"Threescore" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man of threescore and ten, broken in health, with spirit crushed, repeated after a priest these words: "I, Galileo Galilei, being in my seventieth year, a prisoner, on my knees before your Eminences, the Cardinals of the Holy See, having before mine eyes the Holy Bible, which I touch with my hands and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... to say agin it, cried Natty, grasping the bar on which his fingers were working with a convulsed motion. Where am I to get the money? Let me out into the woods and hills, where Ive been used to breathe the clear air, and though Im threescore and ten, if youve left game enough in the country, Ill travel night and day but Ill make you up the sum afore the season is over. Yes, yesyou see the reason of the thing, and the wicked ness of shutting up an old ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... it is physically divine. Besides the liquid flesh which delights the beholder, there is then the retina, the mysterious nerve which receives a thousand pictures on one surface and confuses none; and further, the mystery of the brain, which reproduces them at will, twenty years, yes threescore years and ten, afterwards. Perhaps of all physical things, the eye is most ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... At threescore years and five aroused anew To rule in India, forth a soldier went On whose bright-fronted youth fierce war had spent Its iron stress of storm, till glory grew Full as the red sun waned on Waterloo. Landing, he met the word from England ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... unacceptable to a man of broad views. The negativist of course assumed from the first that Martin, however respectable his knowledge, was far from possessing the scientific mind, and each conversation had supplied him with proofs of this defect; it was not at all in the modern spirit that the man of threescore years pursued his geological and kindred researches, but with the calm curiosity of a liberal intellect which has somehow taken this direction instead of devoting itself to literary study. At bottom, Godwin had no little sympathy with Mr. Warricombe; he too, in ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... class of thumb should never be given any position of authority over others, for he could not curb his ungovernable temper. He would also be absolutely unbalanced in his jealousy, and no woman who has the ambition to live to the usual "threescore-years-and-ten" should risk marriage to a man with one of these thumbs. But as "love is blind" it is useless, I know, to give advice in such ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... thee with my sword and buckler? There's my glove. I'll meet thee, to revenge my daughter's death. Call'st thou me dotard? Though these threescore years I never handled weapon but a knife, To cut my meat, yet will I meet thee there. God's precious! ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... pillars thereof of silver, The bottom thereof of gold, the seat of it of purple, The midst thereof being paved with love (love-gifts), From the daughters of Jerusalem. Behold, it is the litter of Solomon; Threescore mighty men are about it, Of the mighty men of Israel, They all handle the sword, and are expert in war: Every man hath his sword upon his thigh, Because of fear in ...
— Union And Communion - or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon • J. Hudson Taylor
... destinies of maritime cities. With the recorded experience of mediaeval writers at hand, we can localize lagoons and inland seas where to-day we find belts of luxuriant cultivation. In a lifetime falling short of the Psalmist's threescore years and ten observations may be made that necessitate ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... I said before, consisted at first of those that were assistants to Lycurgus in his great enterprise. Afterwards, to fill up any vacancy that might happen, he ordered the most worthy men to be selected, of those that were full threescore years old. This was the most respectable dispute in the world, and the contest was truly glorious; for it was not who should be swiftest among the swift, or strongest of the strong, but who was the wisest and best among the good and ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... among the wonders of womanhood more wonderful than this, that the young mind and young heart,—hearts and minds young as youth can make them, and in their natures as gay,—can assume the gravity and discretion of threescore years and maintain it successfully before all comers. And this is done, not as a lesson that has been taught, but as the result of an instinct implanted from the birth. Let us remember the mirth of our sisters in our homes, and their altered demeanours when those homes were ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... intermediate countries, the aggregate population of which includes one-half of mankind, kites are the favourite toy of both old and young boys, from three years to threescore and ten. Sometimes they really resemble the conventional dragon, from which, among Scotch children, they derive their name; sometimes they are of a diamond shape, and sometimes they are like a great spider ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... of their existence—mothers and fathers in Israel—crowded the schools established for their race. Some ministers of the Gospel after a half century of preaching entered school to learn how to spell out the names of the twelve Apostles. Old women who had lived out their threescore years and ten prayed that they might live to spell out the Lord's prayer, while the modest request of many departing patriarchs was that they might recognize the Lord's name in print. The sacrifices they made for themselves and children challenged the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... extinguished under vindictive Chicane. Behold him, that hapless Lally, his wild dark soul looking through his wild dark face; trailed on the ignominious death-hurdle; the voice of his despair choked by a wooden gag! The wild fire-soul that has known only peril and toil; and, for threescore years, has buffeted against Fate's obstruction and men's perfidy, like genius and courage amid poltroonery, dishonesty and commonplace; faithfully enduring and endeavouring,—O Parlement of Paris, dost thou reward it with a gibbet and a gag? (9th May, 1766: Biographie ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the waters raved, A ship drove on the land, A hundred human creatures saved, Kneeled down upon the sand. Threescore were drowned, threescore were thrown Upon the black rocks wild, And thus among them, left alone, They ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... did not know what trite meant. How could I ever judge Margaret fairly after such a crushing discovery of her superiority? I doubt if I ever did; yet oh, how pleasant it would have been, at about the age, say, of threescore and ten, to rake over these ashes for cinders with her,—she in a snowy cap, and I in ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of the latest productions of the poet Moore, addressed to the Marquis of Lansdowne, shows that though by that time inclining to threescore and ten, he retained all the fire and vivacity of early youth. It is full of those exquisitely apt allusions and felicitous turns of expression in which the English Anacreon excels. It breathes the very spirit of classic festivity. ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... has reached the shady side of threescore years and ten must remember many Lord-Lieutenants—the pompously visible ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... got stuck in the heel of an old shoe. And that's my story. But if ever a man saw anything at all, I saw a bit o' the sun; and I thank God for it. It was a blessed sight for a poor ragged old man of threescore and ten, which was ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... men-at-arms. 'Tis like the French will be three or four days before they come hither, and by that time, with fifty thousand men to work at them, we should have works so strong and high that we could fearlessly meet them. Moreover, the threescore English archers who still remain would be able to gall them as they pressed forward, whereas in a pitched battle they would not be ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... And Harvey's eyes, unmercifully keen, Have murdered fops, by whom she ne'er was seen. Niger adopts stray libels; wisely prone, To cover shame still greater than his own. Bathyllus, in the winter of threescore, Belies his innocence, and keeps a ——. Absence of mind Brabantio turns to fame, Learns to mistake, nor knows his brother's name; Has words and thoughts in nice disorder set, And takes a memorandum to forget. Thus vain, not knowing what adorns ...
— English Satires • Various
... great courtyard there was, and twelve sties for the sows, and four watch-dogs, fierce as wild beasts. In each sty were penned fifty swine; but the hogs were fewer in number, for the suitors ever devoured them at their feasts. There were but three hundred and threescore in all. The swineherd himself was shaping sandals, and of his men three were with the swine in the fields, and one was driving a fat beast to the city, to be meat for the suitors. But when Ulysses ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church
... may, if they please, console themselves with the fatuous commonplaces of a philosophic optimism. They may, with eyes tight shut, cling to the notion that they live in the best of all possible worlds, or discerning all the anguish that may be compressed into threescore years and ten, still try to accept the Stoic's paradox that pain is not an evil. Or, most wonderful and most common of all, they may find this joy of which they talk, in meditating on the moral perfections of the omnipotent ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... Maachah, and by her he had a son, whom he named Abijah. He had moreover many other children by other wives, but he loved Maachah above them all. Now he had eighteen legitimate wives, and thirty concubines; and he had born to him twenty-eight sons and threescore daughters; but he appointed Abijah, whom he had by Maachah, to be his successor in the kingdom, and intrusted him already with the treasures and the ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... 300 men. They spoiled the poetical knight of 5000 sheep, 200 nolt, 30 horses and mares; the whole furniture of his house of Blythe, worth 100 pounds Scots (L8. 6s. 8d.), and every thing else that was portable. "This spoil was committed the 16th day of May, 1570, (and the said Sir Richard was threescore and fourteen years of age, and grown blind,) in time of peace; when nane of that country LIPPENED [expected] such a thing."—"The Blind Baron's Comfort" consists in a string of puns on the word BLYTHE, the name ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... who know and love Dumas's swashbuckling hero, D'Artagnan, will remember that he was a Gascon and always spoiling for a fight. Foch was another Gascon who passed threescore years of his life peacefully enough—but when he did get into the fight at last, it was ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... years of slavery among Algerine pirates, he held up his head, being a man; plotted escape in dreams and waking; fought for freedom as a pinioned eagle might; was at last rescued by the Society for the Redemption of Slaves; sailed home from slavery to penury; came perilously near the age of threescore, poverty-stricken and unknown, when, like a sun which leaps from sunrise to noon at a single bound, this maimed soldier sprang mid-sky, impossible to be ignored or forgotten, and disclosed himself, the marked Spaniard of his era; and on the same ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... first letters of the Correspondence was, accordingly, just nineteen. German authorities have accepted 1788 as Bettina's birth-year, but English publications, including the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) still cling to 1785, the old date. Herman Grimm's account of Bettina's interests at threescore (Briefwechsel, XIX, f.) reveals the same preoccupation with Goethe, Shakespeare, and Beethoven. She died in the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... gain a half-year in each twelve-month as I have my programme mapped out, in seventy years I shall have a net gain of thirty-five years. Then, when Atropos comes along with her scissors to snip the thread, thinking I have reached my threescore and ten, I shall laugh in her face and let her know, between laughs, that I am really one hundred and five, and have played a thirty-five-year joke on her. Then I shall quote Bacon at her to clinch the joke: "A man may be young in years but old in hours if he ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... that I could not forbear taking off my Eye from her when she moved in her Bed, and was in the greatest Confusion imaginable every time she stired a Leg or an Arm. As the Coquets, who introduced this Custom, grew old, they left it off by Degrees; well knowing that a Woman of Threescore may kick and tumble her Heart out, without ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... I know of a truth, there is none of them left alive, For Willie went at eighty, and Harry at ninety-five; And Charlie at threescore years, aye! or more than that I'll be sworn, And that very remarkable infant that died before it ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... the women of the village, they looked on this sheet of water as a trap for their poor bodies and those of their children, and spoke of it as a singular hardship in their lot, that Hernshaw Mere had not been filled up threescore ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... spirit of man has an awful dread of eternity. Though this invisible realm is the proper home of the human soul, and it was made to dwell there forever, after the threescore and ten years of its residence in the body are over, yet it shrinks back from an entrance into this untried world, and clings with the desperate force of a drowning man to this "bank and shoal of time." There are moments in the life of a guilty man when the very idea of ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... persons wanting skill touching the Helvetians' change of state, and killing of Leopoldus the Duke of Austria, and restoring by force their country to liberty, that was done, as appeareth plainly by all stories, for two hundred and threescore years past or above, under Boniface the Eighth, when the authority of the "Bishop of Rome" was in greatest jollity; about two hundred years before Huldericus Zuinglius either began to teach the Gospel, or yet was born: and ever since that time ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... see what you lack? Here's complexion in my pack; White and red you may have in this place, To hide an old ill-wrinkled face: First, let me have but a catch of thy gold, Then thou shalt seem, Like a wench of fifteen, Although you be threescore and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... axioms, there is not one more just than that which says, "There are secrets in all families." These secrets the world commonly affects to know all about, but we think few will have reached the age of threescore without becoming convinced of how much pretending ignorance there is in this assumption of the world. "Tot ou tard tout se scait" is a significant saying of our old friends, the French, who know as much of things, in practice as any other ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... manner" was a small yet fatal fore-shadowing of the Chinese Pavilion at Brighton—of that temple, worthy of Pekin, wherein the Royal infant of threescore was wont to enshrine himself, not from the desecrating touch of the world, but even from the eyes of a curious people, who, having paid some millions toward manufacturing the most finished gentleman in Europe, had now and then a wish—an unregarded ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... are reasons, sire, Good reasons for despondence! As I came I learnt, past question, that Bavaria Swerves on the very pivot of desertion. This adds some threescore ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... with the same propriety take upon himself to be an instructor and legislator in the medical world, as he who had been taught to distinguish truth from falsehood, in the course of so extended an experience, protracted now to almost threescore years? to this may be added, that he has so contrived to blend the utile dulci, by embellishing his precepts with all the delicacy of polite expression, as to render them at the same time not less ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... his aunt in the country, who used to tell him that when he was come to her years and experience he would know that all's not gold that glitters: and it must be owned that his aunt was a very sensible, harsh-looking maiden lady of threescore and upwards. But he was too apt to forget this caution and now, it seems, it had not occurred to him. Stepping up, therefore, to the gentleman, who was lamenting the want of silver, "Your intentions, ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... of polished manners certainly, the superficial polish of the Frenchman, but of no other attraction, and even in that there was something about him to Mary particularly repulsive. He had seen some threescore years; his countenance, in general inexpressive, at times betrayed that strong and evil passions were working at his heart. He was said to be very rich, though some reports had gone about that his fortune had all been amassed by gambling in no very ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... from the same noble spirit that, two years after, Paulus AEmilius his father being dead, he made over to his brother Fabius, who was not so wealthy as himself, the part of their father's estate, which was his (Scipio's) due, (amounting to above threescore thousand crowns,(930)) in order that there might not be so great a disparity between his fortune ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... spent in cooking it, found in her threescore eggs, and her flesh the most savoury and pleasant I ever tasted in ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... grows better, yet I am not fully recovered. I believe it is held, that men do not recover very fast after threescore. I hope yet to see Beattie's College: and have not given up the western voyage. But however all this may be or not, let us try to make each other happy when we meet, and not refer our pleasure to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... [seventy-eight] who seemed to have more complete possession of his faculties, bodily and mental; and this surprised me the more because I knew that in his childhood he had been a feeble-limbed, frail boy.... I found him, having overpassed by nearly a decade the allotted threescore years and ten, with step as active and eye as bright and conversation as vivacious as one expects in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... nurtured is not so terrific as to doubt respecting the intellectual vigour on whose strength you have staked your happiness. Yet these were mighty ones; perhaps the records of the world will not yield us threescore to be their mates! Then tremble, ye whose cheek glows too warmly at their names! Who would be more than man should fear lest he ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... the misfortune of some other person. Jonas pushed a truck loaded with hams from the smoke rooms on to an elevator, and thence to the packing rooms. The trucks were all of iron, and heavy, and they put about threescore hams on each of them, a load of more than a quarter of a ton. On the uneven floor it was a task for a man to start one of these trucks, unless he was a giant; and when it was once started he naturally ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... And shows, dissolved in thine own melting tears. And shows, still whimpering thro' threescore of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... a warm and sultry day, towards the close of one of the warmest and most sultry summers which Upper Canada has ever known, an extraordinary trial took place at the court-house in the old town of Niagara. The time was more than threescore years ago, when York was a place of insignificant proportions; when Hamilton could barely be said to have an existence; and when the sites of most of the other towns of the Province whose names are now familiar to us still formed part of the hunting-grounds ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... In the heat of the debate, however, an almost forgotten voice reached him, reciting one of the consolations of Father Hilarion: "Temptations are for all of us; nor shall any man be free of them. The most we can hope is to be delivered from them. What vanity to think we can travel threescore and ten years from our cradles, if so long we live, without an overture of some kind from the common enemy! On the other side, what a triumph to put his blandishments by! The Great Exemplar did not fly from Satan; he ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... stormiest sessions. The whole court was out of patience; and with good reason. These threescore distinguished churchmen, illustrious tacticians, veteran legal gladiators, had left important posts where their supervision was needed, to journey hither from various regions and accomplish a most simple and easy matter—condemn and send to death a country-lass of nineteen who could neither read ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hundred seventeen— Where am I now? where have I been? My age about threescore and three, Then surely thankful ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... Threescore and ten! I wish it were all to live again. Doesn't the Scripture somewhere say, By reason of strength men oft-times may Even reach fourscore? Alack! who knows? Ten sweet, long years of life! I would paint Our Lady and many and many a saint, And thereby win my soul's repose. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... anything but medicine try. No more in Pewterer's Hall[231] was heard The proper force of every word; Those seats were desolate become, A hapless Elocution dumb. 610 Form, city-born and city-bred, By strict Decorum ever led, Who threescore years had known the grace Of one dull, stiff, unvaried pace, Terror prevailing over Pride, Was seen to take a larger stride; Worn to the bone, and clothed in rags, See Avarice closer hug his bags; With her own weight unwieldy grown, See Credit ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... SIGMA}" which were severally used to represent the numbers 600, 60 and 6, making 666. As the name of the beast is equivalent to this number, the letters in it will represent numbers which amount to six hundred threescore and six. ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... me, Mr. Parson, Ef I seem a little sore; But I 've sung the songs of Isr'el For threescore years an' more, An' it sort o' hurts my feelin's Fur to see 'em put away Fur these harum-scarum ditties 'At is capturin' ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... this present Parliament A leiger to the Devil sent, Fully empowered to treat about Finding revolted witches out? And has he not within a year Hanged threescore ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... far away, Mid Berkshire's hills, one winter's day, Was humming with its wonted noise Of threescore mingled girls and boys; Some few upon their tasks intent, But more on furtive mischief bent. The while the master's downward look Was fastened on a copy-book; When suddenly, behind his back, Rose sharp and clear a rousing ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... an old, old man, was my grandfather. The proverbial "threescore years and ten" was an old story with him, and even the "fourscore" awarded to the strong was receding into the distance. Yet there he sat, in his old straight-back chair, hale and bright, as he looked round on us his descendants, sons and daughters grey-haired already, grandchildren, ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... tipped with trenchers of wood instead of steel pikes. Wert thou not with me when I said to that same gay Marquis, 'Here we be, three good Christians, and on yonder plain there pricks a band of some threescore Saracens—what say you to charge them briskly? There are but twenty unbelieving miscreants to each ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... which is now extending beyond the allotted span of threescore and ten, I have been engaged after the manner of my countrymen, in many sorts of work, have become interested in many conditions of men have joined in many efforts which I hope have been of use; ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... spear of well-ground steel, and still dabbles in aquafortis. An old, old man, he is still strong and hale. If you ask him a reason for his thus rivalling Fontenelle in his patriarchal greenness, for his being able at threescore and ten to paint pictures, (witness that colossal oil-painting of the "Triumph of Bacchus,") to make speeches, and to march at the head of his company as a captain of volunteers, he will give you at once the why and because. He is the most zealous, the most conscientious, and the most invulnerable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... protested certain conciliatory spirits, pressing to the front, "consider, if but for a short breath of time. A day here is as threescore of their years as these mortals live. By to-morrow night not only Sun Wei, but most of those now dwelling down below, will have Passed Beyond. But the story of his unpunished infamy will live. We shall become discredited ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... time of making this deed, half a century had elapsed since the conflict on the hills of Mystic—fifty eventful years in the history of our Colonies. If he was twenty-five years of age when he parted from Eliot in 1646 or 1647, he had then reached threescore years and five; not by any means an aged man, but, for all we know, he may have ...
— John Eliot's First Indian Teacher and Interpreter Cockenoe-de-Long Island and The Story of His Career from the Early Records • William Wallace Tooker
... when she married my father (who was her senior by many years) she had attained the middle age before I was born, no children having been vouchsafed to my parents in the early stages of their union. Yet even at the present day, now that years threescore and ten have passed over her head, attended with sorrow and troubles manifold, poorly chequered with scanty joys, can I look on that countenance and doubt that at one time beauty decked it as with a glorious ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... bark a sort of gum, which exudes freely, particularly in old and diseased trees. It was formerly supposed to be sovereign against some diseases. The number of varieties which have been grafted on these wild stocks is very great. So long ago as 1597, Gerard recounts: 'I have threescore sorts in my garden (at Holborn), all strange and rare: there be in other places many more common, and yet yeerely commeth to our hands others not knowne before.' The bark of both kinds of wild plum was formerly much used in medicine, and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... worry, fret not yourself because of evildoers, let not indignation lacerate your heart, take the sensible and solid view of things, read the Times, and you will surpass the Psalmist's limit of threescore ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... received power reached its climax when they walked round the Close and reached the back of the Cathedral. I know that now, both for Jeremy and me, that prospect has dwindled into its proper grown-up proportions, but how can a man, be he come to threescore and ten and more, ever forget the size, the splendour, the stupendous extravagance ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... case when a man of such cosmopolitan celebrity outlives the ordinary allotted period of threescore years and ten; for a younger generation has then sprung up, who only hear of his great fame, and are ignorant of the long and painful steps by which it was achieved. These remarks are peculiarly applicable in regard to the man whose career we are ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... so far away—and yet the space between them and us is spanned by a lifetime of threescore years and ten— life was simpler in all its details; yet such towns as Boston, already old, had well established local customs which varied not at all from year to year; many of which lingered in later phases of urban growth. In Boston, or at least in that part of Boston ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... which it has entered with Damascus shall also implicate it in a communion of punishment with it, chap. xvii. 3. The adversaries of Rezin shall devour Israel with open mouth, chap. ix. 11, 12. Yea Asshur shall, some time afterwards, put an end altogether to the kingdom of Israel; "Within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken that it shall not be a people any more," chap. vii. 8. Upon Judah also severe sufferings shall be inflicted by Asshur. He shall invade and devastate their land, chap. vii. 17, and chap. viii. He shall irresistibly penetrate to the neighbourhood ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... celestial choir. Then did all who beheld this wondrous vision earnestly entreat of Saint Patrick that in that place, consecrated of heaven, he would build a church. But the saint refused, and prophesied unto them: "When threescore years have passed away, then shall a son of life be born, and his name shall be Comhgallus, which is, being interpreted, the Beautiful Pledge; for he shall be beloved of God and of man, and beautiful in his manners and in his merits; and he shall happily go forward, ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... climacteric, declining years, decrepitude, hoary age, caducity[obs3], superannuation; second childhood, second childishness; dotage; vale of years, decline of life, "sear and yellow leaf" [Macbeth]; threescore years and ten; green old age, ripe age; longevity; time of life. seniority, eldership; elders &c. (veteran) 130; firstling; doyen, father; primogeniture. [Science of old age.] geriatrics, nostology|. V. be aged &c. adj.; grow old, get ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... scene discloses! False wits, false wives, false virgins, and false spouses! Statesmen with bridles on; and, close beside 'em, 15 Patriots, in party-coloured suits, that ride 'em. There Hebes, turn'd of fifty, try once more To raise a flame in Cupids of threescore. These in their turn, with appetites as keen, Deserting fifty, fasten on fifteen, 20 Miss, not yet full fifteen, with fire uncommon, Flings down her sampler, and takes up the woman: The little urchin smiles, and spreads her ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... latent possibilities, all reaching ultimately the same place, it nevertheless is true that at any particular time some are more fully awakened, evolved, unfolded. One should also be careful, if life is continuous, eternal, how he judges any particular life merely from these threescore years and ten; for the very fact of life, in whatever form, means continual activity, growth, advancement, unfoldment, attainment, and, if there is the one, there must of necessity be the other. So in regard to this one or that one, no ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... cast off and spurned; the innamorata of Piero de' Medici, wronged and despised; the wife of Carlo de' Panciatichi, divorced and cloistered, lived on and on, far beyond the scriptural limit of threescore years and ten—the pathetic victim of ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... Virginia's most prominent and most enlightened sons, a graduate of William and Mary College, and the friend of Bishop Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and most of Virginia's other distinguished men, living in his day—one who, in age, has passed the threescore and ten allotted to mankind, and whose dignified yet gentle bearing tells that he is one of the survivors of a class now nearly extinct, "the Virginia gentleman of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... about it. I am past seventy-six, Edward; and you know, Edward, the Bible says that the days of man are threescore years and ten; so that I am beyond the mark. And now, Edward, I have but few words to say. Be careful—if not for your own sake, at least for your little sisters'. You are young, but you are strong and powerful above your years, ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... must kiss, nay, you must kiss none but him too— and nuzle thro his Beard to find his Lips— and this you must submit to for threescore Years, and all for ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... mention to him of aught, he said, "I have plenty of it." Next day, he again repaired to the market-street where he showed a friendly bias towards the merchants and borrowed of them more money, which he distributed to the poor: nor did he leave doing thus twenty days, till he had borrowed threescore thousand dinars, and still there came no baggage, no, nor a burning plague.[FN38] At last folk began to clamour for their money and say, "The merchant Ma'aruf's baggage cometh not. How long will he take people's ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... to the highest fame as a statesman and orator, passing away at threescore and ten, his latest years overshadowed by the grief ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... loomed dead Kathiapur, an island of stone girdled by the shallow silver river. Like the rugged pedestal of some mammoth column, its cliffs rose sheer threescore feet from the water's edge to the foot of the outermost of its triple walls. From the notch in the hills a great stone causeway climbed with a long and easy grade to the level of the first great gate, spanning the chasm over the river ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... them, a moderately thriving haberdasher within Bow Bells, retired since with something under a competence, writes himself parcel gentleman, hath borne parish offices, sings fine old sea songs at threescore and ten, sighs only now and then when he thinks that he has a son on his hands about 15, whom he finds a difficulty in getting out into the world, and then checks a sigh with muttering, as I once heard him prettily, not meaning to be heard, "I have ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... gathered to his fathers, and his son also, and Nabonnedon Belshazzar reigns in his stead, yet have I endured to this day, in Babylon, these threescore and seven years, since Nebuchadnezzar the king destroyed our place upon the earth and led us away captive. Unto this day, Zoroaster, have I endured, and yet a little longer shall I stand and bear ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... sure that Franklin would be less ready to answer, continued: "What is now their pride?" And in a flash the old philosopher of threescore and ten said, "To wear their old clothes over again till they can make new ones." Years had not broken the strong will or dulled ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... years the church of Christ found refuge in seclusion and obscurity. Thus says the prophet: "The woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days."(83) ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... dominions of the King of Dahomey. There is in fact a sort of harmony discoverable between the capabilities of the landscape within a circle of ten miles' radius, or the limits of an afternoon walk, and the threescore years and ten of human life. It will never become ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father; and the physicians embalmed Israel. And forty days were fulfilled for him; for so are fulfilled the days of those which are embalmed; and the Egyptians mourned for him threescore and ten days. And when the days of his mourning were past, Joseph spake unto the house of Pharaoh, saying, "If now I have found grace in your eyes, speak, I pray you, in the ears of Pharaoh, saying, 'My father made me swear, saying, "Lo, I die: in my grave which I have digged for me in ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... his being ninety; no, nor even a hundred. Why, a man with any feeling ought to be ashamed of being eighty, let alone more. Where's his religion, I should like to know, when he goes flying in the face of the Bible like that? Threescore-and-ten's the mark, and no man with a conscience, and a proper sense of what's expected of him, has any business to ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... in England. Even the government, who at first were inclined to suffer the demonstration against the Royalists to gather head, grew alarmed. Absolute revolution was imminent, and resolute measures had to be taken. Nor did the public temper cool until threescore of the most wretched of those who live in the foul dens of the great city lay dead along the streets of Kensington and Belgravia. The military were forced to shoot them down to ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... expedition, have worn him more than anything else; but now that you have returned, I have no doubt, after the first excitement is over, that he will rally. Still man is born to die, Mr Wilmot, and your uncle has already lived beyond the threescore years and ten allotted to the average age of man. Depend upon it, everything shall be done which can protract a life ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... ... say the cow bells far up on the hillside, coming nearer and nearer; the cattle are coming home for the night. Fifteen head of them, and five-and-forty sheep and goats besides; threescore in all. There go the women out with their milk-pails, carried on yokes from the shoulder: Leopoldine, Jensine, and little Rebecca. All three barefooted. The Margravine, Inger herself, is not with them; she is indoors preparing the meal. ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Shakespeare's time could probably show as good Plums as we can now. "To write of Plums particularly," said Gerard, "would require a peculiar volume. . . . Every clymate hath his owne fruite, far different from that of other countries; my selfe have threescore sorts in my garden, and all strange and rare; there be in other places many more common, and yet yearly commeth to our hands ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... distant enemy, he resolved to embrace the honorable pretext of withdrawing his sons from the luxury of Rome, which enervated their minds and irritated their passions; and of inuring their youth to the toils of war and government. Notwithstanding his advanced age, (for he was above threescore,) and his gout, which obliged him to be carried in a litter, he transported himself in person into that remote island, attended by his two sons, his whole court, and a formidable army. He immediately passed the walls ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... been observed of the aged, that although existence, when extended beyond the usual period of "threescore years and ten," is nothing "but labour and sorrow," they still adhere to life with the utmost tenacity, and are even less disposed to relinquish it than those whose more vigorous powers and undecayed youth capacitate them for its enjoyment. But however ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... bank is one hundred and fifty feet high, the mass of earth that tumbles down is of course immense, and the pipemen must stand far off, for fear that they will be caught in the avalanche. Such accidents are of daily occurrence, and the deaths from this cause probably are not less than threescore every year in the state. Often legs are broken; still more frequently the pipemen have warning, and escape in time. When men are buried in the falling dirt, the water is used to wash them out. In some claims, the pipe will tear down more dirt than the sluice ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell
... could remember. In short, they were unlucky to have been bred in an unpolished age, and more unlucky to live to a refined one. They have lasted beyond their own, and are cast behind ours; and, not contented to have known little at the age of twenty, they boast of their ignorance at threescore. ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... my life are protracted beyond the Psalmist's threescore and ten, even though the events that chance in the comparatively long future seethe and struggle as strenuously as those that befell in the eager, vivid procession of yesterdays which makes up my past, my memory's ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... character of the people. Among the scholars of Germany there have been no greater names than those of Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, brothers not far apart in the cradle, not far apart in death, who lived and worked together their full threescore years and ten. They were two wonderful old men, with faces—as I saw them together in a photograph shown me by Hermann Grimm, the well-known son of Wilhelm—full of intellectual strength, and yet with the sweetness and innocence of children. They lie ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... brief narrative should induce anyone to "gird up his loins," shoulder his pack and essay a similar pilgrimage, the author will feel that he has not been unrewarded. And if a man over threescore years of age can tramp through seven counties and return, in spite of intense heat, feeling better and stronger than when he started, a young fellow in the hey-day of life and sound of wind and limb surely ought not to ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... The short space of threescore years can never content the imagination of man; nor can the imperfect joys of this world satisfy his heart. Man alone, of all created beings, displays a natural contempt of existence, and yet a boundless desire to exist; he scorns life, but he dreads annihilation. ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... usurer watch o'er his bags and his house, To keep that from robbers he rak'd from his debtors, Which at midnight cries thieves at the noise of a mouse, And he looks if his trunks are fast bound to their fetters; When once he's grown rich enough for a State's plot, But in one hour plunders what threescore years got. ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... this moment that there was a time in the history of the world when the science of medicine was unknown, when people lived to the incredible age of many centuries; and, even after the span of life had been reduced to threescore and ten, sickness was comparatively unknown. In ancient times, it was looked upon as a calamity, that had overtaken a tribe or people, when one of its ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... than the truest friend, He must be tenderer than a woman's love, A father better than the best of sires; Kinder than she who bore us, though we sin Oftener than did the brother we are told, We-poor ill-tempered mortals-must forgive, Though seven times sinning threescore times ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... be in error concerning your disease; and that threescore years and ten may be alloted you, to embody the airy dreams you love so well. I repeat, if you wish to prolong your days, give yourself more rest. I can do you little good; still, if at any time you fancy that I can aid or relieve you, do not hesitate ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... four Years Time, the War ceasing, he was oblig'd to make use of what Jewels and Money he had left of his own, for his Pay was quite spent. But at last his whole Fund being exhausted to about fifty or threescore Pounds, he began to have Thoughts of returning to his native Country, England; which in a few Weeks he did, and appear'd at the Tower to some of his Majesty's (King Charles the Second's) Officers, in a very plain and coarse, but clean and decent Habit: ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... that dinner was over, and a second young woman—apparently the original owner of my boots—was disposing the crockery on the dresser. In the parlour, Mr. Q——, a man of overpowering dignity, redolent of the Bench, and, as I think, his age some fifty, or by'r lady inclining to threescore, was dining in solitary grandeur, waited on by young woman number three. Lucullus ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... high noon they rode away to the east, threescore strong, with Brian and Cathbarr and the remaining eight axmen in the van. Brian did not spare either man or horse that day, for there was little food left them; when midnight came they had slipped past Galway ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... was the picture of health—a personification of contentment. When I knew him, his years must have considerably exceeded threescore; but his good-natured face was as ruddy as health could make it; his hair, though mingled with grey, was as thick and strong as if he had been but twenty; his person was still muscular and active; ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... seems the fear of death, Seeing how gladly we all sink to sleep, Babes, Children, Youths, and Men, Night following night for threescore years and ten! But doubly strange, where life is but a breath 5 To sigh and pant with, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... bended knees, I give myself, and all I have and am, afresh to Him whom I have endeavoured to serve, but very imperfectly, for more than threescore years. All helpless, myself, I most humbly and devoutly pray that Divine strength may be perfected in my weakness, and that my last days on earth may be my best days—best days of implicit faith and ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall; Threescore men and threescore more Cannot place Humpty Dumpty as ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... and that no one has a right to ask more of him than faithful performance of the duties he has undertaken. I venture to count it an improbable suggestion that any such person—a man, let us say, who has well-nigh reached his threescore years and ten, and has graduated in all the faculties of human relationships; who has taken his share in all the deep joys and deeper anxieties which cling about them; who has felt the burden of young lives entrusted to ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... seekers. But in a little while the mines gave out, one terrible winter night the whole town was destroyed by fire, and now that the miners were drifting to other camps, few of the shacks were rebuilt. Of the six thousand that had been, scarcely threescore remained. A few trappers ran their lines out from the town, a few men had placer claims in the old diggings, two or three woodsmen made precarious livings as guides for such wealthy men as came to hunt moose and caribou, and Bradleyburg's course was run. The winter cold ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... is full already; and, if you force the men to live to threescore and ten, you will overcrowd it so, they will come ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... than if I had built a hundred Pyramids at my own Expence, or published as many Volumes of the finest Wit and Learning. In what a beautiful Light has the Holy Scripture represented Abdon, one of the Judges of Israel, who had forty Sons and thirty Grandsons, that rode on Threescore and Ten Ass-Colts, according to the Magnificence of the Eastern Countries? How must the Heart of the old Man rejoice, when he saw such a beautiful Procession of his own Descendants, such a numerous Cavalcade of his own ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... unregarded kindness of nature, which has given flowers that only open in the evening, and only bloom through the night-season. NECKER perceived the influence of late studies in life; for he tells us, that "the era of threescore and ten is an agreeable age for writing; your mind has not lost its vigour, and ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... but the Jewel found it was held so that he could not move it. It was of no use. The youth was his master in muscle, and in that deadly Indian hug in which men wrestle with their eyes;—over in five seconds, but breaks one of their two backs, and is good for threescore years and ten;—one trial enough,—settles the whole matter,—just as when two feathered songsters of the barnyard, game and dunghill, come together,-after a jump or two at each other, and a few sharp ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the last winding of the gorge he came upon a cluster of some threescore tents, spread over the level pocket at the valley's end. Almost against the northern wall the house of the commander had been built to receive the earliest shadow of the afternoon. The military standard was raised upon ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... preserved her Majesty's forces with the least losses that ever hath been heard of, being within the compass of so great volleys of shot, both small and great. I verily believe there is not threescore men lost of her Majesty's forces." Captain J. Fenner to Walsingham, 4/14 Aug. 1588. (S. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... the amount of estate to which her husband had become heir. There were those among them who could not understand Susan's genuine grief, and there were others whose consolations were no less distressing to one of her reserved character. She made brief answer that the squire was threescore and fifteen years old, his wife nigh about his age; that her husband was now their only child; that he was descended from a son of the great Earl John, killed at the Bridge of Chatillon, that he held the estate of Bridgefield in fief on tenure of military service to ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fights do be made here over nothing,' said an old man next me. 'Did Mourteen or any of them on the big island ever tell you of the fight they had there threescore years ago when they were killing each other with knives out on ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... Lord of Battles: "Shall it be, That this great city, planted by the sea, With threescore thousand souls—with fanes and spires Reared by a race of unexampled sires— That I have watched, now twice a hundred years,[1] Nursed through long infancy of hopes and fears, Baptized in blood at seasons, oft in tears; Purged with the storm and fire, and bade to ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... three syllables lopped off at the end, and for family reasons not divulged here. He assented that he was a fellow-pupil of Liszt's under the beneficent, iron rule of Carl Czerny. But he never looked his age. Seemingly seventy, a very vital threescore-and-ten, by the way, he was as light on his feet as were his fingers on the keyboard. A linguist, speaking without a trace of foreign accent three or four tongues, he was equally fluent in all. Once launched in an argument there was no stopping him. ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... desperadoes, ran boldly into the midst of the pearl fleet off the coast of South America, attacked the vice admiral under the very guns of two men-of-war, captured his ship, though she was armed with eight guns and manned with threescore men, and would have got her safely away, only that having to put on sail, their main-mast went by the board, whereupon the men-of-war came up with them, and the ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... porte. The Venetians haue alwayes their Podesta, or Gouernour, with his two Counsellours resident therein. The towne is welle inhabited, and hath great quantity of housholders. The Iland by report is threescore and tenne miles about, it is able to make twentie thousand fighting men. They say they have alwayes fiue or sixe hundred horsemen readie at an houres warning. They saye the Turke hath assayed it with 100. Gallies, but he could neuer bring his purpose to passe. It is strange to mee ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... you did; They're a source of care and trouble - Just as you were - only double. Comes at last the final stroke - Time has had his little joke! Ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! Daily driven (Wife as drover) Ill you've thriven - Ne'er in clover: Lastly, when Threescore and ten (And not till then), The joke is over! Ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! Then - and then The ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert |
