"Senile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to ease the trembling that seized her. The moon had passed on, and darkness, which is allied to fear, closed her in—the fear of unthinking youth who knows not that the grave is full of peace; the fear of abundant life for senile death; the cold agony that comes in the night-watches, when the business of the day is but a dream and ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... politician as he was a brilliant commander, at once demonstrated to his Government the impotence of such senile attempts. No definite agreements could be made, he wrote, except by a general convention. Before a treaty of peace, no permission would be given by the States to the public exercise of the Catholic religion, for fear of giving offence to what were called the Protestant powers. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... allusion to "the Royal-Martyr" (III, 32) may be considered a modest clue to Swift's Toryism, and it is associated with the Jacobitism of which his Whiggish enemies accused him. Yet an unusual reading of the Struldbruggs in the third voyage (particularly the controls imposed on the senile creatures in order to prevent their engrossing the civil power) as an attack on the religious dissenters demonstrates that Curll and Swift agreed on the issue of an established church. The clergy who wished to separate state from church, or as Curll ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... moodily into his horn cup, made no sign of having heard. His father poured himself more wine, and nodded. The old man added, with a chuckle and a senile ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... a drummer I once saw read a cheap magazine from cover to cover in the finest stretch of the Canadian Rockies. He was not a man, but a sample-fed, word-emitting machine. These people, emotionally speaking, are senile. They should not try to ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... think about them. Yes, I have. Six months ago I should have fretted myself sick. Remember at Cairo? I've only had two or three bad times. Am I getting better, or is it senile decay?" ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... far away from the heart, and it is such a long upgrade return of the blood, that the circulation in the lower extremities easily becomes sluggish. The flabby, relaxed tissues and the hardened blood-vessels allow the blood to stagnate. This is why senile gangrene is so common in the feet ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... most earnest longings of the naturally pious-inclined Germans. One can do no greater wrong to the whole of this exuberant and eccentric movement (which was really youthfulness, notwithstanding that it disguised itself so boldly, in hoary and senile conceptions), than to take it seriously, or even treat it with moral indignation. Enough, however—the world grew older, and the dream vanished. A time came when people rubbed their foreheads, and they still rub them today. People had been dreaming, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... blooming in a bed among all those old decayed and discarded people of the world. Curious, too, I thought, that these people, like old Croasan, had rejected life. Though they were, if anything, less estimable than he was, for he defied life, in his silly, senile, drunken way, while they seemed ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... live long enough,' I says, 'to use as an exhibit in your senile fireside mendacity. Your grandchildren will have to take your word for it. I'll give you one ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... audible in the stillness] Into that! alone—helpless—without money. The men who work with you; the men you make friends of—d'you think they'll let you be? The men in the streets, staring at you, stopping you—pudgy, bull-necked brutes; devils with hard eyes; senile swine; and the "chivalrous" men, like me, who don't mean you harm, but can't help seeing you're made for love! Or suppose you don't take covert but struggle on in the open. Society! The respectable! The pious! Even those who love you! Will they let ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... one, and does not mention Warner, or lead us to believe that he was sole editor. Only a small portion of this projected criticism seems ever to have been written. It appears to have been begun in senile peevishness, containing only a few prefatory remarks and discussing some algebraical questions with the fancied errors of the editors. No mention is made of the'Atomic Theory,'as promised on the title-page, which is here done into ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... admonishes the youth who is taking lessons from a comic actor in voice-production not to carry his precepts so far as to imitate the female falsetto, the senile tremolo, the obsequiousness of the slave, the stuttering accents of intoxication or the intonations ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... contrary; inveterate, rooted. antiquated, of other times, rococo, of the old school, after-age, obsolete; out of date, out of fashion, out of it; stale, old-fashioned, behind the age; old-world; exploded; gone out, gone by; passe, run out; senile &c. 128; time worn; crumbling &c. (deteriorated) 659; secondhand. old as the hills, old as Methuselah, old as Adam[obs3], old as history. [geological eras (list, starting at given number of years bp)] Archeozoic[5,000,000,000], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... give up all the results we have attained with such effort, results of which we have been boasting for three centuries; to give up every convenience and charm of our existence, to prefer savage youth to the senile decay of civilization, to pull down the palace raised for us by our ancestors only for the pleasure of having a hand in the founding of a new house, which will doubtless be built long after we are gone?" ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... snowy hand with almost senile delight, and holds it for—as long as he dares. During this undefined period he tells himself what a perfect picture she is, with her clear, pale, beautiful face, and her nut-brown hair, and the tender sweetness of her attitude, as she bends over the smiling baby. Could any vaunted Madonna ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... and paralysed that gallant clan. Montrose rode north, where, in February 1644, old Leslie, with twenty regiments of foot, three thousand horse, and many guns, was besieging Newcastle. With him was the prototype of Scott's Dugald Dalgetty, Sir James Turner, who records examples of Leslie's senile incompetency. Leslie, at least, forced the Marquis of Newcastle to a retreat, and a movement of Montrose on Dumfries was paralysed by the cowardice or imbecility of the Scottish magnates on the western Border. He returned, ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... Senile Dementia is a form which is incidental to aged persons, and commences gradually with such symptoms as loss of memory for recent events, dulness of perception, and inability to fix the attention. Later on the reasoning powers begin to fail, and finally, memory, reason, and power of attention, ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... of her former voluptuous ardour but weariness of the flesh and a senile tremor of the hands. She had once loved like a she-wolf, but was now wasted, already sufficiently worn out for the grave. There had been strange workings of her nerves during her long years of chastity. A dissolute life would perhaps have wrecked her less than ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... thickening crowd. The old gentleman, who was lank and tall, folded himself down into it, He continued as tranquilly as if seated quite alone with Mrs. Brinkley, and not minding that his voice, with the senile crow in it, made itself heard by others. "I'm always surprised to find sensible people at these things of Jane's. They're most extraordinary things. Jane's idea of society is to turn a herd of human ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... us some o' that!" said the piping, silly voice of the old man. "But I mun' get to that there platform, I'm telling ye. I'm telling all of ye." He made a senile plunge against the body of the policeman, as against a moveless barricade, and then his hat was awry and it fell off, and somebody lifted it into the air with a neat kick so that it dropped on the barrow. All laughed. The old ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... The tone was senile, but it was the senility of an educated man, and as the cultivated accents wavered forth, my mind changed in, regard to the position he held in the house. Interested anew, I sought to give him another look, but he had already vanished through the doorway, and so noiselessly, ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... begun to exhaust the subject. Though he has accumulated a good deal of experience, he is still in his intellectual prime. He has not yet reached the "school age," which in most persons marks the beginning of the senile decay ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... is not a game," he said, with his little laugh, which somehow sounded quite different—less senile, less helpless. "It is not a ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... of moral energy on Gloria's part to intimidate him into returning, and when he reported next day, somewhat depressed from his perusal of the senile bromides skittishly set forth in "Heart Talks on Ambition," he found only fifty of the original three hundred awaiting the appearance of the vital and compelling Sammy Carleton. Mr. Carleton's powers of vitality and compulsion were this time exercised in elucidating that ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... committed by young men between seventeen and twenty four or five years of age than at any other age. Neither the very young nor the old commit crimes, except in rare cases. All the old people could be safely dismissed from prisons. Some few of the senile would need attention, and many need support and care, but none is dangerous to the community. There can be no question that practically all criminals are poor. Even when bankers get into prison they almost never have much money when they start that way, and none when they arrive. They ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... cause the childish side of man to reappear. He had an unconquerable conviction that Cosette was escaping from him. He would have liked to resist, to retain her, to arouse her enthusiasm by some external and brilliant matter. These ideas, puerile, as we have just said, and at the same time senile, conveyed to him, by their very childishness, a tolerably just notion of the influence of gold lace on the imaginations of young girls. He once chanced to see a general on horseback, in full uniform, pass along the street, Comte Coutard, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... recollections Una could shut her heart. To one absurd thing, because it was living, Una could not shut her heart—to the senile canary. ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... been the Protestant pasteur of Nyons for forty-four years. He was eighty-six years old, and on week-days the old gentleman dozed in the sun all day, and was quite senile and gaga. On Sundays, no sooner had he ascended the pulpit than his faculties seemed to return to him, and he would preach interminable but perfectly coherent sermons with a vigour astonishing in so old a man, only to relapse into ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... eighty and your Horace Walpole at sixty are as lively as a girl and boy. Your octogenarian Voltaire is the most agreeable creature in existence. But take Cymon and Daphne from their flocks and herds and pastoral valleys in their old age, and see what senile bores and quavering imbeciles you would find them. Yes, I have no doubt you found your Dorking aunt a nuisance. Take off your wet overcoat and put it out of the room, and then ring for more hot water. You'll find that cognac very fine. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... dreadful cocked hat, and the eye beneath it fixed steadily upon the windows of the club. Sir Charles was a weak man; he was old, and had many infirmities: he cried about his father-in-law to his wife, whom he adored with senile infatuation: he said he must go abroad,—he must go and live in the country—he should die or have another fit if he saw that man again—he knew he should. And it was only by paying a second visit to Captain Costigan, and representing to him, that if he plagued Sir Charles by letters ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... any more? Dry, senile, without feeling, my only wonder was that his stuff was printed, even in the obscure media where ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... computing the effect, as it will appear to neutral eyes, of what he has produced. But the incapacitation which I speak of here as due to opium, is of another kind and another degree. It is mere childish helplessness, or senile paralysis, of the judgment, which distresses the man in attempting to grasp the upshot and the total effect (the tout ensemble) of what he has himself so recently produced. There is the same imbecility in attempting to hold things steadily together, and to bring them under a comprehensive ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... all his eighty years looking at her from that furrowed face out of those little wandering round blue eyes—saw the human part of him as she had never seen it before—with its patience of unfulfilment, its scant small pleasures, its innocent senile passion at the end; saw, too, the divine part, hidden in him as in all humanity—that communion of longing which bound his passionate fluting, Angela's passionate remorse and her own passionate purity into the ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... Legations, each with its own particular ideas and intrigues, but crouching all together under the Tarter Wall and tremblingly awaiting with mock assurance the bursting of this storm? If you are so good as to see this you will realise the wonderful stage effects, the fierce Mediaevalism in senile decay, the superb distances, the red dust from the Gobi that has choked up all the drains and tarnished all the magnificence until it is no more magnificence at all—this dust which is such a herald of the coming storm—the new guns and pistols of Herr Krupp and the camels ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... human powers. They look forward to usefulness until eighty, at least, and now are encouraged to feel that one hundred years is the natural span of life. There are, it is true, few really important studies of how to keep people from growing senile and really old before the time now set for failure of powers. Such studies, however, are prophesied in a small "endowment for the study of diseases of the aged" already given, and more in the statement of appeals ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... remained he repaired it with strips of pasteboard. Then he took an old and worn out horse whose ribs stuck out from his hide and who was more used to hauling vegetables than to warlike adventures, and he called the horse by the high sounding name of "Rocinante," and really believed that the senile old animal was a greater charger than Bucephalus, the famous horse that bore the ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... recite, and to my horror he rose. Until that moment he had been a serious young officer, talking boulevard French. In an instant he was transformed. He was a clown. To look at him was to laugh. He was an old roue, senile, pitiable, a bourgeois, an apache, a lover, and his voice was so beautiful that each sentence sang. He used words so difficult that to avoid them even Frenchmen will cross the street. He mastered them, played with them, caressed them, sipped of them as ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... all else honest. Minister Adams leaned to Russell personally and thought him true, but officially, in practice, treated him as false. Punch, before 1862, commonly drew Russell as a schoolboy telling lies, and afterwards as prematurely senile, at seventy. Education stopped there. No one, either in or out of England, ever offered a rational ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... contemplated the reflection of his face in the small oval mirror which hung on the rough gray plaster wall opposite, just over the small, cheap, brown-stained wooden bureau. The sight of his countenance, as is the case with most of us who have not yet entered the limbo of senile decrepitude and still dare look ourselves in the face, was always a source of extreme satisfaction to him. He held it in the highest esteem as though it were the head of some beautiful antique Apollo, and in his, the Colonel's estimation, was the handsomest ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... types of society,—is wonderful. Its dramatic strength is none the less marked. But aside from and above all this, for me it has a far greater merit—utility. I have no sympathy with the flippant, effeminate, and senile cry, "Art for art's sake"; that is the echo of a decaying civilization, the voice of Greece and Rome in their decline. It is the shibboleth of a people drunken with pleasure; of a popular conscience anaesthetized; the cry of sensualism and selfishness popular with shallow minds and bloodless hearts; ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... broad nose. Then he wiped his beard on the palm of his hand, and his hand on his knee; whereafter, as he stretched forth the pair of senile, dark-coloured hands, and held them over ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... bewilderment for incredulity and his confidential finger dropped from my sleeve. "Eh, that's the story. I tell what I've heard. What do I know?" He resumed his senile shuffle across the marble. "This is a bad place to stay in—no one comes here. It's too cold. But the gentleman said, I must ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... against the imprudent woman who had signed her name. But the rigorous correctness of the marquis made him afraid. How could he distract his attention—get him away? The opportunity occurred of its own accord. Among the letters, a tiny page written in a senile and shaky hand, caught the attention of the charlatan, who said with an ingenuous air: "Oh, oh! here is something that does not look much like a billet-doux. 'Mon Duc, to the rescue—I am sinking! The Court of Exchequer has once more stuck ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... constant hallucination. The most famous and acute physicians of the insane estimate that eighty out of a hundred insane persons are subject to hallucinations. The morbid condition which generates them is also produced by debility, by anaemia, and the senile decay of the cerebral organs, since they occur in dementia, idiocy, and old age, and the physiological and mental causes are the same; the power of fixing the attention and governing the thoughts is diminished, owing to the weakening of the vivid ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... machine's time since first use (that is, until the relatively distant time at which enough mechanical wear in I/O devices and thermal-cycling stress in components has accumulated for the machine to start going senile). Up to half of all chip and wire failures happen within a new system's first few weeks; such failures are often referred to as 'infant mortality' problems (or, occasionally, as 'sudden infant death syndrome'). See {bathtub ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... was of an incredible age. She was senile with age. Her cracked cackle never ceased for an instant. She talked to the dog and the cat; she talked to the walls of the room; she spoke out through the window to the weather; she shut her eyes in a corner and harangued the circumambient darkness. The eldest ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... dignity; should so far descend from argument, from discussion of law to unseemly banter on the question of sex; that it should so far stoop from a canvass of the most important trial that ever took place, to a senile jest on woman, must be matter of astonishment to every candid mind in the legal fraternity, and certainly has a tendency to convince the female portion of the country that the male man is fast losing his right to the definition ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... beauty that boldly challenged men's admiration and exacted tribute of their eyes. The white-haired Governor paid it in full measure, with a fixed and watery gaze from beneath his half-closed lids, and a senile smile lurking under his waxed moustache. But whenever I glanced upward I met the eyes of Mr. Rivers and Don Pedro turned upon me; and I felt a strange thrill made up, in part, of triumph that my dear love was not to be won ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... who had seated himself on the side of the bed. He had become almost frightful to look at; old before his time, livid of complexion, his eyes bloodshot, the rebellious lock of hair straggling over his right temple. Nothing was more heartbreaking than his senile smile when he placed his bony trembling hands upon his thighs. Amedee, who knew, alas, why his father had reached such a pass, felt his heart ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... from my nurse, a vulgar woman with a limited vocabulary and no aspirates. I say nothing, though I might say much, of the jealousy of adult authors, the pusillanimity of unenterprising publishers, the senile indifference of Parliament. But I warn them that, unless the just claims of youth to economic and intellectual independence are speedily acknowledged, the children of England will enforce them by direct action of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... about that. Well, now, it happens sometimes —not often, but it does happen—that a very young person for some cause or another suffers from senile decay. Some terrible leakage of youth occurs. It has been cured, though, and I've cured ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the visitor with whom his daughter had been having her private conversation. How came they to make this appointment? There was something in Clara's voice that set his nerves a-tremble. That night he could not sleep, and next morning he went to work with a senile quiver in his body. For the first time for more than two months he turned into a public-house on his way, just to give himself a little 'tone.' The natural result of such a tonic was to heighten the fever of his imagination; goodness knows ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... fists clenched. He leaned across the table. "You still don't believe we're near Sol, do you? You're getting senile, Hugh! You know the mathematics of our position ...
— An Empty Bottle • Mari Wolf
... part, be traced to the extreme fecundity of nature, who, as before stated, has in all the varieties of her offspring a prolific power much beyond (in many cases a thousandfold) what is necessary to fill up the vacancies caused by senile decay. As the field of existence is limited and preoccupied, it is only the hardier, more robust, better suited to circumstance individuals, who are able to struggle forward to maturity, these inhabiting only the situations to which they have superior adaptation ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... always goes along with a teaspoonful of brains Ain't any real difference between triplets and an insurrection Chastity, you can carry it too far Classic: everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read Don't know anything and can't do anything Dwell on the particulars with senile rapture Future great historian is lying—and doubtless will continue to Head is full of history, and some of it is true, too Humor enlivens and enlightens his morality I shall never be as dead again as I was then If can't make seventy by any but an uncomfortable ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger
... usually fat with puffy eyelids. The skin is smooth and cool, marble-like often, poor in pigment and color. Sometimes it is sallow, wrinkled and senile in a man in his early twenties. At others, it is distinctly feminine in its hairlessness, and the delicate texture of the skin, as well as in the clean-cut patterning of the features. Every gradient between premature senility and sex inversion ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... in Europe, and known only as a horsebreeder until he began to write abrupt little letters about the Budget. He led the French Duke upstairs, talking trivialties in a hearty way, and there presented him to another and more important English oligarch, who got up from a writing-desk with a slightly senile jerk. He had a gleaming bald head and glasses; the lower part of his face was masked with a short, dark beard, which did not conceal a beaming smile, not unmixed with sharpness. He stooped a little as he ran, like some sedentary ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... you that I shall be married in the autumn, dear Uncle Percival," she said with a renewed effort to penetrate the senile ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... rate, dissembled his mirth to perfection. The look which he shifted from me to Susannah and back was eloquent of senile indecision. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... anything else, although he had one of those unfathomable faces in which nationality is lost, was bald, and so grave that his baldness might have been a tonsure. Every time he passed before the Virgin on the prow, he raised his felt hat, so that you could see the swollen and senile veins of his skull. A sort of full gown, torn and threadbare, of brown Dorchester serge, but half hid his closely fitting coat, tight, compact, and hooked up to the neck like a cassock. His hands inclined to cross each other, and had the mechanical ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... explained everything in detail. It was clear that, having found a new opportunity to exercise his mania for espionage, he had availed himself of it to the utmost; perhaps, too, there was at the bottom of it all a vague, carefully concealed rage against his little Chebe, the anger of a senile passion ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... takes so much interest in my affairs, I will now tell Aemilianus why I have examined so many fishes already and why I am unwilling to remain in ignorance of some I have not yet seen. Although he is in the decline of life and suffering from senile decay, let him, if he will, acquire some learning even at the eleventh hour. Let him read the works of the philosophers of old, that now at any rate he may learn that I am not the first ichthyologist, but follow in the steps of authors, ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... into free nurseries of humanitarian democracy. It was sad to see such a figure as that of Mr. Chumbleton, genial and hospitable, I admit, but utterly heedless of the trend of the times, hopelessly ignorant of the Progressive program, and deriving a senile satisfaction from memories of a barbarous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... Here the long i is retained, and in disyllables the penultima is lengthened, as in 'anile', 'senile', 'virile'. There is no excuse for following the classical quantity in the former syllables of any of these words. As an English word 'sedilia' shortens the antepenultimate, like 'tibia' and the rest, the 'alias' rule not applying ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... having the least idea of what it all meant. But, like most fathers of his kind, he made no objection to the man's proposal, and told him his daughter was in the house. As Offitt walked away on the same quest where Bott had so recently come to wreck, Saul sat smiling, and nursing his senile vanity with the thought that there were not many mechanics' daughters in Buffland that could get two offers in one Sunday from "professional men." He sat with the contented inertness of old men on his well-worn bench, waiting to see what would be ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... to hear the witticisms at his expense that followed on the words; he had relapsed into the dreamy state of mind that these superficial observers took for senile torpor, due to his lack of intelligence. If they had only known, they might have been deeply interested by the problem of his condition; but few problems were more obscure. It was easy, of course, ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... suspected of this infirmity, since he often gives good weight, putting several stories into one, as is clearly demonstrated by several in this volume. You may rely on it, that he has chosen for the finish, the best and most ribald of the lot, in order that he may not be accused of a senile discourse. Put then more likes with your dislikes, and dislikes with your likes. Forgetting the niggardly behaviour of nature to story-tellers, of whom there are not more than seven perfect in the great ocean of human writers, others, although friendly, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... obvious fact? Every person in Polktown who had arrived at the age of understanding and was not yet senile knew that Nelson Haley and Janice Day had "made a match of it." Only the girl's youth and the necessity for the young man to become established in his calling precluded the thought of matrimony for the present. But they were sure of their feeling for each ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... are now inextricably mingled with those of Seneca, was accompanied to the throne by the acclamations of the people. Wearied by the astuteness of an Augustus, the sullen wrath of a Tiberius, the mad ferocity of a Caius, the senile insensibility of a Claudius, they could not but welcome the succession of a bright and beautiful youth, whose fair hair floated over his shoulders, and whose features displayed the finest type of Roman beauty. There was nothing ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... from one another, the literatures of modern Europe came into existence with composite dialects and obeyed confused canons of taste, exhibited their adolescent vigour with affected graces and showed themselves senile in their cradles." In the field of literature to-day the standards are more numerous, but more distinctive, than those of the Elizabethans. Our ideals are classified with almost scientific exactness, and we wear the labels ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... whither it lists, and to fling oneself carelessly upon existence, as Sir George Birdwood, for instance, has done! He also wrote to the Times, but in a very different tone. Like another Gulliver, he pictured the calamity of millionaires living on till their heirs are senile. It is all nonsense, he said, to prescribe rules for life. One of his oldest friends drank a bottle of cognac a day, and, as for himself—well, we know that he is eighty, has lived a varied and dangerous life in many lands, has written on carrots, chestnuts, ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... timidities. The apprehension that the sky will fall—that acme of absurdity among the fears of our Gallic forefathers—has entered our own hearts. Does the rain-drop doubt the ocean? the ray mistrust the sun? Our senile wisdom has arrived at this prodigy. It resembles those testy old pedagogues whose chief office is to rail at the merry pranks or the youthful enthusiasms of their pupils. It is time to become little children once more, to learn again to stand with ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... captious critics. Many of the very strong things in Chaucer, which you may call coarse and gross if you will, are omitted by Pope, and many softened down; nor is there a single line in which the spirit is not the spirit of satire. The folly of senile dotage is throughout exposed as unsparingly, though with a difference in the imitation, as in the original. Even Joseph Warton and Bowles, affectedly fastidious over-much as both too often are, and culpably prompt to find fault, acknowledge that Pope's versions ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... offices, and will ever pay implicit obedience to those who administer to their wants. Many of your followers are among the most profligate of the community. They are the bane of social and domestic happiness, senile ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... shall come a time when death shall be overcome, is a persistent part of every prophecy, and of every religious cult. In these days we find that science is speculating upon the probability of discovering a specific for senile death, as well as for the final elimination of death ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... art of divination amongst the Tuscans took its beginning thus: A labourer striking deep with his cutter into the earth, saw the demigod Tages ascend, with an infantine aspect, but endued with a mature and senile wisdom. Upon the rumour of which, all the people ran to see the sight, by whom his words and science, containing the principles and means to attain to this art, were recorded, and kept for many ages.—[Cicero, De Devina, ii. 23]—A birth suitable ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... entirely different with the criminal who suffers from a degenerative prison psychosis. Here we are not dealing with individuals who tend to dement, who have little or no conception of whether they are in a prison or in a hospital. In short, we are not dealing here with paretics or senile dements, who, although being at the same time prisoners, remain subject to the same unavoidable lot of the paretic or the senile dement. The habitual criminal who suffers from a degenerative psychosis, unless he is in a stupor, is constantly on the alert for a chance to escape. No matter ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... execution. He could be rank and vulgar, and he was gentle as a refined child that sees the spectacle of life for the first time. The bitterness of Baudelaire's flowers of evil he escaped until he was in senile decadence. In the press of active life he registered the shock of conflicting arms, the shallow pride of existence and the mere joy of living, all in a sane manner that will ever endear him to lovers ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... it, look at it—did you ever see such a beauty? Such firmness—roundness—such delicious smoothness to the touch?' It was as if he had said 'she' instead of 'it,' and when he put out his senile hand and touched the melon I positively had to look ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... its throat, half blind with age, and tottering on its pedestal. This solemn old bird sat apart from all the others, nodding its head oracularly in the sunlight, and blinking now and again with its white eyelids in a curious senile fashion. ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... making a good deal of a slight matter, to tell the internal conflicts in the heart of a quiet person something more than juvenile and something less than senile, as to whether he should be guilty of an impropriety, and, if he were, whether he would get caught in his indiscretion. And yet the memory of the kiss that Margaret of Scotland gave to Alain Chartier has lasted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... faintly tinged with violet, invading. Beside the stove, a base-burner with faint fire showing through its mica, the identity of her figure merged with the fat upholstery of the chair, except where the faint pink through the mica lighted up old flesh, Mrs. Miriam Horowitz, full of years and senile with them, wove with grasses, the ecru of her own skin, wreaths that had mounted to a great stack in a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... nor, least of all, to that of the United States. The Athenians were the student-youths of mankind; their constitution was a species of academic freedom, and it would be mere folly to seek to introduce it in this our matured age, to revive it in our senile Europe. And how could we put up with that of Sparta, that great and tiresome manufactory of patriotism, that soldiers' barrack of republican virtue, that sublimely bad kitchen of equality, in which black broth was so vilely cooked that ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... for the prolongation of life which have been put into practice by a large number of people during the last two or three years, and are steadily gaining more attention. Sour milk as an article of diet appears to have a peculiar value in arresting the supposed senile changes which are largely due to auto-intoxication ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... his querulous plaint patiently. For that great dome of silence, his brain, repository of so many state-secrets, is still a redoubtable instrument: its wit and its magician's cunning have not yet lapsed into the dull inane of senile decay. Though fallen from power, after a bad beating at the polls, there is no knowing but that he may rise again, and hold once more in those tired old hands, shiny with rheumatic gout, and now twitching ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... said furiously, "is why you have to lend yourself to this senile idiocy. Because some old women choose to sink themselves in a swamp is no reason ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... flies, however, and dogs, and children. We ought to have remained indoors. Thither we retired for coffee and cigars and a liqueur, of the last of which my friend refused to partake. He fears and distrusts all liqueurs; it is one of his many senile traits. The stuff proved, to my surprise, to be orthodox Strega, likewise a ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... is prolonged, for play is always and everywhere the best synonym of youth. All are young at play and only in play, and the best possible characterization of old age is the absence of the soul and body of play. Only senile and overspecialized tissues of brain, heart, and ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... joined the march with all the paraphernalia of their household goods. From the first this throng, uniting with the usual horde of stragglers and camp-followers, prevented all rapid movements by the army; in fact, but for them the half-senile Kutusoff would not have been able to show even his van to the French line. Mortier's effort to destroy the Kremlin failed, and served no purpose except to exhibit the thirst for revenge of a savage ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... speech of the African, Syrian and Greek; imbecile pedants, like the Agamemnon of the book, a rhetoric of artificial words. These people are depicted with swift strokes, wallowing around tables, exchanging stupid, drunken speech, uttering senile maxims and ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Jarom, Mosiah, Alma, Helaman, Nephi, Mormon, Ether, and Moroni. The language is quaint and simple in syllabic construction; but the book altogether is a mass of dreamy, puzzling history—is either a sacred fiction plagiarised, or a useless and senile jumble of Christian and Red Indian tradition. Smith, the founder of Mormonism, had only a rough time of it. His Church was first organised in 1830, in the State of New York. Afterwards the Mormons went into Ohio, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... difficulty of middle age is to remember names, because these have no real relationship or logical value and must be arbitrarily remembered. The typical senile defect is the dropping out of the recent memories, though the past may be preserved in its entirety. With any disease of the brain, temporary or permanent, amnesia or memory loss may and usually ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... replied, as I took up my hat and gold-headed cane and set out to interview and reprimand my curate. Clearly, something should be done, and done quickly. There was a good deal of talk abroad, and I was supposed to be sinking into a condition of senile incompetence. It is quite true that I could not challenge my curate's conduct in a single particular. He was in all things a perfect exemplar of a Christian priest, and everything he had done in the parish since his arrival contributed to the elevation of the people and the advancement ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... knew it. So we talked it over, and he says I ought to do the Final next year. And then, Marcella, look out! I've told you I've laid down my challenge to sickness! I'll have it whacked before I die. I can't see why anyone should die except of senile decay or accident—and those we'll eliminate in time! I feel that there's only a dyke of matchboarding between me and the ocean of knowledge. One day it's going to break, and I'll be flooded with it. It's a most uncanny feeling, old girl. One of the chaps here—a rather mad American—says that ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... an individual changes vastly. Under stress and fear of circumstances, under the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, all sorts of acquirements are made. The body becomes vigorous and then feeble, the mind grows mature, and then senile. He or she grows wrinkled and bowed and perhaps very wise, or perhaps much the reverse. Yet no one viewing a baby show, a children's party, or an assembly of adults, of whom he has no previous knowledge, ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... wonder, the senile scholar listened to the broken sobs of the child of Valerie Delavigne. He was astounded at her financial carelessness, ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... "They are in complete agreement that the cause of death in each case was senile decay. They were both very old men, ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... don't mean anything. You amuse and interest me, that is all. You're something of a study—entirely different from the genus young lady I'm accustomed to. Only—keep your frankness for Cousin Charley, he's harmless; don't display it to the rest of the world. It might spoil your chances. Even senile millionnaires don't care to walk into the trap, unless the springs are hidden in roses. Come, throw down that endless sewing, and let's have a walk on the beach. Who knows when we may see the sun go down, together again, over the classic waters ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... common in men than in women. While it usually attacks only one foot, it is not uncommon for the other foot to be affected after an interval, and in some cases it is bilateral from the outset. It must clearly be understood that any form of gangrene may occur in old persons, the term senile being here restricted to that variety ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... To these senile maunderings Percival paid no attention. When they came into the crowd and lights of the Hightower, he sent ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... bright metal buttons at the top. They owned no pockets, and were, with the exception of the legitimate outlet, continuous in the circumference of the waistband. No dangling strings gave them an appearance of senile imbecility. Were it not for a certain rigidity, sternness, and mental inflexibility,—we will call it military ardour,—with which they were imbued, they would have created envy in the ...
— The Relics of General Chasse • Anthony Trollope
... his wife's recovery there could, however, be no doubt. The crisis through which he had passed had made him, in appearance, a yet older man; when he declared his happiness tears came into his eyes, and his head shook with a senile tremor. ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... grey coat-sleeve, up to the elbow, beyond the elbow, extended tremblingly towards the tray. Its appearance was weird and nauseous, fantastic and silly. But instead of grabbing the bottle as Powell expected, this hand, tremulous with senile eagerness, swerved to the glass, rested on its edge for a moment (or so it looked from above) and went back with a jerk. The gripping fingers of the other hand vanished at the same time, and young Powell staring at the motionless curtains could ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... had been ill with a chronic rheumatism. He grumbled a good deal about the "positively senile" character of his affliction and finally agreed to take to his bed for a few days in the hope of luring nature to a hasty cure. The professor was rather helpless when he was ill; Jane was painfully and triumphantly energetic. One memorable day, when the invalid ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... chaplains—after a time I wouldn't give more than short odds on the complete sanity of any of 'em. Why, even our Chairman . . . I must tell you about our Chairman. . . . He's old, and you may put it down to senile decay. Before we discharge a patient, or let him out as harmless, it's our custom to have him up before the Committee with a relative who undertakes to be answerable for him. Well, our Chairman, of late, can't be trusted to tell t'other from which: and it's ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... any of your readers, gentle or simple, senile or juvenile, inform me, through the medium of your useful and agreeable periodical, in what collection of nursery rhymes a poem called, I think, "The Spider and Fly," occurs, and if procurable, where? The lines I allude to consisted, to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various |
