"Decrepitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seventh stage of pianodum, sans teeth, sans wire, sans everything—he saw the dark-eyed girl and reined his horse. As he did so, she seated herself upon the hair-cloth stool, pressed a white finger to a discolored key and smiled at the not unexpected result—the squeak of decrepitude. While her hand still rested on the board and her features shone strongly in relief against the fire like a cameo profile set in bloodstone, a figure approached, and, leaning gracefully upon the palsied instrument, bent over her with smiling lips. It was the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... her stool, and—when or how it came about, Curdie could not tell—the same instant she stood before him a tall, strong woman—plainly very old, but as grand as she was old, and only rather severe-looking. Every trace of the decrepitude and witheredness she showed as she hovered like a film about her wheel, had vanished. Her hair was very white, but it hung about her head in great plenty, and shone like silver in the moonlight. Straight as a ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... 'Grandfather's Clock.' Hard by lay the pipe, fashioned of the 'foam of perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn,' the pipe on which, perchance, some swain had discoursed sweet music near the shady heights of High Holborn. The cradle of infancy, the gamp of decrepitude, the tricycle of fleeting youth, the paraffin lamp which had lighted bridal gaiety, the flask which had held the foaming malt,—all were gathered here, and the dust lay deep ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... down at five or six years. In California the profitable life of the peach sometimes reaches twenty or more years, if growing under exceptionally good conditions; but 35 years would seem to be at least on the borders of decrepitude. Growing at the tips shows that you have not pruned annually to induce the growth ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... for fear of arriving too late for the fray. Go, braves, to fight with the blessing of the Fatherland. With you goes all Spain, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, from Irun to Tarifa. With what envy do We contemplate you weighing anchor to leave our shores! Oh! why does juvenility, or decrepitude, or duty deprive us of the joy of taking part in your enterprise? But no! with you goes our Spanish heart.... May the Immaculate Virgin, whose scapulary hangs around your necks and whose blessed image floats on your ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... strength still well able to know the physical comforts of food and rest, and attendance; he was in his second childhood, in his ninetieth year, and was unconscious of the debt he owed her; even, with a curious caprice of decrepitude, he disliked her, and noticed nothing, except the raven when it shrieked its "Tue! Tue! Tue!" But to Cigarette he was as sacred as a god; had he not fought beneath the glance, and gazed upon the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... of encouragement to Fanchette, whose face was streaming with perspiration; and together we turned and addressed ourselves to our task, fatigue—for we had had no practice in carrying burdens on the head—enabling us to counterfeit the decrepitude of age almost ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... from the too-curious observation of those who dwelt in the upper stories of the houses opposite. These houses opposite, compared with Gable Inn, are of a mushroom modernness, and yet are old enough (having begun with a debauched and sickly constitution) to have fallen into an almost complete decrepitude. Their stately neighbour seems to be less grimy with the London smoke than they are, has always been less susceptible to outside evil influences, even of that unescapable sort, and drives them to ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... loin a leur teinte grise et blanchatre melee de sillons d'un rouge peu fonce. A l'est les montagnes calcaires laissent le granit a decouvert, et lui demeurent comme adossees. Celles qui leur succedent offrent des marques, effrayantes de decrepitude; leurs cretes sont demantelees, et leurs flancs sont lesardes et herisses de rochers suspendus. Le fond de la vallee semble enseveli sous les debris de cette montagne a demi ecroulees. On trouve, parmi les ruines, des blocs de plusieurs milliers de pieds cubes. ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... which is most terrible to old age, that it has no home here but the grave—no pillow on which to forget its cares but the dust. The sight of these wretched old men, turned out from, the little holdings that sheltered their helplessness, to beg a morsel, through utter charity, in the decrepitude of life, was enough to make a man wish that he had never been born to witness such a wanton abuse of that power which was entrusted to man for the purpose of diffusing happiness instead of misery. All these were known to Raymond, who, as far as he could, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... declared that whatever his opinion might be as to the doctrines of the Socialists, he for one should throw in his lot with the people, until the Government atoned for their atrocity by showing that they were prepared to listen to the demands of men who knew what they wanted, and whom the decrepitude of society forced into pushing their demands ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... would have been more philosophical to enquire, not why it had occurred, but how it could have been so long postponed. During the reign of Charles, the sixteenth century had been advancing steadily in strength as the once omnipotent Emperor lapsed into decrepitude. That extraordinary century had not dawned upon the earth only to increase the strength of absolutism and superstition. The new world had not been discovered, the ancient world reconquered, the printing-press perfected, only that the inquisition might reign ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... upon to consider the uncertainty of human life, the immutable certainty of death, and the vanity of all human pursuits. Decrepitude and decay are written upon every living thing. The cradle and the coffin stand in juxtaposition to each other; and it is a melancholy truth that so soon as we begin to live, that moment we also begin to die. It is passing strange ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... and swiftness belong to them. Also Fairies with wings are quite comprehensible creatures; for one fancies them so light and airy and transparent, living upon honey dew and ambrosia, that wings wherewith to fly seem their natural appendages. But the decrepitude of old age and the wings of youth and power are a strange mixture:—a bald head, and a Fairy's swiftness!—how ridiculous it seems, and so I think I may well say Time is a very ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... an ordinary way. Burr lived then in Jersey City. His office (23 Nassau street) swarmed with applicants for aid, and he seemed now to have quite lost the power of refusing. In no other respects, bodily or mental, did he exhibit signs of decrepitude. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... sour cherries and plums. It stands boldly against the sky, with its elbows at all angles and its scaly bark holding the snow. Against evergreens it shows its ruggedness specially well. It presents forms to attract the artist. Even when gnarly and broken, it does not convey an impression of decrepitude and decay but rather of a hardy old character bearing his burdens. In every winter landscape I look ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... Eagles, but your nest is shattered by the lightning! (He takes up his cloak and liberty cap.) In passing from your threshold, I leave the curse, due to decrepitude, behind me. I devote you and your ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... their placid servitude, decorations tossed to them by the careless hand of a master who is satisfied if they but sign his decrees, with the i's properly dotted, and the t's unexceptionably crossed. They are the crumply officials who melted into defencelessness and moral decrepitude after Frederick the Great, and again at the glance of Napoleon, and who owe the little stiffness they have to the fact that Bismarck lived. It is one of the things a full-blooded man is least able to bear in Germany, to hear the querulous questioning of the great deeds of this man, whose boot-legs ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... which now renders the Sea Facade as important as that to the Piazzetta. There was only a narrow walk between the pillars and the water; and the old palace of Ziani still faced the Piazzetta, and interrupted, by its decrepitude, the magnificence of the square where ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... the order of civilization in all parts of the world been the same? Does not the growth of society resemble individual growth? Do not both exhibit to us phases of youth, of maturity, of decrepitude? To a person who has carefully considered the progressive civilization of groups of men in regions of the earth far apart, who has observed the identical forms under which that advancing civilization has manifested itself, is it not clear that the procedure is determined by law? The religious ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... enamel angel-fish pins, and carried a number of them with him most of the time, so that he could create membership on short notice. It was just another of the harmless and happy diversions of his gentler side. He was always fond of youth and freshness. He regarded the decrepitude of old age as an unnecessary part of life. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of hair and beard, dressed out in red and blue and green jerseys, with knitted sashes about their waists, and red and blue and green tuques on their heads. Drunken rows were their delight, and fights so fierce that many a man came out battered and bruised to death or to life-long decrepitude. They were sitting on the benches that ran round the room, or lounging against the bar singing, talking, blaspheming. At the sight of Macdonald Dubh and his men there fell a dead silence, and then growls of recognition, but Murphy was not yet ready, and roaring out "Dh-r-r-i-n-k-s," he seized ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... sympathetic touch a gentle stream of melody flowed from the old-time piano, scarcely stronger toned in its decrepitude, than the spinet of a former century. A few moments before, under Graciella's vigorous hands, it had seemed to protest at the dissonances it had been compelled to emit; now it seemed to breathe ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... prostitution, which nest it had itself created—scattering its remains over the hospitals, jails and streets of the big city. Even to this day a few of the former proprietresses who have remained alive and have reached the limit of decrepitude, and quondam housekeepers, fat and hoarse, like pug-dogs grown old, recall this common destruction with sorrow, horror, and ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... and sincerity of soul. The voice, the glance, the face itself, seem in harmony with the feelings; and thus it happens that the sternest judge, the most sceptical lawyer, the least complying of usurers, always hesitate to admit decrepitude of heart or the corruption of worldly calculation while the eyes are still bathed in purity and no wrinkles seam the brow. Charles, so far, had had no occasion to apply the maxims of Parisian morality; up to this time he was still endowed with the ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... or permanently derange them. Madness or idiotcy may utterly extinguish the most excellent and delicate of those powers. In old age the mind gradually withers; and as it grew and was strengthened with the body, so does it together with the body sink into decrepitude. Assuredly these are convincing evidences that so soon as the organs of the body are subjected to the laws of inanimate matter, sensation, and perception, and apprehension, are at an end. It is probable that what we ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... unreasonable rapidity. The years crawled like snails. But the sum of them rose by leaps and bounds to an appalling total. Alice found two grey hairs in her red-gold locks. Will had to use glasses for reading fine print at night. From their point of view, decrepitude, senility, dotage stared them in the face, while the bright voyage of life which they were resolved to make only together, was threatened with shipwreck among the shoals ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... in your hand, my dear fellow," said he (for in those days youths did not call each other "old man"—with sad sense of their own decrepitude). "Bob, you are losing your freedom of touch. You must come out of these stony holes, and look at ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... in hand, was pursuing his solitary walk along the centre of the street. As he drew near the advancing soldiers, and as the roll of their drum came full upon his ear, the old man raised himself to a loftier mien, while the decrepitude of age seemed to fall from his shoulders, leaving him in gray but unbroken dignity. Now he marched onward with a warrior's step, keeping time to the military music. Thus the aged form advanced on one side and the whole parade of soldiers ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the seventeenth-century moralists who had preceded him, and also had taught us that we should mistrust our passions and disdain our enthusiasms. To see how completely Vauvenargues rejected the Christian doctrine of the utter decrepitude and hopeless inherent badness of the human mind, we have but to gather some of his sparse thoughts together. He says, in defiance of Pascal and the Jansenists, "Mankind is the only source of our happiness, outside that there is nothing." Again, ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... destined to revolutionize the art of war, whose prudence and foresight were unparalleled, whose correctness of judgment was a thing to wonder at. And in contrast to that picture of Germany he pointed to France: the Empire sinking into senile decrepitude, sanctioned by the plebiscite, but rotten at its foundation, destroying liberty, and therein stifling every idea of patriotism, ready to give up the ghost as soon as it should cease to satisfy the unworthy appetites to which it had given ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... son, "let me interpret it then into prose. Monarchy as an institution is dying, and it can either die in foolish decrepitude, or it can die mightily, merging itself in democracy for a final blow against bureaucratic government. All that is written in my book. That is why I am now able to express myself so well: these periods are largely a matter of quotation. The right role for monarchy to-day is, believe ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... of venerable and powerful appearance. He had snowy hair and a long white beard, but from under shaggy eyebrows there blazed out great black eyes which warned the beholder that the snow was an ornament and not a sign of decrepitude. The eve of my baptism at length drew near; it was fixed for October 12, almost exactly three weeks after my tenth birthday. I was dressed in old clothes, and a suit of smarter things was packed up in a carpet- bag. After nightfall, this carpet-bag, accompanied by my ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... in the remote north where the inhabitants enjoy a natural pefection attended with complete happiness obtained without exertion. There is there no vicissitude, nor decrepitude, nor death, nor fear: no distinction of virtue and vice, none of the inequalities denoted by the words best, worst, and intermediate, nor any change resulting from the succession of the four Yugas." See MUIR'S Sanskrit Texts, Vol. I. ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... glittering altar and with the kneeling priests. I wondered of what the archbishop thought, kneeling so humbly—of the boys dancing before the altar, fresh and young? Was he thinking of their white souls darkening with the sins of the world, or of the troubles, the disillusionments of life, and the decrepitude? Or was it of himself—did he think of his own youth, so long past, so hopelessly gone, or did he think that he was old and worn, and of the dark journey before him, and of the light that seemed so distant? ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... offered those wretched victims, and every month a bride, on pain of his own destruction. What might be the nature of that skeleton form, or their compact, thou canst neither know nor understand. Even I, though nightly witnessing horrors which have given to youth the aspect and decrepitude of age, cannot explain. A connection, if not inseparable, yet intimate as body and soul, existed between those demon-haunted bones and yon monster who sought and accomplished my ruin. What I have seen must not, cannot be told. My lips are for ever sealed. But the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... heads," some points were sufficiently curious to require a word of explanation, as, for example, when the early ages of Christianity were at one time labelled as an epoch of progress and at another time as an epoch of decrepitude. But the argument and the contents never got so far en rapport with each other as to clear up such points as this. On the contrary, each kept on the even tenour of its way without much regard to the other. From the titles of the chapters one was led to expect some comprehensive theory of European ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... export, home consumption, and stock on hand is taken, is from January to January, and the Chinese tea year from July to July; 2nd, that a rise at the close of the last months of the year in England, influences the next year's exports from China; and 3rdly, that of late years, since something of decrepitude has fallen upon the Chinese Government, smuggling there, to escape the export duty, has been carried on largely and at an increasing rate, so that the return is considerably below ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... (his two wives) Devayani and Sarmishtha. And of Devayani were born Yadu and Turvasu, and of Sarmishtha were born Drahyu, Anu, and Puru. And, O king, having virtuously ruled his subjects for a long time, Yayati was attacked with a hideous decrepitude destroying his personal beauty. And attacked by decrepitude, the monarch then spoke, O Bharata, unto his sons Yadu and Puru and Turvasu and Drahyu and Anu these words, 'Ye dear sons, I wish to be a young man and to gratify my appetites in the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... another adversary, stationed against him, of a different order, one whose power was not material, but mental and spiritual; one whose enmity was not random, or casual, or temporary, but went on steadily from age to age, and lasts down to this day, except so far as the Turk's decrepitude has at length disarmed anxiety and opposition. I have spoken of him already; of course I mean the Vicar of Christ. I mean the zealous, the religious enmity to every anti-Christian power, of him who has outlasted Zingis and Timour, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... Glory be to His name for an interest in the blood of sprinkling. Here is the source of my happiness, and all I want is here. THEN—I had a father and mother who loved and cared for me: NOW—my father is gone to his reward, and my mother is sunk in decrepitude, daily waiting her release; and I, myself a mother, have resting upon me the care and anxiety of a family; but I have inherited the promise, which descends from generation to generation. THEN—I looked forward to what might be my future portion: NOW—I look back through five and twenty ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... might bring about its absolute ruin. Then what was to be done? There have been before, in the history of diplomacy, not unfrequent instances in which, even in civilized parts of the globe, States having fallen into decrepitude, have afforded no assistance to keep order and tranquillity, and have become, as these districts have become, a source of danger to their neighbours. Under such circumstances, the Powers of Europe have generally looked to see whether there was any neighbouring Power of a character entirely ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... one; she only wanted to keep at it and make the most of her limited opportunities for practice; inasmuch as at that rate, playing but two parts a year—and such parts: she despised them!—she shouldn't have mastered the rudiments of her trade before decrepitude would compel her to lay it by. The first time she came to the studio after her visit with Dashwood she sprang up abruptly at the end of half an hour, saying she could sit no more—she had had enough and to spare of it. She was visibly restless and preoccupied, and ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... occident, towards their unknown goal. Nineveh and Babylon on the banks of the Euphrates, Thebes and Memphis on the banks of the Nile, had been reduced to dust, sinking from old age and weariness into a deadly numbness beyond possibility of awakening. Then decrepitude had spread to the shores of the great Mediterranean lake, burying both Tyre and Sidon with dust, and afterwards striking Carthage with senility whilst it yet seemed in full splendour. In this wise as mankind marched on, carried by the hidden ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... many of the Union soldiers of the border States were slaveholders themselves and northern soldiers did not understand that they were fighting to free Negroes. The condition in which they were on arriving, moreover, was a new problem for the army. Some came naked, some in decrepitude, some afflicted with disease, and some wounded in their efforts to escape.[9] There were "women in travail, the helplessness of childhood and of old age, the horrors of sickness and of frequent deaths."[10] In their crude state few of them had any conception of the significance of liberty, ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... this growth of nations from youth to decrepitude, and, coming back at last to himself and to his own laud and time, breaks forth into a lament ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... money, but being a bad manager and very careless, all came to nothing. Finally, having become old, unfit for work, and helpless, he was obliged to go on crutches, being unable to stand upright, and so died, after long illness and decrepitude, in his seventy-eighth year. He was buried at Florence, in the church of Ognissanti in the ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... about the Revolution. I rendered an account of this interview with Barras to General Bonaparte the first time I had an opportunity of conversing with him after your return from Egypt. I sounded him; and I was perfectly convinced that in the state of decrepitude into which the Directory had fallen he was just the man we wanted. I therefore adopted such measures with the police as tended to promote his elevation to the First Magistracy. He soon showed himself ungrateful, and instead ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... like the old cemetery at the Point of Graves. When a headstone here topples over it is kindly lifted up and set on its pins again, and encouraged to do its duty. If it utterly refuses, and is not shamming decrepitude, it has its face sponged, and is allowed to rest and sun itself against the wall of the church with a row of other exempts. The trees are kept pruned, the grass trimmed, and here and there is a rosebush drooping with a weight of pensive pale roses, as becomes ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... midst of them all, seemed utterly unconscious of my presence. Like the one I had at first seen in the hold, they all bore about them the marks of a hoary old age. Their knees trembled with infirmity; their shoulders were bent double with decrepitude; their shrivelled skins rattled in the wind; their voices were low, tremulous and broken; their eyes glistened with the rheum of years; and their gray hairs streamed terribly in the tempest. Around them, on every part of the deck, lay scattered mathematical instruments of the most ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... by the inclosing shadows. From the sea this picture is especially refreshing, with the heat left out which is reflected with great power from the sandy rocks and every denuded surface. Below all appears beautiful, luxurious, and new; but above the signs of decrepitude appear, and the broad wastes stretch where little grows except the bayaonde, (Mimosa urens,) with its long murderous spines and ugly pods. Sudden contrasts and absence of delicate gradations mark the whole face of the island. All is extreme; and the mind grows ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... the source of the Renaissance. It was the originality and splendor of the palaces of Vicenza and Venice which gave this school its eminence in the eyes of Europe; and the dying city, magnificent in her dissipation, and graceful in her follies, obtained wider worship in her decrepitude than in her youth, and sank from the midst of her admirers into ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... despite the prodigious care that the great magnifico, Don Juan Belvidero, took of himself, the days of decrepitude came upon him, and with those days the constant importunity of physical feebleness, an importunity all the more distressing by contrast with the wealth of memories of his impetuous youth and the sensual pleasures of middle age. The unbeliever who in the height of his cynical ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... foundations of physical science would remain unshaken, and that the vast intellectual progress of the last two centuries would be largely, though incompletely, recorded. Nor have any signs of halting or of decrepitude manifested themselves in our own times. As in Dr. Wallis's days, so in these, "our business is, precluding theology and state affairs, to discourse and consider of philosophical enquiries." But our "Mathematick" is one which Newton would have to go to school to learn; our ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... only daughter of a wealthy man, who, when he gave me to a magistrate older than himself, did not intend to sacrifice me. You have been young, no doubt, and you, therefore, ought to know how revolting to youth, all freshness and perfume, are the cuddlings and caresses of decrepitude. As yet I do not detest you, but it is absolutely impossible to love you. On the contrary, I am in love with Melladoro; perhaps in your day you were as attractive as he is, and knew how to make the most of what you then possessed. Now, will you please me by going back to Paris? I shall ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... limb affected was much shrunk and contracted, my general health, which was of more importance, was much strengthened by being frequently in the open air, and, in a word, I, who in a city had probably been condemned to hopeless and helpless decrepitude, was now a healthy, high-spirited, and, my lameness apart, a sturdy child—non sine ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... drew her purse out with a trembling hand, and eagerly fumbled for some money, which the other old woman greedily watched for—their heads all but touching, in their hurry and decrepitude—Edith interposed: ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... color: sag-roofed barns and stables, and weak-backed, sunken-chested workshops of every sort lounge along in tumble-down succession, and lean up against the cliff in every imaginable posture of worthlessness and decrepitude; light wooden galleries cross to them from the second stories of the houses which back upon the alley; and over these galleries flutters, from a labyrinth of clothes-lines, a variety of bright-colored garments of all ages, sexes, and conditions; ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... reply, when I felt some one tugging fiercely at my coat, and turning around, I was surprised to find that the beggar was drawing me away from the carriage by main force. I was astonished also at the change in his appearance. The aspect of decrepitude had disappeared, a green patch that I had noticed covering one of his eyes had fallen off, and his black eyes shone with a look of command and power that was in marked contrast with his gray hair, his crooked ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... freedom, on condition that she take care of and support her faithful James,- faithful, not only to her as a husband, but proverbially faithful as a slave to those who would not willingly sacrifice a dollar for his comfort, now that he had commenced his descent into the dark vale of decrepitude and suffering. This important decision was received as joyful news indeed to our ancient couple, who were the objects of it, and who were trying to prepare their hearts for a severe struggle, and one altogether new to them, as they had never before been separated; ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... delicate frame, excesses have much enfeebled his constitution; his continual ill-health, his pallor, and his teeth already decayed, announce, that though so young in years, he is expiating the pleasures of a Sultan by a premature decrepitude. Abdul Medjid has several children, who are weak and sickly like their father, and the state of their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... actively, carrying the infants and leading the smaller children by the hands, and soon disappeared; but it was otherwise with the old people. These, men and women, bowed with age, and tottering as much from terror as decrepitude, hobbled along, panting as they went, and stumbling over every trifling obstruction in their path, being sometimes obliged to stop and rest, though death might be the consequence; and among these there were a few stray little creatures barely able to toddle, who had probably been forgotten or ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... Thomas—who seemed to have become crystallized, as it were, in age and decrepitude, and advanced no further in either—was pottering around the garden, eying askant, like an old robin, the new plough furrows. Pauper women humped their calico backs over the green slopes of the fields, searching for dandelion greens, but not ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... lived in seclusion seven out of the ten had lost their hair and the freshness of their complexion, both of which with us are highly valued. They were very sallow, and their figures betrayed the incipient decrepitude of old age, though for our world they were but in the prime of life, if not of early manhood. Besides which they had formed contracted notions on many subjects, some of them ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... neighborhood of two contending powers they are never peaceful. If the strong hand of power does not bend them down they will raise the tomahawk and bare the scalping knife for deeds of blood and horror: The purity of female innocence, the decrepitude of age, the tenderness of infancy afford no security against the murderous steel of a hostile Indian: to guard against the probable incursions of bands of these murderers, I will not call them by the dignified name of warriors, are you called upon to arm: and who in ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... the sun on the rough porch of a house close by, or ambling slowly about, and had been struck with his appearance. Although bent with his years, he was tall, and, in his younger days, must have had a graceful, as well as powerful, figure, traces of it remaining still, in spite of his decrepitude. But his face was the most noticeable thing about him. Notwithstanding the dimness of age, there was a wonderful amount of intelligence and animation in his expression, and the deep, black eyes could hardly ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... brilliancy. It also explains the number of degenerate works, the gradual degradation of style, the destruction of all sense of expression, the neglect of dramatic properties, the contempt for the true, the grand, and the beautiful, and the cynicism and decrepitude of ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... eye rested for a moment on his once darling grandson, the child of so much pride and promise, now, alas! how changed. It was most touching to look upon one whose morning of life had been so bright and beautiful and, still in the sunny days of childhood, transformed into an image of decrepitude and decay. The fair blooming cheek and finely chiselled features were now shrunk and stiffened into the wan and rigid inflexibility of old age; while the black bandages which swathed the little pale sad countenance, gave additional gloom and harshness to the profound melancholy ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... rest of my miserable fellow-countrymen lived fifty years ago in the year 1892. Naturally you have read no books of history referring to any date anterior to 1902. The wretched records of ignorance, slavery and decrepitude have been justly expunged from your curriculum. Let me tell you then that a little country calling itself the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland at that time arrogated to itself the leadership of the mighty countries which you now call your ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... thing, to be sure, might easily be met with in twenty other places; but here it seemed natural and fitting. It was not a preposterous thought, that any number of other men in the neighborhood might quietly drop into a similar vein of decrepitude, and also attempt to palm off their disjointed fancies upon the orderly foot-passengers. I do not by this mean to insinuate any excessive leaning toward mental derangement on the part of the inhabitants; but it ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... tragical thing had befallen him; that this broken engagement was the ruin of his life and the end of his youth, and that he must live on an old and joyless man, wise with the knowledge that comes to decrepitude and despair; he imagined a certain look for himself, a gait, a name, that would express this; but all the same he was aware of having got out of something. Was it a bondage, a scrape, as Boardman called it? He thought he must be a very light, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... look at, and smiles of young girls, and breaths of perfumes which gardens exhale when the nights of April fall, and all this delicious cajoling of life, since it is all to end ironically in separation, in decrepitude ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... a good deal in my time, and am grown foolish now, and out of bloom. But I do not hold the perverse belief of old men generally, that I am wiser than I was. And I hope I may never grow wise; 'tis a sign of decrepitude. If I thank God for life, it is not by virtue of any riper wisdom that has come to me with age, but because I have always taken a pleasure in life. Age gives no riper wisdom; age gives nothing ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... diligent peripatetics were seen extended on sofas, or feebly promenading under shelter of the bulwarks; while persons who prided themselves on their dignity sustained ignominious falls, or clung to railings in a state of tottering decrepitude, in an attempted progress down the saloon. Though we had four ledges on the tables, cruets, bottles of claret, and pickles became locomotive, and jumped upon people's laps; almost everything higher than a plate was upset—pickles, wine, ale, and oil forming a most odoriferous mixture; ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... whom the characteristics of that school are crystallized. From the point of view which would enter sympathetically into the soul of Ibsen and look out on the world from his eyes, there is no one of his plays more valuable in its purely theoretic way than Rosmersholm. It dissects the decrepitude of ancient formulas, it surveys the ruin of ancient faiths. The curse of heredity lies upon Rosmer, who is highly intelligent up to a certain point, but who can go no further. Even if he is persuaded that a new course of action would be salutary, he cannot ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... between these two men was most remarkable, for whereas Mafuta appeared to be the living embodiment of extreme age, King Banda could scarcely have been forty; and while Mafuta was an image of decrepitude, Banda, despite his excessive corpulence, appeared to be— what in fact he was—a man of immense physical strength. Yet, notwithstanding this marked dissimilarity in their appearance, there was one point of strong resemblance between them: the expression of their faces, and particularly ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... modern age must necessarily have the advantage. This reasoning, he says, is unsound, because the same arts and studies are not always uninterruptedly pursued by the most powerful intellects, but pass into inferior hands, and so decline or are even extinguished, as was the case in Italy in the decrepitude of the Roman Empire, when for many centuries the arts fell below mediocrity. Or, to phrase it otherwise, the argument would be admissible only if there were no breaches of continuity. [Footnote: Tassoni argues that a decline in all pursuits is inevitable when ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... elderly people would warn youth, they rarely ever give concrete examples. They always imply some moral loss which will happen to young people if they do not follow their elders' advice. But youth would be far more impressed if age drew a vivid picture of their own physical and digestive decrepitude. But, of course, age won't do that. Why should it? No one likes to think that their "every ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... venerable when it embodies itself in lilacs, rose-bushes, or any other ornamental shrub; it seems as if such plants, as they grow only for beauty, ought to flourish always in immortal youth, or, at least, to die before their sad decrepitude. Trees of beauty are trees of paradise, and therefore not subject to decay by their original nature, though they have lost that precious birthright by being transplanted to an earthly soil. There is a kind of ludicrous unfitness in the idea of a time-stricken and grandfatherly ...
— Buds and Bird Voices (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... kinds of progress. There is the progress that moves away from infancy towards youth, towards maturity, towards age and decrepitude. And there is a higher progress, a progress that moves towards infancy. 'Except ye be converted and become as little children,' Jesus said, 'ye shall not enter into the kingdom of God.' And the only way of ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... the Doctor had expected, it took all her cunning. True, nature and experience had equipped her for such work; but for all that there was an art to be learned, and time and again there were cases of mental and moral decrepitude or deformity that baffled all her skill until her skill grew up to them, which in some cases it never did. The greatest tax of all was to seem, and to be, unprofessional; to avoid regarding her work ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... All our family have wretched constitutions. If I go to work regularly for a couple of months without a holiday, I sink into absolute decrepitude. An office-chair has been specially made for me, to hold me up at the desk.—I beg your pardon for this clowning, Mrs. Widdowson,' he suddenly added in another voice. 'The air puts me in such spirits. What air it is! Speaking quite seriously, my ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... Several of these trees have been cut down, but one of them is still standing and of substantially the dimensions given above. It must have reached the limit of growth a hundred years ago and now shows very evident signs of decrepitude. This may be due, however, to the loss of a square foot or more of bark ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... green, has rather the shade of a dingy, dirty, melancholy gray. Snow covers the ground—not by any means the glistening white robe of Winter—but a rugged substitute, damp, and discolored. It is snow, but snow far gone into decay and decrepitude— snow that seems ashamed of itself for lingering so long after wearing out its welcome, and presenting itself in so revolting a dress—snow, in fact, which is like a man sinking into irremediable ruin and changing its former glorious state for that condition ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... the dining-table, covered with the shabby green baize cloth, which stood in the centre of the room. There were a variety of uncomfortable chairs, an ink-splashed drugget, and red walls covered with pictures which had been banished from other rooms as they acquired the requisite stage of decrepitude and grime. ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... resumed D'Artagnan, "to this decrepitude is probably added poverty, for he must have neglected the little that he had, and the dirty scoundrel, Grimaud, more taciturn than ever and still more drunken than his master—stay, Planchet, it breaks my heart to ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in a short time overtook his foe. The impostor did not dare to cope with him, but asked his life; and the king, considering him as the least offender of the two, pardoned him upon condition of his surrendering the ring, in consequence of which he passed the remainder of his life in poverty and decrepitude. ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... carved upon it by its Creator, as the letters were on the tables of the law, and was it thus left to bear its eternal testimony to His beneficence among these clouds of Heaven? Or is it the descendant of a long race of mountains, existing under appointed laws of birth and endurance, death and decrepitude? There can be no doubt as to the answer. The rock itself answers audibly by the murmur of some falling stone or rending pinnacle. It is not as it was once. Those waste leagues around its feet are loaded with the wrecks of what it was. On these perhaps, of all mountains, the characters of ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... at the prospectus," he said, preferring not to attack the question of figures at once; and with his eyeglasses on his nose, he began, in a declamatory tone, always upon the stage: "When one considers coolly the decrepitude which dramatic art has reached in France, when one measures the distance that separates the stage ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... period was that which indicated the greatest faith; its worst that which marked the decay of faith. The oldest specimens are invariably the most perfect and beautiful; the most recent exhibit too marked signs of the decrepitude of skill that had come over their makers. Between the oldest specimens and their surroundings there was a harmony and an appropriateness which solemnised the scene and excited feelings of adoration and awe. Between the latest specimens and their surroundings ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... hour later, bent on routine business of the Sherwood estate. Toward seven o'clock he was studying the present decrepitude and future possibilities of a row of Sherwood apartment houses on the West Side, when, as he came out of one building and started into another, a firm hand fell upon his shoulder and ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... Emperor Frederic II. of Germany (1228-9), was diverted altogether from the main object, and spent its force on Constantinople. That city was taken, but the Holy Land was not delivered. The Byzantine Empire was then in the last stages of decrepitude, or its capital would not have fallen, as it did, from a naval attack made by the Venetians, and in revenge for the treacheries and injuries of the Greek emperors to former crusaders. This, instead of weakening the Mussulmans, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... own flight, had the mortification to see all the lands assigned to charitable and to religious uses, the humane and pious foundations of themselves and their ancestors, made to support infirmity and decrepitude, to give feet to the lame and eyes to the blind, and to effect which they had deprived themselves of many of the enjoyments of life, cruelly sequestered and sold at the same market of violence and fraud where their demesne possessions and their goods had been before made away with. Even ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... probable dressing of facts, and the public will be entirely satisfied. What's Hecuba to us, or we to Hecuba? Or is Thackeray's way any nearer the truth, who strips Louis the Great of all his stage-properties, and shows him to us the miserable forked radish of decrepitude? ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... upon a rock, with my bristling head swung high, breathing through wide nostrils all the savour of the world. For I had come marvellously from decrepitude to strength. I had writhed from the bonds of age and was young again. I smelled the turf and knew for the first time how sweet that smelled. And like lightning my moving nose sniffed all things to my heart and separated ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... into an angry inward argument against his suggestion of the savings bank. It was an argument he had often rehearsed, often declaimed, and at bottom it all came to this—without that box under his bed, his life would have sunk to dulness and decrepitude; he would have been merely a pitiful and lonely old man. He had neither wife nor children, all for the hoard's sake; but while the hoard was there, to be handled any hour, he regretted nothing. Besides, there was the peasant's rooted distrust of ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ago observed, that no man, however weakened by long life, is so conscious of his own decrepitude, as not to imagine that he may yet hold his station in the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... was the figure of childhood; Tierce of youth; Sext the full vigour of age; None the approaches of old age, while Vespers were an allegory of decrepitude. They belonged, moreover, to the Nocturns, and were sung about six o'clock in the evening, at that hour when, at the time of the Equinoxes, the sun sets in the red cinder of the clouds. As for Compline, it resounds when night, the symbol of ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... henceforth dwell on the blessed hours when, not long since, I saw that benignant face, the clear eyes, the silently smiling mouth, the form yet upright in its great age—to the very last, with so much spring and cheeriness, and such an absence of decrepitude, that even the term ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... mean, Sir, the Sphinx's description of it;—morning, noon, and night. I would know night, as well as morning and noon.' JOHNSON. 'What, Sir, would you know what it is to feel the evils of old age? Would you have the gout? Would you have decrepitude?'—Seeing him heated, I would not argue any farther; but I was confident that I was in the right. I would, in due time, be a Nestor, an elder of the people; and there should be some difference between ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... (Vol. iii., p. 203.).—The allusions in Hall's poem, stanzas iii. & v., refer to the fine allegorical description of human decrepitude in Ecclesiastes, xii. 5, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... discovered that the knacker and tanner would give only a very few shillings for Prince's carcase because of his decrepitude, Durbeyfield rose to ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... ingenious reasons, some grace and beauty, some unknown charm and mystery in the various phenomena of nature. God only created coarse beings, full of the germs of disease, and who, after a few years of bestial enjoyment, grow old and infirm, with all the ugliness and all the want of power of human decrepitude. He only seems to have made them in order that they may reproduce their species in a dirty manner, and then die like ephemeral insects. I said, reproduce their species in a dirty manner, and I adhere to that expression. What is there, as a matter of fact, more ignoble and more repugnant ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... hidden grace and beauty, unknown charm and mystery in the various phenomena of Nature. God created only coarse beings, full of the germs of disease, who, after a few years of bestial enjoyment, grow old and infirm, with all the ugliness and all the want of power of human decrepitude. He seems to have made them only in order that they may reproduce their species in an ignoble manner and then die like ephemeral insects. I said reproduce their species in an ignoble manner and I adhere to that ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... never feared death, whatever might await him after—conscious of a useful and blameless life. He died as he had desired to die, standing alone with me under the moonlit sky, unconfined, escaping from the decrepitude of old age, still in the full possession and maturity of his talents, and in the ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... prepare, and earthly life without a sound body is not life full and complete. Life is joy, vigor, elasticity, freedom from pain or illness, enjoyment of all innocent pleasures in maturity as well as in youth. We have no right to look forward to decrepitude, to failure in zest of living, to lessening of real enjoyment because of coming years. Life should increase in beauty and usefulness, in ability and joyousness, as the years bring us a wider experience, ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... skill in keeping majorities in the House of Commons by means that would not bear the light, made his support necessary to Pitt himself, and placed a fantastic political jobber at the helm of England in a time when she needed a patriot and a statesman. Newcastle was the growth of the decrepitude and decay of a great party, which had fulfilled its mission and done its work. But if the Whig soil had become poor for a wholesome crop, it was never so rich ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... of the fifth century of the Christian era China had fallen into a state of decrepitude. The second dynasty of the Tsins was near its end. For a century and a half it had held the imperial power, but now it had fallen a prey to luxury, one of its latest emperors dying from prolonged drunkenness, another being smothered in bed by ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Instances of decrepitude and deformity, are rarely known to exist among them: this is probably owing to the manner in which they are tended and nursed in infancy. It is not necessary that the mother should, as has been supposed, be guilty of the unnatural crime of murdering her decrepid or deformed offspring—the hardships ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... carpet of the softest, richest green, there towered a majestic oak, which had looked upward to the sky for centuries, while generation after generation of men had entered the world, had laughed and wept, grown old and died. It showed no signs of the decrepitude of age, and raised up its head proudly like the monarch of the forest; but a deep rent in its heart showed that decay was at work, and that the lofty tree would, one day, he laid low in the dust. Led by an irresistible impulse, Rudolph ascended the mound, and entered ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... to decline, are often vigorous in the decrepitude of age. The curious mind is still striking out into new pursuits, and the mind of genius is still creating. ANCORA IMPARO!—"Even yet I am learning!" was the concise inscription on an ingenious device of an old man placed in a child's go-cart, with an hour-glass upon it, which, it is said, Michael ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... after dinner came in the Chancellor in good humour and spirits; talked of Lord Wellesley, who, since he has been in Ireland, has astonished everybody by his activity and assiduity in business. He appeared, before he went, in the last stage of decrepitude, and they had no idea the energy was in him; but they say he is quite a new man, and it is not merely a splash, but real and bona-fide business that he does. The Chancellor talked over some of the passages of the Queen's trial, to which he loves to revert. It was ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... the man were in communion) he regarded the faces of all nations. Coral City held as complete a record of crime, cruelty, and debauchery as one could find in the human indices of any port. Many were closing their annals of error in decrepitude and beggary; others were well-knit studies of evil, with health still hanging on, more or less, and much deviltry to do. A blue blouse, or a bit of khaki; British puttees and a flare of crimson; Russian boots and a glimpse of sodden gray; or an American campaign-hat crowning a motley of many ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... view, that the objectionable scene should be entirely remodelled or, better still, cut out altogether. The reverend dignitary was supposed to be extremely short-sighted and wandering, moreover, in his mind, from sheer decrepitude. Perhaps he was wily beyond the common measure of man. Be that as it may, he witnessed the spectacle but allowed nothing to escape his lips safe a succession of soft ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... society, and at least elevate its tone. From the methods she employed to effect this change, it may be suspected that the remedy was equivalent to the Hanemannic maxim: "Similia similbus curantur," a strange application of a curative agent in a case of moral decrepitude, however valuable and effective it may be ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... eighty, with a head as white as snow, topping her black body (a flourbag cobbler, as her tribe would call her), was punting a canoe along in the shallow water on the opposite side of the river. She was entirely without clothes, and in spite of her decrepitude stood upright in the cockleshell, handling it with great dexterity. When she was a little above us, she made way on her barque, and shot into the deep water in the middle of the stream, evidently with the intention of ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... Rome it would never do in the world to set herself in contrast to such blue eyes and pink skins and such yellow hair: that Nubians were much more appropriate and that nothing could be more trying than Saxons, even for a bride. She told me I mustn't make fun of her old age and decrepitude. She said that the Saxons had such cheerful, bright faces and looked such infantile giants that she really must have them. So I let her have her way. The Nubians stand the heat better and the Saxons were almost ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... was dressed in a large broad-brimmed hat, a poncho over his shoulders, and sandals on his feet. His projecting, dropping lower jaw exhibited the few decayed teeth he had in his head, which, with his lustreless eyes, made him look the very picture of decrepitude. He brightened up and rose, however, as he saw Uncle Richard,—with whom he was acquainted, and who had frequently shown him kindness,—and welcomed ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston |
