"Middle-age" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... middle-age, which comes so much later to men than to women, she was well on in her thirties—a comely, sensible, well-bred young lady, and a most excellent coadjutor to a squire new to the business. An eminently wise ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... carried forward by many others, including Theophrastus, the able successor of Aristotle; Euclid, the first great geometer; Eratosthenes and Hipparchus, the astronomers; and, latest of ancient scientists, Ptolemy, whose works on astronomy and geography became the text-books of the middle-age schools. ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... discerned at a great distance; and, taken in connection with the extensive ruins of O'Connor's Castle, in the suburbs, and the beautiful abbey upon the other side of the town, seems to partake of the character of the middle-age architecture. The fatal drop was, perhaps, the highest in Ireland. It consisted of a small doorway in the front of the third storey, with a simple iron beam and pulley above, and the lapboard ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... looking at this brilliant and candid face of the earth, because there was not anywhere so much force as in this squat, stubborn body, clayish with middle-age. ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Bigot himself as master of the revels, a short, stout, awkward man of more than middle-age, who did not well become the part. He is, I must add, coarse for my taste, and by his appearance you might judge him capable of any venture in the getting of money. He would say in his cynical, loud way that the end justifies the means, and ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... conferences were now held between Thorndyke, his two daughters, and Elizabeth Wareing—a woman approaching middle-age, whom, under the specious pretence that Mrs. Thorndyke's increasing ailments rendered the services of an experienced matron indispensable, he had lately installed at the farm. It was quite evident to both the mother ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... triumph over love. Sooner or later we are all called upon to decide on the same issue—of us all, the same question is asked. To Lord Arthur it came early in life—before his nature had been spoiled by the calculating cynicism of middle-age, or his heart corroded by the shallow, fashionable egotism of our day, and he felt no hesitation about doing his duty. Fortunately also, for him, he was no mere dreamer, or idle dilettante. Had he been so, he would have hesitated, like Hamlet, and let irresolution mar his purpose. But he was essentially ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... the Middle Ages. The Christian Faith, which was the theme of Dante's Song, had produced this Practical Life which Shakespeare was to sing. For Religion then, as it now and always is, was the soul of Practice; the primary vital fact in men's life. And remark here, as rather curious, that Middle-Age Catholicism was abolished, so far as Acts of Parliament could abolish it, before Shakespeare, the noblest product of it, made his appearance. He did make his appearance nevertheless. Nature at her ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... crowned himself therewith, and springing upon the top of the rock, assumed an oratorical attitude, and waved his hand, as if about to harangue the people. Then, while I was wondering what was to come next, he fixed his eye sternly upon a sinister looking man of middle-age, with the head-dress of an inferior chief, who was standing directly in front of him, and began to declaim in Latin, with great vehemence—'Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra,' etcetera, which the audience seemed at first, to consider highly interesting ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... presently, they left the house to go into the gardens, it happened that they noticed an old gentleman walking at a little distance behind a gate marked "Private," and leaning on the arm of a tall, thin, clean-shaven man of middle-age. ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... won she passed across to the "noir," and there won again, and again a second time, until people at the table began to follow her lead. Gamblers are always superstitious when they see a young girl playing. It is amazing and curious how often youth will win where middle-age will lose. ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... extra-mural decorations of St. Mark's. The world buzzed along after its own fashion, not disturbing him, and his absorptions permitted only a faint consciousness of the despair of his relatives regarding his mind. Arrived at middle-age, and a little more, he found himself alone in the world (though, for that matter, he had always been alone and never of the world), and there was plenty of money for him with various bankers who appeared to know about looking after it. Returning to the town of his nativity after sundry ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... small plump woman, to whose vague prettiness the lines of middle-age had given no meaning: as though whatever had happened to her had merely added to the sum total of her inexperience. After a Parisian residence of twenty-five years, spent in a state of feverish servitude to the great artists of the ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... ten-thousandth repetition of the story of the battle of Niagara (varied to suit customers), told by the old soldier who either was or was not a participant in the battle, they found one true John Bull from the mother country,—a stout, thick-set, florid-faced man of middle-age, not over-intelligent but very earnest and enthusiastic. Leslie marked him as a victim and began at ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... to recall some of those anecdotes which, while justifying them in a measure, yet at the same time illustrate Lord Byron's way of acting. I will select one. When Lord Byron was at Pisa a friend of Shelley's, whom he sometimes saw, had formed a close intimacy with Lady B——, a woman of middle-age but of high birth. The tie between them was evidently the result of vanity on Mr. M——'s side, and, as she was the mother of a large family, it was doubly imperative on her to be respectable. But that did not prevent ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... I had a curious twinge of conscience as I parted from Lady Osprey. Either a first intimation of middle-age or my inexperience in romantic affairs was to blame, but I felt a very distinct objection to the prospect of invading this good lady's premises from the garden door. I motored up to the pavilion, found Cothope reading in bed, told him for the first ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... substantial woman, a little over middle-age, in old dark clothes and a black straw hat, enters from the corridor. She goes to a cupboard, brings out from it an apron and a Bissell broom. Her movements are slow and imperturbable, as if she had much time before her. Her face is broad ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Anglia, that it has given us in Captain Marryat perhaps the very greatest prose writer of the nineteenth century who has been a delight to youth, and two of the very greatest prose writers of all times for the inspiration of middle-age, Sir Thomas Browne and George Borrow. It has given us in Sarah Austin an example of a learned woman who was also a fascinating woman; it has given us again the most remarkable letter-writers in the English ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... inscribed. Our fathers of some consequence carried canes of a gentlemanly pattern, often ones with ivory handles. Though in the days when those of us now sometime grown were small one had to have arrived at the dignity of at least middle-age before it was seemly for one to carry a cane. In England, however, and particularly at Eton, it has long been a common practice for small aristocrats ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... of the origin of a people so graceful and refined that the Roman citizen was a boot-black in comparison to one of them. The Saracens flashed light and life, in later days, once more into the Roman leaven. What a dirty, filthy page the whole Gothic middle-age is at best! It lies like a huge body struck with apoplexy, and only restored to its sensual life by the sharp lancet, bringing blood, of these same infidels, these stinging Saracens. Go into the mountains back of us, hunt up the costumes ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... ground, and then begin all over again the lamentations of the wife, her discouragements, her pretended unfaithfulness, her husband's jealousy, the interference of the neighbors, and the reconciliation. In all this there is a simple and even coarse lesson, which, though it savors strongly of its Middle-Age origin, does not fail to fix its impression if not on the married folk, who are too loving or too sensible to have need of it, at least upon the children and the young people. The "infidel," racing after young girls and pretending to wish to kiss them, frightens and disgusts them to such a degree ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... too with a keen, distasteful curiosity to watch Ernestine's methods. And Ernestine herself chatted all the time, diffused good fellowship and tea—she made an atmosphere which had a nameless fascination for the man who had come to middle-age without knowing what a home meant. Davenant studied him and became thoughtful. He took note of the massive features, the iron jaw, the eyes as bright as steel, and his thoughtfulness became anxiety. ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... father and three brothers, and her final passage from the bondage of infancy, the conflicts of childhood and adolescence, the disenchantments (and other drawbacks) of maturity, to the freedom, peace and happiness of middle-age. ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... he comes and takes some of us along his ways into middle-age, will have to pull. Time is a dotard, an aged parent; some boys that are very strong and young are almost too much for him; when he comes to take them from the garden of boyhood they kick and punch; when Time tries to coax them, pointing out the advantages of middle-age, ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... upon the floor. Yet this third person stands there with his attentive face, and his hat and stick in his hands, and his hands behind him, a composed and quiet listener. He is a stoutly built, steady-looking, sharp-eyed man in black, of about the middle-age. Except that he looks at Mr. Snagsby as if he were going to take his portrait, there is nothing remarkable about him at first sight but his ghostly ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... was the Poet-Laureate after Dryden, assuming the wreath in 1689. We have referred to his origin; Langbaine gives 1642 as the date of his birth; so that he must have set up as author early in life, and departed from life shortly past middle-age. Derrick assures us that he was lusty, ungainly, and coarse in person,—a description answering to the full-length of Og. The commentators upon "MacFlecknoe" have not made due use of one of Shadwell's habits, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... subsided. The boy became pathetic to him; behind his dapper morning clothes, his intricate studs and fobs and rings, his reedy self-confidence, the physician saw the faint, grisly shadow of a sickly middle-age, a ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... really done it very well. Not only had he accounted honourably for his repulse, but he had cleared Elise. And he had cleared himself from the ghastly imputation of middle-age. Repulse or no repulse, he was proud of ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... old Middle-Age structure, built of stone, thanks to the munificence of the lords of Soulanges, who reserved for themselves first a chapel near the chancel, then a crypt as their necropolis, has, by way of portal, an immense arcade, like that ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... here. I felt that his presence had a purpose, and that it was connected in some measure with the two people to whom my attention was so suddenly drawn. They were, in that somewhat heterogeneous crowd, sufficiently noticeable. The man, although he assumed the jauntiness of youth, was past middle-age, and his mottled cheeks, his thin, watery eyes, and thick red neck were the unmistakeable hall-marks of years of self-indulgence. He was well dressed and groomed, and his demeanour towards his companion was one of deferential ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... its rarity, even if it called him away from his dinner or ruthlessly rang him up in the middle of the night. But that was a long time ago, in the days of his impecunious youth; and now, in his prosperous middle-age, he would often have willingly bartered a good many patients ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... like the majority of men' (she says of an acquaintance). 'Certainly those men who lead a gay life in their youth, and arrive at middle-age with feelings blunted and passions exhausted, can have but one aim in marriage—the selfish advancement of their interest. Hard to think that such men take as wives—as second-selves—women young, modest, sincere, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... passe myself and ought to marry something sere and yellow. But I tell you I don't feel any older than twenty-five—never have, it's my affliction—while you've never been younger than forty in all your life. It's you who ought to marry middle-age"—and he grimaced at Martin. ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... and needed no excuse. Though many of the men were physically powerful, few of them could boast of any physical comeliness. Their strength had been bought dear, at the cost of heavy labour begun too early in life, so that before middle-age they were bent in the back, or gone wrong at the knees, and their walk (some of them walked miles every day to their work) was a long shambling stride, fast enough, but badly wanting in suggestiveness of personal pride. ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... with an air of relief. He was a man of little more than middle-age, powerfully built, inclined to be sombre, with features of a legal type, heavily jawed. "Always tactful, dear hostess," he murmured. "As a matter of fact, nothing but the circumstance that it was your invitation and that ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... detachment of mind were alike too strong for that; but he had arrived at the conclusion that you must have learned the rudiments of the art of amusement in early youth if you are to practise it with satisfaction to yourself in middle-age. And he very certainly had not learned the rudiments—not, anyhow, according to the English fashion. He had been aware, during these social excursions, that he was a good deal stared at and even commented on. At first he supposed ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... The lantern light was white and yellow on their faces. He drew out from the inner pocket of his mouse-colored coat a packet of letters, and from the packet the picture of a stout woman, who, like himself, was of middle-age. He handed it to the French ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... conference at New Scotland Yard; they found Fullaway and the Princess already there, in full blast of debate. Allerdyke inspected the new arrival with keen interest and found her a well-preserved, handsome woman of middle-age, sharp, smart, and American to the finger-tips. The official whom they had met before was already questioning her, and for Allerdyke's benefit he repeated what ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... have quarrelled violently with his informant. A week ago he was a cynical clear-sighted modern, a contemner of illusions, a swallower of formulas, a breaker of shams—one who had seen through the heroical and found it silly. Romance and such-like toys were playthings for fatted middle-age, not for strenuous and cold-eyed youth. But the truth was that now he was altogether spellbound by these toys. To think that he was serving his lady was rapture-ecstasy, that for her he was single-handed venturing all. He rejoiced to be alone with his private fancies. His one fear was ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... the lives of poets, we too often see how their inspiration flagged and failed. Milton indeed wrote his noblest verse in middle-age, after a life immersed in affairs. Wordsworth went on writing to the end, but all his best poetry was written in about five early years. Tennyson went on to a patriarchal age, but there is little of his later work that bears comparison with what he wrote before he was ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... vague reply. He was not the man to give away the jokers of Farewell. Old lady, indeed! Miss Blythe to the contrary notwithstanding this girl was not within sight of middle-age. "Yeah," he went on, "they shore fooled me. Told me I'd taken an ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... hands by way of improving her mind; and she had been struck by a passage in which Greville describes Lord Melbourne's training of the young Queen Victoria, whose Prime Minister he was. The man of middle-age, accomplished, cynical and witty, suddenly confronted with a responsibility which challenged both his heart and his conscience—and that a responsibility towards an attractive young girl whom he could neither court nor command, towards ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her impatience. "I wish you'd go over it this morning. From the title it's one of those middle-age ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... I should," he assured her. "Believe me, there isn't such an obstinate person in the world as the man of early middle-age who suddenly discovers the ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the warrior king allowed this speech to last as long as it did. He hated nothing so fiercely, now that he was in middle-age, as any long mention of the "handsome god.[FN81]" Having vainly endeavoured to stop by angry mutterings the course of the Baital's eloquence, he stepped out so vigorously and so rudely shook that ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... of it, hear our side of the question, as far as Negroes and races in a similar condition are concerned. Do you know why and how the Confessional arose? Have you looked, for instance, into the old middle-age Penitentials? If so, you must be aware that it arose in an age of coarseness, which seems now inconceivable; in those barbarous times when the lower classes of Europe, slaves or serfs, especially in remote country districts, lived lives little better than those ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... six months, and work harder than ever when he came back. He had no knack for business, no head for figures, no dimmest insight into the mysteries of commerce. He wanted to travel and write—those were his inmost longings. And as the years dragged on, and he neared middle-age without making any more money, or acquiring any firmer health, a sick despair possessed him. He tried writing, but he always came home from the office so tired that his brain could not work. For half the year he did not reach his dim up-town flat till after dark, and could only "brush up" ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... blind no doubt to its own horrors," he said. "You can respect and even admire old age, like other ruins, if it's picturesque, but middle-age ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... went away intent on classifying the soutar by finding out with what sect of the middle-age mystics to place him. At the same time something strange seemed to hover about the man, refusing to be handled in that way. Something which he called his own religious sense appeared to know something of what the soutar must ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... invented a new fashion of transfixing a silk scarf with a diamond pin. In fact it is during the first flush of his youth that he displays those characteristics which have specialised the Guardsman amongst the golden lads who afterwards come to the dust of middle-age and a colonelcy. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... Her dress, however, suggested that she could not bring herself to believe she was yet out of the hunt, but was still trying to follow it breathlessly on the back of that broken-kneed and sorry steed, late middle-age. There was something ridiculous in the girlish attire intended to convince her fellow creatures that her day was not over; something terrible in the low blouse, short skirt, silk stockings, gauze, lace ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... left had given up in disgust all thought of the famous lawsuit and steadfastly refused to have anything to do with it. He lived quietly in the country in a big, bare building called Bleak House. He was past middle-age, and his hair was silver-gray, but he was ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... he has never adopted and commending methods of treatment from which he has abstained? The reader naturally receives his commendations with suspicion. Is this man, he asks, stricken with penitence in the flower of his middle-age? Has he but just discovered how good are the results that the other game, the game he has never played, can give? Or has he been disconcerted by the criticism of the Young? The Fear of the Young is the beginning of his wisdom. ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... color, her eyes soft and misty and spring-like, too, in their starry fulfillment of love that has been tried and found all-sufficing; another sable-clad figure, but clerically frocked and portly; and the last, a keen-faced, kindly-eyed man approaching middle-age—a man with sandy hair and a mustache just slightly tinged with gray. He might, from his appearance and bearing, have been a great teacher, a great philanthropist, a great statesman. But he was none of these—or rather, let us say, he was all, and more. ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... the leaders escort the happy couple to the Presidio. The Commandante and his bride begin their path in life. It leads toward that yet unbuilt home in the wild hills of Mariposa. With quaint garb, rich trappings, and its bright color, the train lends an air of middle-age romance to the landscape. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... part opens with the sorrowful scene, "Tristis est anima mea," Christ's sad words in the walk to Gethsemane,—an unutterably pathetic solo, with an accompaniment which is a marvel of expressive instrumentation. The next number is the old Middle-Age hymn, "Stabat Mater dolorosa," in which Liszt has combined voices and instruments in a manner, particularly in the "Inflammatus," almost overpowering. Solos, duets, quartets, choruses, orchestra, and organ are all ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... marry either at fifty or sixty, he had much better take a young girl than a woman of more age and experience. Youth is more malleable, more gentle, and has often more respect and compassion for infirmity than middle-age. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... department, from whom she received her work, was a man of middle-age, of rather stern and forbidding aspect; and as she approached his desk, he pointed to the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... be given. Whithersoever she had fared, she had seen nothing but youths fatuously prostrate to her—not one upright figure which she could respect. There were the middle-aged men, the old men, who did not bow down to her; but from middle-age, as from eld, she had a sanguine aversion. She could love none but a youth. Nor—though she herself, womanly, would utterly abase herself before her ideal—could she love one who fell prone before her. And before her all youths always did fall ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... told you all. Perhaps I have put first what should have come last. I have not told you that I love you earnestly and sincerely, with the settled, unalterable love that sometimes comes to men in middle-age who have never turned their thought that way before. I will not attempt the rhapsodies of passion which at my time of life might sound foolish or out of place; yet it is true that I am filled with ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... to be in splendid health; I have seen her swimming, galloping, playing tennis madly. The usual swarm of devoted youth and smitten middle-age is in attendance. She wears neither black nor colours; only white; nor does she go to any sort of functions. At times, to me, she resembles a scarcely grown girl just freed from school and playing hard every minute with every atom of heart ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... only for a single day, I did not think it best to submit in all points to the cold water treatment; neither did SEATSFIELD, for I noticed that he mixed two table-spoonfuls of gin with every gill of cold water. SEATSFIELD is a man of about middle-age, with a penetrating eye, and rather a good form, though not unusually muscular. His face bears a remarkable resemblance to the pictures of NUMA POMPILIUS; the benign smile of each is the same. His chin is round ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... lasted, and diarists still prattle charmingly concerning us. But nothing was expected of us save to be beautiful and to condescend to be made much of, and that is our tragedy. For very few things, my dear, are more pitiable than the middle-age of the pitiful butterfly woman, whose mind cannot—cannot, because of its very nature—reach to anything higher! Middle-age strips her of everything—the admiration, the flattery, the shallow merriment—all the little ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... Goodwin, though his mind still moved slowly, eyed him intently, gauging the man's strange and masked quality, probing the mildness of his address for the thing it veiled. He saw the mate of the Etna as a spare man of middle-age, who would have been tall but for the stoop of his shoulders. His shaven face was constricted primly; he had the mouth of an old maid, and stood slack-bodied with his hands sunk in the pockets of his jacket. Only the tightness ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... clasped; its details were not apparent, but I traced the general points of middle height and considerable breadth of chest. He had a dark face, with stern features and a heavy brow; his eyes and gathered eyebrows looked ireful and thwarted just now; he was past youth, but had not reached middle-age; perhaps he might be thirty-five. I felt no fear of him, and but little shyness. Had he been a handsome, heroic- looking young gentleman, I should not have dared to stand thus questioning him against his will, and offering my services unasked. I had hardly ever seen a handsome ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... too, at this period in the very prime of manhood. He had reached middle-age—an era in the life of man when the faculties, physical or intellectual, may be supposed to attain their fullest organization and most perfect development. Whatever there was in him of intellectual energy and ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... mediaeval legends in which the Devil is overreached and made a laughing-stock. The germ of this notion may be found in the blinding of Polyphemos by Odysseus, which is itself a victory of the sun-hero over the night-demon, and which curiously reappears in a Middle-Age story narrated by Mr. Cox. "The Devil asks a man who is moulding buttons what he may be doing; and when the man answers that he is moulding eyes, asks him further whether he can give him a pair of new eyes. ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske |
