"Fogy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... case. If ever a quiet and peace-loving individual was caught up and whirled about by a tempest of events, I am surely that individual. Before I met this dear little Flora, I had a fair prospect of living and dying a respectable and respected old fogy, as you irreverent reformers call discreet people. But now I find myself drawn into the vortex of abolition to the extent of helping off four fugitive slaves. In Flora's case, I acted deliberately, from affection and a sense of duty; but in this second instance I was taken ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... me to go into the project I declined and was called an old fogy. One man spent a fortune on the enterprise in New Jersey, and at first was hailed as a public benefactor. What was the result of all his outlay and work? He managed to hatch quantities of young chickens every February, ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... a thing about actors!" declared Alicia. "If ever I think another one is handsome and fascinating, I'll remember James Bayne, and know he's nothing but an old fogy!" ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... Methuselah was not shared by a large majority of the people then on earth. On the contrary, we blush to admit it, Methuselah was held in very trifling esteem by his frivolous fellow-citizens, who habitually referred to him as an "old 'wayback," "a barnacle," an "old fogy," a "mossback," or a "garrulous dotard," and with singular irreverence they took delight in twitting him upon his senility and in pestering him with divers new-fangled notions altogether distasteful, not to say shocking, to a gentleman ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... who wrote the Encyclopedia of Agriculture a few years since, is now regarded as an old fogy, because he assumed that the spores of smut travel from the manure and seed of the previous crop in the circulation of the plant to the capsule, and thus convert the grain into a puff-ball, so also the ears of corn, the oats, and rye. This ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... to the dogs. You have to work like a slave, and everybody gets a pull at you. The chances are you never have any ready money, and become as stingy as an old file. You have to get married because of the family, and the place, and all that kind of thing. Then you have to give dinners to every old fogy, male and female, within twenty miles of you, and before you know where you are you become an old fogy yourself. That's ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... to continue reading and thinking and believing as they have long been in the habit of doing, not so much because they feel that their way is best, but because it is easier than to change. Hence the great mass of us settle down on the plane of mediocrity, and become "old fogy." We learn to do things passably well, cease to think about improving our ways of doing them, and so fall into a rut. Only the few go on. They make use of habit as the rest do, but they also continue to attend at critical ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... you say so?" cried Elta, springing up and throwing her arms about his neck. "How can you say that you could ever be an old fogy?" ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... a girl's love. Those two girls sitting by her day after day would have smiled at it, and at its object. Between themselves they considered Mr. Roy somewhat of an "old fogy;" were very glad to make use of him now and then, in the great dearth of gentlemen at St. Andrews, and equally glad afterward to turn him over to Auntie, who was always kind to him. Auntie was so ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... an intelligent, shrewd, naturalized Scotchman, replied that he was "a little old fogy," he supposed, but that those great high buildings, where six or eight hundred children were gathered in one school, were like great cities, where too many people were gathered together. School life, no more than city life, could be healthy, nor just what life ought to be, under such conditions. ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... is not my visitor," was the reply; "it is only some old fogy or other that Erle has picked up at Sandycliffe—Erle has a craze about picking up odd people. Fancy inflicting a blind parson on us, by ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... had been made for thirty years. The result was we were losing our trade. I knew he was blaming me for the trade falling off, so I persuaded him to make a flying trip with me to Buffalo, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit and Chicago. The dealers at Buffalo were rather old fogy, and we got our order there from our regular customer, but when we struck Cleveland I saw the old man open his eyes. It was one of Blossom's off-days, so he didn't waste much time on us, but said he ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... horrid for him to talk like that? He is such an old fogy in his ideas he actually makes me tired. Then he went on to say that never again could he believe that women are the tender-hearted creatures they have always been supposed to be, when they show themselves so eager to be decked with the innocent songsters ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... coat to wear at his own wedding in the evening. Young America don't understand why a pine or an oak tree can't be put over the course, like a sheep or an acre of grain. Besides, you talk like an old fogy. When a man says he has decided to build a house, he means he is ready to begin,—right off; and if our lumber-dealers won't keep dry stuff (which of course they won't unless obliged to), then he must ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... losing time to reason with that old fogy who sees in the events of the day only so ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... your right place. A dowager is a woman who doesn't dance: and her male attendant is—what is he? We will call him a fogy.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fact, I'm going to call you Milt, as Claire does. You don't know what a pleasure it has been to have encountered you. There's a fine keen courage about you Western chaps that makes a cautious old fogy like me envious. I shall remember meeting you with a great ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... too! Am I to bother my brains about a devil-dodger? At any rate, do me the favor of not ever again having such an old fogy to dinner. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... liege lords stood ready to swear to; and it was to them Webb turned in his perplexity when it became apparent that his young adjutant was ensnared. It was to Ray he promptly opened his heart, as that veteran of a dozen Indian campaigns, then drawing his fourth "fogy," came hastening out ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... Iver the hoardings about the streets; he could not forgive himself the revenge he had taken for them. Iver and Southend spoke of big schemes in which they had been or were engaged together—legitimate enterprises, good for the nation as well as for themselves. How had he, a useless old fogy, dared to blackball a man like Iver? An occasional droll glance from ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... neck, bare arms, a tunic, and a hat and feathers, who used to divide the applause with the ladies, and who has now sunk down a trap-door for ever. And this frank admission ought to show that I am not your mere twaddling laudator temporis acti—your old fogy who can see no good ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... enslave thyself in the cause of liberty? I could imagine a paper without even thy faults—and for this, I know full well that if thou notice me at all, it will be as a besotted and dangerous old fogy. ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... fogy's gone down stairs, my dear sir, let us come to an understanding at the beginning of our acquaintance. Of course, you're bound by your cloth to say that sort of thing to me, just as I am bound by it not to swear in your company: but you'll allow me to remark, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... be that in a docile, tame, expensive automobile, garnished with a sane and biddable driver, one might see the desert as it is. I don't know whether such a combination exists. But me—I couldn't get into the Officers' Training Camp because of my advanced years: I may be an old fogy, but I cherish a sneaking idea that perhaps you have to buy some of these things at the cost of the aforementioned thirst, heat, weariness, and the slow passing of long days. Still, an Assyrian brick in the British ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... not? What! are you one of those who believe that Truth is obscure— hides herself—and lies in a well? I tell you, sir, Truth lies in no well. The place Truth lies in is—the middle of the turnpike road. But one old fogy puts on his green spectacles to look for her, and another his red, and another his blue; and so they all miss her, because she is a colorless diamond. Those spectacles are preconceived notions, 'a priori reasoning, cant, prejudice, the depth of Mr. Shallow's inner consciousness, etc., etc. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Sampson was a slow-going old fogy. He didn't do his duty by his employer. When I came in, I turned ...
— Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the station agent tells me, there have been a score of such alarms, and when the people heard Nunamaker they laughed and called him an old fogy for his pains. They had run too often to the mountains to escape some imaginary flood to be scared by anything less than the actual din of the torrent in their ears. Two hours and a half later a despatch came saying that ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... about, Lali; I ought to be thanking you, not you me. Why, look what a stupid old fogy I was then, toddling about the place with too much time on my hands, reading a lot and forgetting everything; and here you came in, gave me something to do, made the little I know of any use, and ran a pretty gold wire ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a pleased smile). "It is clear, then, that one cannot judge of one's self; on the rare occasions when I look in the glass it seems to me that, in the course of the last five years, I have grown into a very old fogy." ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... half as well oriented as that Mrs. Dillon. So obviously adoring her dentist! And seeing Guy only as an eccentric fogy. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... A Fogy who lived in a cave near a great caravan route returned to his home one day and saw, near by, a great concourse of men and animals, and in their midst a tower, at the foot of which something with wheels smoked and panted like an exhausted horse. He sought the ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce |
