"Senile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 'Senile jealousy is anxious to be deceived. He could hardly be deceived so far as to imagine that Madame la Marquise would visit me, such as I am, as my guest. Knowingly or not, his very clever sister, a good woman, and a friend to husband and wife—a Frenchwoman of the purest type—gave me the title. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... date," recalled the man, "I remembered it distinctly this morning when I tore the top leaf off the desk-pad. It stood out as though it were printed in red ink, like the date of a holiday. I—do I show signs of becoming senile—childish, Elice?" ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... Afterward, his senile emotions betraying him, he broke down completely and had to be led from the field. It is rumored he did ...
— It's a Small Solar System • Allan Howard
... has a fallacy somewhere at the root; whether it be useful and operative, as many a legal fiction is operative, for good; or senile, past service yet tyrannous by custom, and so pernicious; or merely foolish, as certain artistic conventions are traceable, when a Ruskin comes to judgment, back to nothing better than folly: and it becomes men of honest mind, in dealing with anything recognisable as a convention, ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... incredible age. She was senile with age. Her cracked cackle never ceased for an instant. She talked to the dog and the cat; she talked to the walls of the room; she spoke out through the window to the weather; she shut her eyes in a corner and harangued the circumambient darkness. The ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... unmoved wonder, the senile scholar listened to the broken sobs of the child of Valerie Delavigne. He was astounded at her financial carelessness, ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... forty-five differed from his forty by a like margin, unless one mention a slight deafness in his left ear. But at fifty-five the process had become a chemical change of immense rapidity. Yearly he was more and more an "old man" to his family—senile almost, so far as his wife was concerned. He was by this time complete owner of the bookshop. The mysterious Mr. Moonlight Quill, dead some five years and not survived by his wife, had deeded the whole stock and store to him, and there he still spent his ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... look at it—did you ever see such a beauty? Such firmness—roundness—such delicious smoothness to the touch?' It was as if he had said 'she' instead of 'it,' and when he put out his senile hand and touched the melon I positively had to look ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... types of society,—is wonderful. Its dramatic strength is none the less marked. But aside from and above all this, for me it has a far greater merit—utility. I have no sympathy with the flippant, effeminate, and senile cry, "Art for art's sake"; that is the echo of a decaying civilization, the voice of Greece and Rome in their decline. It is the shibboleth of a people drunken with pleasure; of a popular conscience ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... affections by her two adroit suitors ('Une Vielle fille'), the intrigues against the peace of the d'Esgrignons and the sublime devotion to their interests of the notary Chesnel ('Le Cabinet des antiques'), and finally the ignoble passions that fought themselves out around the senile Jean Jacques Rouget, under the direction of the diabolical ex-soldier Philippe Brideau ('La Rabouilleuse,' sometimes entitled 'Un Menage de Garcon'), form the absorbing central themes of a group of novels—or rather stories, for few of them attain considerable ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... than this: that it leads men to the worship of some one spirit less erect than the Angels. A care, an egotism, an irritability with regard to details, an anxious craving, a consummate satisfaction in the performance of the due rites, an ecstasy of habit, all proclaim the senile heresy, the material ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... his mind was working well enough to see that Bud rubbed the saddle print off Boise and turned his own horses loose in the pasture, before he let him go on to the house. The last Bud heard from Pop that forenoon was a senile chuckle and a cackling, "Outrun Boise in a quarter dash! Shucks a'mighty! But I knew it—I knew he had the speed—sho! Ye can't fool ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... in creep-mouse sentiment, and call it love. We write pathetically of our impotence to live, and call it resignation. We who have never been young, compare notes with each other on how to remain senile, and call it the ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... example: An Aged Wanderer, A Life Sketch of J. M. Parker, A Cowboy of the Western Plains in the Early Days. "Price 40 cents. Headquarters, Elkhorn Wagon Yard, San Angelo, Texas." It was printed about 1923. When Parker wrote it he was senile, and there is no evidence that he was ever possessed of intelligence. The itching to get into print does not guarantee that the ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... neck. His little sunken eyes, animated with the fire of a deep passion, were set close and had no particular color. The absence of his two upper front teeth gave to his mouth when speaking, and to his sharp chin with its few scattered hairs, the strangeness of a senile faun. The rest of his body was a wretched structure of bones ill- concealed by his clothes. The skin on his hands, his wrists, the back of his arms, and his breast was full of blue punctures made with a pin and india-ink, the souvenirs of sanctuaries ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... joggled together in his brain and made there the subject of a thousand ruminations. They tantalised Pa's slowly revolving thoughts, and kept these moving through long hours of silence. Such notions preserved his interest in the world, and his senile belief in Magic, as nothing ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... in manhood's prime; But age crept on: one God would not suffice For senile puerility; thou fram'dst A tale to suit thy dotage, and to glut Thy misery-thirsting soul, that the mad fiend Thy wickedness had pictured might afford A plea for sating the unnatural thirst For murder, rapine, violence, and crime, That still ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... play for love), that that old idiot must have lost even since I have been here, is beyond all calculation. He has never once been allowed to spot the right thimble, but he will go on. As to the son's motive in permitting it, any bird of the world would tell you that, if you possess a senile parent who is bound to be rooked by somebody, it had better be by a person with whom you can ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... frenzy and the resolution of a splendid animal. We have only cowardice, the unenthusiasm and the indecision of base men. If we had the virtue of Commodus, no Commodus could ever have ruled Rome for half a day. But I am senile. I am sentimental. Rather than betray Marcia—and Pertinax—who would betray me for their own sakes; rather than submit my own old carcass to the slave whom Marcia would send to kill me, I am ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... impotent, words that shamble thus listlessly through life, there are. But many words are born in an entirely normal way; have a grubby boyhood, a vigorous youth, and a sober maturity; marry, beget sons and daughters, become old, enfeebled, even senile; and suffer neglect, if not death. In their advanced age they are exempted by the discerning from enterprises that call for a lusty agility, but are drafted into service by those to whom all levies are alike. Indeed in their very prime of manhood their vicissitudes are ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the pear-tree, and even in his preoccupation he was struck with the signs of its extraordinary age. Twisted out of all proportion, and knotted with excrescences, it was supported by iron bands and heavy stakes, as if to prop up its senile decay. He tried to interest himself in the various initials and symbols deeply carved in bark, now swollen and half obliterated. As he turned back to the summer-house, he for the first time noticed that the ground rose behind it into a long undulation, on ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... bellowed, but it was the Comedie Francaise that was the loser, not the people, when he sailed away in his balloon, posed, squatting majestically as the god of war above the clouds of battle. And little Thiers, furtive, timid, delighting in senile efforts to stir the ferment of chaos till it boiled, he, too, was there, owl-like, squeaky-voiced, a true "Bombyx a Lunettes." There, too, was Hugo—often ridiculous in his terrible moods, egotistical, sloppy, roaring. ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... "They are in complete agreement that the cause of death in each case was senile decay. They were both very ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... Naturalism into which Italian painting plunged from the height of its maturity. This toleration and acceptance of unavoidable change need not imply want of discriminative perception. We can apply the evolutionary canon in all strictness without ignoring that adult manhood is preferable to senile decrepitude, that Pheidias surpasses the sculptors of Antinous, that one Madonna of Gian Bellini is worth all the pictures of the younger Palma, and that Dossi's portrait of the Ferrarese jester is better ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... himself of the place offered at her side, soon the marquis was cackling after the manner of a senile beau of the old school; relating spicy anecdotes of dames who had long departed this realm of scandal; and mingling witticism and wickedness in one continual flow, until like a panorama another age was revived in his words—an age when bedizened women ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... muffled up figure, who preserved total silence—for excellent reasons. The doctor handed to Merton a sealed envelope, obviously the marquis's will. Merton looked closely into the face of the old marquis, whose eyes, dropping senile tears, showed no ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... questions. In his role as Third Assistant he stood with legs akimbo before the pupil, a bamboo twig in his hand; as Isidro the pupil, he plumped down quickly upon the bench before responding. The sole function of the senile old man seemed that of representing the pupil while the question was being asked, and receiving, in that capacity, a sharp cut across the nose from Isidro-the-Third-Assistant's switch, at which he chuckled to himself in silent ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... should so far forget its dignity; should so far descend from argument, from discussion of law to unseemly banter on the question of sex; that it should so far stoop from a canvass of the most important trial that ever took place, to a senile jest on woman, must be matter of astonishment to every candid mind in the legal fraternity, and certainly has a tendency to convince the female portion of the country that the male man is fast losing his right to the definition of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... civic authorities of Mr. Whistler's senile Carlyle renders it necessary for that section of the community who are not enamoured of Impressionism to watch with some vigilance the next steps taken by that body towards the formation ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... destined to revolutionize the art of war, whose prudence and foresight were unparalleled, whose correctness of judgment was a thing to wonder at. And in contrast to that picture of Germany he pointed to France: the Empire sinking into senile decrepitude, sanctioned by the plebiscite, but rotten at its foundation, destroying liberty, and therein stifling every idea of patriotism, ready to give up the ghost as soon as it should cease to satisfy the unworthy appetites ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... beyond the door, and a groping on the outer face of the door. Marguerite jumped up. Mr. Haim stumbled into the room. He had incredibly aged; he looked incredibly feeble. But as he pointed a finger at George he was in a fury of anger, and his anger was senile, ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... spoke; and, though his words were seemingly irrelevant, they were to the point. His voice had a note of martyrdom running through its senile quaver. ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... curve of his nose presented an aquiline silhouette, which suggested the Oriental or Jewish type. His hands—thin, slender, full of nerves which projected like strings upon the finger-board of a violin, and armed with claws like those on the terminations of bats' wings—shook with senile trembling; but those convulsively agitated hands became firmer than steel pincers or lobsters' claws when they lifted any precious article—an onyx cup, a Venetian glass, or a dish of Bohemian crystal. This strange old man had an aspect ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... the bottom of which, if travellers do not lie, you could put Park Street Church and look over the vane from its side, and try to stretch another such spire across it without spanning the chasm,—that idea, I say, is pretty nearly worn out. Now when a civilization or a civilized custom falls into senile dementia, there is commonly a judgment ripe for it, and it comes as plagues come, from a breath,—as fires ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... assistant, a suffragan or coadjutor, and I intend to make it my affair to see that he gets one. When I remember him as he was ten years ago, I find it hard to believe that he is touched with these fancies. To be charitable, it is senile decay. He seems to forget what I have done for him, personally, made up his salary, paid his expenses at different times, and no appeal for the diocese to me was ever in vain. But again, I will let ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to hide an obvious fact? Every person in Polktown who had arrived at the age of understanding and was not yet senile knew that Nelson Haley and Janice Day had "made a match of it." Only the girl's youth and the necessity for the young man to become established in his calling precluded the thought of matrimony for the present. But they were sure of their feeling ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... standpoint of palate and stomach, alcohol was, as it had always been, repulsive. It tasted no better than beer did when I was five, than bitter claret did when I was seven. When I was alone, writing or studying, I had no need for it. But—I was growing old, or wise, or both, or senile as an alternative. When I was in company I was less pleased, less excited, with the things said and done. Erstwhile worth-while fun and stunts seemed no longer worth while; and it was a torment to listen to the insipidities and stupidities ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... Knights of the Golden Circle receive the news that the South is surely going out. The dream long dear to the Southern heart! Any attempt of the senile Buchanan to reinforce the garrisons of the national forts will be the signal for the opening roar of the stolen guns. They know that the inauguration of Lincoln on March 4, 1861, means war without debate. He dare not abandon his trust. He will be welcomed ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... Arts, at the present day, encountering in your four years, seven faces, seven voices, seven repositories of knowledge, need an effort to understand how your predecessors could be cheerful and happy, confined all through to one personality; sometimes juvenile, sometimes senile, ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... ultimate. And, this side of it, a few years of increasing degradation, a mere senseless killing of time until the very unpleasing goal is reached—along with a growing selfishness, and narrowness of outlook; along, possibly, with some development of senile sensuality, the more detestable because it lacks the provocations of hot blood. Oh! Dominic Iglesias, Dominic Iglesias, is that the ugly road you are doomed to travel—a toothless greed for filling your belly with fly-blown ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... it all meant. But, like most fathers of his kind, he made no objection to the man's proposal, and told him his daughter was in the house. As Offitt walked away on the same quest where Bott had so recently come to wreck, Saul sat smiling, and nursing his senile vanity with the thought that there were not many mechanics' daughters in Buffland that could get two offers in one Sunday from "professional men." He sat with the contented inertness of old men on his ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... of Sparta, nor, least of all, to that of the United States. The Athenians were the student-youths of mankind; their constitution was a species of academic freedom, and it would be mere folly to seek to introduce it in this our matured age, to revive it in our senile Europe. And how could we put up with that of Sparta, that great and tiresome manufactory of patriotism, that soldiers' barrack of republican virtue, that sublimely bad kitchen of equality, in which black broth was so vilely cooked that Attic wits declared it made ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... obliged to touch their hats. This may do for young men with whom passion is enjoyment. But it is afflicting to peaceable minds. Tranquillity is the old man's milk. I go to enjoy it in a few days, and to exchange the roar and tumult of bulls and bears, for the prattle of my grand-children and senile rest. Be these yours, my dear friend, through long years, with every other blessing, and the attachment of friends as warm and sincere, as ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... dreadful cocked hat, and the eye beneath it fixed steadily upon the windows of the club. Sir Charles was a weak man; he was old, and had many infirmities: he cried about his father-in-law to his wife, whom he adored with senile infatuation: he said he must go abroad,—he must go and live in the country—he should die or have another fit if he saw that man again—he knew he should. And it was only by paying a second visit to Captain Costigan, and representing ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the recent conditional revocation of that legacy, which had galled her husband's sensibilities by bringing home to him what he had lost through Aunt Hannah's sudden death and through the senile whim of Uncle Meshach to alter his will. He could well have tolerated Meshach's refusal to distribute Aunt Hannah's savings immediately (Leonora thought), had the old man's original testament remained uncancelled. Once upon a time, Ryley, the despised ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... self-aggrandizement. Others are mere parasites, that well know the tenure on which they hold their offices, and will ever pay implicit obedience to those who administer to their wants. Many of your followers are among the most profligate of the community. They are the bane of social and domestic happiness, senile and dependent panderers." ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... are sent thither, alone with his con-science, contending with inquisitors relieving each other, subject to moral tortures as subtile and as keen as old-time physical tortures, to tortures so steady and persistent that he sinks, loses his head, "no longer sleeps and scarcely speaks," falling into a senile condition and even more than senile condition, "a state of mental alienation."[51115] Then, on issuing from this, the poor old man is again beset; finally, after waiting patiently for three years, he is once more brusquely conducted at night, secretly and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... -[I]LI. Here the long i is retained, and in disyllables the penultima is lengthened, as in 'anile', 'senile', 'virile'. There is no excuse for following the classical quantity in the former syllables of any of these words. As an English word 'sedilia' shortens the antepenultimate, like 'tibia' and the rest, the 'alias' rule not applying ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... others who relate, with even more avidity, how, after her removal to apartments of her own, he used to spend hours in the adjoining park just to catch a glimpse of her figure as she crossed the sidewalk on her way to and from her carriage. Indeed, his senseless, almost senile passion for this magnificent beauty became a by-word in some mouths, and it only escaped being mentioned at the inquest from respect to Mr. Fairbrother, who had never recognized this weakness in his steward, and ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... amount of moral energy on Gloria's part to intimidate him into returning, and when he reported next day, somewhat depressed from his perusal of the senile bromides skittishly set forth in "Heart Talks on Ambition," he found only fifty of the original three hundred awaiting the appearance of the vital and compelling Sammy Carleton. Mr. Carleton's powers of vitality and compulsion were this time exercised ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... shaggy beard. The colour of his face was yellow, of an earthy shade; the cheeks were sunken, the back long and narrow, and the hand upon which he leaned his hairy head was so lean and skinny that it was painful to look upon. His hair was already silvering with grey, and no one who glanced at the senile emaciation of the face would have believed that he was only forty years old. On the table, before his bended head, lay a sheet of paper on which something was written ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... since he takes so much interest in my affairs, I will now tell Aemilianus why I have examined so many fishes already and why I am unwilling to remain in ignorance of some I have not yet seen. Although he is in the decline of life and suffering from senile decay, let him, if he will, acquire some learning even at the eleventh hour. Let him read the works of the philosophers of old, that now at any rate he may learn that I am not the first ichthyologist, but follow in the steps of authors, centuries my seniors, such as Aristotle, Theophrastus, Eudemus, ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... may find handles—he generally can. "You are suffering from morbid senile relapse into puerile enjoyment of indecency," he or Mrs. Momus (whom later ages have called Grundy) may be kind enough to say. "You were a member of the Rabelais Club of pleasant memory, and think it necessary to live up to your ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... truth of this statement, combined with the commanding voice and manner he now assumed, controlled Elvira. She stood for some minutes meekly contemplating her senile and smirking suitor. Susannah protested and warned her, but in caprice, as sudden as it was unexpected, Elvira decided to comply with the prophet's request without further ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... judge, "I may almost claim to be a specialist (so far as a country practitioner is permitted to specialize) in senile and paretic dementia, since I had the honor to represent the proponents in the will case of Snoke versus Snoke. But it's only fair to say that I ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... no sooner do they get their little feet settled in a dark, still corner than they are summoned out of it, to sunlight bright and strong. Miss Nancy lives with a bedridden father, who has grown peevish through long patience; can it be that slow, senile decay which has roused in her a fierce impatience against the sluggishness of life, and that she hurries her plants into motion because she herself must halt? Her father does not theorize about it. He says, "Nancy never has ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... absent, with head bowed. Of the joy he felt in his wife's recovery there could, however, be no doubt. The crisis through which he had passed had made him, in appearance, a yet older man; when he declared his happiness tears came into his eyes, and his head shook with a senile tremor. ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... members of the club observed with astonishment that, however affectionately we may regard old persons, we no more think of becoming like them than of becoming negroes. If we catch ourselves observing their senile peculiarities, it is in a purely disinterested manner, with a complete and genuine lack of any personal concern, as with a state to which ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... strength. All that I do argue is that the shooting-up of the German infant does us on the whole no harm, and that there is nothing whatever in the figures of our trade to suggest that full-grown England is approaching senile decay. ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox
... occupation—a New Yorker, up to snuff. The veiled insinuation disgusted Crane. Was everything in the world vile? He had left a young life swimming hopelessly in the breakers of disaster, buoyed only by faith and love; and at his side sat a man who winked complacently, and beamed upon him with senile admiration because of his ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... his ring, and then he broke down pitifully. Doubtless there was good in him, but I saw him only once; and with nothing to contrast against it, I may not now attempt to breathe life into the dust of his senile passion. These were the last words that passed ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... man scarcely seemed to hear the witticisms at his expense that followed on the words; he had relapsed into the dreamy state of mind that these superficial observers took for senile torpor, due to his lack of intelligence. If they had only known, they might have been deeply interested by the problem of his condition; but few problems were more obscure. It was easy, of course, to find out whether Goriot had really been a vermicelli manufacturer; the amount of his fortune ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... captious critics. Many of the very strong things in Chaucer, which you may call coarse and gross if you will, are omitted by Pope, and many softened down; nor is there a single line in which the spirit is not the spirit of satire. The folly of senile dotage is throughout exposed as unsparingly, though with a difference in the imitation, as in the original. Even Joseph Warton and Bowles, affectedly fastidious over-much as both too often are, and culpably prompt to find fault, acknowledge that Pope's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... very wrongly. The frequent wars of this King were all foreign ones, and under his government England was at rest. That long, quiet reign was now drawing near its close. The King had not yet sunk into the sad state of senile dementia, wherein he ended his life; but he was an infirm, tired old man, bereft of his other self, his bright and loving wife, who had left him and the world about four years earlier. He exerted himself a little at supper to make himself agreeable to the ladies, as was then held to ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... away, the senile nodding of his head accentuated into pettishness; and Ferdinand stood looking after him for a second or two with a smile, but presently thinking better of it, he hastened after the angry old man and ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... stove, a base-burner with faint fire showing through its mica, the identity of her figure merged with the fat upholstery of the chair, except where the faint pink through the mica lighted up old flesh, Mrs. Miriam Horowitz, full of years and senile with them, wove with grasses, the ecru of her own skin, wreaths that had mounted to a great ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... incredulity and his confidential finger dropped from my sleeve. "Eh, that's the story. I tell what I've heard. What do I know?" He resumed his senile shuffle across the marble. "This is a bad place to stay in—no one comes here. It's too cold. But the gentleman said, I must ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... with a black crest and a red mark on its throat, half blind with age, and tottering on its pedestal. This solemn old bird sat apart from all the others, nodding its head oracularly in the sunlight, and blinking now and again with its white eyelids in a curious senile fashion. ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... looked at his father, who had seated himself on the side of the bed. He had become almost frightful to look at; old before his time, livid of complexion, his eyes bloodshot, the rebellious lock of hair straggling over his right temple. Nothing was more heartbreaking than his senile smile when he placed his bony trembling hands upon his thighs. Amedee, who knew, alas, why his father had reached such a pass, felt his heart moved with pity ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 1854,—senile, as was natural at the age of ninety-one years and eight months, yet still retaining much of the old Rogers, hospitable, sometimes caustic, sometimes pathetic, and always a true lover and appreciator of the fine arts. Leslie declared him to be the only amateur who had knowledge ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... modern minds insist upon believing, can have no appetite for unnatural praise and adoration. He does not clamour for the attention of children. He is not like one of those senile uncles who dream of glory in the nursery, who love to hear it said, "The children adore him." If children are loved and trained to truth, justice, and mutual forbearance, they will be ready for the true God as ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... policy, we shall experience after the close of the war the darkest and most difficult days of our existence. The crisis through which we are passing is the gravest we have yet encountered. Let us make it a crisis of growth, not a symptom of irreparable senile decay. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... is marching round, paying senile compliments to all the prettiest girls; his son Gillam, with a diamond stud that you could see a mile off, is beaming on Mrs. Bethune, who is openly encouraging him. Indeed, "The Everlasting," as he is called by his friends (it is always one's friends ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... is this? They're greeted with one loud, prolonged, and universal hiss! The sudden sibilation out of silence startles all, HARCURTIUS clangs his buckler, OTTO nearly hath a fall, "Great gods, the Geese are on us, those confounded Sacred Geese, See their long necks, twig their broad beaks! Cease, senile ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 6, 1892 • Various
... most revolting transactions in history, especially as there is some reason to believe that the unfortunate girl was, when it was perpetrated, already attached to one of the sons of the loathsome, senile sensualist. ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... is so senile and superstitious as that? Then the reason of his opposition really is that he believes his death to be implicit in ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... of her former voluptuous ardour but weariness of the flesh and a senile tremor of the hands. She had once loved like a she-wolf, but was now wasted, already sufficiently worn out for the grave. There had been strange workings of her nerves during her long years of chastity. A dissolute life would perhaps have wrecked her less than the slow hidden ravages of ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... sighed tiredly. Senile old devil! No wonder things were going to pot, if this was a sample of E training. "Send me your notes so I can follow them ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... a giant; another friend, Cingar, who delivers him, is Panurge exactly, and quite as much given to practical joking. The women in the senile amour of the old Tognazzo, the judges, and the poor sergeants, are no more gently dealt with by Folengo than by the monk of the Iles d'Hyeres. If Dindenaut's name does not occur, there are the sheep. The tempest is there, and the invocation to all the saints. Rabelais improves all he borrows, but ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... seeing himself alone and the gift of prescience foretelling that he was to be henceforth and forever alone,—"senile fool! Dotard!" He beat about with his cane even as the Chevalier had beaten about with his sword. "Double fool! to lose him for the sake of a lie, a damnable lie, and the lack of courage to own to it!" A Venetian mirror caught his attention. He stood before it, and seeing his reflection ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... face when she came out of that church," cried Travers for the third time; he was falling into the senile habit of repeating himself. "It was fairly distorted and she looked as if she had been crying for a week. Mark my words, Masters had been making the hottest kind of love to her—he was little more composed than she. Bet ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... developed strange timidities. The apprehension that the sky will fall—that acme of absurdity among the fears of our Gallic forefathers—has entered our own hearts. Does the rain-drop doubt the ocean? the ray mistrust the sun? Our senile wisdom has arrived at this prodigy. It resembles those testy old pedagogues whose chief office is to rail at the merry pranks or the youthful enthusiasms of their pupils. It is time to become little ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... observer of this phenomenon cannot help wondering what has made this radical difference in the development of these two animals. The solution is not far to seek. From the beginning of puberty to the beginning of senile decay, the stallion derives from the testes what is referred to above as an ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... pillow to ease the trembling that seized her. The moon had passed on, and darkness, which is allied to fear, closed her in—the fear of unthinking youth who knows not that the grave is full of peace; the fear of abundant life for senile death; the cold agony that comes in the night-watches, when the business of the day is but a dream and Reality visits ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... "Hush! I might have lingered on a little longer, but I chose to concentrate the vital force which would have lasted me a few more senile years into the minutes necessary for this message from me to you—a message I could not have given you if he were not dead. And I am dying so that you may hear it. Dying! My God! I ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... she would take no denial some dotards and striplings were routed out and the patriarch of the clan was thrust forward. He looked senile from his slippered feet to the shine on his bald-pate, he was blear-eyed and hard of hearing, but he understood plain Latin when he heard it, he knew of old the signs he read in the flash of her eyes, the ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... with whom and with whose family in these latter days the old chief of the house effected a complete reconciliation. The Duke was now for ever coming to Madame de Florac; he poured all his wrongs and griefs into her ear with garrulous senile eagerness. "That little Duchesse is a monstre, a femme d'Eugene Sue," the Vicomte used to say; "the poor old Duke he cry—ma parole d'honneur, he cry and I cry too when he comes to recount to my poor mother, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ground longest. The Americans lost 75, their foes 180 men. At Chicago the small force of 66 Americans was surprised and massacred by the Indians. Meanwhile, General Brock, the British commander, advanced against Hull with a rapidity and decision that seemed to paralyze his senile and irresolute opponent. The latter retreated to Detroit, where, without striking a blow, he surrendered 1,400 men to Brock's nearly equal force, which consisted nearly one half of Indians under Tecumseh. On the Niagara frontier, an estimable ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... determining what the eye sees scientifically, thereby making the production of art a mechanical certainty. Such a machine, I am told, was invented by an Englishman. Now if the praying-machine be admittedly the last shift of senile religion, the value-finding machine may fairly be taken for the psychopomp of art. Art has passed from the primitive creation of significant form to the highly civilised statement of scientific fact. I think the machine, which is the intelligent and respectable end, should ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... and deceit; that he is really older and has lived before at some remote period, and that his conduct fully justifies his title as A Venerable Impostor. A variety of circumstances corroborate this impression: His tottering walk, which is a senile as well as a juvenile condition; his venerable head, thatched with such imperceptible hair that, at a distance, it looks like a mild aureola, and his imperfect dental exhibition. But beside these physical peculiarities may be observed certain moral symptoms, which go ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... once more, "that sounds like senile raving. Pardon me. But while I've waited for the politicians of this State to show some signs of decency, waiting in vain, I've been swallowing back a lot of bitterness. No more of it! To our business now. I want you to know what is coming. I depend on you, as I have depended ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... divination amongst the Tuscans took its beginning thus: A labourer striking deep with his cutter into the earth, saw the demigod Tages ascend, with an infantine aspect, but endued with a mature and senile wisdom. Upon the rumour of which, all the people ran to see the sight, by whom his words and science, containing the principles and means to attain to this art, were recorded, and kept for many ages.—[Cicero, De Devina, ii. 23]—A birth suitable ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... herself from her veils, she rubbed her face with her sleeve; the black colour, the senile trembling, the bent figure disappeared, and there remained a strong old man whose skin seemed tanned by sand, wind, and sea. A tuft of white hair rose on his skull like the crest of a bird; and he indicated his disguise, as it lay on the ground, ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... Claire. He had thought her straight. And all the time that she had been saying those things to him that night of their last meeting she had been engaged to another man, a fat, bald, doddering, senile fool, whose only merit was his money. Scarcely a fair description of Mr Pickering, but in a man in Bill's position ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... friends of the Hilarys there was misgiving on this point of their approval of Matt's marriage. Some of them thought that the parents' hands had been forced in the blessing they gave it. Old Bromfield Corey expressed a general feeling to Hilary with senile frankness. "Hilary, you seem to have disappointed the expectation of the admirers of your iron firmness. I tell 'em that's what you keep for your enemies. But they seem to think that in Matt's case you ought to have been more ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... the youth who is taking lessons from a comic actor in voice-production not to carry his precepts so far as to imitate the female falsetto, the senile tremolo, the obsequiousness of the slave, the stuttering accents of intoxication or the intonations of love, ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... of middle age is to remember names, because these have no real relationship or logical value and must be arbitrarily remembered. The typical senile defect is the dropping out of the recent memories, though the past may be preserved in its entirety. With any disease of the brain, temporary or permanent, amnesia or memory loss may and usually is present (e. g., general paresis, ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... the whilom dramatist Wycherley—now a broken septuagenarian, but still retaining a sort of bankrupt bel air. To Wycherley, who could not tear himself from his favorite St. James's, the youthful Pope wrote literary letters, being even decoyed into patching and revising the old beau's senile verses. Another of his correspondents was Henry Cromwell—Gay's "honest, hatless Cromwell, with red breeches," who at this time was playing the part of an elderly Phaon to the Sappho of a third-rate poetess, Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas. The epistles of the boy at ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... and a more senile phantasy! They did not spring spontaneously from the lips of the people, but were composed at leisure by priests desirous of enhancing the antiquity of their cult, and augmenting the veneration of its adherents in order to ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... pretentiousness of urchins. The kings called Napoleon's pistol a toy pistol even while it was holding up their coach and mastering their money or their lives; they called his sword a stage sword even while they ran away from it. Something of the same senile inconsistency can be found in an English and American habit common until recently: that of painting the South Americans at once as ruffians wading in carnage, and also as poltroons playing at war. They blame them ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... accredited works of engineering that would make our greatest modern achievements look small: common sense would say, probably the reminiscence of something actual. Certainly the Chinese emerged from it, and into daylight history, not primitive but effete: senile, not childlike. That may be only a racial peculiarity, a national ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... foot, it is not uncommon for the other foot to be affected after an interval, and in some cases it is bilateral from the outset. It must clearly be understood that any form of gangrene may occur in old persons, the term senile being here restricted to that variety which ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... Vienna fell short of Northern Germany in intellectual activity, the humiliation inflicted on its best elements by this life-destroying surveillance was keenly felt and bitterly resented. More perhaps by its senile warfare against mental freedom than by any acts of direct political repression, the Government ranged against itself the almost unanimous opinion of the educated classes. Its hold on the affection of the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... said furiously, "is why you have to lend yourself to this senile idiocy. Because some old women choose to sink themselves in a swamp is no reason why ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... into open antagonism, whereas their more intimate acquaintance with one another produced personal and national ill-will. The people of the West now appeared more than ever barbarous and overbearing, and the Court of Constantinople more than ever senile and designing. The crafty policy of Alexius Comnenus in transferring his allies with all speed into Asia, and declining to take the lead in the expedition, was almost justified by the necessity of delivering ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... from play; but the play field broadens with succeeding generations youth is prolonged, for play is always and everywhere the best synonym of youth. All are young at play and only in play, and the best possible characterization of old age is the absence of the soul and body of play. Only senile and overspecialized tissues of brain, heart, and muscles know ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... first-hand; but I hoped to return by the middle of the afternoon, and I knew that Bainbridge could repeat with accuracy all that the old sailor should say. I doubted whether Bainbridge could extract very much from the old man's senile intellect before my return, as the aged voyager was, both in mind and body, quite feeble, and of little endurance. Besides, when once started and warmed to his subject—and very little information could be gained till he was so started—he ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... pledge for its being able to resist any new invasion of the East. But why did these centres of civilization, which attempted to answer to deeply-seated needs of human nature, and were so full of life, not live further on? Why were they seized with senile debility in the sixteenth century? and, after having repulsed so many assaults from without, and only borrowed new vigour from their interior struggles, why did they ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... of the first child and the last such an individual changes vastly. Under stress and fear of circumstances, under the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, all sorts of acquirements are made. The body becomes vigorous and then feeble, the mind grows mature, and then senile. He or she grows wrinkled and bowed and perhaps very wise, or perhaps much the reverse. Yet no one viewing a baby show, a children's party, or an assembly of adults, of whom he has no previous knowledge, can say which is the ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... The senile mirth had left the trader's face, and his olive skin was ashen. "Next time," he moaned, "next time, Santa Maria, they will be in force and they—they will take the ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle |
