"Valetudinarian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rather than to astonish or impress the spectator with feelings of awe by their stupendous grandeur; circumstances which, combined with its salubrity of climate, render it a most desirable retreat to the valetudinarian and nervous invalid: indeed all the alterations which have latterly been made, or are now in progress, tend to soften, embellish, and in point of convenience to improve the face of the country. ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... dreadful untiring drum about the street, I forbore to grumble, and when on Sundays they turned out in a body after mass to see their own military section drilled in the Place of the Hotel de Ville, one bored valetudinarian welcomed them heartily. The military section had got down uniforms from one of the Brussels theatres,—busbies and helmets, and the gloriously comic hats of the garde civile,—dragoon tunics, hussar jackets, infantry shell-jackets, cavalry stable-jackets, ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... the world wants is a healthful virtue, not a valetudinarian virtue, a virtue which can expose itself to the risks inseparable from all spirited exertion, not a virtue which keeps out of the common air for fear of infection, and eschews the common food as too stimulating. It would be indeed absurd to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... committee of taste (who is indefatigable in his endeavours to improve the health, as well as promote the enjoyment, of his fellow-students in the school of good living, and to whom the epicure, the economist, and the valetudinarian are equally indebted for his careful revision of this work, and especially for introducing that salutary maxim into the kitchen, that "the salubrious is ever a superior consideration to the savoury," and indeed, the rational ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... confident in the strength of his position and in the accuracy of his intelligence, lived in his tent as he was accustomed to live in his hotel at Paris. He was at once a valetudinarian and a voluptuary; and, in both characters, he loved his ease. He scarcely ever mounted his horse. Light conversation and cards occupied most of his hours. His table was luxurious; and, when he had sate down to supper, it was a service ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the Alchemist remained profoundly ignorant as to the identity of the old man, he must still have observed with interest, features which were equally characterised by the pensiveness of the student and the paleness of the valetudinarian. He knew, however, instinctively, as he had done upon the two preceding occasions, that he beheld a personage of illustrious memory. And he knew rightly, for it was Milton. While the great plague was desolating ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... have spoken only of Mr. HACKETT'S) was to restore a blase and valetudinarian young man of thirty to a proper state of energy by recalling the memories of his past loves and so reviving in him a desire to stand well in the eyes of the sex. For this purpose he produces (1) a bunch of wood-violets to suggest (through the nose) the environment of his first passion; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... herself of the opportunity of their assemblage at the dinner-table, to announce the expected arrival of Mrs. Bloss. The gentlemen received the communication with stoical indifference, and Mrs. Tibbs devoted all her energies to prepare for the reception of the valetudinarian. The second-floor front was scrubbed, and washed, and flannelled, till the wet went through to the drawing-room ceiling. Clean white counterpanes, and curtains, and napkins, water-bottles as clear as crystal, blue jugs, and mahogany ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... quick and rather plentifully; yet the valetudinarian (excuse my rusticity, for I rejoice at seeing it) appears to equal the traveller in appetite, and to be contented with ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... phrase, to rough it, are quite amusing. He talks of riding a day or two on a bad Westphalian road, of sleeping on straw for one night, of travelling in winter when the snow lay on the ground, as if he had gone on an expedition to the North Pole or to the source of the Nile. This kind of valetudinarian effeminacy, this habit of coddling himself, appears in all parts of his conduct. He loved fame, but not with the love of an exalted and generous mind. He loved it as an end, not at all as a means; as a personal luxury, not ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the conversation. Displeased that the lead should be withdrawn from him, he turned to Clara and related one of the after-dinner anecdotes of Dr. Corney; and another, with a vast deal of human nature in it, concerning a valetudinarian gentleman, whose wife chanced to be desperately ill, and he went to the physicians assembled in consultation outside the sick-room, imploring them by all he valued, and in tears, to save the poor patient for him, saying: "She is everything to me, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... calling one day on a gentleman who had been severely afflicted with the gout, found, to his surprise, the disease gone, and the patient rejoicing in his recovery over a bottle of wine. "Come along, doctor," exclaimed the valetudinarian, "you are just in time to taste this bottle of Madeira; it is the first of a pipe that has just been broached." "Ah!" replied the doctor, "these pipes of Madeira will never do; they are the cause of all your ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... genius in a special field, was an incomplete and unsatisfactory human being who ultimately reached a condition very like insanity; Beethoven was a thoroughly morbid and diseased man, who led an intensely unhappy existence; Kant, from first to last, was a feeble valetudinarian. It would probably be difficult to find a healthy normal man who would voluntarily accept the life led by any of these four, even as the price of their fame. J.A. Godfrey (Science of Sex, pp. 139-147) discusses at length the question whether ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... prove the vein. June, as often happens in Canada, was a wet month, and although Featherstone was used to hardship, he sickened with influenza, perhaps in consequence of digging in heavy rain and sleeping in wet clothes. As he was nothing of a valetudinarian he made light of the attack, but did not get better as soon as he expected on his return, and went to see the Toronto doctor, when ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... and Mr. Stubbs helped at this necessary work, and when the professor and the Melbourne merchant heard of it they, too, volunteered. But Marmaduke Timmins, the valetudinarian, and Montgomery Clinton felt quite inadequate ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... marriage in 1839. As early as 1842, the failure of health was so marked that removal from London became imperatively necessary; and Darwin purchased a house and grounds at Down, a solitary hamlet in Kent, which was his home for the rest of his life. Under the strictly regulated conditions of a valetudinarian existence, the intellectual activity of the invalid might have put to shame most healthy men; and, so long as he could hold his head up, there was no limit to the genial kindness of thought and action for all about him. Those ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... find the same man, on the same or similar grounds, abstain from nearly everything that his neighbours innocently and pleasurably use, and from the rubs and trials of human society itself into the bargain, we recognise that valetudinarian healthfulness which is more delicate than sickness itself. We need have no respect for a state of artificial training. True health is to be able to do without it. Shakespeare, we can imagine, might begin ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... entirely for Eleanor's sake that I refrained from taking her into my confidence. To her question I replied that I had not the right to tie her for life to a helpless valetudinarian. "Besides," said I, "as my health grows worse my jokes will deteriorate, until I am reduced to grinning through a horse-collar at the doctor. And you couldn't stand ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... did very little in the case, and brought back a distinct opinion that Grosse could, at present, do nothing but mischief by interference. Madame Danterre had always lived a very retired life, and was either a real invalid or a valetudinarian. Her great, her enormous accession of wealth had only been used apparently in the sacred cause of bodily health. She saw at most six people, including two doctors and her lawyer; and on rare occasions, some elderly man visiting Florence—a Frenchman maybe, ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... face, too, was changed. Tint and expression were both dulled; its marble-like sharpness and finish had coarsened a little, and the figure, which had never possessed the erectness of youth, had now the pinched look and the confirmed stoop of the valetudinarian. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... think—interests itself in the personality of a genius, and somewhat impudently invades his privacy. A young man may muster up sufficient moral courage to lie to his callers, and thus preserve the proprieties; but an aged valetudinarian who wants to get into a quiet nook and nurse himself, may show scant courtesy—even brush the "critic fly" of the genus Gosse out of doors ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... kept a noble butler in purple clothes and a large white wig. Johnson respected Taylor as a sensible man, but was ready to have a round with him on occasion. He snorted contempt when Taylor talked of breaking some small vessels if he took an emetic. "Bah," said the doctor, who regarded a valetudinarian as a "scoundrel," "if you have so many things that will break, you had better break your neck at once, and there's an end on't." Nay, if he did not condemn Taylor's cows, he criticized his bulldog with cruel acuteness. "No, sir, he is not well shaped; for there is not the quick transition ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... in the French saying, that there is no ill without something of good. What state more pitiable to the eye of a man of robust health than that of the Confirmed Valetudinarian? Indeed, there is no one who has a more profound pity for himself than your Valetudinarian; and yet he enjoys two of the most essential requisites for a happy life; he is never without an object of interest, and he is perpetually in pursuit ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... the most of these, which finds a sort of caress in such things. Kubla Khan, the fragment of a poem actually composed in some certainly not quite healthy sleep, is perhaps chiefly of interest as showing, by the mode of its composition, how physical, how much of a diseased or valetudinarian temperament, in its moments of relief, Coleridge's happiest gift really was; and side by side with Kubla Khan should be read, as Coleridge placed it, the Pains of Sleep, to illustrate that retarding physical ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... give a ridiculous serenade, or, rather, a hideous hubbub, of noisy instruments under his mistress' window. A little before this Lady Knowell with a party of friends has visited Sir Patient, who is her next neighbour, and the loud laughter, talking, singing and foppery so enrage the precise old valetudinarian that he resolves to leave London immediately for his country house, a circumstance which would be fatal to his wife's amours. Wittmore and she, however, persuade him that he is very ill, and on being shown his face in a looking-glass that magnifies ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... to Mr. Hector the state of one of their school-fellows, Mr. Charles Congreve, a clergyman, which he thus described: 'He obtained, I believe, considerable preferment in Ireland, but now lives in London, quite as a valetudinarian, afraid to go into any house but his own. He takes a short airing in his post-chaise every day. He has an elderly woman, whom he calls cousin, who lives with him, and jogs his elbow when his glass has stood too long empty, and encourages him in drinking, in which he is very willing to be ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... hidden in them. To me, M. Platzoff seems nothing more than a mild old gentleman; a little eccentric, it may be, as differing from our English notions in many things. Not a smiling fiend in patent boots and white cravat, whose secret soul is bent on murder and rapine; but a shy valetudinarian, whose only firebrand is a harmless fusee wherewith to light a pipe ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... perceive that Mr. Bevan, though objecting to nothing, let all the rough and tough work lapse upon his curates, and took nothing but the graceful representative part. Even then, Mr. Underwood had something to say in his defence; Mr. Bevan was valetudinarian in his habits, and besides—he was in the midst of a courtship—after his marriage he would give his mind to ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the pleasure-garden is greatly heightened by the delightful odour which this plant diffuses; and as it is most readily cultivated in pots, its fragrance may be conveyed to the parlour of the recluse, or the chamber of the valetudinarian; its perfume, though not so refreshing perhaps as that of the Sweet-Briar, is not apt to offend on continuance the most ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. I - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... national prosperity, of the causes of national decay, he knew no more than his master. It is curious to observe the contrast between the dexterity with which he ruled the conscience of a foolish valetudinarian, and the imbecility which he showed when placed at the head of an empire. On what grounds Lord Mahon represents the Cardinal as a man "of splendid genius," "of vast abilities," we are unable to discover. Lewis was of a very different opinion, and Lewis was very ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the freight on spruce boards from Bangor to New York has increased to five dollars a thousand feet. Many of these craft belong to grandfatherly skippers who dared not venture past Cape Cod in December, lest the venerable Matilda Emerson or the valetudinarian Joshua R. Coggswell should open up and founder in a blow. During the winter storms these skippers used to hug the kitchen stove in bleak farmhouses until spring came and they could put to sea again. The rigor of circumstances, however, forced others to seek for trade the whole year through. ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... Mitford among the number, have admired the stability of the Spartan institutions; in fact, there is little to admire, and less to approve. Oligarchy is the weakest and the most stable of governments; and it is stable because it is weak. It has a sort of valetudinarian longevity; it lives in the balance of Sanctorius; it takes no exercise; it exposes itself to no accident; it is seized with an hypochondriac alarm at every new sensation; it trembles at every breath; ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that part of the world, his friends, in town, were labouring for his benefit. The air of a more southern climate, they thought, might prolong a valuable life. But a pension of three hundred pounds a year was a slender fund for a travelling valetudinarian, and it was not then known that he had saved a moderate sum of money. Mr. Boswell and sir Joshua Reynolds undertook to solicit the patronage of the chancellor. With lord Thurlow, while he was at the bar, Johnson was well acquainted. He was often heard to say, "Thurlow ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... bare. But the strangeness for us is not one of costume only. If we know anything of Johnson, we know that he was constantly ill all through his life; and whether we know anything of him or not we are apt to think of a literary man as a delicate, weakly, nervous, and probably valetudinarian sort of person. Nothing can be further from that than the muscular statue. And in this matter the statue is perfectly right. And the fact which it reports is far from being unimportant. The body and the mind are inextricably interwoven in all of us, and certainly in Johnson's case the ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... pere is not much given to rejoicings, and he takes this annual joy, much as a valetudinarian takes his ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... companion for her. He could not meet her in conversation, rational or playful. The evil of the actual disparity in their ages (as Mr. Woodhouse had not married early) was much increased by his constitution and habits; for, having been a valetudinarian all his life, without activity of mind or body, he was a much older man in ways than in years; and though everywhere beloved for the friendliness of his heart and his amiable temper, his talents could not have recommended ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... being innocent of gross sin? But to those other sins—sins of defective moral courage in speech and action, sins arising from over-fastidiousness—had he not yielded freely? Was he not a spiritual valetudinarian? He feared so. Offered, in the Eternal Mercy, endless precious opportunities of service, he had been too weak, too timorous, too slothful, to lay hold on them. And so, as it seemed to him very justly, to-night confession, prayer, adoration, left ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet |
