"Methuselah" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to doubt that METHUSELAH was blessed with a tolerably vigorous constitution. The ordeal through which we pass to maturity, at present, probably did not belong to the Antediluvian Epoch. Whooping-cough, measles, scarlet fever, and croup are comparatively modern inventions. They and ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... will be as old as Methuselah, if you wait till I am your wife. I dare say Perry has got a sister. Suppose you ask him? She would be just ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... at last. "Dashed clever. It 'ud fool the Prince of Wales!" (Dick had astonishing delusions as to the supposed omniscience of the heir to the throne of England.) "The ink looks old, and it's not metallic ink. The parchment's as old as Methuselah—I'll take my oath on that. There's even different ink been used for the map and the margin notes. But that's new blood or my name's Mike! That blood's not a week old! Phew! I bet it's that poor devil Mukhum ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... succeeds in finding him. To do this work correctly the old Italians insisted on from five to eight years with an hour lesson each day. To take such a course following the modern plan of one or two half hours a week, would have the student treading on the heels of Methuselah ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... Britannula we have no capital punishment,—is that murder? It is not so, only because the law enacts it. I and a few others did succeed at last in stopping the use of that word. Then they talked to us of Methuselah, and endeavoured to draw an argument from the age of the patriarchs. I asked them in committee whether they were prepared to prove that the 969 years, as spoken of in Genesis, were the same measure of ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... life. Life is action. Life is not measured by time, but by experience. It is our duty, therefore, to live all we can in the time allotted us. The patriarchs lived longer than we, but we may live more than they. This is a grand age in which we live. We may now live more in fifty years than Methuselah did before the flood. The time is short. Hence if we would live much we must ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... children, enough of that!" he cried. "We'll have no more maundering. Fifty years—what are fifty years! Think of Methuselah! It's summer in the world still, and it's only spring at St. Saviour's. It's the time of the first flowers. Let's dance—no, no, never mind the Cure to-night! He will not mind. I'll settle it with him. We'll dance the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... story is too much in the style of the male story-monger—you all know him—who repeats with undiminished gusto for the forty-ninth time a story that was tottering in senile imbecility when Methuselah was teething, and is now in a sad condition ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... book of the generations of Adam",(1) Galumum's nine hundred years(2) seem to run almost like a refrain; and Methuselah's great age, the recognized symbol for longevity, is even exceeded by two of the Sumerian patriarchs. The names in the two lists are not the same,(3) but in both we are moving in the same atmosphere ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... had dwindled away. Some had been given to the sons and daughters when they left the parental roof; some had died, and others had been sold to pay debts and furnish the means of living. Old Rosa, the cook, Nancy, the waiting-maid, and Methuselah, the ancient gardener, were all the house-servants that remained. So they lived in a very quiet and frugal way; and Miss Matilda's activities, not being entirely engrossed with family cares, found employment in the nurture of flowers ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society
... event happened which I shall never forget if I live to be the age of Methuselah. I was standing near the dock, when suddenly some one laid a heavy hand on ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... wholly settle the question about such toads, because, even though they may not be all that their admirers claim for them, they may yet possess a very respectable antiquity of their own, and may be very far from the category of mere vulgar cheats and impostors. Because a toad is not as old as Methuselah, it need not follow that he may not be as old as Old Parr; because he does not date back to the Flood, it need not follow that he cannot remember Queen Elizabeth. There are some toads-in-a-hole, indeed, which, however we may account for the origin of their legend, are on the ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... said Malcom earnestly. "An ye will, ye may keepit the angel a-growin' within ye alway, though ye live as old as Methuselah. D'ye see this wee brown seed? There's a mornin'-glory vine hidden in it, as would daze your een at the peep o' day wi' its gay blossoms. An' ye see my ould gudewife there? Ah, she will daze the een ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... a feeling of professional regret that we record the death of Mr. Jacob Pigwidgeon. Deceased was one of our earliest pioneers, who came to this State long before he was needed. His age is a matter of mere conjecture; probably he was less advanced in years than Methuselah would have been had he practised a reasonable temperance in eating and drinking. Mr. Pigwidgeon was a gentleman of sincere but modest piety, profoundly respected by all who fancied themselves like him. Probably no ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... stands indebted to Giotto beyond any of her children. His history is a most instructive one. Endowed with the liveliest fancy, and with that facility which so often betrays genius, and achieving in youth a reputation which the age of Methuselah could not have added to, he had yet the discernment to perceive how much still remained to be done, and the resolution to bind himself (as it were) to Nature's chariot wheel, confident that she would erelong emancipate ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... frequently of the 'boys' in Vailima, that she wrote and asked Mr. Stevenson for news of them, as it would so much interest her little girls. In the tropics, for some reason or other that it is impossible to understand, servants and work-people are always called 'boys,' though the years of Methuselah may have whitened their heads, and great-grandchildren prattle about their knees. Mr. Stevenson was amused to think that his 'boys,' who ranged from eighteen years of age to threescore and ten, should be mistaken for little youngsters; but he was touched ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... griefs of life come with age? If Dic should live till his years outnumbered those of Methuselah, no pain could ever come to him worthy of mention compared to this. It awakened him to the quality and quantity of his love. It seemed that he had loved her ever since she lisped his name and clung to his finger in tottering babyhood. He looked back over the years and failed to see one moment ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... stuttered, "did you send him the picture of Methuselah himself? Heaven's sake, skipper, there's a happy medium, you know. I meant for you to pick yourself out a man of about fifty-five, and here you've slipped him a patriarch of ninety. Sarcasm! I ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... dollars in his pocket, the Yankee started off farther South, vowing that, if he lived to be as old as Methuselah, he'd never have any thing to do ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... in my work. The more we sow a field the more it spreads. One would need to live to the age of a Methuselah ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... who was, for my age, what Kitty called 'Bible-learned,' said thoughtfully, and with some puzzledness of mind, 'Then he's older than Methuselah.' ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... the doctor's nature, and of his firm friendship for Valentine. That he did continue most persistently to dwell upon it, and with a keen suspicion, must be due to the present desolation of his circumstances, and to the vain babble of the blue-coated Methuselah, whose intellect roamed incessantly through a marine past, peopled with love episodes of ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... thought within my soul: Time will not serve for the bounding-line. I think it would fail to mete the whole If old Methuselah's years were mine. Like the famous spring that is sometimes dry, Then flows with a river's whelming might, The current of thought now runs so high It covers the earthy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... abode with his kindred in the land of the Chaldees;" and from the lips of his venerable progenitor, Abraham himself may have first received the knowledge of the true God, and have learned lessons of wisdom and obedience, as he sat at his feet. Shem may have conversed with Methuselah; and Methuselah must have known Adam; and from Adam, Methuselah may have heard that history of the creation and fall, which he narrated to Shem, and which Shem may have transmitted to Abraham; and the history of the world would be thus remembered as the traditional recollections of a family, ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... "I wasn't taking no extra time to find out if a no-account feller like Mustard Bilton signed his name M. or Max or Methuselah. No, sir." ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... particularly struck with the short but comprehensive narrative of Enoch: "He walked with God, and he was not; for God took him" (Gen. 5:21-24). He "walked with God," and how long? "Three hundred years" after he begat Methuselah. Oh, how strange that it should be so hard for me to walk in the commandments of the Lord even for a few days! O God, give me more of the love and more of the faith that Enoch ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... one—while that mysterious being dances and prances in it, all will go well; his horses will not stumble, never will his clowns forget a syllable of their antiquated jokes. Oh! let him, then, whilst seriously reflecting upon Simpson and the fate of Vauxhall, give good heed unto the Methuselah, who hath already passed his second centenary ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... apparently, had both his legs. He was too brisk in villainy to admit a wooden leg. But then, he was only an uncle. If his history ran out to the end, doubtless he would go with a limp in his riper days. The story of the Bible—although it trafficked in such veterans as Methuselah—gave not a hint. Abraham died full of years. Here would have been a proper ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... 'tis, she's coming here to lunch. She says all the hateful things she can think of; and you don't know how queer she is. I can't help laughing at her; and that makes mamma cross, for she wants me to be polite to her, because she's old as Methuselah and poor ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... lives!" said he, joyfully, "and God be praised for it! For how tedious and dull it would be at this court had we not our fair queen, who is as wise as Methuselah, and innocent and good as a new-born babe! Do you not, Lady Jane, say with me, God be praised that ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... Adam did justify, In that promise faith made Eve to prophecy. Faith in that promise proved Abel innocent, In that promise faith made Seth full obedient. That faith taught Enos on God's name first to call, And made Methuselah the oldest man of all. That faith brought Enoch to so high exercise, That God took him up with him into paradise. Of that faith the want made Cain to hate the good, And all his offspring to perish in the flood. Faith in that promise preserved both me ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... time is! Where are the years that David lived, and where are those which Methuselah passed in this world? their whole duration seems, at this distance, in the words of St. James, 'Even as a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... extensive—I repeat it—the science of self- knowledge! To be perfect in it we need the life of a Methuselah! But something may be done, even in the short period of seventy years. And if it be but little that we can do in a life time, this consideration only enhances ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... But what? Young and old die upon the same terms; no one departs out of life otherwise than if he had but just before entered into it; neither is any man so old and decrepit, who, having heard of Methuselah, does not think he has yet twenty good years to come. Fool that thou art! who has assured unto thee the term of life? Thou dependest upon physicians' tales: rather consult effects and experience. According to the common course of things, 'tis long since that thou hast lived ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... experience, onwards, this belief is constantly being verified, until old age is inclined to suspect that experience has nothing new to offer. And when the experience of generation after generation is recorded, and a single book tells us more than Methuselah could have learned, had he spent every waking hour of his thousand years in learning; when apparent disorders are found to be only the recurrent pulses of a slow working order, and the wonder of a year becomes the commonplace of a century; ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... moderately, by refraining from worry. But, as a writer in a southern journal expressed it, Why do these aged curiosities never tell us what use they have made of this prolonged existence? Mark Twain said cheerfully, "Methuselah lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years; but what of that? There was nothing doing." No drama on the stage is a success unless it has what we call a supreme moment; and the drama of our individual lives ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... "You are the funniest little person I ever knew. On duty you're as old as Methuselah and as wise as Hippocrates, but the rest of the time I believe your feet are eternally treading the nap off antique wishing-carpets. I wonder how many you've worn out. As for that head of yours, it bobs like a penny balloon ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... I have seen much of the world and many more people than you have. And if I have not learned to judge those I meet by this time I shall never learn, though I grow to be as old as"—she came near saying "as you are," but substituted instead—"as Mrs. Methuselah. I shall remain here. I would not insult Cap'n Amazon or Cap'n Abe, by leaving abruptly and going with you to ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... raising my voice, 'you are still the old man in your answers!' 'Old man,' replied he, with a blunt but respectful air; 'that is just what my father used to say. "Pat," says he, "were you to live to the age of Methuselah, you would still be Patrick O'Donnar."' I lost all patience. 'Sirrah!' cried I, 'to whom do you speak?' 'Sir, did you not know,' answered he, 'I would tell you.' I was extremely provoked; I gave him a push from me, and he fell upon a favourite dog, which set up a loud howl. Pat leisurely ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... can assure you it is only because they will not shut the doors after them below, as I desire. I am certain Mr. Champfort never shut a door after him in his life, nor never will if he was to live to the days of Methuselah." ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... Plumstead, the brother-in-law and cousin, who were both clergymen in the same district, and about the people in the village whom they had known when they were boys, and who never grew any older. "There is old Kilweed, for example, who was Methuselah in those days—he's not eighty yet," he said, with a smile and a sigh; "it is we who grow older and come nearer to the winter and the sunset. My father even has come down a long way off the awful eminence on which I used to behold him: every year that falls on my head seems to take ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... protest at the sacrilege, and finally died away into a muffled intonation resembling a stifled sob. Roused by the unexpected call, there presently appeared an Indian who looked as if he might have been contemporary with Methuselah. No wrinkled leaf that had been blown about the earth for centuries could have appeared more dry and withered than this centenarian, whose hair drooped from his skull like Spanish moss, and whose brown ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... long-lost "Garden of Eden," the veritable navel of the earth, and to have spent over two years studying and reconnoitering in this marvelous "within" land, exuberant with stupendous plant life and abounding in giant animals; a land where the people live to be centuries old, after the order of Methuselah and other Biblical characters; a region where one-quarter of the "inner" surface is water and three-quarters land; where there are large oceans and many rivers and lakes; where the cities are superlative in construction and magnificence; where modes of transportation ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... One forgotten of the gods and living to a great age. History is abundantly supplied with examples, from Methuselah to Old Parr, but some notable instances of longevity are less well known. A Calabrian peasant named Coloni, born in 1753, lived so long that he had what he considered a glimpse of the dawn of universal peace. Scanavius relates ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... deeds were brought to judgment there. They jeered at the age, which released them from the necessity of understanding it. They abetted each other in amazement. They communicated to each other that modicum of light which they possessed. Methuselah bestowed information on Epimenides. The deaf man made the blind man acquainted with the course of things. They declared that the time which had elasped since Coblentz had not existed. In the same manner that Louis XVIII. was by the grace of God, in the five ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... distance of three thousand years; there was Moses with the Burning Bush, the number of the Twelve Tribes, types, shadows, glosses on the law and the prophets; there were discussions (dull enough) on the age of Methuselah, a mighty speculation! there were outlines, rude guesses at the shape of Noah's Ark and of the riches of Solomon's Temple; questions as to the date of the creation, predictions of the end of all things; the great lapses of time, the strange mutations of the globe were ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... was just a little annoying to Mr. Thorne; he was ten years the senior of his wife, and did not like allusions to "growing older." "No one need try to convince me," he answered quite warmly, "that I shall ever cease to enjoy the dishes my mother used to get up if I live to be as old as Methuselah! She is the best cook I ever knew, and she never made ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... very old, and old it was when Methuselah was teething. There is no older and more common story anywhere. As the sequel, it would be heroic to tell you this boy's life was ruined. But I do not think it was. Instead, he had learned all of a sudden that which at twenty-one is heady ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... turned his inclination to good account and might have helped him to self-mastery, if not to the mastery of algebra. He yearned for the emotion of elation, and I was trying to perpetuate his emotion of subjection. If Methuselah had been a schoolmaster he might have attained proficiency by the time he reached the age of nine hundred and sixty-eight years if he had been a close observer, a close student of methods, and had been willing and able to ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... me by worse names at this very minute as they drive home. 'That old Methuselah of a Saracinesca, how has he the face to go on living?' That is the way they talk. 'People ought to die decently when other people have had enough of them, instead of sitting up at the table like death's-heads to grin ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... appeared in the opening, whose absolutely white hair reached below his shoulder-blades, and whose equally white beard descended to his middle. He wore the usual loin-cloth, but was usual in nothing else. He looked older than Methuselah, yet strong, for his muscles stood out like knotted whip-cords; and active, for he stood on the balls of his feet with the immobility that only comes of ableness. The most unusual thing of all was that he spoke. He said several words in Sanskrit ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... (alias Zwack), "guard the origin and the novelty of (*) in the most careful way."[506] "The greatest mystery," he says again, "must be that the thing is new; the fewer who know this the better.... Not one of the Eichstadters knows this but would live or die for it that the thing is as old as Methuselah."[507] ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... last judgment. This is by no means all. There is combined with this outline of history, not less ambitious though perhaps not more eccentric than H. G. Wells's latest book, a gazetteer of the world in general and of Europe in particular, a portrait gallery of all distinguished men from Adam and Methuselah down to the reigning emperor, kings, and pope of 1493, with many intimate studies of the devil, and a large variety of rather substantial and Teutonic angels. Every city in Europe is shown in a front elevation in which the perspective reminds one of Japanese art, and the ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater
... your horrid fondness for money. Suppose Lady Malkinshaw does outlive him; suppose I do lose my legacy. What is three thousand pounds to you? My dress is ruined. My shawl's spoiled. He die! If the old woman lives to the age of Methuselah, he won't die. Give me your arm. No! Go to my father. I want medical advice. My nerves are torn to pieces. I'm giddy, faint, sick—SICK, ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... in a tragic voice; "she never could make the room look at it used to— not if she was to live till the age of Methuselah. Of course you'll improve it, Miss Peel; you couldn't possibly exist in it ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... indeed, you are mistaken there, Louisa," said Ferdinand; "for I read in the Bible, this morning, that Methuselah, who was the oldest man ever known, lived ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... dear count, for that would betray our love to the world. No, no, if any one should speak so to you, you must shrug your shoulders, and say, 'I am not acquainted with Madame von Brandt, I am indifferent whether she is handsome or ugly. She may be as old as Methuselah, it does ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... oneself with his time and his life and his historical relationships, is mere literary dilettantism unless it has that clear sense and deeper enjoyment for its end. It may be said that the more we know about a classic the better we shall enjoy him; and, if we lived as long as Methuselah and had all of us heads of perfect clearness and wills of perfect steadfastness, this might be true in fact as it is plausible in theory. But the case here is much the same as the case with the Greek and Latin studies of our ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... manuscript at the British Museum and elsewhere. Some of it was issued last century, some early in this. Four expensive volumes have been wretchedly edited and issued by the Purcell Society, and those amongst us who live to the age of Methuselah will probably see all the accessible works printed by this body. Some half century ago Messrs. Novello published an edition of the church music, stupidly edited by the stupidest editor who ever laid clumsy fingers on a masterpiece. ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... airs in proportion; but Hugh they regarded as a very aged person; not as old, it was true, as their cousins who came down from college at Christmas, and who, at the first outbreak of war, all rushed into the army; but each of these was in the boys' eyes a Methuselah. Hugh had his own horse and the double-barrelled gun, and when a fellow got those there was little material difference between him and other men, even if he did have to go to the academy,—which was really something ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... her account, for it has rendered needless those awkward efforts to speak loud and painful attempts to hear which used to trouble the family in days gone by. It is quite clear, however, when you look into granny's coal-black eyes, that if she were to live to the age of Methuselah she will never be blind, nor ill-natured, nor less pleased with herself, her surroundings, and the whole order of ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne |
