"Senile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of her former voluptuous ardour but weariness of the flesh and a senile tremor of the hands. She had once loved like a she-wolf, but was now wasted, already sufficiently worn out for the grave. There had been strange workings of her nerves during her long years of chastity. A dissolute life would perhaps have wrecked her less than the slow hidden ravages ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... have a problem," interrupted Possy. "It's a problem that won't be solved by our becoming senile idiots. Get your mind back on Herbux, and help me. I feel this is a most desperate situation. If it gets beyond just the two of us, we are likely to be thoroughly investigated. Then goodness knows ...
— When I Grow Up • Richard E. Lowe
... like a senile old man; he is bald and emaciated, his eyes are clouded, his breathing is labored. He stays in one place, with bent back, and has small interest in anything. If you cut one of his genital ducts, however, which is a comparatively slight operation, it ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... story at first-hand; but I hoped to return by the middle of the afternoon, and I knew that Bainbridge could repeat with accuracy all that the old sailor should say. I doubted whether Bainbridge could extract very much from the old man's senile intellect before my return, as the aged voyager was, both in mind and body, quite feeble, and of little endurance. Besides, when once started and warmed to his subject—and very little information could be gained till he was so started—he would no ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... he could scarcely move, he was so stiff. But his mind was working well enough to see that Bud rubbed the saddle print off Boise and turned his own horses loose in the pasture, before he let him go on to the house. The last Bud heard from Pop that forenoon was a senile chuckle and a cackling, "Outrun Boise in a quarter dash! Shucks a'mighty! But I knew it—I knew he had the speed—sho! ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... himself to despoil Fafnir, who still, transformed to a monstrous serpent, broods on the gold in a hole in the rocks. Mimmy needs the help of a hero for that; and he has craft enough to know that it is quite possible, and indeed much in the ordinary way of the world, for senile avarice and craft to set youth and bravery to work to win empire for it. He knows the pedigree of the child left on his hands, and nurses it to manhood ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... the Oriental or Jewish type. His hands—thin, slender, full of nerves which projected like strings upon the finger-board of a violin, and armed with claws like those on the terminations of bats' wings—shook with senile trembling; but those convulsively agitated hands became firmer than steel pincers or lobsters' claws when they lifted any precious article—an onyx cup, a Venetian glass, or a dish of Bohemian crystal. This strange old man had an aspect so thoroughly rabbinical and cabalistic ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... for me to slog at the donkey-work again, when I knew it. So we talked it over, and he says I ought to do the Final next year. And then, Marcella, look out! I've told you I've laid down my challenge to sickness! I'll have it whacked before I die. I can't see why anyone should die except of senile decay or accident—and those we'll eliminate in time! I feel that there's only a dyke of matchboarding between me and the ocean of knowledge. One day it's going to break, and I'll be flooded with it. It's a most uncanny ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... all meant. But, like most fathers of his kind, he made no objection to the man's proposal, and told him his daughter was in the house. As Offitt walked away on the same quest where Bott had so recently come to wreck, Saul sat smiling, and nursing his senile vanity with the thought that there were not many mechanics' daughters in Buffland that could get two offers in one Sunday from "professional men." He sat with the contented inertness of old men on his well-worn bench, waiting to see what would be ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... understand," he said furiously, "is why you have to lend yourself to this senile idiocy. Because some old women choose to sink themselves in a swamp is no reason ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... so far descend from argument, from discussion of law to unseemly banter on the question of sex; that it should so far stoop from a canvass of the most important trial that ever took place, to a senile jest on woman, must be matter of astonishment to every candid mind in the legal fraternity, and certainly has a tendency to convince the female portion of the country that the male man is fast losing his right to the definition of "man, a ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... flatly, a senile, cackling laugh. He did not want to laugh, but laughed again and, stooping, reached for the bullets. He stared at his fingers, bewildered; they groped helplessly at a spot a foot from the place where lay the two bullets ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... joy he felt in his wife's recovery there could, however, be no doubt. The crisis through which he had passed had made him, in appearance, a yet older man; when he declared his happiness tears came into his eyes, and his head shook with a senile tremor. ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... third section of the trilogy. But his resolution is taken. He has returned to his native land, and will claim his own. The land is now ruled by Harald Gille, who is, like Sigurd Slembe, an illegitimate son of Magnus Barfod, and who, during the last senile years of Sigurd Jorsalfar's life, had won the recognition that Sigurd Slembe might have won had he not missed the chance, and been acknowledged as the king's brother. When the king died, he left a son named Magnus, who should have been his successor, but whom Harald Gille seized, ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... role as Third Assistant he stood with legs akimbo before the pupil, a bamboo twig in his hand; as Isidro the pupil, he plumped down quickly upon the bench before responding. The sole function of the senile old man seemed that of representing the pupil while the question was being asked, and receiving, in that capacity, a sharp cut across the nose from Isidro-the-Third-Assistant's switch, at which he chuckled to himself in silent glee ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... professor had been ill with a chronic rheumatism. He grumbled a good deal about the "positively senile" character of his affliction and finally agreed to take to his bed for a few days in the hope of luring nature to a hasty cure. The professor was rather helpless when he was ill; Jane was painfully and triumphantly ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... on the hearth, and Ewbert made his guest sit down before it. As he lay back in the easy-chair, stretching his thin old hands toward the blaze, the delicacy of his profile was charming, and that senile parting of the lips with which he listened reminded Ewbert of his own father's looks in his last years; so that it was with an affectionate eagerness he set about making Hilbrook feel his presence acceptable, when Mrs. Ewbert left them to finish up ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... Knew it!" said Gaffer Hodge, with a senile chuckle. "I said they was from Lunnon this afternoon when I seen them fust! Glad to meet you, ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... and it is such a long upgrade return of the blood, that the circulation in the lower extremities easily becomes sluggish. The flabby, relaxed tissues and the hardened blood-vessels allow the blood to stagnate. This is why senile gangrene is so common in the ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... shall finish my century—without becoming senile either in body or mind—if I can escape the Griscelli. I was in hopes that I had escaped them by coming here; but I never stay long in Europe that they don't sooner or later find me out. I think I shall have to spend the remainder of my life ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... tell them, but he had contrived to be present when they entered so as to witness their discomfiture. The sight of their amazement gave him considerable enjoyment. Although he was furious at the way this little beggar girl had imposed, as he thought, upon the senile weakness of an old man, it was at least some compensation to know that the two nephews felt the same astonishment ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... adding to her strength. All that I do argue is that the shooting-up of the German infant does us on the whole no harm, and that there is nothing whatever in the figures of our trade to suggest that full-grown England is approaching senile decay. ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox
... a pleased senile, endeavoured to release himself from her arms, but she interrupted his exclamation, "Don't you know, Miss Thoughtless," with the whispered entreaty: "Here me out first, father! Maestro Appenzelder asked me to add my voice to the boy choir a few times more, and yesterday evening ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... individual changes vastly. Under stress and fear of circumstances, under the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, all sorts of acquirements are made. The body becomes vigorous and then feeble, the mind grows mature, and then senile. He or she grows wrinkled and bowed and perhaps very wise, or perhaps much the reverse. Yet no one viewing a baby show, a children's party, or an assembly of adults, of whom he has no previous knowledge, can ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... Church speaker. But like most of the orators of the House of Lords, he considered two hours was the minimum which he was entitled to occupy, and though he spoke with wonderful briskness, for an octogenarian, at the beginning of his observations, his voice soon became so exhausted as to be a mere senile and inaudible whisper. Deeper and deeper it descended, and the House was in the blackest depths when the Foreign Secretary rose to speak. Everybody knows how embarrassing and distressing it is to ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... greeted her kindly, and mumbled something about "Captain Burton." Isabel said, "Oh, he is at Trieste; I am just going to join him." "No," said Sir William, "he has just left me." Thinking he was rather senile, she concluded that he did not understand, and bawled into his ear for the third time, "I am Mrs. Burton, not Captain Burton, just arrived from London, and am on my way to join my husband at Trieste." "I know all that," he said impatiently. ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... as an animated Jericho trumpet. So, biding his time, he bellowed, but it was the Comedie Francaise that was the loser, not the people, when he sailed away in his balloon, posed, squatting majestically as the god of war above the clouds of battle. And little Thiers, furtive, timid, delighting in senile efforts to stir the ferment of chaos till it boiled, he, too, was there, owl-like, squeaky-voiced, a true "Bombyx a Lunettes." There, too, was Hugo—often ridiculous in his terrible moods, egotistical, sloppy, roaring. The Empire pinched Hugo, and he roared; and let the ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... statement, combined with the commanding voice and manner he now assumed, controlled Elvira. She stood for some minutes meekly contemplating her senile and smirking suitor. Susannah protested and warned her, but in caprice, as sudden as it was unexpected, Elvira decided to comply with the prophet's request ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... marriage of persons who had previously been insane would have left British genius untouched. In all cases the insanity came on late in life, and it was usually, without doubt, of the kind known as senile dementia. This was so in the case of the mother of Bacon, the most distinguished person in the list of those with an insane parent. Charles Lamb's father, we are told, eventually became "imbecile." Turner's mother became ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... sound of the knock he raised his head, an expression, which was a mixture of fear and senile cunning came into his lined and pallid face, his dull eyes peered from under their lids with a flash of sudden alertness, and with one motion of his long hands he hurriedly folded the deed before him, crammed it, with the others, ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... gardens with the cloth-of-gold-garbed bride was planned for the next season's calendar and there would be all the pleasure of talking it over, the entertainments, the new clothes, and so on. His father-in-law was paralyzed and his aunt-in-law was senile. Gay was bound to be master of all he surveyed ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... effort to make it too good, was very bad; and the production was very bad, though Brieux himself superintended it. But, all allowances made for the inevitable turpitudes of this ridiculous national theatre, the was senile; it was done for! Certainly it exposes the abuses of the French magistrature, but at what cost of fundamental truth! The melodramatic close might have been written in the ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... rare and these few must be attributed to the wind which ascends from the plain bringing with it germs of infection. It is extremely seldom that a woman dies in child-birth, but a great many succumb to senile decay at about 60 years ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... with even more avidity, how, after her removal to apartments of her own, he used to spend hours in the adjoining park just to catch a glimpse of her figure as she crossed the sidewalk on her way to and from her carriage. Indeed, his senseless, almost senile passion for this magnificent beauty became a by-word in some mouths, and it only escaped being mentioned at the inquest from respect to Mr. Fairbrother, who had never recognized this weakness in his steward, and from its lack of visible connection with her horrible death and the stealing ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... hold their kings in high, indeed religious reverence and take every precaution against their accidental death, nevertheless they cherish "the conviction that the king must not be allowed to become ill or senile, lest with his diminishing vigour the cattle should sicken and fail to bear their increase, the crops should rot in the fields, and man, stricken with disease, should die in ever-increasing numbers." ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... degenerated, ridiculous-looking old object, a man with the most touching confidence in his tailor, which the latter invariably betrayed by never making him a garment that fitted him. He had begun by admiring Evadne, and had endeavoured to pay his senile court to her with fulsome flatteries in the manner approved of his kind—but he ended by being afraid ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... there are in America. Really, as far as I am concerned, this is the best thing that could have happened. I have been getting abominably lazy. If I had gone on living my present life for another year or two, why, dash it! I honestly believe I should have succumbed to some sort of senile decay. Positively I should have got fatty degeneration of the brain! This will be the ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... Yoemon and Kondo[u] Rokuro[u]bei underwent degradation from the caste. There was no disposition to overlook the offence of usury. Beggary was to be the portion of Yoemon, the destitution of the outcast. For some years the senile old man, the virago of a woman once the wife of Kondo[u] Rokuro[u]bei, were stationed at the Nio[u]mon, to attract and amuse the worshippers passing up to the great temple of the Asakusa Kwannon. Not for long could the woman hold her tongue. Abuse passed with the sun's height to ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... They exchanged one glance of consternation, and the fancied security in which they had dwelt, as fragile as a crystal sphere, was shattered in an instant. The old man was broken by his illness, his recent hardships. He was verging on his dotage. His senile folly might well cost them their lives ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Spencer has made in Justice—(and, let us say between parentheses, this work, together with his "Positive and Negative Beneficence" furnishes sad evidence of the senile mental retrogression that even Herbert Spencer has been unable to escape; moreover its subjective aridity is in strange contrast with the marvelous wealth of scientific evidence poured forth in his earlier works)—is based on these two arguments: I. ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... -[I]LI. Here the long i is retained, and in disyllables the penultima is lengthened, as in 'anile', 'senile', 'virile'. There is no excuse for following the classical quantity in the former syllables of any of these words. As an English word 'sedilia' shortens the antepenultimate, like 'tibia' and the rest, the 'alias' rule not applying when ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... recollections Una could shut her heart. To one absurd thing, because it was living, Una could not shut her heart—to the senile canary. ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... youth who is taking lessons from a comic actor in voice-production not to carry his precepts so far as to imitate the female falsetto, the senile tremolo, the obsequiousness of the slave, the stuttering accents of intoxication or the intonations ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... middle age is to remember names, because these have no real relationship or logical value and must be arbitrarily remembered. The typical senile defect is the dropping out of the recent memories, though the past may be preserved in its entirety. With any disease of the brain, temporary or permanent, amnesia or memory loss may and usually is present (e. g., general paresis, tumor, cerebral ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... He marched away, the senile nodding of his head accentuated into pettishness; and Ferdinand stood looking after him for a second or two with a smile, but presently thinking better of it, he hastened after the angry old man ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... Mankind as a Colossal Man, who has already gone through three ages,—Infancy, Boyhood, and Manhood. Old Age is therefore to come next. When, (if it is a fair question,) may it be expected that the sad period of senile decrepitude will set in? What proof, in the mean time, is there, (we venture to ask,) that this period of decay has not begun already? Or does Dr. Temple perhaps imagine that the world is moving in cycles, (to adopt the grotesque speculation of his own first ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... to hide an obvious fact? Every person in Polktown who had arrived at the age of understanding and was not yet senile knew that Nelson Haley and Janice Day had "made a match of it." Only the girl's youth and the necessity for the young man to become established in his calling precluded the thought of matrimony for the present. But they were sure of their feeling for each other. Both had been tested in ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... poplar-tops, And broke the death-like slumber of the Hall. The keeper fetched their breakfast to the hounds; The smart, young ostler whistled in the stalls; The pretty housemaid tripped from room to room; And grave and grand behind his master's chair, But wroth within to have the partridge spoil, The senile butler waited for his lord. But neither Regnald nor young Eustace came. And when 't was found that neither slept at Hall That night, their couches being still unpressed, The servants stared. And as the day wore ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... scarcely seemed to hear the witticisms at his expense that followed on the words; he had relapsed into the dreamy state of mind that these superficial observers took for senile torpor, due to his lack of intelligence. If they had only known, they might have been deeply interested by the problem of his condition; but few problems were more obscure. It was easy, of course, to find out whether ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... the work of the Devil. This is indeed news. We never knew the Devil required any assistance. He was always very active and enterprising, and quite able to manage his own business. And although his rival, Jehovah, is so dotingly senile as to yield up everything to his mistress and her son, no one has ever whispered the least hint of the Devil's decline into the same abject position. But if his Satanic Majesty needed our aid we should not be loth to give it, for after carefully reading the Bible many times ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... blooming in a bed among all those old decayed and discarded people of the world. Curious, too, I thought, that these people, like old Croasan, had rejected life. Though they were, if anything, less estimable than he was, for he defied life, in his silly, senile, drunken way, while they seemed ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... He leaned across the table. "You still don't believe we're near Sol, do you? You're getting senile, Hugh! You know the mathematics of our ...
— An Empty Bottle • Mari Wolf
... continued until one of two things happens. Either the customer is obdurate, and staggers to his feet at last and gropes his way out of the shop with the knowledge that he is a wrinkled, prematurely senile man, whose wicked life is stamped upon his face, and whose unstopped hair-ends and failing follicles menace him with the certainty of complete baldness within twenty-four hours—or else, as in nearly all instances, he succumbs. In the latter case, immediately on his saying "yes" there is ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... dreams that I am in my dotage, and may relent, she strangely forgets the nature of the blood she saw fit to cross with that of a beggarly foreign scrub. Go back and tell her, the old man is not yet senile and imbecile; and that the years have only hardened his heart. Tell her, I have almost learned to forget even ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... accompanied by women and children, they joined the march with all the paraphernalia of their household goods. From the first this throng, uniting with the usual horde of stragglers and camp-followers, prevented all rapid movements by the army; in fact, but for them the half-senile Kutusoff would not have been able to show even his van to the French line. Mortier's effort to destroy the Kremlin failed, and served no purpose except to exhibit the thirst for revenge of a savage nature ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... evidences of life and activity that shock the artistic sense in other towns. All is old, moribund, and picturesque. It lies here in the heart of the Guadarramas, lost and forgotten by the civilization of the age, muttering in its senile dream of the glories of an older world. It has not vitality enough to attract a railroad, and so is only reached by a long and tiresome journey by diligence. Its solitude is rarely intruded upon by the impertinent curious, and the red back ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... adventures not normally within the reach of, or suited to the taste of, the citizens of an ordered state. It is little wonder that the boy regards the moral law as a nuisance and the state as a suitable refuge for those suffering from senile decay. ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... looked up to Claire. He had thought her straight. And all the time that she had been saying those things to him that night of their last meeting she had been engaged to another man, a fat, bald, doddering, senile fool, whose only merit was his money. Scarcely a fair description of Mr Pickering, but in a man in Bill's position ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... the judge, "I may almost claim to be a specialist (so far as a country practitioner is permitted to specialize) in senile and paretic dementia, since I had the honor to represent the proponents in the will case of Snoke versus Snoke. But it's only fair to say that I regard ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... that his quiet dignity shone conspicuous above the quiet dignity of men who might be merely hatters, billiard markers, or grocery-clerks. Beyond an occasional unwary traveller, who came by rail, this gambler was supposed to prey solely upon reckless and senile farmers, who, when flush with good crops, drove into town in all the pride and confidence of an absolutely invulnerable stupidity. Hearing at times in circuitous fashion of the despoilment of such a farmer, the important men of Romper ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... calmly.] According to my opinion, Goethe with his senile regulations for actors denied, in the pettiest way, himself and his whole original nature. What is one to say of his ruling that every actor, irrespective of the quality of the character represented by him, must—these are his very ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... The senile mirth had left the trader's face, and his olive skin was ashen. "Next time," he moaned, "next time, Santa Maria, they will be in force and they—they will take the very horse from ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... the stove, a base-burner with faint fire showing through its mica, the identity of her figure merged with the fat upholstery of the chair, except where the faint pink through the mica lighted up old flesh, Mrs. Miriam Horowitz, full of years and senile with them, wove with grasses, the ecru of her own skin, wreaths that had mounted to a great ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... whither it lists, and to fling oneself carelessly upon existence, as Sir George Birdwood, for instance, has done! He also wrote to the Times, but in a very different tone. Like another Gulliver, he pictured the calamity of millionaires living on till their heirs are senile. It is all nonsense, he said, to prescribe rules for life. One of his oldest friends drank a bottle of cognac a day, and, as for himself—well, we know that he is eighty, has lived a varied and dangerous life in many lands, has written on carrots, ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... fact, let himself be made use of by the girl from Bordeaux with the indulgence which characterises senile attachments. His manufactory was no longer going on. The entire state of his affairs was pitiable; so that, in order to set them afloat again, he was at first projecting the establishment of a cafe chantant, at which only patriotic pieces ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... 'I was hired to cure you of a habit, dear. When you're cured I shall go on to the next case—that senile-decay one at Bourne-mouth I told ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... eighty years looking at her from that furrowed face out of those little wandering round blue eyes—saw the human part of him as she had never seen it before—with its patience of unfulfilment, its scant small pleasures, its innocent senile passion at the end; saw, too, the divine part, hidden in him as in all humanity—that communion of longing which bound his passionate fluting, Angela's passionate remorse and her own passionate purity into the ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... bewildered in computing the effect, as it will appear to neutral eyes, of what he has produced. But the incapacitation which I speak of here as due to opium, is of another kind and another degree. It is mere childish helplessness, or senile paralysis, of the judgment, which distresses the man in attempting to grasp the upshot and the total effect (the tout ensemble) of what he has himself so recently produced. There is the same imbecility in attempting ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... play field broadens with succeeding generations youth is prolonged, for play is always and everywhere the best synonym of youth. All are young at play and only in play, and the best possible characterization of old age is the absence of the soul and body of play. Only senile and overspecialized tissues of brain, heart, and muscles ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... be traced to the extreme fecundity of nature, who, as before stated, has in all the varieties of her offspring a prolific power much beyond (in many cases a thousand fold) what is necessary to fill up the vacancies caused by senile decay. As the field of existence is limited and preoccupied, it is only the hardier, more robust, better suited to circumstance individuals, who are able to struggle forward to maturity, these inhabiting only the situations to which they have superior adaptation ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... vivacity in his walk. His forty-five differed from his forty by a like margin, unless one mention a slight deafness in his left ear. But at fifty-five the process had become a chemical change of immense rapidity. Yearly he was more and more an "old man" to his family—senile almost, so far as his wife was concerned. He was by this time complete owner of the bookshop. The mysterious Mr. Moonlight Quill, dead some five years and not survived by his wife, had deeded the whole stock ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... different sort also. Anna's father was failing. He had written her a feeble, half-senile appeal to let bygones be bygones and come back to see him before he died. Anna was Peter's great prop. What would he do should she decide to go home? He had built his ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... hand on her arm; but as he left the gang-plank he freed himself, and moved a step or two away from his companions. He had seen Charity at once, and his glance passed slowly from her to Harney, whose arm was still about her. He stood staring at them, and trying to master the senile quiver of his lips; then he drew himself up with the tremulous majesty of drunkenness, and ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... I found about me. There were no matches there, and I suddenly realised that my extremities were cold. Sniffing and coughing, whimpering a little, perhaps, I fumbled back to bed. "It is surely a dream," I whispered to myself as I clambered back, "surely a dream." It was a senile repetition. I pulled the bedclothes over my shoulders, over my ears, I thrust my withered hand under the pillow, and determined to compose myself to sleep. Of course it was a dream. In the morning the dream would be over, and I should wake up ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... critics. Many of the very strong things in Chaucer, which you may call coarse and gross if you will, are omitted by Pope, and many softened down; nor is there a single line in which the spirit is not the spirit of satire. The folly of senile dotage is throughout exposed as unsparingly, though with a difference in the imitation, as in the original. Even Joseph Warton and Bowles, affectedly fastidious over-much as both too often are, and culpably prompt to find fault, acknowledge that Pope's versions are blameless. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... terrible roar of the lioness that has been deprived of her cubs is dramatically as far above her customary whine and purr as the kingly and transcendent utterances of Lear are above the level of his senile vaporings. But it is also true that all men and women have what may be called a sub-conscious dramatic sense that is awakened by a sufficiently deep and powerful emotion—a sense unconsciously acquired from literature and the stage that prompts ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... and the overthrow of the laws sustaining slavery; and that a movement was now on foot in New England to found the American Anti-Slavery Society. And that John Quincy Adams, once President, but now a senile intermeddler, had been presenting petitions in Congress from various constituencies for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. This would be finally squelched, he thought. New England had always demanded a tariff in order to foster her industries, ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... elephantiasis might well lead one to ask: Why are we afflicted with a prepuce? We can understand how a man may become gouty, and become a subject in the end for a gangrene of the extremities; or how senile gangrene may, through a series of pathological processes and blood changes, with the aid of age, finally be reached; or how, by a like course of diseased processes, we reach the apoplectic stage. These conditions, however, can be put off, or partly, if not wholly ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... principle that a runner who has less distance to travel not only accomplishes his course quicker, but moves with relatively greater speed, or as a small planet grows old not simply sooner, but comparatively faster than a larger one. Jupiter is still in his fiery youth, while the moon is senile in decrepid old age, and yet his separate existence began long before hers. Either hypothesis will explain the abnormally early development of the Chinese race, and its subsequent career of inactivity. Meanwhile the youthful nurse, in blissful ignorance of the evidence which her present precocity ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... and the betrayal of his affection by the first woman he really loved, had given him his finest conceptions in verse and prose, it is impossible to accept so insufficient an explanation. Nor can we allow that De Musset sank into a condition of puerile impatience and senile querulousness. Judged by our standard, all the Latin races lack manhood, as we may possibly do by theirs: De Musset was only as much more sensitive than the rest of his countrymen as those of the poetic temperament are usually found to be in all countries. Nor had he seen his talent slowly expire: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... gentle once more, "that sounds like senile raving. Pardon me. But while I've waited for the politicians of this State to show some signs of decency, waiting in vain, I've been swallowing back a lot of bitterness. No more of it! To our business now. I want you to know what is coming. I depend on you, ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... a view to finding out the exact cause of death. Among the 111 cases, there are post-mortem records of cases of gallstones, abscess of the mesentery, thrombosis of the mesenteric veins, several cases of heart disease, senile gangrene and one of cor villosum. From no other book do we get so good an idea of a practitioner's experience at this period; the notes are plain and straightforward, and singularly free from all theoretical and therapeutic vagaries. ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... lately, now they mentioned it. As time went on, the scarlet porch became the talk of the town. It was duly discussed at the sewing society, and the reading club, and the general sentiment was practically unanimous that Jackson must be suffering from incipient cataract or senile dementia, and needed a guardian. Even Mary McGuire remarked to Mrs. Burke that she was afraid "that there front porch would sure set the house on fire, if it wasn't put out before." Everybody agreed that if his wife had lived, the thing ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... streets one hot night after a party, discussing the various theories of the soul's destiny. That afternoon they had met at the coffin of a college friend whose mind had been a blank for the past three years. Some months previously they had called at the asylum to see him. His expression had been senile, his face imprinted with the record of debauchery. In death the face was placid, intelligent, without ignoble lineation—the face of the man they had known at college. Weigall and Gifford had had no time to comment there, and ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... antagonism, whereas their more intimate acquaintance with one another produced personal and national ill-will. The people of the West now appeared more than ever barbarous and overbearing, and the Court of Constantinople more than ever senile and designing. The crafty policy of Alexius Comnenus in transferring his allies with all speed into Asia, and declining to take the lead in the expedition, was almost justified by the necessity of delivering his subjects from these unwelcome ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... think,—not of Crasweller or of myself. How will the coming ages of men be affected by such a change as I propose, should such a change become the normal condition of Death? Can it not be brought about that men should arrange for their own departure, so as to fall into no senile weakness, no slippered selfishness, no ugly whinings of undefined want, before they shall go hence, and be no more thought of? These are the ideas that have actuated me, and to them I have been ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... went back to Berlin to her mother. Her father moved heaven and earth to make Clara suspect Schumann's fidelity, and he gave the love affair as unpleasant a notoriety as possible. For an instance of senile spite: Clara had always been given a Behrens piano for her concerts in Berlin. Wieck wrote to a friend to go to Behrens, and warn him that he must not lend Clara his pianos, because she was used to the hard English action, and would ruin any others! He wrote that he hoped the honour of the ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... in the address sent under the royal sign-manual to Parliament, it was invoked to take measures "for better securing the execution of the laws," and it acquiesced in the suggestion. Just as now, a senile executive, under the sinister influence of insane counsels, is proposing, with your assent, "to secure the better execution of the laws," by blockading ports and turning upon the people of the States the artillery which they provided ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... domestic policy, we shall experience after the close of the war the darkest and most difficult days of our existence. The crisis through which we are passing is the gravest we have yet encountered. Let us make it a crisis of growth, not a symptom of irreparable senile decay. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... look at it—did you ever see such a beauty? Such firmness—roundness—such delicious smoothness to the touch?' It was as if he had said 'she' instead of 'it,' and when he put out his senile hand and touched the melon I positively had to ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... your Horace Walpole at sixty are as lively as a girl and boy. Your octogenarian Voltaire is the most agreeable creature in existence. But take Cymon and Daphne from their flocks and herds and pastoral valleys in their old age, and see what senile bores and quavering imbeciles you would find them. Yes, I have no doubt you found your Dorking aunt a nuisance. Take off your wet overcoat and put it out of the room, and then ring for more hot water. You'll find that cognac very fine. Won't ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... age, and tottering on its pedestal. This solemn old bird sat apart from all the others, nodding its head oracularly in the sunlight, and blinking now and again with its white eyelids in a curious senile fashion. ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... several stories into one, as is clearly demonstrated by several in this volume. You may rely on it, that he has chosen for the finish, the best and most ribald of the lot, in order that he may not be accused of a senile discourse. Put then more likes with your dislikes, and dislikes with your likes. Forgetting the niggardly behaviour of nature to story-tellers, of whom there are not more than seven perfect in the great ocean of human writers, others, although friendly, have been of opinion that, at ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... Afterward, his senile emotions betraying him, he broke down completely and had to be led from the field. It is rumored he did not live long ...
— It's a Small Solar System • Allan Howard
... the Rogers of 1854,—senile, as was natural at the age of ninety-one years and eight months, yet still retaining much of the old Rogers, hospitable, sometimes caustic, sometimes pathetic, and always a true lover and appreciator of the fine arts. Leslie declared him to be the only amateur ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... mantle has fallen; a young actor who personates old age so admirably that the oldest men in the audience cannot help laughing. With that quavering voice of his, that bald forehead, and those spindle shanks trembling under the weight of a senile frame, he may look forward to a long career of decrepitude. There is something alarming about the young actor's old age; he is so very old; you feel nervous lest senility should be infectious. And what an admirable Alcalde he makes! What a delightful, uneasy ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... mild surprise. "Ah, yes; she has gone to New York to make our fortune with the system. You see," he continued with senile cunning, "she has taken away the system, and so I am not sure whether I can beat you. But make your play, monsieur." There was at least no indecision in the manner in which he set the ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... practice by a large number of people during the last two or three years, and are steadily gaining more attention. Sour milk as an article of diet appears to have a peculiar value in arresting the supposed senile changes which are largely due ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... blazing when he cried, furiously: "Cut that 'old' out, or I'll show you something. Your mind's gone— senile decay, they ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... old John was—or had been—the sort of man to accept a wedding invitation, go to the reception and eat his fill, and never send the bride so much as a black wire hairpin. And now, grown old, his conscience might be hurting him. He might be in that semi-senile state when restitution becomes a craze, and the ungiven wedding presents might press upon his conscience. It was not at all unlikely that he had chosen the un-burglary method of giving the presents at this late date. The form ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... you signal—! I am for Silesia, to look after Prince Karl, the other long leg of this Business." Old Leopold, according to Friedrich's account, is visibly glad of such opportunity to fight again before he die: and yet, for no reason except some senile jealousy, is not content with these arrangements; perversely objects to this and that. At length the King says,—think of this hard word, and of the eyes that accompany it!—"When your Highness gets Armies of your ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... was of an incredible age. She was senile with age. Her cracked cackle never ceased for an instant. She talked to the dog and the cat; she talked to the walls of the room; she spoke out through the window to the weather; she shut her eyes in a corner and harangued the circumambient darkness. The eldest sister was as silent ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... visioned that surprising person who had such influence over rough boatswains—a prim little man with mutton chop whiskers, he decided. Yes, the 'blessed little mate' of the brig Cohasset would be a little, white-crowned, bewhiskered old gentleman, perhaps somewhat senile and decrepit. It was inherent respect for old age that inspired ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... allusion to "the Royal-Martyr" (III, 32) may be considered a modest clue to Swift's Toryism, and it is associated with the Jacobitism of which his Whiggish enemies accused him. Yet an unusual reading of the Struldbruggs in the third voyage (particularly the controls imposed on the senile creatures in order to prevent their engrossing the civil power) as an attack on the religious dissenters demonstrates that Curll and Swift agreed on the issue of an established church. The clergy who wished to separate state from church, or as ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... his broad nose. Then he wiped his beard on the palm of his hand, and his hand on his knee; whereafter, as he stretched forth the pair of senile, dark-coloured hands, and held them over the embers, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... captain came up from below the cook changed the subject from women to history. In senile fashion, to show off, he recited the names of the Roman emperors, in chronological sequence. And, drawing a curtain aside from a shelf he himself had built over his bunk, he showed me Momsen's complete history of Rome, in a ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... therein! Not to mention the anxiety, which to us now is scarcely conceivable, but which in his time overmastered all others—the anxiety, that is to say, of assuring the magnificence and inviolability of sepulture! . . . And this horrible scarecrow, toothless and senile, lying here in its filthy rags, with the hand raised in an impotent menace, was once the brilliant Sesostris, the master of kings, and by virtue of his strength and beauty the demigod also, whose muscular limbs and deep athletic chest many ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... little snowy hand with almost senile delight, and holds it for—as long as he dares. During this undefined period he tells himself what a perfect picture she is, with her clear, pale, beautiful face, and her nut-brown hair, and the tender sweetness of her attitude, as she bends over the ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... impotent, words that shamble thus listlessly through life, there are. But many words are born in an entirely normal way; have a grubby boyhood, a vigorous youth, and a sober maturity; marry, beget sons and daughters, become old, enfeebled, even senile; and suffer neglect, if not death. In their advanced age they are exempted by the discerning from enterprises that call for a lusty agility, but are drafted into service by those to whom all levies are alike. Indeed in their very ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Semicircle duonrondo. Semicolon punktokomo. Seminarist seminariano. Seminary seminario. Semolina tritikajxo. Senate senato. Senate-house senatejo, senatdomo. Senator senatano. Send sendi. Send away forsendi. Send back resendi. Senile maljuna. Senility maljuneco. Senior plenagxa, pliagxa. Sensation sentado. Sensational sensacia. Sense sento. Sense (meaning) senco. Senseless sensenta. Senseless (unmeaning) sensenca. Sensibility sentemo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... of suddenly, and with an unpleasant oscillatory laughing noise, opening of its own accord and proclaiming its horrid secret to Euphemia's best visitors. An air of wickedness, at once precocious and senile, came upon it; it gaped and leered at Euphemia as the partner of her secret with such a familiar air of "I and you" that she could stand it no longer, and this depraved piece of furniture was banished at last from her presence, and relegated to its proper ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... dissembled his mirth to perfection. The look which he shifted from me to Susannah and back was eloquent of senile indecision. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... however, and dogs, and children. We ought to have remained indoors. Thither we retired for coffee and cigars and a liqueur, of the last of which my friend refused to partake. He fears and distrusts all liqueurs; it is one of his many senile traits. The stuff proved, to my surprise, to be orthodox Strega, likewise a ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... the United States. The Athenians were the student-youths of mankind; their constitution was a species of academic freedom, and it would be mere folly to seek to introduce it in this our matured age, to revive it in our senile Europe. And how could we put up with that of Sparta, that great and tiresome manufactory of patriotism, that soldiers' barrack of republican virtue, that sublimely bad kitchen of equality, in which black broth was so vilely cooked that Attic wits ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... fresh and sparkling, the professor had given him into the safe hands of Reed Opdyke. It was as he said: he was quite well aware that, although Reed had his sirens, they all were curiously clean ones; in short, that his young Mammon was nobler far than many a senile God. ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... back his ring, and then he broke down pitifully. Doubtless there was good in him, but I saw him only once; and with nothing to contrast against it, I may not now attempt to breathe life into the dust of his senile passion. These were the last words that passed between ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... youth is a simulation and deceit; that he is really older and has lived before at some remote period, and that his conduct fully justifies his title as A Venerable Impostor. A variety of circumstances corroborate this impression: His tottering walk, which is a senile as well as a juvenile condition; his venerable head, thatched with such imperceptible hair that, at a distance, it looks like a mild aureola, and his imperfect dental exhibition. But beside these physical peculiarities may be observed certain moral symptoms, which ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... it, he hated part; but he was no friend to either. By and by he grew older. Age removed a good deal of his vanity, and I suppose it forced him to part with some portion of his self-esteem. But I was growing older myself and no doubt getting physically a little helpless. I suppose I made senile noises when I dressed and undressed, expressive of my decorative labors. This may have been the reason; possibly not; but at any rate about this time he conceived it his duty to give up his friendship as an equal and to enter my employ as a servant. He became my valet—without ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... pasteboard. Then he took an old and worn out horse whose ribs stuck out from his hide and who was more used to hauling vegetables than to warlike adventures, and he called the horse by the high sounding name of "Rocinante," and really believed that the senile old animal was a greater charger than Bucephalus, the famous horse that bore the ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... horizons, this nomad loads himself with the incubus of dream-states; while standing alone, he grows into a ferocious brigand. Poets call him romantic, but politicians are puzzled what to do with a being who to a senile mysticism joins the peevish destructiveness of ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... them in my mind's eye walking on either side of me, the one short and slim with a spiritual countenance; the other tall, handsome, and impressive-looking. Their main object in life seems to be to help me on with my overcoat, and to guide my senile steps over street-crossings, though Dr. Meredith tells me that I am good for twenty years yet, and that I haven't an unsound organ in my body. They disagree with me in politics so politely that I am fool enough to open my best ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... again Mary Crawford despatched a messenger to inform Domine Rodgers that his services would not be needed that evening for the marriage, as Colonel Crawford had been called to Albany by telegraph, at a moment's notice, on government business. It seemed idle to attempt, in her father's senile and helpless condition, to make him acquainted with the real circumstances of the case; and so Joe's suggestion was carried much further than she had intended, and the old man and all the household were led to the same understanding, with the additional belief that the Colonel ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... ready to give up all the results we have attained with such effort, results of which we have been boasting for three centuries; to give up every convenience and charm of our existence, to prefer savage youth to the senile decay of civilization, to pull down the palace raised for us by our ancestors only for the pleasure of having a hand in the founding of a new house, which will doubtless be built long after we are gone?" (Herzen, vol. ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... the aged. Its windowed eyes are rheumy. It sags backward on gnarled joints. All its poor old bones creak when the winds shake it. To Average Jones' inquiring gaze on this summer day it opposed the secrecy of a senile indifference. He hesitated to pull at its bell-knob, lest by that act he should exert a disruptive force which might bring all the frail structure rattling down in ruin. When, at length, he forced himself to the summons, the merest ghost of a tinkle complained petulantly ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... began bathing Miss Matoaca's forehead with water which somebody had brought. The General, his eyes very red and bloodshot and his lower lip fallen into a senile droop, was trying vainly to fan her ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow |
