Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.
Old
I saw that time of life begin
When every man, the port approaching, ought
To coil the ropes, and take the canvas in.
Dante.—Inferno, Canto XXVII. Line 79. (Wright’s Translation.)
The good mariner, when he draws near the port, furls his sails, and enters it softly; so ought we to lower the sails of our worldly operations, and turn to God with all our heart and understanding.
Dante.—Convito, Trat. 4, 28. (Note by Mr. Wright.)
Old age came creeping in the peaceful gown,
And civil functions weigh’d the soldier down.
Rowe’s Lucan, Book I. Line 245.
Still seem’d he to possess and fill his place,
But stood the shadow of what once he was.
Rowe’s Lucan, Book I. Line 256.
Old age, a second child, by nature curs’d,
With more and greater evils than the first,
Weak, sickly, full of pains; in every breath
Railing at life, and yet afraid of death.
Churchill.—Gotham, Book I.
An old age serene and bright,
And lovely as a Lapland night,
Shall lead thee to thy grave.
Wordsworth.—(To a Young Lady.)
Old as I am, for ladies’ love unfit,
The power of beauty I remember yet,
Which once inflam’d my soul, and still inspires my wit.
Dryden.—Cymon and Iphigenia, Line 1.
What though his hair be gray, he is not old in mind.
Plautus.—Miles Gloriosus, Act III. Scene 1.
An old man, broken with the storms of state,
Is come to lay his weary bones among ye;
Give him a little earth for charity!
Shakespeare.—King Henry VIII., Act IV. Scene 2. (Griffith on Wolsey’s death.)
In wretchedness grown old.
Congreve.—Priam’s Lamentation.
Old John of Gaunt, time-honour’d Lancaster.
Shakespeare.—King Richard II., Act I. Scene 1. (The King to his Uncle.)
An old man is twice a child.
Shakespeare.—Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2. (Hamlet speaking of Polonius.)
Old ladies who have flirted with our fathers, always seem to claim a sort of property in the sons.
Bulwer Lytton.—Devereux, Book V. Chap. IV.