"Corpse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Deverill, and the story is that he quarrelled with the rector over the question of the church bell being tolled for the funeral. He would have no bell tolled, he swore, and the rector would bury no one without the bell. Thereupon Rawlings had the coffined corpse deposited on a table in an outhouse and the door made fast. Later there was another death, then a third, and all three were kept in the same place for several years, and although it was known to the whole countryside no action was taken by ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... morrow" was as others say "Good night." We never saw her smile but once, And then we wept around her dying couch, For 'twas the dazzling light of joy that stream'd Upon her from the opening gates of heaven; That smile was parted, she so gently died, Between the wan corpse and the fleeting spirit. ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... Heard. The Don, who stood above him, plunged his sword into the old man's body: but the hatchet gleamed, nevertheless: down went the blade through headpiece and through head; and as Heard sprang onward, bleeding, but alive, the steel-clad corpse rattled down the deck into the surge. Two more strokes, struck with the fury of a dying man, and the standard-staff was hewn through. Old Michael collected all his strength, hurled the flag far from the sinking ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... the bed of her I loved so dearly, and in vain Madame Lamarre tried to induce me to come and sit with her. I loved the poor corpse better than all ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... perforce move elsewhere for the time being—but if he is so inconsiderate as to postpone his dying until after one of these semi-annual burnings, it becomes necessary to bury him. In a land where the thermometer frequently registers 100 and above, you couldn't keep a corpse around the house for several months, could you? When cremation day comes round again, however, he is dug up, taken to a temple and burned. There is no escaping the funeral-pyre in Bali. As we were leaving one of the cremation ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... Sassenach; who, accustomed to the solemn and lugubrious decorum of English funerals, was not prepared for an outburst of Celtic enthusiasm upon such an occasion. A remark being made on the oddity of a political hurrah at a funeral, it was replied that the corpse would have doubtless cheered lustily ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... and I'll never more be after seeing him again, the dear young masther, barrin' it's his corpse is sent up by the cruel waves on the shore, and I'll be left all alone in this desart counthry to bury him, the last hope of the D'Arcys, instead of in the tomb of his ancestors in ould Ireland. And what'll the poor misthress be doing when she hears ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... the Newton of biology, was an Agnostic—which is only a respectable synonym for an Atheist. The more he looked for God the less he could find him. Yet the corpse of this great "infidel" lies in Westminster Abbey, We need not wonder, therefore, that Christians and even parsons are on the Shelley Centenary committee, or that Mr. Edmund Gosse was chosen to officiate as high pontiff at the Horsham celebration. Mr. Gosse ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... old man from another world, the man with mittens, who had to be spoon-fed on porridge because he was ninety, who smelled like an unburied corpse. I remembered him and ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... noticed a corpse-like smell in Hassel's cabin, which was empty. On closer sniffing and examination it turned out to be the dead rat, a big black one, unfortunately a male rat. The poor brute, that had starved to death, had tried to keep itself alive by devouring a ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... bitterness toward the adversary pervaded the ranks on both sides, and as the squadron swept by the men showered on the poor dead body remarks expressive of their contempt. Corporal Glazier was an exception. Moved by an impulse born of our common humanity, he returned and buried the cold, stark corpse, covering it with mother Earth; and when questioned why he gave such consideration to a miserable dead rebel, replied, that he thought any man brave enough to die for a principle, should be respected for that bravery, whether his cause ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... and from Madrid to France. Delighted to have met with this longed-for opportunity, and under the most desirable conditions, Jacques Collin scored his back to efface the fatal letters, and altered his complexion by the use of chemicals. Thus metamorphosing himself face to face with the corpse, he contrived to achieve some likeness to his Sosia. And to complete a change almost as marvelous as that related in the Arabian tale, where a dervish has acquired the power, old as he is, of entering into a young body, by a magic spell, the convict, who spoke Spanish, learned as much Latin ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... her scheme was to fasten the outer door, to make sure of not being interrupted. Then she set to work by placing her uncle's small, heavy oak table before the fire; then she went to her uncle's corpse, sitting in the chair as he had died—a stuffed arm-chair, on casters, and rather high in the seat, so it was told me—and wheeled the chair, uncle and all, to the table, placing him with his back toward the window, in the attitude of ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... temple bore on their shoulders. The procession then began, the master of the ceremonies walking first, and after him the oldest warrior, holding in one hand the pole with the rings of canes, and in the other the pipe of war, a mark of the dignity of the deceased. Next followed the corpse, after which came those who were to die at the interment. The whole procession went three times round the hut of the deceased, and then those who carried the corpse proceeded in a circular kind of march, every turn intersecting the former, ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... When the malady flies away the life generally accompanies it. The dead are buried under the earth inside the huts, and in some of the dwellings graves are quite numerous. This custom of interior burial has probably been adopted because the wild animals of the forest would otherwise eat the corpse. Horrible to relate, their own half-wild dogs sometimes devour the dead, though an older member of the tribe is generally left home to ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... incensd. Wrest out of his conceit that harmfull doubt, That since his wracke he hath of me conceiu'd Though wrong conceiu'd: witnesse you reuerent Gods, Barking Anubis, Apis bellowing. Tell him, my soule burning, impatient, Forlorne with loue of him, for certaine seale Of her true loialtie my corpse hath left, T' encrease of dead the number numberlesse. Go then, and if as yet he me bewaile, If yet for me his heart one sign fourth breathe Blest shall I be: and farre with more content Depart this world, where so I ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... of his tongue would move stealthily round the inside of his lips. He hadn't shaved for several days and his face was vague and venerable, glistening grey bristles. When he leaned gently against the vice-bench and folding his arms, closed his eyes, he looked like a hundred-years'-old corpse. He closed his eyes. It was not interesting to him, ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... vermin of every eatable size were soon exterminated from the environs. Three men stole a horse and ate it; they were tortured to make them confess the fact and then hanged for it; their bodies were left upon the gallows, and in the night all the flesh below the waist was cut away. One man ate the corpse of his brother; some murdered their messmates for the sake of receiving their rations as long as they could conceal their death by saying they were ill. The mortality was very great. Mendoza, seeing that all must perish if they remained here, sent George Luchsan, one of his German ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... see folk!" exclaimed Ed. "Not growlin' like a bear because they looks summat like a dead man, an' because they has a bit o' ache in their insides every time they eats. You'm do look as though you'm just rize from th' grave. But you'm a wonderful live corpse yet, Shad. A man may's well be happy even if he do feel like all creation turned inside out, 'specially when he knows he ain't goin' t' keep feelin' that way. A man is just as happy as he's thinkin' he ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... comrade,) and bore him away with great expedition, manifesting no inclination whatever to tarry at a place which had been so fatal to his brethren. But the other had every confidence in the mercy of the whites, and lingered some length of time, gazing at the corpse before him, as if hesitating whether to ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... Something has disappeared in that fatal moment that no one had ever seen or handled—his self-consciousness, his intelligence, his will, his affections, his moral sense: with these he was a person; without them, he is a corpse. If, then, it is these unseen, intangible qualities, and not flesh and bones, muscle and "nerve structure," that constitute human personality, is it not rather childish to argue that, unless God possesses a body ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... preceding, surrounding, and following it. {316} A wonderful thing then took place. The Jews were indignant and enraged, and one more desperately bold than the rest rushed forward, intending to throw down the holy corpse to the ground. Vengeance was not tardy; for his hands were cut off from his arms[121]. The procession stopped; and at the command of Peter, on the man shedding tears of penitence, his hands were joined on again and restored whole. At Gethsemane she was put into a tomb, but her Son transferred ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... good, kind gentleman," she smirked, cheered at the idea of unlimited gin. "And when my boy Sid do come home a corpse, I hope you'll ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... so close that they were always touching; to watch Irene's eyes, like dark thieves, stealing the heart out of the spring. And a great unseen chaperon, his spirit was there, stopping with them to look at the little furry corpse of a mole, not dead an hour, with his mushroom-and-silver coat untouched by the rain or dew; watching over Irene's bent head, and the soft look of her pitying eyes; and over that young man's head, gazing at her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... habiliments—lately nurses of the sick, now watchers over the dead—rose from their seats, and retired silently to a distant corner of the room as Mr Harrenburn and Conrad entered. Where does the poor heart suffer as it does in the chamber of the dead, where lies, as in this instance, the corpse of a beloved daughter? A hundred objects, little thought of heretofore, present themselves, and by association with the lost one, assume a power over the survivor. The casual objects of everyday life rise up and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... the common day! A man weak-willed and fore-ordained to fail . . . The window's empty now, they've gone away, And yonder, see, their furniture's for sale. To all the world their door is open wide, And round and round the bargain-hunters roam, And peer and gloat, like vultures avid-eyed, Above the corpse of what ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... who had taken a prominent part in the operations, and who, with that true womanly tenderness and solicitude which do honour to her sex, and which are nowhere more conspicuous than in America, insisted upon the corpse being taken to a neighbouring house, where, like a ministering angel, she persevered in her efforts for a considerable time, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... other victim is slain or the dummy of a man is destroyed;[233] although the significant Hindu ceremonial of so throwing the limbs of an animal slaughtered to be burnt with the dead that every limb lies upon a corresponding part of the corpse;[234] although Teuton, Celt, and Norse[235] are credited with the practice by authorities not to be questioned, it appears by the evidence that the European form of human sacrifice has little in common with the savage form except in the nature of the victim. It occurred, as Grimm states, ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... come to the King! truly. He places the corpse upon its foundation, in its place that ...
— Egyptian Literature
... combustion of the corpse was rarely complete.[2580] Among the ashes, when the fire was extinguished, the heart and entrails were found intact. For fear lest Jeanne's remains should be taken and used for witchcraft or other evil practices,[2581] the Bailie had them thrown ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... throng of persons ran to the quay for refuge. The city of Lisbon was in profound darkness. The quay and all the people on it disappeared. If it and they went down—not a single corpse, not a shred of clothing, not a plank of the quay, nor so much as a splinter of it ever ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... that not one ends in the key in which it began. He seems to have had a passion for uncanny subjects, for the next work of his is a "Lament of Hagar," of thirteen movements in different keys, unconnected. After this again, a "Corpse Fantasia" to words of Schiller. This has seventeen movements, and is positively erratic in its changes of key. It is full of reminiscences of Haydn's "Creation" and other works. The musical stimulation of this boy was meager indeed. Not until he was thirteen years ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... with the crisis. Whatever the end brings us, it is approaching. I do not ask of you, my Amelie, those selfish, unreasonable things that lovers in danger of death exact from their mistresses; I do not ask you to bind your heart to the dead, your love to a corpse—" ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... profound silence. The relatives went forward first to take farewell of the corpse. Then followed the numerous guests, who had come to render the last homage to her who for so many years had been a participator in their frivolous amusements. After these followed the members of the Countess's household. The last of these was an old woman of the same ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... of the common cause? and he hath murdered him this last night by some of his fencers and ruffians, that he hath about him for his executioners upon soldiers. Answer, Blaesus, what is done with his body? The mortalest enemies do not deny burial. When I have performed my last duties to the corpse with kisses, with tears, command me to be slain besides him; so that these my fellows, for our good meaning and our true hearts to the legions, may have leave to bury us." With which speech he put the army into an infinite fury and uproar: whereas truth was he had no brother, neither ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... Then he takes the tiny corpse up in his arms, and holds it tight against his breast, and kisses the cold lips, and the cold cheeks, and ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... it, and the second wife went and struck it so that some of it went down her throat, and she fell dead. They had only to carry her home a dead corpse and bury her. ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... I mean?" repeated Father Damaso, again raising his voice, and facing the lieutenant. "I mean what I say. I mean that, when a priest turns away the corpse of a heretic from his cemetery, no one, not even the King himself, has the right to interfere, and still less to punish. And yet a ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... been flung. Beside it were a bow and several arrows. The latter were crimsoned to the notch, the feathers steeped in blood and clinging to the shafts. They had pierced the huge bodies of the animals, passing through and through. Each arrow had taken many lives! The old trapper rode up to the corpse, and leisurely dismounted ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... nodded, and the woman went out. La Tulita watched the proud head and erect carriage for a moment, then bound up the fallen jaw of the little corpse, crossed its hands and placed weights on the eyelids. She pushed the few pieces of furniture against the wall, striving to forget the one trouble that had come into her triumphant young life. But there was little to do, and after a time she knelt by the window and looked up at the dark forest ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... eyes under the moony spectacles received the danger signal with something of impatience. The learned Professor seemed to be beginning to think that the time had come in this particular business for every man to drag his own corpse out of the fight. The influence of Mr. Copping of Omaha had kept him in due control for awhile, but the time was clearly coming when the Professor would kick over the traces and give his friend from Omaha the good-bye. It was ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... furious leer on the face of the Master of Burials. So, after all his care, apprentices would never learn to make mistakes on his side. "O my grief, always on the side of the corpse, that can thank nobody for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... chopped the man's head off with that machine, and were standing by, looking at the corpse. I don't like to see such things, ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... cause he says it was making faces at him. The cistern door was open, and Hank fell in. Elmira was over to town, and I was scared. She had always told me not to fool around there none when I was a little kid, fur if I fell in there I'd be a corpse quicker'n scatt. ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... spirit would haunt them. To this spot they brought the rotted skins of his bed, and on them placed the body, fearful lest they touch it. By the body they placed the old man's lamp, stone dishes, membrane-drum and instruments of incantation. Over the corpse they piled the ice encrusted stones, and over these in turn weighty masses of frozen snow. Then they turned in silence and entered their respective shelters. Thenceforth, until a child should be born to whom it could be given, the name ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... that she might not bear it to sit there long amongst us. She rose up and smiled on us as ghastly as a corpse, and gave us leave, and went hurrying into the house. And right glad we were to be at rest from her. Yet as we ourselves durst not go far away from the house, lest some new thing might happen, neither could ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... bridge he heard bursts of cheering, with intermittent lulls and explosions as the battle rolled to and fro. War on so small a scale is startlingly like murder, and Jack shuddered as he went up to the corpse and turned it over. He returned to his boat, and in a fever of activity unloaded his forty bags and trundled them in batches into Meyerfeld's copra shed across the road. It took half a dozen trips of the little flat-car to accomplish this task single-handed, ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... movement she realized that beside the hold which her rescuers had of her, she was grasped by other arms; that she was in the embrace of a man apparently dead. In the dim light her dazed sense did not recognize him, and she struggled to release herself from the hold of this corpse. ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... washed overboard? She drew nearer, she stopped to look at the hat; "Ha! what was lying yonder?" She shuddered; yet it was nothing save a heap of grass and tangled seaweed flung across a long stone, but it looked like a corpse. Only tangled grass, and yet she was frightened at it. As she turned to walk away, much came into her mind that she had heard in her childhood: old superstitions of spectres by the sea-shore; of the ghosts of drowned but unburied people, whose corpses had been washed up on ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... as I'm concerned," said Foucarmont, "I've drunk every imaginable kind of wine in all the four quarters of the globe. Extraordinary liquors some of 'em, containing alcohol enough to kill a corpse! Well, and what d'you think? Why, it never hurt me a bit. I can't make myself drunk. I've tried ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... mouth, and from the wound itself, when again the remorseless knife descended, but only to become entangled in the sleeve of the Duc d'Epernon;[19] while with one thick and choking sob Henri IV fell back a corpse. ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... recalled the sensations of that night, the bitter cold, and clear starlight round her, and the tumult of fear, anger, and hope within. To-day what a difference! Then she was flying from her husband's tyranny, now she was going to meet his corpse, and to receive it with tenderness and honour. Her heart was too full for her to speak. Her companions guessed it, and left her ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... duel. As to the servant, he had deserted his master in London, and had never reappeared. So far as my poor judgment went, the question before me was not of delivering a self-accused murderer to justice (with no corpse to testify against him), but of restoring an insane man to the care of the persons who had ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... noisiest and bragged most of his bridal gift, she said, 'What will you give to Lady Boe?' The boor, who was half intoxicated from the brandy and ale he had swallowed, seized a whip, and answered, 'Three strokes of my waggon-whip.' But at the same moment he fell a corpse to the ground." ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... came and killed him with their base tools, and cast him into the Rhine. They say that the huge body floated on the water, surrounded by a great halo; and that when the men of the banks, seeing this, reverently fished it out, they found that the noble corpse was untouched by decay, and still surrounded by a light of glory. And thus, it seems to me, this Renaud, this rebel baron of whose reality we know nothing, has floated surrounded by a halo of poetry down the black flood of the Middle Ages (in which so much has sunk); and ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... heart? I know not. That sunset was a grave between us; and had the corpse risen and stared him in the face, I think he had run mad. In my solitary hours, I would imagine I spoke. Sometimes I would kneel before him entreating, and he would raise me up, as a certain king did another Esther. ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... despondent gloom of injured pride along the stormy sea, meet listener to his haughty sorrows, while in the distance, turning her tearful eyes back to her lord, Briseis went unwilling at the behest of the unwilling heralds. Again he was presented, mourning with frantic grief over the corpse of his beloved Patroclus—grief that called up his Nereid mother from the blue depths of her native element; and, in the last, chasing with unexampled speed the flying Hector, who, stunned and destined by the Gods to ruin, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... was a ghastly sight. The legs of the corpse were still fast inside the little hoop around the hole in the deck in which the man had sat. His arms hung down limp and dripping. His long black hair streamed with water. He might have been floating there head ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... knew, of course, that James Gilverthwaite himself had not foreseen this affair, nor thought that I should find a murdered man. And as I at last drew breath, and lifted myself up a little from staring at the corpse, a great many thoughts rushed into my head, and began to tumble about over each other. Was this the man Mr. Gilverthwaite meant me to meet? Would Mr. Gilverthwaite have been murdered, too, if he ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... understood the business best, and brought the art to perfection, but each of the twenty-six dynasties had its own method and reputation. The reason for preserving the body was the belief that the soul after purification would return to it in ages to come, and the corpse was made impervious to decay so as to receive the spirit again. Egypt was consequently a vast sepulchre: it has been estimated by eminent authorities that there were over seven hundred millions of the dead preserved in tombs ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... strange pallor. 'Harold!' he called,— 'Harold!' Receiving no answer, he stepped forward hastily and took the dead man by the shoulders. 'Harold!' The cold of the dead hand answered him, and Alfred said, 'He's dead.'... Then afraid of mistake, he shook the corpse and looked into the glassy eyes and the wide open mouth. 'By Jove! He is dead, there can be no doubt. Heart disease. He must have fallen just as he was opening the cigar-box. He was alive a quarter of an hour ago. Perhaps he's not dead a couple of minutes. Dead a couple of minutes or ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... insect kingdom were included in that obscene host I know not; my skin tingled from head to feet; I experienced a sensation as if a million venomous things already clung to me—unclean things bred in the malarial jungles of Burma, in the corpse-tainted mud of China's rivers, in the fever spots of that darkest East from which ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... no more. In five years their very names had been forgotten; in seven the name of the town was changed; in ten the town itself was transported bodily to the hillside, and the chimney of the Union Smelting Works by night flickered like a corpse-light over the site of Johnson's cabin, and by day poisoned the pure spices of the pines. Even the Mansion House was dismantled, and the Wingdam stage deserted the highway for a shorter cut by Quicksilver City. Only the ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... that he found himself in possession of a large sum of money. One day as he was walking on the outskirts of the city he saw a large number of dogs gathered round some object, barking at it and worrying it. Approaching them, he discovered that that which they were worrying was nothing less than the corpse of a man. Making inquiries, he found that the unfortunate wretch had died deeply in debt, and that his body had been thrown into the roadway to be eaten by the dogs. Iouenn was shocked to see such an indignity offered to the dead, and out of the kindness of his ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... mordioux! Thirty-two hours in the saddle, I ride day and night, I perform prodigies of speed, I arrive stiff as the corpse of a man who has been hung—and another arrives before me! Come, sire, I am a fool!—My ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the Decks, for neither of them would quit his Ship. Their Johanna Wives expressed a Concern they did not think them capable of, nay, a Wife of one of the wounded Men who died, stood some Time looking upon the Corpse as motionless as a Statue, then embracing it, without shedding a Tear, desired she might take it ashore to wash and bury it; and at the same Time, by an Interpreter, and with a little Mixture of European Language, she had, begg'd her late Husband's Friends would ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... or strong,—that is to say, for a populace attentive or careless; whether it is to be a background like the sky, for a procession of young men and maidens, because your populace revere life—or the shadow of the vault behind a corpse stained with drops of blackened blood, for a populace taught to worship Death. Every critical determination of rightness depends on the obedience to some ethic law, by the most rational and, therefore, simplest means. And you see how it depends most, of all things, on whether you are working ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... might never see the next session of parliament, else he might follow his dear friend the marquis of Argyle; and the Lord was pleased to grant his request: For he died in a most Christian manner at Edinburgh March 15th, 1662, and his corpse was carried home and ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... pressed close together and lumped into one mass, so as to make the best use of the scanty space in the crowded dwelling. Should you inspect the cell later, you will find, between the heaped cocoons on the wall, a little dried-up corpse. It is the larva that was such an object of care to the mother Mason. The efforts of the most laborious of lives have ended in this lamentable relic. It has happened to me just as often, when examining the secrets of the cell which is at once ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... July 14th he allowed it to have free vent, and thereupon wrote to the Directory, bitterly reproaching them for their weakness in face of the royalist plot: "I see that the Clichy Club means to march over my corpse to the destruction of the Republic." He ended the diatribe by his usual device, when he desired to remind the Government of his necessity to them, of offering his resignation, in case they refused to take ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail; And we started on at the streak of dawn, but God! he looked ghastly pale. He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee; And before nightfall a corpse was all that ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... the next night, when the pore dear creature was stabbed to the 'eart. I thought I should 'ave lost my 'ead, what with the crowds that gathered, an' the police in the 'ouse, an' the doctors a viewin' the departed corpse, an'—" ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... till he has brought the unfortunate person to the shore. And if the victim is already dead, the dog will lie down beside him and bark and whine till somebody comes, and if nobody comes he will stay by the corpse till he himself is dead. That is what such an animal always does. And now take mankind on the other hand. God forgive me for saying it, but it sometimes seems to me as though the brute creature ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... to keep. And she took the ring from the glove when it was given her, and she said, "Whence came this ring, for thou art not wont to have good fortune?" "I went," said he, "to the sea to seek for fish, and lo, I saw a corpse borne by the waves. And a fairer corpse than it did I never behold. And from its finger did I take this ring." "Oh man! does the sea permit its dead to wear jewels? Show me then this body." "Oh wife, him to whom this ring belonged ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... house, therefore, she has with great difficulty prevailed on my father to accompany her. No, no; it is as I have said, Maximilian,—there is no one in the world of whom I can ask help but yourself and my grandfather, who is little better than a corpse." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was at vespers, the king sent to have this young townsman, who had just finished the last scene of his tragic farce, taken down, and having dressed him in a white shirt, two officers got over the walls of La Godegrand's garden, and put the corpse into her bed, on the side nearest the street. Having done this they went away, and the king remained in the room with the balcony to it, playing with Beaupertuys, and awaiting an hour at which the old maid should go to bed. La Godegrand soon came back with a hop, skip, and jump, as the Tourainians ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... the lantern at her prow. Probably the darkness falling round her made those on board uneasy, and the pilot thought it necessary to throw light on the waves. This luminous point, a spark seen from afar, clung like a corpse light to the high and long black form. You would have said it was a shroud raised up and moving in the middle of the sea, under which some one wandered with a star in ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... The steep road down to the plain—called the Monkey's Ladder—was a river, for a thaw had set in. But Hazel did not mind that, though her boots let in the water, as she minded the atmosphere of gloom at old Samson's blind house. She would never, as Abel always did, 'view the corpse,' and this was always taken as an insult. So she waited in the road, half snow and half water, and thought with regret of Undern and its great fire of logs, and the green rich dress, and Reddin with his force and virility, loud voice, and strong teeth. He ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... (principally parsley,) which they take great care to keep alive. Numerous ceremonies are observed at their funerals; but the most interesting scene is the last. "Before the body is covered with earth, the relations approach in turn, and lifting the corpse in their arms, indulge in the full pleasure of their grief, while they call in vain on the friend they have lost, or curse the fate by which that loss has been occasioned." The Greeks, when occasion requires it, make use of flowers to express their thoughts. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... to us on the summer breeze. We watched him make a playful pass at a corpse which some one had propped in ghastly fashion against a door—and miss it—and go on whistling the same air—and then a corner hid ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... they be seen feeding voraciously upon the filthiest carrion of animals; and not unfrequently upon a human body in a state of putrefaction—the corpse of some deluded victim to the superstition of Juggernaut—which has been thrown into the so-styled sacred river, to be washed back on the beach, an object of contention between pariah dogs, vultures, and these gigantic ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... once what had occurred, and that escape was impossible. There was but one way for a hero to die. Setting fire to the temple, he killed himself, and before many minutes the body of the great warrior was a charred corpse in the ashes of ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... rough-looking miner who had been hailed by McLeod as Webster—"mayhap the knife o' the corpse is lyin' about." ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... the people gathered round the little girl's corpse. Among the company was an old man who was of those who liked to display their wisdom on every possible occasion. He declared that faith and love, nothing else, produced such miracles. No miracle-worker could help an unbeliever; but a man whom the people loved could easily ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... would like for breakfast. It would soon be ready; ask, man, ask for what you want, for though I am poor I shall take little credit to myself unless I can make you pick up a little and lose that look of a resuscitated corpse." ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the state of decay in which they were found, to ascertain whether they were European or Indians. Painful doubts, however, were raised, and the following day two other bodies were discovered, one of which was evidently the corpse of a ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... now prepared to dress the dead body, and, in the first place, stopped his nose with deer's hair and put on his gloves, seeming unwilling that his naked hand should come in contact with the corpse. I observed, in this occupation, his care that every article of dress should be as carefully placed as when his wife was living; and, having drawn the boots on the wrong legs, he pulled them off again and put them properly. This ceremony finished, the deceased was sewed up in a hammock, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... saw his pale lips move for some time. I turned away for a few moments; when I came back to him, he was no more! His jaw had fallen; and this being the first time that I had ever faced death, I looked upon the corpse with horror ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the Magi held the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water to be sacred, they feared to either bury, burn, sink, or expose to air the corrupting bodies of their deceased. Therefore, it was their practice to envelop the corpse in a coating of wax or bitumen, so as to hermetically seal it from immediate contact with either of the four sacred elements. Hence the idea of all the bodies of the Magi left at Baku being turned to stone, while only the true believer in Mohammed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... quill toothpick he was chewing to the other side of his mouth. "It ain't likely that anybody from the East will come with the corpse, I s'pose," he ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... forgetfulness of the cause of these transports. This continues so long as he can converse with Kent; becomes an almost complete vacancy; and is disturbed only to yield, as his eyes suddenly fall again on his child's corpse, to an agony which at once breaks his heart. And, finally, though he is killed by an agony of pain, the agony in which he actually dies is one not of pain but of ecstasy. Suddenly, with a cry represented in the oldest text by a ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... door of my home," he said, "they seized me and knocked me down. In front of my door the corpse of a German lay stretched out. The Germans said to me: 'You are going to pay for that to us.' A few moments later they gave me a bayonet cut in my leg. They sprinkled naphtha in my house and set it afire. My son was struck down in the street ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... dinner-table. He had paused, in his usual deliberate way, after the sentence, itself containing a figure beautiful in its appropriateness. "He smote the rock of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth." His eye fell upon a folded napkin; that suggested a corpse in its winding-sheet, and the figure was in ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... only answer was to lift the gun, and for an instant that seemed infinite Rachel waited to hear its explosion, and to see the grey-eyed, open-faced man she loved, who stood there like a rock, fall a shattered corpse. Then one of the Kaffirs, bolder than the rest, struck up the barrels with his arm, and not too soon, for whether or no he had meant to pull the trigger, ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... adversities which hurt instead of purifying the heart; for it is so intense a misery that it hardens & dulls the feelings. Dreadful as the time was when I pursued my father towards the ocean, & found their [sic] only his lifeless corpse; yet for my own sake I should prefer that to the watching one by one his senses fade; his pulse weaken—and sleeplessly as it were devour his life in gazing. To see life in his limbs & to know that soon life would no longer ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... justice to the scenery there. The guide-books struggle desperately with descriptions, adapted for summer reading, of rushing cascades, lichened rocks, waving pines, and snow-capped mountains; but in April these things are not there. The place is locked up—dead as a frozen corpse. The mountain torrent is a boss of palest emerald ice against the dazzle of the snow; the pine-stumps are capped and hooded with gigantic mushrooms of snow; the rocks are overlaid five feet deep; the rocks, the fallen trees, and ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... the thick moss of the cliff, his head propped in his hands, smiling, like the alien he was, upon the ice at sea and the untimely blue loom of the main-land and the vaguely threatening color of the sky. I could not begin, wishful as I might be for his wise counsel: but must lie, like a corpse, beyond all feeling, contemplating that same uneasy prospect. I wished, I recall, that I might utter my errand with him, and to this day wish that I had been able: but then could not, being overwhelmed by this new and convincing vision of all ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... to have dined there, and at three o'clock a note came from Ste(104) to desire him not to come. The late Lord Holland's servants, preserving their friendship for my thief whom I dismissed, were so good, when their Lord died, to send for him to sit up with the corpse, as the only piece of preferment which was then vacant in the family. But they afterwards promoted him to be outrider to the hearse. Alice told me of it, and said that it was a comfort and little relief to the poor man for the present; and Mr. More, the attorney, to whom I mentioned ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... every stump in the State, and come out of the contest with no flesh of mine in his claws—no blood of mine upon his beak." To which Henry instantly replied: "The eagle—the proud bird of freedom—never wars upon a corpse!" ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... your suppliant. Not even for a day will I remain under this roof, even if—which is doubtful—I should be suffered to do so. I put myself under the protection of your Holiness, until such time as I can set forth on my sad journey to Rome. At Surrentum I must abide until the corpse of my brother can be conveyed to its final resting place—as I ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... his tiresome story. Its perpetual hammering had soon its physical effect. A sick headache crept upon me, seized me, held me. I might look at the soldiers, sleeping now like dead men in the trench, I might look at the Red Cross flag lazily flapping in the breeze across the road, I might look at the corpse with the soiled marble feet under the tree, I might look at Trenchard and Marie Ivanovna silent and unhappy on the stretchers, on Anna Petrovna comfortably slumbering with an open mouth, I might listen to the distant batteries, to the sudden quick impatient chatter of ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... thought: 'If you had liked, she would be alive, she would smile, she would love you!' The American was beside the bed, while Florent Chapron, always faithful, was preparing the oil to put upon the face of the corpse, and sinister Lydia Maitland was watching the scene with eyes which made me shudder, reminding me of what I had divined at the time of my last conversation with Alba. If she does not undertake to play the part of a Nemesis and to tell all to the Countess, I am mistaken ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... his heroics were calmly and contemptuously ignored. "Tell my gaoler," said Napoleon to his valet Noverras, "that it is in his power to change his keys for the hatchet of the executioner, and that if he enters, it shall be over a corpse. Give me my pistols," and it is said by Montholon, to whom the Emperor was dictating at the time of the intrusion, that Sir Hudson heard this answer and retired confounded. The ultimatum dazed him, but he was forced to understand that beyond a certain limit, ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... might, and perhaps I might not; but I know you would make a long corpse, and I think you would dangle handsomely enough; you have long limbs, a long body, and half a mile of neck; upon my soul, one would think you were made for it. Yes, I dare say I should like to see you hanged—I am rather inclined to think I would—it's a subject, however, ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... figure for a moment, and bending again over Archie's corpse, stood gazing at the dead face, his hands folded across his girth—as one does when watching a body being slowly lowered into ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... with bounds and sidestarts, with caperings and curvetings, they led the almost bursting Beetle to the rabbit-lane, and from under a pile of stones drew forth the new-slain corpse of a cat. Then did Beetle see the inner meaning of what had gone before, and lifted up his voice in thanksgiving for that the world held warriors so wise as ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... has burned out, as much ground as it has thawed is dug, and then another fire is kindled. We had our own gruesome task. The body should be examined to make legally sure that death came from natural causes. With difficulty the clothes were stripped from the poor marble corpse, my companion made the examination, and as a notary public I swore him to a report for the nearest United States commissioner. This would furnish legal proof of death were it ever required; otherwise, since there is no provision for the travelling ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... said Duane, in the whole crowd's hearing, "he killed himself directly after killing Casey. A very rare act for an Indian, as you are doubtless aware. But if your manoeuvres with his corpse have taught you anything you did not know before, ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... at his reply. "Would it be possible to make marks on a corpse after that length of time?" ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... was in mental courage, was almost paralysed by the shock when he discovered that his mother's spirit had fled; and for some time he remained by the side of the bed with his eyes fixed upon the corpse, and his mind in a state of vacuity. Gradually he recovered himself; he rose, smoothed down the pillow, closed her eyelids, and then clasping his hands, the tears trickled down his manly cheeks. He impressed a solemn kiss upon the pale white ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... a boulder, and came upon a field of sleek purple lava sown all over with little lemon jets of silent smoke, which in their wan and melancholy glow might have been the corpse lights of those innumerable dead whose tombstone was the ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... middle of the floor her father stood, with his long white hair falling around his corpse-like face and his eyes bright with the excitement of delirium. The bed was moved toward the center of the room and in the farthest corner a board of the floor had been ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... dilated and grew till she seemed to rise up from the very ground and to tower above him like an enraged demon evoked from mist or flame. "You have done that once! To murder me twice is beyond your power!" And as she spoke her hands slipped from his like the hands of a corpse newly dead. "Never again can you hurl forth my anguished soul unprepared to the outer darkness of things invisible; never again! For I am free!—free with an immortal freedom—free to work out repentance or revenge,—even as Man is free to shape his course for good or evil. He chooses evil; ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... were drunk and singing, waving their bidons in the air, shouting at people along the road, crying out all sorts of things: "Get to the front!" "Into the trenches with them!" "Down with the war!" In others they sat quiet, faces corpse-like with dust. Through the gap in the trellis Martin stared at them, noting intelligent faces, beautiful faces, faces brutally gay, miserable faces like ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... doubtless have been killed if the grenadiers of the guard had not hastened to his assistance, and delivered him from their hands. It was the monks again. At length the Emperor, much incensed, gave orders that the convent of the Dominicans should be searched; and in a well was found the corpse of the aforesaid officer, in the midst of a considerable mass of bones, and the convent was immediately suppressed by his Majesty's orders; he even thought at one time of issuing the same rigorous orders against ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Politic be decently interred, to avoid putrescence? Liberals, Economists, Utilitarians enough I see marching with its bier, and chanting loud paeans, towards the funeral pile, where, amid wailings from some, and saturnalian revelries from the most, the venerable Corpse is to be burnt. Or, in plain words, that these men, Liberals, Utilitarians, or whatsoever they are called, will ultimately carry their point, and dissever and destroy most existing Institutions of ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... suspicion that the corpse was in the fosse. The green and tranquil waters had closed mysteriously over this victim of the night. . . . Desnoyers suspected that another sorrow was troubling the mother still more, but he kept modestly ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... for the removal of the corpse, and hurried away. The surgeon, who had changed countenance when he overheard the name in which the dying man had addressed De Mauleon, gazed silently after De Mauleon's retreating form, and then, also quitting the dead, rejoined the group he had quitted. Some of ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... old custom, which had come down, from the days of the cave men, that when anyone died, the people, friends and relatives sat up all night with the corpse. The custom arose, at first, with the idea of protection against wild beasts and later from insult by enemies. This was called a wake. The watchers wept and wailed at first, and then fell to eating and drinking. Sometimes, they got to be very lively. The young ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... carnal hearts of the men in ships. Jeremy declared, "Stuff! He'll wink at a sailor man with hardly a free day on shore. It wasn't bad at Calcutta, either, with an awning on the quarter-deck, watching the carriages and syces in the Maidan and maybe a corpse or two floating about the ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... rather Cromwell's) Injunctions (1536), several copies of which were supplied to the bishops and dignitaries of the diocese for the use of the clergy. Something similar was done in Ross, Wexford, and Waterford, except that in the latter place they hanged a friar in his habit, and ordered that his corpse should be left on the gallows "for a mirror to all others of his brethren to live truly." Next they visited Clonmel, in which town according to their own story they achieved their greatest success. ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... situation. The feature here was the fancy of old Hook for being the first man up every morning, his fixed routine as an angler, and his annoyance at being disturbed. The murderer strangled him in his own house after dinner on the night before, carried his corpse, with all his fishing tackle, across the stream in the dead of night, tied him to the tree, and left him there under the stars. It was a dead man who sat fishing there all day. Then the murderer went back to the house, or, rather, to the garage, and went off in his motor ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... the afternoon to get the fingerprint record and make a comparison. Dr. Winters called Mel at home to give him the report. There was no question. The fingerprints were identical. The corpse was that of ...
— The Memory of Mars • Raymond F. Jones
... me! My own health would be seriously endangered by touching a cholera corpse. Allow me to wish monsieur ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... course, a few cents or pence, it may be, but still 'adding up' in the long run—and when sorrow and death enter their humble dwellings they are easily imposed upon by cool scoundrels, who trade on their disinclination to quarrel about money when there is a corpse in the house. ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... last sombre thoughts gnawing at his heart, it was with the firm resolve to hide his death. There should be no inquest held over him, he would not be laid in earth; no one should see him in the hideous condition of the corpse that floats on the surface of the water. Before long he reached one of the slopes, common enough on all French highroads, and commonest of all between Angouleme and Poitiers. He saw the coach from Bordeaux to ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... to recover my strength, and then returned to Mr. Wills. I took back three crows; but found him lying dead in his gunyah, and the natives had been there and had taken away some of his clothes. I buried the corpse with sand, and remained some days; but finding that my stock of nardoo was running short, and being unable to gather it, I tracked the natives who had been to the camp by their foot-prints in the sand, and went some distance down the creek, shooting ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... hectic spot in the centre of each cheek, fatal evidence of the inward fever which was consuming him. His classical features, already pinched and shrunken, their paleness enhanced by contrast with his black whiskers, were fixed and rigid as those of a corpse; while his eyes, which burned with an unnatural brilliancy, glared on us with an expression of mingled hate and terror. He seemed partially to recognise me, for, after watching me for a moment, his lips working convulsively, as if striving to form articulate ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley |
