"Octogenarian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... re-acquire them from their own children and disciples. The Scriptures declare that the preceptor is ever the sire, and the disciple is the son. Difference of age would not disturb the relationship. A youth of sixteen might thus be the father of an octogenarian. With Brahmanas, reverence is ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... pheasant, my lord?' He instantly replied, 'Pheasant,' thus completing his ninth dish of meat at that meal." A few weeks later the Speaker, in conversation with Palmerston, expressed a hope that he was taking care of his health, to which the octogenarian Premier replied: "Oh yes—indeed I am. I very often take a cab at night, and if you have both windows open it is almost as good as walking home." "Almost as good!" exclaimed the valetudinarian Speaker. "A through draught and a north-east wind! And in a hack cab! ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... is the key-note of the correspondence recalls the correspondence that presently was exchanged between Henrietta Howard, Countess of Suffolk, and the octogenarian ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... diplomatic service. I found the Ambassador quite overcome by the terrible news. He seemed stricken with grief at the thought of his aged Sovereign, who had already lost so many of his nearest and dearest, and of the Dual Empire, robbed of its most skillful pilot, and with no one to steer it now but an octogenarian leaning on a youth of twenty-six. M. Cambon had come to the Embassy at the same time, and we left together discussing the results, still impossible to foresee clearly, that this fatality might have for ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... early as 1555, there was formed in England a company of "merchant adventurers of England for the discoverie of landes, territories, isles, dominions, and seigniories unknowen," commonly called "the Muscovy Company," Sebastian Cabot, then almost an octogenarian, was appointed governor for the term of his natural life, and a number of privileges were conferred upon it by the rulers both of England and Russia. At the same time negotiators, merchants, and inquirers were sent by different ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... rare luck of having from the very lips of this octogenarian, an account of the share he had in conducting as one of the cavalry detachment detailed to escort Colonel Winfield Scott and brother officers from Beauport, where they were confined as prisoners on parole, to the district ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... time to live in this world. I have had my share of life and of the good pertaining to it, and shall have no right to complain when my pipe is broken and its ashes scattered.' Such was the philosophy of an almost Octogenarian smoker." ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... to remember that though my father lived in a plain house the most of his days, he died in a mansion provided by the filial piety of a son who had achieved a fortune. There the octogenarian sat, and the servants waited on him, and there were plenty of horses and plenty of carriages to convey him, and a bower in which to sit on long summer afternoons, dreaming over the past, and there was not a room in the house where he was not welcome, and there were ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... deserves, by his position and ability, our very sincere respect; compared with the octogenarian sentimentalism of Jean Kostka, the violence of Signor Margiotta, and the paste-pot of M. de la Rive, one breathes a pleine poitrine in the altitudes of ecclesiastical erudition, artificial as their eminence turns out; the art sacerdotal does not concern itself with ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... were at first friendly; both were honestly anxious to take a crusade in hand. The two were brought no further than the verge of a serious breach about Frederick's exercise of authority over rebellious ecclesiastics. But Gregory IX., though an octogenarian, was recognised as of transcendent ability and indomitable resolution; and his will clashed with that of the young emperor, a brilliant prince, born ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... into summer; and the excitement as to the event of the approaching Trials, when at length the rivals would be pitted against one another, reached such a height as old Jonas Maddox, the octogenarian, could hardly recall. ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... books. But you might live to be an octogenarian yourself without meeting twenty persons who would have read them all. It would not be a hard matter, though, to find those who have read one of his books twenty times; perhaps this very green-covered book with "Sartor ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... Moore's statement, excepting, perhaps as to the deity in question; on that point I have never been informed, but Mr. Moore is probably right in the use of the capital d, as the sacrificer is, according to all accounts, a highly devout Christian. One more instance: an octogenarian woman, born in the parish of Bride, and now living at Kirk Andreas, saw, when she was a 'lump of a girl' of ten or fifteen years of age, a live sheep being burnt in a field in the parish of Andreas, on May-day, whereby she meant the ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... who was very kind to us, as children. My mother, who is an octogenarian, remembers him well, and says he always took a nosegay, tied to the top of his cane, every ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 73, March 22, 1851 • Various
... utmost candour. "Young women of twenty- three do not marry old men of seventy-seven for love. You may imagine a young girl marrying a penniless youth for love, but can you picture her marrying a penniless octogenarian for the same reason? I fancy not. I speak quite frankly to you, Braden, and without reserve. We have always been friends. It would be folly to attempt to delude you into believing that a sentimental motive is back of our—shall ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... Breschet's blennogenous and chromatogenous organs. The dartos was a puzzle, the central spinal canal a myth, the decidua clothed in fable as much as the golden fleece. The structure of bone, now so beautifully made out,—even that of the teeth, in which old Leeuwenhoek, peeping with his octogenarian eyes through the minute lenses wrought with his own hands, had long ago seen the "pipes," as he called them,—was hardly known at all. The minute structure of the viscera lay in the mists of an uncertain microscopic vision. The intimate recesses of the ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... repeat, of our rivers and lakes, of our hills and headlands, do, in their mere names, telegraph back to us, along mighty distances of time, significant specimens of the tongue spoken by the first inhabitants of their district—in this respect resembling the doting and dying octogenarian that has left in early life the home of his fathers, to sojourn in the land of the stranger, and who remembers and babbles at last—ere the silver cord of memory is utterly and finally loosed—one language only, and that some few words merely, in the long ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... presently she would dine alone with Ian in her husband's house—and with her husband's blessing. Pique and pride were in her heart, and she meant Ian Stafford to remember. No man was adamantine; at least she had never met one—not one, neither bishop nor octogenarian. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... faculty for the appreciation of good literature still unimpaired, with my domestic interests so dear to me, and my constant knitting for the infants under the care of the State Inspector—I find my life as an octogenarian more varied in its occupations and interests than ever before. Looking back from the progressive heights of 1910 through the long vista of years, numbering upwards of four-fifths of a century, I rejoice at the progress the world has made. Side by side with the development of my State my life ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... No wonder. The Octogenarian was of Scotch Descent. He was the Color of an Army Saddle. He never smiled except when the Kilties came on tour. His Nippie consisted of a tall Glass about half full and then a little ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... of genius: so many as are not delighted by it are disturbed, perplexed, irritated. The beholder either recognises it as a projected form of his own being, that moves before him with a glory round its head, or recoils from it as a spectre."[1] The octogenarian critic of the Johnsonian school recoils from "Frankenstein" as from an incarnation of the Evil Spirit: she does not know what to make of the "Tales of my Landlord"; and she inquires of an Irish acquaintance ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... impossible to him who attempted the conquest of the atmosphere. This idea clothed itself in every form. The young embraced it with enthusiasm, the old made it the subject of endless regrets. When one of the first aeronautic ascents was made, the old Marechal Villeroi, an octogenarian and an invalid, was conducted to one of the windows of the Tuileries, almost by force, for he did not believe in balloons. The balloon, meanwhile, detached itself from its moorings; the physician Charles, seated in the car, gaily saluted the public, and was then majestically launched ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... Partly in vanity, partly in playfulness, he encouraged the sentimental-exaggeration of his correspondent; but, becoming afraid of the world's laughter, ended by reproving her warmth, and by chilling, under the refrigerating influence of his cautions, all the romance of the octogenarian. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... lantern (and, later, cinematographic) lectures on the wide aspects of Imperial Britain. Its appeal was to the young, the recruit in the battle of life, who in a year or two would qualify for a vote and, except for blind passion and prejudice, not know what the deuce to do with it. The octogenarian Earl of Watford was President; Colonel Winwood was one of a long list of Vice-Presidents; Miss Winwood was on the Council; a General Hankin, a fussy, incompetent person past his prime, was ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... grandfather, Caleb the elder, was an old man before his son, Caleb the younger, went to the wars, and he figured in the recollections of those who remembered him as a grim, white-haired octogenarian who was one day carried home from the iron-furnace which he had built, and put to bed, dead in every part save his eyes. The eyes lived on for a year or more, following the movements of the sympathetic or curious visitor with a quiet, divining gaze; ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... a very rich and well-born Italian, the respected though aged husband of her who later became the Duchesse de Rhetore, to the perpetual grief of Albert Savarus. Argaiolo died, almost an octogenarian, in 1835. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... was ended, every man, priest or layman, youth or octogenarian, had cast his own die of fate, had staked the safety of himself and family, and hurled back into the teeth of the great Bear from the north the unanimous answer of a desperate and downtrodden people ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... that each ovum when impregnate should be considered not as descended from its ancestors, but as being a continuation of the personality of every ovum in the chain of its ancestry, which every ovum IT ACTUALLY IS quite as truly as the octogenarian IS the same identity with the ovum from which he has been developed. This process cannot stop short of the primordial cell, which again will probably turn out to be but a brief resting-place. We therefore prove each one of us to BE ACTUALLY the primordial cell which never died nor dies, ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... Yet, while walking to the tree to which his horse was tied, and busying himself with adjusting the girths of the saddle, he could not avoid hearing, through the hedge of the little garden, a conversation respecting himself, betwixt the lame woman and the octogenarian sibyl. The pair had hobbled into the garden to gather rosemary, southernwood, rue, and other plants proper to be strewed upon the body, and burned by way of fumigation in the chimney of the cottage. The paralytic wretch, almost exhausted ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... assemble in the lazy afternoons and still lazier eventides, to gossip over the latest items of local news; conscious that as they are doing so their ancestors have done for many a generation, and that old as they may be themselves, in their septuagenarian or octogenarian states, they are as infants in comparison with the age of the stones and bricks and timbers about them, grey and fragrant with the antiquity of at least ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... and joined the Roman Church, Newman was confronted with a still more subtle and relentless opponent, whose hostility was never relaxed till the accession of a Liberal Pope made it no longer possible to resist the bestowal of tardy honours upon a feeble octogenarian. The recognition came in time to soothe his decline, but too late to enable him to leave his mark upon the administration of ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... new scheme of rationing spread very rapidly. A few days later we heard that Sir Meesly Goormay, the most self-indulgent and incorrigible egotist in the neighbourhood, had introduced a collection of octogenarian aunts to his household, and, when I was performing my afternoon beat, I was just in time to see the butcher's boy, assisted by the gardener, delivering what looked to be a baron of beef at Sir Meesly's back door. It was an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various
... to get through a copious and excellent lunch in spite of his sorrows, regards them with the morose pity of a dyspeptic octogenarian for healthy children. It is all very well and beautiful for them now, he supposes grimly, but sooner or later even such babes as they will have to Face Life—Come ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... flour-tax. The following day, the chief of the band "obliges the principal inhabitants to give him a sum of money to indemnify, as he states it, the peasants who have abandoned their work," and devoted the day to serving the public.—At Peinier, the President de Peinier, an octogenarian, is "besieged in his chateau by a band of a hundred and fifty artisans and peasants," who bring with them a consul and a notary. Aided by these two functionaries, they force the president "to pass an act by which he renounces his ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... be shod by Hawkins the rival blacksmith, who was a dissenter and had consequently never been employed by the vicarage. Moreover it was generally rumoured once every year that old Nat Barker, the octogenarian cripple who had not been able to stand upon his feet for twenty years, was at the point of death. He invariably recovered, however, in time to put in an appearance by proxy at the distribution of a certain dole of a ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... the Sepoys by proclamation that no offence to their religion or injury to their caste was intended; but on the 10th of May the native portion of the garrison at Meerut broke out in revolt. The Mutineers proceeded to Delhi, and were joined by the native troops there; they established as Emperor the octogenarian King, a man of unscrupulous character, who had been living under ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... extensive compound. A Chinaman, a waif from the plantation, keeps a restaurant in the rear quarters of the village; and the mission is well represented by the sisters' school and Brother Michel's church. Father Orens, a wonderful octogenarian, his frame scarce bowed, the fire of his eye undimmed, has lived, and trembled, and suffered in this place since 1843. Again and again, when Moipu had made coco-brandy, he has been driven from his house into the woods. "A mouse that dwelt in a cat's ear" had a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... discovered certain facts about Mr. Cazalette. He was an octogenarian. He was uncannily active. He had an almost imp-like desire to live—and to dance when he ought to have been wrapped in blankets and saying his last prayers. And a few minutes later, when we were seated round our host's table, I discovered another fact—Mr. Cazalette was one of ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... tired with walking about in the church, and have still some little time to wait, for I am going to London by the evening train.' Poor young man! (for Lord Blandamer was still young in Cullerne, which had only known his octogenarian predecessor) he is no doubt called to London on some public business—the House of Lords, or the Court, or something like that. I wish he would take as much care of himself as he seems to take for others. He looks so very tired, and a sad face too, Anastasia, and yet is most considerate. ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... when the nineteenth century was still a hearty octogenarian that Frederick R. Woods caused Selwoode to be builded. I give you the name by which he was known on "the Street." A mythology has grown about the name since, and strange legends of its owner are still narrated where brokers congregate. But with the lambs he sheared, ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... victims of this persecution; a Priest named O'Loughrane, who had accidentally sailed in the same ship with the Earls to France, was taken prisoner on his return, hanged and quartered. Conor O'Devany, Bishop of Down and Conor, an octogenarian, suffered martyrdom with heroic constancy at Dublin, in 1611. Two years before, John, Lord Burke of Brittas, was executed in like manner on a charge of having participated in the Catholic demonstrations which took place at Limerick on the accession of King James. The edict of 1610 in relation ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... these ruins, and on the morrow he sought the magistrates and said to them: "You see the distress that we are in? Come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem." The same feelings no doubt oppressed the soul of the octogenarian prelate when he saw the walls cracked and blackened, the heaps of ruins, sole remnants of his beloved house. But like Nehemiah he had the support of a great King, and the confidence of succeeding. He set to work at once, and found ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... "Quincy, June 11, 1822. "DEAR SIR:—Half an hour ago I received, and this moment have heard read, for the third or fourth time, the best letter that ever was written by an octogenarian, dated June 1st. ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... hilly country and, a hundred and fifty miles from Calcutta, the flourishing coal-mining district of Asansol brings me again to the East India Railway and semi-European society and accommodation. Instead of doughy chuppatties, throat-blistering curry, and octogenarian chicken, I this morning breakfast off a welcome bottle of Bass's ale, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... kept during three hundred and sixty years and more; then the over-confident octogenarian's prophecy failed. During the tumult of the French Revolution the promise was forgotten and the grace withdrawn. It has remained in disuse ever since. Joan never asked to be remembered, but France has remembered her with an inextinguishable love and reverence; Joan never asked for ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... very anxious to hear how you are. My own health is quite very good; I am a healthy octogenarian; very old, I thank you and of course not so active as a young man, but hale withal: a lusty December. This is so; such is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Marta's friend, has heard from Tommaso, an octogenarian, that their rich and mighty master Sebastiano has found a husband for Marta, and that the latter, being the master's property like everything else around, ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... of course, it superadded certain characteristics of its own, never obliterated or even concealed the marks left by those earlier phases, and the octogenarian Cardinal was a beautifully-mannered, well-informed, sagacious old gentleman who, but for his dress, might have passed for a Cabinet Minister, an eminent judge, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... now an octogenarian, was by no means pleased at these remarks. She still prided herself on her fascinations, was never tired and never bored, and looked upon any one who died under a hundred years of age as a suicide. 'You have more strength and spirit, as well as more genius, than any ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... book. Exactly what advantages he expected to derive therefrom are not apparent, though I presume that he hoped to draw conclusions as to the best time for planting crops. In reading it I was many times reminded of a Cleveland octogenarian who for fifty-seven years kept a record twice a day of the thermometer and barometer. Near the end of his life he brought the big ledgers to the Western Reserve Historical Society, and I happened to be present ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... Joseph Haydn, the silver-haired octogenarian, had still the heart of a fiery man in his bosom, and his trembling lips cursed the conqueror, the relentless foe of Austria, and called down the wrath of Heaven on the French emperor, who always spoke of peace and conciliation, and always stirred up quarrels ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... outside of his books, now rarely opened, and in watching the bright faces around him. He was made to understand what a grand festival was to be held at Cairnforth, and the earl took especial pains to arrange that the feeble octogenarian should be brought to the Castle without fatigue, and enabled to appear both at the tenants' feast in the kitchen, and the more formal banquet of friends and neighbors in the hall—the grand old dining-room—which was arranged exactly ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... were. But the truth of your remark is indisputable. Ah, look! Is not that a face which might make an octogenarian forget that he is not a boy?—what regular ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... belt! For with advancing years the love of adventure leaves us; the "Love of a Lifetime" becomes to us of more real consequence than our pet armchair—but the love of a good dinner, that, at least, can make the everyday of an octogenarian well worth living. Young people little realise the awful prophecy implied in that irritating remark—"Don't gobble!" There is another one, almost equally irritating to youth—"Go and change your socks!" But, if the truth must be told, you regret the "No" you said to Edwin when he asked you ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... York Harbor, Maine, July 10, 1889. "My Dear General Keifer,—Your letter came to me just as I was leaving Washington. . . . I keep fairly well and vigorous for an old fellow so near to the octogenarian line. Accept my thanks for your kind remembrance and good wishes. You want to know about Colonel John DeCourcey, who commanded the [16th] regiment of Ohio Infantry for some time during our late war. I have not much to tell you of him, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... which is the admiration and despair of his contemporaries. Surely when a schoolboy at Eton he must somewhere have discovered the elixir of life, or have been bathed by some beneficent fairy in the well of perpetual youth. Gladly would many a man of fifty exchange physique with this hale and hearty octogenarian. Only in one respect does he show any trace of advancing years. His hearing is not quite so good as it was, but still it is far better than that of Cardinal Manning, who became very deaf in his closing years. Otherwise Mr. Gladstone is hale and hearty. ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... an octogenarian treble, that seemed to come from high up in the head of Uncle Issy, the bass-viol player; "But cast your eyes, good friends, 'pon a little slip o' heart's delight down in the nave, and mark the flowers 'pon the bonnet nid-nodding like ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... only sixty, but his white hair, his wrinkles, and the sad senility of his countenance gave him the appearance of an octogenarian. He sits motionless, his hands crossed on his knees. The lady opposite, whose head rests on the high oak back of her chair, is not yet forty. Her face is hard, and her eyes, fixed upon the Marquis, seem eager to read his thoughts. ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... wanted, (63) that Boaz and Ruth might not have long to wait. Tob, who was not learned in the Torah, did not know that the prohibition against the Moabites had reference only to males. Therefore, he declined to marry Ruth. (64) So she was taken to wife (65) by the octogenarian (66) Boaz. Ruth herself was forty years old (67) at the time of her second marriage, and it was against all expectations that her union with Boaz should be blessed with offspring, a son Obed the pious. (68) Ruth lived to see the glory of Solomon, but Boaz died on the day ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... undivided lump of ice. Our eyelashes became snow-white and heavy with frost, and it required constant motion to keep them from freezing together. We saw everything through visors barred with ivory. Our eyebrows and hair were as hoary as those of an octogenarian, and our cheeks a mixture of crimson and orange, so that we were scarcely recognizable by each other. Every one we met had snow-white locks, no matter how youthful the face, and, whatever was the colour of our horses at starting, we always drove milk-white steeds at the close of the post. ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... left there, as everywhere else, souvenirs of his generosity. The widow of a general officer, living in retirement at Joinville (I regret that I have forgotten the name of this venerable lady, who was more than an octogenarian), came to Troyes, notwithstanding her great age, to ask aid from his Majesty. Her husband having served only before the Revolution, the pension which she had enjoyed had been taken from her under the Republic, and she was in ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... stumbling feebly over an addition that one of the bookkeepers had made upon one of the papers—he hoped to find it wrong; his left-hand neighbor was doubling his under-lip with his stout fingers; an octogenarian beyond had buried his chin in his immense neck, and was going to sleep; another was stupidly blinking at the nearest coal-fire; two more were exchanging gasping whispers; another was wiping his gold spectacles ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... impudencies of logic, considering a reference to the parish register worth all the reasons in the world, "I AM OLD AND WELL STRICKEN IN YEARS," he was wont to say; and I never found any one bold enough to answer the argument. Apart from this vantage that he kept over all who were not yet octogenarian, he had some other drawbacks as a gardener. He shrank the very place he cultivated. The dignity and reduced gentility of his appearance made the small garden cut a sorry figure. He was full of tales of ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... still Epicurus and the others. I am not taking high figures, either, as you will see if you reflect upon the number of octogenarian Stoics, Epicureans, and Platonists who confess that they have not yet completely mastered their own systems. Or, if they did not confess it, at any rate Chrysippus, Aristotle, and Plato would for them; still more Socrates, who is as ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... to be reasoners. Effects of modern education on the reasoning powers. Education of former days, illustrated by an anecdote of an octogenarian. Extracts from her correspondence. Difficulty in getting the ears of mankind. The reasoning powers in man susceptible of cultivation indefinitely. Reflections on the importance of ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... to the last difficulty which confronts the collector with no previous knowledge of shanties. As a mere matter of dates, any sailors now remaining from sailing ship days must necessarily be very old men. I have found that their octogenarian memories are not always to be trusted. On one occasion an old man sang quite glibly a tune which was in reality a pasticcio of three separate shanties all known to me. I have seen similar results in ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... to tiptoe into the church when Reinke played, grateful for the privilege of listening, half-expecting to be thrust out as an interloper. He had gained confidence since then, and now introduced himself to Buxtehude and was greeted by the octogenarian as a brother and an equal, although sixty years divided them. His visit extended itself from one week to two, and then to a month or more, and a message came from his employers that if he expected to hold his place he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... Collector of the Port at New Haven and the appointment of an octogenarian whose chief qualification was his Republicanism brought to a head all the bitter animosity of Federalist New England. The hostility to Jefferson in this region was no ordinary political opposition, as he knew full well, for ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... had stopped, and the crowd broke into a cheer that echoed strangely on the night-air. It had hardly died away when a quavering, high-pitched voice started 'God Save the King,' and with a sturdy indifference to pitch the rest followed, the octogenarian who had begun it sounding clear above the others as he half-whistled and half-sang the anthem through his ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... hear me," taking her hands and looking into her uncomprehending eyes, "I would not be a brother, but something closer, dearer. We are both alone in the world, more or less. Whom have you but a mad-cap sister, a poor dreamer of a brother-in-law, an octogenarian aunt, to look to? I have no one, no one to whom my coming or my going, my living or my dying makes one pulse beat of difference—except poor Sophia. Let us join our loneliness and make of it a beautiful and happy home. Madeleine, I have learned to ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... character essentially barbaric. Raemaekers reproduces the twinkle in the Imperial eye as William of Potsdam offers to a quondam ally the foot which belongs to his senile and helpless brother of Hapsburg. The roar of anguish from the prostrate octogenarian provokes, as we see, not pity but a grim smile. Italy's monarch, we may imagine, is ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... teachers, and who, as "Christopher North," wrote so many witty and solid articles that undeservedly perished in Blackwood's Magazine at the beginning of last reign. I have rarely had such a treat as my talk with this hale-hearted octogenarian. His charming daughters keep house for him, and employ their leisure time weaving at a loom of their own. The sheep that graze on the glebe supply the wool, and the intermediate stages between the back of the sheep and the woollen overcoat on the back of the needy are all supervised ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... old theatre-goers bring back the past with their stories more vividly than men with any other experiences. There were two old New-Yorkers that I used to love to sit talking with about the stage. One was a scholar and a writer of note; a pleasant old gentleman, with the fresh cheek of an octogenarian Cupid. The other not less noted in his way, deep in local lore, large-brained, full-blooded, of somewhat perturbing and tumultuous presence. It was good to hear them talk of George Frederic Cooke, of Kean, and the lesser stars of those earlier constellations. Better still to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... destroyed his hopes of another Cardinal de Richelieu; for to that eminence he destined the child of his age. His biographer adds, that the Duchess was an affectionate and attentive wife, notwithstanding that her octogenarian husband tried her patience ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... uncle, laughing, "I'm not afraid, or I shouldn't have brought you girls up here. I don't mind admitting I have one friend, a wise old octogenarian, rich as Croesus, whom I wouldn't trust up here alone! He'd steal a gem as quickly as a ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... You see she always had excellent health, and there's no reason why she should not live to be an octogenarian." ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... the woman had lived her life out since then, gave him an oppressive sense of age and loss. He bethought himself of something he had read about "sitting by the hearth and remembering the faces of women without desire," and felt himself an octogenarian. ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... his enemy as if sure to become his friend Mondragon was now ninety-two years old More catholic than the pope Octogenarian was past work and past mischief Sacked and drowned ten infant princes Strangled his nineteen ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... merest skeleton of notes. These, with what seemed to the intently-listening audience the fewest, simplest touches, he informed and inflamed with flesh and blood. Spoke for an hour and forty minutes—a marvellous feat for any man, a miracle of mental and physical force for an octogenarian. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... beginning, the publication of this book is not the deliberate act of the octogenarian. Separate causes seem to have co-operated independently to produce the result. Several years ago, in a modest literary club, the late Henry Morse Stephens, in his passion for historical material, urged me from time to time to devote my essays to early experiences in the north of the state and in ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... ancient and towerless little church with rough, grey walls is, if possible, even more desolate-looking than that of Tytherington. In my hunt for the key to open it I disturbed a quaint old man, another octogenarian, picturesque in a vast white beard, who told me he was a thatcher, or had been one before the evil days came when he could work no more and was compelled to seek parish relief. "You must go to the manor-house for the key," he told me. A strange place in which ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... had even found it hard to believe there was no exemption for those to whom he stood in any personal relation. He remembered how, soon after he went to Eton, he had received almost with incredulity the news of the death of his god-father, Lord Stackley, an octogenarian.... He took from the table his album, knowing that on one of the earliest pages was inscribed his boyish sense of that bereavement. Yes, here the passage was, written ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... seemingly empty spaces back of the high, carved railing guarding the great well. Would a younger man have served them better? It began to look so; then without warning and in a flash, as it were, the whole appearance of the octogenarian detective changed, and turning with a smile to the two men so anxiously watching him, he exclaimed with an ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... Subsequently a purse containing thirty pieces of silver was presented by the Emperor to each of the old men, and by the Empress to each of the venerable dames, one of whom had all but attained her hundredth year, while the youngest of the twelve was a hearty octogenarian. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... ourselves, without their aid; when they leave us ... little by little, he sees fit to forego claim after claim on the world, puts up with a less and less share of its good as his proper portion; and when the octogenarian asks barely a sup of gruel and a fire of dry sticks, and thanks you as for his full allowance and right in the common good of life,—hoping nobody may murder him,—he who began by asking and expecting the whole of us to bow down in worship ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... If the conditions of life are the same there as here, the existence of the Mercurians must be four times as short as our own. A youth of twenty, awaking to the promise of the life he is just beginning in this world, is an octogenarian in Mercury. There the fair sex would indeed be justified in bewailing the transitory nature of life, and might regret the years that pass too quickly away. Perhaps, however, they are more ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... threescore years and ten in it, and begins to count himself among those who by reason of strength are destined to reach fourscore, of whom he can see a number still in reasonably good condition. The octogenarian loves to read about people of ninety and over. He peers among the asterisks of the triennial catalogue of the University for the names of graduates who have been seventy years out of college and remain still unstarred. He is curious about the biographies of centenarians. Such escapades ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... recount to her pleased auditory how many a time and often she had made the "penny come quick," by the above-recited inexpensive vocation; until at length her saying became a by-word in the neighbourhood, and universal consent fixed on the ever-happy octogenarian's triplet as a fitting appellation for the then nameless and retired little nook, but now ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... much, too, is said of the physical degeneracy of our own people,—how the jaw is retreating, how the frame is growing slender and gaunt, how the chest flattens, and how tenderly we ought to cherish every octogenarian among us, for that we are seeing the last of them! If this is intended to be a piece of pleasant badinage, far be it from us to arrest a single smile it may awaken. But if it is given as a serious description, from which serious deductions can be drawn, then we say, that, as a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... went to visit an industrial and artistic exhibition at the Brera. There they saw Canova's Hebe, and his colossal statue of Clement XIII. "The desire of seeing and approaching the sovereign," says the Moniteur, "had made the crowd larger. An octogenarian who had in vain struggled to get to a staircase before him, was hustled and knocked down on the steps by the eager multitude. The Empress, who was following, ran to his aid. The Emperor turned back, questioned the ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... the first grand master, died at Acre, in 1200, and was succeeded by Otho de Kerpen, who was an octogenarian at the time of his election, but full of vigor and energy, which he displayed by devoted attention to the duties of his office, and personal attendance upon the sick in the hospitals. During the mastership of Otho de Kerpen, an order of knighthood arose in the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... physical continuity between the earliest known life and ourselves, so that we both are and are not personally identical with the unicellular organism from which we have descended in the course of many millions of years, exactly in the same way as an octogenarian both is and is not personally identical with the microscopic impregnate ovum from which he grew up. Everything both is and is not. There is no such thing as strict identity between any two things in any two consecutive seconds. In strictness they ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... everywhere sunk down to the level of the government of France. Unhappily, the day was coming when the thrones of Europe were about to be occupied by stronger and more expanded minds, whilst France was passing slowly from the hands of a more than octogenarian minister into those of a voluptuous monarch, governed by his courtiers and his favorites. Frederick II., Maria Theresa, Lord Chatham, Catherine II., were about to appear upon the scene; the French had none to oppose them but Cardinal Fleury with one foot in the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... heretofore been painted. In repeating conversations, I have endeavored to stand in the background, where I very properly belong. For the inevitable egotism of the personal pronoun, I hope to be pardoned by all charitable souls. That Landor, the octogenarian, has not been photographed by a more competent person, is certainly not my fault. Having had the good fortune to enjoy opportunities beyond my deserts, I should have shown a great want of appreciation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... was empty except for Nick, shaving before the cracked mirror on the wall, and old Elmer, reading a scrap of yesterday's newspaper as he lounged his noon hour away. Old Elmer was thirty-seven, and Nicky regarded him as an octogenarian. Also, old Elmer's conversation bored Nick to the point of almost sullen resentment. Old Elmer was a family man. His talk was all of his family—the wife, the kids, the flat. A garrulous person, lank, pasty, dish-faced, ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... and turned toward her with a slight grimace, "I am no longer fit to play the lover; yet a little while, madame, and you must stir my gruel-posset, and arrange the pillows more comfortably about the octogenarian." ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... is to be presented to the Royal Automobile Club in token of gratitude by octogenarian ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... of a thousand sketches, many of great power and beauty, are here, besides several portraits and one masterpiece, the Christ in the Temple, brilliant as a canvas of Holman Hunt, although the work of an octogenarian. The painter's easel, palette, and brushes, his violin, the golden laurel-wreath presented to him by his native town, and other relics are reverently gazed at on Sundays by artisans, soldiers and peasant-folk. The local museum in France is something more than a little centre of culture, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... and on the face of it accurately truthful, account of the close of his life in Mr. Forster's admirable and most graphic life of him, I never knew Landor. For the more than octogenarian old man whom I knew at Florence was clearly not the Landor whom England had known and admired for so many and such honoured years. Of all the painful story of the regrettable circumstances which caused him to seek his last home ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... reverenced, and perhaps all the more scrupulously and compassionately in order that they might not guess the lamentable fact that their work was done and that the forces and influences were in younger hands. But the men themselves never lost the sense of their importance. I knew an octogenarian clergyman who declared once in my presence that it was ridiculous to say that old men lost their ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson |
