Decline Love Quotes & Sayings

A sick man, surrounded by those who love him, nursed by those who wish earnestly that he should live, will recover (all other things being equal), when another patient tended by hirelings will die. Doctors decline to see unconscious magnestism in this phenomenon; for them it is the result of intelligent nursing, of exact obedience to their orders; but many a mother knows the virtue of such ardent projections of strong, unceasing prayer. — Honore De Balzac

The shock caused by the fall of a careless word displaces that against which it strikes. At times it happens, without our knowing why, that because we have received an almost imperceptible blow from a chance word, the heart insensibly empties itself of love. He who loves, perceives a decline in his happiness. There is nothing more to be dreaded than this slow exudation from the fissure in the vase. — Victor Hugo

For the outsider
and everyone in this world is an outsider in relation to everyone else
something always seems worse or better than it does for the one directly concerned, whether that something is good luck or bad luck, an unhappy love affair or an 'artistic decline'. — Heinrich Boll

I love things on the decline because that's really the natural progression of our lives. We're born, we're feisty for the first couple of years, and then the inevitable decline begins. — Gary Shteyngart

Your beauty is an elixir.
Which has given an orphan life.
Lovesick I will die, from the grave I will cry
Should you decline to become my wife. — Vikas Swarup

Outside, under the marquee of the hotel, he stood a moment as he did each night beneath the marquee of the Hotel Hyperion, while he decided what direction to take, what to do. And suddenly, realizing it was not the Hotel Hyperion, that the circumstances were quite different, he felt loneliness spring up like a dark forest all around him. The odd thing was, he felt no impulse to hurry after her, to find her somehow. What would he have to offer her except the history of weakness, loneliness, and inadequacy, the decline and fall of himself? He himself was the core of the loneliness around him, and its core was inadequacy. He was inadequate even in love. — Patricia Highsmith

What makes us leave what we love best?
What is it inside us that keeps erasing itself
When we need it most,
That sends us into uncertainty for its own sake
And holds us flush there
until we begin to love it
And have to begin again?
What is it within our own lives we decline to live
Whenever we find it,
making our days unendurable,
And nights almost visionless?
I still don't know yet, but I do it. — Charles Wright

We scornfully decline, because of one whom we love and who will some day be of so little account, to see another who is of no account to-day, with whom we shall be in love to-morrow, with whom we might, perhaps, had we consented to see her now, have fallen in love a little earlier and who would thus have put a term to our present sufferings, bringing others, it is true, in their place. — Marcel Proust

I cannot love evergreens - they are the misanthropes of nature. To them the spring brings no promise, the autumn no decline; they are cut off from the sweetest of all ties with their kind - sympathy ... I will have no evergreens in my garden; when the inevitable winter comes, every beloved plant and favorite tree shall drop together - no solitary fir left to triumph over the companionship of decay. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

This deliberately nurtured hatred then spreads to all that is alive, to life itself, to the world with its colors, sounds, and shapes, to the human body. The embittered art of the twentieth century is perishing as a result of this ugly hate, for art is fruitless without love. In the East art has collapsed because it has been knocked down and trampled upon, but in the West the fall has been voluntary, a decline into a contrived and pretentious quest where the artist, instead of attempting to reveal the divine plan, tries to put himself in the place of God. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I reread these negative remarks and realize that I do not know whether music can despair of music or marble of marble. I do know that literature is an art that can foresee the time when it will be silenced, an art that can become inflamed with its own virtue, fall in love with its own decline, and court its own demise. — Jorge Luis Borges

Every fair from fair sometime declines — William Shakespeare

Let us cherish and love old age; for it is full of pleasure if one knows how to use it. Fruits are most welcome when almost over; youth is most charming at its close; the last drink delights the toper, the glass which souses him and puts the finishing touch on his drunkenness. Each pleasure reserves to the end the greatest delights which it contains. Life is most delightful when it is on the downward slope, but has not yet reached the abrupt decline. — Seneca.

The first Decline I did was out of sheer love and appreciation for the music. In 1977, it was more about bands, because punk was a new form of music. It was groundbreaking and political. — Penelope Spheeris

Alexandros points to the bronze sculpture of Socrates. "His society didn't collapse because of an outside aggressor. It collapsed from within, from the complete breakdown of communication between citizens, and the breakdown of loving sentiment for one another. They ganged up and got rid of Socrates because he was an uncomfortable reminder of the glory days of ancient Athens, when /demokratia/--'people power'--reigned and citizens worked toward a greater good. He epitomized the fact that you're meant to stay open to all views, to all human experiences, because that's how you deepen your love for people and of wisdom. That amazing man sacrificed his life in the name of classic Athenian values of excellence and honor and compassion, so one day they might live on. And they did, here in America, for more than two centuries. I'm worried my beloved America is becoming as loveless as ancient Athens in its days of decline. — Christopher Phillips

Thank you for your kind invitation. However, as a gay man, I must decline. I am deeply troubled by the current attitude toward and treatment of gay men and women by the Russian government. The situation is in no way acceptable, and I cannot in good conscience participate in a celebratory occasion hosted by a country where people like myself are being systematically denied their basic right to live and love openly. — Wentworth Miller

For no one, in our long decline,So dusty, spiteful and divided,Had quite such pleasant friends as mine,Or loved them half as much as I did. [stanza 3]The library was most inviting:The books upon the crowded shelvesWere mainly of our private writing:We kept a school and taught ourselves. [stanza 15]From quiet homes and first beginning,Out to the undiscovered ends,Theres nothing worth the wear of winning,But laughter and the love of friends. [stanza 22]You do retain the song we set,And how it rises, trips and scans?You keep the sacred memory yet,Republicans? Republicans?[stanza 36] — Hilaire Belloc

Fortunes are made, if I the facts may state
Though poor myself, I know the fortunate:
First, there's a knowledge of the way from whence
Good fortune comes
and this is sterling sense:
Then perseverance, never to decline
The chase of riches till the prey is thine;
And firmness never to be drawn away
By any passion from that noble prey
By love, ambition, study, travel, fame,
Or the vain hope that lives upon a name. — George Crabbe

It seemed that out of every tear of a martyr new confessors were born, and that every groan on the arena found an echo in thousands of breasts. Caesar was swimming in blood, Rome and the whole pagan world was mad.

But those who had had enough of transgression and madness, those who were trampled upon, those whose lives were misery and oppression, all the weighed down, all the sad, all the unfortunate, came to hear the wonderful tidings of God, who out of love for men had given Himself to be crucified and redeem their sins.

When they found a God whom they could love, they had found that which the society of the time could not give any one, -- happiness and love. — Henryk Sienkiewicz

I just want, she said when he'd finally broken down her defenses. And so had he. He'd wanted her to desire him, but truthfully, whether she knew it or not, any man's tender arms would do. The woman was wounded and aching for love, and it didn't matter who Adrian was, or that he was the one who held her.
But it had mattered to him. His eyelids slid closed as he envisioned all the pleasure he could have shown her, if she hadn't had the decency to decline. No toys or tricks needed for this one; just deep, primal fucking. Stripping away her inhibitions alone would have been erotic enough to test his endurance. — Shelby Reed

If Christ is not divine, every impulse of the Christian world falls to a lower octave, and light and love and hope decline. — Henry Ward Beecher

Love on the decline is hard to tell from love on the rise." [From 'The Lady from Lucknow'] — Bharati Mukherjee

We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together. — Jean De La Bruyere

Today you are walking in Paris the women are all steeped in blood
It was and I'd rather not remember it was at beauty's decline — Guillaume Apollinaire

You are wrong if you think you cannot live without love. I cannot live without it. I do not mean that I go into a decline, develop odd symptoms, became a caricature. I mean that I cannot live well without it. I cannot think or act or speak or write or even dream with any kind of energy in the absence of love. I feel excluded from the living world. I become cold, fish-like, immobile. I implode. — Anita Brookner

Faith, not cowardice, takes the step into unknown territory for the sake of Jesus Christ and His church. Love, not self-preserving protectiveness, sacrifices its own life that others might live. Hope of new life, not resignation to inevitable decline, yields itself up in the quest for a better future. — Darrin Patrick