"Physiognomy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... groundwork of nature-worship is as much as possible concealed by the working of a plastic imagination; on the other side are forms bestial or grotesque, featureless and passionless, exhibiting nature-worship in one of its lowest stages. But in every respect, in language, in physiognomy, in mind, in political tendencies, in manners, as well as in religion, the contrariety between the Egyptian and the Athenian is complete. There is nothing on the other side except the vain pretensions ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... "Expound to me the story of the urine-phial and whence thou knewest that the water therein was that of a man, and he a stranger and a Jew, and that his ailment was flatulence?" The Weaver replied, "'Tis well. Thou must know that we people of Persia are skilled in physiognomy,[FN445] and I saw the woman to be rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed and tall-statured. Now these qualities belong to women who are enamoured of a man and are distracted for love of him;[FN446] moreover, I saw her burning with anxiety; so I knew ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... written on Expression, but a greater number on Physiognomy,—that is, on the recognition of character through the study of the permanent form of the features. With this latter subject I am not here concerned. The older treatises,[1] which I have consulted, have been of little ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... sympathetic vibration, manifesting itself in some instances in the chest and in the head cavities, and in other instances almost entirely within the latter, that gives to voices their peculiar timbre or tone-quality—their physiognomy. It is by timbre that we distinguish voices as we distinguish features. With instruments, differences in quality of tone—differences in timbre—are due to differences of shape; and in case of instruments of the same kind, for example, violins, ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... of the darkest periods of the Revolution, and after the massacre at Warsaw by the bloodthirsty Tarleton, when the British prison-pens in South Carolina were crowded with wounded captive patriots, an elderly woman, with the strongly marked physiognomy which characterizes the Scotch-Irish race, could have been seen moving among the hapless prisoners, relieving their wants and alleviating their sufferings. She had come the great distance, alone and on foot, through swamps and forests, and across rivers, from a border settlement, ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... in physiognomy might have read that memory was playing havoc with Buck's resolution. Avery was knitting his brows in deep ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... hunters, lawgivers and poets, presiding deities of minor functions, man's lustful appetites and sensual needs. All that men think, or do, or are, or wish for, or imagine in this world, had found exact corporeal equivalents. Not physiognomy alone, but all the portions of the body upon which the habits of the animating soul are wont to stamp themselves, were studied and employed as symbolism. Uranian Aphrodite was distinguished from her ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... is conceded. I don't know what advanced step may be next proposed. If I did, I should propose it to-day—for this reason, that I notice that each advance becomes the acceptance of the disputed question immediately in its rear. When the doctrine of physiognomy—Lavater's doctrine—was first propounded, men laughed it to scorn, and contemned the idea that there could be anything true or noble in it, until phrenology came and asserted that the brain's proportional parts could be known, and that the mind could ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... say again, no other American city is so intensely American as New York. It is generally considered that the inhabitants of New England, the Yankees properly so called, have the American characteristics of physiognomy in the fullest degree. The lantern jaws, the thin and lithe body, the dry face on which there has been no tint of the rose since the baby's long-clothes were first abandoned, the harsh, thick hair, the thin lips, the intelligent eyes, the sharp voice with the nasal twang—not altogether ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... aspect wore I could not ask a question more; But follow'd her. The little one Threw backward ever and anon Her lovely neck, as if to say, "I know you love me, Mister Grey;" For by its instincts childhood's eye Is shrewd in physiognomy; They well distinguish fawning art From sterling fondness of the heart. And so she flirted, like a true Good woman, till we bade adieu. 'Twas then I with regret grew wild, Oh, beauteous, interesting child! Why ask'd I not thy home and name? My courage fail'd me—more's the shame. But ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... too modest," said the Doctor. "In addition to your good right arm, you have your subtle brain. I know nothing of you but what I see; but I see by your physiognomy that you ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... rails of the altar, between the astonished couple, leaving that sanctuary to change into a match maker's—appearing, himself, a perfect clown, stating that sublime, veritable, truth—"here we are again!"—working his geometric, chromatic, physiognomy into endless contortions, extending his arms like the sails of contrary windmills, twiddling his legs like a fly,—and when called upon, by unearthly voices, for "Tippytiwitchet," appears so scared that he tumbles through the big drum, to oblige them with the ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... accompanied by three others. Vasco writes that he was deformed, and so dirty and hideous that nothing more abominable could be imagined. Nature confined herself to giving him a human form, but he is a brute beast, savage and monstrous. His morals were on a par with his bearing and physiognomy. He had carried off the daughters of four neighbouring caciques to satisfy his brutal passions. The neighbouring chiefs, regarding Vasco as a supreme judge or a Hercules, a redresser of injuries, complained of the debaucheries and the crimes ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... was called forth by the sudden and extraordinary change in Verty's physiognomy. As we have said, the young man had received the letter with a radiant flush, and a brilliant flash of his fine eye; and thus the reader will easily comprehend, when we inform him, that Verty imagined the ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... earlier yet scarcely less fresh traces of Roman colonization and dominion, in gateways, triumphal arches, walls, and monuments—how on entering Provence you find yourself among a people of a different physiognomy from those of the northern provinces, speaking a language which rather resembles Italian than French—how the beauty of the women of Avignon still does credit to the taste of the clergy, who made that city for more than half a century the ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... and flanks." He adds: "This is also the case with the puma, and it looks very much as if all the great Cats were descended from a spotted ancestor." The more dog-like head of the lion is well known to all who have studied the physiognomy of the Cats, and I have not only noticed it in drawing the animal, but have seen it alluded to in the writings of others. It was not, however, till lately that I had an opportunity of comparing the skulls of the lion and tiger in ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... to ask a favor of you. When we were boys and girls at home, you used to talk perfect oceans about physiognomy, and phrenology, and unerring signs of character. I thought it was all nonsense then, but if you believe any of it NOW, I wish you'd study the children, and give me your well-considered opinion ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... audacia which may with perfect justice be applied to such men as Elijah, Amos, and Isaiah, is with them equivalent to deus tantum et servitus. But their creed is not to be found in any book. It is barbarism, in dealing with such a phenomenon, to distort its physiognomy by introducing ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... Dantesque proportions. As soon as it was fully fledged, it started with a large ambition. "My work," he said to Zulma Carraud in 1834, "is to represent all social effects without anything being omitted from it, whether situation of life, physiognomy, character of man or woman, manner of living, profession, zone of social existence, region of French idiosyncrasy, childhood, maturity, old age, politics, jurisdiction, war." And in the Forties the ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... Court, which Fred and Rosamond took the next morning, lay through a pretty bit of midland landscape, almost all meadows and pastures, with hedgerows still allowed to grow in bushy beauty, and to spread out coral fruit for the birds. Little details gave each field a particular physiognomy, dear to the eyes that have looked on them from childhood; the pool in the corner where the grasses were dank and trees leaned whisperingly; the great oak shadowing a bare place in mid-pasture; ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... in physiognomy, which I think I have," he writes to Clarendon, "she must be as good a woman as ever was born." "I cannot easily tell you," he writes again; "how happy I think myself; I must be the worst man living (which I think I am not) if I be not a good ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... of sadness formed the physiognomy, as it were, of a dwelling-house in Saumur which stands at the end of the steep street leading to the chateau in the upper part of the town. This street—now little frequented, hot in summer, cold in winter, dark in certain sections—is remarkable for the resonance of its ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... race of dwarfs may be the primitive stock from which the Mongolians branched off on the one hand, and the Negroes on the other, since they are in some measure intermediate between the two. Latham says of the Rajmalis mountaineers, "Some say their physiognomy is Mongolian, others that it is African." Quatrefages is strongly of the opinion that the negro is of Indian origin, and reached Africa through migration. He bases his opinion on the negroid characters of existing tribes in India, Persia, ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... seen it grow into a vigorous child, with the promise of a robust manhood. The mythopoeic faculty is strong in all of us, and in Wadham has grown up a tradition that Dorothy was a strong-minded woman, and her husband a submissive man without character and will. The myth rests only on the science of physiognomy working on portraits,—a most insecure foundation. The Founders' portraits depict him as a gentle, placid person with melancholy eyes; her as a hard-featured woman with a long upper lip and an almost cruel mouth. Against the testimony, always dubious, ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... general classification of diseases is from head to foot—the usual method of that day. The modern reader will probably be surprised at the comprehensiveness of the work, which, besides general diseases, includes considerable portions of physiology, physiognomy, ophthalmology, laryngology, otology, gynecology, neurology, dermatology, embryology, obstetrics, dietetics, urinary and venereal diseases, therapeutics, toxicology, operative surgery, cosmetics and even the hygiene of travel and the prevention of sea-sickness. Some of these subjects too are discussed ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... miraculous success. The sculptor had not shunned to give the full Nubian lips, and other characteristics of the Egyptian physiognomy. His courage and integrity had been abundantly rewarded; for Cleopatra's beauty shone out richer, warmer, more triumphantly beyond comparison, than if, shrinking timidly from the truth, he had chosen the tame Grecian type. The expression was of profound, gloomy, heavily revolving thought; ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... very keen student of physiognomy might have discovered grounds for suspecting her demureness by reason of the thick, level brows that cast a shadow on the bland innocence of her face. For the rest, she possessed a knack of rather harmless perversity, a fair smattering ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... and distinct variations which you see at a glance. Everybody, of course, knows the difference between a Negro and a white man, and can tell a Chinaman from an Englishman. They each have peculiar characteristics of colour and physiognomy; but you must recollect that the characters of these races go very far deeper—they extend to the bony structure, and to the characters of that most important of all organs to us—the brain; so that, among men belonging to ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... Emery Tilney, his pupil during the year he was in residence there, that we are indebted for our fullest description of his appearance and habits. He was, he tells us, "a man of tall stature, polled-headed, and on the same a round French cap of the best; judged to be of melancholy complexion by his physiognomy; black haired, long bearded, comely of personage, well spoken after his country of Scotland, courteous, lowly, lovely, glad to teach, desirous to learn, and was well travelled; having on him for ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... faithful to the very end to the ideal of the early days; but he had no longer that privilege of the young—of Brother Leo, for example—of being able to transform himself almost entirely into the image of him whom he admired. His physiognomy has not that touch of juvenile originality, of poetic fancy, which is so great a charm ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... raised his eyebrows, well-marked crescents of reddish-brown above his ruddy face, and assumed thereby a physiognomy of almost childlike naivete. "Ah, well, on Friday, then;—though Friday is unlucky, and one rarely shines on a day of abstinence, anyhow. It's all a fallacy about fish being food for the brain. Meat, red meat, is ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... to her, "You have transformed my nature." When she was alarmingly ill, in the winter of 1837, he, together with Ballanche, might be seen, in the cold mornings, "his beautiful white hair blown about by the wind, his physiognomy the image of despair," in the court of the Abbaye-aux- Bois, waiting for the doctor to come out. He then writes, "I bring this note to your door. I was so terrified yesterday at not being admitted, that I believed you were going from me. ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... America and Europe, having been before the reading world fifty years, and occupying a place in literature exclusively its own, viz., the study of HUMAN NATURE in all its phases, including Phrenology, Physiognomy, Ethnology, Physiology, etc., together with the "SCIENCE OF HEALTH," and no expense will be spared to make it the best publication for general circulation, tending always to make men better physically, mentally, and morally. Parents and teachers should read the JOURNAL, that they may ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... retail liquor dealers' association were engaged in a trapping enterprise of their own in the Turkish room at Tony's, at this very crucial moment. Fatty Pierson, and two fellow retailers, gentlemen of smooth-shaven face, ample girth, and that peculiar physiognomy which seems fitted to no artistic setting except a background of mirrors and glasses, and a plain foreground of polished wood, were arranging for a police policy to their liking, during the ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... of athletic make; on his head was a white night-cap, and his dress consisted of a long great-coat once green, and he had a sort of jockey waistcoat with three tiers of pockets. His manner was extremely polite and graceful, but my attention was chiefly absorbed by his singular physiognomy. His complexion was deeply sallow, and his eyes large, black, and rolling. He conducted me into a very large parlour, with a window looking backward, and having locked the door, and put the key in his pocket, he desired me to be seated in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... of oceans now vanished,—what wouldst thou have said, could the thought have crossed thy brain, that one day thou shouldst be here? Under a glass! ticketted, numbered, pasted to the wall! forming an item in a collection of things fabulous, and exhibiting thy venerable form, thine antediluvian physiognomy, to thousands of badauds, who either pass thee without a glance, or examine thee with unfeeling curiosity, bestowing not a thought upon thy great age or thy cruel fate, or with a whit more respect for thee and thine awful history, than ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... himself. That postilion with the people in the broken-down chaise roaring after him is as deaf as the post by which he passes. Suppose all the accessories were away, could not one swear that the man was stone-deaf, beyond the reach of trumpet? What is the peculiar character in a deaf man's physiognomy?—can any person define it satisfactorily in words?—not in pages; and Mr. Cruikshank has expressed it on a piece of paper not so big as the tenth part of your thumb-nail. The horses of John Gilpin are much more of the equestrian order; and as here ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of running away with the shell of it, and leaving the essence, it would throw a great light on Friedrich. He is not a brooding inarticulate man, then; but a bright-glancing, articulate; not to be struck dumb by the face of Death itself. Flashes clear-eyed into the physiognomy of Death, and Ruin, and the Abysmal Horrors opening; and has a sharp word to say to them. The explanation of his large cargo of Verses this Autumn is, That always, alternating with such fiery velocity, he ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... Again Goethe was told by a hostile child that he was not the true son of his father. This inoculated him with a disease that long lurked in his system and prompted various indirect investigations to get at the truth, during which he compared all distinguished guests with his own physiognomy to detect his ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... inquired who believed they should be hanged, and who not? The first were to be pardoned, the last hanged outright. Such as were once pardoned were never to be hanged afterwards for any crime whatsoever. He had such skill in physiognomy, that he would pronounce peremptorily upon a man's face. "That fellow," says he, "do what he will, can't avoid hanging; he has a hanging look." By the same art he would prognosticate ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... draught of certainty, one does not suffer less. Yet one walks toward it, barefooted, on the heated pavement, heedless of the heat. The motives which led Boleslas to choose the French novelist as the one from whom to obtain his information, demonstrated that the feline character of his physiognomy was not deceptive. He understood Dorsenne much better than Dorsenne understood him. He knew him to be nervous, on the one hand, and perspicacious on the other. If there was an intrigue between Maitland and Madame Steno, Julien had surely observed it, and, approached in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... This is a conclusion of true metaphysics, and experience teaches the same lesson to all who can look below the surface. Nay, it is proved by the great importance which we all attach to such innate characteristics as physiognomy and external appearance, in the case of a man who is at all distinguished; and that is why we are so curious to see him. Superficial people, to be sure,—and, for very good reasons, commonplace people too,—will be of the ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Bayonne; then long subsequently beneath the brick wall at Novogorod; then beside the Bosphorus; and last at—at—Oh, my respectable and cherished friend, where was it that I had last the felicity of seeing your well-remembered and most remarkable physiognomy?" ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... is beyond science, that is all I can assume," concluded Doctor Bonamy, victoriously. "I will add that we have no convalescence here; health is at once restored, full, entire. Observe the young lady. Her eyes are bright, her colour is rosy, her physiognomy has recovered its lively gaiety. Without doubt, the healing of the tissues will proceed somewhat slowly, but one can already say that mademoiselle has been born again. Is it not so, Monsieur l'Abbe, you who have seen her so frequently; you ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... doing so themselves. I speak of the Chinese fifty years ago; since they have had wars with Europeans they have learnt better to stand to their arms. But they were gradually exterminated by the Malays in these petty wars, and now all that remains of them is a trace of Celestial physiognomy in their Dyak descendants, and the knowledge of agriculture ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... that Balzac got his ideas for Une tenebreuse Affaire from Madame d'Abrantes, states that this is all the more remarkable, since the personage of the senator is the only one which Balzac has kept just as he was, without changing his physiognomy in the novel. The senator was still living at the time Madame d'Abrantes wrote her account of the affair, his death not having occurred until 1827. In her Memoires, Madame d'Abrantes refers frequently ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... white, even regular teeth—the rosy lips, slightly compressed, save when parted in speech, smile, or eager attention—she exhibited in their most perfect but by no means fullest development the characteristics of Martial physiognomy; or rather the characteristic beauty of a family in which the finest traits of that physiognomy are unmixed with any of its meaner or harsher peculiarities. The hands, long, slight, and soft, the unsandalled feet, not less perfectly shaped, could only have belonged to the child of ancestors ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... above the choir, and which, the work of Brunnelleschi, newer and yet more antique than that of St. Peter, lifts in the air to an astonishing height its elongated form, its octagonal sides and its pointed lantern. But how can the physiognomy of a church be conveyed by words? It has one nevertheless; all its portions appearing together are combined in one chord and in one effect. If you examine the plans and old engravings you will appreciate ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... his soul were deeply depicted in his countenance and air. Prince James is dark-complexioned, slender in person, and more like a Spaniard than a Pole; he is very social, courteous and liberal. Alexander is of more manly proportions, and of a true Sarmatian physiognomy. But Constantine is an exact likeness of the king, his father.'" [Footnote: The writer of this note has seen a magnificent picture of that glorious king, a full length, the stature of life. It was nobly painted by an artist ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... some remark I made about physiognomy; he took it up, and passed on to phrenology—in which he is no great believer. From there he touched on the mind, and I listened, entranced, to him. Presently he asserted that I possessed reasoning faculties, which I fear me I very rudely denied. You see, every moment the painful ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... remained at the window, looking on all sides, and trying to read in the physiognomy of every passer-by whether that individual was an actor in the mysterious drama which was preparing, and in which she instinctively understood that Raoul was to play the chief part. She remained, then, with a beating heart, her neck stretched out, and her ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... they neared the house she lost them; then they entered the room and came through it slowly, looking about them with an air of good-humoured amusement. Fleda's eye was fixed, but her mind puzzled itself in vain to recover what, in her experience, had been connected with that fair and lady-like physiognomy, and the bland smile that was overlooked by those acute eyes. The eyes met hers, and then seemed to reflect her doubt, for they remained as fixed as her own, while the lady, quickening her steps, ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... carriage and well-formed limbs; he walked with dignity, had a very serious aspect, the nose and mouth rather large, with full lips, a dark complexion, the eyebrows black and strongly marked, and a command of countenance which rendered his physiognomy formed to express comedy. A less friendly pen (that, of the author of "L'Impromptu de l'Hotel de Conde") has caricatured Moliere as coming on the stage with his head thrown habitually back, his nose turned up into the air, his hands on his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... the same throughout the world, which is an additional argument for man being descended from one stock. We cannot refrain from admiring the tone of the pages which close the book, describing as they do the probable expressions of our early ancestors, their utility, the value of differences of physiognomy, and the desirability or otherwise of repressing signs of emotion. The subject, says the author, "deserves still further attention, especially from any able physiologist;" and so simply ends a volume of surpassing human interest, a text-book for novelists and students ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... dictionary in the pantry there, but show your physiognomy in my presence. What the devil do you think Vattel would say to such a ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... with the exception of the spokesman, whose skin was of a light-brownish yellow hue. The hair in nearly all was frizzled out into a mop, in some instances of prodigious size; the light-coloured man, however, had his head closely shaved.* The physiognomy varied much; some had a savage, even ferocious aspect. The nose was narrower and more prominent, the mouth smaller, the lips thinner, the eyes more distant, the eyebrows less overhanging, the forehead higher, but not broader, than in the Australian, with whom ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... a physiognomy and language of its own. The Paraphrase of the Sacred Edict in a criticism, which, though unfriendly, is not altogether inaccurate, says that Buddhists attend only to the heart, claim that Buddha can be found in the heart, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... her down the hill, through the quieter streets, to the calm, shady precincts of the old cathedral. He had both a stall and a large town living; and his abode was the gray freestone prebendal house, whose two deep windows under their peaked gables gave it rather a cat-like physiognomy. Mrs. Prendergast and Sarah were waiting in the hall, each with a kiss of welcome, and the former took the pale girl at once up-stairs, to a room full of subdued sunshine, looking out on a green lawn sloping down to the ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was struck with the frequent recurrence of the Louis Napoleon type of face. "Has this man," I said, "succeeded in impressing himself even upon the physiognomy of the people? Has he taken such a hold of their imaginations that they have grown to look like him?" The guard that took our train down to Paris might easily play the double to the ex-emperor; and many times in Paris and among different classes I ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... brings us grief," replied the Superior Woman. "The evil is seven leagues round, and devastates the whole land. Provincial life is not self-existent. It is only when a nation is divided into fifty minor states that each can have a physiognomy of its own, and then a woman reflects the glory of the sphere where she reigns. This social phenomenon, I am told, may be seen in Italy, Switzerland, and Germany; but in France, as in every country where there is but one capital, a dead level ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... creature," he mentally announced. "If one can put one's trust in physiognomy, I should say she had about ten times more in her than dwells in ordinary women. She has no suspicion of it herself, however; she will make that discovery later on. I should like to have the power to render myself invisible; but no, I beg pardon, I should like to be present in astral ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... spasm of delight at seeing his own physiognomy reflected in a mirror had passed, I suggested to the king that if he would like to try on his new garments I should be very pleased to instruct him as to the proper method of getting into them, an offer which he instantly accepted; and he would have donned the clothes there and then, in the presence ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... imperfect mental vision and uncertain touch which give us the feeble pictures and the lumpy statues of the mere artisans on canvas or in stone. A true artist, therefore, can hardly fail to have a sharp, well-defined mental physiognomy. Besides this, many young girls have a strange audacity blended with their instinctive delicacy. Even in physical daring many of them are a match for boys; whereas you will find few among mature women, and especially ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... character, and hollow generalisation. An Italian is necessarily a person of volcanic passions; an Englishman or an American (at this time the identification was particularly unlucky) has, of equal necessity, a grave and reserved physiognomy. Orthodox religion is a mistake, but a kind of moral-philosophical Deism (something of the Wolmar type) is highly extolled. You must be technically "virtuous" yourself, even if you bring a whole second volume of tedious tortures on you by being so; but you may play Lady Pandara to a ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... seemed absolutely hidden behind it. Pearl pointed upwards also, at a similar picture in the head-piece; smiling at her mother, with the elfish intelligence that was so familiar an expression on her small physiognomy. That look of naughty merriment was likewise reflected in the mirror, with so much breadth and intensity of effect, that it made Hester Prynne feel as if it could not be the image of her own child, but of an imp who was seeking to mould ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... human sympathy. Lincoln's Gettysburg speech is one of the most genuine and characteristic utterances in our annals. It has the true antique simplicity and impressiveness. It came straight from the man, and is as sure an index of character as the living voice, or the physiognomy, or the personal presence. Indeed, it may be said of Mr. Lincoln's entire course while at the head of the nation, that no President, since the first, ever in his public acts allowed the man so fully to appear, or showed so little disposition to retreat behind the featureless political mask which ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... employ to assure themselves of the identity of evil-doers that they are hunting for.'—'I told you that it was he! I know how to find him, your Putois. Very well! He has a bad face. You had been very careless, you and your wife, to employ him. I understand physiognomy, and though I only saw his back, I could swear that he is a robber, and perhaps an assassin. The rims of his ears are flat, and that is a sign that never fails.'—'Ah! you noticed that the rims of his ears were flat?'—'Nothing escapes me. My dear Monsieur Bergeret, if you do ...
— Putois - 1907 • Anatole France
... erred and that he was now upon the horns of a dilemma; also he no longer knew what course to adopt; the longer he left it the more it would resist. From this combat, there must result one conquered and one contused—a diabolical contusion which he wished to keep distant from his physiognomy by God's help until after his death. The poor seneschal had already great trouble to follow his lady to the chase, without being dismounted; he sweated under the weight of his trappings, and almost expired in that ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... sovereign, and the words of his charter forbade him to make laws repugnant to the laws of England. But Maryland was distant, and wise management might do much. Catholics, Anglicans, Puritans, Dissidents, and Nonconformists of almost any physiognomy, might come and be at home, unpunished ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... well! let each one drink from his glass, but observe! it is not necessary that in the true artist all should be individual and peculiar. It is necessary only that there should exist a degree of individuality, something novel, a distinguishing tone and an artistic physiognomy peculiarly his own. Servile imitations, plagiarism, stupid adaptations, put to death all art and all poetry. In literature particularly is ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... drawn by four horses, dashed round the turn of the road. Within it, thrust partly out of the window, appeared the physiognomy of the old man, with a skin as yellow as if his own Midas-hand had transmuted it. He had a low forehead, small, sharp eyes, puckered about with innumerable wrinkles, and very thin lips, which he made still thinner by pressing them ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... unconscious, the pity of transitory light. A little umber and sienna, a rich grey, not a bit of drawing anywhere, and still the wandering forms of sheep and lambs fully expressed, one sheep even in its particular physiognomy. Truly a charming picture, spontaneous and simple, and proving a painter possessed of a natural sentiment, of values, and willing to employ that now most neglected method of pictorial ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... the ragged and faded clothes of an impecunious veteran of the wars, with his visorless, crumpled cap pulled over his eyes, and with a face which for unadulterated melancholy could not be duplicated. Hardly any one took notice of him, and his physiognomy grew sadder and sadder. At last, however, he left his organ in its corner, and visited the various bars where champagne could be had. With each generous libation his features cleared, and finally he got himself into a decidedly hilarious condition, and ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... and they had dined together again at the St. James Club—Jimmie Dale, and Carruthers of the MORNING NEWS-ARGUS. From Clayton and a discussion of the Metzer murder, the conversation had turned, not illogically, upon the physiognomy of criminals in general. Jimmie Dale, lazily ensconced now in a lounging chair in one of the club's private library rooms, flicked a minute speck of cigar ash from the sleeve of his dinner jacket, and smiled whimsically across ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... evangelical history. Without seeing in the poem an allegorical design, we may imagine that, with the progress of Christianity, those parts of the old mythology which were most in harmony with Christian doctrines had the best chance of survival; and that, as a poet puts a new physiognomy on an old story without distorting the tradition, as we have seen in our own day the story of Arthur told again, not with the elaborate allegory of Spenser, but with a spiritual transfiguration which makes the "Idylls of the King" truly an epic of the nineteenth ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... uniformity in our lives, and many of us who are set down to one continuous occupation can tell twelve months before what, in all probability, we shall be doing at each hour of each day in the week. But for all that, there is a certain individual physiognomy about each new day as it comes to us; and the oldest, most habitual, and therefore in some degree easiest and least stimulating, work has its own special characteristics as it comes again to us day by day ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... our escort, whom we met just out of the city, were a ruffianly-looking set. The chief had received an ugly saber-cut across his face, which added to the forbidding expression of a naturally repulsive physiognomy. They were well mounted, however, and seemed inclined to be civil. We were allowed only an arrota (twenty-five pounds) of luggage, and were supposed to have no money with us; but on the night before we left we sewed a few ounces of gold (sixteen-dollar pieces) in unlikely ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... discernable in the face, is a question which admits of dispute; King Charles the Second thought he could depend upon these Observations, but with submission, I believe an instance might be given, in which his Rules of Physiognomy fail'd [Footnote: Essays, p.120.]. Now I'm sure the first is insolently plain, and the next shews enough to let us into his meaning; which granted, I think I may say, he ought to be less bold with his ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... traversing the boulevards of Paris, from the quiet circles of the Marais to the fashionable quarters of the Chaussee-d'Antin, and I observed for the first time, not without a certain philosophic joy, the diversity of physiognomy and the varieties of costume which, from the Rue du Pas-de-la-Mule even to the Madeleine, made each portion of the boulevard a world of itself, and this whole zone of Paris, a grand panorama of manners. Having at that time no idea of what the world was, and little thinking that ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... Fielder the same question, and she talked as if it were a doubtful point. She could not tell, she said, with a rueful physiognomy. Very probable it might be so. I could not bring her to be more explicit. As I proposed to see you, she said, you were the fittest person to explain your own situation. This made me the more anxious to ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... according to information derived from the headwaiter—and among them, a girl, apparently about eighteen, sitting on the edge of the party and absorbed in a novel of which she was eagerly turning the pages. From her face and figure the half savage, or Asiatic note, present in the physiognomy and complexion of her brothers and sisters, was entirely absent. Her beautiful head with its luxuriant mass of black hair, worn low upon the cheek, and coiled in thick plaits behind, reminded the Englishman of a Greek fragment he had admired, ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and qualities as High-Germans are of their own progenies. He is both cook and physician to his hounds, understands the constitutions of their bodies, and what to administer in any infirmity or disease, acute or chronic, that can befall them. Nor is he less skilful in physiognomy, and from the aspects of their faces, shape of their snouts, falling of their ears and lips, and make of their barrels will give a shrewd guess at their inclinations, parts, and abilities, and what parents they are lineally descended from; and by the tones of their voices and statures ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... on the fact that character can be read; there it lies exposed to the view. It is worthy of remark that men who have no peculiar cast of countenance, and there are a great many such men, are likewise totally deficient in peculiar characteristics, and we may establish the rule that the varieties in physiognomy are equal to the differences in character. I am aware that throughout my life my actions have received their impulse more from the force of feeling than from the wisdom of reason, and this has led me to acknowledge that my conduct ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... centuries after his death. I can imagine that the truest idea of his person is to be obtained not from the abundant effigies which show him as a somewhat sanctimonious ascetic, but from statues of him as a young man, such as that found at Sarnath, which may possibly preserve not indeed the physiognomy of Gotama but the general physique of a young Nepalese prince, with powerful limbs and features and a determined mouth. For there is truth at the bottom of the saying that Gotama was born to be either a Buddha or a universal monarch: he would have made a good general, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... Treatises printed by W. de Worde; Facetiae; Works on Marriage Ceremonies, the Intercourse of the Sexes, and the Philosophy of Marriage; the Plague; Polygamy, Prostitution and its Consequences; Meteors and Celestial Influences; Miracles, Monkish Frauds and Criminal Excesses; Phrenology and Physiognomy, &c. Catalogues will be ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... style was his slave. Hence that energy of epithet, so concise and telling, that a foreigner is tempted to explain it by some special richness or aptitude in the dialect he wrote. Hence that Homeric justice and completeness of description which gives us the very physiognomy of nature, in body and detail, as nature is. Hence, too, the unbroken literary quality of his best pieces, which keeps him from any slip into the weariful trade of word-painting, and presents everything, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the German, "your physiognomy is precisely the same; when a boy, you looked more serious. The day you entered Parliament in hunting-dress I saw you get into your coach; and that evening the President said to his wife, 'Madame, we are going to have a King. I wish you could have been there, in one ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... immaterial, because a thousand absurdities, and such as imply the strongest contradiction, result from the supposition that the Supreme Being is a system of matter. But of any other spirits we neither have nor can have any knowledge: and no man will be inquisitive about spiritual physiognomy, nor go about to inquire, I believe, at this time, as Evodius inquired of St. Austin, whether our immaterial part, the soul, does not remain united, when it forsakes this gross terrestrial body, to some ethereal body more subtile and more fine; which was ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... Highlander; figures such as are met in the Levant; school-boys with their books and lunch-boxes, Cockneys fresh from Piccadilly, a student who reminds us of Berlin, an American Indian, in pantaloons; a gaunt Western, a keen Yankee, and a broad Dutch physiognomy alternate; flower-venders, dog-pedlers, diplomates, soldiers, dandies, and vagabonds, pass and disappear; a firemen's procession, fallen horse, dead-lock of vehicles, military halt, or menagerie caravan, checks momently the advancing throng; and some beautiful face ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... marked his expressive physiognomy among my hearers in the little church in Sonora for some weeks before he made himself known to me. As I learned afterward, he was weighing the young preacher in his critical balances. He had a shrewd Scotch face, ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... the "Queen of Heaven" are often of great magnificence, the dress of one which I know having cost $2,000. In the poor Indian churches a bag of maize leaves, tied near the top to make a neck, and above that an Indian physiognomy, painted with some vegetable dye, serves the same purpose. The Bishop of La Serena, in Chili, has received as much as $40,000 a year for keeping up the revered image in that church, and these images are ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... and others, have insisted, it is the effect on the skull of the great development of the jaw-muscles that causes it to differ so greatly in many respects from that of man, and has given to these animals "a truly frightful physiognomy." Therefore, as the jaws and teeth in man's progenitors gradually become reduced in size, the adult skull would have come to resemble more and more that of existing man. As we shall hereafter see, a great reduction of the canine ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... girl's face was a study at the sight of her cousin. Hamilton, a disinterested observer, read astonishment, annoyance, and resignation in the wide-opened eyes. Bones, who prided himself upon a working knowledge of physiognomy, diagnosed the same symptoms as conveying a deep admiration combined with the ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... whole the most complete natural Gibraltar I ever saw. Other castles scarcely less strong are connected with this by subterranean passages known only to the Indians, while the unnatural blackness of the rock out of which Nature has constructed these defenses, and the weird, inhuman physiognomy of the whole region are well ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... have more of that delicate beauty which belongs to their sex, and in general have finer features and more expression in their physiognomy. Their stature is usually tall, and nearly all are possessed of a light and airy shape,—the breast high, a fine head, and their color of a dazzling whiteness. Let us imagine, under this brilliant ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... rapine, but seek it not without peril, and sword in hand. Every other way of purveying for their necessities they view as base and ignominious. It is enough for them to be seen to be hated and dreaded. The sound of their voice is ferocious; their physiognomy horrible, and their complexion cadaverous." Just such are the inhabitants of Sonnino and its vicinity at present, and among such Spatolino came to complete his band, which, when formed in Rome, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... perhaps—something not like the rest of us." Here her kind eyes regarded me a trifle wistfully." I can't quite make you out sometimes,—I wish I could! But—apart from you and me—look at a few of these men! One has just passed our window who has the exact physiognomy of a hawk,—cruel eyes and sharp nose like a voracious beak. Another I noticed a minute ago with a perfectly pig-like face,—he does not look rightly placed on two legs, his natural attitude is on four legs, grunting with his snout in ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... detestable fellow, altogether Christian in his emotions, and quite sadique at the same time. All his morality is what you have christened 'Slave's' morality.... Look at Dostoievsky's face: half the face of a Russian peasant, half the physiognomy of a criminal, flat nose, little penetrating eyes, under lids trembling with nervousness, the forehead large and well-shaped, the expressive mouth telling of tortures without count, of unfathomable melancholy, of morbid desires, endless compassion, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... of many diverse races, the various nationalities being frequently distinguishable by differences in dress as well as in physiognomy and colour. In the oriental quarters of the city the curious shops, the markets of different trades (the shops of each trade being generally congregated in one street or district), the easy merchant sitting before his shop, the musical and quaint street-cries ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... he was no general, but only a leader of Corsican deserters, suggests one that has already been referred to. It has also been suggested that Lowe was not a gentleman, and references have been approvingly made to comparisons of his physiognomy with that of the devil, and of his eye with "that of a hyaena caught in a trap." As to this we will cite the opinion of Lieutenant (later Colonel) Basil Jackson, who was unknown to Lowe before 1816, and was on friendly terms with the inmates ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... ready," was too indefinite and vague for Montezuma Moggs—he had been too often tricked from comfort in that way before—people will so impose on one in this respect—envious people, who covet your slumbers—such as those who drag the covering off, or sprinkle water on the unguarded physiognomy. But Moggs took care, in the excess of his caution, that no time should be lost by him in a tedious ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... his name. Plump and of medium height, he had a dull complexion, brown eyes, black hair, a turned-up nose, rather wide mouth, and long ears. His gentle, passive, and resigned air gave a certain relief to these leading features of a physiognomy that was full of health, but wanting in action. This young man, born to be a virtuous bourgeois, having left his native place and come to Paris to be clerk with a color-merchant (formerly of Mayenne and a distant connection of the ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac
... but I did not like to tell him to go away. He was a young fellow, certainly more than ten years younger than myself; I had not been—I won't say in that place, but within sixty miles of it, ever since the year '67; yet his guileless physiognomy of the open peasant type seemed strangely familiar. It was quite possible that he might have been a descendant, a son, or even a grandson, of the servants whose friendly faces had been familiar to me in my early childhood. As a matter of fact he had no such claim on my consideration. ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... in its general aspect still lingers a northern reserve which makes the place rather perhaps the last of the prose capitals than the first of the poetic. The long Austrian occupation perhaps did something to Germanise its physiognomy; though indeed this is an indifferent explanation when one remembers how well, temperamentally speaking, Italy held her own in Venetia. Milan, at any rate, if not bristling with the aesthetic impulse, opens to us frankly enough the thick volume of her ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... had predicted, we were hours late and in consequence missed our connection, but the platform of a station where two lines meet, offers, under such circumstances, so diverse and diverting a spectacle that we hardly regretted the delay. It is here that any one interested in physiognomy can best study and judge the masses, for it is as though the very texture from which France is woven were laid bare before him. This spectacle is constantly changing, constantly renewed, at times deeply moving. No face can be, or is, indifferent, in these days and one no ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... appearance of Oswald among them, that they obeyed him at first without resistance. He ordered them to descend before him, one after another, by means of the ladder, which the flames might devour in a moment. The first of these wretched people obeyed without uttering a word; the accent and the physiognomy of Lord Nelville had entirely subdued him. A third wished to resist, without suspecting the danger that he incurred by each moment of delay, and without thinking of the peril to which he exposed Oswald in detaining ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... philosophers inform us that old age is apt to revert to the habits of youth, and Sechard senior is a case in point—the older he grew, the better he loved to drink. The master-passion had given a stamp of originality to an ursine physiognomy; his nose had developed till it reached the proportions of a double great-canon A; his veined cheeks looked like vine-leaves, covered, as they were, with bloated patches of purple, madder red, and often mottled hues; till altogether, the countenance suggested ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... yet more angular: his brows seemed to project more broodingly over his eyes, which, though of undiminished brightness, were sunk deep in their sockets, and had lost much of their quick restlessness. The character of his mind had begun to stamp itself on the physiognomy, especially on the mouth when in repose. It was, a face striking for acute intelligence, for concentrated energy; but there was a something written in it which said, "BEWARE!" It would have inspired any one who had mixed ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Cowper, Wordsworth, and Southey, may be considered, as far as their writings go, to approximate to this moral centre. The following are added as further illustrations of our meaning. Walter Scott's centre is chivalrous honour; Shakespeare exhibits the [Greek: ethos], the physiognomy of an unlearned and undisciplined piety; Homer the religion of nature and the heart, at times debased by polytheism. All these poets are religious:—the occasional irreligion of Virgil's poetry is painful to the admirers of his general taste ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... 47: Lavater—Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741-1801), Swiss writer whose only widely read book was a tract on physiognomy (Physiognomische Fragmente zur Befoerderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe). The Victorians ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... the veins, the nails, the brain, and the white of the eye. The mother's part consists of all that is red in him—the skin, the flesh, the hair, and the black part of the eye. God's part consists of the breath, the soul, the physiognomy, sight and hearing, speech, motive power, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. And when the time comes that the man should depart from the world, God takes away His part, and leaves those which belong to the ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... and she wrote her own defense, a most eloquent production. She was sentenced to death in twenty-four hours. Twenty-two victims had just poured out their blood, and she was to follow their example. A French writer speaks of her at that time as "full of attractions, tall, of an elegant figure, her physiognomy animated, but sorrow and long imprisonment had left traces of melancholy on her face that tempered her natural vivacity. Something more than is usually found in the eyes of woman, beamed in her large, dark eyes, full of sweetness and expression. She ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... Paris was still divided into three wholly distinct and separate towns, each having its own physiognomy, its own specialty, its manners, customs, privileges, and history: the City, the University, the Town. The City, which occupied the island, was the most ancient, the smallest, and the mother of the other two, crowded in between them like (may we be pardoned ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... again took his seat by my side; I was touched, and tremblingly expected what he was going to say: he spoke with a grave and solemn manner. His physiognomy had an expression I had never seen before on any face. His forehead, which I attentively examined, seemed marked by fatality; his face was pale; his black eyes sparkled, and occasionally his features, although changed by pain, would contract in an ironical and infernal smile. 'What I am ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... life; her appearance would seem superior to her condition, and her apparel even betrays a lingering taste for dress; but her delicate limbs appear shrunken, her features are drawn in, her eye is mild and melancholy; her whole physiognomy bears marks of a degree of religious resignation, a deep quiet of all passions, and some sort of natural and tranquil firmness, ready to meet all the ills of life, without fearing and without braving ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... muffled and mantled in the folds of a black cloak, which was raised, by the right hand, to the level of the eyes. This scrutiny being completed, the stranger, dropping the cloak, said, 'I see, by your physiognomy, that you may be trusted;' and revealed to the astonished Scythrop a female form and countenance of dazzling grace and beauty, with long flowing hair of raven blackness, and large black eyes of almost oppressive brilliancy, which strikingly ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... seem quite easy, and free from care or anxiety for the future, and to maintain a certain degree of reserve in talking of his private affairs. Mr. B—- perfectly understood how to play his cards with the land-jobber; and his fat, jolly physiognomy, and rustic, provincial manners and accent, greatly assisted ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... just now referring to a change in the Turks, which I have mentioned before, and which had as important a bearing as any other of their changes upon their subsequent fortunes. It was a change in their physiognomy and shape, so striking as to recommend them to their masters for the purposes of war or of display. Instead of bearing any longer the hideous exterior which in the Huns frightened the Romans and Goths, they were remarkable, even as early as the ninth century, when they had been among ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... involution of the inward and outward drama to the immense advantage of both. For while the spiritual agony of Hamlet gives an incomparable dignity to the ghost-story, yet by the very interruptions and checkings and crossings of it through the accidents and oppositions of the plot, its physiognomy is more distinctly and delicately revealed. Instead of the majestic but monotonous declamation of Timon, we have every variety of that ironical humour (indicating some yet unconquered province of the soul) that guards ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... Remarks New Brunswick—by whom settled Remarks on State of Morals and Religion American Physiognomy The Spring Freshets Cranberries Stream Driving Moving a House Frolics Sugar Making Breaking up of the Ice First appearances of Spring Burning a Fallow A Walk through a Settlement Log Huts Description of a Native ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... suggestions of his sensuous instinct; that he acts suitably when he only obeys his instinct in conformity with the laws; that he acts nobly when he obeys reason only, without having regard to his instincts. We say of a physiognomy that it is common when it does not show any trace of the spiritual man, the intelligence; we say it has expression when it is the mind which has determined its features: and that it is noble when a pure spirit has determined them. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Mr. Morley has dwelt strongly on the circumstance of Wordsworth's remarkable personal happiness, as having had much to do with the physiognomy of his poetic creation—a calm, irresistible, well-being—almost mystic in character, and yet doubtless [93] connected with physical conditions. Long ago De Quincey noted it as a strongly determinant fact in Wordsworth's literary career, pointing, at the same ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... table which had the placid, dignified, and contented look which denotes the consciousness of right motives, a frank independence, and a mind at peace with itself. We could not discover one! I have little doubt that national physiognomy is affected by ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... still unsatisfied curiosity, I rejoined my escort, and proceeded to the gardens, where not more than thirty persons were collected under the windows. There was no enthusiastic cry, at least none deemed sufficient to induce him to show himself. In despair at not being able to contemplate his physiognomy at greater ease, I made my cavalier request some persons in the throng to cry "Vive l'Empereur!" Some laughed, and replied "Attendez un peu," while others advised us to desire some of the children to do so. A few francs thrown to the latter, soon stimulated their little voices into ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... should have great pleasure in beholding. It must add to her charms, and cannot diminish the character, sense, and shrewdness which distinguish her physiognomy, and which she possesses in a great degree, with a happy engrafting of a high-bred foreign air upon an English ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... sorry sight, the unhappy man, unable for the moment to account for his plight, stood aghast, until his gaze, penetrating to the rear of his smudged physiognomy, beheld the reflection of the ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... Murger wrote nothing but poetry for this journal. Monsieur Houssaye took a great fancy to Murger, and persuaded him, for the sake of "effect" on the title-pages of books and on the backs of magazines, to change Henri to Henry, and give Murger a German physiognomy by writing it Muerger. As Frenchmen treat their names with as much freedom as we use towards old gloves, Murger instantly adopted Monsieur Houssaye's suggestion, and clung as long as he lived to the new orthography of his name. He began to find it less difficult to procure each day ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... by his "neglige," if we may borrow from Moliere the word which Eliante uses to express the want of personal neatness. His clothes always seem to have been twisted, frayed, and crumpled intentionally, in order to harmonize with his physiognomy. He keeps one of his hands habitually in the bosom of his waistcoat in the pose which Girodet's portrait of Monsieur de Chateaubriand has rendered famous; but less to imitate that great man (for ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... coats-of-arms, the extravagant contours of the mantles, the chimerical or monstrous figures of heraldry, the branchings of the emblazoned skirts, the lofty attitude of the feudal baron, the modest air of the chatelaine, the sanctimonious physiognomy of the big Carthusian Carmelite, the furtive mien of the young page with parti-coloured pantaloons. . . . He excelled also in setting the persons of poem, drama, or romance in ornamented frames like the Gothic shrines with ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... anything but prepossessing character was imparted to the physiognomy of this individual by the extraordinary keenness of his small eyes, his almost lipless mouth, which stretched from ear to ear, and his long teeth, which were dazzlingly white; their enamel being intact, for he had never been attacked by scurvy, the common ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... my position at the table at the moment of my entrance. It was vis-a-vis a party of four persons,—two of the sterner, two of the softer sex. A back view interpreted them to me. There is much physiognomy in the backs of human heads, because—and here I flatter myself that I enunciate a profound truth—people wear that well-known mask, the human countenance, on the front of the human head alone, and think it necessary to provide such ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... talking with Maria Clara, Sinang, and Victoria, and as he had heard nothing of the quarrel, became rather uneasy at sight of his cousins. Maria Clara, lying in an easy-chair among pillows and wraps, was greatly surprised to see the new physiognomy ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... Bembo, Sadolet, and Baldassarre Castiglione, was at this time a matron of some twenty years' standing; at the date when her avowed portrait was painted she must have been at the very least forty. By what magic did Titian manage to suggest her type and physiognomy in the famous pictures just now mentioned, and yet to plunge the duchess into a kind of Fontaine de Jouvence, realising in the divine freshness of youth and beauty beings who nevertheless appear to have with her some kind of mystic and unsolved connection? If this was what he really ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... from top to toe I sing, Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far, The Female equally with the Male ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... Matter in the Soul of this young Maid, which ought to be nourish'd now while she is young, and they will grow up to very great Perfection: I find Atlante capable of the noble Virtues of the Mind, and am infinitely mistaken in my Observations, and Art of Physiognomy, if Atlante be not born for greater Things than her Fortune does now Promise: She will be very considerable in the World, (believe me) and this will arrive to her perfectly from the Force of her Charms.' De Pais was extremely overjoy'd ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... What is the jest of dry hand, I know not any better than Sir Andrew. It may possibly mean, a hand with no money in it; or, according to the rules of physiognomy, she may intend to insinuate, that it is not a lover's hand, a moist hand being vulgarly accounted a sign of ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... at a first glance would have thought the Sire do Retz to be by nature so cruel and vicious as he was supposed to be. On the contrary, his physiognomy was calm and phlegmatic, somewhat pale, and expressive of melancholy. His hair and moustache were light brown, and his beard was clipped to a point. This beard, which resembled no other beard, was black, but under certain lights it assumed a blue hue, and it was this peculiarity which ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... out, as of yore, was quite white now. His old cheeks were softly rounded, with some colour in them; strangely enough, that something childlike always noticeable in the general contour of his physiognomy had become much more marked. Like his handwriting, he looked childish and senile. He showed his age most in his unintelligently furrowed, anxious forehead and in his round, innocent eyes, which appeared to me weak and blinking and watery; or was it that they were full of ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... bownecked, long-tailed, stumbling, reedy hybrids, born of bad barbs, ill-mated, having mainly supplied their place. This was, indeed, a horse of great power, immense girth of loin, high shoulder, broad hoof; and such a head! the ear, the frontal, the nostril! you seldom see a human physiognomy half so intelligent, half so expressive of that high spirit and sweet generous temper, which, when united, constitute the ideal of thorough-breeding, whether in horse or man. The English rider was in harmony with the English steed. Darrell at this moment was resting ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... diaphanous, phenomenon, epiphany, fantastic Philos loving bibliophile, Philadelphia *Phobos fear hydrophobia, Anglophobe Phone sound telephone, symphony *Phos light phosphorous, photograph *Physis nature physiognomy, physiology *Plasma form cataplasm, protoplasm *Pneuma air, breath pneumatic, pneumonia Polis city policy, metropolitan *Polys many polyandry, polychrome, polysyllable Pous, pados foot octopus, chiropodist *Protos first protoplasm, prototype *Pseudes false pseudonym, pseudo-classic *Psyche ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... who was not endowed with great perspicacity, did not observe the expression which his words had given to the physiognomy of the stranger. The latter rose from the front of the window, upon the sill of which he had leaned with his elbow, and knitted his brow like ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... little remaining sunshine; the inhabitants came forth in furs and bulky wrappings; oysters and French pears became unreasonably dear; and sledges of frozen fish and game crowded down from the northern forests. In a few days the physiognomy of the capital was completely changed. All its life and stir withdrew from the extremities and gathered into a few central thoroughfares, as if huddling together for mutual warmth and encouragement in the cold air and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... he ordered. "I got two guns—not a woid from youse!" His erstwhile amiable physiognomy, now gnarled into an unrecognizable mask of low villainy bespoke his desperate earnestness. The men obeyed. This was apparently a gangster, of gangsters—their fear of the dire vengeance of a rival organization of cut-throats instilled an ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... reach his wife before the girl collapsed. For a time she ran with him but at the last flight of stairs he had to seize and half drag, half carry her to his wife. Mrs Fyne waited at the door with her quite unmoved physiognomy and her readiness to confront any sort of responsibility, which already characterised her, long before she became a ruthless theorist. Relieved, his mission accomplished, Fyne closed hastily ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... accompanied by weak eyes and unexpectedness of forehead, may tend to make the Evil One but languid in his desire for the capture of its human exemplar. This may help account for the otherwise rather curious coincidence of frightful physiognomy and preternatural goodness in this world of sinful beauties[B]. Under such a theory, Mr. DIBBLE'S easy means of frightening the Arch-Tempter into immediate flight, and keeping himself free from all possible incitement to be anything but good, were a face, head and neck shaped ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... the headquarters of the Imperial Agricultural Department of the West Indies, to which (under Sir Daniel Morris) the island owes the development of cotton growing, &c. The majority of the population consists of negroes, passionately attached to the island, who have a well-marked physiognomy and dialect of their own, and are more intelligent than the other West Indian negroes. They outnumber the whites by 9 to 1. Barbados is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. In 1901 the numbers amounted to 195,588, or 1178 to the sq. m., ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... other. This was originally one of the four garrison houses of the town in the old times of terror and defence from Indian incursions; and it would be difficult to find now a more pleasant old-fashioned country house of equal age, with its physiognomy of generous hospitality and unobtrusive refinement and ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... essentials. Who, without a similar act of interruptive reflexion, is conscious of temporal sequence while listening to a story or a piece of music? That which intuition reveals in a work of art is not space and time, but character, individual physiognomy. Several attempts may be noted in modern philosophy, which confirm the view here exposed. Space and time, far from being very simple and primitive functions, are shown to be intellectual constructions of great complexity. And further, ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... motherless infant, whose life was only saved from a dangerous illness by this loving zeal. Among others Mr. and Mrs. Nicholson appeared with offers of help, and as early as September 18 we find that Godwin had requested Mr. Nicholson to give an opinion as to the infant's physiognomy, with a view to her education, which he (with Trelawny later) considered could not begin too soon, or as the latter said: "Talk of education beginning at two years! ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... to the customs of Africa. But might he not be reduced to this state very unjustly, and yet by no means contrary to the African laws? Besides, how could we distinguish between those who were justly or unjustly reduced to it? Could we discover them by their physiognomy?—But if we could, Who would believe that the British captains would be influenced by any regulations made in this country, to refuse to purchase those who had not been fairly, honestly, and uprightly enslaved? They who were offered to us for sale were brought, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... and pressing forward as if a little jealous of her station, stood a middle-aged woman, dressed in calico, rather violently contrasted in color with a tall, meagre, shapeless figure, sharp features, and a somewhat acute expression of her physiognomy. Her teeth were mostly gone, and what did remain were of a tight yellow. The skin of her nose was drawn tightly over the member, to hang in large wrinkles in her cheeks and about her mouth. She took snuff in such quantities as to ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... profession. A purblind cyclops could never mistake the expression of an Independent preacher, an universal free-black-nigger Baptist minister, or a Jesuit. Every body knows an infantry officer, with his "eyes right" physiognomy, his odious black-stock, and his habit of treading on his heels, and can distinguish him from the cavalry man, straddling like a gander at a pond side. Your medical doctor has an obsequious, mealy-mouthed, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... them to be Esquimaux. There was, besides, a degree of lankness in the faces of the two men, the very reverse of the plump, round, oily cheeks of those we had before seen. Their countenances at the time impressed me with the idea of Indian rather than of Esquimaux features; but this variety of physiognomy we afterward found not to be uncommon among these people. The men appeared about forty and twenty-two years of age, and were accompanied by a good-looking and good-humoured boy of nine or ten. They each held in their hand a sealskin case or quiver, containing ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... of illustrious Romans, made it more delightful, by ornamenting it with the portraits of those great men; and the learned Varro, in his biography of Seven Hundred celebrated Men, by giving the world their true features and their physiognomy in some manner, aliquo modo imaginibus is Pliny's expression, showed that even their persons should not entirely be annihilated; they indeed, adds Pliny, form a spectacle which the gods themselves might contemplate; for if the gods ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... work: to pass the time away. For little remains in my head. I dare say you think it very absurd that an idle man like me should poke about here in the country, when I might be in London seeing my friends: but such is the humour of the beast. But it is not always to be the case: I shall see your good physiognomy one of these days, and smoke one of your cigars, and listen to Morton saying fine and wild things, 'startling the dull ear of night' with paradoxes that perhaps are truisms in the world where spirits exist independent of matter. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... superiority. My reply was ready; a reproach I deemed calculated to sting his very heart. He came up the while; and his appearance blew aside, with gentle western breath, my cloudy wrath: a tall, slim, fair boy, with a physiognomy expressive of the excess of sensibility and refinement stood before me; the morning sunbeams tinged with gold his silken hair, and spread light and glory over his beaming countenance. "How is this?" he cried. The men eagerly began their defence; ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... dark and bushy eyebrow. In the union of his features were found collected in one hideous assemblage all the most coarse and uncouth traits which had ever been exhibited singly in wooden cuts, and the observer was left in doubt whether this repulsive physiognomy expressed stupidity of intellect, or maliciousness of heart, or whether it implied them ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... that everything about him was dear to her; his grey eyes, that never saw below the surface of things; his thin, brown face; his youthful affectation; the strange, new growth which shaded his long upper lip, and softened the plainness of the Crewys physiognomy, which Peter would not have bartered for the handsomest set of Greek features ever imagined by a sculptor. Even for his faults Lady Mary had a tender toleration; for Peter would not have been ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... Tartary in the suite of the French ambassador, and resided some years at the court of the Great Khan, where he had acquired the Tartar language, and become deeply learned in the history and customs of that ancient people. He had taken numerous drawings of their physiognomy and features, and many casts of Tartar visages. With a view to learn their opinions of the Deity, and a future state, he had officiated for a full year as the conjuror or powwow of a tribe. When he returned to Europe, he brought with him a couple of human teeth, a pipe, a bow ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... my impressions I finally got upstairs again to bed. It was four o'clock in the morning. I laughed all the way up—at the grotesque banisters, the droll physiognomy of the staircase window, the burlesque grouping of the furniture, and the memory of that outrageous footstool in the room below; but nothing more happened to alarm or disturb me, and I woke late in the morning ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood |
