Dry Rot Quotes & Sayings

The mind of America is seized by a fatal dry rot - and it's only a question of time before all that the mind controls will run amuck in a frenzy of stupid, impotent fear. — Hunter S. Thompson

You are joking. You must want money. You work for money, don't you?"
"I want it very badly," I said. "But I can't take this money. It wouldn't belong to me, I would belong to it. It would expect me to do things, and I would have to do them. Sit on the lid of this mess of yours, the way Marfeld did, until dry rot sets in. — Ross Macdonald

Why do insurance companies, when they want to describe an act of God, invariably pick on something which sounds much more like an act of the Devil? One would think that God was exclusively concerned in making hurricanes, smallpox, thunderbolts, and dry rot. They seem to forget that He also manufactures rainbows, apple-blossom, and Siamese kittens. However, that is, perhaps, a diversion. — Beverley Nichols

Somewhere the saving and putting away had to begin again and someone had to do the saving and keeping, one way or another, in books, in records, in people's heads, any way at all so long as it was safe, free from moths, silverfish, rust and dry rot and men with matches. — Ray Bradbury

Everything is heavy with dreams when I paint a cave or write to you about one - out of it comes the clatter of dozens of unfettered horses to trample the shadows with dry hooves, and from the friction of the hooves the rejoicing liberates itself in sparks: here I am, the cave and I, in the time that will rot us. — Clarice Lispector

But mankind is a dead tree, covered with fine brilliant galls of people.[..]And if it is so, why is it? she asked, hostile.They were rousing each other to a fine passion of opposition.
Why, why are people all balls of bitter dust?Because they won't fall off the tree when they're ripe.They hang on to their old positions when the position is over-past, till they become infested with little worms and dry-rot. — D.H. Lawrence

The cliche that sea dry up and rocks rot away, but the heart never changes is nothing but a beautiful fantasy. — Mo Yan

So there you have it: Nature is a rotten mess. But that's only the beginning. If you take your eyes off it for one second, it will kill you. Thorns, insects, fungus, worms, birds, reptiles, wild animals, raging rivers, bottomless ravines, dry deserts, snow, quicksand, tumbleweeds, sap, and mud. Rot, poison and death. That's Nature."
"It's a wonder you even step outside of your cabin," I said.
"My bravery exceeds my good sense," he said. — Lee Goldberg

a repository sounds like a place for storing furniture when you bash off to some other station. I suppose an Englishman could say that the whole of India is that sort of place. You all went, but left so much behind that you couldn't carry with you wherever you were going, and these days those of you who come back can more often than not hardly bother to think about it, let alone ask for the key to go in and root about among all the old dust sheets to see that everything worthwhile that you left is still there and isn't falling to pieces with dry rot. — Paul Scott

I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time. — Jack London

Doubts are death. Doubts are the dry rot of life. — Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Falsehood, like the dry-rot, flourishes the more in proportion as air and light are excluded. — Richard Whately

Popular success is a palace built for a writer by publishers, journalists, admirers, and professional reputation makers, in which a silent army of termites, rats, dry rot, and death-watch beetles are tunnelling away, till, at the very moment of completion, it is ready to fall down. — Cyril Connolly

Indolence is the dry rot of even a good mind and a good character; the practical uselessness of both. It is the waste of what might be a happy and useful life. — Tryon Edwards

Rather than complaining about inconsequential little irritations, I'm asking God to get right to the root of the problem, to eradicate the dry rot and fix the cracks in my foundation. I need Him to show me how to love Him and how to love His people. Even the ones I don't like - even myself. — Craig Groeschel

We must learn that any person who will not accept what he knows to be truth for the very love of truth alone is very definitely undermining his mental integrity ... you have not been a close observer of such men if you have not seen them shrivel, become commonplace, mean without influence, without friends, and without the enthusiasm of youth and growth, like a tree covered with fungus, the foliage deceased, the life gone out of the heart with dry rot and indelibly marked for destruction
dead, but not yet handed over to the undertaker. — Luther Burbank

If there be any one habit which more than another is the dry rot of all that is high and generous in youth, it is the habit of ridicule. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The discrepancy between American ideals and American practice - between our aims and what we actually do - creates a moral dry rot which eats away at the foundations of our democratic faith. — Helen Gahagan Douglas

I would rather sail and hit a rock
than sit and rot in dry dock. — Lester Roloff

He had, in fact, already begun to sink into that creeping dry rot of pedagogy which is the worst and ultimate pitfall of the profession; giving the same lessons year after year had formed a groove into which the other affairs of his life adjusted themselves with insidious ease. He worked well; he was conscientious; he was a fixture that gave service, satisfaction, confidence, everything except inspiration. — James Hilton

The unhealthy gap between what we preach in America and what we often practice creates a moral dry rot that eats at the very foundation of our democratic ideals and values. — Whitney M. Young

The faithful clamoured to be buried alongside the martyrs, as close as possible to the venerable remains, a custom which, in anthropological terms, recalls Neolithic beliefs that certain human remains possessed supernatural properties. It was believed that canonized saints did not rot, like lesser mortals, but that their corpses were miraculously preserved and emanated an odour of sanctity, a sweet, floral smell, for years after death. In forensic terms, such preservation is likely to be a result of natural mummification in hot, dry conditions. — Catharine Arnold

Skepticism, that dry rot of the intellect. — Victor Hugo

This was a freedom essential to the health even of a character so little susceptible of morbid influences as that of Phoebe. The old house [with dry rot in its structure and perhaps also in its inhabitants]; ... it was not good to breathe no other atmosphere that that. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

A child raised with spiritual skills will be able to answer the most basic questions about how the universe works; she will understand the source of creativity both within and outside herself; she will be able to practice nonjudgment, acceptance, and truth, which are the most valuable skills anyone can possess for dealing with other people; and she will be free from the crippling fear and anxiety about the meaning of life that is the secret dry rot inside the hearts of most adults, whether they can admit it or not. The deepest nurturing you can give your child is spiritual nurturing. — Deepak Chopra

Blight has descended on our regulatory agencies
and a dry rot, beginning in Washington, is seeping into every corner of America
in the payola mentality, the expense account way of life, the confusion between what is legal and what is right. — John F. Kennedy

The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and lichens and for the most part inaccessible and going to waste; the knowledge of the man of science is like timber collected in yards for public works, which still supports a green sprout here and there, but even this is liable to dry rot. — Henry David Thoreau

It's terribly important for everyone, at any age, to live to his full potential. Otherwise a kind of dry rot sets in, a rust, a disintegration of personality, — Dorothy Gilman

Thumb and forefinger, grimacing at its matted feel. One of those low cellar windows was directly behind it, one pane broken, the other opaque with dirt. He leaned forward, now feeling almost hypnotized. He leaned closer to the window, closer to the cellar-darkness, breathing in that smell of age and must and dry-rot, closer and closer to the black, and surely the leper would have caught him if his asthma hadn't picked that exact moment to kick up. It cramped his lungs with a weight that was painless yet frightening; his breath at once took on the familiar hateful whistling sound. — Stephen King

Asleep was the way Harry liked the Dursleys best; it wasn't as though they were ever any help to him awake. Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and Dudley were Harry's only living relatives. They were Muggles who hated and despised magic in any form, which meant that Harry was about as welcome in their house as dry rot. They had explained away Harry's long absences at Hogwarts over the last three years by telling everyone that he went to St. Brutus's Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys. They knew perfectly well that, as an underage wizard, Harry wasn't allowed to use magic outside Hogwarts, but they were still apt to blame him for anything that went wrong about the house. Harry had never been able to confide in them or tell them anything about his life in the Wizarding world. The very idea of going to them when they awoke, and telling them about his scar hurting him, and about his worries about Voldemort, was laughable. — J.K. Rowling

Indifference may not wreck a man's life at any one turn, but it will destroy him with a kind of dry-rot in the long run. — Bliss Carman

I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. - Jack London — Jack London

He's like ... 'I thought you were just friends.' You are my friend. You're my best friend. Why doesn't he get that? Anyway ... I think he wants your dad to rally with him. I'm pretty sure he doesn't give a damn about the dry rot in the basement."
I quirked the corner of my mouth dubiously. Dad rallying with Gabriel was pretty unlikely, considering the lengths he had gone to in proving his approval.
Rafael took one look at me, horrified, and I knew we were on the same wavelength. He whispered: "If your dad gives my uncle the safe sex talk ... — Rose Christo