"Dotard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out of patience, the slave Mansouri took Babadul by his beard, and shaking his head for him, exclaimed with a roar, "Then tell me, you old dotard! what ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... rusty scythe may whet, The unmowed grass is glowing yet Beneath the sheltering snow, my boys; And if the crazy dotard ask, Is love worn out? Is life a task? We'll bravely answer No! my boys, We ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... it! he acknowledges it!" roared the magician. "Wretch, dotard, owl, mole, miserable buzzard! I have no reason to tell thee now that thy form is monstrous, that children cry, that cowards turn pale, that teeming matrons shudder to behold it. It is not thy fault that thou art thus ungainly: but wherefore so blind? wherefore so conceited of thyself! I tell ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Fortunes of Nigel. It was so intense a passion that it supplied the place of talents, that it inspired even fatuity with cunning. "Have no money dealings with my father," says Marth to Lord Glenvarloch; "for, dotard as he is, he will make an ass of you." It was as dangerous to have any political connection with Newcastle as to buy and sell with old Trapbois. He was greedy after power with a greediness all his own. He was jealous of all his colleagues, and even of his own brother. Under the disguise of levity ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... comfortless old age, you will remember that you had one disinterested friend, whose heart you wounded to the quick. The hour of recollection will come—and you will not be satisfied to act the part of a boy, till you fall into that of a dotard. I know that your mind, your heart, and your principles of action, are all superior to your present conduct. You do, you must, respect me—and you will be sorry ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... yet shows that forehead more than fair! Each glance that wins us, and the life that throws A spell which will not let our looks repose, 40 But turn to gaze again, and find anew Some charm that well rewards another view. These are not lessened, these are still as bright, Albeit too dazzling for a dotard's sight; And those must wait till ev'ry charm is gone, To please the paltry heart that pleases none;— That dull cold sensualist, whose sickly eye In envious dimness passed thy portrait by; Who racked his little spirit to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... 'He called me dotard,' said she, as the smoke curled from the hissing cauldron: 'when the jaws drop, and the grinders fall, and the heart scarce beats, it is a pitiable thing to dote; but when,' she added, with a savage and exulting grin, 'the young, and the beautiful, and the strong, are suddenly smitten into ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... and placed himself in a corner of the room. He soon perceived the father and mother of the bride; and coming behind the mother's chair, whispered in her ear, "If you marry your daughter to that old dotard, before eight days are over you shall certainly die." The woman, frightened to hear such a terrible sentence pronounced upon her, and yet not know from whence it came, gave a loud shriek, and dropped upon the floor. Her husband asked what ailed her: she cried that ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... — N. veteran, old man, seer, patriarch, graybeard; grandfather, grandsire; grandam; gaffer, gammer; crone; pantaloon; sexagenarian, octogenarian, nonagenarian, centenarian; old stager; dotard &c 501. preadamite^, Methuselah, Nestor, old Parr; elders; forefathers &c (paternity) 166. Phr. superfluous lags the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Dee, our English "Faust," as he is not inaptly called, has both been misrepresented and misunderstood. An enthusiast he undoubtedly was, but not the drivelling dotard that some of his biographers imagine. A man of profound learning, distinguished for attainments far beyond the general range of his contemporaries, he, like Faustus, and the wisest of human kind, had found out how little he knew; had perceived that the great ocean ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... boys at play, And had his nuts as well as they, A grave Athenian, passing by, Cast on the sage a scornful eye, As on a dotard quite bereaved: Which, when the moralist perceived, (Rather himself a wit profess'd Than the poor subject of a jest) Into the public way he flung A bow that he had just unstrung: "There solve, thou conjurer," he cries, "The problem, that before thee lies." The people ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... and respected the old Duc de Marny, a feeble old man now, almost a dotard whose hitherto spotless blason, the young Vicomte, his son, was ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... was unquestionably honest and patriotic, and the fact that he was a poor man, and a plain farmer of the West, could properly form no objection to his character or his fitness for the Presidency. But the Democratic orators and newspapers assailed him as an "imbecile." They called him a "dotard" and a "granny." They said he had distinguished himself in war by running away from the enemy. One Democratic journalist spoke of him, contemptuously, as a man who should be content with a log cabin and a barrel of hard cider, without ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... dotard; now, thou blind old wizard prophet, Where are your boding ghosts, your altars now; Your birds of knowledge, that in dusky air Chatter futurity? And where are now Your oracles, that called me parricide? Is he not dead? ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... "Away with this prating dotard," said Front-de Boeuf, "lock him up in the chapel, to tell his beads till the broil be over. It will be a new thing to the saints in Torquilstone to hear aves and paters; they have not been so honoured, I trow, since they ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... law. She holds despotic sway. Her wont has been to show the narrow way Wherein must tread the world, the bright, the brave, From infancy to dotard's gloomy grave. ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... to work with zeal, believing it was Bouvard's own case, and calling him an old dotard, even though ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... sight of no one else, but of a very aged bonze, of unkempt appearance, cooking his rice. When Y-ts'un perceived that he paid no notice, he went up to him and asked him one or two questions, but as the old priest was dull of hearing and a dotard, and as he had lost his teeth, and his tongue was blunt, he made most ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... is too absurd to be entertained; or, again, as a sort of contemptuous acquittal of one, who after all has not wit enough to be wicked. But this is not at all what Mr. Kingsley proposes to himself in the antithesis which he suggests to his readers. Though he speaks of me as an utter dotard and fanatic, yet all along, from the beginning of his pamphlet to the end, he insinuates, he proves from my writings, and at length in his last pages he openly pronounces, that after all he was right at first, in thinking me a ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... a mere accident that of a group of depreciatory and contemptuous words ending in 'ard', at least one half should have dropped out of use; I refer to that group of which 'dotard', 'laggard', 'braggard', now spelt 'braggart', 'sluggard', 'buzzard', 'bastard', 'wizard', may be taken as surviving specimens; 'blinkard' (Homilies), 'dizzard' (Burton), 'dullard' (Udal), 'musard' (Chaucer), 'trichard' (Political Songs), ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... window of the Parliament House of Edinburgh, is a mere idol,—a Diana of Ephesus,—whom her votaries worship, either because her shrine brings great gain to the craftsmen, or out of an ignorant and dotard superstition, which induces them to prefer the old Scottish Mumpsimus to the modern English Sumpsimus. Now, this is not fair construction in our friends, whose intentions in our behalf, we allow, ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... won't have it, Ann. I am no more that schoolboy now than I am the dotard of ninety I shall grow into if I live long enough. It is over: ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... grace to that which is out of our power to remedy. But I dare say the rascally groom is not after all so perfect a resemblance of your devoted admirer as the besotted gardener would make us believe; how could the old dotard distinguish objects so well, at the distance he confesses, and at night? It would seem more probable, by his prowling abroad at such an hour, that a free potation of wine had so far acted upon his senses, that he saw the ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... "Your dotard king couldn't rule without Zaspar Makann, and Makann couldn't rule without me, and neither can you," he said. "Shoot this gang of turncoats, and I'll rule Marduk for you." He looked at Trask again. "Who are you?" he demanded. "I don't ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... be offered," replied she, "to such accusations as these? Witness the last—because I was not so craven as the Christians, I am accused of sorcery. The old dotard! but I will expose him. Tell me, if one knows that sorcery is used, and conceals or allows it, is he not a participator and ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... Sam, wagging a finger at him, "tolerated many things I do not propose to tolerate. He suffered this old dotard to annoy the public, though long past work. I am not surprised to learn that he suffered you to forget ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... quiver like aspen-leaves in a storm? ... this darkness is but a conjurer's trick to scare women, and Khosrul's followers can so play with the strings of electricity that ye are duped into accepting the witch-glamour as Heaven's own cloud-flame! By the gods! If Al-Kyris falls, as yon dotard pronounceth, her ruins shall bury but few heroes! O superstitious and degraded souls! ... I would ye were even as I am—a man dauntless,—a ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... said the lady, somewhat scornfully—"to seat a bigoted dotard on the throne of England! That is what they come to consult about. Are they not some of those whom I saw yesterday morning from the window? that dark Sir George Barkley, who used to walk through the halls of St. Germain's, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... a preposterous old dotard! [Aside.]—You will excuse me, Mr. Loveyet; I have company ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... thy great heart? nay, Oliver, hearken, E'en such as I am now these five years I have been. Through five years of striving this dreamer and dotard Has reaped glory from ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... said Mitchell grimly. "My cousin had quite supplanted me with my so-called Uncle McClintock. The old dotard would have left him every cent, except for that calf-love affair of Stan's with the Selden girl. Some reflections on the girl's character had come ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... and leaned my hand against the table for support, breathing heavily. Behind me I heard the click, click of the roulette-ball as it pursued its course around the wheel. The old dotard had already forgotten me, and was playing with his right hand against ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... I saw in the feeble lamplight with the accursed wretch that crosses my path everywhere, the dastard, drivelling dotard of Arpinum; thou that despite thine oath, didst lead him to detect the man, thou hadst sworn to obey, and follow! Thou! it is thou, then, that houndest mine enemies upon my track! By the great Gods, I know not whether most to marvel at the sublime, unrivalled folly, which ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... "Why, you poor old dotard, there's no oil in these specimens. You can smell 'em yourself if you want to," he said. But there was something in his manner of the lady who ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... time the intrigue went on prosperously and secretly. Catharine often told the King plainly what the Protestant Lords of the Council only dared to hint in the most delicate phrases. His crown, she said, was at stake: the old dotard Arundell and the blustering Tyrconnel would lead him to his ruin. It is possible that her caresses might have done what the united exhortations of the Lords and the Commons, of the House of Austria and the Holy See, had failed to do, but for a strange mishap which changed the whole ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... nor Thetis, Achilles; nor Zeus, Sarpedon. But in the Sagas fate is more constantly present to the mind. Much is thought of being "lucky," or "unlucky." Howard's "good luck" is to be read in his face by the wise, even when, to the common gaze, he seems a half-paralytic dotard, dying ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... exercise—and I will never write another. They are the most puling, petrifying, stupidly platonic compositions. I detest the Petrarch so much, that I would not be the man even to have obtained his Laura, which the metaphysical, whining dotard ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... heart may desire, my will follows you, and while I live that is a cord you cannot break unless I choose to loose it, Noma. I command you to be faithful to me and to return to me, and these commands you must obey. Hearken: you taunted me just now, saying that I sat like a dotard in the sun and advanced you nothing. Well, I will advance you, for both our sakes, but mostly for your own, since you desire it, and it must be done through the Prince Hafela. I cannot leave this kraal, for day and night I am watched, and before ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... then she went off and left him; for he was not lustful, nor an agreeable bedfellow to spend the night with. Now a woman delights in being wantonly treated. But you are an old dotard. For (to Phidippides) consider, O youth, all that attaches to modesty, and of how many pleasures you are about to be deprived—of women, of games at cottabus, of dainties, of drinking-bouts, of ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... as a child; so untaught yet by that last lesson, that even a woman's revenge cannot make you treat me as a woman! Clasfempta! you bear, I believe, outside, the fame of a wise and a firm man; but in these little hands you have been as weak a fool as the veriest dotard might ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... signed the articles of confederation, and was now trying to undo his own work. What confidence could be placed in a man who did not know his own mind any better than that? Then there were Hamilton and Madison, mere boys; and Franklin, an old dotard, a man in his second childhood. And as to Washington, he was doubtless a good soldier, but what did he know about politics? So said the more moderate of the malcontents, hesitating for the moment to speak disrespectfully ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... Monfort! You talk like a dotard of eighty; you, a superb-looking man yet, younger than I am, no doubt; young enough to marry again, if the fancy took you, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... have echoed o'er the arsenal, Keeping due time with every hammer's clink, As a good jest to jolly artisans; Or making chorus to the creaking oar, In the vile tune of every galley-slave, Who, as he sung the merry stave, exulted He was not a shamed dotard like ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... horses, hounds, They be *assayed at diverse stounds,* *tested at various Basons and lavers, ere that men them buy, seasons Spoones, stooles, and all such husbandry, And so be pots, and clothes, and array,* *raiment But folk of wives make none assay, Till they be wedded, — olde dotard shrew! — And then, say'st thou, we will our vices shew. Thou say'st also, that it displeaseth me, But if * that thou wilt praise my beauty, *unless And but* thou pore alway upon my face, *unless And call me faire dame in every place; And but* thou make a feast ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... intruding love dwells in my brain, And franticly hath shoulder'd reason thence: I am not old, and yet, alas! I doat; I have not lost my sight, and yet am blind; No bondman, yet have lost my liberty; No natural fool, and yet I want my wit. What am I, then? let me define myself: A dotard young, a blind man that can see, A witty fool, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... this was bad enough; but worse than this Were the attentions of our ancient hero, Whose frequent vow, and frequenter caress, Unwelcome were for any one to hear, who Had charms for better pleasure than a kiss From feeble dotard ten degrees from zero. So, as one does when circumstances harass one, Hy-son began ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... afterward, I was detected—ha-ha! Sua cuique voluptas— in a liaison with a young person who resided with my uncle's wife as a companion. Whereupon my lady used her influence with the demd old dotard, and I was cut off with a shilling. However, he gave me a saloon passage to Melbourne, with an order on his agent in that city for 500. My lady's father also gave me letters of introduction to some friends in Sydney—business people. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... each other than either resembled any other nation. I honestly believe that the American sailor offered rather better material for a man-of-warsman than the British, because the freer institutions of his country (as compared with the Britain of the drunken Prince Regent and his dotard father—a very different land from the present free England) and the peculiar exigencies of his life tended to make him more intelligent and self-reliant; but the difference, when there was any, was very small, and disappeared entirely when his opponents had been drilled for any length ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... dancing and making violent efforts to free himself.) What the plague has got hold of you? What have you to do with me, you dotard? Why pick on me? Why are you grabbing me? Don't beat me! ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... spirit, but that it showed some want of study and practice on the author's part; otherwise I had been extremely touched to think that those young fingers should have thus embroidered an old man's rough sketch of fancy, and given form so brilliantly to the dreams of a dotard like myself. ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... emotions. "The day before yesterday," she thought, "this woman appeared to me to be deranged: she is a lunatic; I wish that Abel were here, he could tell me what happened at dinner between him and this dotard, and we should laugh over it together. Perhaps nothing happened at all. The Princess Gulof should be confined. They do very wrong to let maniacs like that go at large. It is dangerous; the bells of Cormeilles have ceased ringing. Ah! bon Dieu, who knows? Mme. de Lorcy surely ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... dotard. Look at him; he can scarcely move his legs, old Harry with the evil eye. Keeps three women in the village; one is not enough for him. (The monks laugh good-naturedly) You see, you see? Whew! Look at their brazen, shameless eyes! Might as ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... brand me coward, thou whose hands can slay Such Trojan hosts, whose trophies grace the plain. What worth can do, and manhood can essay, We twain may venture. Sooth, not far away Need foes be sought; around the walls they throng. March we to meet them! Dotard, why delay? Still dwells thy War-God in a windy tongue, And flying feet, and knees all feeble ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... awaiting Bayard's return, he said to the Baron du Chimay,—"an honest gentleman who had knowledge," says Fleuranges, "of things to come, and who, before the battle, had announced to Gaston that he would gain it, but he would be in danger of being left there if God did not do him grace,—Well, Sir Dotard, am I left there, as you said? Here I am still.' 'Sir, it is not all over yet,' answered Chimay; whereupon there arrived an archer, who came and said to the duke, 'My lord, yonder be two thousand Spaniards, who are going off all orderly along the causeway.' 'Certes,' said Gaston, 'I cannot suffer ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... fled: his bars, his bolts, His withered Centinel,[96] Duenna sage! And all whereat the generous soul revolts,[df] Which the stern dotard deemed he could encage, Have passed to darkness with the vanished age. Who late so free as Spanish girls were seen, (Ere War uprose in his volcanic rage,) With braided tresses bounding o'er the green, While on the gay dance ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... oblig'd to lie with such a Beast; ay, there's the Devil, Betty. Ah, when I find the difference of their Embraces, The soft dear Arms of Wilding round my Neck. From those cold feeble ones of this old Dotard; When I shall meet, instead of Tom's warm kisses, A hollow Pair of thin blue wither'd Lips, Trembling with Palsy, stinking with Disease, By Age and Nature barricado'd up With a kind Nose and Chin; What Fancy or what Thought can ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... ragged flat-nosed old dotard, who walks about all day barefoot, and filches cloaks, and dissects gnats, and shoes (See Aristophanes; Nubes, 150.) ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Jealousy has fled: his bars, his bolts, His withered sentinel, duenna sage! And all whereat the generous soul revolts, Which the stern dotard deemed he could encage, Have passed to darkness with the vanished age. Who late so free as Spanish girls were seen (Ere War uprose in his volcanic rage), With braided tresses bounding o'er the green, While on the gay dance ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... "The law, you old dotard," cried the Countess, rounding then on him with a suddenness that made him seem to shrink into his shell. "The law! Is a silly wench to run us into danger of losing what is ours? He shall marry her. If you will not force her, then I'll coerce her;" and ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... slavery, or of death. Even from that day, When, on the guilty Capet, I pronounced The doom of injured France, has faction reared Her hated head amongst us. Roland preach'd Of mercy—the uxorious dotard Roland, 180 The woman-govern'd Roland durst aspire To govern France; and Petion talk'd of virtue, And Vergniaud's eloquence, like the honeyed tongue Of some soft Syren wooed us to destruction. We triumphed over these. On the same scaffold 185 Where the last Louis pour'd his guilty ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... you, and I tell you still: Lay steady siege to a rich dotard's will; Nor, should a fish or two gnaw round the bait, And 'scape the hook, lose heart and give up straight. A suit at law comes on: suppose you find One party's old and childless, never mind Though law with him's a weapon ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... impolitic act of the Dauphine herself may be in part ascribed the unwonted virulence of the jealousy and resentment of Du Barry. The old dotard, Louis XV., was so indelicate as to have her present at the first supper of the Dauphine at Versailles. Madame la Marechale de Beaumont, the Duchesse de Choiseul, and the Duchesse de Grammont were there also; but upon the favourite taking her seat at table they expressed ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... said Vautrin, holding the letter up to the light. "A banknote? No." He peered into the envelope. "A receipted account!" he cried. "My word! 'tis a gallant old dotard. Off with you, old chap," he said, bringing down a hand on Christophe's head, and spinning the man round like a thimble; "you will ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... dotard as soon as you can," whispered the Hetman of Jitomir to me. "The party of Trente et Quarante will begin soon. You shall see. You shall see. We go it even harder ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... is what constitutes the true and real tragedy of Richard Carstone. It is strictly the one and only great tragedy that Dickens wrote. It is like the tragedy of Hamlet. The others are not tragedies because they deal almost with dead men. The tragedy of old Dorrit is merely the sad spectacle of a dotard dragged about Europe in his last childhood. The tragedy of Steerforth is only that of one who dies suddenly; the tragedy of old Dombey only that of one who was dead all the time. But Rick is a real tragedy, for he is still alive when ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... perhaps this accounts largely for the wide and lasting popularity of the play. Side by side with this deep-souled, earnest man, moving in the shadow of the unseen, with his terrible duties and haunting fears, Shakespeare has placed in intentional mockery the old dotard Polonius, the incarnation of ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... glad that Metastasio is here," said the empress, "for his presence will prove to Calzabigi that he is not a pensioned dotard. And what thinks my daughter of the opera?" asked ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... setting a proper example of neatness and decorum to her blooming daughter. Considerations of duty and responsibility apart, the change might have taken its rise in feelings of the purest and most disinterested charity. The gentleman next door had been vilified by Nicholas; rudely stigmatised as a dotard and an idiot; and for these attacks upon his understanding, Mrs Nickleby was, in some sort, accountable. She might have felt that it was the act of a good Christian to show by all means in her power, that the abused gentleman was neither the one nor the other. ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... and shuns to know, That Life protracted is protracted Woe. Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy, And shuts up all the Passages of Joy: In vain their Gifts the bounteous Seasons pour, The Fruit Autumnal, and the Vernal Flow'r, With listless Eyes the Dotard views the Store, He views, and wonders that they please no more; Now pall the tastless Meats, and joyless Wines, And Luxury with Sighs her Slave resigns. Approach, ye Minstrels, try the soothing Strain, And yield the tuneful Lenitives of Pain: No Sounds alas would touch th' impervious Ear, ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... not take my word for it, But let a dotard's clatterjaw destroy you? You ken my worth: yet, if you care for Jim, You'll trust his oath. If he denies the bairn, Then, you'll believe? You'd surely never doubt Your husband's word, and on your wedding-day? Small wonder you'd be duberous of mine. But Jim's not my sort; he's an honest lad; And ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... prince, startled into a degrading abandonment of his customary elevation of demeanor. 'The dotard, the imbecile! ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... "I have no choice. I must wed with this de Montfort. I think I shall die presently. I have prayed God that I may die before they bring me to the dotard's bed." ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... years from the death of Chaucer (A.D. 1400), had we been able to intercept the murderous conflicts of Barnet, Towcester, Tewkesbury, St. Albans! How happy for Spain, had no modern line of French coxcombs (not succeeding by any claim of blood, but under the arbitrary testament of a paralytic dotard) interfered to tamper with the old Castilian rules, so that no man knew whether the Spanish custom or the French innovation really governed. The Salic law or the interested abrogation of that law were the governing principle in strict constitutional ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... dotard!" The wondrous phantom cried— "'Tis several centuries ago Since that poor stripling died. He would not use my nostrums— See, shaveling, here they are! These put to flight all human ills, These conquer death—unfailing pills, And ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... were to die, who would maintain your wife and daughter? The widow of a Marshal gets at least six thousand francs pension, doesn't she? Well, then, I wish to marry to secure bread for your wife and daughter—old dotard!" ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... quotations from them, as if he had been cogitating only his own words through the new scenes of glory which had opened before him. Our great Shakspeare has grown none in the passing centuries—comes from the empyrean to gabble like a dotard of the visions of his youth? We ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and bent down his brow: "O man, what can magic avail thee! A false lying dotard, Enchanter, art thou: Our rage and contempt should assail thee. My horse might have borne me till now, but for thee Then the bones of his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... had no more valiant champion. She not only declined to have anything to say to her husband's mother, she carried her disapproval to the extent of refusing point blank to appear at Court. So furious was the Regent at this slight that "the dotard with corrupted eye and withered heart," as Byron calls him, had her portrait removed from the Palace Gallery of Beauties, and returned ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... many things in God, but I moderate myself that I may not perish through boasting; for now it is becoming to me that I should fear the more abundantly, and should not look to those that puff me up." Let us now hear a specimen of the mysticism of this dotard. "There was hidden from the Ruler of this world the virginity of Mary, and the birth of our Lord, and the three mysteries of the shout, which were done in the quietness of God by means of the star, and here by the manifestation of the Son magic began to be dissolved." ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Charles, and proceeded to the election of Ferdinand. That Emperor was crowned in March, and immediately despatched a legation to the Pope to apprize him of the fact. Nothing was less expected than any opposition on the part of the pontiff. The querulous dotard, however, who then sat in St. Peter's chair, hated Charles and all his race. He accordingly denied the validity of the whole transaction, without sanction previously obtained from the Pope, to whom all crowns ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... astonished Stoics at Athens, which commanded the incense and the hecatombs of wandering peasants in Asia, which stilled the gabbling clamor of a wild mob at Jerusalem,—who will doubt the tone in which Paul spoke to Nero! The boy quailed for the moment before the man! The gilded dotard shrunk back from the home truths of the new, young, vigorous faith: the ruler of a hundred legions was nothing before ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... deepest ire—not because he had counted out the hairs, but because there had not been more to count. Jumping to her feet in her wrath, she exclaimed, "Fool that I was, to have withheld one, when the old dotard would have paid for it so richly. But it cannot now be helped," she continued, and resuming her seat, she read the letter through, exploding, but once more, and that at the point where Uncle Nat had spoken of returning asking if there was ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... me all at once, This was the place! those two hills on the right, Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight; While, to the left, a tall scalped mountain ... Dunce, Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce, After a life spent training ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... heaven".[181] A more critical observer of feminine beauty thought her eyes and eyebrows too light,[182] but, as an Italian, he may have been biassed in favour of brunettes, and even he wound up by calling Mary "a Paradise". She was eighteen at the time; her marriage with a dotard like Louis had shocked public opinion;[183] and if, as was hinted, the gaieties in which his youthful bride involved him, hastened the French King's end, there was some poetic justice in the retribution. ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... Nurredin orders him to begin his shaving he relates the fate of his six brothers, who all died before him and always of love. At last Nurredin's patience giving way, he calls his servants in to throw the old dotard out of doors. But Abul drives them all back and Nurredin tries to pacify him with flattery and ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... am laid aside, a useless weapon; I am not even physically capable of writing, even if the world would hear me; and I am forced back upon myself, upon a feeble life, necessarily self-centered, to nurse and coddle myself as though I was a poor failing dotard, with one avenue alone—and how precarious!—through which I may perhaps speak my little message to the world—the education of a child to ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... House fell first on the renegades of the late reign. Of those renegades the Earls of Peterborough and Salisbury were the highest in rank, but were also the lowest in intellect: for Salisbury had always been an idiot; and Peterborough had long been a dotard. It was however resolved by the Commons that both had, by joining the Church of Rome, committed high treason, and that both should be impeached, [540] A message to that effect was sent to the Lords. Poor old Peterborough was instantly taken into custody, and was sent, tottering on a crutch, and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Duke demanded, angrily. "Am I to have the gaiety of my guests spoiled because of this old dotard? Take him to prison." The attendants rushed in and seized Monterone, while he turned again upon the dwarf and cursed him roundly. Not only did the dwarf shrink back, the whole company became affrighted, while the old man was silenced at last by ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... is an old dotard. The indigestion will carry him off before long, no doubt," Lucien said, as he made an end, "and then I will look down on these proud people; I will marry Mme. de Bargeton. I read to-night in her eyes a love as great as mine for her. Yes, she felt all ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... kissed me on the cheek and set off for school as fast as his legs could carry him. O Love, omnivorous Love, that sparest neither the dotard leaning on his staff nor the boy with pantaloons buttoning on his jacket,—omnipotent Love, that, after parents and teachers have failed, in one instant can make Billy try to ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... became an old man, and got into his dotage, he began to study that book called the Bible; and it seems, that in order to credit its fabulous nonsense, we must believe that the knowledge of mankind will be so increased that we shall be able to travel at the rate of fifty miles an hour. The poor dotard!' exclaimed the philosophic infidel Voltaire, in the self-complacency of his pity. But who is the dotard now?—Rev. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... grows ripe, and a certain dotard Is pitched, no parcel that needs invoicing, 250 To the worse side of the Mont Saint Gothard, We shall begin by way of rejoicing; None of that shooting the sky (blank cartridge), Nor a civic guard, all plumes and lacquer, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... in troubled waters, and drink the cup of contention, or she would not now think of mingling her affairs with those of America. It would be like a foolish dotard taking to his arms the bride that despises him, or who has placed on his head the ensigns of her disgust. It is kissing the hand that boxes his ears, and proposing to renew the exchange. The thought is as servile as the war is wicked, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... "Boy, then, dotard!" cried the knight. "Could ye not see it was a wench? She in the murrey-coloured mantle—she that broke her fast ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... puerile desires and pursuits, by a failure of the memory, a deficiency of the judgment, and a general obliteration of the mental powers, its external signs are easily appreciated, and furnish at once abundant reason why, like idiots and madmen, the superannuated dotard is unfit to be the recipient of ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... (crossing the stage) Only look! why, there she is! Some old stammering dotard's with her, too! Yes, 'tis ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... loss Of all his people, in the twentieth year, Unknown to all, he should regain his home, And my prediction shall be now fulfill'd. Him, then, Eurymachus thus answer'd rough The son of Polybus. Hence to thy house, Thou hoary dotard! there, prophetic, teach 240 Thy children to escape woes else to come. Birds num'rous flutter in the beams of day, Not all predictive. Death, far hence remote Hath found Ulysses, and I would to heav'n That, where he ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... girls of the citizen class would not hesitate for a moment to refuse an honorable, good-looking man of their own class, in order to go to the altar with the oldest, ugliest and stupidest dotard among the aristocracy. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... do not bow before me. We have already punished almost all our dupes of Versailles; assuredly they have nothing with which to reproach me. I simply exercise against them the law of retaliation, treating them as they would have treated me in the council of the Queen-mother. The old dotard Bassompierre shall be doomed for perpetual imprisonment, and so shall the assassin Marechal de Vitry, for that was the punishment they voted me. As for Marillac, who counselled death, I reserve death for him at the first false step he makes, and I beg thee, Joseph, to remind me of him; ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... person in civilian clothes, with a bored expression, plus a moustache of dreamy proportions with which the owner constantly imitated a gentleman ringing for a drink. Two appertained to a splendid old dotard (a face all ski-jumps and toboggan slides), on whose protruding chest the rosette of the Legion pompously squatted. Numbers five and six had reference to Monsieur, who had seated himself before I had time to focus my slightly ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... surprise at me changed to one of malice. Down at St. Quentin he had suffered much from us pages, as a slow, peevish old dotard must. I had played many a prank on him, but I had not thought he would revenge himself at such time as this. He looked at me with a spiteful grin, and said to ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... him with us here a prisoner?" suggested an old buck; only to be cried down loudly as a doddering dotard, whose blood ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... strike you as being wonderful and most unnatural that this Ploermel, who is neither absolutely a dotard nor an old woman, should accept ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... visit simply and solely to find food for themselves. The Chinese were the first to leave the duck-yard; and the other fowls soon followed them. The witty little duck said of the Portuguese that the old lady was becoming a ducky dotard. At this the other ducks laughed and cackled aloud. "Ducky dotard," they whispered; "that's too witty!" and then they repeated the former joke about Portulak, and declared that it was vastly amusing. And then ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... grandee?" he asked himself. "A man hired at a few pounds a year and fed at the Maxfield table, in order to help the heir to a little quite unnecessary knowledge of the ancient classics and modern sciences. What was the old dotard,"—the old dotard, by the way, was Captain Oliphant's private manner of referring to the lamented "dear one," whose name so often trembled on his lips in public,—"what was the old dotard thinking about? At any rate, I should like to know a little more ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... reader suppose that he was either a superannuated coxcomb or a driveling dotard. He was a man of sense and feeling, but his passion for Julia had, for the time, changed all his manner and habits.—He saw that she was a young and lovely woman, about to give herself to the arms of a man thrice ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... spy—that is what you are, monsieur!" she said, coming up to him and impudently snapping her fingers under his nose. "Such a fool, this white-headed old dotard of a Count, to think that he can take me in with a silly yarn about going to visit a nephew and bringing him back here to stay. Monsieur, you are a police spy. Well, good luck to you. Get what ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... mistress." Oaths were not unfashionable in his day. "Since the world has been world, this crime was never greater. There were once pillories for these swearers; but now this crime is so common, that the child of five years can swear; and even the old dotard of eighty, who has only two teeth remaining, can fling out ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the dotard, with a senile chuckle, "that he was wrong. His answer was beyond my meaning—he muttered something about 'mutton and capa sauce.' I was engaged," continued the dotard, with a feeble grin, "as a capa for seventy ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various
... now become healthy and habitable. It is not to be imagined how many noble seats and dwellings in this nation of ours, (to all appearance well situated,) are for all that unhealthful, by reason of some grove, or hedge-rows of antiquated dotard trees; nay, sometimes a single tuft only, (especially the falling autumnal leaves neglected to be taken away) filling the air with musty and noxious exhalations; which being ventilated, by glades cut through them, for passage of the stagnant vapours, have been cur'd of ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... beheld in the house of the broker an old wrinkled fellow that gesticulated to her in a frenzy. She snatched her veil down and drew in her head in anger at him, calling to her maids, 'What is yonder hideous old dotard?' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The worm was at my heart; and, I may say, the worm that could not die. Man is doubtless one by some subtle nexus, some system of links, that we cannot perceive, extending from the new-born infant to the superannuated dotard; but, as regards many affections and passions incident to his nature at different stages, he is not one, but an intermitting creature, ending and beginning anew: the unity of man, in this respect, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... that fane; and many a father; Worn out with toil and slavery, implored The poor man's God to sweep it from the earth, And spare his children the detested task 145 Of piling stone on stone, and poisoning The choicest days of life, To soothe a dotard's vanity. There an inhuman and uncultured race Howled hideous praises to their Demon-God; 150 They rushed to war, tore from the mother's womb The unborn child,—old age and infancy Promiscuous perished; their victorious arms Left not a soul to breathe. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Manchester, I beg your pardon for this slight resume of warlike facts, but it is of no consequence. Lord Wellington is, for you, only a decayed old gentleman now. I rather think some of you have called him a "dotard;" you have taunted him with his age and the loss of his physical vigour. What fine heroes you are yourselves! Men like you have a right to trample on what is mortal in a demigod. Scoff at your ease; your scorn can never ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... in your case, that should not disturb me. Is not the jealous dotard twice your age? Such incidents shou'd more confirm my empire. Nay, my offence shou'd be his accusation, Nor wou'd I rest until he shou'd acknowledge The fault was his, not mine; so, ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... me this ear in reply. He was grasped by the arms, and, looking up, perceived three strange men in the chamber. He attempted to shake them off, but in vain. He called for help, but they scoffed at his cries. "Peace, dotard!" cried one: "think'st thou the servants of the most holy inquisition are to be daunted by thy clamours? Comrades, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... right, of course. I am not an idiot; I can understand you. You are young and healthy and beautiful, and longing for life, and I am an old dotard, almost a dead man already. Don't I know it? Of course I see that it is foolish for me to live so long, but wait! I shall soon set you all free. My life ...
— Uncle Vanya • Anton Checkov
... miserable, and degraded compared with mine! I might have been a common soldier, a day-laborer, a factory operative, a mechanic, instead of a missionary. If my faculties had been left to run riot or to waste as those of so many young men, I should now have been used up, a dotard, as many of my school-fellows are. I am respected by the natives, their kind expressions often make me ashamed, and they are sincere. So much deference and favor manifested without any effort on my part to secure it comes from the Author of every good gift. ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... a tale, and swear you read it, Such as, save woman, none would credit Win o'er her confidante and pages By gold, for this a golden age is; And should it be her wayward fate, To be encumbered with a mate, A dull, old dotard should he be, That dulness claims thy courtesy. Keep ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... offered me L150 per annum, and withal invited me to come and examine things on the spot before engaging. I went accordingly, and happy was it I went; from description I was ready to accept the place; from inspection all Earndale would not have hired me to accept it. This boy was a dotard, a semi-vegetable, the elder brother, head of the family, a two-legged animal without feathers, intellect, or virtue, and all the connections seemed to have the power of eating pudding but no higher power. ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... at Naples; the same rough daubs, half improvised on the spur of the moment; the same frankly coarse and indecent gayety. The Odeon where we are now, was the Pompeian San Carlino. Bucco, the stupid and mocking buffoon; the dotard Pappus, who reminds us of the Venetian Pantaloon; Mandacus, who is the Neapolitan Guappo; the Oscan Casnar, a first edition of Cassandra; and finally, Maccus, the king of the company, the Punchinello who still survives and flourishes,—such were the ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... gained, and the satisfied mind rests in enjoyment. The man who had some virtue whilst he was struggling for a crown, often becomes a voluptuous tyrant when it graces his brow; and, when the lover is not lost in the husband, the dotard a prey to childish caprices, and fond jealousies, neglects the serious duties of life, and the caresses which should excite confidence in his children are lavished on the ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... this old fellow here?" cried Edward Randolph, fiercely. "On, Sir Edmund! Bid the soldiers forward, and give the dotard the same choice that you give all his countrymen—to stand aside or be ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... 'Peace, dotard!' cried one of those who guarded and led him; and at the same moment brought his spear with such force upon his head that he felled him ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... spare use of bear's grease to dress his Turkey, an unhealthy bird, scarcely possessing fat enough to cook himself; but, being rather doubtful of his own culinary efficiency, had consented to receive a French cook into the family: and, fearing there might yet be a deficiency, the ever-credulous old dotard was making good-natured overtures to one Joseph of Hapsburg,—never trustworthy, and always known to act as circumstances changed interests,—who said there was no knowing what time he would be ready to turn his attention ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... that she die. To blurt all out— I know that you desire her; without doubt The flame that rages in my heart warms yours; To carry out these subtle plans of ours, We have become as gypsies near this doll, You as her page—I dotard to control— Pretended gallants changed to lovers now. So, brother, this being fact for us to know Sooner or later, 'gainst our best intent About her we should quarrel. Evident Is it our compact would be broken through. There is one ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... and pitched him overboard. "Aha! The duck has a mind to drink. ... Over with you!—There is room for two now!" he shouted. "Quick, major! throw your little woman over, and come! Never mind that old dotard! he will drop ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... discovered in the Italian theatre at Paris his "Medecin malgre lui," his "Etourdi," his "L'Avare," and his "Scapin." Milan offered a pimp in the Brighella; Florence an ape of fashion in Gelsomino. These and other pantomimic characters, and some ludicrous ones, as the Tartaglia, a spectacled dotard, a stammerer, and usually in a passion, had been gradually introduced by the inventive powers of an actor of genius, to call ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... at hand, intent upon an ageless magic. I am no less comely than I was, and my heart, I think, is tenderer. You are yet young, and you are very beautiful, my brave mastiff... And neither of us is moved at all! For us the spring is only a dotard sorcerer who has forgotten the spells of yesterday. I think that it is pitiable, although I would not have it otherwise." She waited, fairy-like and wanton, seeming to premeditate a ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... errand. It's clear as day that it will be a wild goose chase. What's more, it will do him no good; but will, contrariwise, heap disgrace upon his own head! Our Mr. Chia She is now so stricken in years, that in all his actions he unavoidably behaves somewhat as a dotard. It would be well therefore for your ladyship to advise him what to do. It isn't as if he were in the prime of life to be able to do all these things with impunity! He's got at present a whole array of brothers, nieces, sons, and grandsons; and should he still go on in this wild sort ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... for the aged man; Who thinks, when old, to act as he began; But, if the sage a yielding dotard seems, His work is done by those the wife esteems; Complaints are never heard; no thrilling fears; And ev'ry one around at ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... "who wast called Princess of the Zulus, pay no heed to this old dotard, but listen to me. When thy Spirit wandered yonder, even then I saw the seeds of greatness in thee, and begged thee from the savage Dingaan. Also I and Pani, who is dead, and Hana, who lives, read by our magic that at thy feet the tree of Nya would fall, and that after her thou ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... pardon for thy words, "With suppliant voice require; Pallas will grant." Sternly the damsel views her; quits the threads Unfinish'd; scarce her hand from force restrains: And rage in all her features flushing fierce, Thus to the goddess, well-disguis'd, she speaks:— "Weak dotard, spent with too great gift of years, "Curst with too long existence, hence, begone! "Such admonition to thy daughters give, "If daughters hast thou; or thy sons have wives: "Enough for me my inbred wisdom serves. "Hope not, that ought thy vain advice has sway'd "My purpose; still my challenge ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... brute beasts that you are! Dios! Dios! Garajos demonios! Idiots! What fools you are with your dotard God!" and a torrent of imprecations poured forth like a stream of red-hot lava ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... people looked on the barber as a buffoon, or an old dotard. "Silent man," said the sultan, "why do you laugh?" "Sir," answered the barber, "I swear by your majesty's benevolence, that humpback is not dead: he is yet alive, and I shall be content to pass for a madman if I do not convince you this minute." ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... Luia, I love thee! And even if thou canst not love me, yet shall I save thee from wedding this old dotard. Aye, I shall save thee from him as I saved thee from the boiling serf of Falema'a when thy mother, who was a great lady, cried out to me, ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... the year 1808 that the news arrived in Mexico of the imprisonment of Charles IV. and Ferdinand VII., the dotard and simpleton who then disputed the Spanish throne, and who had rendered themselves the laughing stock of all Europe by going, each one in person, to advocate his side of a family quarrel before a common ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... a written obligation to marry her in default of repayment of a sum of money borrowed in a time of need. She enlists Bartolo as adviser, and he agrees to lay the matter before the Count. Somewhat early, but naturally enough in the case of the conceited dotard, he gloats over his vengeance, which seems as good as accomplished, and celebrates his triumph in an air ("La vendetta!"). As she is about to leave the room, Marcellina meets Susanna, and the two make a forced effort to conceal their ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... reft of skill, Who thinks with love to fix a woman's will: Who ev'ry Sunday morn, to please her sight, Knots up his neck-cloth gay, and hosen white: Who for her pleasure keeps his pockets bare, And half his wages spends on pedlar's ware; When every niggard clown, or dotard old, Who hides in secret nooks his oft told gold, Whose field or orchard tempts with all her pride, At little cost may win her for his bride; Whilst all the meed her silly lover gains Is but the neighbours' ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... various types of men—some of them, it may be, types which you and I have never encountered; but even to Chichikov this particular species was new. In the old man's face there was nothing very special—it was much like the wizened face of many another dotard, save that the chin was so greatly projected that whenever he spoke he was forced to wipe it with a handkerchief to avoid dribbling, and that his small eyes were not yet grown dull, but twinkled under their overhanging brows like the eyes of mice when, with attentive ears and sensitive ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... bit of flesh and blood as she is might get a hearing, when a grizzled old head-splitter like me was called a dotard. ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... to obey the word, half because they were cowed by the majestic presence, the guard stood still and the drum was silenced. Andros spurred forward, but even he made a pause when he saw the staff levelled at his breast. "Forward!" he blustered. "Trample the dotard into the street. How dare you ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... than inheritance, and worth wins power better than birth. Moreover, it is no shame to overthrow old age, which of its own weight sinks and totters to its fall. It shall be enough for my father to have borne the sceptre for so long; let the dotard's power fall to thee; if it elude thee, it will pass to another. Whatsoever rests on old age is near its fall. Think that his reign has been long enough, and be it thine, though late in the day, to be first. Further, I would rather have ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... he comes and takes some of us along his ways into middle-age, will have to pull. Time is a dotard, an aged parent; some boys that are very strong and young are almost too much for him; when he comes to take them from the garden of boyhood they kick and punch; when Time tries to coax them, pointing out the advantages of middle-age, they turn their heads from him ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... Charron[2]) Otho a warrior, Cromwell a buffoon? A perjured prince[3] a leaden saint revere, A godless regent[4] tremble at a star? 90 The throne a bigot keep, a genius quit, Faithless through piety, and duped through wit? Europe a woman, child, or dotard rule, And just her wisest monarch ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... with boundless wealth" finds his "grating reed" preferred to the bard's, but that the "tawdry shepherdess" of this dull dotard, by her "pride," makes "the rural thane" ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli |
