The dissolution of the nation destroys the national religion and dethrones the national deity.

As I pass it I feel as if I saw a dear old mother sweet in her weakness trembling at the approach of her dissolution but not appealing to me against the inevitable rather endeavouring to reassure me by her patience and pointing to a hopeful future.

You can forgive people who do not follow you through a philosophical disquisition but to find your wife laughing when you had tears in your eyes or staring when you were in a fit of laughter would go some way towards a dissolution of the marriage.

A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be according to the fitness and tendency of things. Nature has set upon him the process of decline and dissolution by which she removes things which have survived their usefulness.

These are strange times. Reason which once combatted faith and seemed to have conquered it now has to look to faith to save it from dissolution.