"Octogenarian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... take kindly to his enforced retirement? Far from it. With all the querulous impatience of an octogenarian, full of whims, sick in soul and body, suspicious, irritable, dying inch by inch, a prey to insomnia, his neuralgic pains, his swollen veins, in short, a crabbed old man, awaiting the call—behold now ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... and the crowd broke into a cheer that echoed strangely on the night-air. It had hardly died away when a quavering, high-pitched voice started 'God Save the King,' and with a sturdy indifference to pitch the rest followed, the octogenarian who had begun it sounding clear above the others as he half-whistled and half-sang the anthem through his two ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... My octogenarian came to a standstill at last at the stage-door, and seemed relieved at having won safely through ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... now discovered certain facts about Mr. Cazalette. He was an octogenarian. He was uncannily active. He had an almost imp-like desire to live—and to dance when he ought to have been wrapped in blankets and saying his last prayers. And a few minutes later, when we were seated round our host's table, I discovered another ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... new scheme of rationing spread very rapidly. A few days later we heard that Sir Meesly Goormay, the most self-indulgent and incorrigible egotist in the neighbourhood, had introduced a collection of octogenarian aunts to his household, and, when I was performing my afternoon beat, I was just in time to see the butcher's boy, assisted by the gardener, delivering what looked to be a baron of beef at Sir Meesly's back door. It was an enervating and disgusting spectacle, well ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various
... octogenarian whose teeth gave out before his dry toast, she "hadn't finished, but she stopped" there, being clean out ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... during three hundred and sixty years and more; then the over-confident octogenarian's prophecy failed. During the tumult of the French Revolution the promise was forgotten and the grace withdrawn. It has remained in disuse ever since. Joan never asked to be remembered, but France has remembered her with an inextinguishable love and reverence; Joan never asked for a statue, but France ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... twenty books. But you might live to be an octogenarian yourself without meeting twenty persons who would have read them all. It would not be a hard matter, though, to find those who have read one of his books twenty times; perhaps this very green-covered book with "Sartor Resartus" on ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... his last visit he had told Paul Hayne that he did not wish to live to be old—"an octogenarian, far less a centenarian, like old Parr." He hoped that he might stay until he was fifty or fifty-five; "one hates the idea of a mummy, intellectual or physical." If those coveted years had been added to his thirty-eight beautiful ones, a brighter radiance might have crowned ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... remembered him twelve years ago—a mere boy in appearance, with clean-shaven face, dapper and slight figure, the alertness and grace of youth, and a face smooth as the cheek of a maiden. And now—bearded, slightly bowed, with lines deep as the wrinkles of an octogenarian, he sometimes looks like the grandfather of his youthful self. It is in the deep-set, brilliant eyes that you still see all the fire of his extraordinary political genius, and the embers, that may quickly burst into flame, of ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... imperial archdukes and ladies of honor. Subsequently a purse containing thirty pieces of silver was presented by the Emperor to each of the old men, and by the Empress to each of the venerable dames, one of whom had all but attained her hundredth year, while the youngest of the twelve was a hearty octogenarian. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... past with their stories more vividly than men with any other experiences. There were two old New-Yorkers that I used to love to sit talking with about the stage. One was a scholar and a writer of note; a pleasant old gentleman, with the fresh cheek of an octogenarian Cupid. The other not less noted in his way, deep in local lore, large-brained, full-blooded, of somewhat perturbing and tumultuous presence. It was good to hear them talk of George Frederic Cooke, of Kean, and the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... have a record kept and on his return would incorporate it into his book. Exactly what advantages he expected to derive therefrom are not apparent, though I presume that he hoped to draw conclusions as to the best time for planting crops. In reading it I was many times reminded of a Cleveland octogenarian who for fifty-seven years kept a record twice a day of the thermometer and barometer. Near the end of his life he brought the big ledgers to the Western Reserve Historical Society, and I happened to be present on the occasion. "You have studied the subject for a long ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... this persecution; a Priest named O'Loughrane, who had accidentally sailed in the same ship with the Earls to France, was taken prisoner on his return, hanged and quartered. Conor O'Devany, Bishop of Down and Conor, an octogenarian, suffered martyrdom with heroic constancy at Dublin, in 1611. Two years before, John, Lord Burke of Brittas, was executed in like manner on a charge of having participated in the Catholic demonstrations which took place at Limerick on the accession of King ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... (orphaned though he was in early childhood) he had even found it hard to believe there was no exemption for those to whom he stood in any personal relation. He remembered how, soon after he went to Eton, he had received almost with incredulity the news of the death of his god-father, Lord Stackley, an octogenarian.... He took from the table his album, knowing that on one of the earliest pages was inscribed his boyish sense of that bereavement. Yes, here the passage was, written in a large ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... presently to her companion, "that Mr. So and so, the octogenarian, is dead. Now, what on earth is an ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... The poor octogenarian blushed like a girl of fifteen. Nothing could have confused her more than this inopportune reference to the afternoon of the swing. Luis and Fernanda took to seeing each other there once or twice a week. ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... the utmost candour. "Young women of twenty- three do not marry old men of seventy-seven for love. You may imagine a young girl marrying a penniless youth for love, but can you picture her marrying a penniless octogenarian for the same reason? I fancy not. I speak quite frankly to you, Braden, and without reserve. We have always been friends. It would be folly to attempt to delude you into believing that a sentimental motive is back of our—shall we ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... this, so strange was it to receive a lesson in energy from a dying octogenarian. Yet after an instant Nick answered with due modesty: "I haven't been clever enough, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... laughing, "I'm not afraid, or I shouldn't have brought you girls up here. I don't mind admitting I have one friend, a wise old octogenarian, rich as Croesus, whom I wouldn't trust up here alone! He'd steal a gem as quickly as a ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... register worth all the reasons in the world, "I AM OLD AND WELL STRICKEN IN YEARS," he was wont to say; and I never found any one bold enough to answer the argument. Apart from this vantage that he kept over all who were not yet octogenarian, he had some other drawbacks as a gardener. He shrank the very place he cultivated. The dignity and reduced gentility of his appearance made the small garden cut a sorry figure. He was full of tales of greater situations in his ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pathetic, and on the face of it accurately truthful, account of the close of his life in Mr. Forster's admirable and most graphic life of him, I never knew Landor. For the more than octogenarian old man whom I knew at Florence was clearly not the Landor whom England had known and admired for so many and such honoured years. Of all the painful story of the regrettable circumstances which caused him ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... heart was easily touched. Partly in vanity, partly in playfulness, he encouraged the sentimental-exaggeration of his correspondent; but, becoming afraid of the world's laughter, ended by reproving her warmth, and by chilling, under the refrigerating influence of his cautions, all the romance of the octogenarian. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... An octogenarian of my acquaintance informs me that he heard himself thus anathematised when, leaving his native village with his bride, he refused to comply with the extortionate demands ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... least, the charity had gone on, and the estates had prospered. Wool-carding in Barchester there was no longer any; so the bishop, dean, and warden, who took it in turn to put in the old men, generally appointed some hangers-on of their own; worn-out gardeners, decrepit grave-diggers, or octogenarian sextons, who thankfully received a comfortable lodging and one shilling and fourpence a day, such being the stipend to which, under the will of John Hiram, they were declared to be entitled. Formerly, indeed,—that is, ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... End of London is concerned, there is not, perhaps, very much to say. The second-hand bookselling trade for the past half-century has been confined in a large measure to three firms—R. Gladding, an octogenarian, who dealt almost exclusively in theological books, whose shop was at 76, Whitechapel Road, and who retired at the end of 1893; E. George and Sons, who have been for many years established at 231, Whitechapel Road, and have lately acquired Gladding's shop; and Joseph ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... ended, every man, priest or layman, youth or octogenarian, had cast his own die of fate, had staked the safety of himself and family, and hurled back into the teeth of the great Bear from the north the unanimous answer of a desperate and downtrodden people who preferred a future of unknown terror ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... home late, Fenwick and Mrs. Nightingale had gone out in the back-garden to enjoy the sweet air of that rare phenomenon—a really fine spring night in England—leaving the Major indoors because of his bronchial tubes. The late seventies shrink from night air, even when one means to be a healthy octogenarian. Also, they go away to bed, secretively, when no one is looking—at least, the Major did in this case. Of course, he was staying the night, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... veteran, old man, seer, patriarch, graybeard; grandfather, grandsire; grandam; gaffer, gammer; crone; pantaloon; sexagenarian, octogenarian, nonagenarian, centenarian; old stager; dotard &c 501. preadamite^, Methuselah, Nestor, old Parr; elders; forefathers &c (paternity) 166. Phr. superfluous lags the veteran ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... their profession.[12] Taylor lived through the Commonwealth, and Lowin far into the reign of Charles the Second, ultimately reaching his ninety-third year. Their last days were passed in indigence, and Lowin when an octogenarian was reduced to keeping the inn of the "Three ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... Nicolas's great edition. Of the further additions made in the fifth edition, Sir Harris Nicolas makes this just criticism: "It is questionable," he says, "whether the additions which he then made to it have increased its interest. The garrulity and sentiments of an octogenarian are very apparent in some of the alterations; and the subdued colouring of religious feeling which prevails throughout the former editions, and forms one of the charms of the piece, is, in this impression, so much heightened as ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... expected to be reasoners. Effects of modern education on the reasoning powers. Education of former days, illustrated by an anecdote of an octogenarian. Extracts from her correspondence. Difficulty in getting the ears of mankind. The reasoning powers in man susceptible of cultivation indefinitely. Reflections on the importance of maternal effort and ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... open. In conversation I am impassioned, and oppose what I deem error with an eagerness which is often mistaken for personal asperity; but I am ever so swallowed up in the thing said that I forget my opponent. Such am I." The Rev. Leapidge Smith, in his "Reminiscences of an Octogenarian," remembered him as "a tall, dark, handsome young man, with long, black, flowing hair; eyes not merely dark, but black, and keenly penetrating; a fine forehead, a deep-toned, harmonious voice; a manner never to ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Trevelloe, a remarkably vigorous and intelligent octogenarian who has been in his place over half a century, gave me some interesting information about the daws. He says they have greatly increased in recent years in this part of Cornwall because they are no longer molested; ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... naturally addressed herself to the firm which had published her grandfather's works. Its founder, a personal friend of the philosopher's, had survived the Olympian group of which he had been a subordinate member, long enough to bestow his octogenarian approval on Paulina's pious undertaking. But he had died soon afterward; and Miss Anson found herself confronted by his grandson, a person with a brisk commercial view of his trade, who was said to have put "new blood" ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... supremely old; it has arrived at the age at which such things cease to feel the years; the waves of time have worn its edges to a kind of patient dulness; there is something mild and smooth, like the stillness, the deafness, of an octogenarian, even in its rudeness of ornament, and it has become insensible to differences of a century or two. The cathedral interested me much less than Our Lady the Great, and I have not the spirit to go into statistics about ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... than "Otello" this comic opera of the youthful octogenarian disclosed the importance which Boito had assumed in the development of Verdi. That development is one of the miracles of music. In manner Verdi represents a full century of operatic writing. He began when, in Italy at least, the libretto was a mere stalking horse on which ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... days of self-denial I presented myself one evening at the president's house, a look of annoyance with which Gladys greeted me seemed connected in some way with the presence of Boller. In my state of mind I should have suspected any octogenarian who smiled on Gladys Todd as plotting against my happiness. That she was essential to my happiness I realized as I watched her, in the shaded lamplight, her face turned to him as she listened intently to an account of his recent visit to Washington. They did not treat me as though I made a crowd. ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... were. But the truth of your remark is indisputable. Ah, look! Is not that a face which might make an octogenarian forget that he is not a boy?—what regular features!—and what ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... only for her, and his weakness in her presence was unbounded; he obeyed the creature's mere look, and watched her movements as a dog watches every gesture of his master. In short, as Madame Hochon remarked, at fifty-seven years of age he seemed older than Monsieur Hochon, an octogenarian. ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... was, indeed, losing her reason. Or was it he himself who was losing his reason, taking seriously this parochial scandal, and believing that because a doddering hunchback of seventy-five had borrowed an ethical treatise from an octogenarian a marriage must be on the tapis? Yet, on more than one occasion, he came upon circumstances which seemed to justify the popular supposition. There could be no doubt, for example, that when at the conclusion of the synagogue service ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... the next witness, deserves, by his position and ability, our very sincere respect; compared with the octogenarian sentimentalism of Jean Kostka, the violence of Signor Margiotta, and the paste-pot of M. de la Rive, one breathes a pleine poitrine in the altitudes of ecclesiastical erudition, artificial as their eminence turns out; the art sacerdotal does not concern itself with preposterous narratives, so that ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... subject for thought or action to a generation as eager as the ancient Athenians for some new thing, simple legends of the past like that which we have transcribed have undoubtedly lost in a great degree their interest. The lore of the fireside is becoming obsolete, and with the octogenarian few who still linger among us will perish the unwritten history of border life ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... his mind's eye its ancient aspect; but if it chance to him to land at the Battery on a clear and still Sabbath morning, and before the bells summon forth the worshippers, and to walk thence to Union Square in company with an octogenarian Knickerbocker of good memory, local pride, and fluent speech, he will obtain a mental photograph of the past that transmutes the familiar scene by a quaint and vivid aerial perspective. Then the "Middle Road" of the beginning of this century ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains Clank over sceptred cities; nations melt From power's high pinnacle, when they have felt The sunshine for a while, and downward go Like lauwine loosened from the mountain's belt: Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo! The octogenarian chief, ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... contemporaries. Surely when a schoolboy at Eton he must somewhere have discovered the elixir of life, or have been bathed by some beneficent fairy in the well of perpetual youth. Gladly would many a man of fifty exchange physique with this hale and hearty octogenarian. Only in one respect does he show any trace of advancing years. His hearing is not quite so good as it was, but still it is far better than that of Cardinal Manning, who became very deaf in his closing years. Otherwise Mr. Gladstone is hale and hearty. His eye is not dim, neither ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... holds equally true of genius: so many as are not delighted by it are disturbed, perplexed, irritated. The beholder either recognises it as a projected form of his own being, that moves before him with a glory round its head, or recoils from it as a spectre."[1] The octogenarian critic of the Johnsonian school recoils from "Frankenstein" as from an incarnation of the Evil Spirit: she does not know what to make of the "Tales of my Landlord"; and she inquires of an Irish acquaintance whether she retained recollection enough of her ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Max when he leaves school," remarked Caesar languidly, "he'll let me manage him in my own way till he is an octogenarian." ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... veteran, patriarch, Nestor, elder, oldster, Methuselah, dotard; gaffer, crone, geezer; centenarian, octogenarian, sexagenarian, nonagenarian. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... century, she would, with much apparent gusto, recount to her pleased auditory how many a time and often she had made the "penny come quick," by the above-recited inexpensive vocation; until at length her saying became a by-word in the neighbourhood, and universal consent fixed on the ever-happy octogenarian's triplet as a fitting appellation for the then nameless and retired little nook, but now ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... called a convention, and organized the Oregon State Woman Suffrage Association, with Harriet W. Williams, a venerated octogenarian, president. This estimable woman had been one of the earliest leaders of the woman suffrage movement in the State of New York, and her presence at the head of our meetings in Oregon was a source of genuine satisfaction ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... now. You see big dusty ball-rooms in the old taverns: ball-rooms that have had no dancing in them for half a century, and where they give you a bed sometimes. There used to be academies, too, in the hill towns, where they furnished a rude but serviceable article of real learning, and where the local octogenarian remembers seeing something famous in the way of theatricals on examination-day; but neither his children nor his grandchildren have seen the like. There's a decay of the religious sentiment, and ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... identity between the embryo and the octogenarian, we must have it also between the octogenarian and the corpse, and do away with death except as a rather striking change of thought and habit, greater indeed in degree than, but still, in kind, substantially the same ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... inclination at the stirring period of the world when he entered into active life, was military. But to show his persevering industry in his practice as a lawyer, and his power of enduring fatigue, even when almost an octogenarian, the following letter, ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... day through the hilly country and, a hundred and fifty miles from Calcutta, the flourishing coal-mining district of Asansol brings me again to the East India Railway and semi-European society and accommodation. Instead of doughy chuppatties, throat-blistering curry, and octogenarian chicken, I this morning breakfast off a welcome bottle of Bass's ale, baker's ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... had polished up on his grammar and vocabulary considerably since Jack Ready first encountered him as second cook on the seal-poaching schooner Polly Ann, Captain "Terror" Carson commanding, still, a word like "Octogenarian" stumped him, ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... touches on many parts of the Empire, and two continents besides, with my faculty for the appreciation of good literature still unimpaired, with my domestic interests so dear to me, and my constant knitting for the infants under the care of the State Inspector—I find my life as an octogenarian more varied in its occupations and interests than ever before. Looking back from the progressive heights of 1910 through the long vista of years, numbering upwards of four-fifths of a century, I rejoice at the progress the world has made. Side by side with the development of my State ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... on, but again silently pondering that here again was something mysterious in this honest octogenarian's mood. There was an undercurrent of sorrow which, he was sure, was wholly distinct from the anxieties of his mistress and her household, and he wondered what it might be. Surely, for an old man, though wifeless and childless he had much to make him happy. The devotion of the family in which he ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... an arm-chair, the octogenarian sister, like in all points save clothes to her brother, sat listening to the reading of the newspaper and knitting stockings, a work for which sight is needless. Both eyes had cataracts; but she obstinately refused to submit to ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... few days seemed to reunite dissevered Rough-and-Ready. Both factions hastened to the bereaved Daddy with condolements, and offers of aid and assistance. But the old man received them sternly. A change had come over the weak and yielding octogenarian. Those who expected to find him maudlin, helpless, disconsolate, shrank from the cold, hard eyes and truculent voice that bade them "begone," and "leave him with his dead." Even his own friends ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... to the last difficulty which confronts the collector with no previous knowledge of shanties. As a mere matter of dates, any sailors now remaining from sailing ship days must necessarily be very old men. I have found that their octogenarian memories are not always to be trusted. On one occasion an old man sang quite glibly a tune which was in reality a pasticcio of three separate shanties all known to me. I have seen similar results in print, since ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... octogenarian may claim personal identity with the infant, the infant may certainly do so with the impregnate ovum from which it has developed. If so, the octogenarian will prove to have been a fish once in this his present life. This is as certain as that ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... continuity between the earliest known life and ourselves, so that we both are and are not personally identical with the unicellular organism from which we have descended in the course of many millions of years, exactly in the same ways as an octogenarian both is and is not personally identical with the microscopic impregnate ovum from which he grew up. Everything both is and is not. There is no such thing as strict identity between any two things in any two consecutive seconds. In strictness ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... house they sped with the stricken octogenarian, for he was "alone in the world," and she would not take him to the cottage where he had lived for many years by himself, a bleak little house, a derelict of the "early days" left stranded far down in the town between a woollen-mill and the water-works. The workmen were beginning ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... boiling with indignation over this display of loathsome cowardice. And what was the mighty adversary like? Sweden! That invincible world power full of doddering senility! He must compare Sweden to an octogenarian who sat, dead drunk and feeble, and boasted of his warlike temper: "I'll never yield—never!" And when Parliament heard that quavering voice it grew palsied with fear. No, he, Irgens, should have ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... our host was very brisk and polite, and did the honors of his suite of large rooms with much grace and fantastic hospitality. Dancing about him, and making friends freely with us all meanwhile, was the little girl, Imogen by name, who was accredited as the octogenarian's offspring. She was some four or five years of age, but intellectually precocious, though a complete child, too. Mr. Kirkup said that she, like her beautiful mother, was a powerful medium, and that he often used to communicate through her with her mother, who would seem to have ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... rare luck of having from the very lips of this octogenarian, an account of the share he had in conducting as one of the cavalry detachment detailed to escort Colonel Winfield Scott and brother officers from Beauport, where they were confined as prisoners on parole, to the district prison in St. Stanislas street (the Morrin College) from whence the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... grotesque vagaries of Protestantism that have ever come under our notice. One clergyman told his parishioners not to scruple about telling lies as to the party for which they intended to vote. Another characterized the Liberals as "a set of devils." Archdeacon Denison, an octogenarian ecclesiastic, informed his audience at a public meeting that they "might as well cheer for the devil as ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... had actually to re-acquire them from their own children and disciples. The Scriptures declare that the preceptor is ever the sire, and the disciple is the son. Difference of age would not disturb the relationship. A youth of sixteen might thus be the father of an octogenarian. With Brahmanas, reverence is due ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... old, decrepit, hollow-eyed octogenarian, leaning on his staff, "make the best of your youth. I, too, once had a Fillide! I was handsomer than you then! Alas! if we could ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... she passed before the house of her gallant, the sweetheart of former days, a carpenter by trade; now an octogenarian, who sat outside his door all the livelong day, while the young ones, his sons, worked in the shop. It was said that he never had consoled himself for her loss, for neither in first or second marriage would she have him; but with old age his feeling ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... regicidal daring been more strangely coupled with octogenarian prudence, than in many of the predatory enterprises of Paul. It is this combination of apparent incompatibilities which ranks ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... broke in an octogenarian treble, that seemed to come from high up in the head of Uncle Issy, the bass-viol player; "But cast your eyes, good friends, 'pon a little slip o' heart's delight down in the nave, and mark the flowers 'pon the bonnet nid-nodding like bees in a bell, ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... an octogenarian, with silvery hair, and a withered face from which the vitality seemed to have retreated to the eyes. He walked with difficulty, for one of his shrunken legs ended in a painfully deformed foot, which was cased in a species of velvet bag, and obliged him to use a crutch when the arm of ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... left there, as everywhere else, souvenirs of his generosity. The widow of a general officer, living in retirement at Joinville (I regret that I have forgotten the name of this venerable lady, who was more than an octogenarian), came to Troyes, notwithstanding her great age, to ask aid from his Majesty. Her husband having served only before the Revolution, the pension which she had enjoyed had been taken from her under the Republic, and she was in ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... though, of course, it superadded certain characteristics of its own, never obliterated or even concealed the marks left by those earlier phases, and the octogenarian Cardinal was a beautifully-mannered, well-informed, sagacious old gentleman who, but for his dress, might have passed for a Cabinet Minister, an eminent judge, or ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... Innocent IV. With Honorius the emperor's relations were at first friendly; both were honestly anxious to take a crusade in hand. The two were brought no further than the verge of a serious breach about Frederick's exercise of authority over rebellious ecclesiastics. But Gregory IX., though an octogenarian, was recognised as of transcendent ability and indomitable resolution; and his will clashed with that of the young emperor, a brilliant prince, born some ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... reproduces the twinkle in the Imperial eye as William of Potsdam offers to a quondam ally the foot which belongs to his senile and helpless brother of Hapsburg. The roar of anguish from the prostrate octogenarian provokes, as we see, not pity but a grim smile. Italy's monarch, we may imagine, is ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers |
