235 Quotes About Decline

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.

Most are inclined to recline into a reclining position, in order to enjoy the decline.

What baffles me—what will always baffle me—is how easy, how simple, how effortless it was to slip by such lukewarm degrees into the disgraceful state in which I now find myself.

Of course it’s always possible to gain time, put up a front, try to last it out - how long, a year, eighteen months? I’d rather leave the arena before I am beaten to a pulp and have to be dragged out. One has to know how to accept the inevitable.

It was as though I were appealing a medical verdict to a higher court; and I knew, after all, though the law is occasionally flexible enough to grant a suspended sentence, it is futile to keep appealing against decrees of nature.

You are far too well informed a man to pretend that you don’t know what little game you are playing. If you have presentiments of death, it is because of certain wishes. You desire to escape sexual impotence - impotence, in short - and you wish for death to save you from all that. It is one of the virility’s favorite ploys.

There is, of course, Niemen, in Switzerland, and Horsschitt, in Germany... It all depends on what you mean by ‘love’.

My body had become that of an old liar, and my most spontaneous transports had begun to end in calculated maneuverings and delayed deliveries. It was no longer a question of self-esteem or pride; when I thought of breaking up with her, it was not to avoid some sort of discomfiture: it was a question of authenticity. I loved Laura too much to drag myself along on crutches in the wake of our love.

Three, 300, or 3,000 - these are the number of unknown days, each far too little and yet too much at the same time, to see an irrevocably declined loved one languish and suffer, with that bittersweet release lingering in the doorway, but never quite being sent all the way in, to comfort and carry our loved one to that Better Place.” ― Connie Kerbs