"Death's head" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... atropos.—This is called the Death's Head moth from the resemblance of the spot on its thorax to a human skull. It is the largest of the Sphinx tribe, and is vulgarly regarded as the messenger of pestilence and death. When touched it utters a plaintive cry, like that of a bat or mouse. Reaumur ...
— The Emperor's Rout • Unknown
... over it, as far as the slack of the telephone wire of the receiver at my ear would permit. Annenberg had worked with amazing care and neatness on the list, even going so far as to draw at the top, in black, a death's head. The rest of it was elaborately prepared ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... could work on his mind. His prison was built between the trenches of the principal rampart, and was of course very dark. It was likewise very damp, and, to crown all, the name of 'Trenck' had been printed in red bricks on the wall, above a tomb whose place was indicated by a death's head. ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... of this "diaphanous" complexion and "aurified" hair (we borrow the expressions) in a person intended by nature to be dark, or swarthy, is most comical; sometimes the whitelead is used so unsparingly that it has quite a blue tint, which glistens until the face looks more like a death's head anointed with phosphorus and oil for theatrical purposes than the head of a Christian gentlewoman. It may be interesting to know, and we have the information from high, because soi-disant fashionable authority, that the reign of golden locks ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... and the officers of the Emperor's household, of course all in uniform. Then I was ushered alone into the adjoining room where the Emperor, very erect and dressed in the black uniform of the Death's Head Hussars, stood by a table. I made him a little speech, and presented my letters of credence and the letters of recall of my predecessor. The Emperor then unbent from his very erect and impressive attitude and talked with me in a very friendly manner, especially impressing me with his ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... the Death's Head was not uncommon at Aldington and Badsey on potatoes; I had a standing offer of threepence each for any that the village children could bring me. These large caterpillars require very careful handling, and I fear the children were not gentle enough with them, as I only ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... horribly ill, to tell the truth;—as pale as a death's head, and without a word to say for myself. I was ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... ineffectual attempts to remove a heavy body, you will observe them to meet together, consult among themselves, and commence an entire new plan of operations. Bees, also, are always prepared to meet any new difficulty. If the sphinx atropos, or death's head moth, forces its way into the hive, the bees are well known, after having killed it with their stings, to embalm the dead body with wax—their reason for this is, that the body was too large for them to remove through the passage by which it entered, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... 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 variously conjectured to be produced by the friction of its thorax against the abdomen, and Reaumur believed it to be caused by rubbing the palpi against the tongue. I have never been able to observe ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... less pale but even more stern, and the little man with the fish-bone face advanced gravely in his rear. And if the face of Warner in the sunlight was that of a hanging judge, the face of the little man behind was more like a death's head. ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... the fence very attentively. "Not gone by yet. I must wait for him," said he; and forthwith he commenced climbing the highest pile of boards, the top of which he reached at the imminent risk of his neck. Here he sat awaiting the advent of his friend Kinch, the absence of death's head and cross bones from the corner of the fence being a clear indication that he had not yet passed on his way ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... and the English are barbarians who like to be ready to cut some one's throat," answered her companion. "But Holy Jesus! look at the long fellow with the death's head who walks behind him, and carries his luggage in a sack. His face ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... into the stern-sheets. He fell upon the folded legs of the man at the tiller, who, roused by the commotion in the boat, was sitting up, silent, rigid, and very much like a corpse. His eyes were but two black patches, and his teeth glistened with a death's head grin between his retracted lips, no thicker than blackish parchment glued over ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... it!" was the reply. "I'm pretty glad our camp-fare is decent to-night, Joe, for we've a visitor here; a hungry bird who has strayed from his own camp, and has wandered through the forest until he looks like a death's head. But we'll soon fix him up; won't we, Joe? Give him a mug of hot tea right away. Hot tea is worth a dozen of any other drink in the woods ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... heeding her, 'I see you have made great progress in the art of painting. You have lavished more colour on one cheek than Rubens would have required for all the figures in his cartoons.' Observing one of the Ladies of Honour still more highly rouged than the Queen, he said, 'I suppose I look like a death's head upon a tombstone, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... so sad a monster birth? Why then in vain he would excite our mirth; His humour well our laughter might command, But who can bear the death's head in his hand? ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... accustomed, and in attaining an end which has presented itself by accident. Such are, for example, the arrangements which they make to defend their honey against the attacks of a great nocturnal Moth, the Death's Head. I shall have to revert ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... "not any in mine, Martha Merrick. Either we young folks go alone, without any death's head to perpetually glower at us, or we don't go at all! Three better girls never lived, and I'll trust 'em anywhere. Besides that, we aren't going to any of your confounded social functions; we're going on a reg'lar picnic, and if I don't give those girls the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... whose health had been bad for some time, published some work upon the "mesoblast" of the Death's Head Moth. What the mesoblast of the Death's Head Moth may be, does not matter a rap in this story. But the work was far below his usual standard, and gave Hapley an opening he had coveted for years. He must have worked night and day to make the most of ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... from one of the men, and all eyes turned to a point in the bulkhead where a hectic flush glowed like a death's head. Four streams struck it simultaneously. It went out, but reappeared in another place. The water quenched this also, but it came back again and widened, and the plunging water was dried to mist at the instant of contact. The glow grew brighter, then ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... carved a strange human figure, the symbol of the ship's name, The Sea Devil, and, which, the pirates humorously asserted, was the living image of their Captain Davis, whose face had been so disfigured by the bursting of a shell that it resembled a death's head. ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... part company," Mr. Sabin said, "or talk of something more cheerful. You depress me, Felix. Let Duson bring us wine. You look like a death's head." ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... heroic than the other, presented themselves to his mind, each like some grinning death's head. Closing his eyes, Yourii could clearly behold a grey Petersburg morning, damp brick walls and a gibbet faintly outlined against the leaden sky. He pictured the barrel of a revolver pressed to his brow; he imagined that he could ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... death's head toward the city. "Down yonder. But what's the use? There is no food in our house and Rosa is afraid of those wagons. You know—the ones with the corpses. She made me ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... Children are dynamical; churches and frescoes are statical. I can get on with statical subjects, but can do nothing with dynamical ones. Over the door and windows are two frescoes of skeletons holding mirrors in their hands, with a death's head in the mirror. This reflected head is supposed to be that of the spectator to whom death is holding up the image of what he will one day become. I do not remember the inscription at Soazza; the one in the Campo ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... deserve to have it. That's but small comfort, though, you'll say; 'tis confessed, but there is no such thing as perfect happiness in this world, those that have come the nearest it had many things to wish; and,—bless me, whither am I going? Sure, 'tis the death's head I see stand before me puts me into this grave discourse (pray do not think I meant that for a conceit neither); how idly have I spent two sides of my paper, and am afraid, besides, I shall not have time to write two more. Therefore I'll make haste to tell you that my friendship for you makes me ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... be a death's head at the feast," she told herself savagely. "I suppose I'm awfully wicked, but now that they are all so happy, it makes me feel dreadfully lonesome. I'm glad from my very heart for them, of course. But, oh, Paul! Oh, little Dodo! If you ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... tupapau horrors, for God's sake! let him stay away from the club. It's got so I hate to see him come in here, looking like a death's head. He spoils my drink. I'd rather be in the Marquesas with old Hemeury Francois, who is dyin' by inches of the spell Mohuto 's put on him. They're alike, these Kanakas; they're afraid of God and the devil, their own and the dam' missionary outfit, too. They've got them coming and going. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... capita as we, and almost twice as much as the French, are willing to share Fondue honors with the French Alpine province of Savoy, a natural cheese cellar with almost two dozen distinctive types of its very own, such as Fat cheese, also called Death's Head; La Grande Bornand, a luscious half-dried sheep's milker; Chevrotins, small, dry goat milk cheeses; and Le Vacherin. The latter, made in both Savoy and Switzerland, boasts ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... recognised that life with an epigrammatist has become unendurable. "Witty?" (if one may quote again the Carlyle whom English people are forgetting) "O be not witty: none of us is bound to be witty under penalties. A fashionable wit? If you ask me which, he or a death's head, will be the cheerier company for me, ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... tell your fortune, my pretty lady,' said the old woman, munching with her jaws, as if the Death's Head beneath her yellow skin were impatient to ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens |
