"Second childhood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is called to recite. Forth steps a row of queer-looking little fellows, wearing square-skirted coats, and small clothes, with buttons at the knee. They look like so many grandfathers in their second childhood. These lads are to be sent to Cambridge, and educated for the learned professions. Old Master Cheever has lived so long, and seen so many generations of school-boys grow up to be men, that now he can ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... which, with the microscope, may be detected the hairs of missionary martyrs. In fine weather, of course, these attractions would be advertised in vain; but the fact is, our whole community has been reduced by the cruelty of the elements to a sort of second childhood; the rain which permeates everything is ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... grotesque figures, these caricatures of humanity! A comical creature, surely, this Chinaman, the pantaloon of civilization. How useful he has been to us for our farces, our comic operas! This yellow baby, in his ample pinafore, who lived thousands of years ago, who has now passed into this strange second childhood. ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... — N. age; oldness^ &c adj.; old age, advanced age, golden years; senility, senescence; years, anility^, gray hairs, climacteric, grand climacteric, declining years, decrepitude, hoary age, caducity^, superannuation; second childhood, second childishness; dotage; vale of years, decline of life, sear and yellow leaf [Macbeth]; threescore years and ten; green old age, ripe age; longevity; time of life. seniority, eldership; elders &c (veteran) 130; firstling; doyen, father; primogeniture. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and when I remembered how for years I had laughed at the tenderness of the fairest women of the French and Scottish courts—I could not help saying to myself, "Poor fool! you have achieved an early second childhood." But when I recalled Madge in all her beauty, purity, and helplessness, my cynicism left me, and I, who had enjoyed all of life's ambitious possibilities, calmly reached the conclusion that it is sometimes a blessed privilege to be a fool. While I dwelt on thoughts of Madge, all the latent ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
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