"Dotage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lord of weak remembrance] This lord, who, being now in his dotage, has outlived his faculty of remembering; and who, once laid in the ground, shall be as little remembered himself, as he can now ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... craft of such language would be "great dotage" for an old man like him. Yet like those of Lydgate and Caxton, Bokenam's protestations are not entirely convincing, and in them one catches glimpses of a lurking fondness for the wordiness of fine writing. Though Pallas has always refused to ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... man, who, after propounding a theory in his younger days which was at least as reasonable as most of the existing theories, had the misfortune to outlive his usefulness and lay his doctrine open to ridicule by the unreasonable teachings of his dotage. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... it? But he really is not ill, only getting feeble and obstinate. The man is in his dotage. I saw him yesterday, and he refused, most perversely, to sanction the marriage until some facts shall come to his knowledge, of which he is not quite certain at present. I told him the young people would not wait; and he replied, that if I give you ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Braving the cry. O the Vanity and self-dotage of Authors! I, yet, after a reperusal of the preceding Apol. Preface, now some 20 years since its first publication, dare deliver it as my own judgement that both in style and thought it is a work creditable to the head and heart ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... for that I meant not to offend you; and in very deed, I scarce ever do remember that you are not my countrywoman. You are good enough for an English woman, and I would you were—There! I am about to make yet again a fool of myself. Heed not, I pray you, an old man in his dotage." ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... same sins I discovered in my youth; I committed many then, because I was a child, and, because I commit them still, I am yet an infant. Therefore I perceive a man may be twice a child before the days of dotage, and stand in need of AEson's bath ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... solely because the proprietor late in life suddenly married. The wife of the proprietor desiring to share a knighthood with her husband, the proprietor, anxious to please but unwilling to pay, incontinently sacked the tame editor who was beguiling an amiable dotage with the County Times and looked about for a wild editor, whom unquestionably he ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... as the bachelor lived, it passed into his hands. This happened in 1806. And in this year 1846 the hairdresser is still paying that annuity. He has retired from business, he is seventy years old; the ci-devant young man is in his dotage; and as he has married his Mme. Evrard, he may last for a long while yet. As the hairdresser gave the woman thirty thousand francs, his bit of real estate has cost him, first and last, more than a million, and the house at this day is worth eight ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... doctrinal, liturgical, disciplinary, moral, and what may be called ecclesiastical. He includes in the sweep of his very impartial denunciation not only the pernicious tenets of Pelagianism, Arminianism, Latitudinarianism, and Popish errors, but "the dotage of Quakers and other enthusiasts," human inventions in worship, and the private essays made to introduce or impose an unwarrantable liturgie of unsound and useless form, the loose spirit of atheism, profaneness, and ungodliness reigning in all corners of the ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... man, who had the smallest pretensions to common sense, could be jealous, either of him or any one of these apes. And yet jealous I am! My dotage, Fairfax, is come very suddenly upon me; and neither you, nor any one of the spirited fellows, whose company I used to delight in, can despise me half so much as I despise myself—A plebeian!—A—! ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... terrestrially prosperous. He, like thousands of "able editors," apologizes for such vulgar extravagance by urging that it "puts money in circulation, makes business better, and helps the people by supplying employment!" Has the world passed into its dotage, or simply become an universal asylum for idiots? If wanton waste makes business better, then Uncle Sam has but to squander in bal-masques, or other debauchery, his seventy-five billions of wealth to inaugurate an industrial boom! To gratify their taste ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... cheap paper filled with already-fading maps, blurred names and vague sketches. The old man was in his dotage and would soon die and the ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... genteel progeny of his early youth were more than ever dissatisfied, and in their letters among themselves dealt forth harder and still harder words upon poor Sir Joseph. What terrible things might he not be expected to do now that his dotage was coming on? Those three married ladies had no selfish fears—so at least they declared, but they united in imploring their brother to look after his interests at Orley Farm. How dreadfully would the young heir of Groby be curtailed in his dignities and seignories if it should ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... perhaps, but never anything serious. Now, either Southminster sends Harold to prison, or Harold sends Southminster. There's a nice sort of dilemma! I always knew Kynaston's boys were born fools; but to find they're born knaves, too, is hard on an old woman in her hairless dotage. However, you've come, my child, and you'll soon set things right. You're the one person on earth I can trust in ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... proper, either to the author or to his transcribers. * Note: The Millenium is described in what once stood as the XLIst Article of the English Church (see Collier, Eccles. Hist., for Articles of Edw. VI.) as "a fable of Jewish dotage." The whole of these gross and earthly images may be traced in the works which treat on the Jewish traditions, in Lightfoot, Schoetgen, and Eisenmenger; "Das enthdeckte Judenthum" t. ii 809; and briefly in Bertholdt, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... insisted," says Edward Cayley, in his European Revolutions of 1848, "on the dismissal of the King's mistress. She was sent away, but, trusting to the King's dotage, she came back, police or no police.... This was a climax to which the people were unprepared to submit, not that they were any more virtuous than their Sovereign." Another publicist, Edward Maurice, puts it a little differently: "In Bavaria the power exercised by ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... political hypocrisies; the knowledge of which the essence is distilled in Bacon's 'Essays;' or the knowledge of which Polonius seems to have retained many shrewd scraps even when he had fallen into his dotage. In reading 'Clarissa' or 'Eugenie Grandet' we are aware that the soul of Richardson or Balzac has transmigrated into another shape; that the author is projected into his character, and is really giving us one phase ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... waykned his wyt, & wel ne[gh]e he foles, For he wayte[gh] onwyde, his wenches he byholdes, & his bolde baronage, aboute bi e wo[gh]es; 1424 [Sidenote: A cursed thought takes possession of him.] e{n}ne a dotage ful depe drof to his hert, & a caytif cou{n}sayl he ca[gh]t ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... blinds you. The Christian seems to affirm three Gods, and even to aggravate this wickedness by calling one of them 'a Son,' thus seeming to accept that monstrous notion that God is liable to old age and decrepitude, so as to provide wisely against His own dotage. But all this is an error: these three apparent Gods are but one, and in ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... speech. He had loved her greatly, he said. I knew next to nothing about her, and his fine smile and courtly, aged, deferential manners made me very nervous. I felt as if I had been taken to pay a ceremonial visit to a supreme pontiff in his dotage. He spoke about Horton Priory with some animation for a little while, and then faltered, and forgot what he was speaking ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... your modern professors. All such propositions are old—old as the hills, I assure you; and these days in which you live are more suggestive of the second childhood of the world than its progressive prime. Especially in your own country the general dotage seems to have reached a sort of climax, for there you have the people actually forgetting, deriding, or denying their greatest men who form the only lasting glories of their history; they have even done their futile best to tarnish the unsoilable fame of Shakespeare. In ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... forthwith return home. But when Nadan made sure of all commandment being in his own hand, he jeered in public at his uncle and raised his nose at him and fell to blaming him whenever he made act of presence and would say, "Verily Haykar is in age and dotage and no more he wotteth one thing from other thing." Furthermore he fell to beating the negro slaves and the handmaidens, and to vending the steeds and dromedaries and applied him wilfully to waste all that appertained ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the world. Then he passed on to the luxury in which some of the prelates were living, and to their overweening influence in the Councils of State. Edward III., after a reign of great splendour, had sunk into dotage. John of Gaunt had been striving for mastery against the Black Prince, but the latter was dying, July, 1376, and Gaunt was now supreme. He hated good William of Wykeham, who had possessed enormous influence with the old king, and he was bent generally on curbing the power of the higher ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... to be in my dotage,—as I should be if I permitted my son to marry a beggarly Italian,—nor too old to punish impertinence as it deserves," retorted ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... believe in the Holy Scriptures, got hold of this, and said, 'Now look at that mighty mind of Newton, who discovered gravity, and told us such marvels for us all to admire, when he became an old man and got into his dotage, he began to study that book called the Bible; and it appears that in order to credit its fabulous nonsense, we must believe that mankind's knowledge will be so much increased that we shall be able to travel fifty miles an hour. The poor 'dotard!' exclaimed the philosophic infidel, ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... had written them under Stowell's dictation. Sir Walter Scott wanted to see them, and Croker sent them to him in Scotland by the post. The bag was lost; no tidings could be heard of it, Croker had no copy, and Stowell is in his dotage and can't be got to dictate again. So much for the anecdote; then comes the story. I said how surprising this was, for nothing was so rare as a miscarriage by the post. He said, 'Not at all, for I myself lost two reviews in the same way. ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... stated to have attacked in an old-fashioned, out-of-date manner that made the German staff officers stare in open-mouthed wonder. "Eight ranks of infantry, mounted artillery, cavalry in the background—that was too much! A veritable battle plan of a past age, the product of a mind in its dotage, and half a century behind the times! Splendidly, with admirable courage, the English troops came forward to the attack. They were young, wore no decorations; they carried out with blind courage what their ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... well," admitted Cameron. "And McNabb has played his part well—whatever that part is. Orcutt said he was losing his grip, was in his dotage. Well, he will not be the first man that has had to change his mind. He has gone to inspect the mill site and will return day after to-morrow. Wentworth accompanied him. I imagine we will have an interesting half-hour when they find out that ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... to shun th' inglorious stage, And save from infamy my sinking age! Scarce half alive, oppress'd with many a year, What in the name of dotage drives me here? A time there was, when glory was my guide, 5 Nor force nor fraud could turn my steps aside; Unaw'd by pow'r, and unappall'd by fear, With honest thrift I held my honour dear; But this vile hour disperses all my store, And all my hoard of honour ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... her and Lord de Versely as to your mother's death, you have deceived them in everything else, and that she does not now believe that you are the son of her nephew. As I hinted before, the old lady is almost in her dotage, and cannot well be reasoned with, for she is very positive. I argued as long as I could with her, but in vain. At last she consented to stop proceedings until I heard from you, saying, 'If I can have any proof under my nephew's own hand that Percival is his son, I will be content; ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... care about my existence. I am becoming very old, dear Brother; in a little while I shall be useless to the world and a burden to myself: it is the lot of all creatures to wear down with age,—but one is not, for all that, to abuse one's privilege of falling into dotage. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... stops short and his eye Through the lost look of dotage is cunning and sly. 'Tis a look which at this time is hardly his own, But tells a plain tale of the days ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... Hours like these await, Who set unclouded in the Gulphs of Fate. From Lydia's Monarch should the Search descend, By Solon caution'd to regard his End, In Life's last Scene what Prodigies surprise, Fears of the Brave, and Follies of the Wise? From Marlb'rough's Eyes the Streams of Dotage flow, And Swift expires ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... the authorities to lock me up in an asylum, wouldn't you? But just consider what an awful condition of loneliness that poor wretch must be in by this time. You think I've been more alone than's good for me; think of him, shut up with an old woman in her dotage. He was awfully cut up about this affair of old Cameron and the girl, and he is losing all his winter's lumbering for want of a man. Now, there's a fix, if you will, where I say a man is ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... am not the head of Lloyd's yet," he answered, easily. "My uncle is far from his dotage. Then, too, you know that I was never intended for a business man, but a lawyer, like my father, if there had not been so little for my father's second wife and the children—" He stopped himself abruptly on the verge of a confidence. "I think I saw you on your way to the photographer to-day," ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Hill is the residence of a Lewes lady whose charitable impulses have taken a direction not common among those who suffer for others. She receives into her stable old and overworked horses, thus ensuring for them a sleek and peaceful dotage enlivened by sugar and carrots, and marked by the kindest consideration. The pyramidal grave (as of a Saxon chief) of one of these dependants may be seen from ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... aged crone, already stumbling into her dotage, hobbled from the kitchen and gathered up an armful of resinous pine from a pile beside the steps. "Dey's 'mos' es hot es de debbil's wood en iron shovel," she replied, with one foot on the step; adding in a piercing ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... mya bullies!' He drew a sort of simple contortion over his broad, hard face, and mouthed his lips, as if he would the amplest dough-nut be put on his plate. Palm, just as they were resuming their seats, insinuated that as the venerable old man was well gone in his dotage, he had better measure his diet somewhat after the judicious character of his diplomacy, which was celebrated for its small doses crookedly doled out. The dish was again removed, mouths began to water, eager eyes glanced ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... Cynthia, choking; and Christopher, glancing round, saw several decrepit Negroes leaning against the wall—Uncle Boaz, Docia (pressing her weak heart), and blear-eyed Aunt Polly, already in her dotage. ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... lost his senses, cried, "Sallem 'akalak ya Abuna, (May God perfect thy understanding, O our father,) it is not a cock but a cow that is missing." "Go look for the cock," persevered the old man; they obeyed, but this time again without success. People wondered and thought him in a state of mere dotage. Next came the news that a man was killed. The father pertinaciously adhered to his first injunctions, and ordered his sons to look for the cock. Again they returned without finding it, and in the end it came to pass that the killing of the man brought on a blood feud with his relations—the ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... triumvirate consisting of the Belverde, the Dominican and Trescorre. Pievepelago, the Prime Minister, is a dummy put in place by the Jesuits and kept there by the rivalries of the other three; but he is in his dotage and the courtiers are already laying wagers as to his successor. Many think Father Ignazio will replace him, but I stake my faith on Trescorre. The Duke dislikes him, but he is popular with the middle class, who, since they have shaken off the yoke ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... ancient monarch presenting his heir. Later on, when the child was able to say a few words, he entertained himself for hours at a time talking with the tot under the shade of the eucalyptus tree. A certain mental failing was beginning to be noticed in the old man. Although not exactly in his dotage, his aggressiveness was becoming very childish. Even in his most affectionate moments, he used to contradict everybody, and hunt up ways of annoying ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... rag-time words, it would be vastly popular in American vaudeville. At which everyone stared incredulously for a moment, until one of the number, realizing the situation, managed to explain, between gasps of laughter, that "Hello, my Baby, Hello, my Honey" was in its dotage in the United States. Then the laughter became general, for all were more recent arrivals from America than I, and it was hard for them to understand how so elderly and decrepit a ditty could be unfamiliar ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... Penmanmawr to tell him that Lovell had given him Lazy Lawrence, was drowned with many others crossing the Ferry in a storm. The old harper who used to be the delight of travellers is now in a state of dotage. There was no harper at Bangor: the waiter told us "they were no profit to master, and was always in the way in the passage; so master never lets ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... to subvert the Roman constitution; and to make Ignatius's language the rule, instead of the exception, is no less to subvert the Christian church. Wherever the language of Ignatius is repeated with justice, there the church must either be in its infancy, or in its dotage, or in some extraordinary crisis of danger; wherever it is repeated, as of universal application, it destroys, as in fact it has destroyed, the very ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... complete the account of my conversation with Lady Byron; but as the credibility of a history depends greatly on the character of its narrator, and as especial pains have been taken to destroy the belief in this story by representing it to be the wanderings of a broken-down mind in a state of dotage and mental hallucination, I shall preface the narrative with some account of Lady Byron as she was during the time of our mutual acquaintance ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... but in the meantime Belle-Isle is besieged, and my two friends by now probably taken or killed. Poor Porthos! As to Master Aramis, he is always full of resources, and I am easy on his account. But, no, no; Porthos is not yet an invalid, nor is Aramis in his dotage. The one with his arm, the other with his imagination, will find work for his majesty's soldiers. Who knows if these brave men may not get up for the edification of his most Christian majesty a little bastion of Saint-Gervais! I don't despair of it. ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... his stubborn will. As his age prevented him from joining in the chase, he always appeared to part with her with regret, and to caution her not to run into useless danger; and when we returned at night, the old man's eyes sparkled with the rapture of dotage as he welcomed ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... of the girl's soft, tender heart, which but yesterday had been ready for self-sacrifice if only she might secure the well-being of those she loved? Was she, Euryale, in her dotage, that she could be so deceived ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... mysterious thing, a family, came this warning thought—None of his blood, no right to anything! It was a luxury then, this notion. An extravagance, a petting of an old man's whim, one of those things done in dotage. His real future was vested in those who had his blood, in whom he would live on when he was gone. He turned away from the bronzes and stood looking at the old leather chair in which he had sat and smoked so many hundreds of cigars. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... started slightly. He recalled certain acid comments of the bishop, followed by a statement that a young cure should be sent, gently to supersede the old priest, who was in his dotage. ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... ago, conversing at the Club Which Londoners with 'GARRICK'S' title dub, We both confessed, and each with equal grief, That poor Melpomene was past relief; So many symptoms of her dotage shows This nineteenth century of steam and prose. Nor in herself, said you, entirely lies Th' incurable complaint whereof she dies; 'Tis not alone that play-wrights are too poor For gods or men or columns to endure;[4] Nor that all players in a mould are cast, Every new ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... observed Larry; "where did ye larn English, boy, for ye have the brogue parfict, as me gran'mother used to say to the pig when she got in her dotage (me gran'mother, not the pig), 'only,' says she, 'the words isn't quite distinc'.' Couldn't ye give us a skitch o' yer ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... adapted to ensure prosperity to virtue, shall present itself again. It could scarcely be spoken of as being to the wishes of men,—it was so far beyond their hopes.—The government which had been exercised under the name of the old Monarchy of Spain—this government, imbecile even to dotage, whose very selfishness was destitute of vigour, had been removed; taken laboriously and foolishly by the plotting Corsican to his own bosom; in order that the world might see, more triumphantly set ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the border gathering songs and tales of war. His memory was latterly much impaired; yet, the number of verses which he could pour forth, and the animation of his tone and gestures, formed a most extraordinary contrast to his extreme feebleness of person, and dotage of mind.] ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... and protest," said Mr. Mumbray, in a confidential ear, "that if it weren't for the look of the thing, I would withhold my vote altogether! W.-B. is in his dotage. And to think that we might have put new life ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... swill, this patriarch of the dull, The drowsy Mum—But touc not Maro's skull! His holy barbarous dotage sought to doom, Good heaven! th' immortal classics to the tomb!— Those sacred lights shall bid new genius rise 45 When all Rome's saints have rotted from the skies. Be these your guides, if at the ivy crown You aim; each country's classics, and your own. But ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... water, and forming a gigantic crescent on either bank of the broad, curving stream. This is the city of Brunai, the capital of the Yang di Pertuan, the Sultan of Brunai, aetat one hundred or more, and now in his dotage: the abode of some 15,000 Malays, whose language is as different from the Singapore Malay as Cornish is from Cockney English, and the coign of vantage from which a set of effete and corrupt Pangerans extended oppressive rule over the coasts of ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... direction, and when he heard of the matter wrote to the Lord Chancellor and the Earl of Salisbury declining the honour. He says: "My mynde in my younger times hath been ever free from ambition and now I am going to my grave, to gape for such a thing were mere dotage in me." Further, he prayed for "free liberty to dispose of myne owne as other of his ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... true to its nature; they despised faithful exhortations in their presumption and carnal security, and the holy patriarchs they treated as men in dotage and as simpletons because of their threat that God would move in wrath even upon his Church, namely, the heirs of the ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... the lust of sway Had lost its quickening spell, Cast crowns for rosaries away, An empire for a cell; A strict accountant of his beads, A subtle disputant on creeds, His dotage trifled well: Yet better had he neither known A bigot's ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... earth are vanished. This is beyond melancholy. I do dare my fate To do its worst. Now to my sister's lodging And sum up all these horrors: the disgrace The prince threw on me; next the piteous sight Of my dead brother; and my mother's dotage; And last this terrible vision: all these Shall with Vittoria's bounty turn to good, Or I will drown ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... reminds me. Of all my relations you an' your mother's all I care for; because you'm of my awn blood an' you've let me bide, an' haven't been allus watchin' an' waitin' an' divin' me to the bottle. An' the man I was fule enough to take in his dotage be worst of all." ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... where he wrote his famous "Fables for the Holy Alliance." Returning to England, he settled at Bow-wood near Wiltshire, the seat of his life-long friend, Lord Lansdowne. There he spent his declining years and died in dotage. ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... expressed his doubt of the truth of spirit-rapping, table-turning, etc., and being pressed with the appeal, "Surely you must admit these are indications of Satanic agency," quietly answered, "It may be so, but it must be a mark of Satan being in a state of dotage!" ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... such misery Which is throwne on him. Call, oh call to minde His service, how often he hath fought And toyl'd in warres to give his Country peace. He has not beene a flatterer of the Time, Nor Courted great ones for their glorious Vices; He hath not sooth'd blinde dotage in the World, Nor caper'd on the Common-wealths dishonour; He has not peeld the rich nor flead the poore, Nor from the heart-strings of the Commons drawne Profit to his owne Coffers; he never brib'd The white intents of mercy; never sold ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... intended a nobler delineation of a mixed character of manners and of nature. Polonius is a man bred in courts, exercised in business, stored with observations, confident of his knowledge, proud of his eloquence, and declining into dotage. His mode of oratory is truly represented as designed to ridicule the practice of those times, of prefaces that made no introduction, and of method that embarrassed rather than explained. This part of his character is accidental, the rest is natural. Such a man is positive ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... not to hear from those who have lived longer, of wrongs and falsehoods, of violence and circumvention; but such narratives are commonly regarded by the young, the heady, and the confident, as nothing more than the murmurs of peevishness, or the dreams of dotage; and, notwithstanding all the documents of hoary wisdom, we commonly plunge into the world fearless and credulous, without any foresight of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... the patron! The old theme of the sectarists had lost its freshness, and the cavaliers, with their royal libertine, had become as obnoxious to public decency as the Tartuffes. Butler appears to have turned aside, and to have given an adverse direction to his satirical arrows. The slavery and dotage of Hudibras to the widow revealed the voluptuous epicurean, who slept on his throne, dissolved in the arms of his mistresses. "The enchanted bower," and "The amorous suit," of Hudibras reflected the new manners of this wretched court; and that Butler had become the satirist of the party whose ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... the reader must understand, to represent all my excellent old friends as in their dotage. In the first place, my coadjutors were not invariably old; there were men among them in their strength and prime, of marked ability and energy, and altogether superior to the sluggish and dependent mode of life on which their evil stars had cast them. Then, moreover, the white locks of age were ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... after them of the disturbed country. "The king of Spain is not to be trusted with such a royal morsel. Suppose he seizes the heir to England's throne, and holds him as hostage! The boy is mad, and the king in his dotage to permit so wild a thing." Such was the scope of general ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... she had heard his story. It was at the time that she bought the property, and the vendor had mentioned the Marquis as one of the curiosities of the soil. He was said to be half silly, at any rate an original, almost in his dotage, living by any lucky bits that he could make as horse-coper and veterinary. The peasants gave him a little work, as they feared that he might throw spells over anyone who refused to employ him. They also respected him on account of his former wealth and of his title, for he had been rich, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... in your dotage?" Lapo retorted, still glaring with a dreadful interest at Raffaele's flesh. "Do you speak of giving offence, when all I desire is to be as courteous as my uneducated nature will allow? She must pardon ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... Mademoiselle—marvellous and incredible fact—Mademoiselle had married a grey-bearded, bald-headed personage whom her English visitor had mentally classed as a contemporary of "mon pere" and tottering on the verge of dotage. It appeared, however, by after accounts, that he was barely fifty, which Dick Victor insisted was an age of comparative vigour. "Quite a suitable match!" he had pronounced it, but Pixie obstinately withheld ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... average active men—and there must be plenty of work for me to do in looking after the cargo, superintending repairs, taking care of the ship and men. I wonder at you, father. You must either have had a shock of dotage, or fallen into a poetical vein. What is a first mate ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... he asked Miss Cook to come to his house and sit for him and his friends. This she did. She was a mere girl at the time, about seventeen years of age, and yet she baffled this great chemist and all his assistants. You sometimes hear people say, 'Yes, but he was in his dotage.' He was not. He was in his early prime. He brought to bear all his thirty years' training in exact observation, and all the mechanical and electrical appliances he could devise, ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... were few left for her to give it to. The Herritons were out of the question; they would not even let her write to Irma, though Irma was occasionally allowed to write to her. Mrs. Theobald was rapidly subsiding into dotage, and, as far as she could be definite about anything, had definitely sided with the Herritons. And Miss Abbott did likewise. Night after night did Lilia curse this false friend, who had agreed with her that the marriage would "do," and that the ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... trenchant absurdities. Many argue that the whole idea of sovereignty is modern and imported; but it seems impossible that anything so foolish should have been suddenly devised, and the constitution bears on its front the marks of dotage. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... State breaking away from the political bondage of the fathers. But I'm afraid I am older than I thought. I have an old man's fears. I have had enough—too much—of the contact of men. Now this next idea is fanciful—another proof that I'm old—in my dotage, perhaps." His tone was gently playful. "I told you the other day that you seemed to typify the young strength of the State. So I'm going to appeal to you, young man—I cannot very well appeal to the rest, for they are not in the secret—I'm going to beg of you, Mr. Second Generation, ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... be admired. As for church affiliation, what I like to see is a hungry man going where he will be fed and get strength. I trust it does not seem flippant to say that I look on all church organizations in the same way, and that the tradition of a long past suggests to me the inefficiency of a dotage, quite as much as the stimulating aroma of potency which, as in the case of some wines, can only be acquired by the lapse of time. Some will say that this Modernism has no sense of obligation, no sense of veneration, makes no allowance ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... of the laws, The nation looks—and shall it look in vain? Will ye sit idle, or in idle wind Blow out your zeal, and crack your party whips, Or drivel dotage, while the crisis cries— While all around the dark horizon loom Clouds thunder-capped that bode a hurricane? Sleep ye as slept the "Notables" of France, While under them an hundred AEtnas hissed And spluttered sulphur, gathering for the ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... the same time arrested, but allowed to retire beyond seas; Lord Mountgarrett, an octogenarian, and in his dotage, was seized, but nothing could be made out against him; a Colonel Peppard was also denounced from England, but no such person was found to exist. So far the first year of the plot had passed over, and proved nothing against the Catholic Irish. But the example of ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... yo' think I'se come ter ma dotage? When is I see you a cryin' like dis befo'? Not sense yo' was kitin' roun' de lot an' fall down an' crack yo' haid. Yo' ain' been de yellin', squallin' kind, an' when yo' begins at dis hyar day an' age fer ter shed tears dar's somethin' pintedly wrong, an' yo' ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... their lips. The liquor, if it really possessed such virtues as Dr. Heidegger imputed to it, could not have been bestowed on four human beings who needed it more woefully. They looked as if they had never known what youth or pleasure was, but had been the offspring of Nature's dotage, and always the gray, decrepit, sapless, miserable creatures who now sat stooping round the doctor's table without life enough in their souls or bodies to be animated even by the prospect of growing young again. ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with you, that has so little good to hope for from you; mind that. But pray, is not this estate our estate, as we may say? Have we not all an interest in it, and a prior right, if right were to have taken place? And was it not more than a good old man's dotage, God rest his soul! that gave it you before us all?—Well then, ought we not to have a choice who shall have it in marriage with you? and would you have the conscience to wish us to let a vile fellow, who hates us all, run away with it?—You bid me weigh what you write: do you weigh this, Girl: and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... tell the publishers it must be my swan song. Really, I am getting an old man. But they refuse to see it; I expect they will keep me in harness till I am—in my dotage," he added, with a reckless disregard of any possible comment which the phrase might call up ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... man entered into Paris society. Louis XIV. was in his dotage, and at this time paid little attention to men of genius. Arouet soon became popular in the highest circles for his wit and genius. He resolved, much against his father's will, to devote himself to a literary life. One of the first acts of the young ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... in my dotage, think you? I saw my boy, and he was pale, and had blood on his hands, and it ran down his beard and dripped on his vest. You can't deceive me! What is the matter with my poor boy? I will see him! Give me ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... he urged the editors of the Whig press "to lash Butler" for some political shortcoming which he pointed out. In a tone of unrestrained anger, he declared that "we should have a pretty time of it with one of Jackson's lieutenants at Washington, and another at Frankfort, and the old man in his dotage at the Hermitage dictating to both." To lose Kentucky was, for the Whigs, to lose every thing. To reduce the Whig majority in Mr. Clay's own State would be a great victory for the Democracy, and to that end the leaders of the party were ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... ignorance of this country would allow me to guess, had threatened me of late, had come to his knowledge in Florence, and had been forestalled by himself, under the merciful guiding of Heaven, at the last moment. The Government of Tuscany, owing to the dotage of the Grand Duke and the wicked influence of Donna Violante over her brother-in-law, the Grand Prince Gastone, was impotent; there was no police, but indeed a flagrant anarchy abroad, where private malice stalked in the cloak of justice, and the passions of evil men had scope for ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... changes with the temper of every succeeding individual, and is subject to all the varieties of each. It is government through the medium of passions and accidents. It appears under all the various characters of childhood, decrepitude, dotage, a thing at nurse, in leading-strings, or in crutches. It reverses the wholesome order of nature. It occasionally puts children over men, and the conceits of nonage over wisdom and experience. In ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... urbane bank-manager had never before interviewed this terrible personage. He had heard strange stories of an abusive old man in his dotage, who contrived to make it very unpleasant for any representative of the bank sent up to his bedroom to get documents signed, and was therefore surprised to see an alert, hawk-eyed old gentleman, with a skull-cap and a dressing-jacket, sitting up in bed in a small turret bedroom, ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... weakness of old people; I have had a twitch of it myself, though certainly it is the highest absurdity, and as sure a proof of dotage as pink-coloured ribands, or even matrimony. Nay, perhaps, there is more to be said in defence of the last; I mean in a childless old man; he may prefer a boy born in his own house, though he knows it is not his own, to disrespectful or worthless nephews or nieces. But there is no excuse for beginning ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... lonely dancer entering from the court, large, weary, crowned with gold, tufted with feathers, wrinkled, with greedy, fatigued eyes, and hands painted blood-red. She was like an idol in its dotage. Over her spreading bosom streamed multitudes of golden coins, and many jewels shone upon her wrists, her arms, her withered neck. She advanced slowly, as if bored, until she was in the midst of the crowd. Then she wriggled, stretched forth her hands, slowly stamped her feet, and ...
— Smain; and Safti's Summer Day - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... Adm. Is death alike then to the young and old? Pher. Man's due is one life, not to borrow more. Adm. Thine drag thou on and out-tire heaven's age! Pher. Darest thou to curse thy parents, nothing wrong'd? Adm. Parents in dotage lusting still to live! {760} Pher. And thou—what else but life with this corpse buyest? Adm. This corpse—the symbol of thy infamy! Pher. For us she died not; that thou canst not say! Adm. Ah! ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... and middle-age, and even that is very imperfect; and for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition, than upon their best recollections. The least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories; these meet with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which abound ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... ears and some experience in human nature." Saunders puffed at his cigar. He felt that his friend was expecting what he was saying. "Mitchell is getting in his dotage, and he talks very ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... engages Both sexes, all ages, The poor as well as the wealthy; From the court to the cottage, From childhood to dotage, Both those that are sick ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... with a faint hope of alleviating my sorrows, to a display of more than regal magnificence within. For such follies, even in childhood, I had imbibed a taste, and now they came back to me as if in the dotage of grief. Alas, I feel how much even of incipient madness might have been discovered in the gorgeous and fantastic draperies, in the solemn carvings of Egypt, in the wild cornices and furniture, in the Bedlam patterns ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... "too far advanced in life and too inactive" for such an enterprise. At this time McDowell must have been nearly thirty-nine; and Shelby, who was just thirty, wisely refused to risk the campaign under a general who was in his dotage! ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... weapon. It is terrible in the hands of indignant genius, branding the audacious forehead of falsehood or pollution. But ridicule in the hands either of cold-blooded or infuriated Malice, is harmless as a birch-rod in the palsied fingers of a superannuated beldam, who in her blear-eyed dotage has lost her school. The Bird of Paradise might float in the sunshine unharmed all its beautiful life long, although all the sportsmen of Cockaigne were to keep firing at the star-like plumage during the Christmas holydays ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... my landing at Alexandretta was alone responsible for the continuance of my dotage, and hoped that fresh scenes would banish Carlotta's distracting image. But no, it was one of the many vain reflections on which I based a false philosophy. Whether in Beyrout, or the land of the "sweet singer of Persephone," or Alexandria, or on the Cannebiere of Marseilles, or in ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... 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 ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... Madame de Gergy a long time."—"But, according to what she says, you would be more than a hundred"—"That is not impossible," said he, laughing; "but it is, I allow, still more possible that Madame de Gergy, for whom I have the greatest respect, may be in her dotage."—"You have given her an elixir, the effect of which is surprising. She declares that for a long time she has felt as if she was only four-and-twenty years of age; why don't you give some to the King?"—"Ah! Madame," said he, with a sort of terror, "I must be mad ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... past the old couple had lost the ability to sleep. At the present moment they sat there silent, like two persons in their dotage, gazing about them at things they did not see. Their deserted salon, so filled with memories to them, was feebly lighted by a single lamp which seemed expiring. Without the sparkling of the flame upon the hearth, they might soon have been in ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... not effect in a life-time, she fascinated the Bishop to an unprecedented degree. A bachelor, he rejoiced in the commanding period of life that stretches between the time of waning impulse and the time of incipient dotage, when a woman can reach the male heart neither by awakening a young man's passion nor an old man's infatuation. He must be made to admire, or he can be made to do nothing. Unintentionally that is how ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... her dotage and the other at the antipodes Miss Cavendish is practically, if not legally, her ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... in mock melancholy over his supposed intellectual dotage. Unorna turned away, this time with ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... able-bodied man cannot take a babe as the sole companion of his existence. Probably Geoffrey would have found this out in time, and might have drifted into some mode of life more or less undesirable, had not an accident occurred to prevent it. In his dotage, Geoffrey's old uncle Sir Robert Bingham fell a victim to the wiles of an adventuress and married her. Then he promptly died, and eight months afterwards a ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... succeed each other, not as rationals, but as animals. It signifies not what their mental or moral characters are. Monarchical government appears under all the various characters of childhood, decrepitude, dotage; a thing at nurse, in leading-strings, or in crutches. In short, we cannot conceive a more ridiculous figure of government than hereditary succession. By continuing this absurdity, man is perpetually in contradiction with himself; he may accept for ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... fellows rarely drift outside the groove of our fixed orbit. One by one we drop out, and as each one passes beyond it shortens the orbit of the others. The circle is always contracting—never expanding. The last one of us will be found in his dotage never venturing beyond the circle of his own fireside until he, ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... shower so soft and piercing, I almost died to see it; at last delivering me a paper—'Here,' (cried he, with a sigh and trembling-interrupted voice) 'read what I cannot tell thee. Oh, Sylvia,' cried he, '—thou joy and hope of all my aged years, thou object of my dotage, how hast thou brought me to my grave with sorrow!' So left me with the paper in my hand: speechless, unmov'd a while I stood, till he awaked me by new sighs and cries; for passing through my chamber, by chance, ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... found itself not only unable to keep the mass from moving, but unable to keep itself from moving along with the mass. Nor was the effect of the discussions and speculations of that period confined to our own country. While the Jacobite party was in the last dotage and weakness of its paralytic old age, the political philosophy of England began to produce a mighty effect on France, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... voluptuary. It is to me inconceivable how they could have been composed by a man of only twenty—his age when he wrote them. They have no nature—all the sour cream of cantharides. I should have suspected Buffon of writing them on the death-bed of his detestable dotage. I had never redde this edition, and merely looked at them from curiosity and recollection of the noise they made, and the name they have left to Lewis. But they could do no harm, except * ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... revolve, but upon a very different thing, viz. to what age in man these six thousand years correspond by analogy in a planet. In man the sixtieth part is a very venerable age. But as to a planet, as to our little earth, instead of arguing dotage, six thousand years may have scarcely carried her beyond babyhood. Some people think she is cutting her first teeth; some think her in her teens. But, seriously, it is a very interesting problem. Do the sixty centuries of our earth imply ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... consciousness of the external world, produced by a torpidity of the afferent organs. In these cases the recollections which are not altogether lost sometimes reappear as hallucinations. The hallucinations of madness, in its various forms of dementia, idiocy, and dotage, are all, apart from their morbid and organic conditions, derived from the same source which produces myths, dreams, and normal hallucinations; the objective entification of images is due to the innate faculty of the perception, which leads to the immediate ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... a strange thing happened. When we had taken my grandfather to the Hall in June, his dotage seemed to settle upon him. He became a trembling old man, at times so peevish that we were obliged to summon with an effort what he had been. He was suspicious and fault-finding with Scipio and the other servants, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... such an opinion myself. I therefore took occasion to observe, that the world in general began to be blameably indifferent as to doctrinal matters, and followed human speculations too much—'Ay, Sir,' replied he, as if he had reserved all his learning to that moment, 'Ay, Sir, the world is in its dotage, and yet the cosmogony or creation of the world has puzzled philosophers of all ages. What a medly of opinions have they not broached upon the creation of the world? Sanconiathon, Manetho, Berosus, and Ocellus Lucanus, have all attempted it in vain. The latter has these ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... them! I have thousands of acres, hundreds of tenants, farms, sugar-bushes, manufactories for pearl-ash, grist-mills, saw-mills, and I'm damned if I draw sword either way! Am I a madman, to risk all this? Am I a common fool, to chance anything now? Do they think me in my dotage? Indeed, sir, if I drew blade, if I as much as raised a finger, both sides would come swarming all over us—rebels a-looting and a-shooting, Indians whooping off my cattle, firing my barns, scalping my tenants—rebels at heart every one, and ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... their decisions by any succeeding Council or Pope. Hence, even wise decisions—wise under the particular circumstances and times—degenerated into mischievous follies, by having the privilege of immortality without any exemption from the dotage of superannuation. Hence errors became like glaciers, or ice-bergs in the frozen ocean, unthawed by summer, and growing from the fresh deposits ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... you think it is he who has enabled us to keep our position in Washington? And now he is going into his dotage, and the big men won't dare to use him much longer. I'm not blind, Mr. Payne; I can see as well as Garman. Let me speak seriously to you: Your presence here ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... changing its name like a coward, throws itself into the Meuse near Rotterdam; the other still called the Rhine, but with the ridiculous surname of "curved," reaches Utrecht with difficulty, where for the fourth time it again divides; capricious as an old man in his dotage. One part, denying its old name, drags itself as far as Muiden, where it falls into the Zuyder-Zee; the other, with the name of Old Rhine, or simply the Old, flows slowly to the city of Leyden, whose streets it crosses almost without giving a sign of movement, and is ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... Joseph is not only old, but appears almost in a state of dotage, like a lean, wrinkled mendicant, with a bald head, a white beard, a feeble frame, and a sleepy or stupid countenance. Then, again, the later Italian painters have erred as much on the other side; for I have ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... hers, his friends and acquaintances became alarmed for the result, and not without cause. "Her influence over him exceeds all belief," wrote a mutual friend to Greville in March, 1791. "His attachment exceeds admiration, it is perfect dotage." Shortly after this letter was written the two went to England, and there they were married on the 6th of September, 1791. By the end of the year they were back in Naples, and did not again leave Italy up to the time of Nelson's ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... councils of Prussia, Malmesbury declared that he could find no quality but "great and shabby art and cunning; ill-will, jealousy, and every sort of dirty passion." From the head quarters of Moellendorf he wrote to a member of Pitt's Cabinet: "Here I have to do with knavery and dotage.... If we listened only to our feelings, it would be difficult to keep any measure with Prussia. We must consider it an alliance with the Algerians, whom it is no disgrace to pay, or any impeachment ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... in itself, is infinitely unjust, if a story, often told by my poor old grandfather, was true, which I own I am inclined to doubt. The old man, sir, had learned in his youth, or dreamed in his dotage, that Scotland had become an integral part of England,—not in right of conquest, or rendition, or through any right of inheritance—but in virtue of a solemn Treaty of Union. Nay, so distinct an idea had he of this supposed Treaty, that he used to recite one of its articles to this effect:—'That ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... laugh with the foolish tales he tells, you would turn against your own kind, Valencia. No honest Spaniard can be a friend of the gringos. Of the patron," he added rather sorrowfully, "I do not speak, for truly he is in his dotage and therefore not to be judged too harshly. But you, Valencia—you should think twice before you choose a gringo for your friend; a gringo who speaks fair to the father that he may cover his love-making to the daughter, who is ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... in them. Indeed one very trying effect of the continued alarm about Charles was that he took to haunting the place, and report declared that he had talked loudly and coarsely of his cousin's death and his uncle's dotage, and of his soon being called in to manage the property for the little heir—insomuch that Sir Edmund Nutley thought it expedient to let him know that Charles, on going on active service soon after he had come of age, had sent home a will, making his son, who was ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his eyes." The question has more than once been asked, "Is it possible that he can be so befogged?" Why not? He is an old man, between seventy and eighty, of great self-esteem, perhaps entering his dotage. If such a man be placed in so responsible a position, ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... ambition not to lead, but, with a slave's adulation, to obey and to follow all the caprices of the public mind—described Mr. Wordsworth as resembling, in the quality of his mind, an old nurse babbling in her paralytic dotage to sucking babies. If this insult was peculiarly felt by Mr. Wordsworth, it was on a consideration of the unusual imbecility of him who offered it, and not because in itself it was baser or more insolent than the language held by the majority ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... cane of mine, they are realities to my inner conscience. Within every one of us there lives both a Don Quixote and a Sancho Panza to whom we hearken by turns; and though Sancho most persuades us, it is Don Quixote that we find ourselves obliged to admire.... But a truce to this dotage!—and let us go to see Madame de Gabry about some matters more important than the everyday ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... these deformities beauties in the eyes of fashion? and are not these people the favoured nurselings of the World, secure of her smiles, her caresses, her fostering praise, her partial protection, through all the dangers of youth and all the dotage of age? ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... with a threadbare hood of coarse kersey upon his head, and buttoned about his neck, while his pinched features, like those of old Daniel, were illuminated by —"an eye, Through the last look of dotage still cunning and sly." ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... them were in my chain Ytied; and now, what for unwieldy age And unlust, they may not to love attain: And sain that "Love is but very dotage!" Thus, for that they themself lacken courage, They folk exciten by their wicked saws For to rebell against me, ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... usage of attain which has been thought to refer to mere progress of time carries the thought of a result desired; as, to attain to old age; the man desires to live to a good old age; we should not speak of his attaining his dotage. One may attain an object that will prove not worth his labor, but what he achieves is in itself great and splendid; as, the Greeks at Marathon achieved a glorious ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... into my dotage, I look on the dark side of everything. I am invited to a wedding and ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova • David Widger
... the features of outward loveliness that contrast and refine, as it were, the metaphysical terror of the associations. And the beautiful description of Coloneus itself, which is the passage that Sophocles is said to have read to his judges, before whom he was accused of dotage, seems to paint a home more fit for the graces than the furies. The chorus inform the stranger that he has come ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Until her dotage this woman, who, from a natural selfishness and lack of sympathy, was incapable of loving with the characteristic ardor of the women of her time, by knowing how to inspire love in others, controlled and held near her the famous ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... dip by the lane, Tammas and the Master, summoned hurriedly by Owd Bob, came running up to find the little man leaning against the stile, and shaking with silent merriment. Again, poor old Staggy, daring still in his dotage, took a fall while scrambling on the steep banks of the Stony Bottom. There he lay for hours, unnoticed and kicking, until James Moore and Owd Bob came upon him at length, nearly exhausted. But M'Adam was before them. Standing on the far ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... 'Let him alone, will yer.' A laughing-stock in his old age. But yesterday he might have stood before the world: now none so poor to do him reverence,—Shakespeare! That's what's coming. Poor old Bull! In his dotage making a rod to whip ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... know one General G.? He is a weazen-faced warrior, and in his dotage. I had him for a fellow-passenger on board a steamboat. I had also a statistical colonel with me, outside the coach from Cincinnati to Columbus. A New England poet buzzed about me on the Ohio, like a gigantic bee. A mesmeric doctor, of an impossibly great age, gave me pamphlets at Louisville. ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields |
