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Deformity   /dɪfˈɔrməti/   Listen
Deformity

noun
(pl. deformities)
1.
An affliction in which some part of the body is misshapen or malformed.  Synonyms: malformation, misshapenness.
2.
An appearance that has been spoiled or is misshapen.  Synonyms: disfiguration, disfigurement.  "Suffering from facial disfiguration"



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"Deformity" Quotes from Famous Books



... offered up her beauty to her love! For this reason she had so piteously pleaded with him!—for this reason had she clamored for pity!—pity for her youth, her future, her life's happiness! Love and faith she had offered up! Greater, braver than Juliet, she had not given herself up to death, but to deformity! She had destroyed her body, in order to treasure love and constancy in her heart for her beloved! All this the king knew, and a profound and boundless sorrow for this young woman, so strong in her love, came ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... in my opinion, a genius of the first class in whatever relates not to form. In spite of the most portentous deformity, and without considering the spell of his chiaro-scuro, such were his powers of nature, such the grandeur, pathos, or simplicity of his composition, from the most elevated or extensive arrangement to the meanest and most homely, that the best cultivated eye, ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet

... of a tent or 'a tabernacle,' blending the notions of stripping off a garment and pulling down a transitory abode. It speaks about death as a sleep, and in that and other ways sets it forth in gracious and gentle aspects, and veils the deformity, and loves and hopes away ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... cheek-bones, and pointed chin, sufficiently characterised him as labouring under that sort of imbecility not seldom unmixed with a tact and shrewdness that seem to be characteristic of this species of disease and deformity. He set one foot on the mattock, ceasing from his labours whilst he cried out, winking significantly with ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... established and confirmed. Custom has robbed this relict of a former age of much of its repulsiveness; but it is not the less hurtful on that account. Were we to run a parallel with it in any other matter, its true nature and deformity would at once appear. For example, were we to suppose ourselves listening to an imperative message from a superior, by a messenger with whose language we were but partially acquainted, we would not allow him to proceed with his communication from beginning ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall

... (as has been observed) an imitation of men worse than the average; worse, however, not as regards any and every sort of fault, but only as regards one particular kind, the Ridiculous, which is a species of the Ugly. The Ridiculous may be defined as a mistake or deformity not productive of pain or harm to others; the mask, for instance, that excites laughter, is something ugly and distorted ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle

... covered grave, and there leave it to die, or to expose it in some lonely spot, where wild animals would not be likely to find it. After the introduction of Christianity, such exposure was permitted only in cases of extreme deformity.' ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... moral virtue to reason, then, if we look at that which it has of reason, it holds the position of one extreme, viz. conformity; while excess and defect take the position of the other extreme, viz. deformity. But if we consider moral virtue in respect of its matter, then it holds the position of mean, in so far as it makes the passion conform to the rule of reason. Hence the Philosopher says (Ethic. ii, 6) that "virtue, as to its essence, is a mean state," in so far as ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... has been a Briton who pitied the guilty above all other sufferers, and devoted to them his time, his fortune, his all. He will have followers, till Christendom itself follows him; and he will thus have carried forward the Gospel one step. The charity which grieves more for the deformity of the soul than the evils of the body is so far higher a charity, that it may almost be ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... Disease, Insanity, and Deformity. By John Ellis, M.D., Professor of the Principles and Practice of Medicine in the Western Medical College of Cleveland, Ohio; Author of "Marriage and its Violations." A Book for the People as well as for the Profession. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... subject, it does not alter the moral deformity of the act. What have these innocent beings done that they should be subjected to this disgrace? Are they not flesh and blood like ourselves—do they not approach nearer to our form and, for aught we know to the contrary, to our reason, than ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... his reign. In less than eight months, however, every trace of moderation and clemency vanished; while furious passions, unexampled avarice, and capricious cruelty, reigned uncontrolled; and pride, impiety, lust, and avarice, appeared in all their native deformity. ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... the meat that endureth for ever, but for the meat that perisheth. As these three texts are kept, so do many people keep this part of the oath; for there were never more divisions and differences in the church, never more deformity, and pleading against ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... (Fractures). A broken bone or fracture is known by pain in a particular place that hurts on movement or when touched. Also, by a deformity or a movable lump, caused by the ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... a few have peculiarly flattened foreheads (Fig. 64). This deformity is produced by binding a piece of board upon the forehead in babyhood and leaving it there while the head ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks

... "Reflections upon Exile;" the retired Petrarch and Zimmerman's Essays on "Solitude;" the imprisoned Boethius's "Consolations of Philosophy;" the oppressed Pierius Valerianus's Catalogue of "Literary Calamities;" the deformed Hay's Essay on "Deformity;" the projecting De Foe's "Essays on Projects;" the liberal ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... though it was easy, where interest concurred, to deceive them by the thinnest disguises, it might be found dangerous at once to pull off the mask, and to show them in a full light the whole crime and deformity of their conduct. Suspended between these fears and his own most ardent desires, Cromwell protracted the time, and seemed still to oppose the reasonings of the committee; in hopes that by artifice he ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... waters. "Prudence," the only example of a female nude in Bellini's works, holds a looking-glass. Hypocrisy or Calumny is torn writhing from his refuge. The Summa Virtus is an ugly representation of all the virtues; a waddling deformity with eyes bound holds the scales of justice; the pitcher in its hand means prudence, and the gold upon its feet symbolises charity. The landscape, both of this and of the "Fortune," resembles that which he was painting in his ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... for their hardiness, intelligence, integrity, and zeal. Those benefits are felt by us in the general healthiness of the people, and in their vigour and activity; I might have added too in their comeliness. Deformity is indeed unknown amongst us, I mean that of shape. Numbers of the natives of Eboe now in London might be brought in support of this assertion: for, in regard to complexion, ideas of beauty are wholly relative. I remember while in Africa to have seen three negro children, ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano

... Little Nobby's deformity was one of the strange things that made Adam think. Several years before, he had the child with him at the factory one night, just old enough to walk a little. In Adam's momentary absence the boy managed to get upon a box ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... Durham, made the presidential address. He first alluded to the perfection to which the forceps had reached for pelves narrowed at the brim, and the means of correcting faulty position of the foetus during labor. He then stated: 'In cases of great deformity of the pelvis, it has long been the ambition of the obstetrician, where it has been impossible to deliver a living child per vias naturales, to find some means by which that child could be born alive with comparative safety to the mother; and that time has now arrived. It is not for me to ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens

... to moan The unseemly negligence of nature's hand, That left them so forlorn. What praise is thine, O mistress of the passions; artist fine! Who dost our souls against our sense command, Plucking the horror from a sightless face, Lending to blank deformity ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... organiser or inspector to an education committee, a trainer in an elementary training college or physical training college, the head of the gymnastic department of a school clinic, or she may prefer to start a private practice, holding classes, treating cases of deformity, and also acting as visiting gymnastic teacher or games-coach to schools ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley

... no passion that he has not pourtrayed, and laid bare in its beauty or deformity; no feeling or affection to which his genius has not given the stamp of immortality: and does he want an interpreter? It is treading on dangerous ground to attempt to improve him. Even MR. KNIGHT, enthusiast as he is in his veneration for Shakspeare, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various

... in the old chateau of Kerouez, in the commune of Loguivy-Plougras, a rich and powerful seigneur, whose only sorrow was the dreadful deformity of his son, who had come into the world with a horse's head. He was naturally kept out of sight as much as possible, but when he had attained the age of eighteen years he told his mother one day that he desired to marry, and requested her to interview ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... that I could not catch one single word they uttered. We recollected one man whom we had formerly seen among the party of the natives that came to us in 1777, and who is particularised in the account of Captain Cook's last voyage for his humour and deformity. Some of them had a small stick, two or three feet long, in their hands, but ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh

... he rose to rake over his bench for material or a tool, he went spryly, aided by a stick, but at every step his body heeled over because one leg was shorter than the other. Having found what he wanted he would wheel round, with a strange agility that was apparently a consequence of his deformity, continuing his discourse, and driving his points into the air with his hammer, and so hobble back, still talking; still talking through his funny cap, as his neighbours used to say of him. At times he convoluted aerial designs and free ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

... life—not when it is perverted life;"—returned Seaton—"Then it is mere deformity and encumbrance. For life itself in all its plenitude, health and beauty I have the deepest, most passionate respect. It is the outward ray or reflex of the ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli

... fancy—that is, the suddenness of his appearance and his strange conduct have made you imagine this; but I saw in him but a man who, from his peculiar deformity, has become an envious outcast of society—debarred from domestic happiness, from the smiles of the other sex; for what woman could smile upon such a creature? His bile raised at so much beauty in the ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... substantial flesh-and-blood display of passion, exhibit a striking contrast to the cold, abstracted, gratuitous, servile malignity of the Witches, who are equally instrumental in urging Macbeth to his fate for the mere love of mischief, and from a disinterested delight in deformity and cruelty. They are hags of mischief, obscene panders to iniquity, malicious from their impotence of enjoyment, enamoured of destruction, because they are themselves unreal, abortive, half- existences, and who become ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... evil, he thought, if the approach of a pure angel gives me pleasure. The touch of Ithuriel's spear reveals deformity where it exists; ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... exploded rumour, first propagated by John of Gant, that Edmond earl of Lancaster (to whom Henry's mother was heiress) was in reality the elder brother of king Edward I; though his parents, on account of his personal deformity, had imposed him on the world for the younger: and therefore Henry would be intitled to the crown, either as successor to Richard II, in case the intire male line was allowed a preference to the female; or, even prior to that unfortunate prince, if the crown could descend through a female, while ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... miscreate, In masses lumped hideously, Wallowed the conger, the thorny skate, The lobster's grisly deformity; And, baring its teeth with cruel sheen, a Terrible shark, the ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald

... that says, "The court understands nothing of the matter" Defence allures attempt, and defiance provokes an enemy Defend most the defects with which we are most tainted Defer my revenge to another and better time Deformity of the first cruelty makes me abhor all imitation Delivered into our own custody the keys of life Denying all solicitation, both of hand and mind Depend as much upon fortune as anything else we do Desire ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne

... to Trinity College, Cambridge, where Macaulay and Tennyson were to be among his successors. Aspiring to be an athlete, he made himself respected as a fighter, despite his deformity, by his strength of arm, and he was always a powerful swimmer. Deliberately aiming also at the reputation of a debauchee, he lived wildly, though now as later probably not altogether so wickedly as he represented. After three years of irregular attendance at the University ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... being looked at for half a day without returning one glance. This water has a peculiar virtue in it, which makes it the only true cosmetic or beauty wash in the world: the nature of it is such, that if you go to a glass, with design to admire your face, it immediately changes it into downright deformity. If you consult it only to look with a better countenance upon your friends, it immediately gives an alacrity to the visage, and new grace to the whole person. There is indeed a great deal owing to the constitution of the person to whom it is applied: ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... right to follow habits which will endanger health and reason, and which observation and carefully collected statistics show will shorten the average duration of life; for to thus act is to violate the command, "Thou shall not kill." The causes of ill health, deformity, and the prevailing insanity and premature deaths must be sought out and exposed, and a call ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis

... said the Baron, "we must pardon much to men of genius. A delicate organization renders them keenly susceptible to pain and pleasure. And then they idealize every thing; and, in the moonlight of fancy, even the deformity of vice ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... think of things true and pure and of good report. Oft at midnight upon the poet's ear there fell the sound of celestial music, that afterward he transposed into his "Paradise Regained." Dying, it was given him to proudly say: "I am not one of those who have disgraced beauty of sentiment by deformity of conduct, nor the maxims of the freeman by the actions of the slave, but by the grace of God, I have kept my soul unsullied." Here is the immortal Bunyan, spending his best years in Bedford jail because he insisted on giving men the message God had ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... hinted at the possibility of what was taking place in him. Bazarov had a great love for women and for feminine beauty; but love in the ideal, or, as he expressed it, romantic sense, he called lunacy, unpardonable imbecility; he regarded chivalrous sentiments as something of the nature of deformity or disease, and had more than once expressed his wonder that Toggenburg and all the minnesingers and troubadours had not been put into a lunatic asylum. 'If a woman takes your fancy,' he used to say, 'try and gain your end; but if you can't—well, ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... that sometimes he is loathed by his own kith and kin! It is that whiteness which invests him, a thing expressed by the name he bears. The Albino is as well made as other men—has no substantive deformity—and yet this mere aspect of all-pervading whiteness makes him more strangely hideous than the ugliest abortion. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... exultation! He threw himself on his knees, promised, and vowed, and thanked, kissed hands, and was in such ecstasies! He could hardly imagine that his good fortune was real. A beautiful widow with a handsome fortune—how could he ever have thought of throwing himself away upon such a bunch of deformity as the Frau Vandersloosh? Poor Mr Vanslyperken! Dinner put an end to his protestations. He fared sumptuously, and drank freely to please the widow. He drank death to the usurper, and restoration ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat

... of it, extremely odd; he was low in stature; and this defect was enhanced by a distortion of the spine, so considerable as almost to amount to a hunch; his features, too, had all that sharpness and sickliness of hue which generally accompany deformity; he wore his hair, which was black as soot, in heavy neglected ringlets about his shoulders, and always without powder—a peculiarity in those days. There was something unpleasant, too, in the circumstance that he never raised his eyes to meet those of another; ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... those weird sisters, arranged stiffly a l'Etrusque, who are receiving the infant Bacchus, not to give him milk, you may be sure, but to dry-nurse him upon Burgundy; a perfectly intellectual head, planted upon misshapen shoulders, supposed to be AEsop, a beautiful deformity; a Hercules, leaning against a column, and reposing after some of his many labours; the large marble vase with Bacchante figures and attendant Fauns, carrying skins of wine to keep up the festivities; all these are well worthy of a longer inspection than we have now time to bestow. The mosaics ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... them, William Locker, from the extraordinary deformity of his left leg, had been offered L100 for ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... look or word, any deformity, any scar of misfortune to the face or figure of a friend, in not only a breach of etiquette of the grossest kind, but is a want of humanity and good ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost

... house, and made good cheere with her to the utter undoing and impoverishment of her husband, but I that was greatly offended with the negligence of Fotis, who made me an Asse, in stead of a Bird, did yet comfort my selfe by this onely meane, in that to the miserable deformity of my shape, I had long eares, whereby I might heare all things that was done: On a day I heard the old bawd say ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius

... induced by mutilation being inherited (Brown-Sequard's epileptic guinea-pigs) has been discussed by Professor Weismann and shown to be not conclusive. The mutilation itself—a section of certain nerves—was never inherited, but the resulting epilepsy, or a general state of weakness, deformity, or sores, was sometimes inherited. It is, however, possible that the mere injury introduced and encouraged the growth of certain microbes, which, spreading through the organism, sometimes reached ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler

... professed a proper sort of love for the young lady—not exactly such as would seek her for a wife, however, and succeeded in satisfying, after a while, the scruples of one who, in addition to deformity, he also discovered to labor under the more serious curse of partial idiocy. Having done this, and flattered, in sundry other ways, the peculiarities of his companion, he pursued his ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... tend to divest riches of one of the greatest charms, over-bearing dominion. We do, indeed, import gorgeous silks and luscious sweets from the Indies, but we import, at the same time, the spirit of despotism, which adds deformity to the purple robe, and bitterness to the honied beverage." "That Oriental manners are unfavourable to liberty, is, I believe, universally conceded. The natives of the East Indies entertain not the idea of independence. They treat the Europeans, who go ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various

... play of arms, and in the first sallies of my enthusiasm I had seriously attempted to embrace the regular profession of a soldier. But this military fever was cooled by the enjoyment of our mimic Bellona, who soon unveiled to my eyes her naked deformity. How often did I sigh for my proper station in society and letters. How often (a proud comparison) did I repeat the complaint of Cicero in the command of a provincial army: "Clitellae bovi sunt impositae. Est incredibile quam me negotii taedeat. Non ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon

... the white-faced clown; and tremendously funny is he. There is a weird, elastic harlequin in a ghastly mask which he never lifts; and an amazing notary in an astounding nose, who proves to be Monsieur Goosequill. There is a humpback of hideous deformity and a Columbine of seraphic loveliness; and all Monsieur Goosequill's troubles come out of the fact that he endeavors to marry the humpback to the Columbine, who prefers to marry the harlequin. And so the notary's quill sets fire to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... agent upon the instrument; which if with reason we may do, then let our hammers rise up and boast they have built our houses, and our pens receive the honour of our writing. I hold there is a general beauty in the works of God, and therefore no deformity in any kind of species of creature whatsoever. I cannot tell by what logick we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly; they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best express the actions of their inward forms; and having passed that general ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... member—one had never heard of another—where it was vaguely understood letters would some day or other find him. Fortunately he pressed with no sharpness the spring of pity—his whole "form" was so easy a grasp of the helm of consciousness, which he would never let go. He would never consent to any deformity, but would steer his course straight through the eventual narrow pass and simply ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... possession or sovereignty of Colchos and its dependent states. Rich in the accumulated treasures of the East, he extorted from the Romans an annual payment of thirty thousand pieces of gold; and the smallness of the sum revealed the disgrace of a tribute in its naked deformity. In a previous debate, the chariot of Sesostris, and the wheel of fortune, were applied by one of the ministers of Justinian, who observed that the reduction of Antioch, and some Syrian cities, had elevated beyond measure the vain and ambitious spirit ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... ever did them better than he, or came near him in imagining them; to which witness is borne by a marine monster that he made and presented to the Magnificent Giuliano de' Medici, which is so extravagant, bizarre, and fantastic in its deformity, that it seems impossible that Nature should produce anything so deformed and strange among her creations. This monster is now in the guardaroba of Duke Cosimo de' Medici, as is also a book, likewise by the hand of Piero, of animals of the same kind, most beautiful and bizarre, hatched very diligently ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari

... their father, and cast off all the feelings of filial tenderness and respect; would any qualities those children might possess, any appearance of virtue they might exhibit in other respects, compensate for such an unnatural, such an awful deformity of character? Transfer this representation to your conduct in relation to God: "If I," says He, "am a father, where is my fear? if I am a master, where is my honor?" "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth! I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me: the ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser

... which France had abstained from active intervention. If any such hopes existed they were doomed to speedy disappointment. The apparatus of priestly maladministration was restored in all its ancient deformity. An amnesty which had been promised by the Legate Benvenuti was disregarded, and the Pope set himself to strengthen his authority by enlisting new bands of ruffians and adventurers under the standard of St. Peter. Again insurrection broke out, and again at the Pope's request the Austrians ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... showed their bare arms, which were as strong as blackmiths'. They were two strong fellows, who thought a great deal of their vigor, and who showed in all their movements that elasticity and grace of the limbs which can only be acquired by exercise, and which is so different to the deformity with which the same continual work stamps ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... corporeal stains, and wholly given to matter, contracts deeply its nature, loses all its original splendour, and almost changes its own species into that of another; just as the pristine beauty of the most lovely form would be destroyed by its total immersion in mire and clay. But the deformity of the first arises from inward filth, of its own contracting; of the second, from the accession of some foreign nature. If such a one then desires to recover his former beauty, it is necessary to cleanse the infected ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus

... considered the pride, not the shame of the State; and if we falsify such institutions, the disgrace is ours, not theirs. If slavery, however, is a blemish, a blot, an eating cancer in the body politic, it is not our fault if, by holding it up, others should see in the mirror of truth its deformity, and shrink back from the view. We have not, and we intend not, to use any weapons against slavery, but the moral power of truth and the force of public opinion. If we enter the slave States, and tamper with the slave contrary to law, punish us, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... never liked Nick Holden. He was a coarse, rough-looking boy, his reddish face one mass of freckles, and about as unattractive as a person could be, without absolute deformity. This, however, was not ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger

... and abandoned woman when all other influences are powerless. But when love degenerates into idolatry and indulgence, and those to whom the child is given as a sacred trust permit it to grow awry, and develop into moral deformity, men and women, as did Haldane, may breathe curses on the blindness and weakness that was the primal cause of their life-failure. Throughout that long and horrible night he felt only resentment toward his mother, and cherished no better purpose toward her than was embodied in his plan to wring from ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... am not forgotten during the hours when others have claims upon you. I have ever kept you in mind, and I might say more. If women have a little natural spite, men in some situations are endowed with enormous selfishness, and the bump of appropriation grows almost into a deformity." ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... looking daggers at those who conducted him. He was sober, although his eyes bore testimony to recent intoxication, and his face, which was manly and handsome, was much disfigured by an enormous quid of tobacco in his right cheek, which gave him an appearance of natural deformity. As soon as he was near enough to the pacha, the attendants let him go. Jack shook his jacket, hitched up his trousers, and said, looking furiously at them, "Well, you beggars, have you ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... memory of poor Drummond has been most unjustly aspersed. Drummond died, at Calcutta, in 1845, about the age of seventy. He was much respected among a wide circle of friends and admirers. His personal appearance was unprepossessing, almost approaching to deformity,—a circumstance which may explain the ultimate hesitation of Miss Wilson to accept his hand. "The Bonnie Lass o' Levenside" was first printed, with the author's consent, though without acknowledgment, in a small volume ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... creatures in this world don't know how to put on a glove. It's an art, and an art that requires long study. If a few of us were to turn glove-fitters when we are fairly crushed, we might civilize the whole world, and prevent the deformity of an ill-fitting glove ever blotting creation and prostituting Houbigant. What do ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... created for him the position of a star in the world of chess: "There is in my nature neither love for this nonsense, nor respect," he would say. "I simply possess some sort of a mechanical ability of the mind, some sort of a psychic deformity. Well, now, just as there are lefties. And for that reason I've no professional self-respect, nor pride at victory, nor spleen ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... metamorphosis in all the pages of Ovid so wonderful as that which the great magician of the shears and thimble is capable of effecting. If there be the most unpleasant disproportions in the turn of your limbs—any awkwardness or deformity in your figure, the enchantment of this mighty wizard instantly communicates symmetry and elegance. The incongruous and unseemly furrows of your shape become smooth and harmonized; and the total want of all shape is immediately supplied ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various

... breathing World, scarse halfe made vp, And that so lamely and vnfashionable, That dogges barke at me, as I halt by them. Why I (in this weake piping time of Peace) Haue no delight to passe away the time, Vnlesse to see my Shadow in the Sunne, And descant on mine owne Deformity. And therefore, since I cannot proue a Louer, To entertaine these faire well spoken dayes, I am determined to proue a Villaine, And hate the idle pleasures of these dayes. Plots haue I laide, Inductions dangerous, By drunken Prophesies, Libels, and Dreames, To set my Brother ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... But homeliness, ugliness or deformity have their limits, and I challenge anybody to bring forth an authenticated case in which a man fell in love with a woman—or vice versa—who had an enormous tumor on one side of the face, which made her look like a monstrosity, or whose nose was sunk in as a result of lupus or syphilis, or ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson

... demonstrate superiority or to avoid inferiority. There are some who feel inwardly inferior, yet disguise this feeling successfully. This feeling of inferiority may arise from purely accidental matters, such as appearance, deformity, tone of voice, etc., and the individual may either hide, become seclusive or else brazen ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... blemishes, correct his blunders, castigate his faults; it is your duty,—he himself will have reason to thank you. But do not approach him with arrogance or a supercilious coldness; do not, if your knowledge be less than his, seek to mask your ignorance with the deformity of conceit; do not treat him as a criminal or as a dunce, unless he happens really to be one. Above all, do not, by dint of judging, vitiate your faculty of tasting. Recognize the importance, the inestimable virtues, of that quality which you have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... maiden of more than mortal beauty, named Melusine, and, falling at once in love, obtained her hand, on condition that he should never ask to behold her on a Saturday. Their marriage was happy, excepting that all their children had some deformity; but at last, in a fit of curiosity, Raymond hid himself, in order to penetrate into his lady's secret, and, to his dismay, perceived that from the waist downward she was transformed into a blue-and-white serpent, an enchantment she underwent every Saturday. ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... to the place of appointment. It was a glorious summer day; and as he rode briskly along the country road, out of which he soon turned into a long lane skirted on either side by noble trees, he could not help sighing to think how man's sin had brought discord and deformity into a world which might otherwise have been so full of beauty. The wood soon appeared in sight, and a lonely as well as lovely spot it was. Many bridle-roads intersected it; he chose one which seemed to lead into the centre, ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson

... wouldst thou have thy government sound and healthful? Then cast about and see and search diligently to find out all those burthens that came in by Kings, and remove them; and then will thy Commonwealth's Government arise from under the clods under which as yet it is buried and covered with deformity."—WINSTANLEY, ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens

... violin player by nature is proved by the various inventions, chin-rests, braces, intended to supply what nature has not supplied. The study of the violin should never be allowed if it is going to result in actual physical deformity: raising of the left shoulder, malformation of the back, or eruptions resulting from chin-rest pressure. These are all evidences of physical unfitness, ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens

... have the most beneficial effect on mankind. Further, they were bound to form abstract notions for the explanation of the nature of things, such as goodness, badness, order, confusion, warmth, cold, beauty, deformity, and so on; and from the belief that they are free agents arose the further notions of praise and ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza

... see, Made to conceal deformity: Those to whom nature has been kind, Should leave ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park

... the action you propose to yourself is divested of some of the aggravations of seduction. I will acknowledge it. Had my friend received this crime into his bosom in all its deformity, dear as he is to me, I would have thrown him from my heart with detestation. Yes, I am firmly persuaded, that the man who perpetrates it, however specious he may appear, was never conscious to one ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin

... Imbecility of mind is as rare, as deformity of the animal frame. If this position be true, we have only to bear it in mind, feelingly to convince ourselves, how wholesale the error is into which society has hitherto fallen in the destination of its members, and how much yet remains to be done, before our common nature can ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... board on the forehead of an infant in such a way that it presses on the skull and forces the forehead up on to the top of the head. As a man whose head has been flattened in infancy grows older, the deformity partly disappears; but the flatness of the head is always regarded as a ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks

... recalled by the fearful crisis that is now upon us. While we rejoice in our recent victories, and believe that this wicked rebellion will soon be subdued, we must rejoice with trembling, so long as SLAVERY, the acknowledged casus belli, still remains. The unsightly monster, in all its rottenness and deformity, is drawn up from the hiding-place of ages, and it can no more be restored to its former status, than, at the will of the workmen, our old pump could be thrust back, when, suspended in the air, it threatened ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... of the neck of the womb may result from inflammation of the mucous lining, and prevent a free and easy exit of the menstrual fluid. In many cases, the contracted and narrowed condition of the canal of the cervix seems to be a congenital deformity, for we can trace it to no perceptible cause. It is also true that contraction and partial, or even complete, stricture of the cervix, or neck of the womb, often results from the improper application of strong caustics to this passage by incompetent ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... wanted the testimony of my eyes before I could feel perfectly satisfied, because the protuberance I had felt in a certain place might be only a freak of nature. "Should it be the case," I added, "I should have no difficulty in passing over a deformity which, in reality, is only laughable. Bellino, the impression you produce upon me, this sort of magnetism, your bosom worthy of Venus herself, which you have once abandoned to my eager hand, the sound of your voice, every movement of yours, assure me that you do not belong to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... doubt," answered Torbert, "and dread too, for even if he gets well again, he must be maimed for life, and he was the sort of creature that ought not to have a deformity ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg

... giants, that builds the fortifications of tyrants, and is embodied in their armies. Hence the possibility of such tyrannies as those of which it has been said, that "Rome smells worse under Vitellius than under Sulla. Under Claudius and under Domitian there is a deformity of baseness corresponding to the ugliness of the tyranny. The foulness of the slaves is a direct result of the atrocious baseness of the despot. A miasma exhales from these crouching consciences that reflect the master; the public authorities are unclean, hearts are collapsed, consciences ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... felt the departure of these unfortunate creatures a relief. He could not, from their language, manners, and appearance, doubt that they belonged to the degraded class of beings whom deformity of person and weakness of intellect recommended to the painful situation of appendages to great families, where their personal appearance and imbecility were food for merriment to the household. Superior ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... up to the cat-head in time of need; another was for cutting down the foremast (the foretop-mast being already by the board.) The fog totally disappeared, and the black rocky island stood in all its rugged deformity before their eyes. Suddenly the sun broke out in full splendor, as if to expose more clearly to the view of the sufferers their dreadful predicament. Despair was in every bosom—death, arrayed in all its terrors, seemed ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park

... precious picture. I fell upon it. I raved over the straight-front mountains and the marceled waves in that foolish old woodcut as I had never gushed over any piece of paper before, and I hope I never will again. Not once did he relinquish his hold of that faded deformity in art, ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... fitted into a hole in it in such a manner as to thrust the lip straight and far out from the face. As the ring is about the size of an ordinary napkin-ring, it may be easily believed, that time is required for the formation of the deformity. At an early age the middle of the upper lip of a girl is pierced close to the nose, and a small pin introduced to prevent the hole closing up. After it is healed the pin is taken out and a larger one forced into its place, and so for weeks, months, and years the process of increasing ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne

... William Morris that the Dark Ages were to him a time of special light and illumination. Life then was simple. Men worked for the love of it, and if they wanted things they made them. "Every trade exclusively followed means a deformity," says Ruskin. Division of labor had not yet come, and men were skilled in many ways. There was neither poverty nor riches, and the idea of brotherhood was firmly fixed in the minds of men. The feverish ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... the meaning of a strange smile, half scornful and half sad, that played upon his face. At last he rose slowly, and stood looking up at the grim old castle, and its quaint blending of ancient strength and modern deformity. 'Life here, I take it, will go on pretty much as before. All the acts of this drama will resemble each other, but my own little melodrama must open soon. I wonder what sort of house there will be for Joe ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... the luckless negro instantly fled to "the bush;" and, that night, in the agony of delirium, caused by fever and dreaded deformity, the mate ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... abuse, were uttered with the broadest accent of his province. It was easy to discern, from the first words which he spoke, whether he came from Somersetshire or Yorkshire. He troubled himself little about decorating his abode, and, if he attempted decoration, seldom produced anything but deformity. The litter of a farmyard gathered under the windows of his bedchamber, and the cabbages and gooseberry bushes grew close to his hall door. His table was loaded with coarse plenty; and guests were cordially welcomed to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... It illumines the mind, raises the imagination, and warms the heart. It is not an added quality, but grows from the inner nature of things; it is the thought of God working outward. Only from drunken eyes can you with paint and tinsel hide inward deformity. The beauty of hills and waves, of flowers and clouds, of children at play, of reapers at work, of heroes in battle, of poets inspired, of saints rapt in adoration,—rises from central depths of being, and is concealed from frivolous minds. Even in the presence of death, the hallowing ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... readily forgive disgusting physical deformity for Fame's sake than we. They would embrace with more rapture a famous orang-outang than we an illustrious chimpanzee; but when it comes to moral ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade

... barbarous soils, where books have never been opened, and where the savage does not pause to inquire from what source he has derived relief. No improvement in the physical sciences can bear a parallel with that which ministers in every part of the globe to the prevention of deformity, and, in a great proportion, to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... describe. There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn't specify the point. He's an extraordinary-looking man, and yet I really can name nothing out of the way. No, sir; I can make no hand of it; I can't describe him. And it's not want of memory; for I declare I can see him ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... still primitive savages. We are still combating murder, arson, theft—like the cave-dweller fighting the physical mammoth, we are fighting the mammoths of moral deformity. ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane

... felt she was no longer a part of this family. Were they not all pitying and looking down on her in their hearts? She was like a deformed person who has always imagined the consideration he has had was natural and equal, and suddenly discovers that it is pity for his deformity. She now acutely felt her aunt's, her cousin's, dislike; and her uncle's gentleness was not less galling. In her softly rounded youthful face there was revealed definitely for the first time an underlying expression of strength, of what is often confused ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... there are instances in which the inclination is so decided that one is tempted to conclude either that the masons had very crooked sight, or that they were playing tricks with their perspective. The feature, where it is at all marked, is something of a deformity. In our own day it has been introduced, apparently by design, into the plan of Truro cathedral. In medieval work, however, it will seldom be found in a chancel where no enlargement upon an early site has taken place; and it seems ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson

... without lopping off any part of them.' 'If any be indulged in the omission of the least thing there enjoined, they cannot be said to "speak all the same thing."' And then, in more forcible language, he descanted upon what he called 'the deformity and undecency' of difference of practice. He drew a vivid picture how some in the same diocese would use the surplice, and some not, and how there would be parties accordingly. 'Some will kneel at the Sacrament, some stand, some perhaps sit; some will read this part of the Common ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... dwarf. It seems, according to the legend, that, while this artist was working at the ornamentation of the temples at Nikko, he saw and fell in love with a very beautiful Japanese girl resident in the city; but she would have nothing to do with him on account of his deformity of person. In vain was his genius, in vain his tender pleadings; she was inflexible, so that at last, quite heartbroken, the poor sculptor went back to Tokio, his native place, where he carved an image of his beloved in wood, life-size, which, when finished, was so perfect and beautiful that ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou



Words linked to "Deformity" :   clawfoot, cleft foot, Arnold-Chiari deformity, disfiguration, chicken breast, deformed, talipes, pigeon breast, varus, malformation, pes cavus, disfigurement, clubfoot, valgus, plagiocephaly, appearance, visual aspect, misshapenness, scaphocephaly, affliction



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