"Octogenarian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... confronted with a still more subtle and relentless opponent, whose hostility was never relaxed till the accession of a Liberal Pope made it no longer possible to resist the bestowal of tardy honours upon a feeble octogenarian. The recognition came in time to soothe his decline, but too late to enable him to leave his mark upon the administration of ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... excitement—his splendid constitution, sustained and strengthened as it was by his wholesome enjoyment of out-of-door life, and his habitual indulgence in bathing and pedes-trianism, gave him every reasonable hope of reaching the age of an octogenarian. ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... continuity between the earliest known life and ourselves, so that we both are and are not personally identical with the unicellular organism from which we have descended in the course of many millions of years, exactly in the same ways as an octogenarian both is and is not personally identical with the microscopic impregnate ovum from which he grew up. Everything both is and is not. There is no such thing as strict identity between any two things in any two consecutive seconds. In strictness they are identical ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... great city asleep! Weary arm gathering strength for to-morrow's toil. Hot brain getting cooled off. Rigid muscles relaxing. Excited nerves being soothed. White locks of the octogenarian in thin drifts across the white pillow—fresh fall of flakes on snow already fallen. Children with dimpled hands thrown put over the pillow, with every breath inhaling a new store of ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... neophyte, nepotism, neurotic, noisome, nomenclature, nonchalant, non sequitur, nucleus, nugatory, obdurate, objurgation, obligatory, obloquy, obsequious, obsession, obsolete, obstreperous, obtrusive, obtuse, obverse, obviate, occult, octogenarian, officious, olfactory, oleaginous, oligarchy, ominous, onomatopceia, opacity, opaque, opprobrious, oracular, orthodox, oscillate, osculate, ostensible, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... to remember that though my father lived in a plain house the most of his days, he died in a mansion provided by the filial piety of a son who had achieved a fortune. There the octogenarian sat, and the servants waited on him, and there were plenty of horses and plenty of carriages to convey him, and a bower in which to sit on long summer afternoons, dreaming over the past, and there was not a room in the house where he was not welcome, and there were musical instruments of all ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... after three interminable days of self-denial I presented myself one evening at the president's house, a look of annoyance with which Gladys greeted me seemed connected in some way with the presence of Boller. In my state of mind I should have suspected any octogenarian who smiled on Gladys Todd as plotting against my happiness. That she was essential to my happiness I realized as I watched her, in the shaded lamplight, her face turned to him as she listened intently to an account of his ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... Wyld, the painter, with whom I soon became acquainted, and who is still one of my best and most attached friends. Wyld lived and worked at that time in the same studio, in the Rue Blanche, where he is still living and working in this present year (1887), an octogenarian with the health and faculties of ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... to the Wey is rather uninteresting country. Addlestone lies between Chertsey and Weybridge, though not in a direct line, and was the home for years of two octogenarian authors, each of whom had a pension from the State, and who between them wrote or edited over five hundred books—Samuel Carter Hall and his wife Anna Maria Fielding. Both are buried at Addlestone; so is Fanny Kemble's mother, Mrs. Charles Kemble, who as Mademoiselle Decamp had delighted ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... Epicurus and the others. I am not taking high figures, either, as you will see if you reflect upon the number of octogenarian Stoics, Epicureans, and Platonists who confess that they have not yet completely mastered their own systems. Or, if they did not confess it, at any rate Chrysippus, Aristotle, and Plato would for them; still more Socrates, who is as ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... he obeyed the creature's mere look, and watched her movements as a dog watches every gesture of his master. In short, as Madame Hochon remarked, at fifty-seven years of age he seemed older than Monsieur Hochon, an octogenarian. ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... gate he saw, near at hand, Squire Jonas, now a gnarled but still sprightly octogenarian, leaning upon a fence post surveying the universe at large, as was the squire's daily custom. He called out a good morning and waved his stick in greeting toward the squire with a gesture which ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... ended, every man, priest or layman, youth or octogenarian, had cast his own die of fate, had staked the safety of himself and family, and hurled back into the teeth of the great Bear from the north the unanimous answer of a desperate and downtrodden people who preferred a future of unknown terror to the voluntary sacrifice of their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... for his years did the octogenarian walk in through the little pillared portico a moment later. Such deliberation as his movements had might as well have been the mark of a proper self-esteem as the effect of age. He was a slender but wiry-looking old gentleman, was Matthias Valentine, of Valentine's ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... hard to believe there was no exemption for those to whom he stood in any personal relation. He remembered how, soon after he went to Eton, he had received almost with incredulity the news of the death of his god-father, Lord Stackley, an octogenarian.... He took from the table his album, knowing that on one of the earliest pages was inscribed his boyish sense of that bereavement. Yes, here the passage was, written in a ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... room is as sacred as that in which Shakespeare was born, and in the words of Mr. Sam Timmins, "to open the door and look upon the strange relics there is to stand in the very presence of the mighty dead. Everything in the room remains just as it was left by the fast failing hands of the octogenarian engineer. His well-worn, humble apron hangs dusty on the wall, the last work before him is fixed unfinished in the lathe, the elaborate machines over which his latest thoughts were spent are still and silent, as if waiting only for their ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... anxious to hear how you are. My own health is quite very good; I am a healthy octogenarian; very old, I thank you and of course not so active as a young man, but hale withal: a lusty December. This is so; such ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with my faculty for the appreciation of good literature still unimpaired, with my domestic interests so dear to me, and my constant knitting for the infants under the care of the State Inspector—I find my life as an octogenarian more varied in its occupations and interests than ever before. Looking back from the progressive heights of 1910 through the long vista of years, numbering upwards of four-fifths of a century, I rejoice at the progress the ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... always open. In conversation I am impassioned, and oppose what I deem error with an eagerness which is often mistaken for personal asperity; but I am ever so swallowed up in the thing said that I forget my opponent. Such am I." The Rev. Leapidge Smith, in his "Reminiscences of an Octogenarian," remembered him as "a tall, dark, handsome young man, with long, black, flowing hair; eyes not merely dark, but black, and keenly penetrating; a fine forehead, a deep-toned, harmonious voice; a manner never to be forgotten, full of life, vivacity, ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Minister's finger stops at Bordeaux. There the federation festivities are marked with a triple assassination.[3256] In order to let this dangerous moment pass by, M. de Langoiran, vicar-general of the archbishopric, had retired half a league off; in the village of Cauderan, to the residence of an octogenarian priest, who, like himself; had never meddled with public matters. On the 15th of July the National Guards of the village, excited by the speeches of the previous night, have come to the residence to pick them up, and moreover, a third priest belonging ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... idea of "following Hannibal over the mountains" filled our young philosopher with an enthusiasm beyond his years. He took part in the victories of Parma and Guastalla, and he was probably with Villars at Turin when that indomitable octogenarian died in June 1734. The War of the Polish Succession presently sank into a mere armistice, and until 1736 we dimly perceive Vauvenargues sharing the idle and boring life of the officer who, too poor to retire to Paris, ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... so strange was it to receive a lesson in energy from a dying octogenarian. Yet after an instant Nick answered with due modesty: "I haven't been clever ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... brings so much as that of a first-rate London old lady. I came away from the great city with the feeling that this most complex product of civilization was nowhere else developed to such perfection. The octogenarian Londoness has been in society,—let us say the highest society,—all her days. She is as tough as an old macaw, or she would not have lasted so long. She has seen and talked with all the celebrities of three generations, ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... now discovered certain facts about Mr. Cazalette. He was an octogenarian. He was uncannily active. He had an almost imp-like desire to live—and to dance when he ought to have been wrapped in blankets and saying his last prayers. And a few minutes later, when we were seated round our host's table, I discovered another fact—Mr. Cazalette was one of those men to ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... Caleb the elder, was an old man before his son, Caleb the younger, went to the wars, and he figured in the recollections of those who remembered him as a grim, white-haired octogenarian who was one day carried home from the iron-furnace which he had built, and put to bed, dead in every part save his eyes. The eyes lived on for a year or more, following the movements of the sympathetic or curious visitor with a quiet, divining gaze; never sleeping, they said—though that could ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... deserves, by his position and ability, our very sincere respect; compared with the octogenarian sentimentalism of Jean Kostka, the violence of Signor Margiotta, and the paste-pot of M. de la Rive, one breathes a pleine poitrine in the altitudes of ecclesiastical erudition, artificial as their eminence ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... and still lazier eventides, to gossip over the latest items of local news; conscious that as they are doing so their ancestors have done for many a generation, and that old as they may be themselves, in their septuagenarian or octogenarian states, they are as infants in comparison with the age of the stones and bricks and timbers about them, grey and fragrant with the antiquity of ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... uncle, laughing, "I'm not afraid, or I shouldn't have brought you girls up here. I don't mind admitting I have one friend, a wise old octogenarian, rich as Croesus, whom I wouldn't trust up here alone! He'd steal a gem as quickly as ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... Tom Hankin, shoemaker. A man of strong contrasts was Tom; an octogenarian when I first knew him, and an atheist, as he proudly boasted, "all his life." My last interview with him took place a few days before his death, when he knew that he was hovering on the brink of the grave; and it ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... Baillie, dramatic writer, and her sister Agnes lived. Mr. Shaw, writing in the "Dictionary of National Biography," says: "Geniality and hospitality were the characteristics of the two sisters during their residence at Hampstead, and even when one became an octogenarian and the other a nonagenarian they could enter keenly into the various literary and scientific controversies of the day." This is next door to the house known as Windmill Hill, which is also the name given to the locality. Opposite is Mount Vernon, where the Hospital for Consumption stands, ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... pathetic, and on the face of it accurately truthful, account of the close of his life in Mr. Forster's admirable and most graphic life of him, I never knew Landor. For the more than octogenarian old man whom I knew at Florence was clearly not the Landor whom England had known and admired for so many and such honoured years. Of all the painful story of the regrettable circumstances which caused him to seek his last home in Florence it would be mere impertinence ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... were. But the truth of your remark is indisputable. Ah, look! Is not that a face which might make an octogenarian forget that he is not a boy?—what regular features!—and what ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... disregard to the plain indications of nature, in withholding such teeth till the system requires their assistance to masticate solid food. And the method of grating and pounding meat, as a substitute for chewing, may be well suited to the toothless octogenarian, whose stomach is capable of digesting it; but the stomach of a young child is not adapted to the digestion of such food, and will ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... to her companion, "that Mr. So and so, the octogenarian, is dead. Now, what on earth is an ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... either side of him, and from these on to the seemingly empty spaces back of the high, carved railing guarding the great well. Would a younger man have served them better? It began to look so; then without warning and in a flash, as it were, the whole appearance of the octogenarian detective changed, and turning with a smile to the two men so anxiously watching him, he exclaimed with an ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... manservant, who had been with the family for forty years, alone glided in their slippers about the deserted rooms, like a couple of ghosts. Now and then, at very long intervals, there came a visitor: some octogenarian general, so desiccated, so slight of build that he scarcely pressed on the carpet. The house was also the home of shadows; the sun filtered with the mere gleam of a night light through the Venetian blinds. Since madame ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... "as if they wasn't nobody now in Stornham village but Gaarge Doby—s'ems not." They were very fierce in their jealousy of attention, and one must beware of rousing evil passions in the octogenarian breast. ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... mind the most interesting relic in the whole collection was the spry octogenarian who acted as guide and showed us through the place—for he was one of the few living links between the Old West and the New. As a boy-convert to Mormonism he came across the desert with the second expedition that fled westward from Gentile persecution ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... The poor octogenarian blushed like a girl of fifteen. Nothing could have confused her more than this inopportune reference to the afternoon of the swing. Luis and Fernanda took to seeing each other there once or twice a week. Away from ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... still cling to you faithfully, I will never forget it. I will forget only all that now makes me doubt him. But you talk of not living, Audley! Pooh! your frame is that of a predestined octogenarian." ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a reference to the parish register worth all the reasons in the world, "I AM OLD AND WELL STRICKEN IN YEARS," he was wont to say; and I never found any one bold enough to answer the argument. Apart from this vantage that he kept over all who were not yet octogenarian, he had some other drawbacks as a gardener. He shrank the very place he cultivated. The dignity and reduced gentility of his appearance made the small garden cut a sorry figure. He was full of tales of greater situations ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exhibition at the Brera. There they saw Canova's Hebe, and his colossal statue of Clement XIII. "The desire of seeing and approaching the sovereign," says the Moniteur, "had made the crowd larger. An octogenarian who had in vain struggled to get to a staircase before him, was hustled and knocked down on the steps by the eager multitude. The Empress, who was following, ran to his aid. The Emperor turned back, questioned ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... heaven, they had actually to re-acquire them from their own children and disciples. The Scriptures declare that the preceptor is ever the sire, and the disciple is the son. Difference of age would not disturb the relationship. A youth of sixteen might thus be the father of an octogenarian. With Brahmanas, reverence is due ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... octogenarian, was by no means pleased at these remarks. She still prided herself on her fascinations, was never tired and never bored, and looked upon any one who died under a hundred years of age as a suicide. 'You have more strength and spirit, as well as more genius, than any of ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... fairies the other day to a nearly Octogenarian female neighbour, I asked, had she ever seen one in her youthful days. Her answer was in the negative; "but," quoth she, "I've heard my grandmother tell a story, that Midridge (near Auckland) was a great place for fairies when she was a child, ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... Representatives, the Supreme Court of the United States, the Governor, ex-Governors, and Supreme Court of Massachusetts, and all the members of the Essex Club; also, many distinguished citizens, such as George Bancroft (who adds to his autograph "with special good wishes to the coming octogenarian"), Robert C. Winthrop, Frederick Douglass, and J. G. Blaine. An eloquent speech of Senator Hoar, who suggested this unique tribute, is engrossed in the exquisite penmanship of a colored man, to whom was intrusted the ornamental pen-work of the whole ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... delighted by it are disturbed, perplexed, irritated. The beholder either recognises it as a projected form of his own being, that moves before him with a glory round its head, or recoils from it as a spectre."[1] The octogenarian critic of the Johnsonian school recoils from "Frankenstein" as from an incarnation of the Evil Spirit: she does not know what to make of the "Tales of my Landlord"; and she inquires of an Irish acquaintance whether she retained ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... grand gathering and ball at the Manor House of the Patroons, and to it I was invited. Cadwallader Golden, the octogenarian lieutenant-governor, and chief representative of the Crown now that Tryon was away in England, had come up to Albany in state, upon some business which I now forget, and he was to be entertained at the Van Rensselaer mansion, and with him the rank, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... would have a record kept and on his return would incorporate it into his book. Exactly what advantages he expected to derive therefrom are not apparent, though I presume that he hoped to draw conclusions as to the best time for planting crops. In reading it I was many times reminded of a Cleveland octogenarian who for fifty-seven years kept a record twice a day of the thermometer and barometer. Near the end of his life he brought the big ledgers to the Western Reserve Historical Society, and I happened to be present on the occasion. "You have studied the subject for a long time," I said to him. "Are there ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... in an octogenarian treble, that seemed to come from high up in the head of Uncle Issy, the bass-viol player; "But cast your eyes, good friends, 'pon a little slip o' heart's delight down in the nave, and mark the flowers 'pon the bonnet nid-nodding like bees in ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... shall adopt Max when he leaves school," remarked Caesar languidly, "he'll let me manage him in my own way till he is an octogenarian." ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... phylloxera—but are on the opposite bank of the river. Our visit to Saint-Pray was made from Valence, in which dull southern city we had loitered in order to glance at the vast Htel du Gouvernement—where octogenarian Pius VI., after being spirited away a prisoner from Rome and hurried over the Alps in a litter by order of the French Directory, drew his last breath while silently gazing across the rushing river at the view he so much admired—and ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... Paluzzo Altieri was nephew to the Cardinal who governed Rome as the 'real' Pope, while the octogenarian Clement X., who was called the 'nominal' Pope, spent most of his days more or less in his bed. The Cardinal and all his relations had been adopted by him as 'nephews,' and as he was the last of his race he had bestowed on them and their heirs all his vast private ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... and lakes, of our hills and headlands, do, in their mere names, telegraph back to us, along mighty distances of time, significant specimens of the tongue spoken by the first inhabitants of their district—in this respect resembling the doting and dying octogenarian that has left in early life the home of his fathers, to sojourn in the land of the stranger, and who remembers and babbles at last—ere the silver cord of memory is utterly and finally loosed—one language only, and that some few words merely, in the long ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... looking at the fresco of Commerce upon the ceiling; his ponderous right-hand neighbor was stumbling feebly over an addition that one of the bookkeepers had made upon one of the papers—he hoped to find it wrong; his left-hand neighbor was doubling his under-lip with his stout fingers; an octogenarian beyond had buried his chin in his immense neck, and was going to sleep; another was stupidly blinking at the nearest coal-fire; two more were exchanging gasping whispers; another was wiping his gold ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... as to the deity in question; on that point I have never been informed, but Mr. Moore is probably right in the use of the capital d, as the sacrificer is, according to all accounts, a highly devout Christian. One more instance: an octogenarian woman, born in the parish of Bride, and now living at Kirk Andreas, saw, when she was a 'lump of a girl' of ten or fifteen years of age, a live sheep being burnt in a field in the parish of Andreas, on May-day, whereby she ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... great edition. Of the further additions made in the fifth edition, Sir Harris Nicolas makes this just criticism: "It is questionable," he says, "whether the additions which he then made to it have increased its interest. The garrulity and sentiments of an octogenarian are very apparent in some of the alterations; and the subdued colouring of religious feeling which prevails throughout the former editions, and forms one of the charms of the piece, is, in this impression, so much heightened ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... passed before the house of her gallant, the sweetheart of former days, a carpenter by trade; now an octogenarian, who sat outside his door all the livelong day, while the young ones, his sons, worked in the shop. It was said that he never had consoled himself for her loss, for neither in first or second marriage would she have him; but with old age his feeling for her ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... hitting us below the belt! For with advancing years the love of adventure leaves us; the "Love of a Lifetime" becomes to us of more real consequence than our pet armchair—but the love of a good dinner, that, at least, can make the everyday of an octogenarian well worth living. Young people little realise the awful prophecy implied in that irritating remark—"Don't gobble!" There is another one, almost equally irritating to youth—"Go and change your socks!" But, if the ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... M. Skouloudis—a stately octogenarian who, after refusing three times the Premiership, had assumed power in this crisis at the King's insistent desire because, as he said, he considered it his duty so to do—took up the only attitude that could have been expected in ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... contemporaries. Surely when a schoolboy at Eton he must somewhere have discovered the elixir of life, or have been bathed by some beneficent fairy in the well of perpetual youth. Gladly would many a man of fifty exchange physique with this hale and hearty octogenarian. Only in one respect does he show any trace of advancing years. His hearing is not quite so good as it was, but still it is far better than that of Cardinal Manning, who became very deaf in his closing years. Otherwise Mr. Gladstone is hale and hearty. His eye is not dim, neither is his natural ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... The Octogenarian was of Scotch Descent. He was the Color of an Army Saddle. He never smiled except when the Kilties came on tour. His Nippie consisted of a tall Glass about half full and then ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... "The Creation" and "The Seasons." They were the summit of his achievement, as little to be expected from him, considering his years, as "Falstaff" was to be expected from the octogenarian Verdi. Some geniuses flower late. It was only now, by his London symphonies and his "Creation," that Haydn's genius blossomed so luxuriantly as to place him with almost amazing suddenness among the very first of composers. There is hardly anything more ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... life measured by his deeds, as the poet suggests, how brief would be the long years of many an octogenarian, and how extended the short span which has been allotted to not a few of ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... this comic opera of the youthful octogenarian disclosed the importance which Boito had assumed in the development of Verdi. That development is one of the miracles of music. In manner Verdi represents a full century of operatic writing. He began when, in Italy at least, the libretto was a mere stalking ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... style of the vice-resident, and hoists the French colours over a quite extensive compound. A Chinaman, a waif from the plantation, keeps a restaurant in the rear quarters of the village; and the mission is well represented by the sisters' school and Brother Michel's church. Father Orens, a wonderful octogenarian, his frame scarce bowed, the fire of his eye undimmed, has lived, and trembled, and suffered in this place since 1843. Again and again, when Moipu had made coco-brandy, he has been driven from his house into the woods. "A mouse that dwelt in a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... conclusions, back to this underlying truth: "So that each ovum when impregnate should be considered not as descended from its ancestors, but as being a continuation of the personality of every ovum in the chain of its ancestry, which every ovum IT ACTUALLY IS quite as truly as the octogenarian IS the same identity with the ovum from which he has been developed. This process cannot stop short of the primordial cell, which again will probably turn out to be but a brief resting-place. We therefore prove each one of us to BE ACTUALLY the primordial cell which never ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... soon be broken. But what of that? Seventy-eight years is a long time to live in this world. I have had my share of life and of the good pertaining to it, and shall have no right to complain when my pipe is broken and its ashes scattered.' Such was the philosophy of an almost Octogenarian smoker." ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... vicar threatened that in future the mare should be shod by Hawkins the rival blacksmith, who was a dissenter and had consequently never been employed by the vicarage. Moreover it was generally rumoured once every year that old Nat Barker, the octogenarian cripple who had not been able to stand upon his feet for twenty years, was at the point of death. He invariably recovered, however, in time to put in an appearance by proxy at the distribution of a certain dole of a loaf and a shilling on boxing ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... emperor and empress merely respond with an inclination of the head to the salutations of those of minor rank, they invariably approach to the edge of the dais in order to give their hands to be kissed by the octogenarian Prince of Hohenlohe, who has held the office of chancellor ever since the retirement of General Count Caprivi. The band plays throughout the entire ceremony, which is ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... me, of which "jet black was de seal." Under ordinary circumstances, this should have cast a gloom upon my joy; but candour forces me to confess that a perusal of the contents of that epistle produced upon me an effect altogether the reverse. The letter announced the demise of an octogenarian female relative—whom I had never seen—but who, for a full decade of years, beyond the period allotted to the life of man—or women either—had obstinately persisted in standing betwixt me and a small reversion—so long, indeed, that I had ceased ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... the fatal slope toward the ridiculous? Shall we be compelled by a current stronger than our wills to array ourselves each year (the bare thought makes one shudder) in more and more youthful apparel, until corpulent senators take to running about in “sailor suits,” and octogenarian business men go “down town” in “pinafores,” while belles of sixty or seventy summers appear in Kate Greenaway costumes, and dine out in short-sleeved bibs, which will allow coy glimpses of their cunning old ankles ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... written twenty books. But you might live to be an octogenarian yourself without meeting twenty persons who would have read them all. It would not be a hard matter, though, to find those who have read one of his books twenty times; perhaps this very green-covered book with "Sartor Resartus" ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... places, many anecdotes about "Proverbial Philosophy" shall duly appear: I may mention one or two now, as timely. When that good old man, Grandfather Hatchard, more than an octogenarian, first saw me, he placed his hand on my dark hair and said with tears in his eyes, "You will thank God for this book when your head comes to be as white as mine." Let me gratefully acknowledge that he was a true prophet. When I was writing the concluding ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... massive vigor of a Goethe or a Humboldt. How much, too, is said of the physical degeneracy of our own people,—how the jaw is retreating, how the frame is growing slender and gaunt, how the chest flattens, and how tenderly we ought to cherish every octogenarian among us, for that we are seeing the last of them! If this is intended to be a piece of pleasant badinage, far be it from us to arrest a single smile it may awaken. But if it is given as a serious description, from which serious deductions can be drawn, then we say, that, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... character essentially barbaric. Raemaekers reproduces the twinkle in the Imperial eye as William of Potsdam offers to a quondam ally the foot which belongs to his senile and helpless brother of Hapsburg. The roar of anguish from the prostrate octogenarian provokes, as we see, not pity but a grim smile. Italy's monarch, we may imagine, ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... occasion to a number of new undertakings. At first, as early as 1555, there was formed in England a company of "merchant adventurers of England for the discoverie of landes, territories, isles, dominions, and seigniories unknowen," commonly called "the Muscovy Company," Sebastian Cabot, then almost an octogenarian, was appointed governor for the term of his natural life, and a number of privileges were conferred upon it by the rulers both of England and Russia. At the same time negotiators, merchants, and inquirers were sent by different ways from England to Russia in ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... age. Old as he was, our host was very brisk and polite, and did the honors of his suite of large rooms with much grace and fantastic hospitality. Dancing about him, and making friends freely with us all meanwhile, was the little girl, Imogen by name, who was accredited as the octogenarian's offspring. She was some four or five years of age, but intellectually precocious, though a complete child, too. Mr. Kirkup said that she, like her beautiful mother, was a powerful medium, and that he often used to communicate through her with her mother, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... daring been more strangely coupled with octogenarian prudence, than in many of the predatory enterprises of Paul. It is this combination of apparent incompatibilities which ranks him ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... lived her life out since then, gave him an oppressive sense of age and loss. He bethought himself of something he had read about "sitting by the hearth and remembering the faces of women without desire," and felt himself an octogenarian. ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... and confidential friend, rather than a dependant.' My worthy host was the son of this old gentleman, who is still alive and in good health. Several years ago he emigrated to Australia, where he now resides, still taking a lively interest in literary affairs, and reading, though an octogenarian, all the new works, that are regularly sent to him by his son. The old gentleman was as intimately acquainted with Hogg as with Scott, and my host remembers both these personages, though he was but a boy when ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... hostilely convinced that it was not her business to contribute to the happiness of any octogenarian Hun, ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... flour-tax. The following day, the chief of the band "obliges the principal inhabitants to give him a sum of money to indemnify, as he states it, the peasants who have abandoned their work," and devoted the day to serving the public.—At Peinier, the President de Peinier, an octogenarian, is "besieged in his chateau by a band of a hundred and fifty artisans and peasants," who bring with them a consul and a notary. Aided by these two functionaries, they force the president "to pass an act ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... few days seemed to reunite dissevered Rough-and-Ready. Both factions hastened to the bereaved Daddy with condolements, and offers of aid and assistance. But the old man received them sternly. A change had come over the weak and yielding octogenarian. Those who expected to find him maudlin, helpless, disconsolate, shrank from the cold, hard eyes and truculent voice that bade them "begone," and "leave him with his dead." Even his own friends failed to make him respond to their sympathy, ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... arms. There is in the same Galere Capitaine, that well-known, trim figure, the bow-oar; how he tugs, and with what a will! How both of them have been abused in their time! Take the Lawyer's galley, and that dauntless octogenarian in command; when has HE ever complained or repined about his slavery? There is the Priest's galley—black and lawn sails—do any mariners out of Thames work harder? When lawyer, and statesman, and divine, and writer are snug in bed, there is a ring at the poor ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... little girl and Marta's friend, has heard from Tommaso, an octogenarian, that their rich and mighty master Sebastiano has found a husband for Marta, and that the latter, being the master's property like everything else around, has to ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... of the new scheme of rationing spread very rapidly. A few days later we heard that Sir Meesly Goormay, the most self-indulgent and incorrigible egotist in the neighbourhood, had introduced a collection of octogenarian aunts to his household, and, when I was performing my afternoon beat, I was just in time to see the butcher's boy, assisted by the gardener, delivering what looked to be a baron of beef at Sir Meesly's back door. It was an enervating and disgusting spectacle, well calculated to upset the moral ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various
... bad habit of soliloquising, and indeed am absurd enough to attempt conversation with a house, yet the reader must realise from the beginning that I am still quite a young man. I talked a little just now as though I were an octogenarian. Actually, as I said, I am but just gone thirty, and I may reasonably regard life, as the saying is, all before me. I was a little down-hearted when I wrote yesterday. Besides, I wrote at the end of the afternoon, a melancholy time. The morning ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... But the octogenarian egotist has something to tell about beside herself. Here is a passage of interest to the student of Shakspearian localities, and bearing on a matter in dispute from the days ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... cinematographic) lectures on the wide aspects of Imperial Britain. Its appeal was to the young, the recruit in the battle of life, who in a year or two would qualify for a vote and, except for blind passion and prejudice, not know what the deuce to do with it. The octogenarian Earl of Watford was President; Colonel Winwood was one of a long list of Vice-Presidents; Miss Winwood was on the Council; a General Hankin, a fussy, incompetent person past ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... of the late venerable octogenarian, having recently presented me with a copy of Mr. Gough's scarce volume, I am anxious to learn by whom the original French work was written, and where a copy may be purchased. It is one of much erudition; sound in doctrine ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... to Portland, we called a convention, and organized the Oregon State Woman Suffrage Association, with Harriet W. Williams, a venerated octogenarian, president. This estimable woman had been one of the earliest leaders of the woman suffrage movement in the State of New York, and her presence at the head of our meetings in Oregon was a source of genuine satisfaction ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the crowd broke into a cheer that echoed strangely on the night-air. It had hardly died away when a quavering, high-pitched voice started 'God Save the King,' and with a sturdy indifference to pitch the rest followed, the octogenarian who had begun it sounding clear above the others as he half-whistled and half-sang the anthem ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... Timber Town Club: the ancient Mr. Crewe, Scarlett, and Cathro, a little man who rejoiced in the company of the rich octogenarian. ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... no member of the society has been more valued than the late octogenarian, Mr. John Rivett, J.P., who died Sept 4, 1906. For nearly 70 years he was a generous supporter of the cause; he represented the district at no less than 13 Conferences, in various parts of the country, and at the ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... they are actually to swallow that? Here is a jury sworn "to a true verdict find" in the case of an ugly looking customer at the bar who is charged with knocking down an old man and stealing his watch. The old man—an apostolic looking octogenarian—is sitting right over there where the jury can see him. One look at the plaintiff and one at the accused and the jury may be heard to mutter, "He's ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... heretofore been painted. In repeating conversations, I have endeavored to stand in the background, where I very properly belong. For the inevitable egotism of the personal pronoun, I hope to be pardoned by all charitable souls. That Landor, the octogenarian, has not been photographed by a more competent person, is certainly not my fault. Having had the good fortune to enjoy opportunities beyond my deserts, I should have shown a great want of appreciation had I not availed myself of them. If, in referring to Landor, I avoid ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... same time, but this lived in her mind because of the importance and solemnity with which her own parents had purposely invested it in her eyes. One day, at Brighton, this little great-great-grand-daughter of the Lord Kilmarnock of 1745 was brought down from the nursery to see an old, more than octogenarian, soldier who had distinguished himself in recent wars, and reached the rank of general. This tottering old man, more than fourscore years of age, took the wee maiden of hardly four upon his knee, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... silver-haired octogenarian, had still the heart of a fiery man in his bosom, and his trembling lips cursed the conqueror, the relentless foe of Austria, and called down the wrath of Heaven on the French emperor, who always spoke of peace and conciliation, and always stirred up quarrels and enmities. The ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... enjoyment of unimpaired mental faculties never smoked. M. Dufaure, M. Barthelemy St. Hilaire, Victor Hugo, M. Etienne Arago, brother of the astronomer, Abbe Moigno, belong to the non-smoking school of public men. So did M. Thiers, M. Guizot, M. Cremieux, M. Raspail, and the octogenarian, Comte Benoit-D'Azy, who died in full possession of ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... the circuit of these ruins, and on the morrow he sought the magistrates and said to them: "You see the distress that we are in? Come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem." The same feelings no doubt oppressed the soul of the octogenarian prelate when he saw the walls cracked and blackened, the heaps of ruins, sole remnants of his beloved house. But like Nehemiah he had the support of a great King, and the confidence of succeeding. He set to work at once, and found in the generosity ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... happiness; and, while trying to amuse a man who, though possessed of sovereign power, has lost all sense of enjoyment, must have reverted, perhaps with a sigh, to the little chamber in which she so long soothed the sick bed of the witty octogenarian, Scarron; who, gay and cheerful to the last, could make her smile by his sprightly and spirituelles sallies, which neither the evils of poverty nor pain ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... hoarding instinct is not controlled by reason or checked by other interests, we have the miser. In a less degree, we all share with the miser his hoarding instinct. We all like to collect money just as the squirrel likes to gather nuts. The octogenarian continues to collect money with unabated zeal, even though he be childless. He is probably not aware that he is collecting merely for ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... thought Mr. Gryce feeble, though I knew he was over seventy if not very near the octogenarian age. But he drew up a chair at ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... arrived at the age at which such things cease to feel the years; the waves of time have worn its edges to a kind of patient dulness; there is something mild and smooth, like the stillness, the deafness, of an octogenarian, even in its rudeness of ornament, and it has become insensible to differences of a century or two. The cathedral interested me much less than Our Lady the Great, and I have not the spirit to go into statistics about it. It is not statistical to say that the ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... Punch's earliest men before the advent of Leech was H. G. Hine, who up to 1895 was the octogenarian Vice-President of the Institute of Painters in Water-Colours, whose broad and masterly drawings of poetic landscape have been the artistic wonder of recent years. He began to draw for Punch in September, 1841, and ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... said an old, decrepit, hollow-eyed octogenarian, leaning on his staff, "make the best of your youth. I, too, once had a Fillide! I was handsomer than you then! Alas! if we could ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... through the hilly country and, a hundred and fifty miles from Calcutta, the flourishing coal-mining district of Asansol brings me again to the East India Railway and semi-European society and accommodation. Instead of doughy chuppatties, throat-blistering curry, and octogenarian chicken, I this morning breakfast off a welcome bottle of Bass's ale, baker's bread, and ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... have come into the work in late years continually ask, "How have you borne it so long?" Sometimes when their own endurance ceases they write her that they will have to resign, and she makes answer: "If all the young women fail, then the octogenarian must work the harder till a new reserve comes to the rescue;" and of course they are ashamed and redouble their labors to ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... an Emperor knelt; Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains Clank over sceptred cities; nations melt From power's high pinnacle, when they have felt The sunshine for a while, and downward go Like lauwine loosened from the mountain's belt: Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo! The octogenarian chief, Byzantium's ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... of the government of France. Unhappily, the day was coming when the thrones of Europe were about to be occupied by stronger and more expanded minds, whilst France was passing slowly from the hands of a more than octogenarian minister into those of a voluptuous monarch, governed by his courtiers and his favorites. Frederick II., Maria Theresa, Lord Chatham, Catherine II., were about to appear upon the scene; the French had none to oppose them ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Like the octogenarian whose teeth gave out before his dry toast, she "hadn't finished, but she stopped" there, being ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... reaction was not an accomplished fact. Lord Palmerston's ascendency in the country, though diminished, was still great, and the magic of his name carried the election. 'It is clear,' wrote Lord John to the plucky octogenarian Premier, when the latter, some time before the contest, made a fighting speech in the country, 'that your popularity is a plant of hardy growth and deep roots.' Quite suddenly, in the spring of 1865, Lord Palmerston ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... exclaimed the octogenarian, as if it was a matter of the most vital importance to him; 'great run, sir; no, sir, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... hand, when you have an especially attractive young woman staying with you, ask a stolid middle-aged couple and an octogenarian professor for dinner, because the charm and beauty of the former is sure ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... freshness and purity of a mind unsullied by communion with the world is the shallowest nonsense. Your Madame du Deffand at eighty and your Horace Walpole at sixty are as lively as a girl and boy. Your octogenarian Voltaire is the most agreeable creature in existence. But take Cymon and Daphne from their flocks and herds and pastoral valleys in their old age, and see what senile bores and quavering imbeciles you would find them. Yes, I have no doubt you found your Dorking aunt a nuisance. Take off your ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon |
