"Without adventure all civilization is full of decay. Adventure rarely reaches its predetermined end. Columbus never reached China."
Read quote
3 likes
Decay quotes
Decay
228 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Decay
Browse quotes that often appear alongside decay — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Decay quotes (page 4 of 12)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Time drops in decay Like a candle burnt out. And the mountains and woods Have their day, have their day; But, kindly old rout Of the fire-born moods, You pass not away."
Read quote
3 likes
"Yet writers say, as in the sweetest bud The eating canter dwells, so eating love Inhabits in the finest wits of all."
Read quote
3 likes
"But grant, the virtues of a temp'rate prime Bless with an age exempt from scorn or crime; An age that melts with unperceived decay, And glides in modest Innocence away"
Read quote
3 likes
"Then with no throbs of fiery pain, No cold gradations of decay, Death broke at once the vital chain, And freed his soul the nearest way."
Read quote
3 likes
"The body is subject to the law of growth and decay, what grows must of necessity decay."
Read quote
3 likes
"Sometimes death is proof of life. Sometimes decay points out a certain verve."
Read quote
3 likes
"Nations and empires flourish and decay, By turns command, and in their turns obey."
Read quote
3 likes
"The first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence."
Read quote
3 likes
"All composite things decay. Strive diligently."
Read quote
3 likes
"He that plots to be the only figure among ciphers [zeros], is the decay of the whole age."
Read quote
3 likes
"The universal nature has no external space; but the wondrous part of her art is that though she has circumscribed herself, everything which is within her which appears to decay and to grow old and to be useless she changes into herself, and again makes other new things from these very same, so that she requires neither substance from without nor wants a place into which she may cast that which decays. She is content then with her own space, and her own matter, and her own art."
Read quote
3 likes
"Each thought is a nail that is driven In structures that cannot decay; And the mansion at last will be given To us as we build it each day."
Read quote
3 likes
"The decay of society is praised by artists as the decay of a corpse is praised by worms."
Read quote
3 likes
"The constant abrasion and decay of our lives makes the soil of our future growth."
Read quote
3 likes
"Every work of art is an abstraction from time; it denies the reality of change and decay and death."
Read quote
3 likes
"One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is the intermixing of different genres."
Read quote
3 likes
"Without death and decay, how could life go on?"
Read quote
3 likes
"All other things to their destruction draw, Only our love hath no decay."
Read quote
3 likes
"Knowledge is an excellent drug; but no drug has virtue enough to preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the vessel be tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep."
Read quote
3 likes