"Decrepitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... land in the remote north where the inhabitants enjoy a natural pefection attended with complete happiness obtained without exertion. There is there no vicissitude, nor decrepitude, nor death, nor fear: no distinction of virtue and vice, none of the inequalities denoted by the words best, worst, and intermediate, nor any change resulting from the succession of the four Yugas." See MUIR'S Sanskrit Texts, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... Thomas—who seemed to have become crystallized, as it were, in age and decrepitude, and advanced no further in either—was pottering around the garden, eying askant, like an old robin, the new plough furrows. Pauper women humped their calico backs over the green slopes of the fields, searching ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... unfortunate tendency to stale. The joke of yesteryear already shows frays upon its sleeves. The wit of the early volumes of Punch is in the last stages of decrepitude. Watch an actor struggling to conceal from his audience the fact that he is repeating one of Shakespeare's puns. We tolerate the humour of Congreve, not because it is thoroughly amusing, but because it has survived better ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... this menace of stagnation. It was a measure for which we may all be glad, as we can share Mr. GOSSE'S thanksgiving that the writer's death, coming when it did, saved him, as he had wished, "from all consciousness of decrepitude." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... the result is that thy father, all unmindful of his coming doom, cloth seek diligently his own destruction." The Prince, anxious and alarmed, thus answered his wife, "Almighty Allah be praised, the King my liege lord is in the best of health and showeth no sign of disorder or decrepitude: 'tis but this morning I left him hale and hearty, and in very sooth I never saw him in better case. Strange, indeed, that thou shouldst ken what shall betide him before I have told thee aught concerning him, and especially how he hath come to learn of our marriage and of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... an hour later, bent on routine business of the Sherwood estate. Toward seven o'clock he was studying the present decrepitude and future possibilities of a row of Sherwood apartment houses on the West Side, when, as he came out of one building and started into another, a firm hand fell upon his shoulder and ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... excesses have much enfeebled his constitution; his continual ill-health, his pallor, and his teeth already decayed, announce, that though so young in years, he is expiating the pleasures of a Sultan by a premature decrepitude. Abdul Medjid has several children, who are weak and sickly like their father, and the state of their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... something grotesque in their decrepitude. Their toothless mouths, their hooked noses, the meagreness of the active one, and the hanging yellow cheeks of the other (the still one, whose head trembled) would have been laughable if the sight of their dreadful physical degradation had not been appalling ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... overgrown garden surrounded by an ancient stockade ten feet in height, with a massive, slow-swinging gate in front, defended by loopholes. This stockade bulged out in some places and leaned in at others; but the veteran posts, each a tree sharpened to a point, did not break their ranks, in spite of decrepitude; and the Indian warriors, could they have returned from their happy hunting-grounds, would have found the brave old fence of the Agency a sturdy barrier still. But the Indian warriors could not return. The ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... child is the point upon which the whole force of it is directed to play.—Such a thing would batter the whole universe about our ears, brother Shandy, said my uncle Toby—if it was so-Unhappy Tristram! child of wrath! child of decrepitude! interruption! mistake! and discontent! What one misfortune or disaster in the book of embryotic evils, that could unmechanize thy frame, or entangle thy filaments! which has not fallen upon thy head, or ever thou camest into the world—what evils ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... however, that your uncle could run after you in his state of decrepitude. He does not occupy himself with anything but ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... in his appearance of being a "fence." He looked rather an aged Hebrew who simply wished to go his way. The white semi-circle of whisker under his chin, the trembling hands, the bald head, like a globular map with the veins as rivers, all attested extreme decrepitude. He was dressed in a light suit of fluttering linen that blew about him as if his legs were topmasts and he was a ship running in close-reefed on a stormy coast. He has lived in this city for many years, and has been twice married. The second ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... authority to hand down for the benefit of posterity the treasures of wisdom which he had stored up in his long career. The nomarch Phtahhotpu says: "'Sire, my lord, when age is at that point, and decrepitude has arrived, debility comes and a second infancy, upon which misery falls heavily every day: the eyes become smaller, the ears narrower, strength is worn out while the heart continues to beat; the mouth is silent and speaks no more; the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... he took it she made use of his to help herself up from her stool, and—when or how it came about, Curdie could not tell—the same instant she stood before him a tall, strong woman—plainly very old, but as grand as she was old, and only rather severe-looking. Every trace of the decrepitude and witheredness she showed as she hovered like a film about her wheel, had vanished. Her hair was very white, but it hung about her head in great plenty, and shone like silver in the moonlight. Straight as a pillar she stood before the astonished boy, and the wounded bird had now spread ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... hair and beard, dressed out in red and blue and green jerseys, with knitted sashes about their waists, and red and blue and green tuques on their heads. Drunken rows were their delight, and fights so fierce that many a man came out battered and bruised to death or to life-long decrepitude. They were sitting on the benches that ran round the room, or lounging against the bar singing, talking, blaspheming. At the sight of Macdonald Dubh and his men there fell a dead silence, and then growls of recognition, ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... dining-room, or the verandah wanted reflooring if anyone coming to the house was not to put his foot through it; and as to the barn, if it was dropping to pieces it would just have to drop. The barn was definitely outside the radius of possible amelioration—it passed gradually, visibly, into decrepitude, and Mrs Murchison often wished she could ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... wandering along the water-front. With an exoteric eye (for the deeps of the man were in communion) he regarded the faces of all nations. Coral City held as complete a record of crime, cruelty, and debauchery as one could find in the human indices of any port. Many were closing their annals of error in decrepitude and beggary; others were well-knit studies of evil, with health still hanging on, more or less, and much deviltry to do. A blue blouse, or a bit of khaki; British puttees and a flare of crimson; Russian ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... pipe, fashioned of the 'foam of perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn,' the pipe on which, perchance, some swain had discoursed sweet music near the shady heights of High Holborn. The cradle of infancy, the gamp of decrepitude, the tricycle of fleeting youth, the paraffin lamp which had lighted bridal gaiety, the flask which had held the foaming malt,—all were gathered here, and the dust lay deep ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... Its cosmogony is a myth read literally: its history is, for the most part, a highly immoral distortion, and its ethics are those of the Talmudic Hebrews. It has done good work in its time; but now it shows only decay and decrepitude in the place of vigour and progress. It is dying hard, but it is dying of the slow ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... subject, and an imperturbable "Yes, sir" had been the extent of Parkinson's comment on the unusual proceeding. After leaving the station they turned sharply along a road that ran parallel with the line, a dull thoroughfare of substantial, elderly houses that were beginning to sink into decrepitude. Here and there a corner residence displayed the brass plate of a professional occupant, but for the most part they were given up to the various branches of second-rate ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... in a year than he could have learned in ten in an ordinary way. Burr lived then in Jersey City. His office (23 Nassau street) swarmed with applicants for aid, and he seemed now to have quite lost the power of refusing. In no other respects, bodily or mental, did he exhibit signs of decrepitude. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... the current. "Single-speech Hamilton" became a title of ridicule, while Burke was pouring forth, night after night, speech after speech, rich in the most sparkling and most solid opulence of the mind. He must have been more or less than man, to have never cast a glance at the decrepitude of the formal coxcomb whom he once acknowledged as his leader, and compared his shrunk shape with the vigorous and athletic proportions of his own intellectual stature. Hamilton, too, must have had many a pang. The wretched ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... now I wake in such decrepitude As I had slidden down and fallen afar, Past even the presence of my former self, Grasping the while for stay at facts which snap, Till I am found away from my own world, Feeling for foothold ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... "There is apparently no lack of vigour in the Cosmos—no great sign of decrepitude; but we must remember that we see the younger and brighter stars better than the others, and for aught we know there are many dark suns or extinct stars, as well as planets and their satellites. I should not like to say that the population ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... accustomed to the sick must have heard them deplore their ignorance of the necessary consequences of those practises, by which their health has been destroyed: and when men shall be deeply convinced, that the eternal laws of nature have connected pain and decrepitude with one mode of life, and health and vigour with another, they will avoid the former and ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... particularly, is of importance as showing how carefully Fuller studied into the secret of expression, and of nature's sympathy with human moods. This poor, worn, sad, old face, in which beauty and hope shone once, and where resignation and memory now dwell; this trembling figure, to whose decrepitude the bending staff confesses as she totters down the hill; the gathering gloom of the sky, in which one ray of promise for a bright to-morrow shines from the setting sun; the mute witnessing of the trees upon the hill, which have seen her pass and repass from joyful youth to lonely ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... have no holiday, and she didn't want one; she only wanted to keep at it and make the most of her limited opportunities for practice; inasmuch as at that rate, playing but two parts a year—and such parts: she despised them!—she shouldn't have mastered the rudiments of her trade before decrepitude would compel her to lay it by. The first time she came to the studio after her visit with Dashwood she sprang up abruptly at the end of half an hour, saying she could sit no more—she had had enough and to spare of ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... of Youth and Decrepitude of Nations. Statesmen Prophets. General Claim for All Genius. Instances of Secular Prediction: Cayotte's of the French Revolution. The Oracles of Apollo. Vettius Valens' Twelve Vultures. Spencer's of the Disruption of the American Union. ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... world, except the Philosophical Transactions, were destroyed, it is safe to say that the foundations of physical science would remain unshaken, and that the vast intellectual progress of the last two centuries would be largely, though incompletely, recorded. Nor have any signs of halting or of decrepitude manifested themselves in our own times. As in Dr. Wallis's days, so in these, "our business is, precluding theology and state affairs, to discourse and consider of philosophical enquiries." But our "Mathematick" is one which Newton would ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... palaces of Vicenza and Venice which gave this school its eminence in the eyes of Europe; and the dying city, magnificent in her dissipation, and graceful in her follies, obtained wider worship in her decrepitude than in her youth, and sank from the midst of ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... of all the passions in all their combinations, and know the changes of the human mind as they are modified by various institutions, and accidental influences of climate or custom, from the sprightliness of infancy to the despondency of decrepitude. He must divest himself of the prejudices of his age or country; he must consider right and wrong in their abstracted and invariable state; he must disregard present laws and opinions, and rise to general and transcendental truths, which will always be the same; he must therefore content himself ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... quenched forever now. The slowly gathering ferruginous deposits have been exhausted, and three years have elapsed since the furnace-fires were lighted. The blackened shell of the building stands in cold decrepitude, a melancholy vestige of usefulness outlived. In consequence of the stoppage of the works, Hanover has lost seven-eighths of its population, and only about fifty inhabitants remain in the white cottages grouped about the Big House, who are employed in agricultural ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... upon to consider the uncertainty of human life, the immutable certainty of death, and the vanity of all human pursuits. Decrepitude and decay are written upon every living thing. The cradle and the coffin stand in juxtaposition to each other; and it is a melancholy truth that so soon as we begin to live, that moment we also begin to die. It is passing strange that, notwithstanding the daily mementos of mortality that cross ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... son Osman first assumed the title of Sultan; and, in 1300, having reduced the city of Prusa, in Bithynia, he made it the capital of his dominions. The Sultans who succeeded him for some generations, all men of vigor, and availing themselves not less of the decrepitude which had by that time begun to palsy the Byzantine sceptre, than of the martial and religious fanaticism which distinguished their own followers, crossed the Hellespont, conquering Thrace and the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... ever respected, and loved. She who has sustained your weakness, may live to need support from your strength; she who hold you up in the helplessness of infancy, may require your supporting arm, and deserves your sympathizing aid in the years of her decrepitude. ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... which, at the age of one hundred years, fittingly remained for him to do. He was tapering off, building the crown of his good stack. When Death, the great Nimrod, should come to Old Dalton, he would not find him ready caught in the trap of decrepitude. He would find him with his boots on, up and about—or, if in bed, not there except as in the regular rest ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... explanation of the rule that the King of the Wood had to be slain by his successor at least renders that rule perfectly intelligible. It is strongly supported by the theory and practice of the Shilluk, who put their divine king to death at the first signs of failing health, lest his decrepitude should entail a corresponding failure of vital energy on the corn, the cattle, and men. Moreover, it is countenanced by the analogy of the Chitom, upon whose life the existence of the world was supposed ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... observation of those who dwelt in the upper stories of the houses opposite. These houses opposite, compared with Gable Inn, are of a mushroom modernness, and yet are old enough (having begun with a debauched and sickly constitution) to have fallen into an almost complete decrepitude. Their stately neighbour seems to be less grimy with the London smoke than they are, has always been less susceptible to outside evil influences, even of that unescapable sort, and drives them to an added shabbiness of senility by contrast with its own hale old age. The bedroom window ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... the latest to decline, are often vigorous in the decrepitude of age. The curious mind is still striking out into new pursuits, and the mind of genius is still creating. ANCORA IMPARO!—"Even yet I am learning!" was the concise inscription on an ingenious device of an old man placed in a child's go-cart, with an hour-glass ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... involuntary groan as a sharp twinge of pain shot through his anatomy, the bundle stirred, and instantly resolved itself into the quaintest figure of a little, old, bowed Indian woman that it is possible to picture. But, notwithstanding her extreme age and apparent decrepitude, the extraordinary old creature displayed marvellous activity. In an instant she was on her feet and beside the pallet, peering eagerly and anxiously into Harry's wide-open eyes. The result of her inspection ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... the prodigious care that the great magnifico, Don Juan Belvidero, took of himself, the days of decrepitude came upon him, and with those days the constant importunity of physical feebleness, an importunity all the more distressing by contrast with the wealth of memories of his impetuous youth and the sensual pleasures ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... of this sort have taken place in every epoch of humanity, from the time of the patriarchs to the present day,—alliances repugnant to nature,—between men bordering on decrepitude and poor young girls, who are sacrificed by their parents for position, or who sell themselves for gold. There is in these monstrous alliances something which we know not how to brand sufficiently energetically, in considering the reciprocal relations of the pair thus wrongfully united, and the ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... Sir, the Sphinx's description of it;—morning, noon, and night. I would know night, as well as morning and noon.' JOHNSON. 'What, Sir, would you know what it is to feel the evils of old age? Would you have the gout? Would you have decrepitude?'—Seeing him heated, I would not argue any farther; but I was confident that I was in the right. I would, in due time, be a Nestor, an elder of the people; and there should be some difference between the conversation of twenty-eight and sixty-eight. A grave picture ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... darling grandson, the child of so much pride and promise, now, alas! how changed. It was most touching to look upon one whose morning of life had been so bright and beautiful and, still in the sunny days of childhood, transformed into an image of decrepitude and decay. The fair blooming cheek and finely chiselled features were now shrunk and stiffened into the wan and rigid inflexibility of old age; while the black bandages which swathed the little pale sad countenance, gave additional ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... gentle, unmolested decay. I, for my part, would like to have the ducal cities of North Italy, such as Mantua, Modena, Parma, and Ferrara, locked up quietly within their walls, and left to crumble and totter and fall, without any harder presence to vex them in their decrepitude than that of some gray custodian, who should come to the gate with clanking keys, and admit the wandering stranger, if he gave signs of a reverent sympathy, to look for a little while upon the reserved ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... prepare, and earthly life without a sound body is not life full and complete. Life is joy, vigor, elasticity, freedom from pain or illness, enjoyment of all innocent pleasures in maturity as well as in youth. We have no right to look forward to decrepitude, to failure in zest of living, to lessening of real enjoyment because of coming years. Life should increase in beauty and usefulness, in ability and joyousness, as the years bring us a wider experience, and this will be the case ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... abode of life or supporting life; yet the eager champion of the theory of many worlds will have them all in these life-bearing or life-supporting stages, none in any of the stages of preparation, none in any of the stages of decrepitude or death. ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... that blinds you. The Christian seems to affirm three Gods, and even to aggravate this wickedness by calling one of them 'a Son,' thus seeming to accept that monstrous notion that God is liable to old age and decrepitude, so as to provide wisely against His own dotage. But all this is an error: these three apparent Gods are but one, and in the most absolute ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... on the part of the Confederation was met by a new chicane. Though every member, whose character and talents could for a moment redeem the deformity, dulness and decrepitude of the Repeal Association, had passed from its ranks and enrolled themselves in the new League, it resolved to struggle on, acting as a check and a stain by its anility and crookedness, on the rising hopes of the country. During the discussions that led to the formation ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... attitude Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed, Rolling and rolling there Where God seems not to care; Till the fierce Love they bear Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude. ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... ended disastrously, those who remained longest to prosecute it being finally cut to pieces at Jaffa in 1197. The travellers returning to the West from Syria besought immediate help for the Christian survivors there. The Byzantine empire had fallen into decrepitude, and the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem was reduced to a mere strip of coast. Only by prompt action could it be hoped to save any portion of it from ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... Circumcision by the removal of the piece of skin in the member of generation, signified "the passing away of the old generation" [*Athanasius, De Sabb. et Circumcis.]: from the decrepitude of which we are freed by Christ's Passion. Consequently this figure was not completely fulfilled in Christ's birth, but in His Passion, until which time the circumcision retained its virtue and ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... side by side with great nether powers, as yet unaccredited, anarchic, unconscious of their own laws and destinies—an age of formalisms and Pharisaisms, of parties embittered by the sense of their own decrepitude—an age of small men, destined to be the fathers of great ones. And in harmony with this, we have a poetic school of Herberts and Vaughans, Withers and Daniels, to be followed hereafter, it may be, by a Milton, of whom as yet the age has ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... surpassed, on this dreadful event, which, notwithstanding all the subsequent disorders and the lapse of time, is still fresh in the recollection of its inhabitants and of Germany. Neither age, beauty nor innocence, neither infancy nor decrepitude, found refuge or compassion from the fury of the licentious soldiery. No retreat was sufficiently secure to escape their rapacity and vengeance; no sanctuary sufficiently sacred to repress their lust and cruelty. Infants ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... the procession that passes daily beneath my window, with its ever-shifting pictures of sorrow, of decrepitude ill-matched with want, new motherhood, and mendicancy, with uplifted eye and palm—to look down upon all this with only a passing sigh, as my worthy but material fat landlady does, would imply a spiritual blindness infinitely worse ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... like to die, though he now wished to do so. My mother, later, often spoke, in consolation for us and for herself, of his dread of helpless old age; and she tried to be glad that his desire to disappear before decrepitude had been fulfilled. But such wise wishes are not carried out as we might choose. The sudden transformation which took place in my father after his coming to America was like an instant's change in the atmosphere from sunshine to dusky cold. I have never ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... with its elbows at all angles and its scaly bark holding the snow. Against evergreens it shows its ruggedness specially well. It presents forms to attract the artist. Even when gnarly and broken, it does not convey an impression of decrepitude and decay but rather of a hardy old character bearing his burdens. In every winter landscape I look ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... vary according as we see him in public or in private life. On the stage he is all spangles and activity; off the stage, seediness and decrepitude are his chief characteristics. It is usual for him to enter upon his public career with a tremendous bound and a hat and feathers. After standing upon one toe, he raises its fellow up to a line with his nose, and turns round until the applause comes, even if ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... of all human art. Its best period was that which indicated the greatest faith; its worst that which marked the decay of faith. The oldest specimens are invariably the most perfect and beautiful; the most recent exhibit too marked signs of the decrepitude of skill that had come over their makers. Between the oldest specimens and their surroundings there was a harmony and an appropriateness which solemnised the scene and excited feelings of adoration and awe. Between the latest specimens and their ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... may die out from Inherent Causes only indirect and inferential from Arrangements to secure Wide Breeding—Physiological Import of Sexes—Doubtful whether Sexual Reproduction with Wide Breeding is a Preventive or only a Palliative of Decrepitude in Species.— Darwinian ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... old as he may have been, showed no signs either of stiffness or decrepitude. On the contrary he exhibited all the agility of a tiger-cat; along with a fierce determination to continue the combat he had initiated,—notwithstanding the odds that were against him. On discharging his ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... entertain, my company, is it not as plain to you as it is to me that I had better leave such tasks as that which I am just finishing to those who live in a more interesting period of life than one which, in the order of nature, is next door to decrepitude? Ought I not to regret having undertaken to report the doings and sayings of the members of the circle which you have known ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the most worn with time. But the power thus eternal in nations is shortlived for the individual being. Brief, indeed, in the life of each is that season which lasts for ever in the life of all. From the old age of nations glory fades away; but in their utmost decrepitude there is still a generation young enough to love. To the individual man, however, glory alone remains when the snows of ages have fallen, and love is but the memory of a boyish dream. No wonder that the Greek genius, half incredulous of the soul, clung with such tenacity ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... to walk, and to run. Although the limb affected was much shrunk and contracted, my general health, which was of more importance, was much strengthened by being frequently in the open air, and, in a word, I, who in a city had probably been condemned to hopeless and helpless decrepitude, was now a healthy, high-spirited, and, my lameness apart, a sturdy child—non ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... shawl,—sometimes worn by superannuated women of a former generation; a garment of hideousness. Once, when a little girl, she had loyally jerked it off her grandmother because it added to her ugliness and decrepitude. ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... Crusade, commanded by the Emperor Frederic II. of Germany (1228-9), was diverted altogether from the main object, and spent its force on Constantinople. That city was taken, but the Holy Land was not delivered. The Byzantine Empire was then in the last stages of decrepitude, or its capital would not have fallen, as it did, from a naval attack made by the Venetians, and in revenge for the treacheries and injuries of the Greek emperors to former crusaders. This, instead of weakening the Mussulmans, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... the seasons, and by the various properties of the aliments received into the stomach: in short, he would be obliged to acknowledge that at some periods it manifests visible signs of torpor, stupefaction, decrepitude, and death. ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... will try to procure me this favor. My only trust is in your support; and I am persuaded that, having the honor to be so closely connected with you, you would reproach yourself, if you saw me sink into decrepitude, without resources and without honors." [Footnote: Frontenac au Ministre, 15 Sept., 1692.] And still again he appeals to the minister for "some permanent and honorable place attended with the marks of distinction, which are more ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... been permitted to fall into ruin, like the old cemetery at the Point of Graves. When a headstone here topples over it is kindly lifted up and set on its pins again, and encouraged to do its duty. If it utterly refuses, and is not shamming decrepitude, it has its face sponged, and is allowed to rest and sun itself against the wall of the church with a row of other exempts. The trees are kept pruned, the grass trimmed, and here and there is a rosebush drooping with a weight of pensive pale roses, as becomes ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... slaveholders themselves and northern soldiers did not understand that they were fighting to free Negroes. The condition in which they were on arriving, moreover, was a new problem for the army. Some came naked, some in decrepitude, some afflicted with disease, and some wounded in their efforts to escape.[9] There were "women in travail, the helplessness of childhood and of old age, the horrors of sickness and of frequent deaths."[10] In their crude state few of them ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... herself with the affairs only of kings; waiting on them obsequiously and stately, as if she were but a mistress of court ceremonies, and had nothing to do with the registering of the affairs of the common people. I have seen in his very old age and decrepitude the old French King Lewis the Fourteenth, the type and model of kinghood—who never moved but to measure, who lived and died according to the laws of his Court-marshal, persisting in enacting through life the part ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... bud thou art, and we will enshrine its shade, though it hath no soul to join it hereafter, and I will resort to vulgar frankness, employed by the truculent commonplace, and say we live in an age of swaggering, badgering, immoral-begotten, vice-ridden, irreligious decrepitude—" Katherine made a hissing noise with her teeth, as if she had been suddenly and severely pricked by a pin, then put up her hands and stopped her ears—this day, Mistress Penwick thou shalt know the character of thy King—Nay, thou shalt know. I will tell thee that ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... green baize cloth, which stood in the centre of the room. There were a variety of uncomfortable chairs, an ink-splashed drugget, and red walls covered with pictures which had been banished from other rooms as they acquired the requisite stage of decrepitude and grime. ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... that are no more. Aristotle saith, there are certaine little beasts alongst the river Hyspanis, that live but one day; she which dies at 8 o'clocke in the morning, dies in her youth, and she that dies at 5 in the afternoon, dies in her decrepitude, who of us doth not laugh, when we shall see this short moment of continuance to be had in consideration of good or ill fortune? The most and the least is ours, if we compare it with eternitie, or equall it to the lasting of mountains, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... lilacs appear to be very aged, and have lost the luxuriant foliage of their prime. Old age has a singular aspect in lilacs, rose-bushes, and other ornamental shrubs. It seems as if such things, as they grow only for beauty, ought to flourish in immortal youth, or at least to die before their decrepitude. They are trees of Paradise, and therefore not naturally subject to decay; but have lost their birthright by being transplanted hither. There is a kind of ludicrous unfitness in the idea of a venerable rose-bush; and there is something analogous to this in human life. Persons who can only ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... do, but, oh! it was a sad sight to see them do it. The younger women ran actively, carrying the infants and leading the smaller children by the hands, and soon disappeared; but it was otherwise with the old people. These, men and women, bowed with age, and tottering as much from terror as decrepitude, hobbled along, panting as they went, and stumbling over every trifling obstruction in their path, being sometimes obliged to stop and rest, though death might be the consequence; and among these there were a few stray little creatures ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... lower. The restless and inquiring spirit of the Athenians was prompt to unfold the reason of every institution and the consequences of every principle, and their Constitution ran its course from infancy to decrepitude with ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... seven hundred years ago, could make an Emperor wait barefoot, in penance-shift; three days, in the snow, has for centuries seen itself decaying; reduced even to forget old purposes and enmities, and join interest with the Kingship: on this younger strength it would fain stay its decrepitude; and these two will henceforth stand and fall together. Alas, the Sorbonne still sits there, in its old mansion; but mumbles only jargon of dotage, and no longer leads the consciences of men: not the Sorbonne; it ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... for a supply of clothing; but from some cause or other, he did not relieve the wants of our suffering companions. Mr. Mitchell may be a very good man; but every good man is not fit for every station. We had rather see old age, or decrepitude, pensioned by the government we support, than employed in stations that require high health and activity. Disease and infirmity may check, or impede the benevolent views of our government, and cast an odium on the officers of administration. After all, we may find fault where we ought to praise. ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... purely reared child is putting a stone in the foundation of prosperity for this wonderful new civilization, which will go on evolving, or die of decrepitude, just as its central dynamic force, the sex life of the people, finally decides. Sex immorality is, as every one knows, one of the signs of the ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... is not venerable when it embodies itself in lilacs, rose-bushes, or any other ornamental shrub; it seems as if such plants, as they grow only for beauty, ought to flourish always in immortal youth, or, at least, to die before their sad decrepitude. Trees of beauty are trees of paradise, and therefore not subject to decay by their original nature, though they have lost that precious birthright by being transplanted to an earthly soil. There is a ...
— Buds and Bird Voices (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... all Chinamen on land or sea with an especial and piquant blight invoked upon the one now in hiding, then took from the back of a chair where she had hung it the moment before a riding skirt come to feebleness and decrepitude. She held it up before critical eyes as one scanning the morning paper ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... and yet this consciousness of relief persisted. He told himself that a very tragical thing had befallen him; that this broken engagement was the ruin of his life and the end of his youth, and that he must live on an old and joyless man, wise with the knowledge that comes to decrepitude and despair; he imagined a certain look for himself, a gait, a name, that would express this; but all the same he was aware of having got out of something. Was it a bondage, a scrape, as Boardman called it? He thought he must be a very light, shallow, and frivolous nature not ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... their own flight, had the mortification to see all the lands assigned to charitable and to religious uses, the humane and pious foundations of themselves and their ancestors, made to support infirmity and decrepitude, to give feet to the lame and eyes to the blind, and to effect which they had deprived themselves of many of the enjoyments of life, cruelly sequestered and sold at the same market of violence and fraud where their demesne possessions ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Kumaudjeewug! Kumaudjeewug! Kumaudjeewug! they have met, fought, and conquered, was shouted from every mouth, and resounded through the most distant parts of the village. The aged warrior, whom weakness and decrepitude had compelled to throw down the bow and the spear, and the eagle-eyed boy, who was fast gaining upon the ripened period when he should take them up, did each his part in celebrating the feats which the one had equalled, and the other hoped to outdo. The wife, with a proud mien, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... would have been a sufficient price to pay for the garments he stood in, including the wrecked hat he held in his hands and the broken, misshaped shoes on his feet. A purchaser who gave more than four dollars for the whole in its present state of decrepitude would have been but a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... affections here fade and fall away, in just that same proportion do they grow and gather there upon the further shore; and secondly that, after Nature's eternal fashion, the youth and vigour of a new generation is waiting to replace the worn-out decrepitude of that which sinks into oblivion. My life is done, it cannot be long before the churchyard claims its own, but I live again in my son; and take such cold comfort as I may from that idea of family, and of long-continued and assured succession, that has so largely helped to make this ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... e Civili, No. clxxxix., for a lament of this kind over the decrepitude of kingdoms, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... enemies, the vista is almost unique for a certain scenic squalor and gypsy luxury of color: sag-roofed barns and stables, and weak-backed, sunken-chested workshops of every sort lounge along in tumble-down succession, and lean up against the cliff in every imaginable posture of worthlessness and decrepitude; light wooden galleries cross to them from the second stories of the houses which back upon the alley; and over these galleries flutters, from a labyrinth of clothes-lines, a variety of bright-colored garments of all ages, sexes, and conditions; while the footway ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... generations, combining in its tone-power and magnificence the qualities of a Rembrandt, a Titian, a Velasquez." The picture does not challenge you—you have to hunt it out, and you have to bring something to it, else 't will not reveal itself. There is no decrepitude in the woman's face and form, but someway you read into the picture the story of a great and tender love and a long life of useful effort. And now as the evening shadows gather, about to fade off into gloom, the old mother sits there alone, poised, serene: husband gone, children ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... thought, if it could be that some one should come to him with juices that would renew his youth! He looked longingly into the eyes of the ancient-seeming woman before him, and he said: "How is it that you show no gains from the juices that you speak of? You are old and in woeful decrepitude. Even if you would not win back to youth you could have got riches and state for that ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... could reply, Robert Hornblower was on his feet. Another startling transformation had come over the old man. Years and decrepitude fell from him like a discarded garment. As he advanced upon Justin, his fists clenched, he actually looked ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... succeeded to thy young lovers; decrepitude came to thy feet and made thee hideous. Yet, even then, men with the eagle power of vision said to thee in a glance, 'Thou shalt perish ingloriously, because thou hast fallen away, because thou hast broken the vows of thy maidenhood. The angel with peace written on her forehead, ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... me? Nay, Hester, wronged thyself; wronged thine innocent babe; wronged the world; wronged whom thou wilt, but not wronged me! To wake me from a doting dream—that was not wrong! A dream of woman's purity and innocence; a foolish dream of married happiness between thy youth and my decrepitude; to put an end to such a madness, surely was not wrong! Wronged me? Thy levity hath righted my poor mind, which, pondering o'er thy beauties, ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... portraiture, I may name Dandie Dinmont, and Michael,) are hitherto a scarcely injured race; whose strength and virtue yet survive to represent the body and soul of England, before her days of mechanical decrepitude, and commercial dishonour. There are men working in my own fields who might have fought with Henry the Fifth at Agincourt, without being discerned from among his knights; I can take my tradesmen's word for a thousand pounds; my garden gate opens on the latch to the public road, by day and ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... like), and also from causes external to the language, laid in the varying velocities of social progress and social decline; but so it is, that whether of shorter or longer life, they have their youth, their manhood, their old age, their decrepitude, their final dissolution. Not indeed that, even when this last hour has arrived, they disappear, leaving no traces behind them. On the contrary, out of their death a new life comes forth; they pass into new forms, the materials of which they were composed more or less ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... perishing. It could neither launch itself upon a wholly new path, one which was the direct negation of its own genius, nor continue on without change its own existence. Thus, as soon as it began to be penetrated by Greek influence, it fell at once into complete dissolution, and sank into a state of decrepitude, that already resembled death. We shall see, in the next section, how suddenly and completely the Egyptian power collapsed when the moment of trial came, and how little support the surface prosperity which marked the ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... wealthy. He had control over a vast fortune, for he exercised despotic rule over his wife's peasant father, the most fervent of his admirers. His mother seemed to have put the last of her strength into the arrangement of that "marriage of convenience." She had fallen into a senile decrepitude that bordered on dotage. Her sole evidence of being alive was her habit of staying in church until the doors were closed and she could stay no longer. At home she did nothing but recite the rosary, mumbling away in some corner of the house, and taking no part in the noisy play of her grandchildren. ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Eagles, but your nest is shattered by the lightning! (He takes up his cloak and liberty cap.) In passing from your threshold, I leave the curse, due to decrepitude, behind me. I devote you ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of having set his people an example in preserving the monuments of a remote antiquity. While the literatures of ancient Greece and Rome have largely perished in the convulsions that followed the breaking up of the Roman empire in Europe, when the kingdom of China fell into disorder and decrepitude this one great teacher stepped forward to save the precious record of historic fact, philosophical thought, and of legislation as well as poetry, from being swept away by the deluge of revolution. Confucius showed his wisdom by the high value ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... only daughter of a wealthy man, who, when he gave me to a magistrate older than himself, did not intend to sacrifice me. You have been young, no doubt, and you, therefore, ought to know how revolting to youth, all freshness and perfume, are the cuddlings and caresses of decrepitude. As yet I do not detest you, but it is absolutely impossible to love you. On the contrary, I am in love with Melladoro; perhaps in your day you were as attractive as he is, and knew how to make the most of what you then ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... yard, and separated from it by a fence, was the barn yard, a spacious quadrangle flanked on three sides by barns, stables, and sheds, which were large and finely planned, but which now shared the general appearance of decrepitude. The fence, which separated one yard from the other, was broken down, so that the barn yard dwellers, calves, pigs, and poultry, wandered at will in search of amusement or fodder to the very door of the kitchen, and so materially contributed to ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... Creator, as the letters were on the tables of the law, and was it thus left to bear its eternal testimony to His beneficence among these clouds of Heaven? Or is it the descendant of a long race of mountains, existing under appointed laws of birth and endurance, death and decrepitude? There can be no doubt as to the answer. The rock itself answers audibly by the murmur of some falling stone or rending pinnacle. It is not as it was once. Those waste leagues around its feet are loaded with the wrecks of what it was. On these perhaps, of all mountains, the characters ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... Captain Asher's reputation that he had no opportunity to answer Miss Port's remarks. At that instant Mr. Simeon Port appeared at the door which opened from the parlor on the piazza. He stepped quickly, his actions showing nothing of that decrepitude which his dutiful daughter had feared would prevent him from seeking the society of his friends. He fixed his eyes on his daughter and spoke in ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... seen the green of the valley turn to gold and then to flaming brown. I had seen the fire perish out of those autumnal tints, and with the falling of the leaves, a slow, grey, bald decrepitude covering the world. And to this had now succeeded chill wintry gales that howled and whistled through the logs of my wretched hut, whilst the western wind coming down over the frozen zone above cut into me like ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... office, throws light, universally, upon the whole science of college discipline and instruction, and thus aids in infusing a continually renewed life and vigor into those venerable seats of learning that might otherwise sink into decrepitude and decay. By going, however, to some new field, establishing some new and fanciful institution, you take yourself from such a sphere; you exert no influence over others, except upon feeble imitators, who fail in their attempts, and bring discredit upon your ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... had one son who supported me. Give him back, O Lord!" Silence followed again. Peter was standing before the kneeling audience, old, full of care. In that moment he seemed to them decrepitude and weakness personified. With that a second voice ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... fifth century of the Christian era China had fallen into a state of decrepitude. The second dynasty of the Tsins was near its end. For a century and a half it had held the imperial power, but now it had fallen a prey to luxury, one of its latest emperors dying from prolonged drunkenness, another being smothered in bed by his wife, whom he had ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... teaspoonful or two to the saturated leaves which had already served at breakfast and mid-day. This repast was laid on a very dirty cloth. The cups were unmatched and chipped, the knives were in all stages of decrepitude; the teapot was of dirty tin, ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... of pianodum, sans teeth, sans wire, sans everything—he saw the dark-eyed girl and reined his horse. As he did so, she seated herself upon the hair-cloth stool, pressed a white finger to a discolored key and smiled at the not unexpected result—the squeak of decrepitude. While her hand still rested on the board and her features shone strongly in relief against the fire like a cameo profile set in bloodstone, a figure approached, and, leaning gracefully upon the palsied instrument, bent over her with smiling lips. It was the grand seignior, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... we know, Full surely, thou canst never fail? Forgive our weak untrustful woe, Which deemed thy glowing face grown pale. We know thee, mighty to prevail. Doubt and decrepitude depart, And youth comes back ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... seeming of royalty in full panoply. There was white lace over her black velvet at the shoulders; her train swept yards behind her. She was bearing a cane, or rather a staff, of ebony; but it suggested, not decrepitude, but power—perhaps even a weapon that might be used to enforce authority should occasion demand. In her face, in her eyes, however, there was that which forbade the supposition of any revolt being ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... he can find in middle or later life who are thoroughly well. Only occasionally do we meet with an example of vigorous health continued to old age; hourly do we meet with examples of acute disorder, chronic ailment, general debility, premature decrepitude. Scarcely is there one to whom you put the question, who has not, in the course of his life, brought upon himself illnesses which a little information would have saved him from. Here is a case of heart-disease consequent on a ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... ago a fund was formed, in the Episcopal Church, to pay aged ministers pensions, so they would never be destitute. This brought the greatest happiness to many of them who were approaching decrepitude. Letters came in from ministers who had worried in silence for years, with no one to trust but the Deity, whose plans might be strange. They described how they had wept with relief, when this fund was established. ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... existing against her is sure to convict and destroy her," replied Richard. "Her great age, infirmities, and poverty, will be proofs against her. How can she, or any old enfeebled creature like her, whose decrepitude and misery should move compassion rather than excite fear—how can such a person defend herself against charges easily made, and impossible to refute? I do not deny the possibility of witchcraft, even in our own days, though I think it of very unlikely occurrence; but I would determinately ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Mommsen has collected numbers of them in his Corpus, and since that time some sixty new ones have been discovered. And then—the stone lions of Roman days, couched forlornly at street corners, in courtyards and at fountains, in every stage of decrepitude, with broken jaws and noses, missing legs and tails! Venosa is a veritable infirmary for mutilated antiques of this species. Now the lion is doubtless a nobly decorative beast, but—toujours perdrix! ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... the other partners, and was received with cynical disfavor. It was somewhat remarkable that, although generally giving the appearance of healthy youth and perfect physical condition, they one and all simulated the decrepitude of age and invalidism, and after limping about for a few moments, settled back again upon their bunks and stools in their former positions. The Left Bower lazily replaced a bandage that he had worn around his ankle for weeks without any apparent necessity, and the Judge scrutinized with tender ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... keeping majorities in the House of Commons by means that would not bear the light, made his support necessary to Pitt himself, and placed a fantastic political jobber at the helm of England in a time when she needed a patriot and a statesman. Newcastle was the growth of the decrepitude and decay of a great party, which had fulfilled its mission and done its work. But if the Whig soil had become poor for a wholesome crop, it was never so rich ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... ceaseless efforts at remonstrance, endured the yoke when Rome was in her zenith, and when her powers were but here and there evoked; will the same England, afraid of the truth which she has vindicated, or even with the license which has mingled like a weed with its growth, recur to that system in its decrepitude which she repudiated in its vigor?" If the Church of England ever lost her power, it would never be by submission to Rome, "but by that principle of religions insubordination and self-dependence which, if it refuse her tempered rule and succeed in its overthrow, ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... but the silence and mystery of its government concealed even from the Venetians the decrepitude of the state. The government was an aristocratic sovereignty, founded on the corruption of the people and treachery, for the master sinew of the government was espionage; its prestige, mystery; its power, the torture. It lived on terror and voluptuousness; its police ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... preacher of long ago caught sight of one of these distinctions that cut clear through to the roots of things. He says that the sign of old age is that a man is "afraid of that which is high." When courage and ambition have gone old age and decrepitude have entered in, no matter whether a man be ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... age springs on him suddenly, as Javert had done in other days. He has, apparently without provocation, passed from strength to decrepitude. Since he sees Cossette no more, he has grown gray, stooped, decrepit. There is no morning now, since he does not see Cossette. You have seen him walking to the corner to catch sight of her house. How feeble he is! Another day, walking her way, but not so far; and the next, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... Lokman. [22] Sixtus.—Pope Sixtus V., who simulated decrepitude to get elected to the Papal chair, and when elected threw off all ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... good deal in my time, and am grown foolish now, and out of bloom. But I do not hold the perverse belief of old men generally, that I am wiser than I was. And I hope I may never grow wise; 'tis a sign of decrepitude. If I thank God for life, it is not by virtue of any riper wisdom that has come to me with age, but because I have always taken a pleasure in life. Age gives no riper wisdom; ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... two kinds of progress. There is the progress that moves away from infancy towards youth, towards maturity, towards age and decrepitude. And there is a higher progress, a progress that moves towards infancy. 'Except ye be converted and become as little children,' Jesus said, 'ye shall not enter into the kingdom of God.' And the only way of becoming ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... thing of all was, that this young girl had not come into the world to be homely. In her early childhood she must even have been pretty. The grace of her age was still struggling against the hideous, premature decrepitude of debauchery and poverty. The remains of beauty were dying away in that face of sixteen, like the pale sunlight which is extinguished under hideous clouds at dawn on a ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... young Angels with wings. Youth and power and swiftness belong to them. Also Fairies with wings are quite comprehensible creatures; for one fancies them so light and airy and transparent, living upon honey dew and ambrosia, that wings wherewith to fly seem their natural appendages. But the decrepitude of old age and the wings of youth and power are a strange mixture:—a bald head, and a Fairy's swiftness!—how ridiculous it seems, and so I think I may well say Time is a very odd ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... dread of an enemy, and the oak prepared to offer a stout resistance. The hopeful oak in the prime of life, and the oak that totters in desolate and crabbed old age. The oak that enjoys in middle age the good things of life, with well-fed and rounded symmetry; and the oak that suggests decrepitude, with rough exterior, and a life-experience of hardship; the sturdy oak, the ambitious oak, the self-contained oak, and so on, through every phase of character. No other tree is so human or so expressive, and no other tree bespeaks such fortitude and endurance. To say ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... stranger, staff in hand, was pursuing his solitary walk along the centre of the street. As he drew near the advancing soldiers, and as the roll of their drum came full upon his ear, the old man raised himself to a loftier mien, while the decrepitude of age seemed to fall from his shoulders, leaving him in gray but unbroken dignity. Now he marched onward with a warrior's step, keeping time to the military music. Thus the aged form advanced on one side and the whole ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that I have ever seen who did not play the part like a female pantaloon. She did not assume any great decrepitude. In the "Cords" scene, where the Nurse tells Juliet of the death of Paris, she did not play for comedy at all, but was very emotional. Her parrot scream when she found me dead was horribly real ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... cardinal's hats, with cord and tassels, have long been pendant from the vault of the choir, and are now dimmed in colour and thick deep with dust, seemingly destined to fall of sheer old age and decrepitude. Further particulars concerning this picturesque detail are wanting only from the lack of any one in attendance from whom one might get this information,—perhaps some reader of these lines may be ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... solemn warning written in the oracles of God. If, then, your colony had cause to protest against the infliction of this evil in a limited degree, how much stronger must be your opposition to a system which will bring into your streets, your houses, your hospitals and prisons, the crime, insanity, decrepitude, and pauperism ever consequent on transportation, aggravated by transmission through a country in moral ruin. Were we to appeal to a principle of selfishness in addressing our countrymen, we might remind you that the reputation of this ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... Baffo walks beside us in hypocritical composure of bag-wig and senatorial dignity, whispering unmentionable sonnets in his dialect of Xe and Ga. Somehow or another that last dotage of S. Mark's decrepitude is more recoverable by our fancy than the heroism of Pisani in ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... the terrace, in the direction of the Place Louis XV., he caught sight of the aged Marquis de San-Real, who was walking on the arm of his valet, stepping with all the precautions due to gout and decrepitude. Dona Concha, who distrusted Henri, made Paquita pass between herself ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... and softened by a sensation of pleasure, and even death, when j natural, is not without charms. We mean when a man has passed through the different phases of growth, virility, old age, and decrepitude. ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... nor any untried enchantment. The success of violent designs against the National Assembly, had success been possible, could, after all, have been followed by no other consummation than the relapse of France into the raging anarchy of Poland, or the sullen decrepitude ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... gentle mound covered with a carpet of the softest, richest green, there towered a majestic oak, which had looked upward to the sky for centuries, while generation after generation of men had entered the world, had laughed and wept, grown old and died. It showed no signs of the decrepitude of age, and raised up its head proudly like the monarch of the forest; but a deep rent in its heart showed that decay was at work, and that the lofty tree would, one day, he laid low in the dust. Led by an irresistible impulse, ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... word in the involuntary grotesque. In other respects, dead calm, France is sinking gently like a rotten hulk, and the hope of salvage, even for the staunchest, seems chimerical. You need to be here, in Paris, to have an idea of the universal depression, of the stupidity, of the decrepitude in which we ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... reasons, hidden grace and beauty, unknown charm and mystery in the various phenomena of Nature. God created only coarse beings, full of the germs of disease, who, after a few years of bestial enjoyment, grow old and infirm, with all the ugliness and all the want of power of human decrepitude. He seems to have made them only in order that they may reproduce their species in an ignoble manner and then die like ephemeral insects. I said reproduce their species in an ignoble manner and I adhere to that expression. What is there as a matter of fact ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... say, and I think truly, that it was of little use to my brother, King Eystein, that he took to flight; and yet he was a man distinguished for many qualities which adorn a king. Now I, who labour under so great decrepitude, can see how bad my fate would be, if I betook myself to what proved so unfortunate for him; with so great a difference as there is between our activity, health, and strength. I was in the second year of my age when I was chosen king of ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson |
