Death is only kind to mortals.
497
SCHILLER:  Complaint of Ceres, St. 4.

What a strange, delicious amazement is Death, To be without body and breathe without breath. 498 EDWIN ARNOLD:  She and He.

There is no Death!  What seems so is transition;
  This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
  Whose portal we call death.
499
LONGFELLOW:  Resignation, St. 5.

Our days begin with trouble here,
  Our life is but a span,
And cruel death is always near,
  So frail a thing is man.
500
From the New England Primer.

Death rides on every passing breeze,
  He lurks in every flower.
501
HEBER:  At a Funeral, No. i.

How wonderful is Death! 
Death and his brother Sleep.
502
SHELLEY:  Queen Mab, St. i.

And Death is beautiful as feet of friend
Coming with welcome at our journey’s end.
503
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL:  To George William Curtis.

Death in itself is nothing; but we fear
To be we know not what, we know not where.
504
DRYDEN:  Aurengzebe, Act iv., Sc. 1.

=Debt.=

You say, you nothing owe; and so I say: 
He only owes, who something hath to pay.
505
MARTIAL:  (Hay), ii., 3.

=Decay.=

Before decay’s effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers.
506
BYRON:  Giaour, Line 68.

The ruins of himself! now worn away
With age, yet still majestic in decay.
507
POPE:  Odyssey, Bk. xxiv., Line 271.

=Deceit.=

Ah, that deceit should steal such gentle shapes, And with a virtuous visor hide deep vice. 508 SHAKS.:  Richard III., Act ii., Sc. 2.

O, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive.
509
SCOTT:  Marmion, Canto vi., St. 17

=December.=

And after him came next the chill December:  Yet he, through merry feasting which he made And great bonfires, did not the cold remember; His Saviour’s birth his mind so much did glad. 510 SPENSER:  Faerie Queene, Bk. vii., Canto vii., St. 41.

As soon
Seek roses in December, ice in June.
511
BYRON:  English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, Line 75.

=Decency.=

Immodest words admit of no defence,
For want of decency is want of sense.
512
EARL OF ROSCOMMON:  Essay on Translated Verse; Line 113.

=Decision.=

If it were done, when ’t is done, then ’t were well
It were done quickly.
513
SHAKS.:  Macbeth, Act i., Sc. 7.

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, God’s new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right; And the choice goes by forever ’twixt that darkness and that light. 514 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL:  Present Crisis.