people of England had lapsed into a state of religious declension hardly to be distinguished from heathenism. Natural religion was the favorite study of the clergy, and included most of their theology. The higher classes sneered at piety, and prided themselves on being above what they ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... France. These both put off, a poor petitioner, A care-craz'd mother to a many sons, A beauty-waning and distressed widow, Even in the afternoon of her best days, Made prize and purchase of his wanton eye, Seduc'd the pitch and height of his degree To base declension and loath'd bigamy: By her, in his unlawful bed, he got This Edward, whom our manners call the prince. More bitterly could I expostulate, Save that, for reverence to some alive, I give a sparing limit to my tongue. Then, good my lord, take to your ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... just, and if your country rejects them she will not long hold the rank of the first nation in Europe. Her declension is begun, her ruin approaches; for, omitting all other arguments, can a state be well served when the raising of an opulent fortune in its service, and making a splendid use of that fortune, is a distinction more envied than any which arises ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... It was winter and soon dark. The fireworks began at seven; I remember them very well. Above all, I recollect the fine excitement of seeing my own name in great long golden letters, with a word after them that Krak told me I ought to know meant "king," and was of the third declension. "Rex, Regis," said Krak, and told poor Victoria to go on. Victoria was far too excited, and Krak said we must both learn it to-morrow; but we were clapping our hands, and didn't pay much heed. Then Hammerfeldt came in and ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... and on both sides of the Border, the status of the minstrel or ballad-maker—for in old times the two went together, or rather were blent in one, like the words and music—had suffered sad declension. There was no longer question of royal harpers or troubadours, as Alfred the Great and as Richard the Lion Heart had been in their hour of need; or even of bards and musicians held in high favour and honour by king ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... and institutions of religion, and an abounding infidelity, which in many instances tends to atheism itself. The profligacy and corruption of the public morals have advanced with a progress proportionate to our declension in religion. Profaneness, pride, luxury, injustice, intemperance, lewdness, and every species of debauchery and ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... of the poet. Now if we suppose that from 1568, the high noon of the family prosperity, to 1578, the first year of their mature embarrassments, one half the interval was passed in stationary sunshine, and the latter half in the gradual twilight of declension, it will follow that the young William had completed his tenth year before he heard the first signals of distress; and for so long a period his education would probably be conducted on as liberal a scale as the resources of Stratford would allow. Through this ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... obliging, Sir, to offer me one of your Fergussons. I thank you for it, as I ought; but, in truth, I have more pictures than room to place them; both my houses are full, and I have even been thinking of getting rid of some I have. That this is no declension of your civility, Sir, you will see, when I gladly accept either of your medals of King Charles. I shall be proud to keep it as a mark of your friendship; but then I will undoubtedly rob you ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... over the declension of Judaism. In presence of Benedict XIII, antipope, a Spaniard, wandering in Spain, because in Rome they would not own him, a formal disputation was carried on for sixty-nine days between Jerome of Santa Fe and other converts—or, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... Perhaps spiritual pride in the achievements which grace enabled her to accomplish was the cause; or, not improbably, a cherished satisfaction in the blessing she had received, instead of in the BLESSER Himself, may have led to the separation. She seems to have been largely unconscious of her declension; self-occupied and self-contented, she scarcely noticed His absence; she was resting, resting alone,—never asking where He had gone, or how He was employed. And more than this, the door of her chamber was not only closed, but barred; an evidence ...
— Union And Communion - or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon • J. Hudson Taylor
... the essence of vitality in human affairs. The nations by turns are protagonists in the drama of progress; by turns are doomed to play the part of obstructive agents. Intermingled in conflict which is active life, they contribute by their phases of declension and resistance, no less than by their forward movements, to the growth of an organism which shall probably in the far future be coextensive with ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... declension of the Roman empire—which is not to be found in all Gibbon's immense work—may be stated in two words:—the imperial character overlaying, and finally destroying, the national character. Rome under Trajan was ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... on the present fatal Declension of the general Commerce of England, J. Huggenson, ...
— The Annual Catalogue: Numb. II. (1738) • Various
... was the result before the incident I am about to relate. There must have been, however, a gradual declension towards it, although the pain which followed upon this has almost obliterated the recollection of preceding follies. Nobody does anything bad all at once. Wickedness needs an apprenticeship as well as ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... the decline that came in the early church. Many of them, as D'Aubigne, Marsh, Rutter, Waddington, and others, point to the third century, or the latter half of the third century, as marking an unusual epoch in this declension. Others, however, who view things almost wholly from the external point of view, regard the accession of Constantine in the early part of the following century as marking the important epoch. With reference to this subject, I quote Joseph Milner, the English ecclesiastical ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... feeling for Ishmael and for the country method of life that went with him, had been declining, as from some crest set in too rarefied an air for her to breathe with comfort. Poise had been slipping from her, and she was genuinely distressed. In the first stage of her declension she was chiefly occupied with a frantic snatching at her passion—a sustained effort to pull it back and keep it with her; in the second she was occupied in wondering how best to get gracefully out of the entanglement, which was how ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... thus to sketch that declension into paganism on the part of much of the present world, of which we spoke earlier in the chapter. It denies or ignores the humanistic law with its exacting moral and aesthetic standards; it openly flouts the attitude of obedience and humility before ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... confidence expressed, And hoped it would not tend to make him vain. He thought it right his views thus to explain, And trusted they would give them due attention. Should his poor life be spared he would remain And labor hard to keep them from declension, Though of their falling off he had ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... happened that from the delay in the arrival of the running ships, there was not an ounce of either powder or pomatum to be had in the whole town, so I have been driven in my extremity—oh most horrible declension!—to keep my tail on hog's lard and Baltimore ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... besotted fellow began to weep, and comforted himself with a long pull from a flask he took from his pocket. 'Twas plain that the drink had been his undoing, and indeed, before I parted company with him in Port Royal some days later, he told me with maudlin tears the story of his declension from surgeon on a king's ship to buccaneer, and preached me many an impressive sermon on the text ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... to that better self which, according to Marion, exists in all of us. But when she made further inquiries about her, with a view to rescuing her, she was daunted by the discovery that Lenore had been privately married to Delacour for some time past, and that her declension, which was really due to drink, dated from the time ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... amid its adventitious splendour, as we have already said, some intimations of that speedy decay to which the whole civilised world, then limited within the Roman empire, was internally and imperceptibly tending. Nor was it many ages ere these prognostications of declension were ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Kobbe and Miss Pray now and then warily conveyed a "doughnut" from the table to their pockets, with an air of dark declension from the moral laws. Having filled their own receptacles, they whispered me an entreaty to do the same, as we might be late with the tide and hungry on our way home. I complied in this, as in every case, gallantly; but in my very first essay was detected by the proprietor with ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... standing in a colony, and portraits signed "Van Tromp" had celebrated the greatness of colonial governors and judges. In those days he had been married, and driven his wife and infant daughter in a pony trap. What were the steps of his declension? No one exactly knew. Here he was at least, and had been, any time these past ten years, a sort of dismal parasite upon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seen them. The vilest inclinations, the basest actions, succeeded my amiable amusements and even obliterated the very remembrance of them. I must have had, in spite of my good education, a great propensity to degenerate, else the declension could not have followed with such ease and rapidity, for never did so promising a Caesar so ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... First Declension form their genitive in que, and usually are such as terminate in ...
— Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language - Shea's Library Of American Linguistics. Volume III. • Buckingham Smith
... little of proof to so much of passion, that in a very short time I began to lift up my head, my seat was no longer uneasy, my eyes were indifferent which way they looked, or what object caught them, and before I was myself aware of the declension of Mr. Burke's powers over my feelings, I found myself a mere spectator in a public place, and looking all around it, with ...
— Burke • John Morley
... must be admitted, intricate. Each noun boasts two separate forms, and each of its declension-cases keeps a group of sub-cases within reach for special emergencies. There are only two regularly ordained verbs,—"to be" and "to have"; but they don different canonicals for each different ceremony, and their varying garbs seem fairly ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... point out is an even sadder thing than that—namely, that Christian people may lose their strength because they let go their hold upon God, and know nothing about it. Spiritual declension, all unconscious of its own existence, is the very history of hundreds of nominal Christians amongst us, and, I dare say, of some of us. The very fact that you do not suppose the statement to have the least application to yourself is perhaps the very ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... classic spirit from the newly discovered antiques. Here at last it seemed as though his native genius might suffer from contact with the potent style of his great rival; and there are many students of art who feel that Raphael's later manner was a declension from the divine purity of his early pictures. There is, in fact, a something savouring of overbloom in the Farnesina frescoes, as though the painter's faculty had been strained beyond its natural force. Muscles are exaggerated to give the appearance ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... traces those which relate to place; in the fifth, those connected with the idea of time; and in the sixth, the origin of both these classes, as they appear in the writings of the poets. The seventh book is employed on declension; in which the author enters upon a minute and extensive enquiry, comprehending a variety of acute and profound observations on the formation of Latin nouns, and their respective natural declinations from the nominative case. In the eighth, he examines ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... The scantiness of the declension of Celtic nouns.—In Irish there is a peculiar form for the dative plural, as cos foot, cos-aibh to feet (ped-ibus); and beyond this there is nothing else whatever in the way of case, as found in the German, Latin, Greek, and other tongues. ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... subscriptions, and an occasional carriage. There would have been a small margin but for the constant rise in prices. As it was, there was no permanent margin. And to have cut off a single annual subscription, or lessened a single customary gift, would have mortally wounded her pride. The gradual declension of property values in Brougham Street had been a danger that each year grew more menacing. The moment had long ago come when the whole rents of the mortgaged cottages would not cover her interest. The promise of the Corporation Improvement Scheme had only partially reassured her; it seemed ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... And when the talk is over, each goes his way, still flushed with vanity and admiration, still trailing clouds of glory; each declines from the height of his ideal orgie, not in a moment, but by slow declension. I remember, in the ENTR'ACTE of an afternoon performance, coming forth into the sunshine, in a beautiful green, gardened corner of a romantic city; and as I sat and smoked, the music moving in my blood, I seemed to sit there and evaporate THE FLYING DUTCHMAN (for it was ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the erection of churches and support of the clergy perplexed the executive. The ordinary revenue showed symptoms of declension, and the council passed a bill which declared that new imposts were impracticable, and vested a discretionary power in the government to refuse assistance to any new undertaking (1841). Thus the principle of the church act was subverted, and the grant of money for ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... first book of "that Elvish Queene," which was then in manuscript, as a base declension from the classical to the ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... true key to the declension of the Roman Empire—which is not to be found in all Gibbon's immense work—may be stated in two words: the imperial character overlaying, and finally destroying, the national character. Rome under Trajan was ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... participation in the navigation of the Mississippi? Spain excludes us from it. Is public credit an indispensable resource in time of public danger? We seem to have abandoned its cause as desperate and irretrievable. Is commerce of importance to national wealth? Ours is at the lowest point of declension. Is respectability in the eyes of foreign powers a safeguard against foreign encroachments? The imbecility of our government even forbids them to treat with us. Our ambassadors abroad are the mere pageants of mimic sovereignty. ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... but as she neared the end of the nocturne, Drake perceived that there was a growing change, a declension, in her style. She seemed to lose the spirit of the nocturne and even her command on the instrument; the firm touch faltered into indecision, from indecision to absolute unsteadiness; the notes, before clear and distinct, now slurred ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... Mount Rorke slipped between her thoughts, and she refrained. She knew the present treaty secured her immunity from Sally only so long as the affections and attentions of Jimmy and Charley showed no signs of declension, and she was aware that her promise would only hold good so long as Frank interested and ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... be resigned, what it was to break forth in a childish fury of rebellion against fate, and what it was to sink into the coma of despair. The time had changed him. He told himself no longer tales of an easy and perhaps agreeable declension; he read his nature otherwise; he had proved himself incapable of rising, and he now learned by experience that he could not stoop to fall. Something that was scarcely pride or strength, that was perhaps only ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... set rules of the old-fashioned methods of teaching; and (to quote Elder Concannon) he was a Latin scholar! Why the old gentleman should consider that accomplishment of such moment, when no pupil in the Poketown school ever arrived even to a Latin declension, ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... are superior. Death follows birth in respect of all men. This is settled. Creatures, influenced by the attributes of Sattwa, Rajas, and Tamas, pursue acts which have an end.[1554] That man is regarded as righteous who meets with dissolution when the Sun is in the northern declension, and at a time and under a constellation both of which are sacred and auspicious. He is righteous who, having cleansed himself of all sins and accomplished all his acts according to the best of his power and having abstained from giving pain to any man, meets with death when it comes. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... of the declension of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives, as well as the conjugation of verbs in both languages; but the grammatical arrangement of them does not come within the design of this work. The foregoing list of words is a selection of those that are most ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... of the present century, not very long before my own time, after many years of moral and intellectual declension, the University of Oxford woke up to a sense of its duties, and began to reform itself, the first instruments of this change, to whose zeal and courage we all owe so much, were naturally thrown together for mutual support, against the numerous obstacles which lay in their path, and soon ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... proper to observe, on what has been said above, that though frosts advance to their utmost severity by somewhat of a regular gradation, yet thaws do not usually come on by as regular a declension of cold; but often take place immediately from intense freezing; as men in sickness often mend at once from ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... monosyllables, partly words rudely pieced together,—which has been described in a preceding chapter as characteristic of the Turanian race, and which is known in science by the general name of agglutinative, i.e., "glued or stuck together," without change in the words, either by declension or conjugation. The people of Shumir and Accad, therefore, were one and the same Turanian nation, the difference in the name being merely a geographical one. SHUMIR is Southern or Lower Chaldea, the country towards and ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... harmonious and beautiful, and we know that they are essential to the character and structure. They are organic lines, in short. They mean life and growth. In principle they are radiating and recurring lines; in each form they repeat each other in varying degrees of direction and declension of curve. No two lines are alike, yet there is no contradiction and no unnecessary line, and variety is combined with unity. Each affords a perfect instance of harmonious composition of line, and gives us definite principles upon which to work ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... that has been thrown upward ceases to ascend, it begins to descend. When the fulness of the type is reached, then begins the retrogression. This is none the less true of spiritual things. The reason why there need be no declension in love is because the highest point of ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... the "Great Awakening" of 1740-1743 were a time of religious declension. A Socinianized Arminianism had paralysed evangelistic effort. The First Church, Providence, had long since become Arminian and held aloof from the evangelism of Edwards, Whitefield and their coadjutors. The First Church, Boston, had become Socinianized and discountenanced the revival. The First ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... cohesion crucifixion declension dimension dissension distortion divulsion expulsion impulsion insertion intention occasion propulsion recursion repulsion revulsion scansion ...
— Division of Words • Frederick W. Hamilton
... preparation of teachers began in the first quarter of the nineteenth century in Massachusetts. That state, with others, was suffering from an educational declension that had been going on for a long time. Matters were getting serious. Finally, a few clear-headed, far-seeing leaders made an analysis of the situation hoping to bring about a betterment of conditions. They quickly put the finger upon ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... misletoe were sacred to the Druids, so were they to the Israelites in their days of declension. And in Greece we find the famous oracle of Jupiter at the oaks of Dodona. To the ancient inhabitants of Italy the misletoe was a sacred emblem; and the golden branches of Virgil were none other than ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... many they are; in fact, a very large volume might be easily collected of such cases as are of ordinary occurrence. Casuistry, the very word casuistry expresses the science which deals with such cases: for as a case, in the declension of a noun, means a falling away, or a deflection from the upright nominative (rectus), so a case in ethics implies some falling off, or deflection from the high road of catholic morality. Now, of all such cases, one, perhaps the most difficult to manage, the most intractable, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... speaks of 1596 as to be 'markitt for a special perriodic and fatall yeir to the Kirk of Scotland,' and he enters on his narrative of it 'with a sorrowful heart and drouping eyes,' so 'doolful' was the decay it ushered in. The declension is not to be wondered at; for where has a Church been found in which such prolonged oppression as the Scottish Church had been subjected to, did not weary the patience and damp the zeal of all but the most resolved members of its Communion? Had we been present ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... absolute slaughter as I saw that afternoon on the green slope of Malvern Hill. The guns of the entire army were massed on the crest, and thirty thousand of our infantry lay, musket in hand, in front. For eight hundred yards the hill sank in easy declension to the wood, and across this smooth expanse the Rebs must charge to reach our lines. It was nothing short of downright insanity to order men to charge that hill; and so his generals told Lee, but he would not listen to reason that day, and so he sent regiment ...
— A Ride With A Mad Horse In A Freight-Car - 1898 • W. H. H. Murray
... fail to perceive that his own value in society was in an inverse ratio to the chances of the Baronet's marrying, as a report of an actual proposal on the part of the latter had more than once occasioned a visible declension in the number and warmth of his invitations. These considerations appeared, however, only to stimulate the young man's activity in the search of a wife for his cousin. Had he been employed by a marriage broker with a prospect of a liberal commission, ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... and the moment the shadow reached its highest angle, and showed the minutest symptom of declension, she said, "Now," and Hazel called ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... and Mars. That other doubt, Which moves thee, is less harmful; for it brings No peril of removing thee from me. "That, to the eye of man, our justice seems Unjust, is argument for faith, and not For heretic declension. To the end This truth may stand more clearly in your view, I will content thee even to thy wish "If violence be, when that which suffers, nought Consents to that which forceth, not for this These spirits stood exculpate. For the will, That will not, still survives unquench'd, and doth As nature ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... writes as follows to the author: "A visitor to one of their houses is invariably tendered its hospitality in the form of food placed before him. A failure to tender it is deemed a grave breach of hospitality and an insult; and a declension to partake of it would be regarded as a breach of etiquette. As among us, they have their rich and their poor, and the former give to the latter cheerfully and in due plenty." Here we find a nearly exact repetition of the Iroquois and Mandan rules ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... next decade and worked till the last with no distinct declension, but she did not complete it, dying in 1876. Her famous direction about her grave, Laissez la verdure, is characteristic of her odd mixture if theatricality and true nature. But if any one wishes to come to her work with a comfortable ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... been elaborated with such incredible minuteness by native grammarians, that I am not surprised if many scholars who begin the study of Sanskrit turn back from it in dismay. But it is quite possible to learn the rules of Sanskrit declension and conjugation, and to gain an insight into the grammatical organization of that language, without burdening one's memory with all the phonetic rules which generally form the first chapter of every Sanskrit grammar, or without devoting years of study to the unraveling of the ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... geological home-made cake. The magnitude of these preparations quite took away Tom Pinch's breath; for though the new pupils were usually let down softly, as one may say, particularly in the wine department, which had so many stages of declension, that sometimes a young gentleman was a whole fortnight in getting to the pump; still this was a banquet; a sort of Lord Mayor's feast in private life; a something to think of, and hold ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... well divined the cause of his summons. He found Herbert Bowater's papers on the table before the Bishop, and there was no denying that they showed a declension since last year, and that though, from men without his advantages they would have been passable, yet from him they were evidences of neglect of study and thought. Nor could the cause be ignored by any one who had kept an eye on the cricket reports ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the nobility and gentry to the lowest husbandmen, were afterwards exercised, with a stern and unrelenting impartiality, upon the whole people. For, notwithstanding the province before Debi Sing's lease was, from various causes, in a state of declension, and in balance for the revenue of the preceding year, at his very first entrance into office he forced from the zemindars or landed gentry an enormous increase of their tribute. They refused compliance. On this refusal he threw ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... dryness and scurf on the tongue and nostrils is owing to the increased heat of the air expired from the lungs, and consequent greater evaporation of the aqueous part of the mucus. The sweats appear in consequence of the declension of the hot fit, owing to the absorbent vessels of the skin losing their increased action sooner than the secerning ones; and to the evaporation lessening as the skin becomes cooler. The returns of the paroxysms are principally owing to the torpor of some ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... realize the moral declension of that time, as it is portrayed—to use a single example—in the sermon by the Bishop of Litchfield before the Society for the Reformation of Manners, in 1724. Lewdness, drunkenness, and degeneracy, he said, were ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... how much they had at stake. In order to retain any thing like a comfortable or respectable position in their husband's houses, the waning beauties resorted to flattery and to the invention and skillful use of various articles which would conceal the declension of beauty or artfully counterfeit it. The ways and means by which attractiveness of face and figure might be enhanced, preserved, or simulated, became the subject of serious study—something neither to be sneered at nor laughed at. The happiness of a life-time ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... rushed up the patch of shingle until brought to a standstill by its sudden declension into deep water. There was no help for it. Not a soul was in sight. He divested himself rapidly of his clothes, piled them in a neat little heap beyond reach of the tide, and then with considerable ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... shame. Born of the Jeffersonian horror of war, its evil communication corrupted morals among those whose standards were conventional only; for public opinion failed to condemn breaches of embargo, and by a natural declension equally failed soon after to condemn aid to the enemy in an unpopular war. Was it wonderful that an Administration which bade the seamen and the ship-owners of the day to starve, that a foreign state might be injured, and at the same time refused ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan |
