"Methuselah" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the gods and living to a great age. History is abundantly supplied with examples, from Methuselah to Old Parr, but some notable instances of longevity are less well known. A Calabrian peasant named Coloni, born in 1753, lived so long that he had what he considered a glimpse of the dawn of universal peace. Scanavius relates that he knew an archbishop who was so old that he could remember ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... you can be very much to blame for that. I should never learn to be contented here if I lived to the age of Methuselah." ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... ah, madam, there was a time,—a time when even our staid blood rejoiced with a strange fervour in the summer moonlight, and it was good to be alive! Come now, have you the face to deny it,—Mrs. Methuselah?" ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... see them break up for the holidays, and only got over my antediluvian feelings by seeing one of the masters still on the staff who was there when I was a boy. It was a comfort to think what a Methuselah he must be; and yet, if he will excuse the personality, he looked as rosy and smooth-faced as when he used to stand me outside his door with my coat-sleeves turned inside out. It was a way he had. Well, the presence of that particular master made ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... fly" affectation of it. In religion too you are up against the fact that an editor, like an emperor, must not belong to a sect. Wells is on the right tack: my tack. See my prefaces to Androcles and Methuselah. We want the real Catholic Church above the manufactured one. The manufactured one is useful as the Salvation Army is useful, or the formulas of the Church of Christ Scientist; but they do not strike on the knowledge box of the modern intellectual; and it is on ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... umbrage at the manner of his reply, and bristling up, 'If I had known (said he) that you did not care to tell your name, I should not have asked the question — The leddy called you Matt, and I naturally thought it was Matthias: — perhaps, it may be Methuselah, or Metrodorus, or Metellus, or Mathurinus, or Malthinnus, or Matamorus, or —' 'No (cried my uncle laughing), it is neither of those, captain: my name is Matthew Bramble, at, your service. — The truth is, have a foolish pique at the name of Matthew, because it favours ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... is too much in the style of the male story-monger—you all know him—who repeats with undiminished gusto for the forty-ninth time a story that was tottering in senile imbecility when Methuselah was teething, and is now in ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... be no reason to doubt that METHUSELAH was blessed with a tolerably vigorous constitution. The ordeal through which we pass to maturity, at present, probably did not belong to the Antediluvian Epoch. Whooping-cough, measles, scarlet fever, and croup are comparatively modern inventions. They and the doctors ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... said, solemnly stroking its head with his hand, while the parrot turned round to him and bit at his finger with half-doddering affection—"this bird is the oldest of all my birds—-is it not so, Methuselah?—and illustrates well in one of its aspects the superstition of these people. Yes, my friend, you are the last of a kind now otherwise extinct, are you not, mon vieux? No, no, there—gently! ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... was, for my age, what Kitty called 'Bible-learned,' said thoughtfully, and with some puzzledness of mind, 'Then he's older than Methuselah.' ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... therefore, determined to set out upon a search for some relics of the mansion and fort; and as a guide in this enterprise, we engaged an old negro who seemed to have a fair claim in his own conceit to be regarded both as the Solomon and the Methuselah of the plantation. He was a wrinkled, wise-looking old fellow, with a watery eye and a grizzled head, and might, perhaps, have been about eighty; but, from his own account, he left us to infer that he was not much behind that great patriarch of Scripture whose years are described ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... of some of Her Majesty's subjects, the devotion and fealty of others made glorious atonement. There are loyal people in the Cape, who, if they live to be as old as Methuselah, will never forget the opening of December. The streets of Cape Town were literally panting with enthusiasm, every hole and corner being alive with animated crowds to welcome the New Zealanders, Australians, and Canadians, gallant fellows, who, from sheer pride in being associated with the ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... that," said Malcom earnestly. "An ye will, ye may keepit the angel a-growin' within ye alway, though ye live as old as Methuselah. D'ye see this wee brown seed? There's a mornin'-glory vine hidden in it, as would daze your een at the peep o' day wi' its gay blossoms. An' ye see my ould gudewife there? Ah, she will daze the een o' the greatest o' the earth in the bright springtime o' the Resurrection; and ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... old as Methuselah, if you wait till I am your wife. I dare say Perry has got a sister. Suppose you ask him? She would be just the ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... I last as long at Methuselah I shall never forgive myself: But—God forgive me, that I pray, unhappy Martin Relph, As coward, coward I call him—him, yes, him! Away from me! Get you behind the man I am now, you man that ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... said Mr. Gubb, "I wasn't taking no extra time to find out if a no-account feller like Mustard Bilton signed his name M. or Max or Methuselah. ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... think nothink of it; but as I said before, there must be reason in everythink to begin with. After Jim died I didn't care for livin' in the old place, an' thought I'd like to get somewhere near the city. Old people ought to have sense. They don't want to crawl round like Methuselah at forty, but they know w'en they git up to seventy they ain't goin' to live for ever, nor get any suppler in the joints, an' ought to make some provision to get nearer churches an' doctors an' all that's necessary to old people; so I sold out an' bought ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... Condorcet for one of these friendly protests. He showed himself worthy of such courageous conduct. 'One sees things ill,' he writes, 'when one sees them from too far off. After all, we ought never to blush to go to school if we are as old as Methuselah. I repeat my acknowledgments to you.'[5] Condorcet did not conceive that either to be blind to a man's errors or to compromise them is to prove yourself his friend. There is an integrity of friendship as in public ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... just coming out of the canyon between the mountains when Bruce stepped through the cabin door. Old Felix stopped and stood like a statue—Old Felix, the Methuselah of the Bitter Roots, who wore the most magnificent pair of horns that ever grew on a mountain sheep. Solid and perfect they were, all of nineteen and three-quarters inches at the base and tapering to needle points. Of incredible ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... hundred. Yes, you may be a thousand years old for what I know. Your teeth are false. One eye is evidently false. Can I say that the other is not? If a man's age may be calculated by the rings round his eyes, this man may be as old as Methuselah. He has no beard. He wears a large curly glossy brown wig, and his eyebrows are painted a deep olive- green. It was odd to hear this man, this walking mummy, talking sentiment, in these queer old ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... three thousand dollars in his pocket, the Yankee started off farther South, vowing that, if he lived to be as old as Methuselah, he'd never have any thing to do with ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... "But you're not 'men,' you old goose!" Unexpectedly she jerked his head down to hers, and gave him a resounding smack on the cheek. "There! I'm going to kiss people I love, men or women, till I'm as old as Methuselah—'specially if they're cross with me. You may as well get used to it.—Now kiss me ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... a patient man; he was the "man that waits" of the old French proverb; all things came to him. He had waited for an opportunity to change his brother's mind, and it had come. Again, he waited for him to die; and, like Methuselah and others, he died. He had heard of a race more powerful than the Natchez—a white race; he waited for them; and when the year 1682 saw a humble "black gown" dragging and splashing his way, with La Salle and Tonti, through the swamps of Louisiana, ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... of things not practicable under present conditions. Methuselah might, with much propriety, have taken half a century to get his doctor's degree; and might, very fairly, have been required to pass a practical examination upon the contents of the British Museum, before commencing practice as a promising ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... Austin?" I asked, with a feeling of awe creeping over me, as though I had been talking to the widow of Methuselah, and I looked up ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... lightened. In nothing did he feel the want of pence more keenly than in his inability to keep a secretary for his public work. "Money is time," he used to complain; "the millionaire is your only Methuselah." ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... my friends, my children, enough of that!" he cried. "We'll have no more maundering. Fifty years—what are fifty years! Think of Methuselah! It's summer in the world still, and it's only spring at St. Saviour's. It's the time of the first flowers. Let's dance—no, no, never mind the Cure to-night! He will not mind. I'll settle it with him. We'll ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... still my friend, and I'm proud of him. Now, if you'll all join me at the bar, we'll drink his health—on me.'" Thaddeus paused, and then he added: "I imagine they're cheering yet; at any rate, if I have as much health as they drink—on Haskins—I'll double discount old Methuselah in the matter ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... all the antediluvian affairs I ever beheld, the old fellow now coming towards us is the queerest; he looks like a fossil edition of Methuselah, dug up and modernised some hundred years ago at the very least. Holloa! he's going mad I believe; I ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... back to Ages past, And men in being fancy those are dead, It makes things gone perpetually to last, And calls back moneths and years that long since fled. It makes a man more aged in conceit, Then was Methuselah, or's grandsire great; While of their persons & their acts his ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... Sir Robert. "Clara, I must trust to you to put this notion out of Anne's head. Why should her dancing days be over? I am not a Methuselah, I hope. She has no right to shelve herself so early, has she? I hope to see her make a good ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... assure you it is only because they will not shut the doors after them below, as I desire. I am certain Mr. Champfort never shut a door after him in his life, nor never will if he was to live to the days of Methuselah." ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... all," said Maurice Quill, "now that people have given up making fortunes for the insurance companies by living to the age of Methuselah, there's nothing like being an Irishman. In what other part of the habitable globe can you cram so much adventure into one year? Where can you be so often in love, in liquor, or in debt; and where can you get so merrily out of the three? Where are promises ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... in the mad glad May days, Woo'd I one who was with us still; Bade him wake to the world's blithe heydays, Leap in joyance and eat his fill; Sang I, sweet as the bright-billed ousel, a Paean of praise for thy pal, Methuselah. Ah! he too in the Winter's grey days Died of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... dear count, for that would betray our love to the world. No, no, if any one should speak so to you, you must shrug your shoulders, and say, 'I am not acquainted with Madame von Brandt, I am indifferent whether she is handsome or ugly. She may be as old as Methuselah, it does not ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Homer, her face launching a thousand ships and burning the topless tower of Ilion—fairer than the evening air and simply but effectively attired in the beauty of a thousand stars? What poet has ever said things like that of an old man, even of Methuselah?" ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... seventy years, feeble and broken down. Would he, in so short a time, be tired of living? Would he, so soon, be ready to leave the glory and honour to which he had been called? Should he ask for length of days? Should he request that, till he had reached an age exceeding that of Methuselah, the cold hand of death might not be laid upon him, and the greedy and all-devouring tomb might not claim him as its victim? Should he ask that he might plant his feet upon the neck of all his enemies, not one daring to raise ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... there, and he shall rot! He never shall get out to disgrace the family—no, not if I live to be as gray as Methuselah, I warrant you!" And Mr. Soloman, having made his compliments to the sixth glass, draws from his breast pocket a legal-looking paper, which he passes to Mrs. Swiggs, as she ejaculates, "Oh! I am glad you thought ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... And clearly declared in Abel's innocency. Faith in that promise old Adam did justify, In that promise faith made Eve to prophecy. Faith in that promise proved Abel innocent, In that promise faith made Seth full obedient. That faith taught Enos on God's name first to call, And made Methuselah the oldest man of all. That faith brought Enoch to so high exercise, That God took him up with him into paradise. Of that faith the want made Cain to hate the good, And all his offspring to perish ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... interpretation were too good to be true, we need not be surprised. Few things in the universe are as superficially they look. The earth looks flat and, as long as we gaze on it, it never will look any other way, but it is spherical for all that. The earth looks stationary and if we live to be as old as Methuselah we never will see it move, but it is moving—seventy-five times faster than a cannon ball! The sun looks as though it rose in the east and set in the west, and we never can make it look any other ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... methods of massage and cold cream have kept away the crowsfeet, and fortunately I had the Rogerson complexion to start with. You wouldn't think I was really thirty-eight, would you? Thirty-eight! Twenty years ago I thought anybody who was thirty-eight was a perfect female Methuselah. And now I feel so horribly, ridiculously young, Louisa. Every morning when I get up I have to say solemnly to myself three times, 'You're an old maid, Nancy Rogerson,' to tone myself down to anything like a ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... lives by having sufficient sleep, by eating moderately, by refraining from worry. But, as a writer in a southern journal expressed it, Why do these aged curiosities never tell us what use they have made of this prolonged existence? Mark Twain said cheerfully, "Methuselah lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years; but what of that? There was nothing doing." No drama on the stage is a success unless it has what we call a supreme moment; and the drama of our individual lives can not be really interesting or important unless it has some moments when we ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... we rested at Warm Baths, and I think we deserved it. If "early to bed and early to rise, make a man healthy, wealthy and wise," excepting occasionally the first clause "early to bed," I consider we ought all to live the health and longevity of Methuselah or Old Parr, the wealth of Croesus or Vanderbilt, and the wisdom of Solomon, blended with the guile of the Serpent. Mention of the guile reminds me of a simple little incident which occurred to-day, and which, months ago, we simple Yeomen would never have perpetrated. A terrible thing happened ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... young for the responsibilities you put upon him, Margaret," Cousin Ann exclaimed, drawing her wrapper more closely over her tall spare figure; "and if he was as old as Methuselah he would still be careless, for he was born so! All this talk about his being skilful with tools has only swollen his vanity. A boy of his age should be able to make a bedstead ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... literary dilettantism unless it has that clear sense and deeper enjoyment for its end. It may be said that the more we know about a classic the better we shall enjoy him; and, if we lived as long as Methuselah and had all of us heads of perfect clearness and wills of perfect steadfastness, this might be true in fact as it is plausible in theory. But the case here is much the same as the case with the Greek and Latin ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Miss Day in a tragic voice; "she never could make the room look at it used to— not if she was to live till the age of Methuselah. Of course you'll improve it, Miss Peel; you couldn't possibly exist in ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... wish to count the Scarlet Oaks, do it now. In a clear day stand thus on a hill-top in the woods, when the sun is an hour high, and every one within range of your vision, excepting in the west, will be revealed. You might live to the age of Methuselah and never find a tithe of them, otherwise. Yet sometimes even in a dark day I have thought them as bright as I ever saw them. Looking westward, their colors are lost in a blaze of light; but in other directions the whole forest is a flower-garden, ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... making any adequate return for such a letter as yours, my dearest Fanny, it is absolutely impossible. If I were to labour at it all the rest of my life, and live to the age of Methuselah, I could never accomplish anything so long and so perfect; but I cannot let William go without a few lines of ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... measured by time, but by experience. It is our duty, therefore, to live all we can in the time allotted us. The patriarchs lived longer than we, but we may live more than they. This is a grand age in which we live. We may now live more in fifty years than Methuselah did before the flood. The time is short. Hence if we would live much we ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... particularly struck with the short but comprehensive narrative of Enoch: "He walked with God, and he was not; for God took him" (Gen. 5:21-24). He "walked with God," and how long? "Three hundred years" after he begat Methuselah. Oh, how strange that it should be so hard for me to walk in the commandments of the Lord even for a few days! O God, give me more of the love and more of the faith that ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... palm-trees hovering in the horizon, and processions of camels at the distance of three thousand years; there was Moses with the Burning Bush, the number of the Twelve Tribes, types, shadows, glosses on the law and the prophets; there were discussions (dull enough) on the age of Methuselah, a mighty speculation! there were outlines, rude guesses at the shape of Noah's Ark and of the riches of Solomon's Temple; questions as to the date of the creation, predictions of the end of all things; the great lapses of time, the strange mutations of the globe were unfolded ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... never be as complete in the one instance as in the other, because the intellect and the artistic faculty of man are far vaster than this planet, far more diverse, far more intricately and perplexingly arranged than all its abundant material dispositions and products. The life of Methuselah and the mind of Shakespeare together could hardly take the whole of critical knowledge to be their joint province. But the area of survey may be constantly increased; the particularity of knowledge ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... No wonder he nearly went out of his mind when he found he must leave it all intact and in first-rate working order for you to enter into. If he lives until he is as old as Methuselah he will never ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill |
