"Great-uncle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... long story, but it boils down to this," he said. "I'm looking for a Patrick Henry Considine, but I don't know what he's like. I don't know whether there is such a chap, in fact, but if there is, I've got to find him. A great-uncle of mine died out here a long while ago, and we believe he left a son; and if there is such a son, it turns out that he would be entitled to a heap of money. It has been heaping up for years in Chancery, and all that ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... to stories about their elders, when they were children; to stretch their imagination to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle, or grandame, whom they never saw. It was in this spirit that my little ones crept about me the other evening to hear about their great-grandmother Field, who lived in a great house in Norfolk—a hundred times bigger than that in which they ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... Jr. It is a terrible thing, one would say, to a mind of honorable feeling, to be pointed out as somebody's son, or uncle, or granddaughter, as if the excellence were all derived. It must be a little humiliating to reflect that if your great-uncle had not been somebody, you would be nobody—that, in fact, you are only a name, and that, if you should consent to change it for the sake of a fortune, as is sometimes done, you would cease to be anything but a rich man. "My father was President, or Governor ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... that peach? Pretty lifelike, I call it—well, there ain't anything in it yet, but my great-uncle Bradly's shirtstuds are in the Bartlett pear, just beyond, and that orange contains a Honiton lace collar that my mother wore the day ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... were not artificial but natural formations in the wild, mountainous country of the Western Highlands. Far less convenient and comfortable were these caves and fissures in the rocks than those secret places which preserved the life of the "young chevalier's" great-uncle Charles II. Altogether, the terrible hardships to which the last claimant to the Stuart throne was subjected were far greater in every way, and we can but admire the remarkable spirit, fortitude, and courage that carried him through his numerous dangers ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... needs of the hour, the world is disposed not to reproach him, but rather to feel pity for the young ruler who has had thrust upon him such an insoluble problem. His character recalls somewhat that of his great-uncle Alexander I. We see the same vague aspiration after grand ideals, and the same despotic methods in dealing with things in the concrete. No general amnesty attended his coronation, no act of clemency has been extended to political exiles. Men and women whose hairs have whitened in Siberia have not ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... exercise in the picaresque school, lacking none of the author's usual raciness and vigour; but, if at the end we find Mr. Fergus Rowley still unable to reinstate himself, and left with no better consolation than the "Heigho" of his famous great-uncle Anthony, the fault, I feel, was his own. He ought to have looked in at the Kingsway Theatre and provided ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... first time since my terrible desertion I had an opportunity to think, and I did think, if the pulse of an overwhelming pain, perpetually recurring like the beat of a loaded wheel, can be called thought. Although there is no insanity in our family nearer than a great-uncle, I marvel that I retained my wits under this terrible blow. I seriously contemplated suicide, and probably should have taken my life had not my mental condition gradually undergone a change. I was no longer conscious of suffering, nor of a desire to end my life. I was simply indifferent. It was ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... she turned her wheel Or run the new-knit stocking-heel, Told how the Indian hordes came down At midnight on Cocheco town, And how her own great-uncle bore His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore. Recalling in her fitting phrase, So rich and picturesque and free, (The common unrhymed poetry Of simple life and country ways,) The story of ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... my mother was born, Margaret, the eldest daughter of Robert, your great-great-uncle: he married one of the daughters of Rowland Eyes, of Bradway, in the same county of Derby, by whom he had twelve sons and two daughters: that family remains ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... little face could only belong to one related to Daisy Wilson," he said. "Little one, put yer arms round me. I'm your great-uncle—your great-uncle! I never thought that Daisy Wilson could have a daughter married, and that that daughter could have little ones of her own. Well, well, well, how time does fly! I'm your grandmother's brother—Sandy ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... I was fifteen. My great-uncle, my guardian, is a wholesale grocer in Chicago; he has a large ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... them, only that my father and mother were second cousins; but I don't even know to which of them my great-uncle ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Rome first addressed the prince's great-uncle, Cardinal Fesch, requesting him to advise the Duchess of St. Leu to remove the young prince from Rome for a ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... saved him from assassination. At the accession of James II. he was once more taken from active employment, and "Barzillai, crowned with honour and with years" died at his Dorsetshire house in 1688. He had seen his great-great-uncle the Black Earl, who was born in 1532, and a great-grandson was playing beside him a few hours before his death. His brave son Ossory, "the eldest hope with every grace adorned," died eight years before him, and he was succeeded by a grandson James, the second duke of Ormonde, who, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Henry could not be content firmly and quietly to enforce the law as it had been declared at Clarendon. He had in his character much of the orderly spirit of his grandfather, Henry I., but he had also something of the violence of his great-uncle, William II. A certain John the Marshal had a suit against the archbishop, and when the archbishop refused to plead in a lay court, the king's council sentenced him to a fine of 500l. Then Henry summoned the archbishop to his castle at Northampton ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... irresistible Pedgift placed a chair for his patron, and issued his orders cheerfully to his viceroy, the head-waiter. "Iced punch, William, after the soup. I answer for the punch, Mr. Armadale; it's made after a recipe of my great-uncle's. He kept a tavern, and founded the fortunes of the family. I don't mind telling you the Pedgifts have had a publican among them; there's no false pride about me. 'Worth makes the man (as Pope says) and want of it the fellow; the rest is all but leather and prunella.' I cultivate ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... "Tom King the carpenter," and so on, who owned the house in Willow Lane in which Borrow spent his boyhood. That 'old King the carpenter'—I believe he called himself a builder, but perhaps this was when he grew more prosperous—was my great-great-uncle. One of his sons became physician to Prince Talleyrand and married a sister of John Stuart Mill. One of his great-nieces was my grandmother, and her mother's family, the Parkers, had lived in Norwich for many generations. So on the strength of this ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... That ideal, which had lain so long in the secret depths of his soul, in fact ever since he had known thought; that ideal to which he had already dedicated himself, when he had stood as a boy by the corpse of his great-uncle Gustavus Adolphus; that ideal was now truth and reality before his inward vision. He was a Prince wreathed in glory; he was beloved by his strong ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... come to Fissore, the accuser of the other three. Investigation of his origin showed that a male cousin had died raving mad, a female cousin had died in an asylum, a great-uncle on the maternal side had been crazy and had committed suicide; another cousin was weak-minded and subject to fits; another, a deaf-mute, had died in an asylum; another great-uncle was a drunkard and a loafer; one sister was an idiot, the other had ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... venerable. He was pure Swahili, though of the savage branch of that race, and had none of the negro type of countenance. In fact, so like was he in face, hair, short square beard and genial dignity to a certain great-uncle of mine that it was very hard to remember that he had on only a small strip of cloth, that he was cherishing as a great treasure a piece of soap box he had salvaged from the shore, and that his skin was red chocolate. I felt inclined to talk to him as to an intellectual equal, especially as ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... few relatives and friends. Among these was a very, very old man, whom he afterwards heard was a great-uncle and a centenarian. Between him and one of the little girls, there apparently existed a strong sympathy; for his hand reached out and drew her to him when the tears began to steal down her cheeks, and the looks which passed between the two had all the appeal ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... valerian and assafoetida,—not quite so much since the new blood came in. There is n't the change in folks people think,—same thing over and over again. I've seen six fingers on a child that had a six-fingered great-uncle, and I've seen that child's grandchild born with six fingers. Does this girl like to have her own way pretty well, like the rest ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... she could not meet the look in his reproachful grey eyes. His great-uncle Jeoffrey recovering first from the shock finally ...
— Pearl and Periwinkle • Anna Graetz
... an interest in some intellectual pursuits outside the mere school routine. Why, now, did he not take up some standard book of history with which to occupy his spare time, or some great poem like the Paradise Lost, of which he might commit a few lines to memory every day, and so emulate his great-uncle, who used to be able to repeat ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... to Martha on the stage stands her brother, William Taylor Money, Elsie's great-uncle. We greet him gladly, for he was a man of character. He was a friend of Wilberforce, and a Member of Parliament when the Anti-Slavery Bill was passed. Afterwards "he owned a merchant vessel, and gained great honour by his capture of several of ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... note, entitled: Historic Evidences as to the Causes of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and M. de Malesherbes had himself presented to Louis XVI. a scheme for a law. "It is absolutely necessary," said he, "that I should render the Protestants some kind offices; my great-uncle De Baville did them so much injury!" The Assembly of notables appealed to the king's benevolence on behalf of "that considerable portion of his subjects which groans under a regimen of proscription ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... that their uncle and great-uncle Minoret was really coming to live in Nemours, they were seized (in spite of the political events which were just then weighing so heavily on Brie and on the Gatinais) with a devouring curiosity, which was not ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... Cartwright, there were several other children sitting in Mrs. Howard's parlour, waiting till dinner should be set on the table. My mother was there," said Mrs. Goodriche—"she was then a very little girl—and your grandmother and great-uncle, both young ones; with many others now dead and gone. In one corner of the parlour was a cupboard with glass doors, where Mrs. Howard had placed such of those pretty toys (as I before spoke of) which she meant to give away in the ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... water-belt there," said Lund, "than there was music in your great-uncle's jewsharp; but there's a spot off to the sou'-west that looks to me ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... King, and I was with you when Sompseu set the crown upon your head and you made promises to Sompseu—promises that you have not kept. Now you are weary of me, and it is well; for I am very old, and doubtless my talk is foolish, as it chances to the old. Yet I think that the prophecy of Chaka, your great-uncle, will come true, and that the white men will prevail against you and that through them you shall find your death. I would that I might have stood in one more battle and fought for you, O King, since fight you will, but the end which you choose is for me the best end. Sleep in peace, ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard
... maternal grandfather of Mme. de Beauseant. He had married the daughter of Chevalier de Rastignac, great-uncle of Eugene ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... A great-uncle of mine owned the Baskerville property (he, Baskerville, was buried in his own grounds) at the time of the Church and King Riot in 1791; but it was the recent growth of the town that ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... and most unusual, I know," she continued saying after she had scarified a place to scratch on. "Your great-uncle Everett Gayler did not scruple to call it phenomenal, and that when I was the merest child. After eleven no sleep!" She continued her knitting with tenacity to illustrate her wakefulness. "But I am glad, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... expected that my books saw little of me; but, on the contrary, I found in them a pleasure and a companionship that has lasted through my life. Thus it happened that I made considerable progress. So much so that the good Bishop, my great-uncle, often flattered me with the ambitious hopes of some day filling his Episcopal chair—a hope that, I need not ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... for five hundred dollars. I cannot connect Abel Strout with this shake-down—for that is what it is. The woman up in Michigan never heard of her great-uncle's property down here till this little Schrimpe told her. But we can't connect him with Strout. Strout's skirts are clear. And this Schrimpe had a perfect legal right to drum up trade. He's that kind of lawyer," said Mr. Payne, ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... return to the family in Wilton Square. Let us, before proceeding with the story, enumerate the younger Mutimers. The first-born, now aged five-and-twenty, had his great-uncle's name; Joseph Mutimer, married, and no better off in worldly possessions than when he had only himself to support, came to regret the coldness with which he had received the advances of his uncle the capitalist, and christened his son Richard, with half a hope that some ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... in the part of the country where your grandfather and your great-uncle Bidault belong, in the arrondissement of the deputy who ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... boyhood, he had passed to mutilating slaves; that not only had he given himself from his earliest years to every species of oriental lust—some too vile to be named—but he was even a drunkard, a vice forbidden by the Alcoran and foreign to the manners of Indostan. To his great-uncle, the late Nabob, who doted on him to distraction, he had shown, it was said, the basest ingratitude, insolently taking advantage of the old man's affection to accomplish his crimes and murders with impunity, and, if restrained in any of his desires, to withdraw ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... her mother's portrait had been, as she stared at the trembling Mitch cowering against Maggie's dress, she experienced the most terrifying, shattering upheaval since the day when as a little girl of six she had been faced as she had fancied, with the dripping ghost of her great-uncle William. Not at once, however, was the battle to begin. Maggie gave way about everything. She gave way at first because she was so confident of getting what she wanted later on. She never conceived that she was not to ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... Louise's prosaic and stupid great-uncle, as a young husband, felt dreadfully scandalized when his Queen, Marie Antoinette, bombarded ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... of adventure in a wild country that lay before him. He had in his blood a large share of the restless spirit of enterprise that has been the main factor in making the Anglo-Saxons the dominant race of the world. His father and his grandfather had both been officers in the royal navy, and a great-uncle had commanded a merchantman that traded in the Eastern seas, and had never come back from one of its voyages; there had been little doubt that all on board had been massacred and the ship burned by Malay pirates. His Uncle Harry had ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... literary merits— the merits of mere smoothness, clearness, grammatical coherence, and intelligibility—than the autograph; and I can understand the preference of some students for the former, though I do not share it Michelangelo the younger added fluency and grace to his great-uncle's composition by the sacrifice of much that is most characteristic, and by the omission of much that is profound and vigorous ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... a very old woman, and when his father is quite an old duke, and when he has a dozen little boys and girls of his own, you will tell him the story. Then he will reflect what a madman his great-uncle must have been, to have thought of making a duchess out of such a wizened old ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... understanding; firm in what he once resolved, or once denied; strongly intent on business, little on pleasure; by these virtues he engaged the attention of all men And the people, sensible that they owed their liberty and very existence to his family, and remembering that his great-uncle Maurice had been able, even in more early youth, to defend them against the exorbitant power of Spain, were desirous of raising this prince to all the authority of his ancestors; and hoped, from his valor and conduct alone, to receive protection against ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... me think of a story I heard Uncle Roger telling about Cousin Annetta King," said the Story Girl. "Great-uncle Jeremiah King used to live where Uncle Roger lives now, when Grandfather King was alive and Uncle Roger was a boy. In those days it was thought rather coarse for a young lady to have too hearty an appetite, ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... gentleness of an angel, taking continuous pleasure in her little son—indeed, Anna had said this was her only joy, to caress the illustrious infant and call him Paul—such name he had been christened—after a great-uncle. And again Dmitry lowered his eyes, and again Paul looked out of the window ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... ago," he began, "since I came into my property, Heatherleigh Hall, near Carlisle, Cumberland. It was left me by my great-uncle, General Wimpole, whom I had never seen, but who had made me his heir in preference to his other nephews, owing to my reputed likeness to an aunt, to whom he was greatly attached. Of course I was much envied, and I dare say ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... married; the other two did. Daniel was not very fond of money; the other two were, and they founded the glorious firm of Etches. Harold was the grandson of one brother, and Maud was the Granddaughter of the other. Consequently, they both stood in the same relation to Dan, who was their great-uncle—addressed ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett |
