"Dotage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... confirmed age the same sins I discovered in my youth; I committed many then, because I was a child, and, because I commit them still, I am yet an infant. Therefore I perceive a man may be twice a child before the days of dotage, and stand in need ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... before and gone to his last "repose," and Mademoiselle—marvellous and incredible fact—Mademoiselle had married a grey-bearded, bald-headed personage whom her English visitor had mentally classed as a contemporary of "mon pere" and tottering on the verge of dotage. It appeared, however, by after accounts, that he was barely fifty, which Dick Victor insisted was an age of comparative vigour. "Quite a suitable match!" he had pronounced it, but Pixie obstinately withheld her approval. Mademoiselle, as mademoiselle, would have been a regular visitor for life; ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... [this lord of weak remembrance] This lord, who, being now in his dotage, has outlived his faculty of remembering; and who, once laid in the ground, shall be as little remembered himself, as he ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... antiquated superstitions," interrupted Cetoxa, contemptuously. "They are out of fashion; nothing now goes down but scepticism and philosophy. And what, after all, do these rumours, when sifted, amount to? They have no origin but this,—a silly old man of eighty-six, quite in his dotage, solemnly avers that he saw this same Zanoni seventy years ago (he himself, the narrator, then a mere boy) at Milan; when this very Zanoni, as you all see, is at least as young as you or ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... nothing battling for the Red Branch; and I would not, even for Deirdre, war upon my comrades. But Deirdre I will not leave nor forget for a thousand prophecies made by the Druids in their dotage. If the Red Branch must fall, it will fall through treachery; but Deirdre I will love, and in my love is no dishonor, nor any ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... proportionally valuable; rival collectors, with fury in their faces, will run you up to a fabulous price at the auction, and you will at last be put into free quarters for life in some shady alcove upon some lofty shelf, with unlimited rations of dust, as you glide into a vermiculate dotage. Why should you be faint-hearted, when the men of the stalls ask such a breath-stretching price for the productions of William Whitehead, Esq., who used to celebrate the birthdays of old George the Third ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... "This is folly—dotage;" said Ellinor, indignantly: "Surely there are others, as brave, as gentle, as kind, and if not so wise, yet more fitted for ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... concealed in the parish of Aldington. The priest mounted his horse, and rode to Lambeth with the news to the Archbishop of Canterbury; and the story having lost nothing of its marvel by the way,[313] the archbishop, who was fast sinking into dotage, instead of ordering a careful inquiry, and appointing some competent person to conduct it, listened with greedy interest; he assured Father Richard that "the speeches which she had spoken came of God; and bidding him keep him ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... lonely dancer entering from the court, large, weary, crowned with gold, tufted with feathers, wrinkled, with greedy, fatigued eyes, and hands painted blood-red. She was like an idol in its dotage. Over her spreading bosom streamed multitudes of golden coins, and many jewels shone upon her wrists, her arms, her withered neck. She advanced slowly, as if bored, until she was in the midst of the crowd. Then she wriggled, ...
— Smain; and Safti's Summer Day - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... hazards; that they would pull it down with their finger-nails, if they could not get it in any other way; that the other Southern States were becoming excited on the subject; that President Buchanan was in his dotage; that the government in Washington was breaking up; that all was confusion, despair, and disorder there; and that it was full time for us to look out for our own safety, for if we refused to give up the fort nothing could prevent the Southern troops from exterminating ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... strange thing happened. When we had taken my grandfather to the Hall in June, his dotage seemed to settle upon him. He became a trembling old man, at times so peevish that we were obliged to summon with an effort what he had been. He was suspicious and fault-finding with Scipio and the other servants, though they were never so busy for his wants. Mrs. Willis's dainties ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... way lived on a while; but its life was so feeble, and, so to say, illogical, that it could not resist any change in external circumstances, still less could it give birth to anything new; and before this century began, its last flicker had died out. Still, while it was living, in whatever dotage, it did imply something going on in those matters of daily use that we have been thinking of, and doubtless satisfied some cravings for beauty: and when it was dead, for a long time people did not know it, or what had taken its place, crept so to say into its dead body—that ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... of all ages, especially dotage, is for a relapse to the infantile state when all playthings were held in common. And this wisest of all places (in its own opinion) had a certain eccentric inclination towards the poetic perfection when it will be impossible ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... eyes and ears and some experience in human nature." Saunders puffed at his cigar. He felt that his friend was expecting what he was saying. "Mitchell is getting in his dotage, and he talks very freely to ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... Larry; "where did ye larn English, boy, for ye have the brogue parfict, as me gran'mother used to say to the pig when she got in her dotage (me gran'mother, not the pig), 'only,' says she, 'the words isn't quite distinc'.' Couldn't ye give us a skitch ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... fact, whenever there is great disparity of years between husband and wife, the younger is, I believe, always possessed of absolute power over the elder; for superstition itself is a less firm support of absolute power than dotage. ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... indignant genius, branding the audacious forehead of falsehood or pollution. But ridicule in the hands either of cold-blooded or infuriated Malice, is harmless as a birch-rod in the palsied fingers of a superannuated beldam, who in her blear-eyed dotage has lost her school. The Bird of Paradise might float in the sunshine unharmed all its beautiful life long, although all the sportsmen of Cockaigne were to keep firing at the star-like plumage during the Christmas holydays of a ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... I can say is that if I had died before this chance, I had lived a blessed time. I perceive more and more that I'm obsolete. I'm in my dotage; I prattle of the good old times, and the new spirit of the age flouts me. Miss Effie, ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... Wordsworth, Shelley, and Byron, the last named being his ideal. He ridiculed the Lakers, whom I loved; and when Southey's last poem, "On Gooseberry Pie," appeared, he declared that the poor old man was in his dotage, to which I assented with sorrow in my heart. Though only one year older than I, yet, as a Junior, and from his superior knowledge of life, I regarded him as being about thirty. He was quite familiar, in a refined and gentlemanly way, with all the dissipation of Philadelphia ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... quests of Sir Gawaine, Sir Tor, and King Pellinore, it fell so that Merlin fell in a dotage on the damosel that King Pellinore brought to court, and she was one of the damosels of the lake, that hight Nimue. But Merlin would let her have no rest, but always he would be with her. And ever she made Merlin good cheer till she had learned of ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... violating that rule. I want to speak to you about Miss Emily. May I take your arm? Thank you. At my age, girls in general—unless they are my patients—are not objects of interest to me. But that girl at the cottage—I daresay I am in my dotage—I tell you, sir, she has bewitched me! Upon my soul, I could hardly be more anxious about her, if I was her father. And, mind, I am not an affectionate man by nature. Are ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... were few left for her to give it to. The Herritons were out of the question; they would not even let her write to Irma, though Irma was occasionally allowed to write to her. Mrs. Theobald was rapidly subsiding into dotage, and, as far as she could be definite about anything, had definitely sided with the Herritons. And Miss Abbott did likewise. Night after night did Lilia curse this false friend, who had agreed with her that the ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... in her rocking-chair and rocking herself furiously, "I ken'd weel what it would come til! Adversity mak's a man wise, they say, if it doesna mak' him rich. But it's the Prime Minister I blame for this. The auld dolt! he must be fallen to his dotage. It's enough to mak' a reasonable body go out of her mind to think of sic wise asses. I told you what to expect, but you were always miscalling me for a suspicious auld woman. Oh, it's a thing ye'd no suspect; but Jane Callender is only ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... resource is in two marble kittens that Mrs Damer has given me, of her own work, and which are so much alive that I talk to them, as I did to poor Tonton! If this is being superannuated, no matter; when dotage can amuse itself it ceases to be an evil. I fear my marble playfellows are better adapted to me, than I am to being your ladyship's correspondent." Poor Tonton was left to Walpole by "poor dear Madame de Deffand." In a letter to the Rev. Mr Cole, in 1781, he announces its arrival, ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... save by Drann and Holvey. They exchanged one glance of consternation, and the fancied security in which they had dwelt, as fragile as a crystal sphere, was shattered in an instant. The old man was broken by his illness, his recent hardships. He was verging on his dotage. His senile folly might well cost ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... you of your skill, perchance, and because he makes you laugh with the foolish tales he tells, you would turn against your own kind, Valencia. No honest Spaniard can be a friend of the gringos. Of the patron," he added rather sorrowfully, "I do not speak, for truly he is in his dotage and therefore not to be judged too harshly. But you, Valencia—you should think twice before you choose a gringo for your friend; a gringo who speaks fair to the father that he may cover his love-making to the daughter, who is easily ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... my looks were charms, my touches fetters, My locks soft chains, to bind the arms of Princes, And make them in that wish'd for bondage, happy. I am like others of a coarser feature, As weak to allure, but in my dotage, stronger: I am no Circe; he, more than Ulysses, Scorns all my offer'd bounties, slights my favours, And, as I were some new Egyptian, flyes me, Leaving no pawn, but my own shame behind him. But he shall finde, that in my ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... now by example plain Another fellow, being a counterfeit page, Brought the gentleman's servant out of his brain, And made him grant that himself was fallen in dotage Bearing himself in hand that he did rage, And when he could not bring that to pass by reason, He made him grant it, and say ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... myself, and see clearly my own natural misery. I come then to see the exceeding favour of the Lord in that He ever holds this insane fool fast in prayer and holiness. What would those who love and honour me think if they saw their friend in this dotage and distraction? I reflect at such times on the great hurt our original sin has done us. For it is from our first fall that all this has come to us that we so wander from God, and are so often utterly ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... he must have been in his dotage," Roy agreed. "In five minutes he told us all his life's history and ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... conviction, "the fiction of the law, which admitted the application of the royal political authority, when the personal was disabled, as implicated in the very principles of hereditary succession, which otherwise would suffer interruption from nonage, infirmity, dotage, and every contingency in the state of man." Sheridan spoke very ill: very hot, injudicious, and ill-heard. Rolle, whilst adverting to Sheridan's speech, made use of a remarkable expression, and which seems to hint some future acting up to the rumours of his purpose. He said that in proper ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... same stern order doth apply To the pranks of this remote age! We are sure alike to be thrust by, In our nonage, and our dotage. ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... put her hand in that of her lover, and answered quietly, "Nay, but I had no mind to wed with one who was already in his dotage; little good the lands, and castles, and gold would have done me, had I been obliged to spend my time in nursing an old man; and, as for my father, I know he will secretly rejoice when he hears, that, after all, I shall wed my own true love, who, I would have him know, is an Earl's son, although ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... his nephew, had involved the French monarch in a war which was contrary to his interests and inclination. Paul now found his ally too sorely beset to afford him that protection upon which he had relied, when he commenced, in his dotage, his career as a warrior. He was, therefore, only desirous of deserting his friend, and of relieving himself from his uncomfortable predicament, by making a treaty with his catholic majesty upon the best terms which he could obtain. The King of France, who ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... pointed out. In a tone of unrestrained anger, he declared that "we should have a pretty time of it with one of Jackson's lieutenants at Washington, and another at Frankfort, and the old man in his dotage at the Hermitage dictating to both." To lose Kentucky was, for the Whigs, to lose every thing. To reduce the Whig majority in Mr. Clay's own State would be a great victory for the Democracy, and to that end the leaders of the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... would have risked it, but we might not have been able to force our way in without authority, since the vile Abbe was on his own ground, and Madame Darpent told us her son had devised a better plan. He had gone to the Coadjutor, who in the dotage of his uncle, the Archbishop of Paris, exercised all his powers. As one of their monkish clergy, this same Abbe was not precisely under his jurisdiction, but the celebration of a marriage, and at such an hour, in a Priory Chapel, ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... or spared their opponent. The key to this conduct was their dubious position with the Russian court. The Empress, Elizabeth, continually instigated by her minister, Bestuzheff, against Prussia, was in her dotage, was subject to daily fits of drunkenness, and gave signs of approaching dissolution. Her nephew, Peter, the son of her sister, Anna, and of Charles Frederick, Prince of Holstein-Gottorp, the heir to the throne of Russia, was a profound admirer of the great Prussian monarch, took him for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... ho!" laughed Keane. "Why, Richards, you're in your dotage, man! I've a baronet in view for Gerty. And Jack is a beggar, although he does swing a sword at his side and ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... approach so much nearer to my own. As to the rest, in this traffic, I did not suffer myself to be totally carried away; I pleased myself in it, but did not forget myself. I retained the little sense and discretion that nature has given me, entire for their service and my own: a little emotion, but no dotage. My conscience, also, was engaged in it, even to debauch and licentiousness; but, as to ingratitude, treachery, malice, and cruelty, never. I would not purchase the pleasure of this vice at any price, but content myself with its ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... and folly," &c. And ver. 23: "All his days are sorrow, his travel grief, and his heart taketh no rest in the night." So that take melancholy in what sense you will, properly or improperly, in disposition or habit, for pleasure or for pain, dotage, discontent, fear, sorrow, madness, for part, or all, truly, or metaphorically, 'tis all one. Laughter itself is madness according to Solomon, and as St. Paul hath it, "Worldly sorrow brings death." "The hearts of the sons of men are evil, and madness is in their hearts while they ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Cayley, in his European Revolutions of 1848, "on the dismissal of the King's mistress. She was sent away, but, trusting to the King's dotage, she came back, police or no police.... This was a climax to which the people were unprepared to submit, not that they were any more virtuous than their Sovereign." Another publicist, Edward Maurice, puts it a little ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Her dim old eyes brightened as she gently stroked the child's brow with her palsied fingers. "Dis yer ain' no way ter conjure, honey," she whispered. "You des wait twel de full er de moon, w'en de devil walks de big road." She was wandering again after the fancies of dotage, but Betty threw herself upon her. "Oh, change it! change it!" cried the child. "Beg the devil to come and ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... urbane bank-manager had never before interviewed this terrible personage. He had heard strange stories of an abusive old man in his dotage, who contrived to make it very unpleasant for any representative of the bank sent up to his bedroom to get documents signed, and was therefore surprised to see an alert, hawk-eyed old gentleman, with a skull-cap and a dressing-jacket, sitting ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... plan would revolutionise the world. It would make statesmen hurry up. At present, they are nearly fifty before you hear of them. How can we expect the country to be properly governed by men in their dotage? ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... their senior, would naturally expect to command and whom he considered "too far advanced in life and too inactive" for such an enterprise. At this time McDowell must have been nearly thirty-nine; and Shelby, who was just thirty, wisely refused to risk the campaign under a general who was in his dotage! ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... return home. But when Nadan made sure of all commandment being in his own hand, he jeered in public at his uncle and raised his nose at him and fell to blaming him whenever he made act of presence and would say, "Verily Haykar is in age and dotage and no more he wotteth one thing from other thing." Furthermore he fell to beating the negro slaves and the handmaidens, and to vending the steeds and dromedaries and applied him wilfully to waste all that appertained to ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... himself. In answer to this assertion, it was observed, that probably the king would not have been so forward in creating his grandson prince of Wales, if he had not been forced into this step by his parliament; for Edward in his old age fell into a sort of love dotage, and gave himself entirely up to the management of his mistress, Alice Pierce, and his second son, the duke of Lancaster; a circumstance that raised a most reasonable jealousy in the Black Prince, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... ask you if you recollect,' pursued his wife, 'that evening of the ball? I only ask you that. If you do; and if your memory has not entirely failed you, Mr. Snitchey; and if you are not absolutely in your dotage; I ask you to connect this time with that - to remember how I begged and prayed you, on my ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... own dark ends. You'll see, you'll see. But that reminds me. Of all my relations you an' your mother's all I care for; because you'm of my awn blood an' you've let me bide, an' haven't been allus watchin' an' waitin' an' divin' me to the bottle. An' the man I was fule enough to take in his dotage be worst ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Egyptian fetters I must break, or lose myself in dotage' (Antony and Cleopatra)" This he added from old habit. "I'll quote everything I can think of to D., just to make her think I have forgotten her wish that I should leave off quoting; and if that is not doing my duty by St. George, I should like to know what is. Only that might ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... where he will be fed and get strength. I trust it does not seem flippant to say that I look on all church organizations in the same way, and that the tradition of a long past suggests to me the inefficiency of a dotage, quite as much as the stimulating aroma of potency which, as in the case of some wines, can only be acquired by the lapse of time. Some will say that this Modernism has no sense of obligation, no sense of veneration, makes no allowance for the idiosyncrasies of others. Well, ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... high pleasure through sufferings. Lloyd does not like it; his head is too metaphysical, and your taste too correct; at least I must allege something against you both, to excuse my own dotage— ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... sad injustice, the reader must understand, to represent all my excellent old friends as in their dotage. In the first place, my coadjutors were not invariably old; there were men among them in their strength and prime, of marked ability and energy, and altogether superior to the sluggish and dependent mode of life on which their evil stars had cast them. Then, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... reversion of immortality), shewed no respect for himself, for that genius that had raised him to distinction, for that nature which he trampled under foot—who, amiable, frank, friendly, manly in private life, was seized with the dotage of age and the fury of a woman, the instant politics were concerned—who reserved all his candour and comprehensiveness of view for history, and vented his littleness, pique, resentment, bigotry, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... his feet, financially and politically. I think he must have wanted the owlet back again before he was done with Anne, because Anne was a termagant—and ruled him with the heaviest rod of iron she could lift. But this last passion—the flickering, sputtering flame of his dotage—was the worst of all, both subjectively and objectively; both as to his senile fondness for the English princess and her impish tormenting of him. From the first he evinced the most violent delight in Mary, who repaid it by holding him off and evading him ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... evident she was looking for one of those almost incredible excuses which are sometimes accepted by credulous old men when violent passions seize them in their dotage. ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... remarkable document. Biddle declared that Jackson was like "a chained panther, biting the bars of his cage." Webster and John Quincy Adams, taking counsel of their hopes, declared that the old man in the White House was in his dotage and at ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... Custom, forfeited by owning her Passion. But she spoke not of a Lover only, but of a Prince dear to him to whom she spoke; and of the Praises of a Man, who, 'till now, fill'd the old Man's Soul with Joy at every Recital of his Bravery, or even his Name. And 'twas this Dotage on our young Hero, that gave Imoinda a thousand Privileges to speak of him without offending; and this Condescension in the old King, that made her take the Satisfaction of speaking of him ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... meantime Belle-Isle is besieged, and my two friends by now probably taken or killed. Poor Porthos! As to Master Aramis, he is always full of resources, and I am easy on his account. But, no, no; Porthos is not yet an invalid, nor is Aramis in his dotage. The one with his arm, the other with his imagination, will find work for his majesty's soldiers. Who knows if these brave men may not get up for the edification of his most Christian majesty a little bastion of Saint-Gervais! I don't despair of it. They have cannon and a garrison. And yet," ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... time."—"But, according to what she says, you would be more than a hundred"—"That is not impossible," said he, laughing; "but it is, I allow, still more possible that Madame de Gergy, for whom I have the greatest respect, may be in her dotage."—"You have given her an elixir, the effect of which is surprising. She declares that for a long time she has felt as if she was only four-and-twenty years of age; why don't you give some to the King?"—"Ah! Madame," said he, with a sort of terror, "I must be mad to think ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... is the residence of a Lewes lady whose charitable impulses have taken a direction not common among those who suffer for others. She receives into her stable old and overworked horses, thus ensuring for them a sleek and peaceful dotage enlivened by sugar and carrots, and marked by the kindest consideration. The pyramidal grave (as of a Saxon chief) of one of these dependants may ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... much bandying of not always well-informed argument, that importance is pretty generally allowed by the competent. It has, fortunately, ceased to be fashionable to regard the dispute about Universals as proper only to amuse childhood or beguile dotage, and the quarrels of Scotists and Thomists as mere reductions of barren logomachy to the flatly absurd. Still, this importance, though real, though great, is not directly literary. The claim which ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... the dotage of an old, formal, obstinate, stiff, rich, Scotch grandmother, who, upon a promise of leaving this grandchild all her fortune, would have the girl sent to her to Scotland, when she was but a year old, and ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... one of its wings the joys and sorrows, the failures and successes of a private family and their friends, with the other the fates of England and Europe; the fortunes of Marlborough and of Swift on their way from dictatorship, in each case, to dotage and death; the big wars and the notable literary triumphs as well as the hopeless passions or acquiescent losses. It is thus an instance—and the greatest—of that revival of the historical novel which was taking place, and in which the novel of Scott(1)—simpler, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... my Aunt Ruxton. The boy to whom Lovell used to be so good, and who stopped my father on Penmanmawr to tell him that Lovell had given him Lazy Lawrence, was drowned with many others crossing the Ferry in a storm. The old harper who used to be the delight of travellers is now in a state of dotage. There was no harper at Bangor: the waiter told us "they were no profit to master, and was always in the way in the passage; so master never lets them ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... cried up Shakspeare; and now is distracted at the just encomiums bestowed on that first genius of the world in the new translation. He sent to the French Academy an invective that bears all the marks of passionate dotage. Mrs. Montagu happened to be present when it was read. Suard, one of their writers, said to her, "Je crois, Madame, que vous etes un peu fache de ce que vous venez d'entendre." She replied, "Moi, Monsieur! point du tout! Je ne suis pas amie de Monsieur Voltaire." I shall go to ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... a degree I am become helpless; nothing can account for it but extreme dotage, or extreme infancy. I wish Barthow had left Lady Caroline, and was here only to dress me in warmer clothes, but she goes from here, I hear, to Lady Ailesford, so that I must not think of lying in and being nursed for some time. ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... it? But he really is not ill, only getting feeble and obstinate. The man is in his dotage. I saw him yesterday, and he refused, most perversely, to sanction the marriage until some facts shall come to his knowledge, of which he is not quite certain at present. I told him the young people would not wait; and he replied, that if I give you my daughter ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... he is a small boy until he is in his dotage, a man swings off a car, facing in the direction in which the car is headed. Then, a premature turn of a wheel pitches him forward with a good chance to alight upon his feet, whereas the same thing happening when he was facing in the opposite direction would cause him to tumble ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... by treating him like this? Did he think he would endure to be set aside thus deliberately as one whose words had no weight? Did he think—confound him!—did he think that he had reached his dotage? ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... of him, and with not a thought to the mind of him which is not foolishness. And I judge from by what they be in birth, and not by the bags of gold what have been left them by any old madams in their dotage. So now you see how I takes it all and you and me can start ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... in the chase, he always appeared to part with her with regret, and to caution her not to run into useless danger; and when we returned at night, the old man's eyes sparkled with the rapture of dotage as ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... believed. Where was it that there had been a fire just like that, with the ashes like moss over the heat,—and on a night in winter, too, the wind rattling the panes? Where was it? While Soule stood waiting for his answer, his mind was drifting back, like that of a man in his dotage, through its dull, muddy thoughts, after that one silly memory. He struck on it at last. A year or two after he was married. In the bedroom. Martha was sitting by the fire, with the old yellow dog beside her: she was trying to ride the baby on his neck,—he was the clumsiest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... lovely, the Joy of her Swain, By Iphis was lov'd, and lov'd Iphis again; She liv'd in the Youth, and the Youth in the Fair, Their Pleasure was equal, and equal their Care; No Time, no Enjoyment their Dotage withdrew; But the longer they liv'd, but the longer they liv'd, ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... sexes, all ages— The poor as well as the wealthy; From the Court to the cottage, From childhood to dotage, Both those that are ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... of simple contortion over his broad, hard face, and mouthed his lips, as if he would the amplest dough-nut be put on his plate. Palm, just as they were resuming their seats, insinuated that as the venerable old man was well gone in his dotage, he had better measure his diet somewhat after the judicious character of his diplomacy, which was celebrated for its small doses crookedly doled out. The dish was again removed, mouths began to water, ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... withstand a long siege. This was, practically, his sole achievement in the campaign. Outnumbered, outgeneralled, bankrupt in health as in reputation, he soon resigned his command, but not before he had given signs of "downright dotage."[54] He had, however, achieved immortality: his incapacity threw into brilliant relief the genius of his young antagonist, and therefore appreciably affected the fortunes of Italy and ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... that the widow was out. Some people are so happily constituted that they never admit the possibility of misfortune. I was like that myself till the age of thirty, when I was put under the Leads. Now I am getting into my dotage and look on the dark side of everything. I am invited to a wedding, and see nought but gloom; and witnessing the coronation of Leopold, at Prague, I say to myself, 'Nolo coronari'. Cursed old age, thou art only worthy of dwelling in hell, as others before ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... swear, that I will not be at the initiating, passing, or raising a candidate in a clandestine Lodge, I knowing it to be such. Furthermore, do I promise and swear, that I will not be at the initiating of an old man in dotage, a young man in nonage, an atheist, irreligious libertine, idiot, madman, hermaphrodite, nor woman. Furthermore, do I promise and swear, that I will not speak evil of a brother Master Mason, neither behind his back, nor before his ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... headlands comes the day, Though moon and planet on a sky of gold, Chequered with orange and vermilion-stoled, Have floated long before the sun's first ray Has shot across the waters to display Amalfi in her dotage; as of old His beams lit up her splendours manifold, Her quays and palaces that fringed the bay. His smile makes every barren hill-side blush In rose and purple for the glories fled, As early watchers note ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... declining age, When no more heat was left but what you forced, When all the sap was needful for the trunk, When it went down, then you constrained the course, And robbed from nature, to supply desire; In you (I would not use so harsh a word) 'Tis but plain dotage. ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... such virtues as Dr. Heidegger imputed to it, could not have been bestowed on four human beings who needed it more woefully. They looked as if they had never known what youth or pleasure was, but had been the offspring of Nature's dotage, and always the gray, decrepit, sapless, miserable creatures who now sat stooping round the doctor's table without life enough in their souls or bodies to be animated even by the prospect of growing young again. They drank off ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... old, placed a royal throne for herself, Philosophy, who, despised in her solitude, with a sole attendant, Study, now possesses an enduring citadel of light and immortality, and under her victorious feet tramples the withered flowers of a world already in its dotage. ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... I would shee had bestowed this dotage on mee, I would haue daft all other respects, and made her halfe my selfe: I pray you tell Benedicke of it, and ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... consequently for the unrepealability of their decisions by any succeeding Council or Pope. Hence, even wise decisions—wise under the particular circumstances and times—degenerated into mischievous follies, by having the privilege of immortality without any exemption from the dotage of superannuation. Hence errors became like glaciers, or ice-bergs in the frozen ocean, unthawed by summer, and growing from the fresh deposits ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... to talk big of the coming changes and his own distinguished part in them. Indeed one very trying effect of the continued alarm about Charles was that he took to haunting the place, and report declared that he had talked loudly and coarsely of his cousin's death and his uncle's dotage, and of his soon being called in to manage the property for the little heir—insomuch that Sir Edmund Nutley thought it expedient to let him know that Charles, on going on active service soon after ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... long time." "But, according to what she says, you would be more than a hundred." "That is not impossible," said he, laughing; "but it is, I allow, still more possible that Madame de Gergy, for whom I have the greatest respect, may be in her dotage." "You have given her an elixir, the effect of which is surprising. She declares that for a long time she has felt as if she was only four-and-twenty years of age; why don't you give some to the King?" "Ah! Madame," said he, with a sort of terror, "I must be mad to think of giving the ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... America, fortified by the Atlantic, could not believe that her peace was in any way assailed. The idea seemed too madly far-fetched. At first she refused to realise that this apportioning of a continent three thousand miles distant from Germany was anything but a pipe-dream of diplomats in their dotage. It was inconceivable that it could be the practical and achievable cunning of military bullies and strategists. The truth dawned too slowly for her to display any vivid burst of anger. "It isn't true," she said. And then, "It seems incredible." ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... dotage Make thee an unbeliever; this my vow Shall never on my soul be satisfied With my ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... took for Maudlin, And a cruse of cockle pottage, And a thing thus—tall, Sky bless you all, I fell into this dotage. I slept not till the Conquest; Till then I never waked; Till the roguish boy Of love where I lay, Me ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... view of the purpose of God in history began to prevail in all classes of society. The Grand Monarque was ready to proclaim the divine right of the State which was himself. Still, not until the period of his dotage did that claim bear any relation to what even he would have called religion. Publicists, both Catholic and Protestant, sought to recur to the lex naturae in contradistinction with the old lex divina. The natural rights of man, the rights of the people, the rationally conditioned rights ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... to offend, or that any should mistake my honest meaning: for I wish good to all, hurt to none; but rich men for the most part are grown to that dotage through their pride in their wealth, as though there were no accident could end ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... dotage; that will be soon put out of the lass's head, if it ever gets into it," answered Bucklaw. "And now fill your glass again, Captain; I am going to make you happy; I am going to let you into a secret—a plot—a noosing plot—only the noose ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... the head of Lloyd's yet," he answered, easily. "My uncle is far from his dotage. Then, too, you know that I was never intended for a business man, but a lawyer, like my father, if there had not been so little for my father's second wife and the children—" He stopped himself abruptly on the verge of a confidence. "I think I saw you on your way to the photographer ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... you before; I have written by the name of Maria. You have told me you were too far gone in life to think of love. Therefore, I am answered as to the passion I spoke of; and," continued she, smiling, "I will not stay till you grow young again, as you men never fail to do in your dotage, but am come to consult you about disposing of myself to another. My person you see; my fortune is very considerable; but I am at present under much perplexity how to act in a great conjuncture. I have two ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... ago, conversing at the Club Which Londoners with 'GARRICK'S' title dub, We both confessed, and each with equal grief, That poor Melpomene was past relief; So many symptoms of her dotage shows This nineteenth century of steam and prose. Nor in herself, said you, entirely lies Th' incurable complaint whereof she dies; 'Tis not alone that play-wrights are too poor For gods or men or columns to endure;[4] ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... old age With dotage mocked; not gallantry that faints And still pursues; not the vile heritage Of sin's ...
— A Father of Women - and other poems • Alice Meynell
... I in my dotage, think you? I saw my boy, and he was pale, and had blood on his hands, and it ran down his beard and dripped on his vest. You can't deceive me! What is the matter with my poor boy? I will see him! Give me ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... unclouded in the gulfs of fate. From Lydia's monarch should the search descend, By Solon caution'd to regard his end, In life's last scene what prodigies surprise, Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise! From Marlb'rough's eyes the streams of dotage flow, And Swift expires a driv'ller and a show. [ee]The teeming mother, anxious for her race, Begs for each birth the fortune of a face; Yet Vane could tell what ills from beauty spring; And Sedley curs'd the form ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... not equitable in itself, is infinitely unjust, if a story, often told by my poor old grandfather, was true, which I own I am inclined to doubt. The old man, sir, had learned in his youth, or dreamed in his dotage, that Scotland had become an integral part of England,—not in right of conquest, or rendition, or through any right of inheritance—but in virtue of a solemn Treaty of Union. Nay, so distinct an idea had he of this supposed Treaty, that he used to recite one of its articles to ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... King asked, "Who is this Hyder Ali who is making you British so much trouble in India?" to which the bold Briton answered: "Sire, he is only an old tyrant who, after robbing his neighbors, is now falling into his dotage" ("Sire, ce n'est qu'un vieux tyran qui, apres avoir pille ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... political hypocrisies; the knowledge of which the essence is distilled in Bacon's 'Essays;' or the knowledge of which Polonius seems to have retained many shrewd scraps even when he had fallen into his dotage. In reading 'Clarissa' or 'Eugenie Grandet' we are aware that the soul of Richardson or Balzac has transmigrated into another shape; that the author is projected into his character, and is really giving us one phase of his own sentiments. In reading Fielding we are listening to remarks made by a ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... cannot hide from a friend what all the world will soon ridicule, and had sooner you heard it from me than another. Was you to reproach my folly as I deserve, you will write volumes and I promise to read with seasonable humility. Sure I must be falling into premature dotage. ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... second campaign, B.C. 89, was opened in Bicenum. Marius was not in the field. His conduct in the previous campaign was not satisfactory, and the conqueror of the Cimbri, at sixty-six, was thought to be in his dotage. Asculum was besieged and taken by the Romans, who had seventy-five thousand troops under the walls. The Sabellians and Marsians were next subjugated, and all Campania was lost to the insurgents, as far as Nola. The Southern army was under the command of the consul, Lucius Sulla, ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... field never attained by any other. He toured the world heralded as the champion, yet he would never permit himself to be announced as such. He earned two fortunes. Today at an age that leaves the greater number of men in their dotage, Mr. Robinson is healthy and active. He enjoys life as few old persons do. In the office of his friend, Dr. J. J. McClellan, he may be found almost any day, the center of a group of good fellows and none merrier than ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... didn't know better,' said Lavvy. 'And if my grandmamma wasn't in her dotage when she took to insisting on people's retiring to dark apartments, she ought to have been. A pretty exhibition my grandmamma must have made of herself! I wonder whether she ever insisted on people's ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... thou? What am I come to? A woman's toy, at these years! Death, a bearded baby for a girl to dandle. O dotage, dotage! That ever that noble passion, lust, should ebb to this degree. No reflux of vigorous blood: but milky love supplies the empty channels; and prompts me to the softness of a child—a mere infant and would suck. Can ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... for your care about my existence. I am becoming very old, dear Brother; in a little while I shall be useless to the world and a burden to myself: it is the lot of all creatures to wear down with age,—but one is not, for all that, to abuse one's privilege of falling into dotage. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... are vanished. This is beyond melancholy. I do dare my fate To do its worst. Now to my sister's lodging And sum up all these horrors: the disgrace The prince threw on me; next the piteous sight Of my dead brother; and my mother's dotage; And last this terrible vision: all these Shall with Vittoria's bounty turn to good, Or I will drown this weapon ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... turned into a shower so soft and piercing, I almost died to see it; at last delivering me a paper—'Here,' (cried he, with a sigh and trembling-interrupted voice) 'read what I cannot tell thee. Oh, Sylvia,' cried he, '—thou joy and hope of all my aged years, thou object of my dotage, how hast thou brought me to my grave with sorrow!' So left me with the paper in my hand: speechless, unmov'd a while I stood, till he awaked me by new sighs and cries; for passing through my chamber, by chance, ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... active-minded, strong-hearted, able-bodied man cannot take a babe as the sole companion of his existence. Probably Geoffrey would have found this out in time, and might have drifted into some mode of life more or less undesirable, had not an accident occurred to prevent it. In his dotage, Geoffrey's old uncle Sir Robert Bingham fell a victim to the wiles of an adventuress and married her. Then he promptly died, and eight months afterwards a ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... who was ever foremost in pursuit of such pleasures as wine begets and love appeases. His mirth was the most buoyant, his conversation the most agreeable, his manner the most engaging in the world; whence he became "the delight and wonder of men, the love and dotage of women." A courtier possessed of so happy a disposition, and endowed with such brilliant talents, could not fail in pleasing the king; who vastly enjoyed his society, but was occasionally obliged ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... dotage?" Lapo retorted, still glaring with a dreadful interest at Raffaele's flesh. "Do you speak of giving offence, when all I desire is to be as courteous as my uneducated nature will allow? She must pardon me that slip of the hand; I meant only to stroke her cheek in compliment but ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... craziness came of physical exhaustion or the shock of losing boat, son, and grandchild all in a few minutes, no one could tell. He never set foot on board a boat again, but sank straight into pauperism and dotage. ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... his head in mock melancholy over his supposed intellectual dotage. Unorna turned away, this time with ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... finger. "Aw, must I be y'r schoolmaster in the days of your dotage! Of course the ould fella has someone to watch, an' I dunno which it is—the Chinaman or the half-breed wumman. But I'll tell you this: they'll take his pay and lie to him about whatever's goin' on inside the house. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hast attained all the object of thy desire when thou hast become the excellent priest of the gods, versed in all the sacred hymns, and hast overreached the influence of death and dotage, what can ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Shushions; he was a familiar figure of the streets of Turnhill, and he had the reputation of being the oldest Sunday School teacher in the Five Towns. He was indeed exceedingly old, foolish, and undignified in senility; and the louts were odiously jeering at his defenceless dotage, and a young policeman was obviously with the louts and ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... World has not yet arrived at such a consummation as that of surpassing the vices and crimes of the Old, as we are certain it has not yet achieved such a moral victory as that of outrunning it in the race of scientific or mechanic fame. England is no more in her dotage than America is in her nonage. The former, without vanity or want of verity be it spoken, is as pre-eminent as the latter is honestly and ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... need not tell you that it is not he who governs the duchy. We are ruled at present by a triumvirate consisting of the Belverde, the Dominican and Trescorre. Pievepelago, the Prime Minister, is a dummy put in place by the Jesuits and kept there by the rivalries of the other three; but he is in his dotage and the courtiers are already laying wagers as to his successor. Many think Father Ignazio will replace him, but I stake my faith on Trescorre. The Duke dislikes him, but he is popular with the middle ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... we got back to Belvane; we have left her alone too long. It was more than Udo did. Just now he was with her in her garden, telling her for the fifth time an extraordinarily dull story about an encounter of his with a dragon, apparently in its dotage, to which Belvane was listening with an interest ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne |
