"Climacteric" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... presently he came out and greeted me. I told him I was an American physician, who wished to look in his face and take his hand,—nothing more. I looked in his face, which was that of a thoughtful, hard-worked student, a little past the grand climacteric,—he was born in 1822. I took his hand, which has performed some of the most delicate and daring experiments ever ventured upon, with results of almost incalculable benefit to human industries, and the promise of triumph in the treatment of human disease ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... "it made one long to grow old";[1] but Montaigne was a Frenchman, and such sentiment was quite in his way. The dialogue, whether it produce this effect on many readers or not, is very pleasant reading: and when we remember that the author wrote it when he was exactly in his grand climacteric, and addressed it to his friend Atticus, who was within a year of the same age, we get that element of personal interest which makes all writings of the kind more attractive. The argument in defence of the paradox that it is a good thing to grow old, proceeds ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... be said of those, also few, from the early months of 1888. The last of all contains a reference to Robert Elsmere. Five days later, on April 15, a sudden exertion, it seems, brought on the fatal attack, and he died. He had outlived his grand climacteric of sixty-three (which he had thought would be "the end as well as the climax") by ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... disposed, in matters of advice and guidance, to waive any of the prerogatives which primogeniture confers. May they continue still in the same mind; and when they shall be seventy-five, and seventy-three, years old (I cannot spare them sooner), persist in treating me in my grand climacteric precisely as ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... of this spot—my door had been found out. I have too much gallantry left to suppose that my Breton had betrayed me; though a dagger at her heart and a purse in her hand might be powerful arguments against saving the life of an old soldier who had reached his grand climacteric. At all events, as I saw torch after torch rising along the roofs, I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... my great Climacteric, and am naturally a Man of a meek Temper. About a dozen Years ago I was married, for my Sins, to a young Woman of a good Family, and of an high Spirit; but could not bring her to close with me, before ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... to be equally unknown to all three leaders, and as the month of December which saw me thus miserably straitened saw me reach the age of forty, which I regard, differing in that from many, as the grand climacteric of a man's life, it will be believed that I had need of all the courage which religion and a ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... genius, and glowing with hope. I will not speak of you, his feeble and unhappy father; I will not speak of us, his mourning friends. Russia has lost her beloved, her national poet. She has lost him at the very moment when his powers had reached their maturity, lost him when he had reached that climacteric—that point at which our intellect, bidding farewell to the fervid, and sometimes irregular force of youth agitated by genius, devotes itself to more tranquil, more orderly powers of riper manhood, fresh as the first period, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... from him. He may have been sorely tempted to reply, but I am apt to believe that the rumors that reached him from abroad and at home did not then affect him as they might have done earlier. He was at his grand climacteric, he had passed his sixty-third year, his temper was less hasty than it had been in his youth, and his nerves had not yet received the severe strain from whose effects he suffered during the ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... Sanford," said Henry, looking at Jessie, "he is really a remarkable man. My son has such confidence in him that he seemed quite relieved when I had passed my grand climacteric and could get on his list. You know he takes no one under sixty-three. By the way, governor," he added, turning around with some ado, so as to face George, "I heard he had been treating your rheumatism lately. Has he seemed ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... maturity, seniority; epoch, period, time; century; eon; climacteric; old age, dotage, senescence, senility, decrepitude, superannuation; longevity. Associated Words: nostology, geratology, geromorphism, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... of the Roman Catholic tenet of the Assumption of the Virgin, we have limited our researches to the writers who lived before the Nicene Council. That Council has always been considered a cardinal point,—a sort of climacteric in the history of the early Church. It was the first Council to which all the bishops of Christendom were summoned; and the influence of its decrees is felt beneficially in the Catholic Church to this very day. In fixing upon this Council as our present boundary line, I was influenced ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... he says in the following letter, reached his grand climacteric—his sixty-third year, according to the old belief, the last and most dangerous of the periodical crises to which man's bodily life was supposed to be subject—and the winter of 1786-87 laid him so low with a chronic obstruction of the bowels that Robertson wrote ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... has given its name to that brilliant generation of poets, novelists, painters and philosophers which, as Theophile Gautier says with just pride, "will make its mark on the future and be spoken of as one of the climacteric epochs of the human mind." The revolution of July inspired Delacroix with one of his most interesting pictures. Le 28 Juillet is the only one of his works in which he depicts modern life, and was a striking ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... in which Cato came upon the stage, was the grand climacteric of Addison's reputation. Upon the death of Cato he had, as is said, planned a tragedy in the time of his travels, and had for several years the four first acts finished, which were shown to such as were likely to spread their admiration. They were seen by Pope and ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... pink of condition, by Gad—good for a liberal twenty years yet, and more—bar accident. Indefinite postponement of the grand climacteric in this case.—All the same a leetle, lee-tie bit dangerous, I'm thinking, for both, if she tumbles ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... fancy, the ardors that honest men have. Who knows, as your Bell once spitefully said, but he may have half a dozen creatures to quit his hands of before he engages for life?—Yet I believe you must not expect him to be honest on this side of his grand climacteric. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... designed, as Sir Roger and his friends were designed, to carry the human interest of a distinct personality through the whole series of papers. The "Tatler's" personality was Isaac Bickerstaff, Physician and Astrologer; as to years, just over the grand climacteric, sixty-three, mystical multiple of nine and seven; dispensing counsel from his lodgings at Shire Lane, and seeking occasional rest in the vacuity of thought proper to ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... the character of this 'grand climacteric' are often marked. Not unfrequently the woman becomes more masculine in thought and habit, as has been admirably described by Dr. Tilt:—'There are almost always while the change is progressing various forms of nervous irritability and some amount ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... his story with a certain youthful expectancy, the air of one who confides, counting upon a delicate understanding. But Sam O'Neill, though perfectly willing to be delicate, could only say, after an anti-climacteric pause: "Is that right? Well, that bunch needed to grovel all right"—which was a little vague, say what you ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison |
