Who doth not feel, until his failing sight
Faints into dimness with its own delight,
His changing cheek, his sinking heart confess.
The might - the majesty of Loveliness? [ Byron ]

Love ends with hope: the sinking statesman's door
Pours in the morning worshipper no more. [ Johnson ]

Darkness of slumber and death, forever sinking and sinking. [ Longfellow ]

If a man is not rising upward to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downward to be a devil. He cannot stop at the beast [ Coleridge ]

The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read. [ Colton ]

There is a law of neutralization of forces, which hinders bodies from sinking beyond a certain depth in the sea; but in the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking. [ Lowell ]

Oratory is the huffing and blustering spoiled child of a semi-barbarous age. The press is the foe of rhetoric, but the friend of reason; and the art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and readers wise enough to read. [ Colton ]

Your invitation honors me, and pleases me because you still keep me in your remembrance, but I am seventy; seventy, and would nestle in the chimney-corner, and smoke my pipe, and read my book, and take my rest, wishing you well in all affection; and that when you in your return shall arrive at pier No. 70 you may step aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay your course toward the sinking sun with a contented heart. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]