nations decay from within more often than they surrender to outward assault.
Not idly do the leaves of Lorien fall
It is the fate of all things to ripen, and then to decay.
For all things come from earth, and all things end by becoming earth.
The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.
As fall the light autumnal leaves, one still the other following, till the bough strews all its honors on the earth below.
If gold rusts, what then can iron do?
By 'life,' we mean a thing that can nourish itself and grow and decay.
I have seen a thousand graves opened, and always perceived that whatever was gone, the teeth and hair remained of those who had died with them. Is not this odd? They go the very first things in youth and yet last the longest in the dust.
A ruined man fell from her hands like a ripe fruit, to lie rotting on the ground.
All bodies are slow in growth but rapid in decay.
States, like men, have their growth, their manhood, their decrepitude, their decay.
All disease, at some period or other of its course, is more or less a reparative process, not necessarily accompanied with suffering: an effort of nature to remedy a process of poisoning or of decay, which has taken place weeks, months, sometimes years beforehand, unnoticed.
And so all growth that is not towards God Is growing to decay.
And what a congress of stinks!- Roots ripe as old bait, Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich, Leaf mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks, Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.
The human body is constantly undergoing a process of decay and of reconstruction. First builded into the astral form in the womb of the mother, it is built up continually by the insetting of fresh materials. With every moment tiny molecules are passing away from it; with every moment tiny molecules are streaming into it.
Makes sense, the earth is quick to consume the flesh of things that ain't natural.
Throughout the whole vegetable, sensible, and rational world, whatever makes progress towards maturity, as soon as it has passed that point, begins to verge towards decay.
Growing and decaying vegetation in this land are responsible for 93 percent of the oxides of nitrogen.
We know that our senses are subject to decay, that from our middle years they are decaying all the time; but happily it is as if we didn't know and didn't believe.
History gets thicker as it approaches recent times: more people, more events, and more books written about them. More evidence is preserved, often, one is tempted to say, too much. Decay and destruction have hardly begun their beneficent work.
The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay.
The trouble with conspiracies is that they rot internally.
Bodies which contain a greater proportion of water than is necessary to balance the other elements, are speedily corrupted, and lose their virtues and properties.
In order to induce the process of decay, water is necessary. I think that, in the case of women, men are the water.
