"Phrenologist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the cause of her death, and has wished to examine; but I said no, for I am a philosopher, and it is no use looking for causes after effects; but I have done since her death what she never would permit me to do during her life. I have had her head shaved, and examined it very carefully as a phrenologist, and most curiously has she proved the truth of the sublime science. I will give you the result. Determination, very prominent; Benevolence, small; Caution, extreme; Veneration, not very great; Philo-progenitiveness, ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Rudolf von Reibisch, the most intimate friend of the family, whose great talents would have rendered him capable of really grand achievements in various departments of art, examined our skulls as a phrenologist or read aloud his last drama. Here, too, I met Major Serre, the bold projector of the great lottery whose brilliant success called into being and insured the prosperity of the Schiller Institute, the source of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... time.' The young lady soon appeared, breathless and exhausted with running. Lord Egremont mentioned our names, and she said, looking up to Wilkie with an expression of great respect, 'Oh, sir! it was but yesterday I had your head in my hands.' This puzzled him, as he did not know she was a phrenologist. ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... after this occurrence, Squire Hardy went to hear an itinerant phrenologist who lectured in the village. In the progress of his discourse, the lecturer, for purposes of illustration, introduced the skulls of several animals, mapped off in the most correct ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... by a long haired phrenologist in the West who has, during his life, felt of over a hundred thousand heads. A comparison of a large number of charts given in these cases shows that so far no head examined would indicate anything less than a member of the lower ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... and ethereal about him. Perhaps he didn't eat enough, or it may have been the effect of "New Thought," in one of the fifty-seven varieties of which he was a firm believer. He told me that his astral colors were red and blue, and that a phrenologist had told him that a bump on the back of his head indicated that he ought never to buy mining stock. With the same instinct that undid Bluebeard's and Lot's wives he had tried it, and is once more back at his job of gardening with an increased ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... The distinguished phrenologist Gall had a dog whose memory was remarkable, and he thoroughly understood words and phrases. "On this subject I have made," says Gall, "the following observations: I have often spoken intentionally of things which might interest my ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... deliberative assemblies—such, at least, as represent any popular influences and debate with open doors—intercepts the very possibility of senatorial eloquence. [Footnote: The subject is amusingly illustrated by an anecdote of Goethe, recorded by himself in his autobiography. Some physiognomist, or phrenologist, had found out, in Goethe's structure of head, the sure promise of a great orator. "Strange infatuation of nature!" observes Goethe, on this assurance, "to endow me so richly and liberally for that particular ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... luckless spinster had of her misfortune, was conveyed in a stentorian laugh from Jack, whose organ of mirthfulness, marked very large by the phrenologist, could not withstand such a ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... the same comparative massiveness of forehead, not receding like the Celtic—the same even roundness in the frontal organs; but it is far loftier in the apex, and far less pronounced in the hinder cranial hemisphere where phrenologists place the animal organs. To speak as a phrenologist, the cranium common to the Vril-ya has the organs of weight, number, tune, form, order, causality, very largely developed; that of construction much more pronounced than that of ideality. Those which ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... knowledge of it; but my object in learning to presage events, was not as a means of livelihood, but in order to appease my appetite for a bit of fun. It was while I was "reading, learning, and inwardly digesting" the contents of the book that Professor Fowler, the well-known phrenologist, came to Keighley and gave lectures on the science of bumps, or phrenology, in the old Mechanics' Hall—now the Yorkshire Penny Bank. I attended one of those lectures in company with Morgan Kennedy, a Keighley man, who afterwards became a professional phrenologist. ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... continue through all the examinations. Suffice it to say, by this display of my new craft, I was raised very much in the estimation of everybody. But the most surprising thing was, a Touarick affirmed to the Rais, with great vehemence, that one of his neighbours was a phrenologist, and acquired his knowledge from the jenoun ("demons"). The major-domo of his Excellency, (who had had a good character given to him in the examination,) was very angry at this attempt to lower my ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... be idle to take up in any detail the claims of phrenologist and palmist. The former had a very respectable start in the work of Broca and Gall[1] in that the localization of function in the various parts of the brain made at least partly logical the belief that the conformation ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... love with woman, woman with man, not with a particular man or woman." Young men and women inherit, from a long series of ancestors, a disposition to love which at puberty reveals itself in vague longings and dreams. The "bump of amativeness," as a phrenologist might say, is like a powder magazine, ready to explode at a touch, and it makes no great difference what kind of a match is applied. In later love affairs the match is ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... member of Parliament, wrote nine volumes of such description. His work is a storehouse of fact, useful to this day to the American historical student[18]. George Combe, philosopher and phrenologist, studied especially social institutions[19]. Joseph Sturge, philanthropist and abolitionist, made a tour, under the guidance of the poet Whittier, through the Northern and Eastern States[20]. Featherstonaugh, a scientist and civil engineer, ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... plot of land was and still remained a great difficulty. In my walks I had long had my eye on a little winter residence in the district of Enge, on the ridge of the hill that separates the Lake of Zurich from Sihlthal. It was called Lavater Cottage, as it had belonged to that famous phrenologist, and he had been in the habit of staying there regularly. I had enlisted the services of my friend Hagenbuch, the Cantonal Secretary, to use all his influence to secure me a few acres of land at this spot as cheaply as possible. But herein lay the great difficulty. The piece ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... a warder, and looked round with the utmost composure, as though examining the Caesars in the British Museum, and was as interested as any fanatical fool of a phrenologist. He shrugged his shoulders, raised his eyebrows, and repeated his old formula, "Well, if I am to be hanged, I ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... close of the session of 1851-52, in the Eclectic Medical College, in that city. The doctor is highly esteemed by the physicians of his system, who continually interchange calls with him. He is also a practical phrenologist,—which profession he does not now attend to, giving his undivided attention to the practice of medicine,—and has written a pamphlet on that subject, entitled, "Synopsis of Phrenology, and the Phrenological Developments, as given ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... with the long hair firm on it; which, on being cleaned, is neither black nor fair, but a darkish dusk, the most common of any other colour. Soon afterwards we found the skull, but it was not complete. A spade had damaged it, and one of the temple quarters was wanting. I am no phrenologist, not knowing one organ from another, but I thought the skull of that wretched man no study. If it was particular for anything, it was for a smooth, almost perfect rotundity, with only a little protuberance above ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... asked Bellew, advancing and examining the part. "No, all right. A good supper will be the best cure for it. If I was a phrenologist now, I'd name it the bump of top-heaviness. Sit down, sir; sit down, Le Rue, an' look after my kettle while I see ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... of her person. Her head seemed somewhat too large for her body; and the upper part of it seemed too large for the lower portion. She had a large, square forehead, white enough, but strongly marked with inequalities of surface, which, however much they might have delighted a phrenologist, were not conducive to girlish comeliness. Her hair was of the very light reddish quality, which has not a single touch in it of that rich sunny auburn, which makes so many heads charming, red though they be. Her face was ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... tranquillise him. Now, why should not a philosopher make a pun? Shakespeare was an incorrigible punster. Why should a man's life be divided into little artificial sections, like the labelled heads in the phrenologist's window? I do not want to see a man put on his Sunday clothes to talk about religion. But a congenital inelasticity is fostered in the atmosphere of common-rooms, there where solemn-footed serving-men present the port with sacerdotal ceremonies, and where, if the dons are no longer (in the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... likely to appear invidious, and which might be so readily construed, by a foolish woman, into an impertinence. Though a man naturally of quick, warm feelings, Calvert had been early taught to think cautiously—indeed, the modern phrenologist would have said that, in the excess of this prudent organ lay the grand weakness of his moral nature. This delayed him in the contemplated performance much longer than his sense of its necessity seemed to justify. Having now resolved, however, and secure in the propriety of his object, ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... If a phrenologist should undertake to "read" my head, he would undoubtedly find my love of home—if that is what it is called—a sharply defined welt. I know that I watched the lights of old Frisco slip behind me with as virulent a case of the deeps as often comes to a man when his digestion is good. It ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... and soberer part of the afternoon the phrenologist had skilfully steered his way by the safe stars of flattery. Now, as he ran his hands uncertainly through the miner's thick hair, a look of mystification crept into his bleary eyes. ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... Ducker said suavely, speaking in a low voice, and looking at whom he supposed to be the latest McSorley, "it looks as if there must be something in it over there. Isn't that McSorley over again? Low forehead, pug nose, bulldog tendencies." Mr. Ducker was something of a phrenologist, and went blithely on ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... end—voluntarily. The barber talked soothingly of making a discount on the bill; and I, looking at it in a strictly diplomatic light, gradually permitted myself to grow calmer. He went further, and did the handsome thing by me—as if it wasn't enough to cut under his price! A phrenologist by profession, so he said, he had resorted to barbering simply for amusement, and under the circumstances he would give me ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 29, October 15, 1870 • Various
... public or private life, estimating a wife or husband, and their fitness for each other, or endeavoring to understand myself and to select the right occupation, there is no advice of which I so often feel the need as that of a thoroughly able, scientific, experienced and Christian phrenologist." ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... phrenologist, or, as some call him, Mr. Comb—perhaps on account of his being so busy about the head—has given it as his opinion, that in less than a hundred years public affairs will be (in America at least) carried on by the rules of phrenology. By postponing the proof of his assertion ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... Toulmin Smith, the phrenologist, of Boston, writes: "I perfectly concur with you in your remarks on the minor details of phrenology. They have hitherto been loose and vague, but though at first sight they seem minor, they will be found, in truth, of great importance to the thorough elucidation ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... signs admonished that we were floating eastward. A shabbily dressed phrenologist laid his hand on every head which would bend, with half-conceited, half-sheepish expression, to the trial of his skill. Knots of people gathered here and there to discuss points of theology. A bereaved lover was seeking religious consolation in—Butler's Analogy, ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... (35) Causality. The judgment of the phrenologist is determined by the size of the brain in general, and by the size of the organs that have been formulated, and these are estimated by certain arbitrary rules that render the boundaries ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... natural element, and the breath of our nostrils; 'but if a stream of the same be directed on the body for a time, it causes cold, fever, and even death.' 'How wearisome,' exclaims Emerson, 'the grammarian, the phrenologist, the political or religious fanatic, or, indeed, any possessed mortal, whose balance is lost by the exaggeration of a single topic! It is incipient insanity.' The bore of society is constituted by his one-sidedness. His ear is deficient in the sense of harmony, and he deafens and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... to polish you off phrenologically in the recesses of the establishment. Suppose yourself in a room full of casts and pictures, before a counterful of books with taking titles. I wonder if the picture of the brain is there, "approved" by a noted Phrenologist, which was copied from my, the Professor's, folio plate, in the work of Gall and Spurzheim. An extra convolution, No. 9, Destructiveness, according to the list beneath, which was not to be seen in the plate, itself a copy of Nature, was very liberally supplied by the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... chrome yellow and vermilion—strong poisons all; while many other kinds of wax are equally poisonous, and, therefore dangerous. There are very many persons who are aware of the intense sufferings, for very many years past, of Mr. W. Bally, phrenologist and modeller in wax, in which latter branch he has laboured for 24 or 25 years, three of them as teacher of the art, at the Manchester Mechanics' Institution. Mr. Bally has been at times completely paralysed, and is now and has long been very nearly so, especially ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey
... countenance better suited to the character which this singular woman had assumed. Rich, thick, auburn hair was parted loosely over a brow in which the large and full temples would have betrayed to a phrenologist the great preponderance which the dreaming and the imaginative bore over the sterner faculties. Her eyes were deep, intense, but of the bright and wandering glitter which is so powerful in its effect on the beholder, because it betokens that thought which is ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... under the discerning leadership of President Enright, never fails in the administration of justice. Doctor Peets will be glad to exhibit this memento mori to all who care to call. Doctor Peets, who is eminent as a phrenologist, avers that said skull is remarkable for its thickness, and that its conformation points to the possession by Bear Creek, while he wore it, of the most powerful natural inclinations to crime. From these discoveries of Doctor Peets, the committee which ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis |
