"Human head" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the cry seemed, however, to have put life into the little boat, for a human head rose slowly above the gunwale. It was that of a youth, of about twenty years of age, apparently in the last stage of exhaustion. He looked round slowly, with a dazed expression, like one who only half awakes from sleep. Drawing his hand across his brow, and gazing wistfully ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... human head may be divided into three equal parts, the length of the nose being the central part, from the nose to the end of the chin another, and the remainder above the nose the third part. In inferior heads these three measurements are equal, the upper third extending to the top of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... Sphinx is represented by a human head on the body of a lion; it is always in a recumbent position with the fore paws stretched forward, and a head dress resembling an old-fashioned wig. The features are like those of the ancient Egyptians, as represented on their monuments. ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... spectacle in the British Museum, no very new or singular objects can be selected in this. One of the rarest articles it contains is the representation in wax of a human head, most dexterously flayed indeed! Rapturous encomiums have been bestowed by amateurs on this performance. A German professor could hardly believe it artificial; and, prompted by the love of truth, set his teeth in this delicious morsel to be convinced of its reality. My faith was ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... themselves. These tribes, the Igorots, the Ilongots, the Bilans, and so forth, are of the same general type as the head-hunters of Borneo, and some,—like the Ilongots—to this day carry out the savage custom that 'no young man can be accepted in marriage until he has presented his bride with a human head.'" ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... gorgeous chapel of the saint which forms part of the Cathedral of Naples, and the place was filled with devout worshipers of every class, from the officials in court dress, representing the Bourbon king, down to the lowest lazzaroni. The reliquary of silver gilt, shaped like a large human head, and supposed to contain the skull of the saint, was first placed upon the altar; next, two vials, containing a dark substance said to be his blood, were also placed upon the altar, near the head. As the priests said prayers, they turned the vials from time to time; ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... reared its human head and laughed out in triumph. Then slowly it unloosed its gleaming coils: slowly it slid to the earth and shrank and withered like a flaming scroll, till at length it seemed once more but a shining jewel ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... and deducting Mr Pecksniff's commission from the same; in which abstruse employment he was much distracted by a habit his new friend had of whistling aloud while he was drawing—when they were not a little startled by the unexpected obtrusion into that sanctuary of genius, of a human head which, although a shaggy and somewhat alarming head in appearance, smiled affably upon them from the doorway, in a manner that was at once waggish, conciliatory, and ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... among the branches, her delicate fingers just meeting round one of the burnished apples that glow amidst the leaves like 'golden lamps in a green night.' An amethyst-coloured serpent, with a devilish human head, is twisting round the trunk of the tree and breathes into the woman's ear a blue flame of evil counsel. At the feet of Eve bright flowers are growing, tulips, narcissi, lilies, and anemones, all painted with a loving patience that reminds us of the older Florentine ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... once concentrated all my attention at this spot. Hunting among the debris, I came across the bas-reliefs seen in plates 4, 2, and 5, which confirmed my conclusions. This pile of stones had been in times past the pedestal that supported the effigy of the dying tiger with a human head, which the Toltecs had thrown down when they invaded Chichen, at the beginning of the ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... tall and thin. He stooped much. His limbs were exceedingly long and emaciated. His forehead was broad and low. His complexion was absolutely bloodless. His mouth was large and flexible, and his teeth were more wildly uneven, although sound, than I had ever before seen teeth in a human head. The expression of his smile, however, was by no means unpleasing, as might be supposed; but it had no variation whatever. It was one of profound melancholy—of a phaseless and unceasing gloom. His eyes were abnormally large, and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... could have saved me. Without releasing my hold upon the crossbar, I clutched at the ledge with the fingers of both hands and swung back into the room my right leg, which was already across the sill. With all my strength I kicked out. My heel came in contact, in sickening contact, with a human head; beyond doubt that I had split the skull of ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... carving the bowl of the pipe into the shape of some animal or bird. In some instances we have carved representations of the human head. Such as these are of particular interest and value, as they are probably faithful representations of the features of the Mound Builders. This is a fine specimen found in one of the altar mounds in Ohio. The method of wearing the hair is worthy of notice. ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... the project of inclosing England with a wall, so as to render it inaccessible to any invader. They accordingly raised the devil, as the person best able to inform them how this was to be done. The devil advised them to make a brazen head, with all the internal structure and organs of a human head. The construction would cost them much time; and they must then wait with patience till the faculty of speech descended upon it. It would finally however become an oracle, and, if the question were propounded to it, would teach them the solution of their problem. The ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... ourselves into the water, we might gain a place some way off with safety. Stay, I shall try an experiment." So saying, he detached, with some trouble, one of the trunks from the little island; and its knotty end looked not unlike a human head. This he placed carefully on the water, and soon it floated gently down the stream. The three friends followed its course anxiously; then, when it had disappeared, ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... the house and, with the exception of a rude carving of the ridgepole into the suggestion of a human head with a rudimentary body, there is no decoration in the interior. On the outside, one frequently sees at the ends of the ridgepole, and set upright at right angles to each other, two narrow, thin pieces of wood about 1 meter long. Along the sides of these are cuttings which ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... name, used at present as a prison for great criminals. At the foot of the rocks lies the little town of Konigstein. Not far off, on the right bank, a huge rock, resting on others, bears a striking resemblance to a human head. The more distant groups of rocks are called those of "Rathen," but are considered as belonging to Saxon Switzerland. The "Basteien" (Bastions) of this Switzerland, close by which we now pass, are most wonderful superpositions ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... Amen-em-api, the eldest son of Rameses II., and as the visitor will notice, have severally their presiding genius, with sacred inscriptions. Another remarkable vase is that in arragonite marked 609, with its cover fashioned in the form of a human head, and the remains of an inscription which had been laid on with a thick kind of colour. That marked 629 with the jackal-head of Tuantmutf, bears an inscription in which the standard-bearer of Plato ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... understood human nature to a kink, and well knew whom he had to deal with; and then, one glance of his squinting eye, was as good as a knock-down, for it was the most deep, subtle, infernal looking eye, that I ever saw lodged in a human head. I believe, that by good rights it must have belonged to a wolf, or starved tiger; at any rate, I would defy any oculist, to turn out a glass eye, half so cold, and snaky, and deadly. It was a horrible thing; and I would give much to forget that I have ever seen it; ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... Evans. "I wonder," he added thoughtfully, "why we despise certain occupations? We don't despise a man who hammers stone or saws boards; why should we despise a barber? Is the care of the human head intrinsically less honourable than the shaping of such rude material? Why do we still condemn the tailor who clothes us, and honour the painter who portrays us in the same clothes? Why do we despise waiters? I tried to make Barker believe that I respected all kinds of honest work. But I lied; ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... ages before. They were daubed with grotesque figures in faded, but still discernible, colors. Most of these figures had to do with scenes of violence, and in almost all of them the figure of what appeared to be an enormous rattlesnake, with human head ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... pervaded the room, already too warm from the numbers it contained. Involuntarily we held our noses, wondering what might be the cause, when we perceived that one of the warriors had stepped into the centre and suspended round the shoulders of each dancer a human head in a wide meshed basket of rattan. These heads had been taken in the late Sakarron business, and were therefore but a fortnight old. They were encased in a wide net work of rattan, and were ornamented with ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... the worship of species of animals, which we have noticed in the last chapter, certain animals were combined with the human form. It was always the head of the animal which was united to a human body; the only converse instance of a human head on an animal body—the sphinxes—represented the king and not a god. Possibly the combination arose from priests wearing the heads of animals when personating the god, as the high priest wore the ram's skin when personating ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... almost to have features as Rick drew closer, like a pale-blue jack-o'-lantern, but it was soon clear that this was no hollowed pumpkin head. It was like a human head illuminated from ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... height: the basement contains only the door, which is entered by a richly-ornamented arch, (see plate fifty-nine, fig. B.) surmounted by a broad drip-stone, decorated with quatrefoils, and terminating at each end in a human head of classical character. The lowest moulding of this arch is considerably more flattened than the upper, a peculiarity that is likewise observable in the interior arch to the great door-way at Castle-Acre Priory, in Norfolk.[116] In the second story are six arches, ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... vases, bottles, a small box or comb and especially the foot of a horse drawn with great precision. At the other end of this division a hideous monster advances on the river bank. Its semi-bestial, semi-human head is flat and scarred, with a broad upturned nose and a mouth reaching to the ears. The upper part of its body is that of a man, although its skin is seamed all over with short vertical lines meant to indicate hairs. One arm is raised and the ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... be the arrival of a strong team of the Kajawee Cannibal Islanders, a ferocious race, who have been instructed in the game by a celebrated Midland half-back. As in practice they invariably, instead of a foot-ball, use a fresh human head, and in a scrimmage leave half their number dead on the field, by having recourse to the 'Kogo' or 'Spine Splitting Stroke,' introduced from a local athletic game, some excitement will no doubt be manifested in sporting circles when they meet ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • Various
... with the same blunt courtesy, "Hob Miller of Twyford commends him to Damian de Lacy, and knowing his purpose to amend disorders in the commonwealth, Hob Miller sends him toll of the grist which he has grinded;" and with that he took from the bag a human head, and tendered ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... promotion of good citizenship, as ever was the guillotine among the terrorists of France. It was, in short, the platform of the pillory; and above it rose the framework of that instrument of discipline, so fashioned as to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and thus hold it up to the public gaze. The very ideal of ignominy was embodied and made manifest in this contrivance of wood and iron. There can be no outrage, methinks, against our common nature—whatever ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... him in Dublin); I say that I was more flattered by it, because it was single, unpolitical, and was without motive or ostentation,—the pure and warm feeling of a boy for the poet he admired. It must have been expensive, though;—I would not pay the price of a Thorwaldsen bust for any human head and shoulders, except Napoleon's, or my children's, or some 'absurd womankind's,' as Monkbarns calls them,—or my sister's. If asked why, then, I sat for my own?—Answer, that it was at the particular request of J.C. Hobhouse, Esq. and for no one else. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... (intaglio), and we instinctively interpret the less familiar form by the more familiar. This explanation appears to be borne out by the fact emphasized by Schroeder that the illusion is much more powerful if the design is that of some well-known object, as the human head or figure, or ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully |
