Agressive music can only shock you once. Afterwards its impact declines. It's inevitable.
Growth in wisdom can be measured precisely by decline in bile.
A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be, according to the fitness and tendency of things. Nature has set upon him the process of decline and dissolution by which she removes things which have survived their usefulness.
Thank you, but we respectfully decline your overture, being more enjoyably occupied at present.
History. The more of it you have the more you have to live it. After a little while there gets to be too much of it to memorize and maybe that's when empires start to decline.
Fragmentation occurs when a civilization is in decline.
It is by no haphazard chance that in every age men have risen early to pray. The first thing that marks decline in spiritual life is our relationship to the early morning.
It's amazing to hear, as a voice matures and then starts to decline, what kind of emotion is still conveyed by a really good vocalist.
We have had actually a decline in government service overall, but the growth is in high-tech areas, specialty areas in the Labor Department and other departments.
I decline to discuss, under compulsion, where I have sung, and who has sung my songs, and who else has sung with me, and the people I have known.
Today you can buy the Dialogues of Plato for less than you would spend on a fifth of whiskey, or Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for the price of a cheap shirt. You can buy a fair beginning of an education in any bookstore with a good stock of paperback books for less than you would spend on a week's supply of gasoline.
To keep any great nation up to a high standard of civilization there must be enough superior characters to hold the balance of power, but the very moment the balance of power gets into the hands of second-rate men and women, a decline of that nation is inevitable.
If someone lies down and invites you to trample upon him, you are a remarkable individual if you decline the invitation.
The standard of living of the average American has to decline.
Greater completion marks the progress of art, absolute completion usually its decline.
Societies in decline have no use for visionaries.
When a daffadill I see, Hanging down his head towards me, Guess I may, what I must be: First, I shall decline my head; Secondly, I shall be dead: Lastly, safely buryed.
I propose that 100,000 degenerate Britons should be forcibly sterilized and others put in labour camps to halt the decline of the British race.
I can't bear Britain in decline. I just can't.
I know of no severe depression, in any country or any time, that was not accompanied by a sharp decline in the stock of money, and equally of no sharp decline in the stock of money that was not accompanied by a severe depression.