"Prime of life" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... while he thought over that abortive system of decimal coinage by which he had once hoped to make himself one of the great benefactors of his nation, revolving in his mind the troubles which his wife brought upon him, and regretting the golden inanity of the coronet which in the very prime of life had expelled him from the House of Commons. Here he seated himself, and for an hour neither stirred from his seat, nor touched a pen, nor opened a book. He was trying to calculate in his mind what might be the consequences of paying the money to Mr. Lopez. But when the calculation ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... is my natal hour, And only now my prime of life; I will not doubt the love untold, Which not my worth or want hath bought, Which wooed me young, and wooes me old, And to ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... was lonely, and had need of love. I have in me for her a passionate avowal and strictly honorable proposal, written to her, after many rough copies, by a gentleman who had made her acquaintance under this very roof. He was rich, he was charming, he was in the prime of life. He had asked if he might write to her. She had flutteringly granted his request. He posted me to her the day after his return to London. I looked forward to being torn open by her. I was very sure she ...
— A. V. Laider • Max Beerbohm
... 1828, with the title Colburn's United Service Magazine; under which name, save and except the Colburn, it still survives. Besides weightier matters, its early issues abounded in reminiscences by naval officers, then yet in the prime of life, who had served through the great Napoleonic wars. More delightful still, it had numerous nautical stories, based probably on facts, serials under such entrancing titles as "Leaves from my Log Book," by Flexible Grommet, Passed Midshipman; a pen-name, the nautical ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... climate was even kinder to him than that of Italy. He went to all the famous places, and saw many of the famous Englishmen, and wrote that he felt England to be his home. Burying himself in the ancient gloom of a university town, altho past the prime of life, he studied like an ambitious boy. He said again that his life had been wine poured upon the ground, and he felt guilty. And so our cousin became ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... the Almighty, who does not allow perfection to be of this world, did not permit him to remain on earth, when once he had reached that point. He allowed him, however,—and this perhaps as a compensation for all the injuries which he had suffered,—to die in the prime of life a death worthy of him; the death of a virtuous man, of a hero, of ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... his stalwart shoulders was embroidered with shells and silver spangles. His sun-burnt face was free from the Runic characters which the slow finger of Time is apt to trace upon the brow of the human race; and but for the color of his hair, he would have been mistaken for a man in the prime of life. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... also buried without unnecessary delay. I have even seen a man in the prime of life all ready placed upon the bier before he was dead, and the mourners and others waiting to convey him to his long home, as soon ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... metropolis, and, on knocking, the door was opened to me by a man who might be six and forty years of age—there, or thereabout. Guessing the purport of my visit, he said nothing, but led me up to his master's room, when a spectacle of the most appalling character met my eyes. A gentleman in the prime of life, lay extended on a bed—his hair dishevelled, his dress disordered, and his complexion a midway hue between the tints of chalk and Cheshire cheese. His tongue hung out of his mouth, loaded with evidence of internal strife. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... was personally interested? There was nothing in the address that he delivered which appealed to the enthusiasm of women. He was undoubtedly a handsome man, whose appearance proclaimed him to be in the prime of life, midway, perhaps, between thirty and forty years of age. But why a lady should persist in keeping an opera-glass fixed on him all through his speech was a question which found the general ingenuity at a ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... All the other hands, some forty in number, submitted and took the yoke upon them, and went down into the house of bondage, knowing whither they went. Every man of them is now a beggar, compared with what he was then. Many are dead in the prime of life of consumption, bad food and lodging, and the peculiar diseases of our trade. Some have not been heard of lately—we fancy them imprisoned in some sweaters' dens—but thereby hangs a tale, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... that we do not pay our men enough. A London director has to be content with an honorific position, a fee of a few hundred pounds a year, and, it must be added, a very exiguous degree of responsibility. That is not enough to attract men in the prime of life with expert or technical knowledge of industry and finance, who would have to submit to a reduction in the large incomes they are earning by the exercise of their special abilities if they were to accept a seat on the board of a ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... struggle. He desired this woman mightily. That he had been totally indifferent to her before argued nothing. He had been suddenly awakened: and he was in the prime of life. But the very strength of his desire warned him. If he had really been on a hunt for ivory—well—he wrenched his mind savagely from even a contemplation of possibilities. Still, it would be a very sweet relation in a lonely life—a women of this quality, ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... Abbey, while I and a few others went up to the Abbey gates, and knocked loudly four times with my sword-hilt, stamping on the ground meantime. A long, low whistle answered me from within, which I in my turn answered: then the wicket opened, and a monk came out, holding a lantern. He seemed yet in the prime of life, and was a tall, powerful man. He held the lantern to my face, then smiled, and said, "The banners hang low." I gave the countersign, "The crest is lopped off." "Good my son," said he; "the ladders are within here. I dare not trust any of the brethren to carry them for you, though ...
— The Hollow Land • William Morris
... Maximus seemed a man just passing the prime of life. His figure, as he sat his horse, was squat rather than tall, though this appearance might be due, in a measure, to the great breadth of his shoulders; altogether his frame seemed one better adapted to feats of strength and endurance than for those of agility. The face, ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... gratitude for having interfered to check the progress of Russian conquest upon his northern frontier. After Persia had long been closed from foreign intercourse by the jealous and cruel Shah, Aga Mohammed, Fath' Ali, a comparatively enlightened prince in the prime of life, willingly entertained envoys and travellers from European courts, and Sir Gore Ouseley was resident at Shiraz as British Ambassador. Yet it was not considered safe for a Frank to travel through Persia without an Oriental dress, ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... four hundred and fifty yards separating us when I passed through the line of warriors; therefore, for the moment, I could only take in the general effect of the group, and very imposing it was. For, with the exception of some half a dozen elders, every one of those chiefs was in the very prime of life, ringed of course, standing fully six feet in height, each one of them bearing the scars of many battles—as I perceived when I drew near—and evidently men who knew not the meaning of the word fear. And in every respect ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... conversation they lingered near me, and I had full opportunity to contemplate her. Scarcely, however, had I cast my eyes upon her companion, but even her beauty was not powerful enough to fix my attention. He appeared to be a man still in the prime of life, rather slight, and of a tall, noble figure. Never have I beheld so much mind, so much noble expression, in a human countenance. Though perfectly secured from observation, I was unable to meet the lightning glance that shot from ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... even now. It was a sight that should be seen; for words convey very little idea of the pathos of the scene. We were walking through the thick jungle on the hillside when on the narrow path we saw a little procession wending its way toward us. In front walked a big, hardened-looking man, in the prime of life; behind him came a child, a slim, wonderfully fair girl of about ten years, lithe and graceful, with large, expressive dark eyes. After her came a woman prematurely old, her face lined and ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... an increase of fever from working in ill-ventilated rooms, an increase of poor-rates, {215b} and an especial increase of orphanage and widowhood, as the fever chiefly seizes upon persons in the prime of life. And a large part of this increase is thus distinctly brought home to neglect, or ignorance, on the part of the employers of labour. Surely, as soon as they are made cognizant of this matter, they will at once hasten to correct it. In the appendix ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... Thus in the prime of life, hardly understanding a word of the trial, stunned, helpless, alone, the latter began upon his term of five years in the penitentiary. His patient, gentle face impressed me as it did others, and his very helplessness ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... frequent pestilence. It is calculated that about one-tenth of the whole population of the country were killed in battle or died of wounds and disease during the war; and as these must have been nearly all men in the prime of life, it is difficult to understand how the effect on the labour market was not more marked. The enclosing of land for pasture farms, which we shall next have to consider, was probably in many cases an absolute necessity, for the number ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... appeared to pay considerable deference, was a thin spare person, somewhat above the middle height; his complexion was very pale, his features emaciated but fine, his eyes dark and sparkling; he might be about fifty—the other two were men in the prime of life. One was of rather low stature; his features were dark, and wore that pinched and mortified expression so frequently to be observed in the countenance of the English -: the other was a bluff, ruddy, and rather good-looking young ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... had not the extreme ferocity for which Kentucky had earlier been famous, and which crops up here and there in frontier life elsewhere. All the same, as might naturally be supposed, they shared Plato's opinion that youths and men in the prime of life should settle their differences with their fists. Young Lincoln's few serious combats were satisfactorily decisive, and neither they nor his friendly wrestling bouts ended in the quarrels which were too common among his neighbours. Thus, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... must just throw it all up and go abroad. God bless her! I know she means what she says, and Mike is Mike still.' And then he groaned, and his head dropped on his arms, and the tide of desolation swept over him. He was still young—in the prime of life—and yet what good was his life ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the sad truth. Merman felt himself ill-used by the world, and thought very much worse of the world in consequence. The gall of his adversaries' ink had been sucked into his system and ran in his blood. He was still in the prime of life, but his mind was aged by that eager monotonous construction which comes of feverish excitement on a single topic and ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... distinguished himself as a leader in the 'german', or Yvonne's brother, the officer of chasseurs, who had gained the prize for horsemanship, and others besides these—seemed to her very commonplace by comparison. No!—he whom she loved was a man in the prime of life, well known to fame. She didn't care if he had a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... fellows," he said at length: "how many of them I have known! Some of them were in my squadron. Nearly all young, or in the prime of life—all dead before their time, worn out ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... not dwell on the physical and mental suffering caused by war; General Sherman's famous declaration, "War is hell!" sums the matter up. Agonizing wounds, pitiless disease, the permanent crippling, enfeeblement, or death of vigorous men in the prime of life, the anguish of wives and sweethearts, the loneliness of widows, the lack of care for orphans-it is impossible for those who have not lived through a great war to realize the horror of it, the cruel pain suffered by those on the field, the torturing suspense of those left behind. It is, indeed, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... now, Trot, you have ever been a credit to me, and a pride and pleasure. I have no other claim upon my means,—and you are my adopted child. Only be a loving child to me in my old age, and bear with my whims and fancies, and you will do more for an old woman whose prime of life was not so happy as it might have been, than ever that old woman did ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... born in 1625(?) at Haarlem. In 1668 he was in Amsterdam, and acted as witness to the marriage of Hobbema, whose lack of worldly prosperity Ruysdael shared. He himself was unmarried, and maintained his father in his old age. In the prime of life Jacob Ruysdael in turn fell into extreme poverty, and died an inmate of the Haarlem Almshouse in 1682—a sad record of Holland's greatest landscape painter, for 'beyond dispute' Ruysdael is the first of the famous ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... of the first to land, and Miss Carleton, watching from the deck, saw, almost as soon as he had reached the pier, a fine-looking gentleman in the prime of life step quickly out from, the crowd, and, grasping him cordially by the hand, enter at once into earnest conversation. Harold Mainwaring turned towards the steamer for a parting salute, and, as both gentlemen raised their hats, she recognized ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... again briskly to the table, expecting to see Agnes. To his surprise there appeared, in her place, a perfect stranger to him—a gentleman, in the prime of life, with a marked expression of pain and embarrassment on his handsome face. He looked at Mr. Troy, and ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... of the most severe losses which can befall a youth of his age. His mother,[16] then only twenty-four years old, having given birth to four sons and two daughters, was taken away from the anxious cares and comforts of her earthly career, in the very prime of life.[17] Nor was this the only bereavement which befell the family at this time. Constance, the second wife of John of Gaunt, a lady to whose religious and moral worth the strongest and warmest testimony is ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... years, and when all save the oldest Philadelphians had forgotten Miss Lydia Carew, the very, very distant cousin appeared. He was quite in the prime of life, and so agreeable and unassuming that nothing could be urged against him save his patronymic, which, being Boggs, did not commend itself to the euphemists. With him were two maiden sisters, ladies of excellent taste and manners, who restored the Carew china to its ancient ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... gaols before a vivified spirit of Christianity, and the enlightenment consequent on the Advance of Science.[A] After fourteen years of such a life, how glorious must have been the opportunities the freedom of the Bush afforded to an instinctive miscreant, still in the prime of life, and artificially debarred for so long from the indulgence of a natural bent for wickedness; not yet ennuye by the monotony of crime in practice, which often leads to a reaction, occasionally accompanied by worldly success. There was, however, about Daverill a redeeming point. He ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... seen me talking with Bob, which probably did not much recommend me. Presently, four more horsemen rode up, and then a third party, so that there were now fourteen of them assembled, all decided-looking men, in the prime of life and strength. The judge, who slept in an adjoining room, had been awakened by the noise. I heard him jump out of bed, and not three minutes elapsed before he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... no unnecessary adjectives. They had a gentle manner, and no ill language; sometimes our rough ship talk raised a slight protest; a raised hand, or a mild, "Oh, Sir!" Their leader, who was Governor of the Island, was a man in the prime of life, and, though dressed in dungarees and a worn cotton shirt, barefooted like the rest, had a quiet dignity in his manner and address that caused even our truculent Old Martin to call him Sir. There was one outlander ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... muscular or well-trained classes, was a natural appendage, as enforced continence and the most absolute chastity was the rule, to enforce which they even resorted to infibulation. This enforced continence often resulted in impotence, even before the prime of life was passed, accompanied by an inevitable atrophy of the male organ, with the resulting prepuce in the shape in which it is found in a boy of from eight to twelve years, precisely as they are found on the statues. How faithful the sculptors and artists were to nature and life in their representations ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... recent visits to Tennessee, we noticed that a considerable share of the immigrants arriving were from Michigan. They are mostly of the second generation from the settlers from the East in that State—men in the prime of life, who are seeking cheap lands in a genial climate, where the pastoral, dairy, and fruit-raising pursuits to which they are accustomed may be pursued with perfect success. Michigan farmers are usually intelligent, practical workers, who understand their profession ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... great change, and above all his grief at the loss of his beloved horses, was more than he could endure. He became melancholy and spent his days in silent brooding, and by and by, to everybody's surprise, Liddy fell ill, for he was in the prime of life and had always been singularly healthy. Then to astonish people still more, he died. What ailed him—what killed him? every one asked of the doctor; and his answer was that he had no disease—that nothing ailed him except a broken heart; and that ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... Claverhouse was in the prime of life, rather low of stature, and slightly, though elegantly, formed; his gesture, language, and manners, were those of one whose life had been spent among the noble and the gay. His features exhibited even feminine regularity. ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... trumpets was ringing in men's ears, and the troops were still distributed in their winter quarters, the storms of angry fortune surrounded the commonwealth with fresh dangers through the manifold and terrible atrocities of Caesar Gallus:[1] who, when just entering into the prime of life, having been raised with unexpected honour from the lowest depth of misery to the highest rank, exceeded all the legitimate bounds of the power conferred on him, and with preposterous violence threw everything into confusion. For by his near relationship to ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... Naples, although he was snatched from us by death in the very prime of life, at a time when greater things were looked for from him, yet showed in the works of sculpture that he made at Naples during his few years, what he would have done if he had lived longer; for the works ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... yellow tawny color. At the time of the discovery of the lake, Messrs. Oswell and Wilson shot two specimens of another variety. One was an old lion, whose teeth were mere stumps, and his claws worn quite blunt; the other was full grown, in the prime of life, with white, perfect teeth; both were entirely destitute of mane. The lions in the country near the lake give tongue less than those further south. We scarcely ever ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... of certain age, To catch a husband did engage; But, having passed the prime of life In striving to become a wife Without success, she thought it time To mend the follies ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... stage now; she was no longer a marked person: she might pass anywhere as Mistress Lumley, who had acted with success and celebrity, and withdrawn at the proper moment, with the greatest dignity and discretion. And Master Rowland was arranging his affairs to make the grand tour in the prime of life: his absence would clear away a monstrous objection. What would the Vicar ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... ought to have made him happy. He professed to find the highest enjoyment in the quiet and retirement of country life. He was in the prime of life, successful beyond all his fellows in his special work, and apparently with unabated interest in what remained to be done of it. And though he could not but feel himself at a distance from the "sweet civility" of England, and socially at disadvantage compared to those whose ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... affected by the music as the negro. Though he stood in such a position as to be effectually screened from the view of those within, a gleam of reflected light fell upon his figure, showing him to be a tall, handsome man in the prime of life. He was clothed in what may be styled a mixed European and native costume, and a gun on which he rested both hands seemed to indicate him a hunter. He carried no other weapon, except a long knife in his girdle. ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... addressed to Scrooge, or to any one whom he could see, but it produced an immediate effect. For again he saw himself. He was older now; a man in the prime of life. ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... moved the world, often before reaching the prime of life. It is astonishing what daring to begin and perseverance have enabled even youths to achieve. Alexander, who ascended the throne at twenty, had conquered the known world before dying at thirty-three. Julius Caesar captured eight hundred cities, conquered three hundred ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... this time in his forty-first year, was still, to all appearance, in the prime of life, still an adept in feats of skill and strength, and not less romantic and susceptible than in the days of his youth. With his high rank, his vast though encumbered estates, his picturesque appearance, and his wide experience in affairs of the heart, he anticipated ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... to a pleached alley out of sight of the windows. There they stood still. It was a strange meeting of two who had not seen each other for fourteen years, when the one was a tall, ungainly youth, the other well-nigh a child. And now Giles was a fine, soldierly man in the prime of life, with a short, curled beard, and powerful, alert bearing, and Aldonza, though the first flower of her youth had gone by, yet, having lived a sheltered and far from toilsome life, was a really beautiful woman, gracefully proportioned, and with the delicate features ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she continued thoughtfully, "I should like to get rid of it, and yet—how old are you, Wingrave? Well, I know. You are very little over forty. You are barely in the prime of life, you are strong, you have the one thing which society today counts almost divine—great, immeasurable wealth! Can't you find someone ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... filling his purse in parading through Europe. With winning smile the great, good man told these visitors to return to their home while yet they could. Mr. G. continued: "As I was gazing at this scene I saw a gentleman enter whose appearance called off the General's attention. He was in the prime of life (thirty-five), and of that vigor which air and manly exercise give. I had seen the heads of great men, and there were some close to me, but none with such a full, expansive forehead, such strong features, a mouth firm without harshness, and an ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... of very prepossessing appearance entered, and Ray, arising, was astonished to behold, instead of the invalid he had pictured to himself, a man in the prime of life and ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... fears only that he may be assigned to Western duties. This will keep him from the triumphal marches over the North. He may miss the glories of that day when Robert Toombs calls the roll of his blacks at Bunker Hill Monument. In the prime of life and vigor of mind, he is rich. He has now a tiny girl child, gladdening sweet Senora Dolores. His domain blossoms like the rose. Valois has many things to tie him to San Joaquin. His princely possessions alone ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... inborn and inbred notions of the deference due their sex, with that pride of womanhood which our republican chivalry has cherished in them, they would like, when they went to court, to stand, for hours perhaps, while a strong young man, or a fat old man, or a robust man in the prime of life, remained seated in the midst of them? Would it flatter their hopes of distinction to find the worst scenes of trolley-car or subway transit repeated at the highest social function in the land, with not even a hanging-strap to support their weariness, their weakness, or, if we must say ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... man's life performs a journey that in staid and ancient days would have occupied the years of many generations, and, as if in illustration of the fleeting nature of men and things and systems at this time, here we find a contemporary (at this moment hardly past the prime of life) giving us portraits, and relating anecdotes of men with whom he, in his youth, lived in intimate and professional relations, but who seem now as absolutely to belong to a bygone order of things, as if they had wrangled before the Dikasts of Athens, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... were of the finest possible type, the admiration of all who saw them; but the medical examination of the recruits disclosed that of 135,282 examined after the introduction of the Military Service Act—mostly young men in the prime of life—only 57,382, or say, 421/2 per cent., could be accepted as fit for training, unmistakably proving that the nation as a whole was much below the standard of physical fitness ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health
... and New Hampshire alike laid claim. The four commonwealths of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island had all been in existence, under one form or another, for more than a century. The men who were in the prime of life there in 1750 were the great-grandsons and great-great-grandsons of the men who crossed the ocean between 1620 and 1640 and settled New England. Scarcely two men in a hundred were of other than English blood. About one in a hundred could say that his family came from Scotland or ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... that he found a West End anchorage there, not when he had retired, but when he was in the very prime of life. He never told anyone that he was single; at the same time he never told anyone he was married. He just came and rented those three rooms, and there his man brought him his tea at ten o'clock every morning for thirty years. ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... play naturally. Still, though he bubbled and brimmed over with fun, he left the impression on me that . . . . there is a pain and care, bred, it may be, out of the very richness of his gifts and abundance of his outward prosperity. Rich, in the prime of life, . . . . and children budding and blossoming around him as fairly as his heart could wish, with sparkling talents,—so many, that if he choose to neglect or fling away one, or two, or three, he would still have enough left to shine with,—who should be happy if not he? ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the service, he had seen men meant for better things broken as a reed on the wheel of military formalism; he had seen them retiring when but in the prime of life, broken in spirit, unfit for any new career, impaired in health, perfectly useless—victims of the conventional ideas that rule supreme in the army. Others he had seen forced to resign, overloaded with a burden of debt, ruined financially, physically, morally bankrupt,—all due to ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... well-cooked and properly selected food, and the habitual taking of wholesome drinks. On all sides the observant medical man sees constant and reckless disregard of the simplest and most fundamental laws governing this subject. Nothing is more common than to hear of men in the prime of life being seized with what is called a "nervous breakdown,"—which generally means a digestive breakdown—to be followed by an era of misery for the unfortunate subject and his scarcely happier family. Nervous and irritable, the slightest ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... nothing especially graceful about my senior Aide; and, besides being past the prime of life, he was of a rather bulky tallness, stolid and phlegmatic. I could readily imagine his style, and a very few passes confirmed it. He was of the ordinary type and I could have run him through without the least effort. As it was, I touched him, presently, ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... prime of life; longer past it, as I afterward discovered, than she really was. But I never remember, in any other face, to have seen so much of the better part of the beauty of early womanhood still remaining, as I saw in hers. Sorrow had evidently passed over the fair, calm countenance before me, but ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... the Indian could be seen very distinctly, and it was one with more individual character than any Mickey had as yet noticed. It was not handsome nor very homely, but that of a man in the prime of life, with a prominent nose—a regular contour of countenance for an Indian. The face was painted, as was the long black hair which dangled about his shoulders. His eye was a powerful black one, which flitted restlessly, as he ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... lay, His pale face lined with suffering and care; And looking toward the King, then Gurnemanz Spake with his own sad heart: "He comes, my King,— A helpless burden to his servitors. Alas, alas! That these mine eyes should see The sovereign of a strong and noble race, Now in the very flower and prime of life, Brought low, and made a bounden slave Unto a shameful and a stubborn sickness!... Ye servitors, be careful of this couch! Careful! Set down the litter tenderly! I hear the King, our Master, groan ...
— Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner • Retold by Oliver Huckel
... underground apartment plainly but comfortably furnished. In the centre, under a hanging lamp, was a large table covered with maps and plans, and at the table sat a tall, handsome man, still in the prime of life. He was dressed in the usual long plain great-coat of coarse drab cloth, but he had shoulder-straps of broad gold lace, and his flat muffin cap lying in front of him was similarly ornamented. This personage, an officer of rank evidently, looked up sharply, ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... Kapus and his wife would never allow their daughter to marry a man with pockets as empty as their own, and it was no use waiting for dead men's shoes. Lakatos Pal, the rich uncle, from whom Andor was bound to inherit some day, was little past the prime of life. Until he died how would Andor and a penniless wife contrive to live? For Lakatos Pal was a miser and hoarded his money—moreover, he was a confirmed bachelor and woman-hater; he would do nothing for Andor if the young ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... forty perhaps; and here there were lines round his eyes, and there curious clefts in his cheeks. Slightly battered he appeared, but dogged and in the prime of life. ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... chanced to be the celebrated Heer Pieter Retief, a very fine man of high character, then in the prime of life, and of Huguenot descent like Heer Marais. He had been appointed by the Government one of the frontier commandants, but owing to some quarrel with the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Andries Stockenstrom, had recently ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... was a man to hold a distinguished place in that Academy even before he became its host and patron. He was still in the prime of life, not more than four and forty, with a somewhat haughty, cautiously dignified presence; conscious of an amazingly pure Latinity, but, says Erasmus, not to be caught speaking Latin—no word of Latin to be sheared off him by the sharpest of Teutons. He welcomed ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... towering in severe majesty above the rising generation, with a protecting grove of hopeful saplings pressing close around his feet, each dressed with such loving care that not a leaf seems wanting. Other groups are made up of trees near the prime of life, nicely arranged as if Nature had culled them with discrimination from all the rest of the woods. It is from this tree, called Red Fir by the lumbermen, that mountaineers cut boughs to sleep on when they are so fortunate as to be within its limit. Two or three ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... Council, the proceedings reflected the general enthusiasm with which India had rallied to the cause of the Empire. But before the Congress met again a disease common amongst Indians and aggravated by overwork and anxiety had carried away in April 1915, still in the prime of life, the founder of the "Servants of India Society," Mr. Gokhale, himself perhaps the greatest servant of India that has toiled in our time for her social as well as her political advancement. His friends believed that in his case the end was precipitated ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... during the previous year, 1917, were 1,808, thus showing on official figures an annual mortality of 45 per thousand. Comparing this with the 26 per thousand of Trinidad, and remembering that most of the San Thome labourers are in the prime of life, it will be seen that this death rate represents a heavy loss of life and justifies the continued demand from the British cocoa manufacturers for the appointment and report of ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... leave the matter of the choice of a Caesar in the hands of a woman was not to his liking. Though good-looking and still in the prime of life he had never found favour with women, and Dea Flavia had often shown open contempt for him, and for the selfish ambition which moved his every action, and which he was ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the same school than to that of Burns, though never degrading itself by Elliott's ferocity, is that extraordinary poem, "The Purgatory of Suicides," by Thomas Cooper. As he is still in the prime of life, and capable of doing more and better than he yet has done, we will not comment on it as freely as we have on Elliott, except to regret a similar want of softness and sweetness, and also of a clearness and logical connection of thought, in which Elliott seldom fails, except when cursing. ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... gout in the feet when he was thirty-three years of age. He had inherited the complaint, for it often happens that a tendency to disease is handed down like other qualities in a sort of succession. While he was in the prime of life he overcame his malady and kept it well in check by abstemious and pure living, and when it became sharper in its attacks as he grew old he bore up against it with great fortitude of mind. Even when he suffered incredible torture and the most horrible ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... the very prime of life, a man of a great length of body, with a deep Herculean torso and limbs that advertised a giant strength. His hawk-nosed face ending in a black forked beard was of a swarthiness accentuated to exaggeration by the snowy white turban wound about his brow. ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... of the hand, that lessens the usefulness or incapacitates the fine artist or skilful mechanic, in the prime of life, from pursuing their vocations, may be, and is often, induced by the influence of intoxicating drink, which debilitates and ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... and went, carrying home pieces of work, which she dispatched quickly and well. She was a fine-looking mulatto-woman, in the prime of life, with wavy black hair and sparkling eyes, though her features preserved the negro cast. Her manners had a warmth and geniality belonging to good specimens of her race, with a freedom that was odd and amusing, but never offensive. When she brought home ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... now let us estimate the keenness of that trial. Remember John was a man: he had tasted the sweets of influence; that influence was dying away, and just in the prime of life he was to become nothing. Who cannot conceive the keenness of that trial? Bearing that in mind—what is the prophet's answer? One of the most touching sentences in all Scripture—calmly, meekly, the hero recognises his destiny—"He must increase, but I must decrease." He does more than recognise ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... Wells live in the full enjoyment of fortunes wrested from the plain. They are still young men, in the prime of life, while the opportunities of a thrifty country invite their assistance and leadership on every hand. They are deeply interested in every development of their state, preferring those avenues where heroic endeavor calls forth their best exertion, save ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... breathing with heroic life. Apparently the stranger, though habited as a Moslemin, was not insensible to the genius of the locality, nor indeed would his form and countenance have misbecome a contemporary of Pericles and Phidias. In the prime of life and far above the common stature, but with a frame the muscular power of which was even exceeded by its almost ideal symmetry, white forehead, his straight profile, his oval countenance, and his curling lip, exhibited the same visage that had inspired the sculptor ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... old arrow wound in the lung. We had a long conversation without adverting to the former one, and he told me some of the present circumstances of his ruined life. It is piteous that a man like him, in the prime of life, should be destitute of home and love, and live a life of darkness in a den with no companions but guilty memories, and a dog which many people think is the nobler animal of the two. I urged him to give up the whisky which at present is his ruin, and his answer had the ring of a sad truth in ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... reached the prime of life; and he is on the way—already far on the way—to be one of the foremost men of his time. With a private fortune, he has worked as few surgeons work who have their bread to get by their profession. The money comes from his late father. ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... which frivolous trifles could alone gratify appeared evident; and the countenance of the lady, who was reclining listlessly on the couch, would have confirmed these surmises. She did not look above forty, if as much, but her features told a tale of lassitude and weariness, at variance with the prime of life, which was then her own. No intellect, no emotion was expressed on her countenance; it never varied, except, perhaps, to denote peevishness or sullenness when domestic affairs annoyed her, which appeared to be the case at present. A volume of the last new novel was in her hand, in which ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... matron of that age, if her life has been a happy one, and her hymeneal condition of not more than ten years' standing, is scarcely in the heyday of her charm's. And the same rule will apply with equal force to the other sex; for, after the first prime of life, bachelors decay and grow old much faster than ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... apparently about ten years old, and was partially covered by a linen cloth. The man, whose features bore a marked resemblance to those of the child, was evidently from his attire above the middle rank. His frame was athletic, and as he was scarcely past the prime of life, the irresistible power of the disease, which could in one instant prostrate strength like his, was ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... his Lieutenant in the battle at Guasimas, joined the regiment in 1880, and had already passed through eighteen years of the kind of service above described. He was at the time of the Cuban War in the prime of life, a magnificent horseman, an experienced scout, and a skilled packer. In 1880, when he joined the regiment, the troops were almost constantly in motion, marching that one year nearly seventy-seven thousand miles, his own troop covering twelve hundred and forty-two miles in one ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... give a muster-roll of more than twenty thousand dead; men, women, and children counted all together. On the plains of France, since I first began to speak to you on the subject of the arts of peace, at least five hundred thousand men, in the prime of life, have been massacred by the folly of one Christian emperor, the insolence of another, and the mingling of mean rapacity with meaner vanity, which Christian nations ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... attracted and repelled me at the same time. He was in the prime of life and undeniably handsome, while there was a look of sagacity, almost ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... secretary. For a long time I liked the position greatly. When one is attached to an active American plutocrat in the prime of life one need not have many dull moments. Besides, it made me independent. My father had some serious business reverses about that time, and I was glad to be able to do without an allowance from him. At the end of the first year Manderson doubled ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... fired, and it is not certain that all the charges have exploded, no person is permitted to enter the place until forty-five minutes after the explosion. My records prove the great need for this precautionary measure, and I only wish it had been enforced years ago, before so many men in the prime of life had been deprived of eyesight, and of earning capacity ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... who was on a tour through his native land. He sat near me at the table d'hote, and I had an opportunity of noticing the changes which time has made in his appearance. The last time I had seen him was in Columbus, Ohio, in 1844. He was then in the very prime of life, slender and graceful, yet broad of shoulder and powerful of limb; with light straight hair, clear blue eyes, and a healthy Northern complexion. He is now quite altered, and I am not sure that I would have recognized him had he not been pointed out to me. In form he is much stouter, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... but a fact," the Colonel said. "There is nothing very surprising in it. There were only two lives between your father and the peerage; and as one was that of an old man, the second of a man certainly in the prime of life, but unmarried, why, the Jews would have lent money ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... a few days before Christmas, and the men around the large fireplace at the club had, not unnaturally, fallen to talking of Christmas. They were all men in the prime of life, and all or nearly all of them were from other parts of the country; men who had come to the great city to make their way in life, and who had, on the whole, made it in one degree or another, achieving sufficient success in different fields to allow of all being called successful ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... of a man still in the prime of life, in spite of his white hair; for he had married at twenty-one, and had never—since they grew up—seemed to himself very much older than his elder children. He had but a very dim memory of his wife. Sometimes ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Timar as if the demon who hated both him and his wife was now praying for the prolongation of his detested life, so that their mutual suffering might last the longer. Every one remarked the great change which had taken place in him. In the spring he was a strong man in the prime of life; now he was like ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... of both these men, in the very prime of life and in the fulness of power, was keenly felt at the time: each had a world-wide fame, and each awakened a blank, distressful sense of personal loss in his many admirers as he was suddenly called away from incomplete ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... happy life, even a life of resignation, that had left such lines in her mother's face? She was hardly in the prime of life, but she looked old already. Instead of being drawn to sympathize with her, Jeanne was repelled. Her mother did not want her for solace and human love and sympathy, but simply to keep her from evil. Was affection such a sin? She could love her father, yes, she could love M. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... the first words of his which Helen heard. The tone commanding, the voice remarkably gentlemanlike. An instant afterwards he came in. A fine figure, a handsome man; in the prime of life; with a high-born, high-bred military air. English decidedly—proudly English. Something of the old school—composed self-possession, with voluntary deference to others—rather distant. Helen felt that ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... he held, our future pages will disclose; suffice it here to state, that there was no lack of personal attractions or mental graces, to account for the universal, yet unspoken and unacknowledged dislike which he inspired. Apparently in the prime of life, he yet seemed to have relinquished all the pleasures and even the passions of life. Austere, even rigid, in those acts of piety and personal mortifications enjoined by his religion—voluntary fasts, privations, nights supposed to be past in vigil and in penance; occasional ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... the public burden, and while war menaced England on every hand, congratulated the house on the increasing prosperity of the country. At this time, however, the prime minister had lost much of his usual confidence, arising partly from his declining health. Although in the prime of life, Pitt, from the task which he had undertaken, and which he so energetically performed, was now in constitution a worn-out man. The burden of office was too great for his strength; and it had become manifest ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Bologna sausage. This did not prevent his seeing the naked man who was to be eaten walk slowly and stiffly across the gangway and down the corridor. He saw him from behind. It was a big handsome man in the prime of life, quite naked and perhaps stupid. But of course he was only a skin stuffed with meat, whom the grey tin-miners were going ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... years. Kennedy went back happy on the whole, happy above all in the certainty that he had made in Julian one noble friend. Lillyston went back happy, well-pleased with the sense of duty done, and the prime of life well and innocently enjoyed. And Julian went back in the same train with De Vayne, happy too, with a mind strengthened and expanded, with knowledge deepened and widened, with an honourable ambition opening before him, and friends and a fair ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... he was a dead one, he reflected as he stumbled along the sidewalk toward his boarding house on Irving Place. A man of sixty safely intrenched in his own business, with the confidence his wealth inspires, is in the very prime of life. But Max, with his health impaired and his employment taken away from him, felt and looked a decrepit old man as he tottered upstairs to his third-floor room and flung himself on the bed, where he lay for more than an ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... which we dismounted. A crowd of inquisitive Arabs surrounded us upon seeing so large a party of hygeens, and the firman having been delivered by our guide, Sheik Ali, we were almost immediately visited by Sheik Atalan Wat Said. He was a man in the prime of life, of an intelligent countenance, and he received us with much politeness, immediately ordering a fat sheep to be brought and slaughtered for ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... Foissac, de Lapouge, and Richet in France; Tiedemann and Seeck in Germany; Guerrini in Italy; Kellogg and Starr Jordan in America. The case is indeed overwhelming. The lives destroyed in war are nearly all males, thus disturbing the sex equilibrium of the population; they are in the prime of life, at the age of greatest fecundity; and they are picked from a list out of which from 20 to 30 per cent. have been rejected for physical unfitness. It seems to be proved that the children born in France during the Napoleonic wars were poor and undersized—30 millimetres below the ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... 31, 1494. He was therefore in the prime of life when he discovered Canada, and not more than forty-nine years of age at the time when he returned home from his last trip ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... old. He was virtually in the prime of life. He had been dreaming, he had been thinking, for many years, of composing some poems of a higher order than his Souvenirs. He desired to embody in his work some romantic tales in verse, founded upon local legends, noble in conception, elaborated with care, ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... of this nature can be assigned. Thus understood, it was a very wise and sensible division; though eight hours daily for any long period of time, appropriated to services strictly devotional, would not seem to be a wise arrangement, especially for a man in the prime of life, and in a position demanding the constant exercise of his powers in the discharge ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... then probably nearly five hundred settlers on the Cumberland, one half of them being able-bodied men in the prime of life. [Footnote: Two hundred and fifty-six names are subscribed to the compact of government; and in addition there were the women, children, the few slaves, and such men as did not sign.] The central station, the capitol of the little community, was ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... women, or women in the prime of life. They are carefully chosen for their beauty and charms, and are frequently persons of education and refinement. They are required to observe the utmost decorum in the parlors of the house, and their toilettes are exquisite and modest. They never make acquaintances on the ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... not even holding their own. The high birth rate of the foreign born is, of course, in part to be explained through the fact that the foreign-born population is made up for the most part of individuals in the prime of life, that is, in the reproductive age. Nevertheless, while this explains the excessively high birth rate of some of these foreign elements, it does not explain the great discrepancy between their birth rate and that of the native born. If the present tendencies continue, it is apparently ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... depravity faithfully reflected in communism as in a mirror. We should not overlook the fact that it is with whole nations as with the individual man who amasses his own fortune. He reaches the culminating point of his wealth generally after he has passed the prime of life. The most flourishing period of a nation's existence is wont just to precede its decay, and to introduce it.(157) Hence, here nothing could be more untrue, as Macchiavelli has remarked, than the general opinion that money is ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... after that self-question at sixty, and after eighty he continued to prove that threescore was not the limit of a man's intellectual activity or literary charm. During all that time the work he did in mere quantity was the work that a man in the prime of life might well have been vain of doing, and it was of a quality not less surprising. If I asked him with any sort of fair notice I could rely upon him always for something for the January number, and throughout the year I could count upon him for those occasional ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... account of her talents, selected to enter the Feng Ts'ao Palace. Ch'in Ching-ch'ing departs, in the prime of life, by ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... competent part of society; the burdens. The able-bodied and competent part of a society is the adults in the prime of life. These have to bear all the societal burdens, among which are the care of those too young and of those too old to care for themselves. It is certain that at a very early time in the history of human society the burden of bearing and ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... the prime of life, Struck down in one short hour, The loving wife, the rose-cheeked girl, Fairer than opening flower, The ardent youth, with fond hopes elate,— O'ertaken all by one ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... lecherous person, to have done more than merely hint at the affair, instead of dwelling, doubtless in erotic delight, on such details. So I pumped him as to what sort of woman his mamma was. His description showed that she was a fine, full grown woman, old, in his opinion, but in reality in the prime of life, between thirty-five and forty. He had not scanned her proportions with any erotic thought and did not seem to attach the idea of the woman to her—only that of the mother. But I drew out of him that she was broad in ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... seas, hopes that she will some day be as free of alcoholic poisons as China herself hopes to be of opium. Every vice, however, has its defense. Some years ago I met a famous Dutch artist in Peking, who, though still in the prime of life, was obliged to lay aside his work for a few days each month, due to an occasional attack of rheumatism. I found he was fond of his cup, though I did not understand that he was an immoderate drinker. I discoursed to him ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... case of plethoric and heavy-milking cows of mature age and in the prime of life, the hitherto liberal diet must be changed at the last week for the scantiest possible fare, and the bowels must be kept open by laxatives, if need be, if the owner would avoid milk fever. Her stall should not incline downward from shoulder ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... was offering these poor victims; the third, a very elegant gentleman in a green coat and buckskin breeches, leant nonchalantly upon the rail of the tumbril and exchanged gibes with the people. All five of them were in the prime of life, and, by their toilettes and the air that clung to them, belonged ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... movement among the cuirassiers, and fifty-four men rode up, and clustered around their common ancestor. There were bronzed faces with white beards—others with gray; there were men in the prime of life, and others in the flower; there were youths approaching manhood, and lads that had scarcely emerged from childhood; but from peeping bud to fruit that was about to fall, they one and all resembled their parent stem; every ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... important, as will appear when we come to the last act of the tragedy. Captain Roald Amundsen was one of the most notable of living explorers, and was in the prime of life—forty-one, two years younger than Scott. He had been in the Antarctic before Scott, with the Belgica Expedition in 1897-99, and therefore did not consider the South Pole in any sense our property. Since then ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... an old and staunch comrade of Sir Reginald Elphinstone, and an equally staunch, though more recent, friend of Lady Elphinstone, whose acquaintance he had first made some six years before under startling and extraordinary circumstances. He was a man in the very prime of life; tall, and with a very fair share of good looks—although certainly not so handsome a man as his friend the baronet—upright as a dart, and, when in his normal state of health, singularly robust of frame; but now, as he slowly mounted the broad, yet easy, flight of steps, there was ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... sides, but a general fight, in which every man attacked his neighbor. Such scenes were the most bloody, and therefore the most exciting. A conflict of this kind would always destroy the greatest number in the shortest time. The arena presented a scene of dire confusion. Five hundred armed men in the prime of life and strength all struggled confusedly together. Sometimes they would all be interlocked in one dense mass; at other times they would violently separate into widely scattered individuals, with a heap of dead upon the scene of the combat. But these would assail one another again with ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... named Elias Henderson. He was a man in the prime of life, and possessed of good natural parts, carefully improved by the best education which those times afforded. To these qualities were added a faculty of close and terse reasoning; and, at intervals, a flow of ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... capital one. When I was in New York, Maxwell, I was in a hospital, and saw a number of men who had been day laborers. Some of them were old and feeble, and others were young men, broken down in the prime of life. Their limbs were shrunken and drawn. They had been digging in the earth, and working on high buildings, and confined in dingy basements, and had done all kinds of hard labor for other men. They had given their lives and strength for others, and this was the end of it to die ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... shamusho we make the acquaintance of the Guji of Hinomisaki, a noble-looking man in the prime of life, with one of those fine aquiline faces rarely to be met with except among the high aristocracy of Japan. He wears a heavy black moustache, which gives him, in spite of his priestly robes, the look of a retired army officer. We are kindly ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... cheeks were now tinged with colour, and the throat, where he had pulled aside the robe, showed firm and white. Mechanically St. George passed his hand along the inert arm, and it was no more withered than his own—the arm of no greybeard, but of a man in the prime of life. What did it mean—what did it mean? St. George waited, the blood throbbing in his temples, a mist before his eyes. ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... reputation of being a good seaman, and undoubtedly he was, and being strong and vigorous, in the prime of life, he was considered an especially valuable man to Captain Bergen, who paid him five dollars more per month than ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... good-looking men, in the prime of life, dressed in scarlet and embroidered robes of much richness. Unlike the rest of the people, they neither shaved nor wore the cue. We found them drawn in a line before the altar, from which they were separated by a screen: an ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... graduated from West Point in 1838, second in a class of forty-five men. His family was of high French extraction, having settled in Louisiana in the reign of Louis XV. He had entered the Mexican War a lieutenant and emerged from the campaign a major. He was now forty-five years old, in the prime of life. His ability had been recognized by the National Government in the beginning of the year by his appointment as Superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point. His commission had been revoked at the last moment by the vacillating ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... have hovered over my head pretty steadily of late! It is a question whether I had not better let you come on and end these weary struggles, rather than become a hopeless cripple in the prime of life! Why should I fear death now ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... French Ministries. It was he more than any other single man who had checkmated the Royalist reaction of 1877 and driven MacMahon from power; and in the year after we first met him he was to bring Jules Ferry to grief over L'affaire de Tongkin. He was then in the prime of life, and he is still (1917), thirty-three years later,[1] one of the most vigorous of French political influences. Mr. Chamberlain, in 1884, was forty-eight, five years older than the French politician, and was at ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... now, in the prime of life, forsake the service for which he had been educated, and to which he had already given many of his best years? Could he be content to bid a final farewell to the glorious old ocean so long his home, so beautiful and lovable in its varied ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... I did wrong. I have regretted the same in sorrow many years. Two of the young women so used still keep warm hearts for me, notwithstanding my conduct toward them. They were young and in the prime of life when I sent them from me. They have since married again, and are the mothers of families. They frequently send letters to comfort me in my troubles and afflictions, but their kind remembrances serve only to add to my self-reproach for my cruel treatment of them in past years. I banished ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... voyage; and, soon after their appointment, they received ample instructions, from the council of the Royal Society, with regard to the method of carrying on their inquiries. The lieutenant was also accompanied by Joseph Banks, Esq. (now Sir Joseph Banks, Bart.) and Dr. Solander, who, in the prime of life, and the first of them at great expense to himself, quitted all the gratifications of polished society, and engaged in a very tedious, fatiguing, and hazardous navigation, with the laudable views of acquiring knowledge in general, of promoting natural knowledge in particular, and of contributing ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... to be expected in young men in the prime of life, sound of wind and limb, who will soon become fathers of families ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... melancholy young lovers can be found forty years afterwards chuckling over their port wine. And second, Dickens never did grow old, even in a physical sense. What weariness did appear in him appeared in the prime of life; it was due not to age but to overwork, and his exaggerative way of doing everything. To call Dickens a victim of elderly disenchantment would be as absurd as to say the same of Keats. Such fatigue as there was, was due not to the slowing down of his blood, but rather ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... excludes pauperism,"—that, if the serf owes work to his owner in the prime of life, the owner owes support to his serf in the decline of life. No lie could be more absurd to one who had seen Russian life. We were first greeted, on entering Russia, by a beggar who knelt in the mud; at Kovno eighteen beggars besieged the coach,—and Kovno was hardly worse than scores of other ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various |
