"Death's-head" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... frown, as who should say 'An you will not have me, choose.' He hears merry tales and smiles not: I fear he will prove the weeping philosopher when he grows old, being so full of unmannerly sadness in his youth. I had rather be married to a death's-head with a bone in his mouth than to either of these. God defend ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... in a church where the windows are open and darkened with curtains that are occasionally lifted by a breeze, letting in the sunshine, which whitens a carved tombstone on the pavement of the church, disclosing, perhaps, the letters of the name and inscription, a death's-head, a crosier, or other emblem; then the curtain falls ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... action of the two sides of its body fringed with fins, and its consequent motion, were much more like the act of flying than that of swimming. Behind him floated his long tail, making him yet more resemble the hideously imagined kite which he at once suggested. But the terrible thing about him was the death's-head look of the upper part of him. His white belly was of course toward them, and his eyes were on the other side, but there were nostrils that looked exactly like the empty sockets of eyes, and below them was a hideous ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... other doorway the bushmen threw aside their useless guns and drew their machetes. Jose, grinning like a death's-head, whirled the bush knife aloft and mockingly dared the Red Bones still fronting him to come and take it from him. Pedro and Lourenco indulged in no such bravado, but leaped like jaguars at their foes. Whereupon Jose, muttering a curse on them for getting ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... head, as though sweating in an oven had three times over stained his skin. Closely-set wrinkles that could no longer be relaxed made eternal furrows, whiter in their cracks. The yellow face was all wrinkles. The bald skull, resembling Voltaire's, was as parched as a death's-head, and but for a few hairs at the back it would have seemed doubtful whether it was that of a living man. Under a rigid brow, a pair of Chinese eyes, like those of an image under a glass shade in a tea-shop—artificial eyes, which sham life but never vary—moved but ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... of terror we now observed that the flag at the schooner's peak was black, with a Death's-head and cross-bones upon it. As we gazed at each other in blank amazement, the word "pirate" escaped ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... supper, and to be surprised every morning at dawn at the baccarat table, after spending five hours saying "Bac!" in a stifled, hollow voice. Gustave understands life, and, taking into consideration his countenance like a death's-head, it may lead him to make the acquaintance of something entirely different. But who thinks of death at his age? Gustave wishes to know life, and when a fit of coughing interrupts him in one of his idiotic ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... living can conceive how mossy and dried-up and gnarled and black and unlike a human being such an old plain-dweller could be. The skin was so drawn over brow and cheeks, that he looked almost like a death's-head, and one saw only by a faint gleam in the hollows of the eye sockets that he was alive. And the dried-up muscles of the body gave it no roundness, and the upstretched, naked arms consisted only of shapeless bones, covered with shrivelled, hardened, bark-like ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... stories; the sons of Musa discussed politics and the price of money with the rich Aziz; the priest made childish jokes and laughed at them; while the remainder of the party, mere turbaned fellahin, swarthy-faced and rough-handed, ate heartily and applauded all that was said. The only death's-head present was Abdullah. Dismissed by Cook as a result of the aspersions of the missionary, he now proclaimed his intention to start business on his own account. But men shook their heads and winked aside when he talked of it. The testimonials which he vaunted as his stock-in-trade ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... the room with the utmost care, but nothing of any interest rewarded his search. It had been his hope that he might find something of definite value—the typewriter, perhaps, upon which the threatening letters had been written, the black sealing wax, used in making the death's-head seals, the paper employed by the writer. None of these things was in evidence; there was no typewriter, the table contained a small bottle of ink, a couple of pens, and some cheap envelopes and a writing tablet of linen paper quite different from ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... quality in the hard insolence which made Francis go very red and Augus very white. Angus stared like a death's-head behind his monocle, with ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... is embossed half-way round. There is also a charm, which is said to have belonged to Kate M'Niven. It is a slight iron chain with a black heart, having two cross bones in gold on the back, bearing the words 'cruelle death' on it, and attached to it a death's-head in the shape of a ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... listener. Once or twice I have seen marks of special attention to personal adornment, a ruffled shirt-bosom, one day, and a diamond pin in it,—not so very large as the Koh-i-noor's, but more lustrous. I mentioned the death's-head ring he wears on his right hand. I was attracted by a very handsome red stone, a ruby or carbuncle or something of the sort, to notice his left hand, the other day. It is a handsome hand, and confirms my suspicion ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... knows we struggled. We did not give in without agony. In our hopeless, staring eyes there was the anguish of the great temptation. We looked in each other's death's-head faces. We clasped skeleton hands round our rickety knees, and swayed as we tried to sit upright. Vermin crawled over us in our weakness. We were half-crazy, and muttered ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... mirror. This death's-head was given me for that of the prettiest woman in all Venice. She was what you are, and you will ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... was Clon. How he had stolen up so quietly, how long he had been at my elbow, I could not tell. But his eyes gleamed spitefully in their deep sockets, and he laughed with his fleshless lips; and I hated him. In the daylight the man looked more like a death's-head than ever. I fancied that I read in his face that he knew my secret, and I flashed into rage at sight ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... my old death's-head on a mop-stick?" said Turpin, with a laugh. "Ain't we merry mumpers, eh? Keeping it up in style. Sit down, old Noah—make yourself ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... I, "you mean that big sphinx moth that is commonly known as the 'death's-head moth.' Why the mischief should the people ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... man, deepening the grin of a death's-head, on which his chisel was just then employed, "I really felt for the poor woman; it was one of my best pieces of marble,—and to be thrown ...
— Chippings With A Chisel (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... spent his whole life in resisting Orangemen, because he refused to become an instrument in the hands of the popish priesthood and their agitator, was denounced as unworthy of being elected; every man who dared to vote for him was to have a death's-head and cross-bones painted on his door: and the consequence was that he was rejected. Of a candidate for New Ross, who refused to enlist under his banner, O'Connell said, "Whoever shall support him, his shop shall be deserted; no man shall pass his threshold. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... merry company. That is Wolde's head, as you may perceive; and now ye may conjure the devil together as ye were wont." Then, grinning maliciously, he went out, locking the prison door upon the unfortunate wretch and the death's-head. ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... whom Gwynplaine now saw seemed a man of about fifty or sixty years of age. He was bald. Grizzly hairs of beard bristled on his chin. His eyes were closed, his mouth open. Every tooth was to be seen. His thin and bony face was like a death's-head. His arms and legs were fastened by chains to the four stone pillars in the shape of the letter X. He had on his breast and belly a plate of iron, and on this iron five or six large stones were laid. His rattle was at times a sigh, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Mercury of France, for July 1730, of some curious sports of nature on insects. The rector of St. James at Land, within a league of Rennes, found in the month of March, 1730, in the church-yard, a species of butterfly, about two inches long, and half-an-inch broad, having on its head the figure of a death's-head, of the length of one nail, and perfectly imitating those that are represented on the church ornaments which are used for the office of the dead. Two large wings were spotted like a pall, and the whole body covered with a down, or black hair, diversified with ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... believed for the instant that she had put it on expressly, so that from underneath it she might scrutinize me without being scrutinized herself. At the same time it increased the presumption that there was a ghastly death's-head lurking behind it. The divine Juliana as a grinning skull—the vision hung there until it passed. Then it came to me that she WAS tremendously old—so old that death might take her at any moment, before I had time to get what I wanted from her. The ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... their pay, and he supplied them by stealth with an old death's-head. A seamster cut out for them two long black robes with hoods attached, like monks' habits. The Falaise coach brought them a large parcel in a wrapper. Then they set about the work, the one interested in executing it, the other afraid ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... mother whom you know; she was never shown the face of true piety; she saw only the mimicry of it. Repentant Magdalens of the Madame Colleville species always assume an air of wishing to retire to a desert with their death's-head and crossed bones. They think they can't get salvation at a cheaper rate. But after all, what did Celeste ask of Monsieur Felix? Merely that he would ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... a small Death's-head, carved in ivory with extraordinary power and anatomical skill. Each jaw was furnished with a row of diamonds, and two rubies flashed from the deep eye-sockets. On the forehead was engraved, Ruit Hora; and on the occiput Tibi, Hippolyta. ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... Of better, and Hope, a poising eagle, burns Above the unrisen morrow:' then to me; 'Know you no song of your own land,' she said, 'Not such as moans about the retrospect, But deals with the other distance and the hues Of promise; not a death's-head at ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... or a hyena, or a death's-head, could not have shown the Captain more teeth at one time, than Mr Carker showed him at this ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... fruit-eaters do not recognise the lordly fellow on the instant of his appearance, he may perch on the topmost branches of the tree to scrutinise the shallows, and they will resume their feasting and noise. But a falcon is as a death's-head, and alas! too often a sanguinary disturber of the peace, as the tufts of ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... caterpillars, even a rarer color than red. Indeed, among our larger larvae, the only cases I can recall are the Lappets, which have two conspicuous blue bands, the Death's-head Moth, which has broad diagonal bands, and two of the Hawk-moths, which have two bright blue oval patches on the third segment. The Lappets are protected by being hairy, but why they have the blue bands I have no idea. It is interesting, that ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... nodded to him as he whispered to me unconsciously, "The Acherontia Atropos of the Sphinges, what you call the 'Death's-head Moth'?" ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... and possibly other things. Oh, I was going to say there is an art-gallery at the top of the house. Her husband—I mean Mrs. Phillips'—was a painter and collector himself; and after dinner we went up there, and a curious man came in, propelling a wheeled chair—a sort of death's-head at the feast.... But don't let me get too far away from the matter in hand. She is dark and a bit tonguey—the artist-girl; and I believe she would be sarcastic and witty if she weren't held down pretty well. I think she's a niece: ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... mummies may have been congenial to Manetho's soul. Awful is that loneliness which even the prospect of death has deserted, and which must prolong itself throughout a lifeless and hopeless Forever! If Manetho could imagine any bond of relationship between this perennial death's-head and himself, no marvel ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... drinking-goblet. It has a silver rim and stand, but still the ugly skull is bare and evident, and the naked inner bone receives the wine. I should think it would hold at least a quart,—enough to overpower any living head into which this death's-head should transfer its contents; and a man must be either very drunk or very thirsty, before he would taste wine out of such a goblet. I think Byron's freak was outdone by that of a cousin of my own, who once solemnly ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... it, drove his bayonet into my mare's thigh. Her ferocious instincts being restored by the pain, she sprang at the Russian, and at one mouthful tore off his nose, lips, eyebrows, and all the skin of his face, making of him a living death's-head, dripping with blood. Then hurling herself with fury among the combatants, kicking and biting, Lisette upset everything that she met on her road. The officer who had made so many attempts to strike me tried to hold her by the bridle; she seized him by his belly, and carrying him off with ease, ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... they were linked together by the ordinary associative ties. I found, however, that they were wholly independent of each other. Curious to know whether the will exerted any power over them, I set myself to try whether I could not conjure up a death's-head as one of the series; but what rose instead was a cheerful parlour fire, bearing a-top a tea-kettle, and as the picture faded and then vanished, it was succeeded by a gorgeous cataract, in which the white foam, at first strongly relieved against the dark rock over which it fell, soon exhibited ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Lawless, removing the cigar from his mouth and puffing a cloud of smoke into the sexton's face, "I should just think it was, most particularly and confoundedly wrong. I'll tell you what it is, old death's-head and cross-bones; things can't be allowed to go on 131in this manner. Reform, sir, is wanting, 'the bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill'. I mean to get into Parliament some day, Fairlegh, when I am tired of knocking about, you know—but ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... and other things which I have since forgotten. And all the time she cooked more and more and I ate more and more. I gorged like a savage; but then it was a far cry across the Sierras on a blind baggage, and I knew not when nor where I should find my next meal. And all the while, like a death's-head at the feast, silent and motionless, her own unfortunate boy sat and stared at me across the table. I suppose I represented to him mystery, and romance, and adventure—all that was denied the feeble flicker of life that was in him. And yet I could not forbear, once ...
— The Road • Jack London
... whose existence is so out of parallel with the larger laws in the midst of which it is moving, that life becomes to them as death and death as life.—How am I getting along?—he said, another morning. He lifted his shrivelled hand, with the death's-head ring on it, and looked at it with a sad sort of complacency. By this one movement, which I have seen repeatedly of late, I know that his thoughts have gone before to another condition, and that he is, as it were, looking back on the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... these nocturnal moths is the richly-coloured Acherontia Satanas, one of the Singhalese representatives of our Death's-head moth, which utters a sharp and stridulous cry when seized. This sound has been conjectured to be produced by the friction of its thorax against the abdomen;—Reaumur believed it to be caused by the rubbing of the palpi against the tongue. I have never been able to observe either ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... honour to them! This poor Pope,—who knows what good is in him? In a Time otherwise too prone to forget, he keeps up the mournfulest ghastly memorial of the Highest, Blessedest, which once was; which, in new fit forms, will again partly have to be. Is he not as a perpetual death's-head and cross-bones, with their Resurgam, on the grave of a Universal Heroism,—grave of a Christianity? Such Noblenesses, purchased by the world's best heart's-blood, must not be lost; we cannot afford to lose them, in what confusions soever. To all of us the ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... enemies, converted himself to the Roman Church, and obtained a captaincy of horse in the Spanish service. He was seen one day, to the disgust of many spectators, to enter Antwerp in black foreign uniform, at the head of his troopers, waving a standard with a death's-head embroidered upon it, and wearing, like his soldiers, a sable scarf and plume. History disdains to follow further the career of the renegade, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... defense, I can only plead that Margaret was an unusually beautiful woman. It is all very well to flourish a death's-head at the feast, and bid my lady go paint herself an inch thick, for to this favour she must come; and it is quite true that the reddest lips in the universe may give vent to slander and lies, and the brightest eyes be set in the dullest ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... fastened round her sunburnt face, which, under all its coarseness and premature wrinkles, showed a half-sad, half-ludicrous maternal resemblance to the tender baby-face of the little maiden—the sort of resemblance which often seems a more croaking, shudder-creating prophecy than that of the death's-head. ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... returned the other thoughtfully. "One sure thing, though, is that some sweet little cherubs are looking after us, and that death's-head at the gate is a good Joss, apparently. I'll go and get the gold bags, Barry, then I'd better take up quarters at the post. ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... regular provision; then it is that their reasoning powers are called into action. I will explain this by stating a fact relative to the bee, one of the animals upon which instinct is most powerful in its action. There is a certain large moth, called the Death's-head moth, which is very fond of honey. It sometimes contrives to force its way through the aperture of the hive, and gain an entrance. The bees immediately attack it, and it is soon destroyed by their stings; but the carcass is so large, that they cannot ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... said, after contemplating it for some minutes, "this is a strange scarabaeus, I must confess: new to me: never saw anything like it before—unless it was a skull, or a death's-head—which, it more nearly resembles than, anything else that has come ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... the morning, I still remember, because I hadn't breakfasted. That lady who is followed by a duenna is the celebrated Pepay, the dancing girl, but she doesn't dance any more now that a very Catholic gentleman and a great friend of mine has—forbidden it. There's the death's-head Z——, who's surely following her to get her to dance again. He's a good fellow, and a great friend of mine, but has one defect—he's a Chinese mestizo and yet calls himself a Peninsular Spaniard. Sssh! Look at Ben-Zayb, him with the face of a friar, who's ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... and wonder That the sunlight should reveal you such a thing of skin and bone, As if unaware a Death's-head must of need lie not far under Flesh whose years ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... the toad, In their caves that make abode; Earthy Dun that pants for breath, With her swelled sides full of death; By the crested adders' pride, That along the clifts do glide; By thy visage fierce and black; By the death's-head on thy back; By the twisted serpents placed For a girdle round thy waist; By the hearts of gold that deck Thy breast, thy shoulders, and thy neck: From thy sleepy mansion rise, And open thy unwilling eyes, While bubbling springs their music keep, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... though not very interesting, was quite a favourite before she died. She left Wynnie—for she and her brother were the last of their race—a death's-head watch, which had been in the family she did not know how long. I think it is as old as Queen Elizabeth's time. I took it to London to a skilful man, and had it as well repaired as its age would admit of; and it has gone ever since, though not with the greatest accuracy; for what could ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... stepped out of the real living world into some grey, uncanny land of dreams, where the very air is thick and haunted with some quality of unknown fear and unknown oppression? So it seemed to me when I first saw the Skull and Spectacles with its death's-head smirking welcome and the river mud oozing about its timbers. But the place piqued me while it frightened me, and I pulled my courage together like a coat, buttoned it ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... horror at the savage slaughter at Magdeburg, the triumphant Tilly marched upon and captured the city of Leipsic. Here he fixed his headquarters in the house of a grave-digger, where he grew pale at seeing the death's-head and cross-bones with which the owner had decorated his walls. These significant emblems may have had something to do with the unusual mildness with which he treated the citizens ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... rigidly together in the moonlight, like a death's-head. "Yes," she said dryly, "it was that old Barker woman. Say, Seth," she continued, moistening her lips slowly, ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... his mantle flung over one shoulder, his saber in his hand. When he saluted the ladies on their balconies, his spirited horse would rear and dance proudly. His company, the "Volons," had selected black and crimson as the colors for their uniform. The shako was ornamented in front with a white death's-head, and one would not have believed that a skull ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... the worst form of medicine. More- over, the feverish, disgusting pride of those who call [5] themselves metaphysicians or Scientists,—but are such in name only,—fanned by the breath of mental mal- practice, is the death's-head at the feast of Truth; the monkey in harlequin jacket that will retard the onward march of life-giving Science, if not understood and with- [10] stood, and so ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... wrenched until at last the hedgehog screamed—a thin, piercing wail, most ghastly and pitiful and old, ancient as the cry of the death's-head moth, that faint ghostly shriek as of a tortured witch. Centuries of pain were in it, the age-long terror of weakness bound and helpless beneath the knife, and that something vindictive and terrifying that looks up at the hunter from the eyes of trapped animals and sends the cuckoo fleeing ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... Oleander, with his death's-head smile, "Miss Mollie's return is far more remarkable than her departure! That young lady's sang-froid requires to be ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... was first printed in quarto, without name or date, at London, 1616. In the frontpiece were engraved the tobacco-pipes, cross-bones, death's-head, etc. It is not improbable that it was directly intended to foment the popular prejudice against Sir Walter Raleigh, who was put to death in the same year (1616). James alludes to the introduction of the use of tobacco and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various |
