"Valetudinarian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Delarayne's occasional affectation of valetudinarian peevishness, alleged ill-health as a fact. As a rule it was the prelude to the request for a favour on a grand scale, and being a man of very great wealth, and therefore somewhat tight-fisted, he was always rendered unusually solemn by his ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... allowed to pass for idle caprice of ill-humor, had not master and man, lingering round the corner of the elevated skylight, began whispering together in low voices. This was unpleasing. And more; the moody air of the Spaniard, which at times had not been without a sort of valetudinarian stateliness, now seemed anything but dignified; while the menial familiarity of the servant lost its original ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... world—unwisely I think—interests itself in the personality of a genius, and somewhat impudently invades his privacy. A young man may muster up sufficient moral courage to lie to his callers, and thus preserve the proprieties; but an aged valetudinarian who wants to get into a quiet nook and nurse himself, may show scant courtesy—even brush the "critic fly" of the genus Gosse out of doors with ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... military regulation, for the united purpose of cut and thrust. The light which enabled me to discover the contents of the room, proceeded from a rush-light placed in the grate; this general symptom of a valetudinarian, together with some other little odd matters (combined with the weak voice of the speaker), impressed me with the idea of having intruded into the chamber of some sick member of the crew. Emboldened by this notion, and by perceiving that the ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... by the peculiar atmosphere of the Big City, partly by anxiety of mind, had been much increased by the exertions which I had been compelled to make during the last few days. I felt that, were I to remain where I was, I should die, or become a confirmed valetudinarian. I would go forth into the country, travelling on foot, and, by exercise and inhaling pure air, endeavour to recover my health, leaving my subsequent movements to be determined ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... sake I've got to be so. So I never write 'metropolis' for seven cents, because I can get the same money for 'city.' I never write 'policeman,' because I can get the same price for 'cop.' And so on and so on. I never write 'valetudinarian' at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn't do it for fifteen. Examine your obscene text, please; count ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... committee of taste (who is indefatigable in his endeavours to improve the health, as well as promote the enjoyment, of his fellow-students in the school of good living, and to whom the epicure, the economist, and the valetudinarian are equally indebted for his careful revision of this work, and especially for introducing that salutary maxim into the kitchen, that "the salubrious is ever a superior consideration to the savoury," and indeed, the rational epicure only relishes the latter when entirely subordinate ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... Epicurean, and M. MARIUS, the valetudinarian and wit, were among friends valued for their personal and agreeable qualities rather than for any public or political importance attaching to them. The same may be said of L. LUCCEIUS, of whose Roman history Cicero ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... hideous hubbub, of noisy instruments under his mistress' window. A little before this Lady Knowell with a party of friends has visited Sir Patient, who is her next neighbour, and the loud laughter, talking, singing and foppery so enrage the precise old valetudinarian that he resolves to leave London immediately for his country house, a circumstance which would be fatal to his wife's amours. Wittmore and she, however, persuade him that he is very ill, and on being shown his face in a looking-glass that magnifies instead of in his ordinary mirror, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... the French saying, that there is no ill without something of good. What state more pitiable to the eye of a man of robust health than that of the Confirmed Valetudinarian? Indeed, there is no one who has a more profound pity for himself than your Valetudinarian; and yet he enjoys two of the most essential requisites for a happy life; he is never without an object of interest, and he is perpetually in pursuit ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... onions, and fat play a rather too important part in the repast, and the whole is prepared with very little attention to the recognised principles of culinary hygiene. Many of the dishes, indeed, would make a British valetudinarian stand aghast, but they seem to produce no bad effect on those Russian organisms which have never been weakened by town life, nervous ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... we shot through the Iberian narrows on our frantic voyage hither, my entire store was blown out of my hands and away to sea. The rarest sorts were flung about on rocks where nothing more valetudinarian than a baboon could possibly taste them. My earliest care on arriving here was to search these woods for fresh specimens, and my success has been beyond all hope. See, this comes from the wet lands on the hither side ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... and he cannot endure the notion of retirement and care of his life, which is only valuable to him while he can exert it in active pursuits. I doubt if he could live in retirement and inactivity— the life of a valetudinarian. ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... conversation. Displeased that the lead should be withdrawn from him, he turned to Clara and related one of the after-dinner anecdotes of Dr. Corney; and another, with a vast deal of human nature in it, concerning a valetudinarian gentleman, whose wife chanced to be desperately ill, and he went to the physicians assembled in consultation outside the sick-room, imploring them by all he valued, and in tears, to save the poor patient for him, saying: "She is everything to me, everything; and if she dies I am compelled to run ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... after saying which the doctor's gig was doing its best to arrive in time to prevent that valetudinarian swallowing five grains of calomel, or something of the sort, on his ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... "before the sun, and bathe after a gentle ride; my diet is light and sparing, and I go early to rest; yet the activity of my mind is too strong for my constitution, though naturally not infirm; and I must be satisfied with a valetudinarian state of health." All these precautions, however, did not avail to secure him from violent and reiterated attacks. In 1784, he travelled to the city of Benares, by the route of Guyah, celebrated as the birth-place of the philosopher ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... when we go on to find the same man, on the same or similar grounds, abstain from nearly everything that his neighbours innocently and pleasurably use, and from the rubs and trials of human society itself into the bargain, we recognise that valetudinarian healthfulness which is more delicate than sickness itself. We need have no respect for a state of artificial training. True health is to be able to do without it. Shakespeare, we can imagine, might begin the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rising from her mat, the mistress, after shaking hands, wished them good night in a thick tremulous tone, and waddled out of their yard in a direction, which Hogarth denominates the line of beauty, she returned home to her husband, who was a valetudinarian. Thus passed their evenings, and thus much of their solitary ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... loans and contributions on a sensitive populace whose goodwill he earnestly strove to gain, an easy-going epicure spurred on to impetuous action by orders from Paris which he dared not disregard and could not execute, a peace-loving valetudinarian upon whom was thrust the task of controlling testy French Marshals, and of holding a nation in check and ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose |
