"Death's head" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... persons in the saloon,—three burly, bearded miners of the conventional big-hatted, big-booted, and big-voiced type. Above their heads and against the wall was this sign, lettered roughly with charcoal, under a crudely drawn death's head: ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... could work on his mind. His prison was built between the trenches of the principal rampart, and was of course very dark. It was likewise very damp, and, to crown all, the name of 'Trenck' had been printed in red bricks on the wall, above a tomb whose place was indicated by a death's head. ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... twenty-eighth Book of his History, says, 'The moth, too, that flies at the flame of the lamp, is numbered among the bad potions,' evidently alluding to their being used in philtres or incantations. There is a kind called the death's head moth; but it is so called simply from the figure of a skull, which appears very exactly represented on its body, and not on account of any noxious qualities known to ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... looked, horror struck, from one death's head to another, I was affected by a singular hallucination. Like a wavering translucent spirit face superimposed upon each of these brutish masks I saw the ideal, the possible face that would have been the actual if mind and soul had lived. It was not till ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... mentioning it," Dr. Ashton said at length, "you are about as cheerful company as a death's head. You are so melancholy that I am tempted to fling in your face one of my old epigrams; that love is a gay young bachelor who can never be persuaded to marry ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... it is astonishing what human creatures can get used to! I believe they could make themselves comfortable at the bottom of a sewer. It really disgusts a man, for I was just the same myself. You mustn't suppose that I was like this chap here, always staring at a death's head. Like everybody else, I thought the whole thing was idiotic; but life is like that, as far as I can see! ... We did what we had to do, and let it go at that;—the end? Well, one is as good as another, whether you lose ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... fighting of all seems to have been done by the Turcos and Senegalese. In trenches taken by them from the guards and the famous Death's Head Hussars, the Germans showed no bullet wounds. In nearly every attack the men from the desert had flung themselves upon the enemy, using only the butt or the bayonet. Man for man no white man drugged for years with meat ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... nothing but hideous. It could not have been termed a smile, and what emotion it registered the Englishman was at a loss to guess. No expression whatever altered the steady gaze of those large, round eyes; there was no color upon the pasty, sunken cheeks. A death's head grimaced as though a man long dead raised his parchment-covered ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... more heroic than the other, presented themselves to his mind, each like some grinning death's head. Closing his eyes, Yourii could clearly behold a grey Petersburg morning, damp brick walls and a gibbet faintly outlined against the leaden sky. He pictured the barrel of a revolver pressed to his brow; he imagined that he could hear the whiz of nagaikas ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... the forgotten scrap of a torn up cloud. As she passed the point and turned towards the harbour, the warm amethystine hue suddenly vanished from her sails, and she looked white and cold, as if the sight of the Death's Head had scared the blood out of her. "It 's hersel'!" cried Malcolm in delight. "Aboot the size a muckle herrin' boat, but nae mair like ane than Lady Florimel 's like Meg Partan! It 'll be jist gran' to hae a cratur sae near leevin' ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... "the gift of a splendid country estate, and would load her with diamonds besides. The poor old man was a comic sight to look upon—unusually short in stature; and every time he spoke he threw his head back and opened his mouth so wide as to expose the artificial gold roof of his palate. A death's head making love to a lady could not have been a more horrible or disgusting sight. These generous gifts were most ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... wasted to skeletons, with livid skins, recalling the colour of that earth in which they would soon be laid to rest; and there was one among them who was quite white, with flaming eyes, who looked indeed like a death's head in which a torch had been lighted. Then every deformity of the contractions followed in succession—twisted trunks, twisted arms, necks askew, all the distortions of poor creatures whom nature had warped and broken; and among these was one whose right hand was thrust ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... lying stretched at full length on a sofa. He looked abnormally long, because he was so thin that he was, as the nurse had said, a skeleton. His face was almost a death's head, but his blue eyes looked out of their great hollow sockets clear as tarn water, and with the smile which Coombe would not have forgotten howsoever long life ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... laudanum arrived, he took the bottle and examined it. A death's head and crossbones were on the label. He took out the cork, and smelt ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... name may have been applied with reference to topographical features, as we speak of the brow of a hill; or, if the spot was the usual place of execution, it may have been so called as expressive of death, just as we call a skull a death's head. It is probable that the bodies of executed convicts were buried near the place of death; and if Golgotha or Calvary was the appointed site for execution, the exposure of skulls and other human bones through the ravages of beasts and by other means, would not be surprizing; ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage |
