"Old age" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of a solitary old age but an old age beholden to either public or private charity was to her intolerable; and she had now few years left her to work in—a governess's life wears women out very fast. She determined to begin to work again immediately, laying by as much as possible yearly against the days when she could ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... little village, called "New Place." Here he gave a home to his father and mother, and provided liberally for his younger brothers. To his sister Joan he gave the house in Henley Street, which remained in the possession of her descendants until 1820. He may have looked forward to a long and honorable old age, but died in 1616, it is said, on the same day of the year on which he was born. His son Hamnet died long before him. He ...
— Harper's Young People, October 12, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... would be safe, almost, to say that not a day passes in which the daily papers do not contain allusions to some simple little lines dear to our childhood. They are not to be sneered at; they are to be loved in babyhood and childhood, understood in youth, and treasured in middle life and old age. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... he should not have been successful in any of these his intentions, yet there remains this consolation behind—that these his pursuits, by keeping the body and mind employed, have, under Providence, contributed to much health and cheerfulness of spirits, even to old age:—and, what still adds to his happiness, have led him to the knowledge of a circle of gentlemen whose intelligent communications, as they have afforded him much pleasing information, so, could he flatter himself with a continuation of them, would they ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... excluded: two of these are of Portuguese nationality, sons of the Congregation of Yndia—who, by a decree of his Majesty, and the decision of a full definitory of this province, are commanded to return to their own congregation. Two others are prevented from saying mass—one by old age, and the other by having been insane more than fifteen years. Another is of Japanese nationality; and the sixth is a mestizo, son of a Portuguese father and a Japanese mother. At the foot of this memorandum is a declaration by the definitory that ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... will act differently with him! I don't wish to have shame eat up my eyes in my old age, because my grandson has an unclean friendship with a beggar. ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... life; the oldest biography of Lao Tzu, written about 100 B.C., says that he lived as an official at the ruler's court and, one day, became tired of the life of an official and withdrew from the capital to his estate, where he died in old age. This, too, may be legendary, but it fits well into the picture given to us by Lao Tzu's teaching and by the life of his later followers. From the second century A.D., that is to say at least four hundred ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... your judges, or your corregidores. Take the llano!—and take this with it. May the drought seize your cattle till their tongues hang down as long as those of your lying lawyers! May it be the curse and torment of your old age, as you and yours have made it ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... a fighting seaman. With one brief exception, occurring twenty years later, when he commanded the British squadron in the North American and West Indian waters, but when there was no warfare to be done the rest of his life, comprising thirty years of ripe manhood and vigorous old age, was passed without employment in the profession which was dear to him, and in which he had shown himself to be possessed of talents rarely equalled and certainly ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... the unhappiness of middle life and old age are the result of the thoughts and deeds of ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... nature of the group shone out. The women were of no age. A wandering life produces premature old age, and indigence is made up of wrinkles. One of them was a Basque of the Dry-ports. The other, with the large rosary, was an Irishwoman. They wore that air of indifference common to the wretched. They had squatted down close to each other when they got on board, on chests at the foot of the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... the top, he called out, "Quick, mother! A hatchet, a hatchet!" Jack seized it and chopped away at the beanstalk, when down it fell, bringing along with it the Giant. Jack instantly cut off his head. After this Jack and his mother lived very happily, and Jack was a great comfort to her in her old age. ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... to Gelasius, who shared his cave and who had urged him to flight, that he was content in whatever place or whatever hour the Lord should call him, and that it was in God's hands to decide whether old age or an arrow-shot should open to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... platonic little pat on the back the next, which is exasperating. As a friend I adore her, but to fall in love with her! Ah, non, merci! I have had a checkered childhood and my full share of suffering; I wish some peace in my old age. At sixteen one goes to the war of love blindly, but at forty it is different. Our chagrins then plunge us into a state of ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... are fairly seething with indignation. Take it easy; Tom Moore doesn't need a memorial tablet. He will be read and honored centuries after the library building with its poet's corner has perished of old age. He is the poet of the people, and has more readers than any ten of ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... of a mother in Israel. It was otherwise with the boys. Every Jew deemed himself in duty bound to educate his son. "Learning is the best merchandise"—Torah iz die beste sehorah—was the lesson inculcated from cradle to manhood, the precept followed from manhood to old age. All the lullabies transmitted to us from earliest times indicate the pursuit of knowledge as the highest ambition cherished by mothers for ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... heart of hearts; kind he was to me—a second father to my child—God bless him! Sure I am, if he were still among us, how his good heart would melt, how it would bleed for us—for her—I know it would." Here the old man sobbed and kept silence a space, then proceeded—"You see how weak old age and over-love of this world make a man, sir. Yet I am content. Next to God, I owe to him whose dear corpse I have just now been so near, a long and happy life,—thanks, thanks, thanks! To both, up yonder, I do here render them ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... when they saw, advancing toward them from the end of the long gallery, two great basilisks, dragging after them a very badly made box; behind them came a tall old woman, whose ugliness was even more surprising than her extreme old age. She wore a ruff of black taffeta, a red velvet hood, and a farthingale all in rags, and she leaned heavily upon a crutch. This strange old woman, without saying a single word, hobbled three times round the gallery, followed ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... thou shalt live. I will leave thee to hopeless regret; to wiles that have been scorned and defeated; to the unheeded petulance of dotage; to the fondness that is repayed with neglect; to restless wishes, to credulous hopes, and to derided command: to the slow and complicated torture of despised old age; and that, when thou shalt long have abhorred thy being, shall destroy it.' 'The misery,' said OMAR, 'which thou hast menaced, it is not in thy power to inflict. As thou hast taken from me all that I possessed ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... from his old age the man Cyav[a]na; Ye brought and gave the charger swift to Pedu; Ye two from darkness' anguish rescued Atri; Ye set ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... however, had she seen any figure as venerable as the Agha's, and she thought at once of Abraham at his tent door. Just such a man as this Abraham must have been in his old age. She could even imagine him ready to sacrifice a son, if he believed it to be the will of Allah; and Maieddine became of more importance in her eyes because of his relationship to this kingly patriarch ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... circumstances! Despite the continued generosity of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution to him, alas! this is not the case. Would that some practicable scheme for providing a pension for deserving working men in their old age were ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... simple conception enabled him to subordinate his interests as a marcher potentate to his duty to the English monarchy. It guided him in his difficult work of serving with unbending constancy a tyrant like John. It shone most clearly when in his old age he saved John's son from the consequences of his father's misdeeds. A happy accident has led to the discovery in our own days of the long poem, drawn up in commemoration of his career[1] at the instigation of his son. This important work has enabled ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... storm-beaten house on the cliffs by Chepstow (the house his father's father had built), whence he could see the surf whiten on the rocks and gulls forever circling about the Brown Cow. His was a narrow and surly old age, not overwell provided, for he had never been a thrifty man; and he found among the rattletrap furnishings of his neglected home one living chattel quite as worthless—a weird, lean goblin of a boy, his sole descendant, fatherless and motherless, playing lonely little games ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... it was—it had always been an understood thing that Lasse should spend his old age at Pelle's fireside. In his childish dreams of the future, however various they might be, Father Lasse was always at hand, enjoying a restful old age, in return for all he ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... dug for it, and began to fiercely pile in the earth around it;—"Fate is fate, and there is no gainsaying it! The law of Compensation will always have its way! Look you, man!—and listen! I, Rene Ronsard, once killed a king!—and now in my old age, the only creature I ever loved is tricked by the son of a king! It is ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... cloth. I say to myself, which of these things can you do? Not one. I can make a bow or an arrow, catch fish, kill game, and go to war; but none of these things is of any use here. To learn what is done here would require a long time. Old age comes on. I should be a useless piece of furniture, useless to my nation, useless to myself. I must go back ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... the somewhat eccentric manner in which he passed his latter days, there were some persons who assumed after his death that in his declining years he lacked the attention of friends, and the little comforts and considerations that are due to old age. Yet this was not so; if the world heard little of him from the time of his final retirement into rural seclusion, and lost sight of him and believed him dead, it was his own choosing that they should remain in ignorance. He had had his day, a longer and fuller one than falls to the lot of ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... more than could be learned by an ordinary disciple from so common-place a preceptor. This poor master, however, had sufficient intelligence to appreciate the genius of Petrarch, whom he esteemed and honoured beyond all his other pupils. On the other hand, his illustrious scholar aided him, in his old age and poverty, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... seem presumptuous that so young a man as myself should propose to write his life and memoirs, for, as a rule, one waits until he has accomplished something in the world, or until he has reached old age, before he ventures to tell of the times in which he has lived, and of his part in them. But the profession to which I belong, which is that of a soldier, and which is the noblest profession a man can follow, is a hazardous one, ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... interest, and recommend investments. "Ay, man?" Dand would say; "and do you think, if I took Hob's siller, that I wouldna drink it or wear it on the lassies? And, anyway, my kingdom is no of this world. Either I'm a poet or else I'm nothing." Clem would remind him of old age. "I'll die young, like, Robbie Burns," he would say stoutly. No question but he had a certain accomplishment in minor verse. His "Hermiston Burn," with ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he dare not offend: after this there is no need to mention the low scoundrel Perpenna. The tendency to this frigidity of soul was perceptible in Corneille, even at an early period of his career; but in the works of his old age it increased to ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... for exorbitant tasks, murderous injustice is done to the beast. They have their rights, which every right-minded owner will respect. We owe them return for the service they yield, all needful comfort, kind usage, rest in old age, and an ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... that the Latin Church has long been hostile to Masonry, that popes have condemned the order, and have excommunicated its initiates. Having regard to the position of the brotherhood here in England, most of us have been content to infer in this respect that the ripe old age of the Church is passing into a second childhood; some, however, have concluded that there may be more in Continental Freemasonry than meets the English eye, and here the Church herself comes forward to assure them that ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... who survived from the days of Partholan to those of S. Finnen. He was a decrepit man at the coming of Nemed, and one night, having lain down to sleep, he awoke as a stag, and lived in this form to old age. In the same way he became a boar, a hawk, and a salmon, which was caught and eaten by Cairell's wife, of whom he was born as Tuan, with a perfect recollection of his ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... ruin that came upon him in cumulative degree, from year to year, Sutter managed to save, for a period, what is known as Hock farm, a very extensive and valuable estate on the Feather River. This estate he proposed to secure as a resting-place in his old age, and for the separate benefit of his wife and children, whom he had brought from Switzerland in 1852, having been separated from them eighteen years. Sutter's titles being generally discredited, his vast flocks and herds having dwindled to a few head, and his resources being ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... it, Let meane men cry to have Law and Iustice done And tell their griefes to Heaven that heares them not: Kings must upon the Peoples headlesse courses Walk to securitie and ease of minde. Why, what have we to doe with th'ayrie names (That old age and Philosophers found out) Of Iustice and ne're certaine Equitie? The God's revenge themselves and so will we; Where right is scand Authoritie's orethrowne: We have a high prerogative above it. Slaves may do what is right, we what we please: ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... found to register 98, whereas the Professor's was only 90. He explained that the temperature of youth is normally greater than old age, but it was remarkably close to the average normal temperature of ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... of the day alone in that solitary room, away from Martha and Rover and everybody. I would that even now in my old age I waited for God as then I waited for my uncle! If only he would come, that I might pour out the story of my fall, for I had sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression!—only I was worse, for neither serpent nor wife ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... another. His bed was in an attic, next door to his big cousin Marten's room. Marten had a shelf full of books, which Henry used to carry off to his own domain and read over and over again. From these books he first dated an intense love of reading which was destined to be his chief stand-by in old age. We shall not wonder that Mary loved to recall her early remembrances of this little school-boy when we know that, several years later, he became her husband, with whom she spent a long ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... two entire stories: one in Pitre (No. 71) the other in Comparetti (No. 54, "The Golden Hair," from Monferrato, Piedmont). The latter is in substance as follows: A king with three sons marries again in his old age. The youngest son falls in love with his step-mother and the jealous father tries to poison her. The son and wife flee together, and fall in with some robbers whom they kill, and set at liberty a princess who has the gift of curing blindness ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... this time, being consulted, said that if the boy passed the critical period of fifteen years, he would live, like his father, to a good old age. So Mansoor caused a subterranean palace to be hewn out of the mountain, in the deeper chambers of which, fitted up with all magnificence, he caused Ali to be kept by a faithful nurse; whilst he himself ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... and endorsing it, that she literally cannot deny herself the pleasure of basking in it, making hay, so to say, while her sun shines, revelling in the consciousness of her power all the more delicious because she knows only too well that she must lose it later on, as youth flies: old age, i.e. the loss of her charm, being every woman's ogre, the skeleton in her cupboard, which she dreads far more than death, just as the only disease which she shudders to face is the smallpox, for a similar reason. And so, when she finds her spell working, ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... on the rear of a herd, hoping to cut out calves or buffaloes weak from old age. Now they're expecting to reap a little from the harvest made by the hunters. There, they've gone too, though for a long time you'll hear the herd thundering away to the west. But we don't mind the sound of a danger when the danger itself has passed. We'll mount ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... And first the unerring prophet justified; This nymph the god Cephisus had abused, With all his winding waters circumfused, And on the Nereid got a lovely boy, Whom the soft maids even then beheld with joy. The tender dame, solicitous to know Whether her child should reach old age or no, 10 Consults the sage Tiresias, who replies, 'If e'er he knows himself, he surely dies.' Long lived the dubious mother in suspense, Till time unriddled all the prophet's sense. Narcissus now his sixteenth year began, Just turned of boy, and on the verge of man; Many ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... animated by a sullen, obstinate hostility toward any introduction from the West, however plain its value may be; while his gayer and more mercurial neighbor, the Japanese, is regarded as the true child of the old age of the West, following assiduously in its parent's footsteps, and pursuing obediently the path marked out by European experience. There is considerable misconception in this, as indeed there is at all times in the English popular mind with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... each other no more; at which he wept, and said, "Let your sons come, we will treat them well." Oree is a good man, in the utmost sense of the word; but many of the people are far from being of that disposition, and seem to take advantage of his old age; Teraderre, his grandson and heir, being yet but a youth. The gentle treatment the people of this isle ever met with from me, and the careless and imprudent manner in which many of our people had rambled about in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... live on till youth has pass'd, And feel but little pain, And may thou, in a blest old age, Live o'er ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... in our veins. The Italian opera composer who holds the highest place to-day in the heart of the serious musician is that grand old man of music, Giuseppe Verdi, whose genius enabled him to yield four times to the spirit of the age, during his long career, and who in his ripe old age endeavored to give Italy what Wagner ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... waters? We cannot say, or rather we shall not stop to inquire. Enough that the poor old hermit saw it, and seeing, was transported into ecstacy. His whole being appeared transfused into the ethereal vision which shone before him. The gross outlines of old age and shabby costume were melted into the beautiful forms of exultation and reverence. Under the misty moon, under the faint light of the stars, he fell upon his knees, stretched out his arms, and his face turned eagerly upwards in ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... compelled him to remember it. But what Rutherford meant was that his old parishioner should willingly, deliberately and repeatedly open the stained and torn leaves of his past life and read it all over in the light of his old age, approaching death, and late-awakened conscience. Rutherford wished Cardoness to sit down as Matthew Henry says the captives sat down by the rivers of Babylon, and weep 'deliberate tears.' There were pages in his past life that it was the very pains of hell to old ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... patting successful people expensively on the back. It acts twenty years too late, falls into line with our usual worldly ornamental D.D., LL.D. habit, and has become, so far as Literature is concerned, a mere colossal, kindly, doddering Old Age Pension from a few gentlemen in Stockholm. It adds itself as one more futile effort of men of wealth—or world owners to be creative and lively with money, very much on the premises with money, after they ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... still keen and bright in its well-cared for old age, and carried it into the morning-room. There was a door near the writing-table leading to a back stairway; Jane vanished through it with such lightning rapidity that the butler doubted whether she had seen him come in. Half an hour later Clovis was driving ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... soon become famous for its Olympian rice dishes. His nephews who were fishermen would receive him like a god. He could also be partner in a couple of barks, dedicated to fishing for the bou. There was awaiting him a happy and honorable old age; his former sailing companions were going to look upon him with envy. He could get up late in the morning; he could go to the cafes; as a rich devotee he could figure in all the religious processions of the Grau and of the ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to the door, perceived a stranger, with a child by his side, in an old, weather-beaten carriage, with a black horse. The stranger asked for Mrs. Rugg, and was informed that Mrs. Rugg had died, at a good old age, more than twenty years before that time. The stranger replied, "How can you deceive me so? do ask Mrs. Rugg to step to the door." "Sir, I assure you Mrs. Rugg has not lived here these nineteen years; no one ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... barrier between hearts. For my part, I have more often found it an open door, and a security of generous and tolerant welcome for the young soldier, who comes in tired and dusty from the battle-field, to tell his story of defeat or victory in the garden of still thoughts where old age is resting in the peace of honourable discharge. I like what Robert Louis Stevenson says about it in his essay on Talk ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... spending it all in a breath," she ran on. "I went right away to Mr. Engle and had him cash it so that I could see what five twenty-dollar gold pieces looked like. And I chinked them and played with them like a child! Do you think I am growing greedy for gold in my old age? . . . You ought to see them piled up, though; five twenties. Isn't gold a pretty thing? I've a notion to go get them and show them to you; they're right ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... the anecdotes and witticisms which are recorded of the prolific genius of Roger in the simple annals of Laracor, would fill a little volume. He died at the good old age ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... the two sat down to eat their breakfast; and no one would have discovered, from the manner in which the old man helped himself, nor yet from the look of his eyes, that he was stone blind. It came neither of old age nor disease—he had been born blind. His eyes, although large and wide, looked like those of a sleep walker—open with shut sense; the shine in them was all reflected light—glitter, no glow; and their colour was so pale that they suggested ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... He finished the castle at Tarascon, which had been begun earlier in the century, - finished it, I suppose, for consistency's sake, in the manner in which it had originally been designed rather than in accordance with the artistic tastes that formed the consolation of his old age. He was a painter, a writer, a dramatist, a modern dilettante, addicted to private theatricals. There is something very attractive in the image that he has imprinted on the page of history. He was both ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... pages is necessary to contain those poems written and published by him during his active literary career, and ultimately rejected as unsatisfactory. Of this considerable body of verse, a great part was written, not in youth or old age, but while Tennyson's powers were at their greatest. Whatever reasons may once have existed for suppressing the poems that follow, the student of English literature is entitled to demand that the whole body of Tennyson's ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... are latent in the female is shown by the frequent appearance of such characters in old age, or in individual cases. The development of hair on the face of women in old age, or after the child-bearing period, is a well-known fact. Rorig, [Footnote: 'Ueber Geweihbildung und Geweihentwicklung.' Arch. Ent.-Mech. x. and xi.] who ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... have risen to the grade of actual civil councilor, and I have an unblemished record. I will not fatigue your attention by enumerating my works and my merits, I will only say that I have done far more than some celebrities. And yet here I am in my old age, I am getting ready for my coffin, so to say, and I am as celebrated as that black dog yonder running ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... originality, his pictures were looked at askance; because he chose to live his own life, indifferent to accepted conventions, he himself was misunderstood. It was his cruel fate to enjoy prosperity and popularity in his earlier years, only to meet with neglect in his old age. But this he felt probably less than other men; he was not a courtier, with Velasquez, nor vowed to worldly success, with Rubens. His pleasure and his reward, he found in his work. So long as easel and canvas, brushes and paints were left to him, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... them, what milk is to infants. In reality, if one examines the nature of chocolate a little, with respect to the constitution of aged persons, it seems as though the one was made on purpose to remedy the defects of the other, and that it is truly the panacea of old age." ...
— Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes and Home Made Candy Recipes • Miss Parloa
... ever a nation of grander promise than Greece or Rome? But Greece died of premature old age, and Rome of rottenness begotten of sin. But each of them, you will say, left a priceless heritage to the immortal race. But if Greece and Rome and a host of older nations, of which History has often forgotten ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... minutes of what old maidenhood means to a woman—and then let him be silent. Is it easy to bear through life a name that in itself signifies defeat? to dwell, as nine out of ten unmarried women must, under the finger of another woman? Is it easy to look forward to an old age without honour, without the reward of useful labour, without love? I wonder how many men there are who would give up everything that is dear in life for the sake of maintaining ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... impart Facts they have learn'd or feelings of the heart? They talk indeed, but who can choose a friend, Or seek companions at their journey's end? Here are not those whom they when infants knew; Who, with like fortune, up to manhood grew; Who, with like troubles, at old age arrived; Who, like themselves, the joy of life survived; Whom time and custom so familiar made, That looks the meaning in the mind convey'd: But here to strangers, words nor looks impart The various movements of the suffering heart; Nor will that heart with those alliance own, ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... de Mowbray, was also lord lieutenant of the county. Although advanced in years, he was still extremely handsome; with the most winning manners; full of amenity and grace. He had been a roue in his youth, but seemed now the perfect representative of a benignant and virtuous old age. He was universally popular; admired by young men, adored by young ladies. Lord de Mowbray paid him the most distinguished consideration. It was genuine. However maliciously the origin of his own father might be represented, nobody could deprive him of that great fact, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... play and no proper pay, for Western competition now prevents all chance of decent profits. Little can be laid up for old age, except by the most painful economy and daily scrimping; and how can the children consent to stay on, starving body and soul? That explains the 3,318 abandoned farms in Maine at present. And the farmers' wives! what monotonous, treadmill lives! Constant toil with no wages, ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... are attended with pleasure, might with propriety be kept up by young women as well as by young men, as a means of retaining strength and elasticity of the muscles; and, instead of weak, trembling frames and broken down constitutions, in the prime of life, a bright, vigorous old age would be the reward. The pursuit of archery is recommended to both young and old, male and female, as having advantages far superior to any of the out-door games and exercises, as a graceful and invigorating pastime, developing in ladies a strong constitution, perfection of sight at long range, ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... "if I get it as an all-round thing it will really do you no harm at all—except perhaps to an infinitesimal degree it brings you nearer old age. You will just have lived ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... certain grave considerations render such a course on her part improper in her own estimation. All the Lady Luftons of whom she had heard, dowager and ante-dowager, had always had their seasons in London, till old age had incapacitated them for such doings—sometimes for clearly long after the arrival of such period. And then she had an idea, perhaps not altogether erroneous, that she annually imported back with ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... the Rev. Mr. Bell in his MS. "Treatise on Witchcraft," "there has been much harm done to worthy and innocent persons in the common way of finding out witches, and in the means made use of for promoting the discovery of such wretches and bringing them to justice; so that oftentimes old age, poverty, features, and ill-fame, with such like grounds not worthy to be represented to a magistrate, have yet moved many to suspect and defame their neighbours, to the unspeakable prejudice of Christian charity; a late instance whereof we had in the west, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... limply with eyes on the floor, in a daze of internal emotion; but when the door of the vault closed on his dead a final terrible cry burst from him, the cry of one who realizes to the last and to the full the emptiness, the futility of a life without love, an old age ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... it was not until he had reached the age of three score and ten years. As old age came upon him, and his little farm became less productive, debts accumulated. Being forced to raise money, he had borrowed a thousand dollars of Esquire Harrington, giving him a mortgage on his home for security. But as the interest was regularly paid, his creditor was well ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... to-morrow du Tillet is going to start for Holland. He will hand it over to a banker there to forward to Dr. Sandwith, to whom I have written asking him to undertake the charge. If you will take my advice you will forward at the same time all your jewelry. If things go wrong it will keep us in our old age and furnish a ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... hundred dollars towards it, which I've saved up from my earnin's. I haven't forgot what you and your uncle said to me, and I'm tryin' to grow up 'spectable. I haven't been to Tony Pastor's, or the Old Bowery, for ever so long. I'd rather save up my money to support me in my old age. When my hair gets gray, I'm goin' to knock off blackin' boots, and go into some light, genteel employment, such as keepin' an apple-stand, or disseminatin' pea-nuts among ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... in the town of Mons, in Hainault, a lawyer of a ripe old age, who had, amongst his other clerks, a good-looking and amiable youth, with whom the lawyer's wife fell deeply in love, for it appeared to her that he was much better fitted to do her ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... In the old age black was not counted fair, Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name; But now is black beauty's successive heir, And beauty slander'd with a bastard shame: For since each hand hath put on Nature's power, Fairing the foul with Art's false borrowed face, Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower, ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... breadwinner, and her mother's declining years were shielded from poverty. They would be able to manage famously until Sir Galahad arrived, and when he came one of the joys of her surrender would be that her mother's old age would be ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... early in June; and she left the farm of Lochs, in Glen-Lyon, either on the Thursday afternoon, or Friday morning, a week and two days before. The farmer of Harehope paid the Highland farmer the price of her, and she remained on her native farm till she died of old age, in her seventeenth year. ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... cannot be used, except in a sermon or some very grave and formal compositions. It is with language as with manners they are both established by the usage of people of fashion; it must be imitated, it must be complied with. Singularity is only pardonable in old age and retirement; I may now be as singular as I please, but you may not. We will, when we meet, discuss these and many other points, provided you will give me attention and credit; without both which it is to no purpose to advise ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... about for some kindness; begin to return the warm pressure of the hand, and to submit to be waited upon by the anxiety of love? Not in weakness alone comes the second childhood upon men, but often in childlikeness; for in old age as in nature, to quote the song of ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... be a neighbouring state within sight, and the voices of the fowls and dogs should be heard all the way from it to us, but I would make the people to old age, even to death, not ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... who were undoubtedly Spaniards in some other guise. He puttered about the flower beds with spade and rake and kept the bowling green clipped close with a keen sickle. In short, there was a niche for Trimble Rogers in his old age and he seemed well satisfied to fill it, just as Admiral Benbow spent his time among his posies at Deptford when he was not bombarding or blockading the French ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... of fighting-men, we can cultivate to better perfection the "smartness," the craft, and the cunning, and all the other "business-like" virtues on which we so pride ourselves, and which were so neglected and treated with so little respect in the bad old age of violence, when men chose lions and eagles for their symbols ...
— Evergreens - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... My Torah, 'And there hath not arisen since a prophet in Israel like unto Moses.'" Moses: "Future generations will perhaps say that I had probably acted in accordance with Thy will in my youth, while I was active as a prophet, but that in my old age, when my prophetic activities ceased, I no ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... been considering it, madame," replied Julie, with astounding simplicity, "ever since I saw him here the other evening, and learned that he still cared for me. One must have a harbour in one's old age." ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... other by the throat. The driving rain, the cursing and screams of pain, the swish of the blows, the yelling of orders and advice, the heavy smell of the damp cloth—every incident of that scene of my early youth comes back to me now in my old age as clearly as if it ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with herself, were linked and bound together by some strange fatality which she could not understand, but from which there was no escape, and which was bringing them slowly and surely to the blank horror of lonely old age. ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... of seing{sic} a priest at the altar, denotes quarrels and unsatisfactory states in your business and home. To see a marriage, sorrow to friends, and death to old age. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... pastime, if not aided by the interposition of the judgment, and sent home, by the delightful process of criticism, to the memory, there to exercise the mind to the last of life, to be the amusement of our declining years, and, when all the other faculties for receiving pleasure are impaired by old age and infirmity, to cast the sunshine of delight over the last moments of ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... of God tried in mind by the prospect of old age, when they might be unable to work any longer, and therefore were harassed by the fear of having to go into the poorhouse. If in such a case I pointed out to them how their heavenly Father has always helped those who put their trust in him, they might ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... woman, a pilgrim of fourscore years, who had lost her way and knew not whither she was going, entered the shed. Lame and humpbacked, reduced to the stature of childhood's days, afflicted with all the ailments of extreme old age, she was dragging herself along with the assistance of a stick, and at her side was slung a can full of Lourdes water, which she was taking away with her, in the hope of yet prolonging her old age, in spite of all its frightful decay. For a moment her senile, imbecile ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... fighter, near his three-score-and-ten, should have been white-haired, he was but gray; where he should have been inflicted with the kindred illnesses of advancing old age he simply owned up, and sheepishly at that, to a burned hand. Where he should have been willing to lay down his share of civic responsibility and let the "young fellows" have a go at the game, he was as ever on the firing-line, his name in the local ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... the Marquis lost his heart At the beautiful princess' smile; And the very next day the two were wed, In wonderful state and style. And Puss in Boots was their favorite page, And lived with them to a good old age. ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... presented a special set of concerns over the financial stability of the social security system. Shortly after taking office I proposed and Congress enacted legislation to protect the stability of the old age and survivors trust fund and prevent the imminent exhaustion of the disability insurance trust fund, and to correct a flaw in the benefit formula that was threatening the long run health of the entire social security system. The actions taken by the Congress ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Jimmy Carter • Jimmy Carter
... was nothing to fear if Smut was there; whether boar or buck you might advance fearlessly to him with the knife, with the confidence that the dog would pin the animal the instant that it turned to attack you; and when he once obtained his hold he was seldom shaken off until in his old age, when he lost his teeth. Even then he was always one of the first to seize. Although comparatively useless, the spirit was ever willing; and this courage, poor fellow, ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... sold her soul to the Devil for the power of foretelling future events. Though during her lifetime she was looked upon as a witch, she yet escaped the witch's fate, and died peaceably in her bed at an extreme old age, near Clifton in Yorkshire. A stone is said to have been erected to her memory in the church-yard of that ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... often forced to herd with sin; And our cold breath has pierced through without pity, Bare, ruined hovel and worn garments thin; Through narrow chink and broken window pouring Draughts rife with fever and with deadly chill, Choosing our victims 'mid old age and childhood, Or tender, ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... men and women, acting together, taking counsel together, used to settle for themselves in their own way. Education and the training and feeding of children, the housing and sanitation problems, provision against old age and sickness, the prevention of disease—all these are questions that formerly were dealt with, of course, in a very isolated and inadequate way, by cooperation and discussion between the heads of each household. What reason is there why the same ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... ballot at the polls was required to show a receipt from the Department of Health that two dollars had been paid into the Old Age Pension fund for the previous year, which was a salutary measure in preserving the purity of elections by eliminating the shiftless and improvident from participation in ...
— Eurasia • Christopher Evans
... year. And the same is true of diseases of the heart and blood vessels, which now claim more lives annually than any other cause. He finds that when rabbits are fed meat meal mixed with flour in bread, they soon become diseased through changes in the bloodvessels and die of old age before they ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... of our century no one has left a more valuable literary legacy than has John Ruskin, but the splendid and voluminous works of his brain are even less priceless than the example of his wonderful life. That he is in the shadow in his old age is by no means strange; a nature so sensitive, so finely strung, so keenly alive to the sufferings of others on every hand, has necessarily felt what the well-kept and self-engrossed animals around him knew nothing of. Indeed, just here we find the chief reason why the finest ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... away. "Ah," thought Champigny, "some Northern lady on a mission." . . . Old Champigny could not get over it that he had never seen her before. But he must have seen her, and, with his abstraction and old age, not have noticed her, for he found out from the negroes that she had been teaching four or five years there. And he found out also—how, it is not important—that she was Idalie Sainte Foy Mortemart des Islets. La grande demoiselle! ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... sung in all keys, played the lyre and fluttered wings; he turned into a Lydian and even into a gnat, daubed himself with green to become a frog.[68] All in vain! When young, you applauded him; in his old age you hooted and mocked him, because his genius for raillery had gone. Cratinus[69] again was like a torrent of glory rushing across the plain, uprooting oak, plane tree and rivals and bearing them pell-mell in its wake. The only songs at the banquet were, 'Doro, shod with ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... shrubs; he had in his mouth a ripe fruit, a parcimon, if I remember right. At every moment he would stop and look as if he were watched, just as if he feared detection. At last he arrived near the pariah, and deposited before him his offering to misery and old age. ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... time hunting, cock-fighting, or watching entranced while two men pound each other unrecognizable in the prize ring. Occasionally he has the good taste to break his neck in the hunting field, or get himself gloriously shot in a duel, but the generality live on to a good old age, turn their attention to matters political and, following the dictates of their class, damn reform with a whole-hearted fervor equalled ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... many summers have brought old age upon me, and I can not expect to survive many moons. Before I set out on my journey to the land of my fathers, I have determined to give my motives and reasons for my former hostilities to the whites, and to vindicate my character from misrepresentation. The kindness ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk
... as she is lovely! My son, do not diminish my happiness by unkind thoughts and expressions, which would result in our estrangement. No father could have devoted himself more assiduously to a child than I have done to you, and in my old age, if this marriage brings me so much delight and comfort, have I not earned the right to consider my own happiness? It is quite natural that you should be surprised, and to some extent chagrined at ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... vigorous, and happy life; or, in prosperity, that they may offer, in gratitude to man and to God, some tribute, always noble, however humble, to the principles and institutions that first formed their characters, and then controlled their destiny; or, in old age, the wanderer, like Jacob in Egypt, with his blessing upon the tribes and families of men, says, "I am to be gathered unto my people; bury me with my fathers." This occasion and its honors are due to the memory of him whose name this institution ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... married love knew only bitterness; on whom life smiled for a brief time only, but for whom heaven reserves a palm, the reward of resignation and of loving-kindness under sorrow. Ah! does she not even triumph over Job in never murmuring? Can you wonder that her words are so powerful, her old age so young, her soul so communicative, her glance so convincing? She has obtained extraordinary powers in dealing with sufferers, for she ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... that he should have been tempted by ironic fortune to turn for aid in the ingenious plot he was hatching to the particular man upon whom he pitched for assistance. Already in those days of which I write, far-away days as they seem to me now in this green old age—or shall I, with an eye to my monkish habit, call it gray old age?—of mine, those gentry existed who have now become so common in Italy, the gentry that were called Free Companions. These worthy ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... to do," she interrupted his thought and finished it for him. "I told you to join Anderson. I told you to go to New York and make overtures to General Clinton. That's what you should do. Seek respect and power and honor for your old age." ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... and a good deal of interest had been felt in England in the religious state of the Red men. The charter to the colony had enforced their conversion on the settlers, and Dr. Lake, Bishop of Bath and Wells, declared that but for his old age and infirmities he would have headed a mission to America for the purpose. Had he done so, perhaps something systematic might have been attempted. As it was the new colonists had too severe a struggle with their own difficulties to attend to their ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... he listed, and listed nearly everywhere—into nobles, crowns and pounds sterling, and left a glorious fortune to his son and to his son's son, unto about the fourth generation, which was a ripe old age for a fortune, I think. How few of them live beyond the second, and fewer still beyond the third! It was during the third generation of this fortune that the events of ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... best provision he can make for him—as heir of his own calling of cicerone, perhaps. He has a little farm at Bavello, which he tills when it is past the season for cultivating foreigners in Naples; he expects to spend his old age there; and I thought it not a bad lookout. He was perfectly well-mannered, and at a hotel where we stopped for tea he took his coffee at our table unbidden, like any American fellow-man. He and the ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... will lose their charm; you'll get bored as you've never been yet. The emptiness and dreariness that you theorize about will become stern realities: you'll pine, when it's too late, for human affection and some hold on life. My lad, you are storing up for yourself a sad old age." ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... always, a Christian. He travelled around the globe, and then told the world's story of liberty and of the war that crushed slavery and state sovereignty and consolidated the Union. With his books he has educated a generation of American boys and girls in patriotism. He died without entering into old age, for he was always ready to entertain a new idea. Let us glance at his name and inheritance. He was well named, and ever appreciated his heritage. In his Christian, middle, and family name, is a suggestion. ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... chimneys and fireplaces. For actual and even heating of all parts of the house, some type of heating plant is necessary both for comfort and economy. It is true that our forefathers lived, many of them to a ripe old age, with only fireplaces to heat their drafty homes and with no heat at all in their public buildings. They did, however, fortify themselves well with a daily draft of rum and they wore a quantity of clothing that would be intolerable ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... receiving that letter, thought that her niece was disposed of in the manner that had seemed most desirable to all her friends. Aunt Sarah loved her niece dearly, and by no means looked forward to improved happiness in her own old age when she should be left alone in the house at Uphill; but she entertained the view about young women which is usual with old women who have young women under their charge, and she thought it much best that this special ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... know himself, to track out and run to earth his own heart, and thus to lay open and read other men's hearts to their self-deceived owners in the light of his own. A matter, moreover, that he gets not one word of help toward in all his college curriculum. David was able to say in his old age that he fed the flock of God in Israel according to the integrity of his heart, and guided them by the skilfulness of his hands. But what years and years of shortcoming and failure in private and in public life lie behind that fine word 'integrity'! ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... churches. Can't wait for a high school, seminary, or college. The boy can't wait to become a youth, nor the youth a man. Youth rush into business with no great reserve of education or drill; of course they do poor, feverish work, and break down in middle life, and many die of old age in the forties. Everybody is in a hurry. Buildings are rushed up so quickly that they will not stand, and ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... his intemperate habits. "His face was terribly bloated from drink, and he had a look as if his intellect was almost as much decayed as his body," wrote a contemporary. {35a} "Matters grew worse in his old age," says Harriet Martineau, "when his habits of intemperance kept him out of the sight of ladies, and he got round him a set of ignorant and conceited young men, who thought they could set the whole world right by their destructive ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... true? Or do we not reiterate a lie? I deny old age. It is a false belief, a bad philosophy dimming the eyes of generations. Men and women may wear caps, but not because of age. In each one's heart, if he permit, a child keeps house to the very end. If Welsh rabbit lose its flavor, is it a sign of decaying power? I have yet to know that ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... leaving even the greater part of the management of his estate to the hands of others. He was exceedingly fond of literary men. Irving was his friend, and Halleck his business manager. He died at the age of eighty-four years and eight months, literally from old age. He was buried in St. ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... eloquent Preface defending the poet's deep humanity and his ideal of noble stoicism. The political side of his life was being recalled too; for some men of his time, his co-workers in the task of keeping the national spirit firm in the hope of an independent future, had been in their old age publishing their memoirs, where the part he played was for the first time publicly disclosed to the world. I learned then of things in his life I never knew before, things which outside the group of the initiated ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... her husband have gone to Californy; where, they do tell me, that lumps of pure gold lay about the ground as plenty as stones do around here! Anyways, they've all gone! all the little sisters as I have worked for, and cared for, and saved for—all gone, and left me alone in my old age!" ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... with here and there a tall, awkward, stern-wheel river steamer tied up, looking rather like an old-fashioned New Jersey seacoast hotel, covered with porches and jimcrack carving, painted white, embellished with a cupola and a pair of tall, thin smokestacks, and set adrift in its old age to masquerade ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... it was known that he had been blown up, the loss of his eye as well as the scars on his face were all put down to the same accident, and he excited interest as a gallant and maimed officer. He married, and lived contented and happy to a good old age. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... innocent! No daylight, no air, no virtue! They are without hope, and yet—there is the danger—they expect something. Realize all this misery. There are beings who live in death. There are little girls who at twelve begin by prostitution, and who end in old age at twenty. As to the severities of the criminal code, they are fearful. I speak somewhat at random, and do not pick my words. I say everything that comes into my head. No later than yesterday I who stand here saw a man lying in chains, naked, with stones piled on his chest, expire in torture. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo |
