"Disfigurement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... statement that there are three windows at the end and four at the sides. The walls are all panelled and disfigured by hideous light pink paint, done, probably, in the same period of taste when an attempt was made to whitewash the statue of bronze in the court to make it look like marble! This disfigurement extends even to the magnificent trophy of arms and accoutrements carved round the great mirror over the mantelpiece, and, of course, supposed to be the work of the great Gibbons. The fireplace and mantelpiece are of white marble, with an inner setting of veined marble. The edges of many of ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... in the former was a disfigurement, the rooms were closets, or cells, the paper abominable, the wardrobe damp, the drawers swollen or exasperating muftis, the whole apartment the flimsiest sort of a cheap, showy, contract structure, such as no self-respecting people ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... his nephew conduct the caravan, dressed in rough boots (which hurt Bertrand's feet), blue hose, and coarse cloth frocks. The innocent paynims give them friendly welcome, though William is nearly discovered by his tell-tale disfigurement. A squabble, however, arises; but William, having effected his entrance, does not lose time. He blows his horn, and the knights springing from their casks, the town is taken. This Charroi de Nimes is one ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... Michel well, and, like the writer, have spent several days upon the island, cannot but feel that such a scheme would not only be a frightful disfigurement, but would entirely destroy all the associations and the poetry of the place. Practical people will say, "Modern improvement cannot stop in its march forward to consider poetical associations and mere artistic whims and fancies." Now, this ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... to certain minds, he was the first of those who condemned, and secretly slew, the unfortunates, who either came into the world hampered by disfigurement, or who, by accident, were unfitted for the ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... they have vowed, or of grief for their loss, and are wholly devoted to their interests. Among "bad wives" are those that wed their husband's slayer, run away from their husbands, plot against their husbands' lives. The penalty for adultery is death to both, at husband's option—disfigurement by cutting off the nose of the guilty woman, an archaic practice widely spread. In one case the adulterous lady is left the choice of her own death. Married women's ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... that, to all appearance, her charming face will not receive any disfigurement by this cruel enemy to beauty, I am sure you will congratulate me upon a felicity so desirable: but were it to be otherwise, if I were capable of slighting a person, whose principal beauties are much deeper than the skin, I should deserve to be thought ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... the King who lived in the Red Castle, Dermott and Downal told the other two. He was called the Wry-faced King, and, on account of his disfigurement, he let no one ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... an ex-pugilist named Pettit, where he took a hand in billiards and made awkward essays with the boxing-gloves. Of course there is the inevitable yarn of a college town that he became so conceited over his skill in the manly art that he ventured to "stand up" before Pettit, to the bloody disfigurement of his countenance and the humiliation of his pride. If this is true, the lesson lasted him all his life, for a less combative adult than Eugene Field never graduated from an American college. He had a physical as well as a moral antipathy to personal ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... Perkes was being wheeled about the bazaar in a wheelbarrow, insensibly drunk, by a brother emigrant, who was also considerably elevated. Perkes had at some former time lost an eye by the kick of a horse, and to conceal the disfigurement he wore a black patch, which gave him very much the expression of a bull terrier with a similar mark. Notwithstanding this disadvantage in appearance, he was perpetually making successful love to the maidservants, and he ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... else, however, was very kind to the poor girl, Sister Avice especially so, and Grisell soon forgot her disfigurement when she ceased to suffer from it. She had begun to learn reading, writing, and a little Latin, besides spinning, stitchery, and a few housewifely arts, in the Countess of Salisbury's household, for every lady was supposed to be educated in these arts, and great establishments were schools ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ear, in consequence of the interposition of some unctuous matter between it and the cerecloth, was found entire. It was difficult at this moment to withhold a declaration, that, notwithstanding its disfigurement, the countenance did bear a strong resemblance to the coins, the busts, and especially to the picture of King Charles I. by Vandyke, by which it had been made familiar to us. It is true that the minds of the spectators of this interesting sight were well prepared to receive this impression; but ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... peculiarity that cannot help being noticed is the number of persons whose eyes are not on the same level. When this does not amount to an actual disfigurement, it is still a blemish which prevents many a young girl from being classed as a beauty. This and the peculiar notched or cleft teeth seem to point to an hereditary taint. Also unmistakable signs of ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... insignificance, and the infinite distance that lay between him and the Divine Being, must have been sent home with irresistible power to his mind, by the recollection that the mere sight of that terrible majesty had struck him to the ground, and had left an ever-during brand of pain and disfigurement on his person. I shall just add, that in Second Corinthians xii. 7, the words, {te hyperbole ton apokalypseon} may with quite as much propriety be construed with {edothe moi skolops te sarki}, as with {hina ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... plant. The Party in office directed its attention to what was uppermost and urgent—to that which kicked them. Although we were living, by common consent; with a disease in the frame, eruptive at intervals, a national disfigurement always a danger, the Ministerial idea of arresting it for the purpose of healing was confined, before the passing of Mr. Gladstone's well-meant Land Bill, to the occasional despatch of commissions; and, in fine, we behold through History the Irish malady treated as a form of British constitutional ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... hear the cannon roar, Beseeching God to turn the cruel North And break it that her son might come once more; He was New England's maiden pale and pure, Whose gallant lover fell on Shiloh's plain; He was the mangled body of the dead; He writhing did endure Wounds and disfigurement and racking pain, Gangrene and ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... that beauty! I felt as though I were trying to guard a treasure for him as I used every means I had heard of to save it from disfigurement, not permitting one ray of daylight to penetrate into the room, and attempting whatever could prevent the marks from remaining. And here Millicent's habits of patience and self-command came to her aid, and Dr. Dirkius said he had never had a better or a gentler sick ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Tita, in a low but distinct voice. She turns to him proudly. "Have you forgotten?" says she. Her poor little face is stained with tears, but he sees no disfigurement in it; he has but one desire, and that is to take her into his arms and kiss those tears away from it ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... the application to the case, very likely to happen, of some disfigurement of that exquisite toilette of Aurelia's? In going down stairs, for instance, why should not heavy old Mr Carbuncle, who is coming close behind with Mrs. Peony, both very eager for dinner, tread upon the hem of that garment which my ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... nicknames upon him in a speech at a meeting, no one could discover the grounds for it. He nodded briefly. A Radical apple had struck him on the left cheekbone as he performed his triumphal drive through the town, and a slight disfigurement remained, to which his hand was applied sympathetically at intervals, for the cheek-bone was prominent in his countenance, and did not well bear enlargement. And when a fortunate gentleman, desiring to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... you think of me?" she said at last, lifting her head, and drying her eyes. "Now that you have heard how unwomanly I am, how wicked, how criminally wicked! Because, I suppose, morally speaking, to lie awake and scheme out one's sister's disfigurement is as bad ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... remained standing, but so badly shattered that public safety required that they should be pulled down altogether. There was not, so far as at present is known, a brick or stone building which was not more or less cracked, and in most of them the cracks were a permanent disfigurement and a source of danger and inconvenience." In some places the railway track was curiously distorted. "It was often displaced laterally, and sometimes alternately depressed and elevated. Occasionally several lateral flexures of double ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... resemblance of the gods, is chang'd Into som brutish form of Woolf, or Bear, 70 Or Ounce, or Tiger, Hog, or bearded Goat, All other parts remaining as they were, And they, so perfect is their misery, Not once perceive their foul disfigurement, But boast themselves more comely then before And all their friends, and native home forget To roule with pleasure in a sensual stie. Therfore when any favour'd of high Jove, Chances to pass through this adventrous glade, Swift as the Sparkle of a glancing Star, 80 I shoot from Heav'n to give him ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... That when my old face was gone from me, and I had no attractions, he could love me just as well as in my fairer days. That the discovery of my birth gave him no shock. That his generosity rose above my disfigurement and my inheritance of shame. That the more I stood in need of such fidelity, the more firmly I might trust in him to ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the woman, as she in a low tone uttered something about the unbecoming colour of the ribbons, adjusted the cap on her head, and then, saying in a regretful and petulant voice, "Why should they have cut off my hair? Such a disfigurement!" bade Dummie desire Mrs. Margery once more to ascend ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I stayed with the Rev. Dr. Savin, and spent a very pleasant two days' rest here in his hospitable hands. It was in this district I first came across goitre, the first time I had seen it in my life. It is a terrible disfigurement. ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... in great probability, exists for them, because we feel that not to believe this would be to turn the whole scheme of the universe, as we understand it, into one little short of nonsense. We do not stop to reason: such things are because they must be; they cannot cease to be without total disfigurement of the plan of our conception. Intuition points, and almost impulsively perhaps, in one direction. There is "an intelligent Author of Nature or Natural Governor of the world." Life is not made up of haphazards. ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... that fellow Dimsdale," Ezra answered, putting his hand up to his mouth to hide the disfigurement. "He followed us to the station, and we had to beat him off; but I think I left ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... know," said Trirodov. "In my conception every written lechery and disfigurement of beautiful truth to gratify the low instincts of the man-beast—that is pornography. Your thrice-assured State school—that is ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... his neck almost to the shoulder. The whole top of the shoulder seemed to have been shot away, and the blade broken, by a ball that had struck him there and ploughed through into the neck; and the yet imperfectly healed flesh lay in torn ridges of ghastly disfigurement. Thousands of men have died from wounds of not half the apparent consequence; and yet the wearer of this was the smiling and even-tempered man of the new uniform—going back to-morrow! The world has not lost all its heroes yet; and some of them have the same fancy for a clean shirt and ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... can get into line once more with that general level of human thought which is now so far in front of them? I say that they can do more than get level—they can lead. But to do so they must, on the one hand, have the firm courage to cut away from their own bodies all that dead tissue which is but a disfigurement and an encumbrance. They must face difficulties of reason, and adapt themselves to the demands of the human intelligence which rejects, and is right in rejecting, much which they offer. Finally, they must gather fresh strength by drawing in ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... we consider distortion or disfigurement of the body a thing to be avoided for its own sake, why should we not also, and perhaps still more, cultivate dignity of form for its own sake? And if we avoid what is unseemly, both in the condition and motion of the body, why may we not on the other hand pursue beauty? And we also desire ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... effectually stopped by such a blow across his mouth, from Lacey's hand, as brought the blood profusely on the spot, and caused such disfigurement, for days after, that appropriate justice seemed ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... Hebrew went into a painfully graphic account of the disease; the frightful disfigurement it caused, and its almost, if not quite, ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... the accompaniment of certain mysterious hints about my nose being out of joint. I examined that feature carefully in the looking glass, but could not discover anything usual about it. It was quite beyond me to imagine that our innocent little baby could have anything to do with the possible disfigurement of my face, but she did absorb the fondness of the whole family, myself included, and she became my father's playmate and darling, the very apple of his eye. I used sometimes to wish I were a baby too, so that he would notice me, but ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... compensation of injured workers of other establishments.[155] Compensation also need not be based exclusively on loss of earning power, and an award authorized by statute for injuries resulting in disfigurement of the face or head, independent of compensation for inability to work, has been conceded to be neither an arbitrary nor oppressive exercise ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... also thought of the temporary introduction of Arnott's stoves; but they would have been unsuitable, requiring long chimneys (as they would have been of a temporary kind) to go out of the windows. On this account, the uncertainty of their answering in our case, and the disfigurement of the rooms, led me to give up this plan also. But what was to be done? Gladly would I have paid L100, if thereby the difficulty could have been overcome, and the children not be exposed to suffer for many days from being in cold rooms. At last I determined on falling entirely into the hands ...
— Answers to Prayer - From George Mueller's Narratives • George Mueller
... that harmony was of course everything. He took, in fancy, his composition to pieces, redistributing it into other lines, making other juxtapositions and contrasts. He shifted this and that candle, he made the spaces different, he effaced the disfigurement of a possible gap. There were subtle and complex relations, a scheme of cross-reference, and moments in which he seemed to catch a glimpse of the void so sensible to the woman who wandered in exile or sat where he ...
— The Altar of the Dead • Henry James
... and regarded herself as a defeated martyr. The hour and a half before his coming she had not devoted to tears, but to beautifying herself. She met him radiant, and from her eyes and lips all the disfigurement of distress was banished. She laughed and chatted throughout dinner, and over the coffee, leaning forward a little, she asked, "Where do you mean ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... strength of her love for her sister, with the vehemence of the indignation that she felt for her sister's sake, the terrible temptation of her life fastened its hold on her more firmly than ever. Through all the paint and disfigurement of the disguise, the fierce despair of that strong and passionate nature lowered, haggard and horrible. Norah made an object of public curiosity and amusement; Norah reprimanded in the open street; Norah, the hired victim of an ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... a beautiful island, dividing the Falls of Niagara, called Goat Island: they have thrown a bridge across the rapids, so that you can now go over. A mill has already been erected there, which is a great pity; it is a contemptible disfigurement of ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... round from left to right she felt perfectly happy. Claude, however, was indignant, and, shaking Cadine, he asked her what she was doing in front of "that abomination, that corpse-like hussy picked up at the Morgue!" He flew into a temper with the "dummy's" cadaverous face and shoulders, that disfigurement of the beautiful, and remarked that artists painted nothing but that unreal type of woman nowadays. Cadine, however, remained unconvinced by his oratory, and considered the lady extremely beautiful. Then, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... for the most part the long, involved sentences rolled themselves without meaning. But now and then something struggled clear—a familiar phrase—an ironical echo. Then Robert Stonehouse saw through the disfigurement to the man that had been—the poor maimed and shackled fighter gibing ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... to prevent Sylvia's seeing the child that day and night, and the next morning came the specialist. He held out no hope of saving any remnant of the sight, but the child might be so fortunate as to escape disfigurement—it did not appear that the eyeballs were destroyed, as happens generally in these cases. This bit of consolation I still have: that little Elaine, who sits by me as I write, has left in her pupils a faint trace of the soft red-brown—just enough ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... with a skylight. In the farthest corner was a screen. Hester crept gently towards it, and Amy after her, not attempting to stop her. She came to the screen and peeped behind it. There lay a young man in a troubled sleep, his face swollen and red and blotched with the small-pox; but through the disfigurement she recognized her brother. Her eyes filled with tears; she turned away, and stole out again as softly as she came in. Amy had been looking up at her anxiously; when she saw the tenderness of her look, she gathered courage and followed her. Outside, Hester stopped, and Amy again closed ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... with all his great force, until absolutely weary, exhausted and panting for breath. I still adhered to my purpose of non-aggressive defence, and made no other use of my arms than to defend my head and face from further disfigurement. The mere pain arising from the blows he inflicted upon my person was of course transient, and my clothing to some extent deadened its severity, as it now ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... maternal care—the mother's absence having been secured by the father, by a lettre de cachet. In addition, that boyhood had been irritated and embittered by a continuous and exasperating development of his natural personal disfigurement. His enormous head grew less in harmony with his torso, his lips and nose became thick and heavy, great moles revealed themselves upon his cheeks, and in every way, physically, his growth was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... Sir William nor his lady had ever beheld him, prior to this period, except for a very few days, while the Neapolitan subsidiary troops were embarking for Toulon, when he was without any wound or disfigurement whatever, though always of a plain but pleasingly expressive countenance: he was now returned, in the short space of about four years, having atchieved victories which might have graced an age of absence; but, at what a price were ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... all is green; and that, instead of being, as in Europe, stone or moor, is jagged and feathered with gigantic trees. How rich! you would say. Yet these West Indians only mourn over its desolation and disfigurement; and point to the sheets of gray stems, which hang like mist along the upper slopes. They look to us, on this 30th of December, only as April signs that the woodlands have not quite burst into full leaf. But to the inhabitants they are tokens of those fearful ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... no importance, as far as the health of the infant is concerned. If situated in the face, however, they frequently cause great disfigurement, as the claret-stain, which may be seen sometimes to occupy nearly half the face. But they happily do not increase in size, remaining stationary through life; and as any operation that might be proposed for their removal, would only cause an equal, if not ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... shall be beautiful, elaborate, or otherwise, according to the fee. But in any case it is well to deal liberally with the artist, lest he should allow the chisel to slip "accidentally on purpose," and produce a permanent disfigurement instead of a fine design. The colouring-matter in which the tool is dipped is a thick mixture, prepared by rubbing down charcoal in oil or water. The pattern appears black on a brown skin, and dark blue on the skin of a white man, and ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... are not so much a matter of money as of thought. A few days ago, in a suburb of a Western city, I passed two houses recently constructed. One was simply an enlarged drygoods box with a few windows and doors broken into its sides—altogether a hideous disfigurement to the charming spot on which it was erected. Across the way stood the other cottage, with the same number of rooms as its vis-a-vis, but really exquisite in its simple beauty. And the latter, I was told, though equally spacious, ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... But these, as I found later, were of a beauty and expressiveness to make one forget their terrible setting. Large, pellucid, of a bright hazel, there was something magnetic in their straight and honest gaze; and I can well believe that before he met with his awful disfigurement their owner must have been ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... pair. They had to walk slowly, and often he would have to help her, for her burden had now become great. She had altered all her dresses, and she wore a long cape, and even then was not able to hide the disfigurement of her person. They would sit upon a bench in the cold, and talk about the latest aspects of his struggle, what he was doing and what he hoped to do. Corydon would bring him the opinions of a few more members of the bourgeois world, and they would curse this world and these people ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... appears that Rutherford Hope, though at first affected with disgust by her disfigurement, and convinced that no healthy man could consort with 'so unnatural a woman,' had come at last to regard her as a possible wife—before he was confronted with the sudden temptation to secure a fortune by wedding Betty Ochiltree, in compliance ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... across a face — a face at once familiar and horrible. A well-known face, yet so ghastly in its bloody disfigurement that Blaine shivered, drew back, then bent ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... new ayah whom Peter with the air of a magician who has but to wave his wand had presented to her half an hour before. The woman was old and bent and closely veiled—so closely that Stella strongly suspected her disfigurement to be of a very ghastly nature, but her low voice and capable manner inspired her with instinctive confidence. She realized with relief from the very outset that her faithful Peter had not made a mistake. She was sure that the new-comer had nursed ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... quick breakfast over a small fire, and Aldous heated water in which he soaked his face until the strips of court-plaster peeled off. The scratches were lividly evident, but, inasmuch as he had a choice of but two evils, he preferred that Joanne should see these instead of the abominable disfigurement of court-plaster strips. ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... cases three or four inches in diameter, which was inserted into the cartilage of each ear, which, of course, had previously been pierced and gradually distended to receive it. To Harry's unsophisticated eye these so-called ornaments constituted a hideous disfigurement, and he was glad to see that they were worn by men only, the ears of the women being for the most part innocent of artificial adornment, although a few of the ladies wore ear-rings of somewhat similar character to those of ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... cushion, lay trembling. She would have begged for death upon her knees rather than suffer this horror. She felt Vauquier's fingers lingering with a dreadful caressing touch upon her shoulders and about her throat. She was within an ace of the torture, the disfigurement, and she knew it. She could not pray for mercy. She could only lie quite still, as she was bidden, trying to control the shuddering of ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... neighbors,—and the house placed under quarantine. Abner Blossom has prudently absented himself from the chances of infection, and the daughter has fled. The sick man is attended only by a black servant and an ancient crone; so that, if the poor major escapes with his life or without disfigurement, pretty Mistress Bolton of Morristown need not ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... human being in the world with whom the old man talked freely, to whom he unburdened himself. With his chief lieutenant Blenham he was, as with other men, short, crisp-worded, curt. Now, seeming to take no stock of Blenham's disfigurement, in a dozen snapping sentences he ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... commentator of Timaeus, wrote of the Soul of the World, 667-u. Plato's Deity the essence of Goodness, "The Good" itself, 682-l. Plato declares absolute truth is in God; it is God under one of His phases, 707-l. Plato developed beautifully the higher Greek religious ideas, 617-m. Plato discourses on the disfigurement of the Soul, 858-m. Plato drew his doctrines from the East and the Mysteries, 398-m. Plato expresses his idea of the love of God, 704-l. Plato, greatest of human Revealers, 100-u. Plato, in part, conceived the progressive ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... remains of Greek sculpture, a constantly accumulating store, yet only an insignificant remnant of what once existed. These works have suffered sad disfigurement. Not one life-sized figure has reached us absolutely intact; but few have escaped serious mutilation. Most of those found before the beginning of this century, and some of those found since, have been subjected to a process known as "restoration." Missing ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... with carrot-red hair turning gray, had prominent red eyebrows over pale, intelligent eyes that winked often, owing to some weakness of the lids, which had lost most of their lashes. This disfigurement he concealed as well as he could with rimless pince-nez, which some people said were not necessary as an aid to eyesight. They were an aid to vanity, however; and the care Edwin Reeves bestowed on his ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... "addition" unknown to the old printed forms, appears in some modern ones. It is a mere disfigurement: and is hardly likely even to have been a ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... been battered with some heavy weapon. Somehow or other, there was nothing that fixed my attention so much as this door! I examined it—- I laid my hand upon it. Why should it have been so hastily built up, to the disfigurement of the wall? for the coarseness of the plaster and the rudeness of the work denoted haste. I was standing opposite to it, and asking myself this question, when I heard a heavy foot approaching; and before I had time to move, I saw the astonished face of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... sure to be in it!" gasped Anna. The Callenders looked heart-wrung, but Flora smiled on as she thought what comfort it would be to give each of them some life-long disfigurement. ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... of shoes or stockings, the bust and neck are hideously covered by a wooden breastplate, which, springing from the waist, rises at an angle of forty-five degrees as high as the chin; and on the edge of it is fastened a handkerchief, tied tightly round the neck. A greater disfigurement of the female form could scarcely have been devised. Yet, to these good people, it is doubtless beauty and propriety itself; for it is ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... These two small examples are entirely the fault of the mother and do not lie at the door of uncorrected habits in the children themselves. No boy's ears need stick out; there are caps and every sort of contrivance yearly being improved upon to obviate this disfigurement. No girl need have anything but a beautiful skin if her mother uses intelligence and supervises the early treatment of it. Because if she has the end in view, the mother will know that her little boy or girl will probably grow up and desire affection and happiness, ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... debris and lifted it, he saw with horror that the head was twisted under the shoulder, and swung helplessly from the dislocated neck. But that horror gave way to a more intense and thrilling emotion as he saw the face—although strangely free from laceration or disfigurement, and impurpled and distended into the simulation of a self-complacent smile—was a face he recognized! It was the face of the cynical traveler in the coach—the man who he was ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... hatred, and agony in her twisted limbs the woman had hung about the streets in front of the hotel until she had seen the man for whom she had felt such a sudden and fleeting love, and who was the primary cause of her disfigurement. ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... breast—'from his mother,' was engraven on it—who had come into the net across the river, with a bullet wound in his fair forehead and his hands cut with a knife, but whence or how was a blank mystery. This time, I was forced into the same dread place, to see a large dark man whose disfigurement by water was in a frightful manner comic, and whose expression was that of a prize-fighter who had closed his eyelids under a heavy blow, but was going immediately to open them, shake his head, and 'come up ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... curious, if not uncanny, spectacle then. His countenance was covered by a glass mask such as the chemist dons while preparing or studying some highly unstable and dangerous substance. Even more than death he feared pain and disfigurement. His method of dealing with Christopher's clock had been carefully thought out. In the rainproof coat which he wore was a respirator, oxygenated, as well as sundry little tools. For it was the green fluid that had engaged his wits most seriously: it must be got rid of; its powers, ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... said, "I shall be the sooner rid of my torment. The disfigurement of your face, which I believe is of your own seeking, shall not restrain me from making you mine. Though I could have nothing but your bones, I would yet hold them ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... their Father which, seeth in secret may reward them openly." The motives of reward and punishment have come, from the misconception of language of this kind, to be strangely overpressed by many Christian moralists, to the deterioration and disfigurement of Christianity. Marcus Aurelius says, ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... seigniories in oblong shapes with very narrow frontage along the river—a frontage of two or three arpents against a depth of from forty to eighty arpents—and the same inconvenient oblong plan was followed in making sub-grants to the censitaire or habitant. The result was a disfigurement of a large portion of the country, as the civil law governing the succession of estates gradually cut up all the seigniories into a number of small farms, each in the form of the parallelogram originally given ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... to it and your winch; keep on examining the point of your hook; do not be afraid of sliding down a rock that cannot be otherwise travelled over, for in these days of science the reseating of breeks is not impossible, and any casual personal disfigurement that may ensue is not likely to be obtruded upon the notice ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... neck, and dragged it from its desired prey. Then, with the point of her little, silver- sandaled foot, she turned the fallen face of the dead man slightly round, so that she might observe it more attentively, and noting its livid disfigurement, smiled. ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... were brothers-twin brothers, probably. Both were above middle height; both had olive-brown complexions, black eyes, hooked noses, pointed chins, a slightly projecting lower lip; both were round-shouldered, though this defect did not amount to disfigurement: the whole personality suggested strength, and was not destitute of masculine beauty. So strong a likeness is hardly ever seen; even their ages appeared to agree, for one would not have supposed either to be more than thirty-two; and the only difference ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... if you were with us, I expect," Angelica answered, and then she turned her attention to Edith, but not by a sign did she betray, the slightest consciousness of the latter's disfigurement—unless making herself unusually agreeable was a symptom of commiseration; and in this she succeeded so thoroughly that when the others rose to go Edith did not feel ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... dwelling-place They sought; saw Indra face to face; The meeting with Agastya gained; The heavenly bow from him obtained. How Rama with Viradha met; Their home in Panchavata set. How Surpanakha underwent The mockery and disfigurement. Of Trisira's and Khara's fall, Of Ravan roused at vengeance call, Maricha doomed, without escape; The fair Videhan(55) lady's rape. How Rama wept and raved in vain, And how the Vulture-king was slain. How Rama fierce Kabandha slew; Then to the side of Pampa drew, Met Hanuman, and her whose vows ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... quite a young woman. Formerly she used to come alone, but for three years past she had always been accompanied by a young lady, who wept bitterly when she arrived and when she went away. This young lady had but one ear and concealed the disfigurement by the way in which she dressed her hair. Michael Petroff had cut off her other ear when she was only a child, during the ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... Almain, she taking him by the hand, and his head not reaching to her girdle; and yet he had by her Charlemain, the great Emperor and King of France, which is reported to be almost a giant's stature."[866] It was not so easy to dispose of the disparity in years,[867] and perhaps still less of Alencon's disfigurement by small-pox; for that unlucky prince added this to the long catalogue of his misfortunes. The course of the treaty for mutual defence was, happily, somewhat smoother than that of the matchmaking. On the eighteenth of April the treaty was formally concluded,[868] and shortly after, Marshal Montmorency ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... an attempt to correct such a disfigurement would in all probability not be made until the ink had dried, an inspection of the reverse side of the paper will usually furnish satisfactory evidence on the point. If the color of the ink be not more distinct on the under side of the paper than the color of other writing where there was no erasure, ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... scrutiny of Miss T.'s features). Oh, BOB, remind me to get some more of that mosquito stuff. I should so hate to be bitten—such a dreadful disfigurement! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... its nimble tongue had lighted, damaged by that contact—at loose ends, frayed and ravelled, its inwove pattern just slightly discoloured and defaced. The patterned fabric of Damaris' thought and inner life had not been spared, but suffered disfigurement along with the rest. She felt humiliated, felt unworthy. The ingenious torments of a false conscience gnawed her. Her better judgment pronounced that conscience veritably false; or would, as she believed, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... little fond one may be of it, so thickly is the room set round with rose-draped mirrors. For the moment, O friends, I will own to you that I appear to myself nothing less than brutally ugly. I know that I am not so in reality, that the disfigurement is only temporary, but none the less does the consciousness deeply, deeply depress me. My nose is of a lively scarlet, which the warmth of the room is quickly deepening into a lowering purple. My quick passage through the air has set my hat a little awry, giving me a ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... fell into the snares that surround the provincial woman. If a Parisian woman's hips are too narrow or too full, her inventive wit and the desire to please help to find some heroic remedy; if she has some defect, some ugly spot, or small disfigurement, she is capable of making it an adornment; this is often seen; but the provincial woman—never! If her waist is too short and her figure ill balanced, well, she makes up her mind to the worst, and her adorers—or they do not adore her—must take her as she is, while the Parisian always insists on ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... case under discussion. Who, for instance, would conceive that you would have taken the trouble to call upon the American consul for the cipher message that has caused all this unpleasant row and facial disfigurement?" ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... extent of five or six thousand pounds a year is spent on preserving and maintaining national monuments and buildings of antiquarian and architectural interest. In Germany steps are being taken which we might follow with advantage in this country, to control and limit the disfigurement of landscapes ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... which cannot be washed out with water. Consider, my daughter, in the long life of the house, how many unborn men will turn the leaves of this book, and coming to this leaf will be offended at so grievous a disfigurement! If we of this generation were destined to live for ever, then it might be written on this page for a punishment and warning:" Yoletta tore it in her anger. "But we must pass away and be nothing to succeeding generations, and it would not be right that Yoletta's name should be remembered for ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... a blow from the knife as "all in the game," a smash from a bare fist that made a permanent disfigurement was completely outside his code of sportsmanship. He resented it with the white-hot passion of ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... expect he started with two hassocks and worked up to this. I'm not afraid but I want to know the possibilities. If it's only a broken leg or two, I don't mind. If it's permanent disfigurement I think I ought ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... accommodation for casual visitors to the observatory than the spiral staircase and lead-flat afforded. As this cabin would be completely buried in the dense fir foliage which enveloped the lower part of the column and its pedestal, it would be no disfigurement to the general appearance. Finally, a path was to be made across the surrounding fallow, by which she might easily approach the scene of ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... night to think of things to say to that compositor if ever I should meet him, and to the printer's reader who passed his abominable blunder. The most indurated professional writer who takes any interest in his work likes it to appear before the public without this kind of disfigurement; but it is only the beginner who experiences the full fury of pain a misprint can inflict, and I think that even the beginner must be a poet to know ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... the bright faces opposite, under the pheasant plumes. Was it any delight to Leslie to see her own face so? What was the use of being—what right had she to wish to be—pretty and pleasant to look at, when there were such utter lifelong loss and disfigurement in the world for others? Why should it not as well happen to her? And how did the world seem to such a person, and where was the worth while of it? This was the question which lingered last in her mind, and to which all else reverted. To be able to bear—perhaps this was it; and this was ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... embarked the scum of the port—men whose reputations were so vile that the lowest crimp would have been ashamed to furnish them. There was Birthmark Sweetlocks, who was known to have been present at the killing of the logwood-cutters, so that his hideous scarlet disfigurement was put down by the fanciful as being a red afterglow from that great crime. He was first mate, and under him was Israel Martin, a little sun-wilted fellow who had served with Howell Davies at the taking of ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... at all times, beautiful even now, in spite of the cruel disfigurement inflicted upon her by the march of modern vulgarity, but she has three high festivals which clothe her with a special glory and crown her with their several crowns. One is the Festival of May, when her hoary walls and ancient enclosures overflow with ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... British industry, and leaders of the men and women who slave to make its wheels go round, make a pilgrimage to this spot, and learn what foul disfigurement you have brought on the land of England these last five generations! The natural loveliness in this Heritage is no greater than the loveliness that used to be in a thousand places which you have blotted out of the book of beauty, with your smuts and wheels, your wires ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... it is perhaps worth while to point out one of the reasons why the Congo atrocity exhorters found such ready exhibits for their arguments. The Central African native delights in disfigurement not only as a sign of "beauty," but as a means of retaliation for real or fancied wrongs among his own. In the old days dozens of slaves, and sometimes wives, were sacrificed upon the death of an important chief. Their spirits were supposed ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... bending, wherever it escaped, into rich and massy curls. There was one of these which fell upon the back of her fair neck, and another upon either temple. Upon the forehead, as was then customary, the hair was divided into smaller curls, and cut much shorter, which fashion was a great disfigurement to beauty, and certainly left her less handsome than she otherwise would have appeared. Still, however, she was very, very lovely; and the fine lines of her features, the clear rich brown of her complexion, the glorious light of her large dark eyes, softened by the ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... clean forgot to mention that!" Toby instantly exclaimed. "He certainly did have just such a disfigurement, though I took it for a birth-mark and not a scar or healed wound. So then you've already got a good suspicion about his identity, have you? Well, this keeps on growing more and more interesting. Steve and ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... suspect that dream interpretation is capable of giving us hints about the structure of our psychic apparatus which we have thus far expected in vain from philosophy. We shall not, however, follow this track, but return to our original problem as soon as we have cleared up the subject of dream-disfigurement. The question has arisen how dreams with disagreeable content can be analyzed as the fulfillment of wishes. We see now that this is possible in case dream-disfigurement has taken place, in case the disagreeable content serves only as a disguise for what is wished. ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... with death, acted much as his chief, Henry Plummer, had done. He begged and pleaded, and asked for mutilation, disfigurement, anything, if only he might still live. But, like Plummer, at the very last moment he pulled together and died calmly. "How long will it take me to die?" he asked. "I have never seen anyone hanged." They told him it would be very short and that he would not suffer much, and this seemed ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... temperament, and was unable to give the warmer touch to the classic, which they did so well. His paneled walls, however, have great dignity and purity of line and feeling, and the applied ornament was really an ornament, and not a disfigurement as too often happens in our day. With Adam one feels the surety of knowledge and the refinement of good taste led by ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... the cradle of the human race, or at least of that part of it to which we belong, where first Mohammedans, and then Christians, were most cruelly infuriated against the adherents of the original faith of mankind. The destruction or disfigurement of the ancient temples and idols, a lamentable, mischievous and barbarous act, still bears witness to the monotheistic fury of the Mohammedans, carried on from Marmud, the Ghaznevid of cursed memory, down to Aureng Zeb, the fratricide, whom the Portuguese Christians ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... removed her veil, and indeed she did have two ghastly looking scars, but she had exaggerated her disfigurement, for despite the scars hers was not an uncomely face to look upon. Her eyes were beautiful, and the detective was led to say with chivalrous truth ...
— A Successful Shadow - A Detective's Successful Quest • Harlan Page Halsey
... or tumor, internal or external, cured by soothing, balmy oil, and without pain or disfigurement. No experiment, but successfully used ten years. Write to the home office of the originator for free book.—DR. D. M. BYE Co., Drawer ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... In the centre of the wood (for such it seemed) rises the choir, a gaudy and tasteless excrescence added by the Christians. Even Charles V., who laid a merciless hand on the Alhambra, reproved the Bishop of Cordova for this barbarous and unnecessary disfigurement. ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... revolver jerked from my hand, and my coat ripped from my body. Like so much carrion the fellows had flung me back against the wall, so as to make room for the swinging open of the door. I lay there huddled up in shapeless disfigurement, blood staining the stones, one arm twisted above my head. Consciousness returned so slowly, the benumbed brain began to flicker into activity before a stiffened muscle relaxed. I was awake, able to perceive dimly, and to realize my situation, before my body responded to action. Returning life seemed ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... so bare-faced a robbery—and Mrs. Treadwell's last days could be spent in comfort and Miss Laura saved from any fear for her future, and enabled to give more freely to the poor and needy. Barclay Fetters recovered the use of one eye, and embittered against the whole Negro race by his disfigurement, went into public life and devoted his talents and his education to their debasement. The colonel had relented sufficiently to contemplate making over to Miss Laura the old family residence in trust for use as a hospital, with a suitable fund for its maintenance, but it unfortunately ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... puffy swelling located in front and on the inside of the hock, varying from the size of a walnut to that of a man's fist. It very seldom causes lameness, but is a serious disfigurement and blemish. ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... colour, green, crimson, heliotrope and poppy-red. Even from amidst the chalk bags, a daring little flower could be seen showing its face; and a primrose came to blossom under the eaves of our dug-out. Nature was hard at work blotting out the disfigurement caused by man to the face of ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... dress will go for nothing. For instance, cleanliness, which according to the old proverb, is rated so high as to be placed next to godliness, is one of these, and of primary importance. The most costly attire, if unaccompanied by it, is not only valueless, but may become a positive disfigurement, while the simplest dress, combined with cleanliness, may be absolutely refreshing. There is no reason whatever why the most menial occupation should be admitted as any excuse for want of personal cleanliness. It is always easy to distinguish between accidental ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... West Island origin. Others say they are true Caithness men, and others again look for their ancestors among the Southern Scotch. They were not strongly built, nor had they a look of vigorous bodily health. Their heads and faces were usually bad in form. Broken noses and scars were a common disfigurement, and a revelation at the same time of the brutality of their lives. One girl might have been painted for a rustic beauty of the Norse type, and there was a boy among them with an excellent head. It is possible that one or both of these may yet leave their parents, from dissatisfaction ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... up and to rig a ladder outside. They did so, and Mr. Clarkson ascended to the ragged end of the hollow stump and looked down. Standing at the wheel, steering the drifting ship with one hand and holding an empty bottle in the other, was a man with torn clothing and bloody face. In spite of the disfigurement Mr. Clarkson knew him. Jammed into the narrow staircase leading below was the body of a man partly hidden by a Gatling gun, the lever of ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... Lady Holme to Casa Felice. When she had found that the accident had disfigured her frightfully, and that the disfigurement would be permanent, she had at first thought of killing herself. But then she had been afraid. Life had abruptly become a horror to her. She felt that it must be a horror to her always. Yet she dared not leave it then, in her home in London, in ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... illustrate the new books. I have never myself seen or heard of a 'Caxton' in which an illuminator has painted a preliminary border or initial letters; even the rubrication, where it exists, is usually a disfigurement; while as for pictures, it has been unkindly said that inquiry whence they were obtained is superfluous, since any boy with a knife could have cut them ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... on errands, letting him also occupy himself in cultivating the garden. He was gentle, timid, silent, and affectionate. And she experienced a deep happiness, a fresh happiness when he kissed her without surprise or horror at her disfigurement. He called her "Aunt," and treated her as ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... forty years. Pascal, discussing the privileges of the nobles and the kings, said to them boldly: "You are kings only of concupiscence." This great court, the most brilliant in Europe, "sweated hypocrisy," said Saint-Simon. It may be remarked, that, in addition to the very frequent disfigurement by small-pox, from which even the king was not entirely free, there was a remarkable prevalence of deformity among the families of the aristocracy. "There was scarcely one of which some member, male or female, had not a curved spine, a distorted limb, or other malformation; owing, most likely, ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... must be shorn and shaven, why not the man's? It is not fair. I can think of no reason, pretext, or excuse, unless it is to be found in the fact that women are more beautiful than men, and need greater disfigurement to make them ugly. That is a fact which I have long suspected, and observations made on this journey confirm my suspicions,—intensify them into certainty. An ugly woman is handsomer than a handsome man,—if you examine them closely. She is finer-grained, more soft, more delicate. Men are animals ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... nuisance to the inhabitants of those rooms. The rails are supported on a timber frame which rests on stout wooden piles. These latter are possibly twenty feet high, they are very rough, and greatly disfigure the thoroughfare. Another disfigurement in the streets of New York are the telegraph-poles. We run our wires over the house-tops or underground. They do not. The wires are probably more numerous than ours, but all are ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... formerly lighted by three large windows,—one of them of very great size; but the thrifty church-wardens of a generation or two ago had built them up with brick, to the great disfigurement of the church. The sexton called my attention to the organ-pipe, which is of sufficient size, I believe, to ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
