"Human face" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... many stories of that saint, which are meritorious, he did the four Evangelists in some medallions, in an original style, for above the bust and human limbs he gave St John the head of an eagle, St Mark the head of a lion, St Luke that of an ox, while only St Matthew has a human face, that is to say an angel's. Outside Arezzo, he decorated the church of S. Stefano, built by the Aretines upon many columns of granite and marble, to honour and preserve the names of several martyrs who were put to death by Julian the Apostate. Here he ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... they measure their own. She did not see the faded color of the woman's face at all; she did not see the spreading marks around mouth and eyes, or the faint parallels of care on the temples; she saw only that which her unbiased childish vision had ever sought in a human face, love and kindness, and tender admiration of herself; and her conviction of its beauty was complete. But at the same time a bitter and piteous jealousy for her mother and home, and all that she had ever loved and believed in, came over her. What right had this strange ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Hell every evening—when at the moment of his birth the Angel's finger had struck him on the upper lip and sent him into the world crying at the pain, and with that dent under the nostrils which, in every human face, is the seal of oblivion of the celestial spheres. But on the anniversary of the great Day of the Decalogue—on the Feast of Pentecost—the synagogue was dressed with flowers. Flowers were not easy to get in Venice—that city ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... bent his head and placed his ear on the cold breast. As he raised his eyes and they chanced to rest on Kennedy's hands, holding the electrodes dangling idly in the air, I think I never saw a greater look of astonishment on a human face. "It—is—almost—natural," he gasped. ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... to forget that face, although it remain like an angel's face to me, because it is the fairest example of the human face divine that I ever hope ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... without. It was his earliest bulletin-board of intelligence. It was the first parchment to bear tidings; it was the original newspaper; it was the rude, but vivid, primeval book of the woods. The human face was all that. Ages more had to pass before spoken language began, and still other ages before written language began. Thus for an immeasurable time nature developed the face and multiplied its expressions to enable man to make himself understood. At last this development ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... dog-like body was supported upon two legs terminating in eagle's claws; in addition to his arms, which were furnished with sharp talons, he had four outspread wings, two of which fell behind him, while the other two rose up and surrounded his head; he had a scorpion's tail, a human face with large goggle-eyes, bushy eyebrows, fleshless cheeks, and retreating lips, showing a formidable row of threatening teeth, while from his flattened skull protruded the horns of a goat: the entire combination was ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... darkling, and, in shadiest covert hid, Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year Seasons return; but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and, for the book of knowledge fair, Presented with a universal blank Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased, ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... advanced than our own—for as Jean Paul Richter wrote "There is no end"—that he had learned that the supposedly impossible could be done. He assisted John W. Draper in taking the first photograph of the human face ever made. Science with him was never opposed to religion. His moving pictures and spectral analysis were almost miracles at that time. He delighted to show how the earth in forming was flattened at the poles, and he would illustrate the ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... stuffed into it to keep out the cold. At that sight I forgot my fatigue, and Mr Popham grew excited, and waved his cap over his head, crying, "Hurrah! Now go ahead, Mrs Englefield!" for which piece of boyish folly he received a frown from Basil, the darkest I ever saw on human face. ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... a human face showed amazement and discomfiture, Swope's did. He had been so busy at his game of potting his officer he did not see Newman until the latter walked into his range of vision and sent forth his hail. He could have shot Newman then, and I could ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... equal horizontal bands of light blue (top), white, and light blue; centered in the white band is a radiant yellow sun with a human face known as ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... across the lawn to the house the two lovers came out to meet them. Sir James saw the look with which Diana watched them coming. It seemed to him one of the sweetest and one of the most piteous he had ever seen on a human face. ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... gleamed almost brazen, showing the cruel scars, the trenches torn by cloud-bursts, the lines wrought by the long, patient waiting of the earth for the lifting of the wrath of God. Imperishable grief was writ on the land as on a human face. The night wore on, the watches changed, the herd continued restless; not more than a third of it had bedded down. The third watch was from one o'clock to half-past three in the morning. Simpson and another "XXX" man, with two of the Wetmore outfit, made up a double watch, ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... two or three minutes on both sides, when Mabel perceived that the bushes opposite were cautiously pushed aside, and a human face appeared at an opening. A glance sufficed to let Mabel see that it was the countenance of a red-skin, as well as that of a woman. A second and a better look satisfied her that it was the face of ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... such an angular soul couldn't fit into another's. And then I thought that the chief thing about Mary was just her serene certainty. Her eyes had that settled happy look that I remembered to have seen only in one other human face, and that was Peter's ... But I wondered if Peter's eyes were ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... the sculpture of the Old Empire at its best. The all-important fact to notice is the realism of these portraits. We shall see that Greek sculpture throughout its great period tends toward the typical and the ideal in the human face and figure. Not so in Egypt. Here the task of the artist was to make a counterfeit presentment of his subject and he has achieved his task at times with marvelous skill. Especially the heads of the best statues have an individuality ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... very learned and about as imaginative as a wart hog, declares that the human face is merely an extension and elaboration of the alimentary canal—that the beauty of expression, the marvellous qualities of a noble human face, are merely indirect results of the alimentary canal's strivings to satisfy ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... attracted our attention. We followed the sound—it came from the ruins of the church, and there, among the weeds and flowers lay Conrad stiff and cold—he was dead, and, oh the horrible expression of that face, the demoniac look of despair was never written in such fearful lines on human face before. All felt relief when 'twas covered from the sight. One hand had 'twined in the death grasp round the reed-like stem of the mullen plant—we unclosed it, and it sprung back, tall and straight as before; something glittered in the other—'twas the half of De Clairville's golden ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... as though the old man's capacity for being shocked or infuriated had been exhausted. There was no roar of maddened wrath or denunciation of denial now. Never had Sim seen on a human face such a despair of stricken grief. Hump Doane only passed an open palm across his forehead. Somehow this hideous recital, which had made him an old man in the space of a few minutes, blasting ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... creature's white snow and rose face resting lovingly and confidingly aginst the black cheeks, you knew that Aunt Tryphena had good in her. Little children are good detectives, like the sun that photographs hidden virtues and failings in the human face, so a child's intuition brought from the heaven they have so lately left, takes the best impressions of a person's real character. Children and animals live so near Nature's heart they can detect real diamonds from the false, no paste glitter can deceive 'em. Aunt ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... three days received of forgiveness, it must have been to him a most welcome reassurance when, on opening his eyes again upon the external world, he was met with no contradiction of the visions he had been looking on, but the first object he saw was a human face bending over him with looks of forgiveness and perfect love. He learned from Ananias the future the Saviour had appointed him: he had been apprehended by Christ in order to be a vessel to bear His name to Gentiles and kings and to the children of Israel. He accepted the mission ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... and their choice of colors admirable. In profile work or bas-relief they get on very well, where there is no perspective required, but in grouping they pile houses on the sea and mountains on the housetops. At caricature they greatly excel, indeed they scarcely attempt to represent the human face and figure in any other light. In place of entertaining any idea of what is lovely in our species, they look only at the human face and form from the ludicrous side, and this they render by giving it ideal ugliness, or by exaggerating the grosser characteristics. The Japanese ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... was gazing into mine—at the distance of only a foot or two. The creature that owned it had been crouching behind the parasite, and had looked round it at the same instant that I did. It was a human face—or at least it was far more human than any monkey's that I have ever seen. It was long, whitish, and blotched with pimples, the nose flattened, and the lower jaw projecting, with a bristle of coarse whiskers round the chin. The eyes, which were under thick and heavy brows, ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... terror more eloquently depicted on any human face than on Katie's expressive countenance on this occasion. She flung herself into Dolores's arms and clung to her. Dolores said nothing, but ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... characters in which a near acquaintance does not enable us to discover some one leading principle or passion consistent enough in its operations to be taken confidently into account in any estimate of the disposition in which they are found. Like those points in the human face, or figure, to which all its other proportions are referable, there is in most minds some one governing influence, from which chiefly,—though, of course, biassed on some occasions by others,—all its various impulses and tendencies will be found to radiate. In Lord Byron, however, this sort of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... romance. There is one book, for example, more generally loved than Shakespeare, that captivates in childhood, and still delights in age - I mean the ARABIAN NIGHTS - where you shall look in vain for moral or for intellectual interest. No human face or voice greets us among that wooden crowd of kings and genies, sorcerers and beggarmen. Adventure, on the most naked terms, furnishes forth the entertainment and is found enough. Dumas approaches ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... concentrated all my attention on himself. Slowly he rose up, all his hair bristling, and stood perfectly rigid, and with the same wild stare. I had no time, however, to examine the dog. Presently my servant emerged from his room; and if ever I saw horror in the human face, it was then. I should not have recognised him had we met in the streets, so altered was every lineament. He passed by me quickly, saying in a whisper that seemed scarcely to come from his lips, "Run—run! it ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... "Plenty of room. We could find space for FOUR of you, William," she added, opening the door, and Ralph found that Rodney had now joined their company. The two men glanced at each other. If distress, shame, discomfort in its most acute form were ever visible upon a human face, Ralph could read them all expressed beyond the eloquence of words upon the face of his unfortunate companion. But Mrs. Hilbery was either completely unseeing or determined to appear so. She went on talking; she talked, it seemed to both the young men, to some one ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... seeing!' To the mean eye all things are trivial, as certainly as to the jaundiced they are yellow. Raphael, the Painters tell us, is the best of all Portrait-painters withal. No most gifted eye can exhaust the significance of any object. In the commonest human face there lies more than Raphael ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... abysses, and followed the capricious fissures which wound through the immense plains. But all relief was as yet leveled in intense brilliancy. They could scarcely distinguish those large spots which give the moon the appearance of a human face. ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... neighbourhood of Charing Cross, on Craven Street, at No. 8, is still the door-knocker which so looked, to Scrooge, like a human face. ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... can figure to yourself our consternation, the pause, the cry—our hearts dropping back as it might be into their places—the sudden stop of the wild panting in our breasts: when there became visible to us a human face well known, a man as we were. 'Lecamus!' I cried; and all the men round took it up, crowding nearer, trembling yet delivered from their terror; some even laughed in the relief. There was but one who had an air of discontent, and that was M. le Cure. As he said 'Lecamus!' like the ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... collected in that locality, are simply waterworn pebbles of flint, which, when broken with a hammer, exhibit on the smooth surface some resemblance to the human face; and their possessors are thus enabled to trace likenesses of friends, or eminent public characters. The late Mr. Tennant, the geologist, of the Strand, had a collection of such stones. In the British Museum is a nodule of globular or ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... entered carrying a baby and—greatly to Mr. Jones's annoyance—took the corner seat opposite him. Being a confirmed bachelor, he had a horror of all babies, but this child in particular struck him with disfavour; seldom, he thought, had he seen such a peevish discontented expression on any human face. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... mystic or spiritual order; they have no political authority; they are simple peasants, living by the sweat of their brow and the offerings of the faithful. According to one account they live in absolute solitude, never meeting each other and never seeing a human face. They inhabit successively seven towers perched upon seven mountains, and every year they pass from one tower to another. People come furtively and cast within their reach what is needful for their subsistence. The kingship lasts seven ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... dear child, she is very timid; when I am not here," said Croustillac, tenderly, "she will not see a human face, not even this good priest; my shortest absence causes her sadness, desolation and tears; this is what worries me; all this is very simple; since I have been condemned to this absolute retirement I have never left my wife, ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... surprise. No preparation by the eulogies of description can lessen the effect that the first sight of a beautiful object produces upon a mind to which refinement of idea gives an accurate and quick comprehension of beauty. Be it a work of art, a scene in nature, or, rarest of all, a human face divine, a beauty never before beheld strikes us with hidden pleasure, like a burst of light. And it is a pleasure that elevates; the imagination feels itself richer by a new idea of excellence; for not only is real beauty wholly original, having ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Human Species, chap. xxvi; also Mortillet, Le Prehistorique, Paris, 1885, pp. 232 et seq.; also other writers cited in this chapter. For the other discoveries mentioned, see the same sources. For an engraving of the skull and the restored human face of the Neanderthal man, see Reinach, Antiquities Nationales, etc., vol. i, p. 138. For the vast regions over which that early race spread, see Quatrefages as above, p. 307. See also the same author, Histoire Generale des ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... shelter, and the bullets rained harmlessly round the spot where he had just stood. Then, under cover of fire, some men advanced and again placed the ladder against the precipice. As Rohan crouched down on the ledge, he was startled by the apparition of a human face. With a cry of rage, he sprang to his feet, and, heedless of the bullets thudding on the rock around him, he slowly and painfully lifted up a terrible granite boulder, poised it for a moment over his head, and then hurled it down at the shapes dimly struggling below ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... in moments of complete surprise that the human face fails to keep up some semblance of guard over the inmost feelings. At the discovery that the jewel-case was empty Miss Heredith's dignity dropped from her like a falling garment, and she stared at the velvet interior with half-open mouth and an ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... that had not to be maintained with labour, or to a pretence requiring little effort and encountering no suspicion, but to the concealment of her feelings when she was openly put to the question, her powers were inadequate. If ever a human face served its owner ill, by apparently confessing guilt, where only folly existed, Margaret's ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... He lived apart in one wing of the house. He tidied his own room—or left it undone, every day. His meals were laid for him downstairs: he never saw a human face. His host, an old peasant, a taciturn, selfish creature, took no interest in him. Whether Christophe ate or did not eat was his affair. He hardly ever noticed whether Christophe came in at night. Once he was lost in the forest, buried up to his hips in the snow: ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... the year Seasons return; but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But clouds instead and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... only a few square inches—of cells and things, no one quite knows what—on a human face, but a man can see more of the world in those few inches, and understand more of the meaning of the world in them, put the world together better there, than in any other few inches that God has made. Even one or two faces do it, for a man, for most of us, when we have seen ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... morning my men killed another big monkey, with the most human face I have ever seen on a quadruman—just like a negro's countenance. It came very near us in its curiosity to see what we were doing, and, though shot at several times, remained there watching us, as it had never heard the report of a ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... known, then, has a distinctive spectrum of its own when it is raised to incandescence, and this distinctive spectrum is as reliable a means of identification for the element as a human face is for its owner. Whether it is a substance glowing in the laboratory or in a remote star makes no difference to the spectroscope; if the light of any substance reaches it, that substance will be recognised and identified by the characteristic set ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... one another with dilating eyes, to read in a human face whether such a deed as this could really be done by man upon his fellow. They uttered wild ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... towards them, and rendered me a considerably more indolent sort of person than either before or since. It is asserted by artists of discriminating eye, that the human hand bears an expression stamped upon it by the general character, as surely as the human face; and I certainly used to be struck, during this transition period, by the relaxed and idle expression that had on the sudden been assumed by mine. And the slackened hands represented, I too surely felt, a slackened mind. The unintellectual toils ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... question, and a nasal noise between groan and snort seems to signify that they ask to be asked again, a sort of ha—a—h? "long drawn out." The human face and the face of nature, at that hour, were as an east of thunder fronting a west of golden blue summer serenity. The Mawworms of Calvinistic Methodism have made a sort of monkery of all Wales, as regards ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... Jack and John DeWitt were learning to follow the trail. The most vivid picture in her mind was of the utter weariness of John's face. In the past weeks Rhoda had learned how fearful had been the hardships that would bring such weariness to a human face. Tears came to her eyes. No one so weak, so useless as herself, she felt, ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... trees and my own bobolinks and my own little island of sky up over me, and in the vast and desolate solitude of men and women I wandered about up and down the streets. Every block I saw, every window, skyline, engine, street-car, every human face, made me feel as if I belonged to another world. Here was a great conspiracy in stone and iron against my own life with myself. Was there a soul in all this huge roar and spectacle of glass and stone and passion that cared ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... was something different, something new; she did not think it was actually in the atmosphere, nor in the silence; she did not know where it was until she opened her eyes—and then she knew. Bending over her, within a few inches of her face, was another face, the ghastly caricature of a human face. It was on a larger scale than that of any mortal Lady Adela had ever seen; it was long in proportion to its width—indeed, she could not make out where the cranium terminated at the back, as the hinder portion of ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... door, so as to prevent no one from getting in. Aye, I kep' two lights burning, to scare the ghost if he should come again; and theer I stop't till daylight, when I heard you stirring, and comed here to speak to you, glad to see a human face agen, if only a beast of a b'y like you—far them sperrits do make a chap feel quar all over! Besides, too, the fear o' seeing the blamed thing agen, I thought the skipper, who was drinking awful arter Jan Steenbock left, he and Flinders having a regular go in at the rum, ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... story-telling, the occupation of his maturity, had first been the delight of his childhood, and remained always his favorite recreation. Triumph rewarded his early efforts, and admiration followed him to the grave. Into no human face could this man look, nor into any crowd of faces, which did not return his glance with a gaze of admiring love. He lived precisely where and how it was happiest for him to live; and he had above ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... certainly a sort of mysterious and pre-existing harmony between this creature and this church. When, still a little fellow, he had dragged himself tortuously and by jerks beneath the shadows of its vaults, he seemed, with his human face and his bestial limbs, the natural reptile of that humid and sombre pavement, upon which the shadow of the Romanesque capitals cast so many ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... The Nagas (serpents) are demigods with a human face and serpent body. They inhabit Patala or the regions under the earth. Bhogavati is the name of their capital city. Serpents are still worshipped in India. See Fergusson's ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... water, where he pointed, I saw a head of hair or a bunch of seaweed, I could not tell which; but, on the chance of its being the former, I sculled up to it. The sun shone forth brightly, and I caught a glimpse of a human face convulsed with agony beneath the tide. Twice it eluded me; but stretching out my arm, and almost going overboard and capsizing our already over-crowded boat, I got firm hold of a person by the hair, who, I saw, had a midshipman's patch on the collar of his jacket. I had some difficulty in getting ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... hope of finding anything that would help them, when they came to a place where the slope jutted out sharply for a little space, like the nose on a human face. The ground sloped outward for a distance at a gentle angle, then dropped precipitously many feet. But on either side of the nose of land the even slope of the hill was unbroken, just as human cheeks continue their uninterrupted slope from the forehead. Perched on this ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... sun-burned face had remarkable vivacity. "Pardon me," said he in French, "that I come so unceremoniously to make your acquaintance. I learned yesterday of your arrival, and the desire of seeing at last a human face so took possession of me that I could wait no longer. You will understand this when you shall have ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... heaves underneath the earth, And the earth changes like a human face; The molten ore burst up among the rocks, Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds, Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask— God joys therein. ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... and an oak, and the berries of the former were not more vivid than her dress, and the brown leaves of the latter not more brown and wrinkled than her cheeks. At first sight King Arthur thought he must be bewitched—no such nightmare of a human face had ever seemed to him possible. Her nose was crooked and bent hideously to one side, while her chin seemed to bend to the opposite side of her face; her one eye was set deep under her beetling brow, and her mouth was nought but a gaping slit. Round this awful countenance hung ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... her excitement she managed, somehow, to snap or loosen the fastening which held her yashmak, and it fell—fell, and let my son realise, as I realised, how wondrously beautiful it is possible for the human face to be!" ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... which seemed to emulate its occupants in stiffness and rigidity, and whose glassy eyes looked out as coldly upon the beauteous face of nature, as they from their own stern "windows of the soul," upon the human face divine. There was no comfort, no home-look about the place; even the flowers seemed not to grow by their own sweet will, but came up as they were bidden, tall and straight, and stiff. And the glorious rays of the sun glanced off from the dazzling whiteness of the forbidding mansion, as though ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... from pole to pole? Who can refresh the burning sandy plain, And quench the summer with a waste of rain? Who, in rough desarts, far from human toil, Made rocks bring forth, and desolation smile? There blooms the rose, where human face ne'er shone, And spreads its beauties to the sun alone. To check the shower, who lifts his hand on high, And shuts the sluices of th' exhausted sky When earth no longer mourns her gaping veins, Her naked mountains, and her russet plains; But, new in life, a cheerful prospect ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... Physiognomist, the great Changer of Countenances, who transforms the features that Heaven has bestowed upon him into an endless succession of surprising and extraordinary visages, comprehending, Messieurs et Mesdames, all the contortions, energetic and expressive, of which the human face is capable, and all the passions of the human heart, as Love, Jealousy, Revenge, Hatred, Avarice, Despair! Hi hi! Ho ho! Lu lu! Come in!' To this effect, with an occasional smite upon a sonorous kind ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... certain story tells how he showed them the way to tattoo by puncturing the muzzle of a dog, whence dogs went with black muzzles as men see them now. For many generations the patterns cut and pricked on the human face and body were faithful imitations of what were believed to be Maui's designs. They were composed of straight lines, angles, and cross-cuts. Later the hero Mataora taught a more graceful style which dealt in curves, spirals, volutes and scroll-work. Apart from legend it is a matter of reasonable ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Christo, where they procured tortoises as large as bucklers, which went there on shore to lay their eggs in the sand. The admiral affirmed that he saw three mermaids at this place, and that he had seen others on the coast of Guinea. He described them as having some resemblance to the human face, but by no means so beautiful as they are usually represented. From Punta Roxa, he proceeded to Rio de Garcia, or the river of Grace, where Martin Alonzo Pinzon had been trading, and which is likewise called by his name. At this ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... does not see the colour of life in any mass. The human face does not give much of it, what with features, and beards, and the shadow of the top-hat and chapeau melon of man, and of the veils of woman. Besides, the colour of the face is subject to a thousand injuries and accidents. The popular face of the Londoner has soon lost ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... for ages, and could wait ages longer; and there was I, like that single blade of grass growing in the crevice of one of them, with only a summer to see and know them all. I could bear it no longer, and rushed wildly down the mountain in hopes to meet the girl; for any human face, even hers, would be better than that eternal silence. The motion restored my courage, and before I had gone far I felt ashamed of what seemed a retreat. I wonder if any of you ever feel so about any thing that you particularly dread, that if you do not meet it then and overcome it, it ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... of faith and hope in God's promise to lead us into all truth, I believe that every joy and every sorrow which befell us, every book which we opened, every walk which we took upon the face of God's earth, ay, every human face into which we looked, would teach us some lesson, whereby we should be wiser, better, more aware of where we are and what God requires of us as human beings, neighbours, citizens, subjects, members of His church. All things would be clear to us; for we should see them in the light ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... of the sea to-day, and made me believe we were all found out," said the gay Charron to the gloomy Carne, a day or two after poor Scudamore's wreck. "I never beheld a more strange-looking creature as the owner of our human face divine, as some of your poets have found to say. He has hair from his head all down to here"—the little Captain pointed to a part of his system which would have been larger in more tranquil times—"and his clothes were so thin that one was able to see through them, and the tint of his face was ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... extraordinary host rode the Chief, mounted on a white horse, which he sat like a centaur. 'He was quite a show, everyone stopping to look at him,' adds the sculptor Gibson, to whom these details are owed. 'Probably,' writes another Englishman, 'a human face so like a lion, and still retaining the humanity nearest the image of its Maker, was never seen.' Garibaldi wore the historic red shirt, and a small ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... turned away, Nathanael looked after her. Such a flood of tenderness, reverence, sorrow, passion, rarely swept over a human face. ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... clearness of every separate little stroke and dint, and were therefore forced into an almost more than sculptural perfection of mere line, of mere profile and throat and elaborately composed hair, a sort of sublime abstraction of the possible beauty of a human face, as in the coins of Syracuse and also of Alexander; the men of the fifteenth century employed the process of casting the bronze in a concave mould obtained by the melting away of a medallion in wax; in wax, which taking the living impress ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... houses, many of them are decorated with images. These are nothing more than the trunks of very large trees, four or five feet high, set up singly, or by pairs, at the upper end of the apartment, with the front carved into a human face; the arms and hands cut out upon the sides, and variously painted; so that the whole is a truly monstrous figure. The general name of these images is Klumma; and the names of two particular ones, which stood abreast of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... grace, Run, as of yore, on its appointed race, Safe both from giving and receiving harms; Outliving human lives, outlasting human charms. But good advice, however kind, Is thrown away upon a made-up mind, And this was all that babbling Brook would say— "Give me a human face and form, if ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... God capable of being God, he will speak the clearest grandest word of guidance which he can utter intelligible to his creatures. For us, that word must simply be the gathering of all the expressions of his visible works into an infinite human face, lighted up by an infinite human soul behind it, namely, that potential essence of man, if I may use a word of my own, which was in the beginning with God. If God should thus hear the cry of the noblest ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... He looked at her a moment before answering. If a human face could have been expressed in a punctuation mark, that agent's face should have been drawn in a big question mark, with the eyes put somewhere in the hook, and the neck growing longer ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... formally established in the United States; the first carriage in the world propelled by steam was built here in 1804; the oldest American playhouse now in existence was built here in 1808; the first American locomotive, "Ironsides", was built here in 1827; and the first daguerreotype of the human face was made here in 1839. The Bible and Testament, Shakespeare, Milton and Blackstone were printed for the first time in America in Philadelphia, and Thackeray's first ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... artist's rapture at the prospect unrolled in a grand panorama around them, and transferred to the canvas many a glowing picture. It was delightful to watch the progress of these new creations,—but far more interesting when the human face was the subject of the pencil. Edith and myself were multiplied into so many charming forms, it is strange we were not made vain by ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... where they never wrote anything but nonsense, would work symbols with light and rapid touch upon the back of Moossy's coat as they returned; and if one after the other, adding to the work of art, could draw what was supposed to be a human face upon Moossy, the class was satisfied it had not lost the hour. There were times when Moossy felt the hand even on the looseness of that foolish coat, and turned suddenly; but there was no shaking the brazen impudence of Muirtown, and Moossy, looking into ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... scenes and mythological figures. The ceiling was crossed with heavy beams of oak, black with the smoke of a century; and the stairway upon the left was also black, but ornamented with a series of rough panels, upon each of which was painted a human face, giving it a somewhat fantastic appearance. Paul could not help glancing above, toward the mysterious regions with which this eccentric stairway communicated. An antique sofa, studded with brass nails, exhibited upon its towering back a picture of ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... stripes of white (top and bottom) alternating with blue; there is a white square in the upper hoist-side corner with a yellow sun bearing a human face known as the Sun of May and 16 rays alternately triangular ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... if you who move about at will, And live in sweet communion with your kind, After an hour lost in these lonely rocks Hunger and thirst after some human voice To drink, and human face to feed upon; What must one do where all is mute, or harsh, And ev'n the naked face of cruelty Were better than the mask it works beneath?— Across the mountain then! Across the mountain! What if the next world which they tell one of Be only next across the mountain then, Though ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... people called him an idiot, but Roddy was not quite such an idiot as they took him for. He obeyed his master's mandate by sitting down on a tall stool near the window, and occupied himself in attempting to carve a human face on the head of ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... like several beginnings that had nothing to do with one another. Then another actor appeared with a horn in his belt, leading a man dressed up as a bear, who walked on all-fours. He let loose the bear on the dwarf, who ran away, but forgot to bend his knees this time. The actor with the human face represented the hero, Siegfried. He cried out for a long time, and the dwarf replied in the same way. Then a traveller arrived—the god Wotan. He had a wig, too; and, settling himself down with his spear, ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... honeycombed with the shadows of the dints, hollowed out like a Roman mask. It set all the laws of anatomy at defiance. Close inspection failed to detect the substructure. Where you expected to find a bone, you discovered a layer of cartilaginous tissue, and the hollows of an ordinary human face were here filled out with flabby bosses. A pair of gray eyes, red-rimmed and lashless, looked forlornly out of a countenance which was flattened something after the fashion of a pumpkin, and surmounted by a Don Quixote nose that rose ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... and near to the roof,—so near that to reach it, without the most efficient means from the inside, was a matter of positive impossibility—is a small iron grating, and not much larger than might be entirely obscured by any human face that might be close to it from ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... command— To keep heart-open-house to brother men; But till in thy God's love perfect I stand, My door not wide enough will open. Then Each man will be love-awful in my sight; And, open to the eternal morning's might, Each human face will shine my window for ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... told me that she saw The Angel of the Cross Roads lead me out, And point to every corner of the sky, And say, "Thy feet shall follow in the trail Of every tribe; and thou shalt pitch thy tent Wherever thou shalt see a human face Which hath thereon the alphabet of life; Yea, thou shalt spell it out e'en as a child: ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... votive offerings. The shrine of the deity that presides over the destiny of fishermen is distinguished by a huge silver-paper fish and numerous three-pronged fish-spears. Among other queer objects whose meaning defies the penetration of the traveller unversed in Japanese mythology is a monstrous human face, with a nose at least three feet long, and ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... to control himself, but how at the grave, when she was hidden forever from his sight, he stretched out his hands, crying, "Madaline, Madaline!" and how for the remainder of that day he shut himself up alone, refusing to hear the sound of a voice, to look at a human face—refusing food, comfort, grieving like one who has no hope for the love he had lost. All Castledene grieved with him; it seemed as though death and sorrow ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... such things! Why need we speak of them? Yet how comes it that suddenly into the midst of our careless, frivolous, unthinking moments there may enter another, and a very different, tendency?—that the smile may not have left a human face before its owner will have radically changed his or her nature (though not his or her environment) with the result that the face will suddenly become lit with a radiance never before ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... a cave larger than the one seen this morning; of its actual size, however, I have no idea, for being pressed for time I did not attempt to explore it, having merely ascertained that it contained no paintings. I was moving on when we observed a profile of a human face and head, cut out in a sandstone rock which fronted the cave; this rock was so hard that to have removed such a large portion of it with no better tool than a knife and hatchet made of stone, such ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... before; in front, in the van, in advance; ahead, right ahead; forehead, foremost; in the foreground, in the lee of; before one's face, before one's eyes; face to face, vis-a-vis; front a front. Phr. formosa muta commendatio est [Lat][Syrus]; frons est animi janua [Lat][Cicero]; "Human face divine" [Milton]; imago animi vultus est indices oculi [Lat][Cicero]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Baptist in the meantime? Painters have tried their hands at drawing him, and we thank them. Pictures, says St Augustine, are the books of the unlearned. And, my friends, when great painters paint, they are the books of the too-learned likewise. They bring us back, bring us home, by one glance at a human face, a human figure, a human scene of action, out of our philosophies, and criticisms, and doctrines, which narrow our hearts, without widening our heads, to the deeper facts of humanity, and therefore to the deeper facts of theology likewise. But what picture of St ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... denied her own son and betrayed the stranger wanderers. Whence he came he did not know himself. He loved the lonely desert, the home of great thoughts. He did not fear the robbers of the desert, for he was stronger than they because he had nothing. Now and again the desire came to him to behold a human face, so that he might read therein whether the souls of men looked upwards or sank downwards. The old man went up to the woman who had denied her own son and betrayed the fugitives. And he said: "Daughter of Uriah! twice have you given your son life: once through ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... is failing! I must die soon and he will live. That thought burns my brain, passing through it day by day. His life may be long extended and he cannot live alone, nor among men, for he would be a stranger and friendless—feared and dreaded by superstitious fools. He has never seen a human face outside these walls nor heard a human voice but mine. I have ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... passion was the antique. He deliberately withdrew from all commerce with the ideas and art of his own times. He loved architecture for architecture's sake; not as a decoration, not as a background for humanity, but as something personal. It was for him what the human face was for Rembrandt and Velasquez. That he was called the Rembrandt of Architecture is but another testimony to the impression he made upon his contemporaries, though the title is an unhappy one. Piranesi ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... looked into human face so full of the love of God, so shining with love of humanity, as the face of ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... island. We were approaching it from the south-west—the direction mentioned in my ancestor's cryptogram—and as we gradually rose it above the horizon it was curious to note how exact a resemblance its outline bore to the profile of an upturned human face lying prone along the water. It was so striking that even the children remarked upon it; while, as for the men, they could scarcely remove their eyes from it, though their interest in the place was doubtless founded more upon the wealth they hoped to find upon ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... trickling from her eye-lashes, her head stooping, her attitude fixed, with the finest expression that ever was seen of mixed regret, pity, and stubborn resolution; but without speaking a word, without altering a feature. It was like a petrifaction of a human face in the softest moment of passion. "Ah!" I said, "how you look! I have prayed again and again while I was away from you, in the agony of my spirit, that I might but live to see you look so again, and ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... Very dimly he could see the dark outline of a window some dozen feet from the pavement, and framed within it the lighter blotch that might have been a human face. Again came the challenging: "S-s-t!" Yes, there was someone above, ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Divine, last and most potent of the goddesses, came walking through the woods and diffused the mystery of heaven over the forest paths, the trees, the streets of the town; and she melted into a sweet and noble human face—a face I caught but for a moment clearly on one of our galloping rides, Quinet's and mine; yet it remained and still looks upon me in the holy of holies of my heart's ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... day-before-yesterday antiquities, you should choose a time when the hoary Shadow Face of the Jungfrau is not by. It antedates all antiquities known or imaginable; for it was here the world itself created the theater of future antiquities. And it is the only witness with a human face that was there to see the marvel, and remains to us a memorial ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his chair. He spoke hurriedly, almost hysterically, his eyes snapping at mine like coals, his curls disheveled, his fingers curved and stiffened like the talons of a hawk. I had never seen such intense earnestness in a human face. Passions like these had never penetrated the convent ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... fields, black, livid, all burnt by the sun, bound to the earth that they dig and work with unconquerable pertinacity; they have a sort of articulate voice, and when they rise on their feet, they show a human face; in fact they are men.' That these violent and humiliating contrasts are eternal and inevitable, is the last word of the dominant philosophy of society; and one of the reasons why Turgot's life is worth studying, is that he ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... not to me returns Day, or the sweet Approach of Ev'n and Morn, Or Sight of vernal Bloom, or Summer's Rose, Or Flocks or Herds, or human Face divine; But Cloud instead, and ever-during Dark Surround me: From the chearful Ways of Men Cut off, and for the Book of Knowledge fair, Presented—with an universal Blank Of Nature's Works, to me expung'd and raz'd, And Wisdom at one Entrance ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... and demoniac woe. The young, the noble, the sanguine were writhing there in agony. Bullets respect not beauty. They tear out the eye, and shatter the jaw, and rend the cheek, and transform the human face divine into an aspect upon which one can not gaze but with horror. From the field of Marengo many a young man returned to his home so multilated as no longer to be recognized by friends, and passed a weary ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... cheerfully his feet— And straightway was aglow with an incalculable heat! His face was as effulgent as a human face could be, And caloric ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... crescent-shaped opening a human face looked in, and a voice, which Dennis instantly recognised, gave warning ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... to my immense surprise, one of the smooth round boulders on the hillside seemed slowly to uncurl, and to peer about it cautiously. Then it raised itself in the slant sunlight, put a hand to its eyes, and gazed out upon me with a human face for a moment. After that it descended, step by step, among the other stones, with a white object in its arms. As the boulder uncurled and came to life, I was aware, by degrees... yes, yes, it was Hilda, with Tant ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... to be, totally divested of every stroke that hath a tendency to good drawing; it may be said to be a species of lines that are produced, rather by the hand of chance, than of skill; for the early scrawlings of a child, which do but barely hint the idea of a human face, will always be found to be like some person or other, and will often form such a comical resemblance, as, in all probability, the most eminent caricaturers of these times will not be able to equal, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... the hand That formed of earth the human face, And to the elements did stand In nearer kindred, than our race. In many a flood to madness tossed, In many a storm has been his path; He hid him not from heat or frost, But met them, ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... engraver, which I must insist is the highest form of the art, as the human face is the most important object for its exercise. Less clear and simple than Nanteuil, and less severe than Edelinck, he gave to the face individuality of character, and made his works conspicuous in art. If there was excess in ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner
... agony of the world, And more, like slaves to poor humanity, Labour for mortal good? I sure should see Other men here, but I am here alone." "Those whom thou spakest of are no visionaries," Rejoined that voice; "they are no dreamers weak; They seek no wonder but the human face, No music but a happy-noted voice: They come not here, they have no thought to come; And thou art here, for thou art less than they. What benefit canst thou do, or all thy tribe, To the great world? Thou art a dreaming thing, A fever of thyself: think ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... as to luik at ony; for gien ever she set ee upo' ane, she never loot it rist: her ee aye jist slippit ower a face as gien the face micht or micht not be there —she didna ken or care. A'body said she had sic a hauchty leuk as was never seen on human face afore; an' for freen'ly luik, she had nane for leevin' cratur, 'cep' it was her ain father, or her ain horse 'at she rade ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... positively to deny the fact. And there is one part of the figure in which Hogarth is allowed to have excelled, which these foreigners seem to have overlooked, or perhaps calculating from its proportion to the whole (a seventh or an eighth, I forget which,) deemed it of trifling importance; I mean the human face; a small part, reckoning by geographical inches, in the map of man's body, but here it is that the painter of expression must condense the wonders of his skill, even at the expense of neglecting the "jonctures and other difficulties of drawing in the limbs," which it must be a cold eye that, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... as it affects the art of tapestry weaving. With the improvement of drawing that came in these years, a greater excellence of weave was required to translate properly the meaning of the artist. The human face which had hitherto been either blank or distorted in expression, now required a treatment that should convey its subtlest shades of expression. Gifted weavers rose to the task, became almost inspired in the use of their medium, and produced such works of their art as have never been equalled in ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... in her white dressing-gown, her heavy dark hair about her, her brush idle in her hand. Her father stood silently in the doorway, regarding her, a great dread tugging at his heart. Jules Levice was a keen student of the human face, and he had caught a faint glimpse of something in the doctor's eyes while Ruth sang. He knew it had been harmless, for her back had been turned, but he ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... now I could close the door. But again I saw a picture that transfixed me. Bob had taken Beulah by both shoulders and he held her off and looked into her eyes long and beseechingly. Never before nor since have I seen upon human face that glorious joy which the old masters sought to get into the faces of their worshippers who, kneeling before Christ, tried to send to Him, through their eyes, their soul's gratitude and love. I stood as one enthralled. Slowly and as reverently as the living lover touches ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... we look at the cross with the left eye closed, the spot disappears. The size of the blind spot is large enough to cover in the heavens a plate which has twelve times the diameter of the moon. It may cover a human face at a distance of 6', but we do not observe this because we generally fill out the void. If we see a line in the place in question, we see it unbroken, because we know it to be so, and ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... steward, her reprimand was certain and very severe. She could not nurse the sick or wounded personally, for her whole time was necessarily devoted to executive duties, but her smile was the sweetest, I believe, that ever lit up a human face, and standing by the bedside of some poor Alabamian, away from home, and wretched as well as sick, she must have seemed to him like an angel visitant. A more decided woman in dealing with all who came within her influence or control I never knew, yet she was kindly withal, though never ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... cough just as Eunice finished her nasty speech, and we all turned quickly and there in the open door stood Jane, as white as a sheet, with her great, big blue eyes looking black as coals and such suffering I never saw in a human face—and she just stood and looked at them all, a hurt, loving, searching look, as if she was reading their souls, and no one spoke nor moved, only Eunice, who got very red, and Eugenia, who straightened up and got haughty and hateful, looking ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... which is generally composed of brass or iron. It has frequently a violent resemblance to the "human face divine," or the ravenous expressiveness of a beast of prey. It assumes a variety of phases under peculiar vinous influences. A gentleman, in whose veracity and experience we have the most unlimited confidence, for a series ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... alembic of the soul,—how they are worked up there by exquisite and subtile processes of moral chemistry, humanized, spiritualized, and appropriated unconsciously to sweet uses of piety and affection. We do not know how the star, the flower, the dear human face, the movement of a wave, the song of a bird,—we do not know how these things enter into the heart, become ideal, mingle with human emotions, consecrate and are consecrated, and come forth once more into light, but transfigured into tenderest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... them is subtle but goes very deep. For both the ultimate and internal significance of what they painted counted for more than the significance which is momentary and external. Cezanne saw in a tree, a heap of apples, a human face, a group of bathing men or women, something more abiding than either photography or impressionist painting could present. He painted the "treeness" of the tree, as a modern critic has admirably expressed it. But in everything he did he showed the architectural mind of the true Frenchman. ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... accorded rudely with the picture on the rocks. It was said to prey on human flesh, and to be held in fear by the Indians, who encountered it on and near the Mississippi. It had the body of a panther, wings like a bat, and head and horns of a deer. Father Marquette gave it a human face. The sculpture was undoubtedly made by Indians, but its resemblance to the winged bulls of Assyria and the sphinxes of Egypt has been quoted as confirmation of a prehistoric alliance of Old and ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... lending money, Mrs Nickleby,' said Miss Knag, 'or you'll drive me crazy, perfectly crazy. My mama—hem—was the most lovely and beautiful creature, with the most striking and exquisite—hem—the most exquisite nose that ever was put upon a human face, I do believe, Mrs Nickleby (here Miss Knag rubbed her own nose sympathetically); the most delightful and accomplished woman, perhaps, that ever was seen; but she had that one failing of lending money, and carried it to such an extent that she lent—hem—oh! ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... effort, which, on the other hand, could not, I was conscious, result in the slightest shade of satisfaction to her, receive and talk to her. Perhaps it is hard for you to fancy even how I shrink away from the very thought of seeing a human face—except those immediately belonging to me in love or relationship—(yours does, you know)—and a stranger's might be easier to look at than one ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... hate them. Toward the end of the second day, the four Schmicks became so aggravatingly doleful that I ordered them, one and all, to keep out of my sight. Even the emotionless Hawkes and the perfect Blatchford were infected. I don't believe I've ever seen a human face as solemnly respectful as Hawkes' was that night at dinner. He seemed to be pitying me from the bottom of his heart. It was ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... words and phrases, but not nearly so many as Shakespeare. Still there are a few phrases which are now so common that many people use them without even knowing that they come from Milton's writings. Some of these are "the human face divine," "to hide one's diminished head," "a dim religious light," "the light fantastic toe." It was Milton who invented the name pandemonium for the home of the devils, and now people regularly speak ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... protest. This point of seeing natural causes for the unexplainable phenomenon of Heaven and especially of relying upon the testimony of the senses is soon brought out by Beatrice reproving Dante for thinking that the spirits whom he now sees are only reflections of the human face: ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... seem to lose The substance of my being—my strongest grasp Sends inwards but weak witness that I am. I seek to cheat the echo.—How the half sounds Blend with this strangled light! Is he not here— [Looking round. O for one human face here—but to see One human face here to sustain me.—Courage! It is but my own fear! The life within me, It sinks and wavers like this cone of flame, Beyond which I scarce dare look onward! Oh! If I faint? If this inhuman ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... fled, Nor utter'd more; and after him there came A centaur full of fury, shouting, "Where Where is the caitiff?" On Maremma's marsh Swarm not the serpent tribe, as on his haunch They swarm'd, to where the human face begins. Behind his head upon the shoulders lay, With open wings, a dragon breathing fire On whomsoe'er he met. To me my guide: "Cacus is this, who underneath the rock Of Aventine spread oft a lake of blood. He, from his brethren parted, here must tread ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... would, nevertheless, leave it to the consideration of those who are the patrons of this monstrous trial of skill, whether or no they are not guilty, in some measure, of an affront to their species in treating after this manner the "human face divine," and turning that part of us, which has so great an image impressed upon it, into the image of a monkey; whether the raising such silly competitions among the ignorant, proposing prizes for such useless accomplishments, filling the common ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... a part of the world as a human face: why should I not take my inspiration from a picture as well as ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... "I don't know how the word spreads, but it happens, in nonhuman parts. I think they can see trouble written in a human face, or smell it on the wind." She fell silent, her face propped sleepily between her hands, her hair falling in tangles. I took one of her hands in mine and ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley |
