"Grey-headed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... parents' loins (a substance unworthy of a word, unworthy of a thought), when I consider what I am now (a volume of diseases bound up together; a dry cinder, if I look for natural, for radical moisture; and yet a sponge, a bottle of overflowing Rheums, if I consider accidental; an aged child, a grey-headed infant, and but the ghost of mine own youth), when I consider what I shall be at last, by the hand of death, in my grave (first, but putrefaction, and, not so much as putrefaction; I shall not be able to send forth so much as ill air, ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... had to hire a native boy to travel with us and look after the luggage, as it is difficult to do without one in India. All servants are called "boys" here, even if they are grey-headed; our man is probably about five-and-twenty. He is called Ramaswamy, and has a chocolate-coloured moon-face with big round eyes; I think he is intelligent though he looks stupid. He is dressed in spotless white, his garments consisting of a short jacket and a dhoti, and he ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... of "an old family servant" carries with it a thousand kind associations in all parts of the world; and there is no claim upon the home-bred charities of the heart more irresistible than that of having been "born in the house." It is common to see grey-headed domestics of this kind attached to an English family of the "old school," who continue in it to the day of their death in the enjoyment of steady unaffected kindness, and the performance of faithful unofficious duty. ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... velvet carpet, to be shown; and which, but for its size, might as well be on a museum shelf at once, under cover;—but, on the Continent, the links are unbroken between the past and present; and, in such use as they can serve for, the grey-headed wrecks are suffered to stay with men; while, in unbroken line, the generations of spared buildings are seen succeeding, each in its place. And thus, in its largeness, in its permitted evidence of slow decline, in its poverty, in its absence of all pretence, of all show and care for outside ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... hand; until at last, at the time he was living in the town of Fundi, the province of Hispania Tarraconensis was offered him. After his arrival in the province, whilst he was sacrificing in a temple, a boy who attended with a censer, became all on a sudden grey-headed. This incident was regarded by some as a token of an approaching revolution in the government, and that an old man would succeed a young one: that is, that he would succeed Nero. And not long after, a thunderbolt falling into a lake in Cantabria [660], twelve axes ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... unless she could show herself a little better trained, Joan joined the County Council Night Schools in the neighbourhood. She would go there five evenings in the week; three for shorthand and two for typing. Her fellow scholars were drawn from all ages and all ranks—clerks, office boys, and grey-headed men; girls with their hair still in pig-tails, and elderly women with patient, strained faces, who would sit at their desks plodding through the intricacies of shorthand and paying very little attention to what ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... up and arrayed them in their harness, Odysseus and his men being four, and the six sons of Dolius, and likewise Laertes and Dolius did on their armour, grey-headed as they were, warriors through stress of need. Now when they had clad them in shining mail, they opened the gates and went forth and ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... a holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean, The children walking two and two, in red, and blue, and green: Grey-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow, Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames ...
— Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience • William Blake
... who are to be more envied than those who have collected Henry James from the beginning—and these alas! are most of them grey-headed now—are the people who, possessed of the true interior unction, have by some accident of obstructing circumstance been debarred from this voluptuous pleasure until late in their experience. What ecstasies such persons have ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... things. Also she knew well that this would have been the desire of my dear father, who was killed in the Zulu war with his father, the Ralph Kenzie of the story, whom, by the way, I can remember as a handsome grey-headed man. For my father was a thorough Englishman, with nothing of the Boer about him, moreover he married an English lady, the daughter of a Natal colonist, and for these reasons he and his grandmother did not get ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... sheer wonder at the lunacy of our dispute and the side he was forcing me to take. Here was I haranguing a grey-headed veteran on his own quarter-deck and exhorting him to valour! In a flash I saw myself befooled, tricked into playing the patronising amateur, complacently posturing for the derision of gods and men. And Captain Colenso, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Attinghausen. A Gothic Hall, decorated with escutcheons and helmets. The Baron, a grey-headed man, eighty- five years old, tall and of a commanding mien, clad in a furred pelisse, and leaning on a staff tipped with chamois horn. Kuoni and six hinds standing round him with rakes and scythes. Ulrich of Rudenz enters in the costume of ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... was contrasted by a snow-white cap, somewhat pointed at the top, which hardly concealed her grizzled hair. She was both exhibiting and admiring in dumb show the telescope so lately in the possession of our friend Robin; while Ned Purcell, a little dumpy, grey-headed mariner, who had heretofore been considered the owner of the best glass in Greenwich, was advancing, glass in hand, to decide which was really the best without farther parley. As Robin was obliged to sing his song twice, we may be ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... saw her being whipped across the eyes, right in the eyes! He was crying, he felt choking, his tears were streaming. One of the men gave him a cut with the whip across the face, he did not feel it. Wringing his hands and screaming, he rushed up to the grey-headed old man with the grey beard, who was shaking his head in disapproval. One woman seized him by the hand and would have taken him away, but he tore himself from her and ran back to the mare. She was almost at the last gasp, but began kicking ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Grey-headed men, wonderfully pathetic in their dissipation, stared at her through clouds. Smooth-cheeked boys, some of them with faces of stone and mouths of sin, not nearly so pathetic as the grey heads, tried to find the girl's eyes in the smoke wreaths. Maggie considered she ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... two o'clock when Sir Henry Wilding's motor turned its back upon the outskirts of London, and it was a quarter past seven when it whirled up to the stables of Wilding Hall, and the baronet and his grey-headed, bespectacled and white-spatted companion alighted, having taken five hours and a quarter to make a journey which the trains which run daily between Liverpool Street ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... FOLLOWED BY A BOY WITH WINE. CAR. Come, come, leave these fustian protestations; away, come, I cannot abide these grey-headed ceremonies. Boy, fetch me a glass quickly, I may bid these gentlemen welcome; give them a health here. [EXIT BOY.] I mar'le whose wit it was to put a prologue in yond' sackbut's mouth; they might well think he'd be out of tune, and yet you'd ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... Grey-headed Shepherd, thou hast spoken well; Small difference lies between thy creed and mine; This beast not unobserv'd by Nature fell, His death was ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... a childless spouse see in a dream children running round the fireside, there is reason to fear the little prattlers will never be there in reality. It is unlucky to dream that a girl has a beard, or that a boy is grey-headed. It is unlucky to dream of a minister, but it is not an evil sign for one to suppose he is worshipping in church. If you dream that a watch or clock falls or is broken, be ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... immediately makes a circuit to avoid her. If she is neglectful upon this point, she exposes herself to scolding, and sometimes to severe beating by her husband or nearest relation, because the boys are told from their infancy, that if they see the blood they will early become grey-headed, and their strength will fail prematurely."[181] And of the South Australian aborigines in general we read that there is a "custom requiring all boys and uninitiated young men to sleep at some distance from ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... Lucy, laying down her knitting, took it from him with eager fingers. Place a la poste—in eighteen hundred and sixty-one! She untied the string, emptied letters and papers upon the table beside her, and began to sort them. Julius, a spare and venerable piece of grey-headed ebony, an autocrat of exquisite manners and great family pride, stood back a little and ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... dead—but her work is often done by Despair. For a while there was confusion all round the pit-mouth, but with a white fixed face and glaring eyes, Lawrie Logan advanced to the very brink, with the rope bound in many firm folds around him, and immediately behind him stood his grey-headed father, unbonneted, just as he had risen from a prayer. "Is't my ain father that's gaun to help me to gang doun to bring up Willie's body? O! merciful God, what a judgment is this! Father—father—Oh! lie doun at some distance awa frae the sicht o' this place. ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... absolute failure of this method. In the miserable prison pen, one hundred and forty-four were crowded like cattle. Among this multitude of criminals were young boys, just entering upon a life of crime, imprisoned for some paltry offence, and herded with them were grey-headed murderers. All these prisoners were from the Indian Territory, or the "Nation" as they call it. One man had just been convicted of murder. Two beautiful daughters of an Indian mother stood weeping beside him. A gallows stands constantly ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 1, January 1888 • Various
... God's great pity has desthroyed her raison, poor darlin'," muttered a grey-headed old prisoner named Terry; "lave her alone. We'll take the babe ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... a good deal of kissing and embracing went on. One old grey-headed gentleman was constantly walking up to the cabinet and being embraced by a white figure, whose arms we could just see, thrown round his neck, in the dim light. (I note that the light here was much less than with Mrs Stoddart Gray ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... that while they became enervated by pleasures and broke down under labours, he on the other hand seemed unaffected by either, and that too, not only while he was young and eager for fame: but even when he was an old grey-headed man, after he had been consul and had triumphed, he yet, like a victorious athlete, still kept himself in training, and never relaxed his severe discipline. He himself tells us that he never wore a garment worth more than a hundred drachmas, that when he was general ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... case might be different. Some considerable time after the singing had ceased, there was a slow, heavy step heard approaching the rick; an exclamation in Gaelic followed; and then a rough hard hand grasped Walter by the naked heel. He started up, and found himself confronted by an old, grey-headed man, the inmate of a cottage, which, hidden in the neighbouring clump, had ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... had been attached from his infancy. He had often made excursions to it when a boy, and the impressions of delight given to his mind by the homely kindness of the grey-headed peasant, to whom it was intrusted, and whose fruit and cream never failed, had not been obliterated by succeeding circumstances. The green pastures along which he had so often bounded in the exultation of health, and youthful freedom—the woods, under whose refreshing shade ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... fear I shall be grey-headed before I belong to anything else. He makes much of the ancient customs of the country: I would he would follow them. In the good old times I should have been a squire at least by now, if, indeed, I had not earned ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... my heart; my poor wife, my dear children, and my grey-headed parents, were all at once plunged into want and misery, instead of the ease and happiness which we were expecting; for we were just arriving at the height of our earthly wishes. I had, however, one ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... number of riders, whom Jussuf could easily discern to be those who had taken him prisoner. Behind these, and surrounded by them, rode the master of the country, who had destined him to be sacrificed. Then came twenty venerable grey-headed men, in red and gold striped garments, each of whom bore a broad glittering blade, and a bundle of dry bamboo-sticks. Behind them followed ten youths, with coal-dishes full of glowing coals. And now Jussuf was brought forth, and, with his hands fastened, and his feet chained to ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... moral purity and religious fervor had done for the young man what a lifetime of political scheming had failed to do for many a grey-headed disappointed adventurer. Then, as in all ages, intrigue regarded the success of sincerity with astonishment.—The Master of the Magicians, by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... grey-headed supermen, beings possessed of the rounded eyes of happy children, descending from the hills, and decking the earth, and sowing it with sheerly kaleidoscopic treasures, and coating the tops of the mountains with massive layers of silver, and ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... at the magistrate not believing you, Jones. You are an infernal, grey-headed, mouldy old liar. That yarn is as old as the hills, and since you cannot speak the truth we will go by ourselves," said Hal, coming forward and taking the keys ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... My companion, the grey-headed chaplain, took the Highlander affectionately by the second button of his tunic and gave it a pull. "Not much space here, eh? I think you're pretty well ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... ready, and after dispensing it all round, led the conversation to the antiquities of York, with which both he and the grey-haired gentleman appeared to be well acquainted. When this topic flagged, he turned with a smile to the grey-headed gentleman, and asked if he ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... beloved by all about him, his Servants never care for leaving him: by this means his Domesticks are all in years, and grown old with their Master. You would take his Valet de Chambre for his Brother, his Butler is grey-headed, his Groom is one of the Gravest men that I have ever seen, and his Coachman has the Looks of a Privy-Counsellor. You see the Goodness of the Master even in the old House-dog, and in a grey Pad that is kept in the Stable with great Care and Tenderness out of Regard to his past ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... little sallow rat-faced, dark-eyed fellow who was introduced to me as Mr. Lestrade, and who came three or four times in a single week. One morning a young girl called, fashionably dressed, and stayed for half an hour or more. The same afternoon brought a grey-headed, seedy visitor, looking like a Jew pedlar, who appeared to me to be much excited, and who was closely followed by a slip-shod elderly woman. On another occasion an old white-haired gentleman had ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... such a fiendish man! They were bent on profitable cruises, the profit to be counted down in dollars from the mint. He was intent on an audacious, immitigable, and supernatural revenge. Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with curses a Job's whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too, chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals —morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... at him most furiously. Grettir was tired of it, so he took hold of him and set him down next to himself, saying: "I could do what I liked with you; but I have no fear of your killing me. I am much more afraid of your grey-headed father, Snorri the Godi, and of his counsels, which have brought many a man to his knees. You should take up tasks which you are able to accomplish; it is no child's play to fight ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... the highroad, one was grey-headed and clean-shaven, and wore a German peaked cap, the other young and tall, with a beard and a Polish cap. A two-horse vehicle was drawn up ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... there rose up a grey-headed old chief, and said, "Give this warrior the horn of Gunnar, that we may hear him wind it. I would not say that unless I were sure that he was the right ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... was going on, and shall endeavour to describe a small part of what met my eye on that occasion. In one locality (and this was a specimen of the rest) I saw fourteen different squads of masons at work, with the natives attending them. Old grey-headed men, worn down by previous hardship and present want, were to be seen carrying stones, and wheeling them and other materials on barrows, or conveying them on their backs to the buildings, and with their tottering limbs and trembling hands straining to raise them on the walls. ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... with such meek pertinacity; and he began to look towards a different quarter. Among the courtiers of Elizabeth had lately appeared a new favourite, young, noble, wealthy, accomplished, eloquent brave, generous, aspiring; a favourite who had obtained from the grey-headed Queen such marks of regard as she had scarce vouchsafed to Leicester in the season of the passions; who was at once the ornament of the palace and the idol of the city. who was the common patron of men of letters and of men of the sword; who was ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in Bishopsgate Street, whose aged grey-headed father waited for him at the gallows, kissed him at its foot when he arrived, and sat there, on the ground, till they took him down. They would have given him the body of his child; but he had no hearse, no coffin, nothing to remove it in, being too poor—and walked ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens |
