Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore, And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.
The state is not abolished, it withers away.
There are two kinds of beauty; there is a beauty which God gives at birth, and which withers as a flower. And there is a beauty which God grants when by His grace men are born again. That kind of beauty never vanishes but blooms eternally.
A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and truth in front of patriotic passion.
It is still summer, but the summer is no longer alive. It has come to a standstill; nothing withers, and fall is not ready to begin. There are no stars yet, just darkness.
You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole.
Deference often shrinks and withers as much upon the approach of intimacy as the sensitive plant does upon the touch of one's finger.
Worship your heroes from afar; contact withers them.
The vine that has been made to bear fruit in the spring, withers and dies before autumn.
One withers, another grows.
Let the galled jade wince; our withers are unwrung.
Silence kills the soul; it diminishes its possibilities to rise and fly and explore. Silence withers what makes you human. The soul shrinks, until it's nothing.
When the State withers, humanity flowers.
Intelligence flourishes only in the ages when belief withers.
Nothing is more fleeting than external form, which withers and alters like the flowers of the field at the appearance of autumn.
Women are so gentle, so affectionate, so true in sorrow, so untired and untiring! but the leaf withers not sooner, and tropic light fades not more abruptly.
Now nothing can prevent this but mortification; that withers the root and strikes at the head of sin every hour, so that whatever it aims at it is crossed in.
Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers.
When self control is lacking in small things, the ability to apply it to matters of importance withers away. Every day in which one does not at least deny himself some trifle is badly spent and a threat to the day following.
Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question is what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. People don't become inured to what they are shown — if that's the right way to describe what happens — because of the quantity of images dumped on them. It is passivity that dulls feeling.
