Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Physiognomy   Listen
Physiognomy

noun
(pl. physiognomies)
1.
The human face ('kisser' and 'smiler' and 'mug' are informal terms for 'face' and 'phiz' is British).  Synonyms: countenance, kisser, mug, phiz, smiler, visage.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Physiognomy" Quotes from Famous Books



... the stranger see his mistake at a second glance; and on second glance you do not look very much like Jack Wingfield," the Doge concluded. "Just a coincidence in physiognomy!" ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... depicted spots and streaks of crimson, white, and bright yellow, in different patterns according to the species. Their elegant shape, showy colours, and slow, sailing mode of flight, make them very attractive objects, and their numbers are so great that they form quite a feature in the physiognomy of the forest, compensating for the ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... dignity and importance left to loneliness and the quiet wear of time; like an antique mansion of a noble not quite allowed to decay, but merely existing shorn of its full glories. "Nuernberg—with its long, narrow, winding, involved streets, its precipitous ascents and descents, its completely Gothic physiognomy—is by far the strangest old city I ever beheld; it has retained in every part the aspect of the Middle Ages. No two houses resemble each other: yet, differing in form, in colour, in height, in ornament, all have a family ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt

... animals generally, temperament is the foundation of intelligence and progress. Fifty years ago Fowler and Wells, the founders of the science of phrenology and physiognomy, very wisely differentiated and defined four "temperaments" of mankind. The six types now recognized by me are the morose, lymphatic, sanguine, nervous, hysterical and combative; and ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... if I wouldn't pretty soon spoil his physiognomy, if you would only say the word!" said Joe, shaking his head sullenly ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones

... broader of feature, with full grayish beard and moustache that concealed the outlines of the lower face, but still such a striking likeness of father to son that even one less versed in the human physiognomy than Mlle. Fouchette must have at once recognized Marot pere. The deeply recessed eyes looked darker and seemed to burn more fiercely than Jean's, and more accurately suggested Lerouge. Indeed, to the casual ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... the spirit of Mr. Hicks's physiognomy. He sat stroking his wide-spreading moustache. Jonas Hicks had a self-made moustache which seemed to have borrowed its style from the horns of a Texas steer. It might be said that, for the moment, he looked ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart

... face was so distasteful to her proud shrinking bashfulness, that she felt it like an insult when reported to her, and could almost have wished not to be so handsome, if it had not been more agreeable to an artist-like eye to see a tolerable physiognomy in the glass, when obliged to look there, and besides she would not but be like the Arundels, and was well satisfied with the consciousness of having their features, as indeed she would have been if their noses had ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... binocular case crossed his chest. His elderly red cheeks nourished but a very thin crop of short white hairs, and the end of his nose was so perfectly round that it determined the whole character of his physiognomy. Indeed nothing else in it had the slightest chance to assert itself. His disposition, unlike the widower's, appeared to be mild and humane. He offered me the loan of his glasses. He had a wife and some small children concealed in the depths of the ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... has not yet produced any perfect picture of the physiognomy of the man. It should always be borne in mind that, as Stilpo says in the old play of Timon, written about 1600, "The man in the moone is not in the moone superficially, although he bee in the moone (as the ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... brain which perishes of genius and leads human civilization; it is a great man, a perpetually creative artist, a politician with second-sight who must of necessity have wrinkles on his forehead, the vices of a great man, the fantasies of the artist, and the politician's disillusions. Its physiognomy suggests the evolution of good and evil, battle and victory; the moral combat of '89, the clarion calls of which still re-echo in every corner of the world; and also the downfall of 1814. Thus this city ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... vernacular of the Osmanlis themselves. The real 'Turkey' is Turkestan, and the real Turks are the Turcomans. The Osmanlis are the least typical Turks surviving. Only a very small proportion of them have any strain of Turkish blood, and this is diluted till it is rarely perceptible in their physiognomy: and if environment rather than blood is to be held responsible for racial features, it can only be said that the territory occupied by the Osmanlis is as unlike the homeland of the true Turks as it can well be, and is quite unsuited to typically ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... drama to the immense advantage of both. For while the spiritual agony of Hamlet gives an incomparable dignity to the ghost-story, yet by the very interruptions and checkings and crossings of it through the accidents and oppositions of the plot, its physiognomy is more distinctly and delicately revealed. Instead of the majestic but monotonous declamation of Timon, we have every variety of that ironical humour (indicating some yet unconquered province of the soul) that guards and embalms the purer strength of feeling, ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... is attended with fears and doubts such a he felt not before, built on the vileness of his backsliding; more dreadful scriptures look him in the face, with their dreadful physiognomy. His new sins all turn talking devils, threatening devils, roaring devils, within him. Besides, he doubts the truth of his first conversion, and thus adds lead to his heels in returning to God by Christ. He ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... sorely upon the sensibilities of the million. The pipe, in fact, was the great organ of reflection and deliberation of the New Netherlander. It was his constant companion and solace: was he gay, he smoked; was he sad, he smoked; his pipe was never out of his mouth; it was a part of his physiognomy; without it his best friends would not know him. Take away his pipe? You might as well take ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... to ogle the beautiful and facile half-breed women, whose transparent robes reveal their splendid figures. That which distinguishes the female half-breeds (Spanish-Tagals, or Chinese-Tagals) is a singularly intelligent and expressive physiognomy. Their hair, drawn back from the face, and sustained by long golden pins, is of marvellous luxuriance. They wear upon the head a kerchief, transparent like a veil, made of the pine fibre, finer than our finest cambric; the ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere

... whose frame had once been richly gilt, although it now scarcely retained a few tarnished vestiges of its former splendour. The subject was an old man, his face swarthy and bronzed, with furrowed brow and hollow temples, and sharp high cheekbones; a physiognomy on which the ravages of time, and climate, and suffering were plainly legible. The figure was draped in a flowing Asiatic costume. Defaced and injured and grimed with dirt though the portrait was, yet, when Tchartkoff had wiped the dust from the countenance, he perceived evident traces ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... in the snow visible from afar, and in summer a well-defined trail. In the woods it wore the roots of the trees. It steered for the gaps or low places in the fences, and avoided the bogs and swamps in the meadow. I can recall yet the very look, the very physiognomy of a large birch-tree that stood beside it in the midst of the woods; it sometimes tripped me up with a large root it sent out like a foot. Neither do I forget the little spring run near by, where we frequently paused to drink, and ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... of many diverse races, the various nationalities being frequently distinguishable by differences in dress as well as in physiognomy and colour. In the oriental quarters of the city the curious shops, the markets of different trades (the shops of each trade being generally congregated in one street or district), the easy merchant sitting ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... mind as well as in body. It might not do so to you; but you are of a different constitution, and, from all I see, the power of a man's muscles, the excitability of his nerves, the shape and balance of his brain, make him what he is. Else what is the meaning of physiognomy? Every man's destiny, as the Turks say, stands written on his forehead. One does not need two glances at your face to know that you would not enjoy fox-hunting, that you would enjoy book-learning and "refined repose," as they are pleased to call ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... Strawberry Hill[C] edition of the Parallel between Magliabechi and Mr. Hill, 1758, 8vo.—an elegant and interesting little volume. Before we come to speak of his birth and bibliographical powers, it may be as well to contemplate his expressive physiognomy. ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... obtained not from the abundant effigies which show him as a somewhat sanctimonious ascetic, but from statues of him as a young man, such as that found at Sarnath, which may possibly preserve not indeed the physiognomy of Gotama but the general physique of a young Nepalese prince, with powerful limbs and features and a determined mouth. For there is truth at the bottom of the saying that Gotama was born to be either a Buddha or ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... related by Mr. Baring-Gould, in his chapter of horrors, actually believed themselves to have been transformed into wolves or other wild animals. Jean Grenier was a boy of thirteen, partially idiotic, and of strongly marked canine physiognomy; his jaws were large and projected forward, and his canine teeth were unnaturally long, so as to protrude beyond the lower lip. He believed himself to be a werewolf. One evening, meeting half a dozen young girls, he scared them out of their ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... am an Englishwoman, and—" He interrupted the discourse by making his tongue smack against the teeth of his upper jaw—superb teeth, indeed! "Presently," said he: "I am occupied." He understood only Greek, and Mrs. Simons knew only English; but the physiognomy of the King was so speaking that the good lady comprehended easily without the aid of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... front of us, and if the touch of her arm did not suggest that I should give her up, neither did it intimate that we had better pass on. I had no idea of giving her up, albeit one of the things that I seemed to discover just then in Jasper's physiognomy was an imperturbable implication that she was his property. His eye met mine for a moment, and it was exactly as if he had said to me, 'I know what you think, but I don't care a rap.' What I really thought was that he was selfish beyond the limits: that was the substance of my little revelation. ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James

... The physiognomy of Mesopotamia has then been profoundly modified since the fall of the ancient civilization. By the indolence of man it has lost its adornments, or rather its vesture, in the ample drapery of waving palms and standing corn that ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... of King George the Third. Little Alice clapped her hands, and seemed pleased with the bluff good nature of his physiognomy. But Laurence thought it strange, that a man with such a face, indicating hardly a common share of intellect, should have had influence enough on human affairs, to convulse the world with war. Grandfather observed, that this poor king ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... whether their language was that of warning or reproach. She studied their material likenesses—the last save one in the picture-gallery—honest faces, bright with wholesome vigour; their son Hector's was a finer physiognomy, but the light had left lip and eye, and Leslie missed it as she gazed wistfully at these shadows, and compared them ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... this nose under the chin must be understood, that the elf has so long and crooked a nose, that it reaches and turns up under his chin. Crooked noses are, in all stories, allowed to be an ingredient of fiendish physiognomy. ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow

... be supposed by the intelligent to have sustained in a lapse of centuries, were popularly believed, in the latest period of the Western empire, to exist as so many charters of supremacy. Jupiter himself in Rome had put on a peculiar Roman physiognomy, which associated him with the destinies of the gigantic state. Above all, the solemn augury of the twelve vultures, so memorably passed downwards from the days of Romulus, through generations as ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... frying-pan. At the sight of me, he let go the frying-pan, threw up his arms in the air, and uttered shrieks of enthusiasm. He was a little man whose pimply features, aquiline nose, round eyes, and projecting chin formed a very expressive physiognomy. ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... grand scene—namely, that where Kean, whilst playing Hamlet, goes mad upon the stage; and this scene Rossi renders superbly. As to Nero, it is marvelous to witness the complete eclipse of the refined, accomplished gentleman and intellectual actor behind the brutal physiognomy of the wicked emperor. It is Hamlet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... talked noisily around him without disturbing him; they questioned one another, launched into the field of suppositions, examined their president, and tried, but in vain, to make out the x of his imperturbable physiognomy. ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne

... of coats-of-arms, the extravagant contours of the mantles, the chimerical or monstrous figures of heraldry, the branchings of the emblazoned skirts, the lofty attitude of the feudal baron, the modest air of the chatelaine, the sanctimonious physiognomy of the big Carthusian Carmelite, the furtive mien of the young page with parti-coloured pantaloons. . . . He excelled also in setting the persons of poem, drama, or romance in ornamented frames like the Gothic shrines with triple colonettes, arches, canopied and bracketed niches, with ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... certainly a splendid fellow. I think I never saw so fine a man physically in my life. And if the lesson of his physiognomy be true, he is as sterling inwardly as his external is fair. "Now," said I to Teuta, "we are to all intents quite alone. Tell me all that has been, so that ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... Composita, and interspersed with rich but not extensive prairies harbouring a great variety of herbaceous plants; while in the deltas of the Black Sea rivers impenetrable masses of rush shelter a forest fauna. But cultivation rapidly changes the physiognomy of the Steppe. The prairies are superseded by wheat-fields, and flocks of sheep destroy the true steppe-grass (Stipa-pennata), which ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... no Michael Cassio, no great arithmetician. Roger Kirkpatrick was a rare fellow, of the driest humour, and the nicest tact, of infinite sleights and evasions, of a picked phraseology, and the very soul of mimicry. I fancy I have some insight into physiognomy myself, but he could often expound to me at a single glance the characters of those of my acquaintance that I had been most at fault about. The account as it was cast up and balanced between us was not ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... him first at Bayonne; then long subsequently beneath the brick wall at Novogorod; then beside the Bosphorus; and last at—at—Oh, my respectable and cherished friend, where was it that I had last the felicity of seeing your well-remembered and most remarkable physiognomy?" ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... enjoying their works, though full of other qualities. For instance, Wilkie or Delaroche (in nearly all his works, though the Hemicycle is fine in colour). From Wilkie I would at any time prefer a thoroughly fine engraving—though of course he is in no respect even within hail of Hogarth. Colour is the physiognomy of a picture; and, like the shape of the human forehead, it cannot be perfectly beautiful without proving goodness and greatness. Other qualities are in its life exercised; but this is the body of its life, by which we know and love ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various

... smile—allowing for the exaggeration of the African physiognomy—did "Leonoro" contemplate his victim, and me, the bystander, and then sauntered slowly from the room, without uttering one word. It was a great moral lesson, and I profited by it. But, in truth, there was little to complain ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... of the artist's brush, looked too tiny and delicate to be of any service save to receive the kisses of a lover's lips,—or to be raised, folded pure and calm, in a child-like appeal to Heaven. Certainly in her fragile appearance she expressed nothing save indefinable charm—no one, studying her physiognomy, would have accredited her with genius, power, and the large conceptions of a Murillo or a Raphael;—yet within the small head lay a marvellous brain—and the delicate body was possessed by a spirit of amazing potency to ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... ship, and his chance of a voyage after his own heart—given it up, too, for Isaac Dent, a fellow whom he was quite sure was more or less a bit of a scoundrel. Will was honest, unsuspicious, and guileless; but even he could not quite think the best of a man with Dent's physiognomy. ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade

... have a small, shortlegged, wavy or curly-haired man, round headed generally, flat and broad nosed, with occasionally bearded face and restless nervous physiognomy. Most of these are not characteristics of the ordinary forest Malayan; on the contrary, they suggest the Negrito, and occasion the belief, in my own mind, that the Ilongot is, like many other peoples of the Philippines and Malaysia, ...
— The Negrito and Allied Types in the Philippines and The Ilongot or Ibilao of Luzon • David P. Barrows

... always an ardent reader; but the niceties of a well-balanced style hardly interested me: I did not understand them. A good deal later, when close upon fifteen, I began vaguely to see that words have a physiognomy of their own. Some pleased me better than others by the distinctness of their meaning and the resonance of their rhythm; they produced a clearer image in my mind; after their fashion, they gave me a picture of the object described. Colored by its adjective and vivified by its verb, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... over the Sultan's face at the same moment, and an accurate reader of physiognomy would have detected the fear expressed there that his violent purpose, as executed upon Aphiz, had failed ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray

... of dwarfs may be the primitive stock from which the Mongolians branched off on the one hand, and the Negroes on the other, since they are in some measure intermediate between the two. Latham says of the Rajmalis mountaineers, "Some say their physiognomy is Mongolian, others that it is African." Quatrefages is strongly of the opinion that the negro is of Indian origin, and reached Africa through migration. He bases his opinion on the negroid characters of existing tribes in India, Persia, and elsewhere in Asia, and on the similar characters ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... had twined its leash about one leg of its master—who was an alien from Wapping—and the spout of a zinc watering-can which a porter had left upon the platform; for which joke it had received a vile cuff on its wrinkled physiognomy from ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... distinguished, however wealthy, however pertinacious. If he had not chanced to enter Miss Spencer's office at that precise moment, and if he had not been impressed in a somewhat peculiar way by the physiognomy of the millionaire, not all Mr Racksole's American energy and ingenuity would have availed for a confabulation with the owner of the Grand Babylon Hotel that night. Theodore Racksole, however, was ignorant that a mere accident had served him. ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett

... physiognomy can be more hideous, when seen from the front, than the countenance of the largest South American vampire-bat. Fancy a creature measuring twenty-eight inches in expanse of wing, its large leathery ears standing out from the sides and top of the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... on, still seeking the eider-island,—which at first, so the Artist said, was "half a mile off," then "a piece farther," then "right up here," then "just ahead," and now threatened to keep ahead,—I nested myself again in the bottom, and renewed an old boy-custom by studying the elder Canadian's physiognomy. It was strangely attractive, and yet strangely impenetrable, a rare out-door face, clean and firm as naked granite after a rain, healthful as balsam-firs, and so honestly weather-beaten that one could not help regarding it as a feature of natural ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... nations manifest their life and individuality. Taking any one of them at any period of its existence, and comparing it with others, peculiarities immediately show themselves which give it a particular physiognomy whereby it may be at once distinguished from any other; so that, in those agglomerations of men which we call nations or races, we see the variety everywhere observable in Nature, the variety by which God manifests the infinite ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... be the most exacting of all the Arts, the cultivation of which presents the greatest difficulties, for a consummate interpretation of a musical work so as to permit an appreciation of its real value, a clear view of its physiognomy, or discernment of its real meaning and true character, is only achieved in relatively few cases. Of creative artists, the composer is almost the only one who is dependent upon a multitude of intermediate agents between ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz

... Physiognomy.—It is a point of cunning to wait upon him with whom you speak with your eye, as the Jesuits give it in precept; for there be many wise men that have secret ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... part in the scene enacted before them. One of them—even at this crucial moment Yerby noticed it with a pang of regretful despair—held noiseless on his knee a violin, and more than once addressed himself seriously to rubbing rosin over the bow. There was scant music in his face—a square physiognomy, with thick features, and a shock of hay-colored hair striped somewhat with an effect of darker shades like a weathering stack. He handled the bow with a blunt, clumsy hand that augured little of delicate skill, and he seemed from his diligence to think that ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... asleep in the island of Dia, to seek her fortune, that was erst his loving mistress. [5685]Nunc primum Dorida vetus amator contempsi, as he said, Doris is but a dowdy to this. As he that looks himself in a glass forgets his physiognomy forthwith, this flattering glass of love will be diminished by remove; after a little absence it will be remitted, the next fair object will likely alter it. A young man in [5686]Lucian was pitifully in love, he came to the theatre by chance, and by seeing other ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... sheep and crosses dangling from it, must be approached as Artaxerxes and Domitian. These automatons, we are told nevertheless, are very condescending. Poor fools who tell us it! ignorant that where on one side is condescension, on the other side must be baseness. The rascals have ruined my physiognomy. I wear an habitual sneer upon my face, God confound them for it! even when I whisper a word of love in the prone ear ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... weekly ceremony is almost the sole occasion on which foreigners can see his highness. During my stay at Constantinople, I had several opportunities of gazing upon the descendant of the Prophet. He is a young man, of slender frame, of grave physiognomy, and a most distingue appearance. A crowd of officers and eunuchs formed his suite, and all heads bowed low at his approach. Abdul Medjid, who was the twentieth-born child of his father Mahmood, was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... Indian accouterments and garments which bedecked this person, he would have been known anywhere as a white man. His skin was burned to a dark bronze, but it had not the red tinge which characterizes the Indian. This white man had, indeed, a strange physiognomy. The forehead was narrow and sloped backward from the brow, denoting animal instincts. The eyes were close together, yellowish-brown in color, and had a peculiar vibrating movement, as though they ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... for the sake of possessing a work of art than the great landlord or shareholder who paid a thousand pounds, which he was too rich to miss, for a portrait that, like Hogarth's Jack Sheppard, was only interesting to students of criminal physiognomy. A lively quarrel ensued, Trefusis denouncing the folly of artists in fancying themselves a priestly caste when they were obviously only the parasites and favored slaves of the moneyed classes, and his friend ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... allegorical design, we may imagine that, with the progress of Christianity, those parts of the old mythology which were most in harmony with Christian doctrines had the best chance of survival; and that, as a poet puts a new physiognomy on an old story without distorting the tradition, as we have seen in our own day the story of Arthur told again, not with the elaborate allegory of Spenser, but with a spiritual transfiguration which makes the "Idylls of ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... Not though he sat waiting for his "two- hours' wife," whom undoubtedly he had married for love—pure love— the only reason for which anyone, man or woman, old or young, ought to dare to marry. That he could feel as very few have the power to feel, no one who was any judge of physiognomy could doubt for a moment; yet he sat perfectly quiet—the quietness of a man accustomed to something safer and higher than self-suppression—self-control. When Mr. Ferguson came in, he rose and began to speak about the weather and local topics as men do speak ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... The pipe, in fact, was the great organ of reflection and deliberation of the New Netherlander. It was his constant companion and solace—was he gay, he smoked: was he sad, he smoked; his pipe was never out of his mouth; it was a part of his physiognomy; without it, his best friends would not know him. Take away his pipe? You might as well take ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... famous parts, saw nothing negro about him, except the length of his arm, the shrillness of his voice in excitement, the terrible animality of the murder-scenes, and his tendency to exaggerate. "The bright-colored nails were very evident, and his whole physiognomy, in spite of his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... justified in taking the most doubtful feature of his model's physiognomy and building up from it a repellent portrait is question for debate, especially when he admits its incompleteness. But we may balance against this incompleteness, the fine fire of enthusiasm for the "cause" in the poem, and the fact that Wordsworth ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... Latin. Thus, 'people' is indeed 'populus', but it was 'peuple' first, while 'popular' is a direct transfer of a Latin vocable into our English glossary. So too 'enemy' is 'inimicus', but it was first softened in the French, and had its Latin physiognomy to a great degree obliterated, while 'inimical' is Latin throughout; 'parish' is 'paroisse', but 'parochial' is 'parochialis'; 'chapter' is 'chapitre', but 'capitular' ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... stopped. As a physician, he was accustomed to notice the changes of physiognomy. Instinctively he put some feet of distance between himself and his companion. Was it agony ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... variations which you see at a glance. Everybody, of course, knows the difference between a Negro and a white man, and can tell a Chinaman from an Englishman. They each have peculiar characteristics of colour and physiognomy; but you must recollect that the characters of these races go very far deeper—they extend to the bony structure, and to the characters of that most important of all organs to us—the brain; so that, among men belonging to different races, ...
— The Conditions Of Existence As Affecting The Perpetuation Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley

... faces. I particularly observed a Frenchman whom I had not noticed before. He addressed me with a courteous offer of refreshments. His manners and language were evidently those of an educated person, while his figure and physiognomy indicated aristocratic habits or birth, yet his features and complexion bore the strong imprint of that premature old age which always ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... the sorry sight, the unhappy man, unable for the moment to account for his plight, stood aghast, until his gaze, penetrating to the rear of his smudged physiognomy, beheld the reflection of the coal heaps ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... head is now fringed with white hair, and partial baldness contributes an impressive reverence to his presence and tends to enhance the intellectual effect of his wide brow. In repose his countenance shows a hint of melancholy: as Miss Bronte has said, "his physiognomy is fine et spirituelle;" one would hardly imagine it could ever resemble the "visage of a black and sallow tiger." His voice is low and soft, his bow still "very polite, not theatrical, scarcely French," his manner suave and courteous, his dress scrupulously neat. He accosted us in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... on the street, that he was born thousands of years before the oldest native American; and he may have something to communicate to you, when you two shall have learned a common language. Remember that his very physiognomy is a cipher the key to which it behooves you ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... rest, not lifted into that higher notice by such favour of their creator, must remain like any other undistinguished crowd. But among them may perhaps be detected, by those who have special insight for the physiognomy of a name, some few with so great promise in them of fun and character as will make the "mute inglorious" fate which has befallen them a subject for special regret; and much ingenious speculation will ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... a science called physiognomy. The Greeks, from what I can learn, knew more of it than any people since: though the Italian painters and sculptors must have known much; far more than we. In a more scientific civilisation there will be such a science once more: but its laws, though still in the empiric stage, are not altogether ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... same combinations of moral qualities, infinitely varied, which compose the harsh physiognomy of what we call worldliness in the living groups of life, must unavoidably present themselves in books. A library divides into sections of worldly and unworldly, even as a crowd of men divides into that same majority and minority. The world has an instinct for ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various

... the room, its plainness, and yet its expression of life and mental activity; the work and workbasket on the chair, the bunch of ferns and amaranthus in one vase, the roses in another, the violets on the table, the physiognomy of the books, which were not from the next circulating library, the drawing materials; and then came back to the figure seated before her, with the tossed, beautiful hair and the very delicate, spirited face; and it crossed Lady Brierley's mind, if she had a daughter ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... Cockburn, bald, almost in youth, with its pliant, refined features, and its fresh tint upon a cheek always clear, generally high in colour, was a strong contrast to the rigid petitesse of Jeffrey's physiognomy; much more so to the large proportions of Mackintosh; or to the ponderous, plain, and, later in life, swarthy countenance of Sydney Smith. Lord Webb Seymour, the brother of the late Duke of Somerset, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... in natural history that one's elbow is sure to be jogged. It does not matter what you do; suppose you paint in the most secluded spot, and insert yourself, moreover, in the most inconspicuous part of that spot, some vacant physiognomy is certain to intrude, glaring at you with glassy eye. Suppose you do nothing (like myself), no matter where you do it some inane humanity obtrudes itself. I took out my note-book once in a great open space at the Tower of London, ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... Compare J. B. Say, Traite I, introd. Thus, it would be certainly possible to describe every individual's physiognomy by means of a very complicated mathematical formula, and yet there is no one who would not prefer the usual mode of taking pictures. The simple motions of the heavenly bodies, on the contrary, are always ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... open it. An imperative need had just come over him to see Jean at once, to look at him at his leisure, to surprise him in his sleep, while the calm countenance and relaxed features were at rest and all the grimace of life put off. Thus he might catch the dormant secret of his physiognomy, and if any appreciable likeness existed it ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... end to the ideal of the early days; but he had no longer that privilege of the young—of Brother Leo, for example—of being able to transform himself almost entirely into the image of him whom he admired. His physiognomy has not that touch of juvenile originality, of poetic fancy, which is so great a charm ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... and snatching her hand, he pressed it convulsively to his lips, while the doctor brought by Anna Sergyevna, a little man in spectacles, of German physiognomy, stepped very deliberately out of the carriage. 'Still living, my Yevgeny is living, and now he will be saved! Wife! wife!... An angel from heaven has come ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... encouragement. Your work is so urgent that you have no time to stop and speak to the people, but every day you meet scores, perhaps hundreds and thousands of persons, upon whom you might have direct and immediate influence. 'How? How?' you cry out. We answer: By the grace of physiognomy. There is nothing more catching than a face with a lantern behind it, shining clear through. We have no admiration for a face with a dry smile, meaning no more than the grin of a false face. But a smile written by the hand of God, as an index finger or table of contents, ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden

... the clever wife of him of the Louis XIV. curls, whose intrigues won for her husband command of the army, for another province? It was whispered, too, that the military glory of him of the Marshal Ney physiognomy was due to the good fortune of a senile field-marshal for an opponent. But no matter. These gentlemen had seen the enemy fly. They had won. Therefore, they were the supermen of sagas ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... does not produce the same species in analogous climates, either in the plains of isothermal parallels, or on table-lands the temperature of which resembles that of places nearer the poles, we still remark a striking resemblance of appearance and physiognomy in the vegetation of the most distant countries. This phenomenon is one of the most curious in the history of organic forms. I say the history; for in vain would reason forbid man to form hypotheses on the origin of things: he is not the less tormented ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... symptoms of a mystery, from recognizing in the Count the same effects of physiognomy as I had observed in my uncle. The exercise of virtue, serenity of conscience, and purity of mind had transfigured my uncle, who from being ugly had become quite beautiful. I detected a metamorphosis ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac

... but this latter cry was not repeated so frequently as the others: in general I remarked that the people gaped and listened with a sort of indifference. As I had taken a very active part in all that had happened during some preceding days I was particularly curious to study what might be called the physiognomy of Paris. This was the second opportunity which had offered itself for such a study, and I now saw the people applaud the fall of the man whom they had received with enthusiasm after the 18th Brumaire. The reason was, that liberty ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... seemed to be habited in a brown coloured petticoat, waistcoat, and a white hood; such a one as his wife's sister usually wore, and that her countenance looked extreamly pale and wan, with her teeth in sight, but no gums appearing, and that her physiognomy was like to that of his wife's sister, who was ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey

... known to travellers. Each of them wore its own expression, of peace, pleasantness, innocent mirth, or meditation. Each possessed its treasures, jealously guarded: its belfries, its churches, its canals, its old bridges, its quiet convents, its ancient houses, which gave it a special physiognomy, never to be forgotten by ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck

... possessor of much skill in physiognomy, and it would have deterred him in other circumstances from attempting to make a friend of this boy. The countenance of the latter immediately impressed a beholder disagreeably, but it required some examination to discover that the cause was a very slight distortion ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... classification of diseases is from head to foot—the usual method of that day. The modern reader will probably be surprised at the comprehensiveness of the work, which, besides general diseases, includes considerable portions of physiology, physiognomy, ophthalmology, laryngology, otology, gynecology, neurology, dermatology, embryology, obstetrics, dietetics, urinary and venereal diseases, therapeutics, toxicology, operative surgery, cosmetics and even the hygiene of travel and the prevention of sea-sickness. ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson

... special inheritance of the British Philistine. But instead of the large goggle eyes, always jeering and impudent, which lighted up the paternal countenance, Clarence had a pair of mild brown orbs, repeated from his mother's faded face, which introduced the oddest discord into his physiognomy generally. In the family, that is to say among the step-brothers and step-sisters who formed Mr. Copperhead's first family, the young fellow bore no other name than that of the curled darling, though, indeed, he was as far from ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... beholder who gazes upon the portraits of Charles. The eyes of the Chevalier were light-hazel, his face was pale and long, and in the fullness of the lips he resembled his mother, Mary of Modena. To this physiognomy, on which it is said a smile was rarely seen to play, were added, according to the account of a contemporary, from whose narrative we will borrow a further description, "a speech grave, and not very clearly expressive of his thoughts, nor over much to the purpose; his ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson

... dignity dwells in a suit of Cast Clothes! How meekly it bears its honors! No haughty looks, no scornful gesture: silent and serene, it fronts the world; neither demanding worship, nor afraid to miss it. The Hat still carries the physiognomy of its Head: but the vanity and the stupidity, and goose-speech which was the sign of these two, are gone. The Coat-arm is stretched out, but not to strike; the Breeches, in modest simplicity, depend at ease, and now ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... vigorous brush-work of the master. It is the head of a saucy fisher-boy, the colour scheme unusual for Hals. The Quentin Matsys pictures are strong; among others the portrait of Peter Gillis with his shrewd, strongly marked physiognomy. This is a Matsys town. Every one looks at his old iron well beside the Cathedral and recalls the legend of the blacksmith, as every boy remembers here Hendrik Conscience and the Lion of Flanders. Van Reymerswael's The ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... "You understand physiognomy, good Mr. Caleb," said the Keeper, smiling; "I assure you the gentleman has been near such a consummation before now; for I most distinctly recollect that, upon occasion of a journey which I made about a fortnight ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... the unfortunate thief felt very uncomfortable. Nature had endowed him with rather a remarkable physiognomy, and it was difficult to find a passport to fit him unless it were made on purpose; so that out of five or six which he had in his possession, not one would do. At last he made up his mind to walk out of the town without a passport, as if he were one of the town's-people ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... foreign art—Italian operas and French plays—upon which Germans had lived hitherto. When an art, like music or the drama, begins to flourish on a new soil, it is certain to exhibit new features, to show new developments, so that with respect to its external physiognomy it may in a sense be called new; but far truer is the very opposite statement, that Wagner's art is as old as art itself; its greatness lies not in any novelty of invention, but in his having developed the old forms into something dreamed of by his ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight

... the depths of metaphysics; a third has brought to perfection the science of astronomy; but it was reserved for the exclusive genius of the present times, to invent the noble art of picturesque gardening, which has given, as it were, a new tint to the complexion of nature, and a new outline to the physiognomy ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock

... not afraid of any one. But just look at him; he's a beast by his physiognomy; you can see by his nose.' (Kondrat often used to drive with gentlemen, and had been in the chief town of the province, and so liked on occasion to show off his attainments.) 'There's positively no doing anything with him. How many times ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... but not begotten by the owner, O chief of Bharata's race, bears all the marks of the sire that has actually begotten him (and not the marks of one that is only the husband of his mother). The son thus born is incapable of concealing the evidences that physiognomy offers. He is at once known by eyesight (to belong to another).[304] As regards the son made, he is sometimes regarded as the child of the person who has made him a son and so brings him up. In his case, neither the vital seed of which he is born nor the soil in which he is born, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... there was another man in the saloon, standing a little on one side and looking intently at me. The chief mate. His long, red moustache determined the character of his physiognomy, which struck me as pugnacious in (strange to say) ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad

... little mouth and small, white, even regular teeth—the rosy lips, slightly compressed, save when parted in speech, smile, or eager attention—she exhibited in their most perfect but by no means fullest development the characteristics of Martial physiognomy; or rather the characteristic beauty of a family in which the finest traits of that physiognomy are unmixed with any of its meaner or harsher peculiarities. The hands, long, slight, and soft, the unsandalled feet, not less perfectly shaped, could only have belonged to the child of ancestors ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... had engaged the respect of the Osmanlis, and he is as graciously received by the Pasha, who created him a Bimbashi, and received him, his companions, and followers, into his service. Malek Shouus is a large stout man, of a pleasing physiognomy though black, of about forty years of age, and was considered as the greatest warrior among the people of the Upper Nile, who all stood in ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English

... indicated a Londoner of some fashion, partly by its neatness and simplicity, with just so much of a peculiarity of style as served to show that, although he belonged to the order of metropolitan beaux, he was not altogether a common one ... His physiognomy was prepossessing and intelligent, but ever and anon his brows lowered and gathered—a habit, as I then thought, with a degree of affectation in it, probably first assumed for picturesque effect and energetic expression, but which I afterwards discovered ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... appearance. In truth, she seemed absolutely hidden behind it. Pearl pointed upwards also, at a similar picture in the head-piece; smiling at her mother, with the elfish intelligence that was so familiar an expression on her small physiognomy. That look of naughty merriment was likewise reflected in the mirror, with so much breadth and intensity of effect, that it made Hester Prynne feel as if it could not be the image of her own child, but of an imp who was seeking to mould ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... I came to Bologna,—learned Bologna; indeed an Italian city, full of expression, of physiognomy, so to speak. A woman should love Bologna, for there has the spark of intellect in woman been cherished with reverent care. Not in former ages only, but in this, Bologna raised a woman who was worthy to the dignities ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... not hold throughout, but they facilitate the presentation of a subject that is exceedingly complicated. It may almost be said that each generation of the eighteenth century had a salon with a different physiognomy; those of 1710, 1730, 1760, and 1780 were all inspired by different motives, causes, and events, and were all led by women of different histories and aspirations, whose common idol was man, but whose ideas of what constituted ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... delineated with long hair and scanty beard. The drooping lids give to his eyes a languid expression, while the length of his nose, which earned him the sobriquet of "le roi au long nez," redeems his physiognomy from any approach to heaviness.[213] On the other hand, the Venetian Marino Cavalli, writing shortly before the close of his reign, eulogizes the personal appearance of Francis, at that time more than fifty years old. His mien was so right royal, we are assured, that even ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... celebrated Dr. F. Shuman, Swede by birth, just arrived in this city, offers his services in astrology, physiognomy, &c. He can be consulted on matters of love, marriage, past, present, and future events in life. Nativity calculated for ladies and gentlemen. Mr. S. has travelled through the greater part of the world in the last forty-two years, and is willing to give the most satisfactory ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various

... plain furniture, the meals, the house full of merry people, my grandmother Amy's sweet old face in its Quaker cap, my grandfather "the Major," jovial, red, stout, with sonorous voice and characteristic physiognomy, with the actual sights themselves, made the most pronounc'd half-day's ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... was a somewhat formidable-looking character. By his side appeared, when the curtain drew up, a curious-looking clown, with a huge face, with all sorts of twists and curls in it, great big ears, a cock-up nose, and a short stumpy beard. This extraordinary physiognomy was covered with a high cap, which had a tassel and bells. He wore also a party-coloured waistcoat, huge full breeches of all the colours of the rainbow, hose of yellow, and long shoes with rosettes of vast size. He stood forth a veritable clown or ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... first acute spasm of delight at seeing his own physiognomy reflected in a mirror had passed, I suggested to the king that if he would like to try on his new garments I should be very pleased to instruct him as to the proper method of getting into them, an offer which he instantly accepted; and he ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... "L'Artiste," and it happened oddly enough that Murger wrote nothing but poetry for this journal. Monsieur Houssaye took a great fancy to Murger, and persuaded him, for the sake of "effect" on the title-pages of books and on the backs of magazines, to change Henri to Henry, and give Murger a German physiognomy by writing it Muerger. As Frenchmen treat their names with as much freedom as we use towards old gloves, Murger instantly adopted Monsieur Houssaye's suggestion, and clung as long as he lived to the new orthography of his name. He began to find ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... detail! You know now the physiognomy of Madame Bovary in repose, when she is inciting no one, when she does not sin, when she is still completely innocent, and when, on her return from a rendezvous, she is by the side of her husband, whom she detests; you know now the general colour of the picture, the general physiognomy ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various

... excellent portrait-painters, Ravesteyn (1572?-1657) and De Keyser (1596?-1679) do not provoke enthusiasm. They were quiet, conservative, dignified, painting civic guards and societies with a knowing brush and lively color, giving the truth of physiognomy, but not with that verve of the artist so conspicuous in Hals, nor with that unity of the group so essential in ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... Montezuma Moggs—he had been too often tricked from comfort in that way before—people will so impose on one in this respect—envious people, who covet your slumbers—such as those who drag the covering off, or sprinkle water on the unguarded physiognomy. But Moggs took care, in the excess of his caution, that no time should be lost by him in a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... conspicuous at the meeting of three ways, aptly suggestive of Hecate and infernal things. Its spiritual and intellectual physiognomy, and that of the university in general, must be learned from the exhaustive pages of Professor Masson. A book unpublished when he wrote, Ball's life of Dr. John Preston, Master of Emmanuel, vestige of an entire continent of submerged Puritanism, also contributes much to the appreciation ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... the heated pavement, heedless of the heat. The motives which led Boleslas to choose the French novelist as the one from whom to obtain his information, demonstrated that the feline character of his physiognomy was not deceptive. He understood Dorsenne much better than Dorsenne understood him. He knew him to be nervous, on the one hand, and perspicacious on the other. If there was an intrigue between Maitland ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... since (temporarily, at least, and by force of circumstances) he was the man of men. But a private grief had built up a barrier about him, impeding the customary free intercourse of Americans with their chief magistrate; so that I might have come away without a glimpse of his very remarkable physiognomy, save for a semi-official opportunity of which I was glad to take advantage. The fact is, we were invited to annex ourselves, as supernumeraries, to a deputation that was about to wait upon the ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Aurelius; the other is a fragment, magnificent in its ruin, of a Roman theater. But for these fine Roman remains and for its name, Orange is a perfectly featureless little town, without the Rhone— which, as I have mentioned, is several miles distant—to help it to a physiognomy. It seems one of the oddest things that this obscure French borough—obscure, I mean, in our modern era, for the Gallo-Roman Arausio must have been, judging it by its arches and theater, a place of some importance—should have given ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... anything but prepossessing character was imparted to the physiognomy of this individual by the extraordinary keenness of his small eyes, his almost lipless mouth, which stretched from ear to ear, and his long teeth, which were dazzlingly white; their enamel being intact, for he had never been attacked ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne

... the body frankly exhibited. Mediaeval religion withdrew Italian sculptors and painters from the problems of purely physical form, and obliged them to study the expression of sentiments and aspirations which could only be rendered by emphasising psychical qualities revealed through physiognomy. At the same time, modern habits of life removed the naked body ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... their crestfallen demeanor with the inclemencies of the season, were peasants. The one was an old man, gray-haired, stooping, and apparently sixty years of age: the other, his son, as I afterward found out, was a mere youth of, at the most, twenty. They were strikingly alike in physiognomy, notwithstanding the difference in their years, but neither had anything at all remarkable either in his looks or general appearance: both were small, clumsy-limbed, somewhat simple-faced, rather ugly; and on the whole they were a very commonplace, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... secrecy,—Mr Bowman. BEN, Sir Sampson's younger son, half home-bred and half sea-bred, designed to marry Miss Prue,—Mr Dogget. FORESIGHT, an illiterate old fellow, peevish and positive, superstitious, and pretending to understand astrology, palmistry, physiognomy, omens, dreams, etc; uncle to Angelica,—Mr Sanford. JEREMY, servant to Valentine,—Mr Bowen. TRAPLAND, a scrivener,—Mr Triffusis. BUCKRAM, ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve

... than the age of the oldest dowagers, estimable streets, streets always clean, streets always dirty, working, laboring, and mercantile streets. In short, the streets of Paris have every human quality, and impress us, by what we must call their physiognomy, with certain ideas against which we are defenceless. There are, for instance, streets of a bad neighborhood in which you could not be induced to live, and streets where you would willingly take up your abode. Some streets, like the rue Montmartre, ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... personal advantages were now departed. Crippled in hands, knees, and legs, he supported himself with difficulty upon a crutch, with the aid of an attendant's shoulder. In face he had always been extremely ugly, and time had certainly not improved his physiognomy. His hair, once of a light color, was now white with age, close-clipt and bristling; his beard was gray, coarse, and shaggy. His forehead was spacious and commanding; the eye was dark-blue, with an expression both majestic and benignant. His nose ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... been more disappointed than in the appearance of these men. There is more or less of character about the exterior and physiognomy of them all, it is true; but scarcely one has what we are accustomed to think the carriage of a soldier. It may be known to you that Moreau had very little of this, and really one is apt to fancy he can see the civic origin in nearly all of them. While the common French soldiers have a good deal ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... you can a cross between a sheep and a gorilla, and you will have some conception of the physiognomy of the creature that bent close above me, and of those of the half-dozen others that clustered about. There was the facial length and great eyes of the sheep, and the bull-neck and hideous fangs of the gorilla. The bodies and limbs were both man ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... masks of misery, masks of joy, masks of hypocrisy; all alike worn and stamped with the indelible signs of a panting cupidity? What is it they want? Gold or pleasure? A few observations upon the soul of Paris may explain the causes of its cadaverous physiognomy, which has but two ages—youth and decay: youth, wan and colorless; decay, painted to seem young. In looking at this excavated people, foreigners, who are not prone to reflection, experience at first a movement of disgust towards the capital, that vast workshop of delights, from which, in a short ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac

... unclassified senses had the highly-organized animal by which he should become aware of me? The dog turned his noble head—he was a St. Bernard, with the moral qualities of the breed well marked upon his physiognomy; he lifted his eyes and solemnly ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... general, but only a leader of Corsican deserters, suggests one that has already been referred to. It has also been suggested that Lowe was not a gentleman, and references have been approvingly made to comparisons of his physiognomy with that of the devil, and of his eye with "that of a hyaena caught in a trap." As to this we will cite the opinion of Lieutenant (later Colonel) Basil Jackson, who was unknown to Lowe before 1816, and was on friendly terms with ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... physiognomy, and concluded that she was not only perfectly happy, but also the cause of happiness. But here let me say how vain a thing it is for anyone to pronounce a man or woman to be happy or unhappy from ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... their physiognomy—especially buildings in great cities—and the face of this house was essentially furtive in its expression. The front windows were all shut, and the front blinds were all drawn down. It looked no larger than the other houses in the street, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... to occupy his attention in the faces round him. He furtively examined Mr. Gordon, as he bent over his high desk, writing, but couldn't make our the physiognomy. There had been something reserved and imperious in the master's manner, yet he thought he should not dislike him on the whole. With the countenances of his future schoolfellows he was not altogether pleased, but there were one or ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar

... faith in these people, as a rule," replied Miss Seaton, "but it is a fact that some of them really have a strange and inexplicable power to foresee events. Whether it is a genuine science, or a mere application of general rules of physiognomy to the particular features of each visitor, I do not profess to say; but there is no doubt, I believe, that they have been very successful in reading ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton

... carriage and well-formed limbs; he walked with dignity, had a very serious aspect, the nose and mouth rather large, with full lips, a dark complexion, the eyebrows black and strongly marked, and a command of countenance which rendered his physiognomy formed to express comedy. A less friendly pen (that, of the author of "L'Impromptu de l'Hotel de Conde") has caricatured Moliere as coming on the stage with his head thrown habitually back, his nose turned up ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... man," then said Tucket, "jest look at that jack-of-spades. He got it in the physiognomy wus'n I did. 'Alas, the mother that him bare, if she had been in presence there, in his greased cheeks and greasier hair, she had not known ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... over the high forehead. The closely-cropped beard left his chin free, and the fine mustache showed a mouth with a rather satirical curve and closely compressed lips A strong aquiline nose and narrow bright blue eyes completed a physiognomy indicating great reserve and a remarkable degree of melancholy. It is no advantage to a man to possess a Sphinx-like head. The pretty faces apparently full of secrets offer easy deceptions, and one expects that the mouth when open will reveal all that the eyes seem to mean. One is half-angry ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... 141) that "in barbarous nations there is a physiognomy peculiar to the tribe or horde rather than to any individual." It has been noted by various observers that the lower the race is the more do its individuals thus resemble one another. Nay, this approximation goes so far as to make even the two sexes much less distinct than they are with us. ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... opposed it with vehement hostility: it disputed their traditions and disturbed their monarchical tendencies. But the party had to contest with a minister as imperturbable in his convictions and will as in his physiognomy. Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr had a powerful, original, and straightforward mind, with no great combination of ideas, but passionately wedded to those which emanated from himself. He had resolved to give back to France what she no longer possessed—an ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... we have little more to expect than the monotonous repetition of the same duties recurring at the same hour every day—even for such each day has its own distinctive character. Like a flock of sheep they seem all alike, but each, on closer inspection, reveals a physiognomy of its own. There will be so many small changes that even the same duties or enjoyments will not be quite the same, and even if the outward things remained absolutely unaltered, we who meet them are not the same. Little variations in mood and tone, diminished zest here, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... a taste for physiognomy should carefully observe the features of the ox and the cow; their demeanor and the expression of their eyes. They are figures which bear an extraordinary stamp of respectability. They look neither joyful nor melancholy. They are seldom evilly disposed, but never sportive. They are ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... around her that she could see and be seen on all sides, came Elizabeth herself, then in the prime of womanhood, and in the full glow of what in a Sovereign was called beauty, and who would in the lowest rank of life have been truly judged a noble figure, joined to a striking and commanding physiognomy. She leant on the arm of Lord Hunsdon, whose relation to her by her mother's side often procured him such distinguished marks ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... those two, which seems to me to be the reason that takes them along the pathway so unusual and difficult in a climate so hot, and lands so dangerous (as he who has had experience in these islands, and who knows the wretchedness of their natives in this region, will know). For the physiognomy of those men is that of eunuchs, and their natural disposition and condition are so cold, that it made me think that they must be so naturally, and that nature kept her virtue under control in this region. But since ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... true nosce teipsum, as I have named it, compared with which the finest mirror of steel or silver is mere darkness. See now, how by diligent shaving, the nether region of your face may preserve its human outline, instead of presenting no distinction from the physiognomy of a bearded owl or a Barbary ape. I have seen men whose beards have so invaded their cheeks, that one might have pitied them as the victims of a sad, brutalising chastisement befitting our Dante's Inferno, ...
— Romola • George Eliot



Words linked to "Physiognomy" :   Britain, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, human face, pudding-face, Great Britain, pudding face, United Kingdom, U.K., face, human head, UK, colloquialism



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com