"Human head" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... enterprise an interesting account of the character and usages of the Dyaks. Their ferocity of disposition is proverbial in the East. It is said that when a Dyak has promised a head—a human head—to the woman he loves, he will obtain it at any cost. Whether he strikes down friend or foe he cares not, so long as he secures the ghastly gift; and his eye being as sure as that of the tiger, his arrow never misses its aim. When we remember that these savages ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... sacred to Kali, the black goddess of destruction, with a protruding blood-red tongue, who wears a necklace of human skulls and a belt of human hands and tongues, and, holding in one of her many hands a severed human head, tramples under foot the dead bodies of her victims. From the ghats, or long flights of steps, that descend to the muddy waters of a narrow creek which claims a more or less remote connection with the sacred Ganges, crowds of pious Hindus go through their ablutions ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... fourth-degree initiation. Immediately within and to either side of the east and west entrances is planted a short post, 5 feet high and 8 inches thick, painted red upon the side facing the interior and black upon the reverse, at the base of each being laid a stone about as large as a human head. These four posts represent the four limbs and feet of the Bear Manid[-o], who made the four entrances and forcibly entered and expelled the evil beings who had opposed him. The fourth-degree Mid[-e] post— the cross—furthermore symbolizes the four ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... about: for now Goody Brown—whom Zekiel Brown caressed in his arms; nor he alone, but half the parish besides; so famous was she in the fields of Venus, nor indeed less in those of Mars. The trophies of both these her husband always bore about on his head and face; for if ever human head did by its horns display the amorous glories of a wife, Zekiel's did; nor did his well-scratched face less denote her talents (or rather ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... among the natives as lucky stones or amulets. In the Zotzil insurrection of 1869, already referred to, one was found suspended to the neck of one of the slain Indians. It came into the possession of M. Maler, who has described and figured it.[47-[]] It represents a human head with a curious expression and a ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... to have features as Rick drew closer, like a pale-blue jack-o'-lantern, but it was soon clear that this was no hollowed pumpkin head. It was like a human head illuminated from within by ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... mechanical pressure has affected certain structures. Every one knows that savages alter the shape of their infants' skulls by pressure at an early age; but there is no reason to believe that the result is ever inherited. Nevertheless Vrolik and Weber[852] maintain that the shape of the human head is influenced by the shape of the mother's pelvis. The kidneys in different birds differ much in form, and St. Ange[853] believes that this is determined by the form of the pelvis, which again, no doubt, stands in close relation with their various habits of ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... iron: a third is mounted upon a ladder, and is slowly boring through the wall of some monstrous formation, or cutting away excrescences of iron from some massive casting with a cold chisel. In a word, the details are so endlessly varied as to excite the wonder of the beholder that any human head should have been capable of containing them all, so as to have planned and arranged the fitting of such complicated parts with any hope of their ever ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... in carving the bowl of the pipe into the shape of some animal or bird. In some instances we have carved representations of the human head. Such as these are of particular interest and value, as they are probably faithful representations of the features of the Mound Builders. This is a fine specimen found in one of the altar mounds in Ohio. ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... like a farmer in his Sunday best; the heavy ploughman's figure firmly planted on its burly legs; his face full of sense and shrewdness, and with a somewhat melancholy air of thought, and his large dark eye "literally glowing" as he spoke. "I never saw such another eye in a human head," says Walter Scott, "though I have seen the most distinguished men of my time." With men, whether they were lords or omnipotent critics, his manner was plain, dignified, and free from bashfulness ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shrewdness in all his lineaments; the eye alone, I think, indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large, (p. 054) and of a dark cast, which glowed (I say literally glowed) when he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such another eye in a human head, though I have seen the most ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... shouted the boy, as with a violent effort he freed himself, and ran shrieking into the house. "'Murder!' repeated Anderson in astonishment, while he stooped to look into the oven, where the first thing that met his gaze was a human head, whose ghastly visage and staring eyeballs worked and moved about under the influence of the heat ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... base of a ladder, a little further on, stood a post with a carving of a tiger-cat grasping a human head and guarding the entrance. They are a protection to the owner of the house against evil antohs; it is as if they were saying: "Keep away, antoh! You see I slew a man, so you know what ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... near the top of the building, on the north side, a human head was rudely carved in relief, which tradition affirms to have been a memorial of one of the workmen, accidentally killed while the house ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... silently as it was offered, and when he brought her clay and, still mute, showed her how to block the rough clay into a semblance of a human head, she smiled at him with ready gratitude, not daring more for fear ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... looked up and turned his strange dark eyes upon his questioner. They were vitreous, with a misty dry shininess, such as Smith had never seen in a human head before. As he gazed into them he saw some strong emotion gather in their depths, which rose and deepened until it broke into a look of something akin both to horror and ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... (intaglio), and we instinctively interpret the less familiar form by the more familiar. This explanation appears to be borne out by the fact emphasized by Schroeder that the illusion is much more powerful if the design is that of some well-known object, as the human head or figure, or an animal form, ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... egg in which a small live snake had been placed. In an age of superstition no people had so great a reputation for credulity as the Paphlagonians, and Alexander had little difficulty in convincing them of the second coming of the god under the name of Glycon. A large tame snake with a false human head, wound round Alexander's body as he sat in a shrine in the temple, gave "autophones'' or oracles unasked, but the usual methods practised were those of the numerous oracle-mongers of the time, of which Lucian gives a detailed account, the opening of sealed inquiries by heated needles, a neat ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... nearest, almost beneath us, is defiling across the river by a bridge of boats, near the junction of the Rhine and the Neckar, where the oval town of Mannheim, standing in the fork between the two rivers, has from here the look of a human head in a cleft stick. Martial music from many bands strikes up as the crossing is effected, and the undulating columns twinkle as if ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... the characteristic Assyrian method of representing the human head. Here are the same Semitic features, the eye in front view, and the strangely curled hair and beard. The only novelty is the incised line which marks the iris of the eye. This peculiarity is first observed in work of Sargon's time ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... hideous and impossible creatures, such as are illustrated in the accompanying figure, which shows a creature that was born shortly after a battle of Louis XII, in 1512; it had the wings, crest, and lower extremity of a bird and a human head and trunk; besides, it was an hermaphrodite, and had an extra eye in the knee. Another illustration represents a monstrous head found in an egg, said to have been sent for examination to King Charles at Metz in 1569. It represented the face ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... be the thing thus attracting, at the same time repelling them? Surely no common quarry, as the carcase of elk, antelope, or mustang? It seems not a thing that is dead. Nor yet looks it like anything alive. Seen from a distance it resembles a human head. Nearer, the resemblance is stronger. Close up, it becomes complete. Certainly, it is a human head—the head of ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... exceedingly long and emaciated. His forehead was broad and low. His complexion was absolutely bloodless. His mouth was large and flexible, and his teeth were more wildly uneven, although sound, than I had ever before seen teeth in a human head. The expression of his smile, however, was by no means unpleasing, as might be supposed; but it had no variation whatever. It was one of profound melancholy—of a phaseless and unceasing gloom. His eyes were abnormally large, and round like those of a cat. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... tells us that this "Danish monument" "lies in the south-east [south-west] side of the building (or monastery), on a rising ground. It is (he adds) of a rigid form, and the surface ornamented with scale-like figures. At each end is the representation of a human head."[43][44] In its existing defaced form,[45] the sculpture has certainly much more the appearance of a recumbent human figure, with a head at one end and the feet at the other, than with a human head at either extremity. ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... species of animals, which we have noticed in the last chapter, certain animals were combined with the human form. It was always the head of the animal which was united to a human body; the only converse instance of a human head on an animal body—the sphinxes—represented the king and not a god. Possibly the combination arose from priests wearing the heads of animals when personating the god, as the high priest wore the ram's skin when personating Amon. But when we notice the frequent combinations and love of symbolism, ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... price of a Thorwaldsen bust for any human head and shoulders, except Napoleon's, or my children's or some absurd womankind's, as Monkbarns calls them, or my sister's. If asked why, then, I sat for my own? Answer, that it was at the particular request of J.C. Hobhouse, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... the house and, with the exception of a rude carving of the ridgepole into the suggestion of a human head with a rudimentary body, there is no decoration in the interior. On the outside, one frequently sees at the ends of the ridgepole, and set upright at right angles to each other, two narrow, thin pieces of wood about ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan |
