"Superannuated" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for the expense of the expedition; and the original design was entirely defeated. Had the Manilla ship escaped the vigilance of the English commodore, he might have been, on his return to England, laid aside as a superannuated captain, and died in obscurity, but his great wealth invested him with considerable influence, and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... of his ancestors, with but one faithful old servant remaining to him of the numerous retinue of the olden times; one poor old dog, half starved, and gray with age, where used to be a pack of thirty hounds; one miserable, superannuated pony in the stable where twenty horses had been wont to stand; and one old cat to beg for ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... every other, we are "going ahead" with accelerated velocity, and promising to outstrip the superannuated countries of Europe. It is really astonishing to see the number of tribunals incessantly springing up for the trial of literary offences. Independent of the high courts of Oyer and Terminer, the great quarterly reviews, we have innumerable minor tribunals, monthly and weekly, ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... and facile music and the independent pieces of the old operas hardly interested him; the wretched trills of Auber and Boieldieu, of Adam and Flotow and the rhetorical commonplaces of Ambroise Thomas and the Bazins disgusted him as did the superannuated affectations and vulgar graces of Italians. That was why he had resolutely broken with musical art, and during the years of his abstention, he pleasurably recalled only certain programs of chamber music when he had ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... be but one opinion—that such an atmosphere was harmful to him. He speaks of Naples himself as being a country of poets, whores, and scoundrels; and Southey does not attempt to mince words, for in vigorous terms he describes England's "alliances to superannuated and abominable governments of the Continent." These are the states that we shed British blood and squandered British money over, and in truth Southey ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... a good one, but superannuated. That, however, did not interfere with its usefulness as a dwelling. We could get it—the doctor had seen the owner—for a small sum per annum, and here was positively no ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... Sophia paused. Holding the flat silver candlestick with one hand, with the other clasping to her bosom her bundle of superannuated love letters, she glanced out into the long black chasm of corridor with a shudder, and vowed she had not the courage to traverse it alone at such an hour. She cast as she spoke such a meaning ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... dog; I am too old, and should only breed it up to be unhappy when I am gone. My resource is in two marble kittens that Mrs Damer has given me, of her own work, and which are so much alive that I talk to them, as I did to poor Tonton! If this is being superannuated, no matter; when dotage can amuse itself it ceases to be an evil. I fear my marble playfellows are better adapted to me, than I am to being your ladyship's correspondent." Poor Tonton was left to Walpole by "poor ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... All is at a standstill; books closed, paper put aside, the voice, the eternal voice of R. L. S., well silenced. Hence this plaint reaches you with no very great meaning, no very great purpose, and written part in slumber by a heavy, dull, somnolent, superannuated son ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... function of a critic. It is not for him to set up sign-posts, or even warning-boards, for those who run and read. To attain true distinction he should erect a pillory upon his study table, and start the fun himself with a choice selection of the literary analogues of the superannuated eggs and futile kittens which served as projectiles in the past. The public may be trusted to keep it going, and also to retain a grateful recollection of the original promoter of the sport. My little weekly and monthly pillories became instantly popular, for all my kittens were well ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... was Hiquey, over whom Queen Hiquanama, a superannuated Princess, whome the Spaniards Crucified, did preside and Govern. The number of those I saw here burnt, and dismembered, and rackt with various Torments, as well as others, the poor Remnants of such matchless ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... district and had no mind to lose the money they had invested in a purely financial operation. The truth is that modern Europe has no room for "prancing Pro-consuls," and no longer takes stock in autocrats. They are, or ought to be, superannuated, out of date. To use an expressive colloquialism they are "a back number." The progress of the world demands the development of peoples; it has no use for mediaeval monarchies like that of Potsdam. One of the things we ought to banish for ever is the ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney
... shirt-frill of English lace, yellow with age, the magnificence of which a queen might have envied, formed a series of yellow ruffles on his breast; but upon him the lace seemed rather a worthless rag than an ornament. In the centre of the frill a diamond of inestimable value gleamed like a sun. That superannuated splendor, that display of treasure, of great intrinsic worth, but utterly without taste, served to bring out in still bolder relief the strange creature's face. The frame was worthy of the portrait. That dark ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... I gained the lee side of the cook's galley at the forward end of the deckhouse. Here, as I conjectured, I found old Greazer, our lamp-trimmer. This worthy, who was quite a character in his way, was a superannuated fireman belonging to the line, whom age and long years of toil had unfitted for the rougher and more arduous duties of his vocation in the stoke-hold, and who now, instead of trimming coals in the furnaces below, trimmed wicks and attended ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... says he, ferreting for some disbanded officer, I warrant. Half pay is but thin subsistence, says he. Well, what pension does your lady propose? Let me see, says he, what, she must come down pretty deep now, she's superannuated, says ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... decrepit, venerable, patriarchal, superannuated, senile; former, pre-existing, preceding, ancient, archaic, antique, antiquated, olden, time-honored, traditional, immemorial, primitive, primordial, primeval, pristine, fossil; dilapidated, decayed, effete; practiced, veteran, experienced; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Williams. She belonged to Bill Reagan. After I married I worked in the railroad shops at "Helena", and sometimes I fired the engine on the road, for about eight years. Then I went into the ministry. I was called by the Spirit of the Lord, gradually, and I preached 51 years. I have been superannuated two years. ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... to have certain sacred boxes or arks, which they regularly took with them to war. Such a holy ark consisted of a square wooden box, which contained "certain consecrated vessels made by beloved superannuated women, and of such various antiquated forms, as would have puzzled Adam to have given significant names to each." The leader of a war party and his attendant bore the ark by turns, but they never set ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... conception of rights, and especially of penal law, should then change. We should entirely do away with retaliation, a barbarous relic of a more or less animal sentiment of our ancestors, and expiation, the relic of a superannuated and superstitious mysticism. Modern and truly scientific reformers of penal law have already taken account of this necessity. But, in spite of the complete inefficacy of the old penal system as regards the diminution of crime, they have so far only put ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... "Dr. Pillule is superannuated," said the young priest, "and old-fashioned, and obstinately prejudiced against all modern innovations, at the best. We want a new man among us—particularly now that ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... has no beauty, no grace, no detail, nothing that charms or detains you; it is simply very old and very big—so big and so old that this simple impression is enough, and it takes its place in your recollections as a perfect specimen of a superannuated stronghold. It stands at one end of the town, surrounded by a huge, deep moat, which originally contained the waters of the Maine, now divided from it by a quay. The water-front of Angers is poor—wanting in colour and in movement; and there is always an ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... attempted to come into his flock. Others again had a less number; some no more than one or two; and here and there we have seen one lying growling in a retired, place, alone, and suffering neither males nor females to approach him: We judged these were old and superannuated. ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... egg," the Easy Chair retorted, "but there is not the same winning appeal in the baldness of the superannuated bird which has evolved from it—eagle ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... without warning he transferred him to another parish, and sent our friend, the archaeologist here, in his place. This did not suit the man relieved; Chila itself was much to his liking; what he really wanted was to be relieved from the support of his superannuated predecessor. No sooner was he transferred than he began to look with longing on his former charge and to make a vigorous effort to regain it. Accusations were hurried to Oaxaca; the new priest was pursuing agriculture as a means of profit; he had not paid the dues to the aged priest; he had himself ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... though it looks not half the distance. Is this not a glorious view? Hill and valley spread out like a map before us! The snow lies in patches upon the fields, and the sun is lighting up the tinned spire of the village church, which, as the stage passed it yesterday, you thought looked like a superannuated old man with a martin-cage upon his crooked back. There is the old homestead looking at us through the locusts that surround it, and there are the orchards off to the right, which in a few weeks ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... embraced all invalid and incapable men who were able to perform light work, as sweepers, watchmen in country commands, and in charge of latrines; also caretakers at Government bungalows, and those superannuated men who were exempt from all work. No convicts were admitted to this class until declared unfit for hard work by the medical officer and the Annual Medical Committee. Men of approved conduct got the indulgences of their former class. Female convicts belonged to this class, of which there were always ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... preaching is getting superannuated. It lags superfluous in the pulpit. Our people are outgrowing the cruelties and absurdities of the ancient Jews. The idea of hell has become shocking and vulgar. Eternal punishment is eternal injustice. ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... to an accomplished fact. It appeared in a Parsi paper, which strongly insists on the necessity of giving up "disgusting superannuated customs," and especially the early marriage. It justly ridiculed a certain Gujerati newspaper, which had just described in very pompous expressions a recent wedding ceremony in Poona. The bridegroom, ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... clothing; and she asked me, in case of such an emergency, if she might sometimes apply to me for some of the articles of which they might be in especial need. From that time Canada became the ultimate destination of all my old clothes. I could imagine superannuated cloaks and shawls wrapped around dusky and shivering shoulders, and familiar bonnets walking about Canada in their old age on the woolly heads of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... schools; who, upon the discovery of so apparent an error as a torrid zone, intended to proceed in an inquisition after more solid truths; till the mediation of some whose livelihood lay in hammering shrines for this superannuated study, possessed queen Elizabeth that such doctrine was against God no less than her father's honor; whose faith, if he owed any, was grounded upon school divinity. Whereupon she chid him, who was, by his own confession, ever after branded with the name of an ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... you hear that, Louis? Look at her, your Vaurois! She's got the airs of a superannuated barmaid! Make ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... forty than by a man of sixty. If we are to pay deans at all, we are to pay them for some sort of work. That work, be it what it may, will be best performed by a workman in the prime of life. Dr. Trefoil, we see, was eighty when he died. As we have as yet completed no plan for pensioning superannuated clergymen, we do not wish to get rid of any existing deans of that age. But we prefer having as few such as possible. If a man of seventy be now appointed, we beg to point out to Lord —— that he will be past all use in a year or two, if indeed ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... it is a situation for life unless the holder prove unworthy, with a pension if superannuated; but in our own country the appointments are in a measure political, and consequently liable to be temporary. This circumstance is deplored by the Board which sometimes in this way loses valuable servants after they have gained a skill and experience which only comes with time; and raw, untried ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... away, and in a moment was back with a candle, the light of which soon revealed the awful mystery. It was an Indian, who at the time was struggling in convulsions, which he was subject to. He was a superannuated chief, a relative of the wife of the hospitable trapper, and generally made his home there. Absent when Captain Williams arrived, he came into the room at a very late hour, and went to the bed he usually occupied. No one on the claim knew of his ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... occupying our minds as we climbed the bluffs for a visit to this incipient Pittsburg. The equipage did no credit to the financial status of the iron company, as it consisted of a superannuated express-wagon drawn by a dyspeptic white horse which the boy who officiated as driver found no difficulty in restraining. Two gentlemen in charge of the constructions, their visitor and two kegs of nails ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... leash on the dog to lead him to a spot in the forest where all the superannuated dogs from the manor were shot and buried. He was not a cruel man, but he was very glad to shoot that dog, for he knew that sheep and chickens were not the only creatures he hunted. Times without number ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... was an indispensable condition of industrial and commercial prosperity; the philosophical historians showed that the normal historical development of the country demanded the immediate abolition of this superannuated remnant of barbarism; and the writers of the sentimental, gushing type poured forth endless effusions about brotherly love to the weak and the oppressed. In a word, the Press was for the moment unanimous, and displayed a feverish excitement ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... energetically, "why do you not think up something new? We import pretty material for ladies' wear, that could as well be made here, for we women are growing sensible enough to believe something beside silk admissible. And though men may cling to superannuated coats, with an affection most commendable in hard times, I never heard of a woman being attached to an ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... taking part in many similar conversations, I became an especial favourite with the old nobleman. I was invited to his evening assemblies which were, as I have stated before, frequented by superannuated women and witty men. He told me that in this circle I would learn a science of greater import than Gassendi's philosophy, which I was then studying by his advice instead of Aristotle's, which he turned ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... member of the Municipal Police Force, whilst in the actual performance of duty, shall become permanently disabled, so as to render his dismissal from membership proper, or if any such member shall become superannuated after ten years of membership, a sum of not exceeding $150, as an annuity, to be paid such member, shall be chargeable upon the Municipal Police Life Insurance Fund. If any member of the Municipal Police Force, whilst in the actual discharge ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... old age; the general commissioned my master upon his route to deliver some instructions to the superannuated commandant of the fortress; now the old gentleman proving somewhat dull of apprehension, my master though dying of impatience, was constrained to a delay of some extra hours, despatching me, his humble ambassador, forward, to prevent ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... thither himself with the rural produce of his farm, (for which the Castle was a ready market,) but also to send Annette. Thus then commenced that innocent girl's acquaintance with the Baron's chief huntsman, not long after Elliott's induction into that office, by the resignation of his superannuated predecessor. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... Everett you are wrong; And your superannuated allies, TYPE and FIGURE, whom I disdain to combat, cannot aid you to defend ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... when I first became acquainted with her, occupied, together with her father (a superannuated man of ninety), a large farm very near our former habitation. It had been anciently a great manor-farm or court-house, and was still a stately, substantial building, whose lofty halls and spacious chambers gave an air of grandeur to the ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... rid of responsibilities. These hard-working veterans will not let one get rid of them until he drops in his harness, and so gets rid of them and his life together. How often has many a tired old man envied the superannuated family cat, stretched upon the rug before the fire, letting the genial warmth tranquilly diffuse itself through all her internal arrangements! No more watching for mice in dark, damp cellars, no more awaiting the savage gray rat at the mouth of his den, no more scurrying ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... tells it. It takes forty minutes by the watch. Did I laugh? Well, say! When I got my face straight he calls in old Pete, the superannuated darky, and sends him down to the hotel to bring up my valise. It was Elmcroft for me while I was ...
— Options • O. Henry
... in her youth she might have been beautiful; yet there was an expression on them which was not attractive to Edith, being a compound of primness and inanity, which made her look like a superannuated fashion plate. She was elaborately dressed: a rich robe of very thick silk, a frisette with showy curls, a bonnet with many ornaments of ribbons and flowers, and a heavy Cashmere shawl—such was her costume. Her eyes were undeniably fine, and a white veil covered her ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... russet clothing, And looking round Where rest was to be found, There was no house—no villa there—no nothing! No house! The change was quite amazing; It made her senses stagger for a minute, The riddle's explication seemed to harden; But soon her superannuated nous Explain'd the horrid mystery;—and raising Her hand to heaven, with the cabbage in it, On which she meant to sup,— "Well! this is Fairy work! I'll bet a farden, Little Prince Silverwings has ketch'd me up, And set me down in some ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... misfortune; but I shall always keep him for my pet, and I'll have a basket-carriage and drive him when I go to see my poor people. Sitting behind a pony is an awful bore when one's natural place is on his back, but I'd sooner endure it than let Titmouse fancy himself superannuated." ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... was gone, Bushido, left an orphan, had to shift for itself. The present elaborate military organization might take it under its patronage, but we know that modern warfare can afford little room for its continuous growth. Shintoism, which fostered it in its infancy, is itself superannuated. The hoary sages of ancient China are being supplanted by the intellectual parvenu of the type of Bentham and Mill. Moral theories of a comfortable kind, flattering to the Chauvinistic tendencies of the time, and therefore thought well-adapted to the need of this day, have been invented ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... wrong with the bowels of mercy when criminals are executed barbarously, while science needs their lives, or at least an insight into the method of their dying; when precise examination of the manner of nerve and blood supply to the organs of a superannuated horse is heavily finable; when charitable but perchance too enthusiastic societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals push their earnestness even to interference with scientific researches, because, forsooth! they jeopardize the lives of rabbits, guinea-pigs and dogs? The legend ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... his master's vagaries; and that the failure of his adventures must recoil invariably on his unfortunate head. Yet he looked sorely puzzled how to find out the nature of the impropriety he had committed against the superannuated dame who dealt him ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... vigil. It was melancholy work, since no skill that I had could tell me whether my patient would live or die. Nowadays the young men might know, or say that they did, but it must be remembered that, as a doctor, I am entirely superannuated. How could it be otherwise, seeing that I have passed the best of my life in the desert without any opportunity of keeping up with ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... moody baby, a dull small boy who knew few of his letters at four; and was superannuated—such was his impenetrability to learning—at the age of five from the school of which his father had been master. He was moreover till the age of six and a half so frequently subject to long fits of abstraction and of apparently causeless ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... before going to Brighton was as unsatisfactory as the last. Though not beyond her own powers of unravelling, they made it clear that Brooks was superannuated. It was piteous to see the old man seated in the study, racking his brains to recollect the transaction with Farmer Hodnet about seed-wheat and working oxen; to explain for what the three extra labourers had been put on, and to discover his own meaning ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wrong address strike us as funny instead of pathetic? I myself had been amused by them many a time. In a book which I had read only a few days before our cold-dinner party a shop-woman, annoyed with an omnibus conductor, had thrown a superannuated orange at him. It had found its billet not on him but on a perfectly inoffensive spectator. The missile, said the writer, "'it a young copper full in the hyeball." I had enjoyed this when I read it, but now that Fate had arranged a precisely similar situation, with myself in the role of the ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... children, like nations, regard the new in the light of the old, so that the old, especially when it is fixed by language, becomes the mind's instrument for the control of the new. Indeed we often stick linguistically to old things, although they have been long superannuated. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... fitted for their purposes, had, however, one essential defect: the lands granted to the soldiers did not pass to their posterity; so that the Roman people must have multiplied poorly in this island, when their increase principally depended on a succession of superannuated soldiers. From this defect the colonies were continually falling to decay. They had also in many respects degenerated from their primitive institution.[26] We must add, that in the decline of the Empire ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a political meeting in Aberdeen, on the 22nd of September, 1885, the Earl of Iddesleigh approved the superannuated notion of lunar influence, and likened the leading opponents of his party to the old and new moon. "What signs of bad weather are there which sometimes you notice when storms are coming on? It always seems to me that the worst sign of bad weather is when ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... the cupboard with infinite care, but the contents, I need not say, had mixed themselves up in wild disorder, though nothing was broken—not even the pot of guava-jelly. They included a superannuated watch in a loose silver case, a medal (in bronze) struck to commemorate Lord Howe's famous victory of the First of June, two pieces-of-eight and a spade guinea (much clipped); a small china mug painted with libellous portraits of King George III. and his consort; a ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... Licinius. Tum intermissa causa, CENTUMVIRI, inquit, HOC ARTIFICIUM PERIIT. Lib. ii. ep. 14. Domitius Afer has been mentioned, s. xiii. note [d]. To what is there said of him may be added a fact related by Quintilian, who says that Afer, when old and superannuated, still continued at the bar, exhibiting the decay of genius, and every day diminishing that high reputation which he once possessed. Hence men said of him, he had rather decline than desist. Malle eum deficere, quam desinere. ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... month had passed the two had so thoroughly renewed their youth that they were discussing the expense of fitting out a "hit-the-grit" circus, and were writing to the big shows for prices on superannuated ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... remain in Boston he might have held his charge against the ravages of time, secreted a curate, taken on a becoming buffer of adipose, and glided off by imperceptible degrees on to the Superannuated List. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... the back of the shop his father—a peevish old man, well past seventy—stooped over a desk, engaged as usual in calculating his book-debts, an occupation which brought him no comfort but merely ingrained his bad opinion of mankind. Having drunk his trade into a decline, and being now superannuated, he nagged over his ledgers from morning to night and snatched a fearful joy in goading William to the last limit of forbearance. William, who had made himself responsible for the old man's debts, endured him on the whole very creditably. "Here's a bad 'un," ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of Helen. The progress of science renders useless the very books which have been the greatest aids to that progress. As those works are no longer useful, modern youth is naturally inclined to believe they never had any value; it despises them, and ridicules them if they happen to contain any superannuated opinion whatever. That is why, in my twentieth year, I amused myself at the expense of Monsieur Petit-Radel and his chronological table; and that was why, the other day, at the Luxembourg, ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... and becks and wreathed smiles, with a tendency every now and then to employ language rather stronger than the occasion warranted? Did youths and maidens wander about with faint moral odours of pot-pourri and quaint creases of character, as of superannuated garments long folded in a drawer! Or are these qualities taken on by each generation in turn, in which case will the Hilda Wangels and Dodos of to-day delight the twentieth century as possible ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... looks to me as if these eccentric wills of old Nutcombe's came in cycles, as it were. Just as he was due for another outbreak he happened to meet you. It's a moral certainty that if he hadn't met you he would have left all his money to a Home for Superannuated Caddies or a Fund for Supplying the Deserving Poor with Niblicks. Why ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... Warton being superannuated at Winchester, was entered of Oriel College, Oxford; and taking his bachelor's degree, in 1744, was ordained to his father's curacy at Basingstoke. Having lost his father about a year after, he removed to the curacy of Chelsea, in February, 1746. Near this time, I suppose a letter, ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... of Tring, in Hertfordshire, would do well to remember that no longer ago than the year 1751, and within twenty miles of the capital, they seized on two superannuated wretches, crazed with age, and overwhelmed with infirmities, on a suspicion of witchcraft; and, by trying experiments, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... for the well-known signal in the offing,—daily walking to the shore, where kind old Uncle Shubael, now long superannuated, and idly busying himself about the fish-house, strove to cheer her fainting soul by store of well-chosen proverbs, and yarns of how, aforetimes, schooners not larger and not so stout as the "Miranda," starting early for the Banks, had been blown southward ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... beyond the stipulated extortion impoverished me, and when we came to take a rowboat back to our steamer I beat the boatman down cruelly, mercilessly. He was a poor, lean little man, with rather a superannuated boat, and he labored harder at the oar than I could bear to see without noting his exertion to him. This was fatal; instantly he owned that I was right, and he confessed, moreover, that he was the father of a family, and that some of his children were then suffering from sickness as well as want. ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... of every age contended but that it was Unreal, and the folly of a dream? He had never thought of himself as an infidel; perhaps it would have shocked him to be called one, though he was not quite sure. But that a little superannuated dancer at music-halls, battered and worn by an unlawful life, should sit and smile in absolute faith at such a—a superstition as this, stirred something like awe ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sweets would have lost him many a half-holiday had not his services been required at outside-left in the hockey eleven. With some difficulty he managed to pass into Eton, and three years later—with, one would imagine, still more difficulty—managed to get superannuated. At Cambridge he went down-hill rapidly. He would think nothing of smoking a cigar in academical costume, and on at least one occasion he drove a dogcart on Sunday. No wonder that he was requested, early in his second year, to give up his struggle with the Little-go and betake himself ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... should have written this description long ago, but I had not years enough; only now am I entering upon them, directly and indirectly. I should have done it while the country was groping for long periods under the shadow of superannuated incompetence. Instead I do it now, when I myself am being accused of a tendency to cast shadows. "Sensationalism," you will say, "chasing after fame!" My dear, chaste friend, I have fame enough ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... law was not more unchangeable than Van der Kemp's commands! At all events it crept down his arm and leg, waddled slowly over the floor of the shed with bent back and wrinkled brow, like a man of ninety, and took up its old position on the deck, the very personification of superannuated woe. ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... swords and firearms against unapparent robbers, rioters, and invaders who, it seemed, in my father's prime had more chance of being real. The morris-dancers had not then dwindled to a ragged and almost vanished rout (owing the traditional name probably to the historic fancy of our superannuated groom); also, the good old king was alive and well, which made all the more difference because I had no notion what he was and did—only understanding in general that if he had been still on the throne he would have hindered everything that wise ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... old beaux and superannuated libertines whose company I have had the misfortune of not being able to avoid, Roederer is the most affected, silly, and disgusting. His wrinkled face, and effeminate and childish air; his assiduities about every woman of beauty or fashion; his confidence in ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... and training required for the work to be performed and not on the basis of sex; (c) A minimum wage in Federal, State and local service which shall not be less than the cost of living as determined by official investigations; (d) Provisions for an equitable retirement system for superannuated public employees; (e) Enlarging of Federal and State Civil Service Commissions so as to include three groups in which men and women shall be equally represented; namely, representatives of the administrative officials, of the employees and of the general ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... while the train rumbled, creaked, and clattered and jerked itself along, as only local trains can, probably because they are old and rheumatic and stiff and weak in the joints, like superannuated crocodiles, though they may have once been young express trains, sleek and shiny, and quick and noiseless as ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... handy man. Vanderbilt, it was testified by numerous ship owners, refused to charter any vessels unless the business were transacted through Southard, who demanded a share of the purchase money before he would consent to do business. Any ship owner who wanted to get rid of a superannuated steamer or sailing vessel found no difficulty if he acceded ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... dead; in governing mankind by embalming old dead tyrannies of Faith; restoring dilapidated dogmas; regilding faded, worm-eaten shrines; whitening and rouging ancient and barren superstitions; saving society by multiplying parasites; perpetuating superannuated institutions; enforcing the worship of symbols as the actual means of salvation; and tying the dead corpse of the Past, mouth to mouth, with the living Present. Therefore it is that it is one of the fatalities of Humanity to be condemned to eternal struggles ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... own skin you're saving, you fool, as well as mine! If I'm caught, you all go! Carlis thinks he can bluff it, and Mallowe's a superannuated, pig-headed old goat. He'll try to stand on his reputation, and cave in like a pricked balloon when the crash comes. I know his kind; I've hounded too many of 'em to the finish. But you're a man of sense, Rockamore, and you know you've got to help me out of this ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... every paper had been drawn up by himself since he first entered the office. To do him justice I believe he is very industrious. When he got into the Cabinet he said he could no longer go on in this way, and accordingly he has superannuated Lack, and is going to appoint the best man he can find in his place. This operation has led to the removal of Hay, whom Stephen replaces at ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... me. My friends said I never did so well as that evening. At the close of the lecture the audience arose and handkerchiefs, like so many white doves, fluttered in the air. In the midst of that scene, an old superannuated minister of the New York Methodist Conference planted a kiss on my cheek, and I have wondered often, why a man should have thought of that ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... Rusticoli de la Palferine's burning activity vainly sought an upward turn, Tissot, from the professor's chair, pleaded the cause of the rights and aspirations of youth that had been ignored and despised by the power surrendered into the hands of superannuated ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... Johnson, Copeland—all colored bishops at Topeka, Kansas. Then I attended conference at Bereah, Kentucky. Bishop Dizney presided. I preached in Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas. I am now what they call a superannuated minister. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... some fine trees, under which the old men sat and amused themselves in the summer mornings. On this chilly wintry day none of them were visible, except the cheerful old soul bent almost double, but with a chirruppy little voice like a superannuated sparrow, who acted as porter, and closed the big gates every night, and fined the old men twopence if they were too late. He trotted along the echoing passages, with his keys jingling, to ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... wholly unfitted for, nor how often sickness is engendered by their great bodily exertions, by neglect and deprivation. In a country like that in which Mr. Lount was settled, the inhabitants resided far apart, and consisted generally of old, worn, and superannuated British officers, who, at the close of the war, pitched their tents, for the last time, in the wilderness. The sums which they obtained from the sale of their half-pay, almost expended in the transportation of their little families, before arriving ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Farandal, seated behind her, also looking at it. He felt old, lost, despairing. Ah, never to await anything more, never to hope for anything more, no longer to have even the right to desire, to feel himself outside of everything, in the evening of life, like a superannuated functionary whose career is ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... or a lacerating personality, if the "shock" of the witticism is a powerful one; while mere fun will have no power over them if it jar on their moral taste. Hence, too, it is, that while wit is perennial, humor is liable to become superannuated. ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... and were soon on their way again, going even more rapidly than before. In this way the pursuit led by Captain Fuller came to Etowah Station. Here he found the old "Yonah," a locomotive belonging to the Mark A. Cooper Iron Works. The "Yonah" was a superannuated engine, but Captain Fuller pressed it and its crew into his service. The rickety old "Yonah" seemed to enter into the spirit of the pursuit, for the distance to Kingston—thirteen miles—was made ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... new-coppered. Here, for instance, is the great "Empire State" of New York, with a constitution hardly a year old! The stripling who has just attained his majority, has actually survived the whole life of its predecessor; and he who lives half as long again, will see the new one superannuated and going the way of all written constitutions. The late constitution of this State was in many respects a noble one; but its successor plays the mischief with every thing; and I have heard an old freeholder complain that he hardly knows whether he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... A superannuated clergyman walked three miles and a quarter in a heavy rain, minus umbrella, to bring me a large and common pitcher, badly cracked and of no original value; heard I was collecting old china. Then, after making a long call, ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... the reader suppose that he was either a superannuated coxcomb or a driveling dotard. He was a man of sense and feeling, but his passion for Julia had, for the time, changed all his manner and habits.—He saw that she was a young and lovely woman, about to give herself to the arms of a man thrice ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... from the forest. The day was kept as a general holiday. From an early hour the improvised avenue was thronged with visitors of all ranks bearing cards, letters of congratulation or flowers. The great Dollfus works were closed, and the five thousand workmen with their wives, children and superannuated parents, were not only feasted but enriched. After the banquet every man, woman and child received a present in money, the oldest and those who had remained longest in the employ of M. Dollfus being presented with forty francs. But the crowning ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... innocent, and the shyest. He is entirely of modern growth. He has but lately emerged from the soldier's barracks, the suttler's shop, and the mess-room. As a prolific tale-teller he amused the leisure hours of superannuated sergeants and half-pay subalterns. Ten or twelve years ago he had not yet made his appearance in plain clothes; he is now creeping and winding his way with slow and sure steps from his old haunts into some first-rate ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... polite to ask what brought such a superannuated militaire as I am,' said the count, 'from his retirement into this gay world again. A relation of mine, who is one of our Ministry, knew that I had some maps, and plans, and charts, which might be ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... trophies of Waterloo: thunder and lightning are not the thunder and lightning which I remember. Roses are degenerating. The Fannies of our island—though this I say with reluctance—are not visibly improving; and the Bath road is notoriously superannuated. Crocodiles, you will say, are stationary. Mr. Waterton tells me that the crocodile does not change,—that a cayman, in fact, or an alligator, is just as good for riding upon as he was in the time of the Pharaohs. That may be; but the reason is that the crocodile does ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... relate it, as I heard it first from an old superannuated follower of the family, which, owning other, though not fairer demesnes in some distant county, had never more used Ditton-in-the-Dale as their dwelling place, although well nigh two centuries had elapsed since the transaction which had scared them ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... observed that Louis Bonaparte and two foreign Ambassadors spoke to her as old acquaintances. Though rich, to the amount of ten millions of livres—she, or rather her husband, keeps a gambling-house, and her superannuated charms are still to be bought for money, at the disposal of those amateurs who are fond of antiques. Both her husband and herself are still members of our secret diplomacy, though she complains loudly that, of the two millions of livres—promised her in 1799 by Bonaparte ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... light of afternoon? How was it that he had not known those things that belonged to his peace? And probably it would end in nothing. Was it likely that such a splendid young woman as Ida would care for a superannuated army officer, with nothing to recommend him beyond five or six hundred a year and a Victoria Cross, which he never wore. Probably if she married at all she would try to marry someone who would assist to retrieve the fallen fortunes of her family, which it was ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... a laid-up excursion-boat and a file of North Sea fish-carriers, lay the Minnie, painted black, with nothing brighter than a deep brown on her deck-house, her boats painted a shabby green. She might have been an overgrown tug or a superannuated fish-carrier. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... or two's continuance; the regular life I had led, as I have already taken notice, for so many years, not having permitted any superfluous or bad humours to breed in me; or if they did, to acquire such strength and malignity, a they generally acquire in the superannuated bodies of those, who live without rule. And as there was not any old malignity in my humours (which is the thing that kills people) but only that, which my new irregularity had occasioned, this fit of sickness, though exceeding violent, ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro
... master of all the distinctively social virtues and a votary of all agreeable sensations; a devotee of something mysterious and sacred to which he occasionally alluded in terms more ecstatic even than those in which he spoke of the last pretty woman, and which was simply the beautiful though somewhat superannuated image of HONOR; he was irresistibly entertaining and enlivening, and he formed a character to which Newman was as capable of doing justice when he had once been placed in contact with it, as he was unlikely, in musing upon the ...
— The American • Henry James
... insisted she was a foolish, empty-headed creature, and that Browning praised her because she had a title. This was taken seriously, and the Poet requested that no disparaging remarks would be made on one of his best friends. "Pooh," said Forster, contemptuously, "some superannuated creature! I am astonished at you." How it ended I cannot say, but it ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... But as to your coming to Kent Villa, I am afraid you would not be very comfortable there. You know I am superannuated. Only ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... declares that within a few weeks I shall be an accomplished horseman, and he does not desire to be superannuated as a master, he proposes to teach me other accomplishments of a somewhat irregular character, and sufficiently unsuited to a future priest. At times he proposes to train me in throwing the bull in order that he may take me afterward to Seville, where, with lance in hand, ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... anatomist says that we have the vestiges of one hundred and eighty organs which have stuck to us from our animal ancestors,—now useless, or often worse than useless, like the vermiform appendix. Eleven of these superannuated and obsolete organs we bring from the fishes, four from amphibians and reptiles. The external ear is a vestige—of no use any more. Our dread of snakes we no doubt inherited from ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... considers themselves sane, I must undoubtedly be the mad one. It is as simple as a sum in arithmetic.—And, in all conscience, isn't it madness, when all is said and done, to take such trifles so much to heart?—to bother about a few miserable superannuated forms that are not of the slightest importance?—a few venerable, harmless prejudices?—a few foolish social customs and other trumpery ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... system, now modern and electric, warns of fire by its means, summoning the firemen to boxes by numbers rung. Yet only a few years ago the old tower was literally a watch-tower, occupied always by one of three superannuated seamen who watched for fires, and seeing one rang the bell and shouted the location to the fire department. One stood watch in the glassed-in octagon above. Two sat by the fire and smoked in a room in the belfry ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... desk the whole morning, occasionally having anxious consultations with certain sickly men whom I supposed to be superannuated bookkeepers, in impoverished circumstances, and rather pallid from the want of nutritious food. One of them, dressed in rusty black, with a flabby white neckcloth, I took for an ex-clergyman; he was absorbed in the last number of the "Independent," though I observed, at length, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... sell that farm you purchased?" suggested the Bishop. "It should bring a fair price, and the money would keep you for some time. I cannot place you on the Superannuated list at present, but there may be a vacancy soon and the money from the sale of the farm will keep ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... to obtrude the name of the old original superannuated obscure Jemmy Jackman, once (to his degradation) of Wozenham's, long (to his elevation) of Lirriper's. If I could be consciously guilty of that piece of bad taste, it would indeed be a work of supererogation, now that the name is borne by JEMMY ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings • Charles Dickens
... another man. In this new light, what had before seemed sufficient for his needs, even enjoyable, all this simplicity that his ancestors had loved, appeared poor, ugly, ridiculous. Out of the question to ask an Emperor to climb this wooden staircase, sit in these old arm-chairs, walk over such superannuated carpets. So the mayor called architect and masons; pickaxes attacked walls and demolished partitions, and a drawing-room was made, out of all proportion to the rest of the house in size and splendor. He and his family retired into ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... The Lacedaemonians, receiving news of this, and fearing, dispatched an embassy to the Athenians, entreating that they would send their wives and children to Sparta, and receive support from them for their superannuated. For, being despoiled both of their city and country, the people were suffering extreme distress. Having given audience to the ambassadors, they returned an answer, upon the motion of Aristides, worthy of the highest admiration; ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... invests the sepoy insurrection. Besides the notorious fact that no grievances, the very slightest, have been alleged, it must also be remembered that we first and solely made a provision for the invalided and for the superannuated soldier—a thing unheard of throughout Asia. And this golden reversion, the poor infatuated savages have wilfully renounced! The sole sure result, from this most suicidal of revolts, is—that unpitied myriads of sepoys will be bayonetted, thousands ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey |
