"Octogenarian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... found embodiment in Boller of '89. When 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 recent visit to Washington. ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... 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 ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... One octogenarian—a carpenter's apprentice—heatedly informed me, through Schmick, that he had a child two weeks old that would die before morning if deprived of proper food and nourishment. Somewhat impressed by this pitiful ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... the 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 ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... Subsequently a purse containing thirty pieces of silver was presented by the Emperor to each of the old men, and by the Empress to each of the venerable dames, one of whom had all but attained her hundredth year, while the youngest of the twelve was a hearty octogenarian. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... tempest of small finances, the will of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt came up in the court for discussion. The whole world was anxious then to know if the Vanderbilt will could be broken. After battling half a century with diseases enough to kill ten men, Mr. Vanderbilt died, an octogenarian, leaving over $100,000,000—$95,000,000 to his eldest son—$5,000,000 to his wife, and the remainder to his other children and relations, with here and there a slight recognition of some humane or religious institution. I said then that ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... organs. The dartos was a puzzle, the central spinal canal a myth, the decidua clothed in fable as much as the golden fleece. The structure of bone, now so beautifully made out,—even that of the teeth, in which old Leeuwenhoek, peeping with his octogenarian eyes through the minute lenses wrought with his own hands, had long ago seen the "pipes," as he called them,—was hardly known at all. The minute structure of the viscera lay in the mists of an uncertain microscopic vision. ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... added to Mr. Moore's statement, excepting, perhaps 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, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... to the place where he was wanted, (63) that Boaz and Ruth might not have long to wait. Tob, who was not learned in the Torah, did not know that the prohibition against the Moabites had reference only to males. Therefore, he declined to marry Ruth. (64) So she was taken to wife (65) by the octogenarian (66) Boaz. Ruth herself was forty years old (67) at the time of her second marriage, and it was against all expectations that her union with Boaz should be blessed with offspring, a son Obed the pious. (68) Ruth lived to see ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... 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
... touched. Partly in vanity, partly in playfulness, he encouraged the sentimental-exaggeration of his correspondent; but, becoming afraid of the world's laughter, ended by reproving her warmth, and by chilling, under the refrigerating influence of his cautions, all the romance of the octogenarian. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... should presently be another election, and meantime the candidates would improve the time by making their arrangements and canvassing their supporters so as to control the votes of the College at that future Conclave. Therefore Francesco Piccolomini, Cardinal of Siena (nephew of Pius II), a feeble octogenarian, tormented by an ulcer, which, in conjunction with an incompetent physician, was to cut his life even shorter than they hoped, was placed upon the throne of St. Peter, and assumed with the Pontificate the name ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... witness, 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
... to the last difficulty which confronts the collector with no previous knowledge of shanties. As a mere matter of dates, any sailors now remaining from sailing ship days must necessarily be very old men. I have found that their octogenarian memories are not always to be trusted. On one occasion an old man sang quite glibly a tune which was in reality a pasticcio of three separate shanties all known to me. I have seen similar results in print, since the collector arrived too ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... becoming so of ourselves, without their aid; when they leave us ... little by little, he sees fit to forego claim after claim on the world, puts up with a less and less share of its good as his proper portion; and when the octogenarian asks barely a sup of gruel and a fire of dry sticks, and thanks you as for his full allowance and right in the common good of life,—hoping nobody may murder him,—he who began by asking and expecting the whole of us to bow down in worship to ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... get through a copious and excellent lunch in spite of his sorrows, regards them with the morose pity of a dyspeptic octogenarian for healthy children. It is all very well and beautiful for them now, he supposes grimly, but sooner or later even such babes as they will have to Face ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... 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 ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... 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
... action came—where were they then? She had no idea how he and others were boiling with indignation over this display of loathsome cowardice. And what was the mighty adversary like? Sweden! That invincible world power full of doddering senility! He must compare Sweden to an octogenarian who sat, dead drunk and feeble, and boasted of his warlike temper: "I'll never yield—never!" And when Parliament heard that quavering voice it grew palsied with fear. No, he, Irgens, should have ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Collector of the Port at New Haven and the appointment of an octogenarian whose chief qualification was his Republicanism brought to a head all the bitter animosity of Federalist New England. The hostility to Jefferson in this region was no ordinary political opposition, as he knew full well, for it was compounded of many ingredients. In New England there was ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... assured, Manning was able, by his persuasive eloquence and the weight of his character, to prevent its being carried to excess. After other conciliators— among whom was the Bishop of London— had given up the task in disgust, the octogenarian Cardinal worked on with indefatigable resolution. At last, late at night, in the schools in Kirby Street, Bermondsey, he rose to address the strikers. An enthusiastic eye-witness has described ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... 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, and for many long years after that." A rather ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... 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 ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... tints, Timrod took his leave of us. In a conversation on the night but one previous to his departure, we had been speaking of Dr. Parr and other literary persons of unusual age, when he observed: "I haven't the slightest desire, P——, to be an octogenarian, far less a centenarian, like old Parr; but I hope that I may be spared until I ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... anxious to take a crusade in hand. The two were brought no further than the verge of a serious breach about Frederick's exercise of authority over rebellious ecclesiastics. But Gregory IX., though an octogenarian, was recognised as of transcendent ability and indomitable resolution; and his will clashed with that of the young emperor, a brilliant prince, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... 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 after Brigham ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... most interesting of 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 thenceforward bore with Newman the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... judicial place; and it is said of him, that in his last year he pointed the ignominious story of his existence by a speech that soon ran the round of the courts. In answer to an inquiry for his health, the octogenarian judge observed, "My dear sir—you see how it fares with me; I just manage to keep hanging on, hanging on." This story is ordinarily told as though the old man did not see the unfavorable significance of his words; but it is probable that, he uttered them wittingly and with, a sneer—in ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... personal about it. But if one lives to seventy he soon gets used to the text with the threescore years and ten in it, and begins to count himself among those who by reason of strength are destined to reach fourscore, of whom he can see a number still in reasonably good condition. The octogenarian loves to read about people of ninety and over. He peers among the asterisks of the triennial catalogue of the University for the names of graduates who have been seventy years out of college and remain still unstarred. He is curious about the biographies of centenarians. Such escapades as those of ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... hours of labor in factories and in the limitation of factory work by children. From 1876 to 1880 he was mayor of Salem, and displayed almost the same vivacity and energy in discharging the duties of this office, as an octogenarian, that he had shown in his youth. He was master of the theory and history of music, a good bass singer, a good organist, and the author of several popular compositions. Of these "Federal Street" seems likely to become permanent in ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... Governor of Montreal, who, with other persons of rank and distinction thought it a religious duty to assist at the ceremony. All the priests and religieuses of the colony were present in the church of Montreal, and M. de Olier, himself an octogenarian, officiated. The body was interred under the entrance of the chapel of the Infant Jesus, commonly called the Sisters' chapel, the mother in life becoming the mother also in death, as her sepulture was ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... Emperor left there, as everywhere else, souvenirs of his generosity. The widow of a general officer, living in retirement at Joinville (I regret that I have forgotten the name of this venerable lady, who was more than an octogenarian), came to Troyes, notwithstanding her great age, to ask aid from his Majesty. Her husband having served only before the Revolution, the pension which she had enjoyed had been taken from her under the Republic, and she was in the greatest destitution. The brother of General Vouittemont, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the rare luck of having from the very lips of this octogenarian, an account of the share he had in conducting as one of the cavalry detachment detailed to escort Colonel Winfield Scott and brother officers from Beauport, where they were confined as prisoners on parole, to ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... 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 ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... who was very kind to us, as children. My mother, who is an octogenarian, remembers him well, and says he always took a nosegay, tied to the top of his cane, every ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 73, March 22, 1851 • Various
... rivers 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, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... greatness cannot confer 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
... still 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
... York Harbor, Maine, July 10, 1889. "My Dear General Keifer,—Your letter came to me just as I was leaving Washington. . . . I keep fairly well and vigorous for an old fellow so near to the octogenarian line. Accept my thanks for your kind remembrance and good wishes. You want to know about Colonel John DeCourcey, who commanded the [16th] regiment of Ohio Infantry for some time during our late war. I have not much to tell you of him, except that I made his acquaintance afterwards ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... 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" on ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... genius: so many as are not 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 recollection enough of her own country to be entertained ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... "Otello" 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 ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... course, it superadded certain characteristics of its own, never obliterated or even concealed the marks left by those earlier phases, and the octogenarian Cardinal was a beautifully-mannered, well-informed, sagacious old gentleman who, but for his dress, might have passed for a Cabinet Minister, an eminent judge, or ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... usually in angry reliance on certain superb qualities, injured fine qualities of ours undiscovered by the world, not much more than suspected by ourselves, which are still our fortress, where pride sits at home, solitary and impervious as an octogenarian conservative. But it is not possible to answer it so when the brain is rageing like a pine-torch and the devouring illumination leaves not a spot of our nature covert. The aspect of her weakness was unrelieved, and frightened her back to her loathing. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... very tired with walking about in the church, and have still some little time to wait, for I am going to London by the evening train.' Poor young man! (for Lord Blandamer was still young in Cullerne, which had only known his octogenarian predecessor) he is no doubt called to London on some public business—the House of Lords, or the Court, or something like that. I wish he would take as much care of himself as he seems to take for others. He looks so very tired, and a sad face too, Anastasia, and ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... provinces. At the same time she had been witness of the tremendous struggle between Rome and Pontus which commenced in B.C. 88, was still continuing, and still far from decided, when Sanatroeces came to the throne. An octogenarian monarch was unfit to engage in strife, and if Sanatroeces, notwithstanding this drawback, had been ambitious of military distinction, it would have been difficult for him to determine into which scale the interests of his country required that he should cast the weight of his sword. On the one ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... an octogenarian, though you be a nonagenarian, all the thoughts and acts of your life are in your mind, whether you recall them now or not, just as Macaulay's history is in two volumes, although the volumes may be closed, ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... 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
... kindly to his enforced retirement? Far from it. With all the querulous impatience of an octogenarian, full of whims, sick in soul and body, suspicious, irritable, dying inch by inch, a prey to insomnia, his neuralgic pains, his swollen veins, in short, a crabbed old man, awaiting the call—behold now our great Otto von Bismarck, and mark ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... religion or injury to their caste was intended; but on the 10th of May the native portion of the garrison at Meerut broke out in revolt. The Mutineers proceeded to Delhi, and were joined by the native troops there; they established as Emperor the octogenarian King, a man of unscrupulous character, who had been ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... 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 cat's ear" had a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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
... 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 a little ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... executions. The Prior of the famous retreat of Lough Derg was one of the victims of this persecution; a Priest named O'Loughrane, who had accidentally sailed in the same ship with the Earls to France, was taken prisoner on his return, hanged and quartered. Conor O'Devany, Bishop of Down and Conor, an octogenarian, suffered martyrdom with heroic constancy at Dublin, in 1611. Two years before, John, Lord Burke of Brittas, was executed in like manner on a charge of having participated in the Catholic demonstrations which took place at Limerick on the accession of King ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... was in early childhood) he had even found it 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 large ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... Brussels would soon create an exterminating army against their followers. Hostilities were resumed with more bitterness than ever. The battle of St. Denis—fierce, fatal, but indecisive—was fought. The octogenarian hero, Montmorency, fighting like a foot soldier, refusing to yield his sword, and replying to the respectful solicitations of his nearest enemy by dashing his teeth down his throat with the butt-end of his pistol, the hero of so many battles, whose defeat at St. Quintin ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 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 essay of the first ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... for his subsequent actions. On the 3rd of December Parliament voted a proposal to send a deputation to the Pope, praying him to return to his States. To give the deputation greater authority, the Municipality of Rome proposed that the Syndic, the octogenarian Prince Corsini, should accompany it. It also comprised two ecclesiastics, and thus constituted, it left Rome for Gaeta on the 5th of December. On the borders of the Neapolitan kingdom its passage was barred by the police, and it was obliged to retrace its steps to Terracina. ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... Joseph Haydn, the 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 latest reverses of ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... 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
... 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
... St. Francis of Assisi or St. Theresa. The only smiling countenance in a hospital is the Sister of Mercy. The only active resisters under the despotism of Henry VIII. were Sir Thomas More and a broken octogenarian priest, Cardinal Fisher. ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... along the Mohawk, and the peltries, after passing through the hands of frontier dealers, generally found their way into Astor's warehouse, in Liberty street. Here they were sorted with great care by his own hands, and prepared for foreign markets. An octogenarian merchant informed me that, calling once at Mr. Astor's store, he found him in an upper loft clad in a long, coarse wrapper, and engaged among his furs. 'I shall get for that,' said he, holding up the skin of a splendid silver fox, 'forty dollars, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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
... remarked presently to her companion, "that Mr. So and so, the octogenarian, is dead. Now, what on ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... 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 by which he renounces his seignorial ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... 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 ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... and perhaps all the more scrupulously and compassionately in order that they might not guess the lamentable fact that their work was done and that the forces and influences were in younger hands. But the men themselves never lost the sense of their importance. I knew an octogenarian clergyman who declared once in my presence that it was ridiculous to say that old men lost their faculty ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... trellis and the old wall, and from the window I see many other vines showing their lustrous leaves against tiled roofs of every shade, from bright-red to black. In the next garden is my friend the aumonier, an octogenarian priest, who is still nearly as sprightly of body as he is of mind. He lives alone, surrounded by books, in the collection of which he has shown the broad judgment, and impartiality of the genuine lover of ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... see she always had excellent health, and there's no reason why she should not live to be an octogenarian." ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... this mob?" he objected. "It's too long a story in any case. But why shouldn't you and I have a seance, to let a garrulous old fellow talk about his youth?" he demanded in his lordly way. "Why not come out on the river in my boat? They'll let you play about with an octogenarian, won't they?" ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... "Siegfried." In "The Rheingold" some of the smaller parts—such as Miss Weed's Freia—were handsomely done; the Mime was also excellent; but I cannot quite reconcile myself to Friedrichs' Alberich. "The Dusk of the Gods" was marred by Burgstaller, and "The Valkyrie" by the two apparently octogenarian lovers. That is Bayreuth's way. It promises us the best singers procurable, and gives us Vogl and Sucher, who undoubtedly were delightful in their parts twenty years ago; and it would be shocked to learn that its good faith is questioned so ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... be reasoners. Effects of modern education on the reasoning powers. Education of former days, illustrated by an anecdote of an octogenarian. Extracts from her correspondence. Difficulty in getting the ears of mankind. The reasoning powers in man susceptible of cultivation indefinitely. Reflections on the importance of maternal ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... 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 ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... were soon one undivided lump of ice. Our eyelashes became snow-white and heavy with frost, and it required constant motion to keep them from freezing together. We saw everything through visors barred with ivory. Our eyebrows and hair were as hoary as those of an octogenarian, and our cheeks a mixture of crimson and orange, so that we were scarcely recognizable by each other. Every one we met had snow-white locks, no matter how youthful the face, and, whatever was the colour of our horses at starting, we always drove ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... 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 us,' wrote Abraham ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... veteran, old man, seer, patriarch, graybeard; grandfather, grandsire; grandam; gaffer, gammer; crone; pantaloon; sexagenarian, octogenarian, nonagenarian, centenarian; old stager; dotard &c. 501. preadamite[obs3], Methuselah, Nestor, old Parr; elders; forefathers &c. (paternity) 166. Phr. "superfluous lags the veteran on the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the church when Reinke played, grateful for the privilege of listening, half-expecting to be thrust out as an interloper. He had gained confidence since then, and now introduced himself to Buxtehude and was greeted by the octogenarian as a brother and an equal, although sixty years divided them. His visit extended itself from one week to two, and then to a month or more, and a message came from his employers that if he expected to hold his place ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 fun ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... 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 ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... we lodged in the home of an old farmer, an octogenarian who had never in all his life been twenty miles from his farm. He had never seen Boston, or Portland, but he had been twice to Nashua, returning, however, in time for supper. He, as well as his wife (dear simple soul), looked upon us as next door to educated Indians and entertained us ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... with the utmost candour. "Young women of twenty- three do not marry old men of seventy-seven for love. You may imagine a young girl marrying a penniless youth for love, but can you picture her marrying a penniless octogenarian for the same reason? I fancy not. I speak quite frankly to you, Braden, and without reserve. We have always been friends. It would be folly to attempt to delude you into believing that a sentimental motive is back of our—shall we ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... hot little room was empty except for Nick, shaving before the cracked mirror on the wall, and old Elmer, reading a scrap of yesterday's newspaper as he lounged his noon hour away. Old Elmer was thirty-seven, and Nicky regarded him as an octogenarian. Also, old Elmer's conversation bored Nick to the point of almost sullen resentment. Old Elmer was a family man. His talk was all of his family—the wife, the kids, the flat. A garrulous person, lank, pasty, dish-faced, ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... more care of him than the youngsters. They heard that Nash was an octogenarian, and likely to die in his sins, and resolved to do their best to shrive him. Worthy and well-meaning men accordingly wrote him long letters, in which there was a deal of warning, and there was nothing which Nash dreaded so much. As long as there was immediate fear of ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... Madeleine. Nay, hear me," taking her hands and looking into her uncomprehending eyes, "I would not be a brother, but something closer, dearer. We are both alone in the world, more or less. Whom have you but a mad-cap sister, a poor dreamer of a brother-in-law, an octogenarian aunt, to look to? I have no one, no one to whom my coming or my going, my living or my dying makes one pulse beat of difference—except poor Sophia. Let us join our loneliness and make of it a beautiful and happy home. Madeleine, I have learned ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... 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
... I wish we 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 ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... enough 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 Hill; in ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... 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 to the friends of the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... 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 order to confirm ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... gallantry that is the key-note of the correspondence recalls the correspondence that presently was exchanged between Henrietta Howard, Countess of Suffolk, and the octogenarian Earl ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... 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 his ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... Heytesbury and Upton Lovell. Its ancient and towerless little church with rough, grey walls is, if possible, even more desolate-looking than that of Tytherington. In my hunt for the key to open it I disturbed a quaint old man, another octogenarian, picturesque in a vast white beard, who told me he was a thatcher, or had been one before the evil days came when he could work no more and was compelled to seek parish relief. "You must go to the manor-house for the key," he told me. A strange place in which to look for the key, and it was ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... 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![391][5.H.] Th' octogenarian chief, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... Chevalier de Port-de-Guy, a pillar of the library of the Louvre, called the King's cabinet, M. de Port-de-Guy, bald, and rather aged than old, was wont to relate that in 1793, at the age of sixteen, he had been put in the galleys as refractory and chained with an octogenarian, the Bishop of Mirepoix, also refractory, but as a priest, while he was so in the capacity of a soldier. This was at Toulon. Their business was to go at night and gather up on the scaffold the heads and bodies of the persons who had ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... cherished 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... the moribund murmured not; and more than once a raid was turned and a sharp skirmish won, when the withered cheek of the octogenarian was next the rosy face ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... and others of more or less distinction, have disappeared. And now of English poets, advanced in life, I cannot recall any but James Montgomery, Thomas Moore, and myself, who are living, except the octogenarian with ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... roll-call was 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... are very remarkable works; they have an inexhaustible wealth of detail in which Donatello can be studied with endless pleasure. The backgrounds are full of his architectural fancy, and the sustained effort put forth by Donatello is really astonishing. But he was an octogenarian, and there are signs of decay. Michael Angelo and Beethoven decayed. Dante and Shakespeare were too wise to decay; Shelley and Giorgione died too young. But the sculptor's intellect must be reinforced by keen eyes and a steady hand: of all artists, Nature finds him most vulnerable. Donatello's ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... 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 ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... 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 angry eyes of Amalia, the count found it very pleasant, ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... known as Cap'n 'Kiah, an octogenarian who was regarded as an oracle, down to Tready Morgan, a half-witted orphan, the inmates of the poor-house had an enjoyment of living astonishing to behold. It had been hinted at town-meeting that the keeper of the poor-farm was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... awoke—this was for the beloved Beth, the old family nurse. Beth became nurse-maid to my grandmother, Mrs. Sidgwick, as a young girl; and the first of her nurslings, whom she tended through an attack of smallpox, catching the complaint herself, was my uncle, William Sidgwick, still alive as a vigorous octogenarian. Henry Sidgwick, Arthur Sidgwick, and my mother were all under Beth's care. Then she came on with my mother to Wellington College and nursed us all with the simplest and sweetest goodness and devotion. For Hugh, as the last of her "children," she had the ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the contagion spread; though, upon strict examination of the evidence, not nearly so far as was supposed. Hundreds were bewildered and terrified, as well they might be; the magistrates—Stoughton, Sewall, John Hathorne, poor Octogenarian Bradstreet, Sir William Phips—these and others to whom it fell to investigate and pronounce sentence—let us hope that some, if not all of them, truly believed that their sentences were just. "God ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... person of Dom-Luis, who is an old ex-monarch; they tried to get an Italian, in the person of Victor Emanuel's young son, the Duke of Genoa; they tried to get a Spaniard, in the person of Espartero, who is an octogenarian. Some of them desired a French Bourbon, Montpensier; some of them a Spanish Bourbon, the Prince of Asturias; some of them an English prince, one of the sons of Queen Victoria. They have just tried to get the German Prince Leopold; but they have thought it better to give him up ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... woman had 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 |
