"Phrenologist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... organ of animal courage largely developed," said a phrenologist, who was examining Wellington's head. "You are right," replied the Iron Duke, "and but for my sense of duty I should have retreated in my first fight." That first fight, on an Indian field, was one of the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... If a phrenologist should undertake to "read" my head, he would undoubtedly find my love of home—if that is what it is called—a sharply defined welt. I know that I watched the lights of old Frisco slip behind me with as ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... expression, yet, when narrowly observed, putting on an air of vacancy, if not stupidity, that furnishes a perfect blind to the lurking meaning within. His nose is large, yet not disproportionately so; his head well made, though a phrenologist might object to a strong animal preponderance in the rear; his mouth bold and finely curved, is rigid however in its compression, and the lips, at times almost woven together, are largely indicative of ferocity; they are pale in color, and dingily so, yet his flushed cheek and brow bear striking ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... demonstrated by a reference to the Library Catalogue of the British Museum, where we find pamphlet after pamphlet, broadsheet after broadsheet, treating of the adventures, trial, and execution of this youthful jailbird. Even George Combe, the phrenologist, most famous in his day, sat in judgment upon the young man while he was in prison, and published a pamphlet which made a great impression upon prison reformers. Combe submitted his observations to Haggart in jail, and told the prisoner indeed that ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... Episcopal faith, but allowed me to keep the pew to myself for one or two years, till I went to college. In Dr. Furness's chapel I often heard Channing and all the famous Unitarian divines of the time preach, and very often saw Miss Harriet Martineau, Dr. Combe, the phrenologist, and many other distinguished persons. In other places at different times I met Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, to whom I was introduced, Daniel Webster, to whom I reverently bowed, receiving in return a gracious acknowledgment, Peter Duponceau, Morton, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... treated him with gentleness, though with a certain imperiousness; much as one might treat a savage mastiff which it was necessary to dominate without exasperating. He more than once spoke of Ivan as a living satire on physiognomists and phrenologists; and as I am a phrenologist, I ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... six or seven years old a quack phrenologist stopped at our house and Father kept him over night. In the morning he fingered the bumps of all of us to pay for his lodging and breakfast. When he came to my head I remember he grew enthusiastic. "This boy will be a rich man," he said. "His head beats 'em all." And ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... influences and debate with open doors—intercepts the very possibility of senatorial eloquence. [Footnote: The subject is amusingly illustrated by an anecdote of Goethe, recorded by himself in his autobiography. Some physiognomist, or phrenologist, had found out, in Goethe's structure of head, the sure promise of a great orator. "Strange infatuation of nature!" observes Goethe, on this assurance, "to endow me so richly and liberally for that particular destination which only the institutions of my country render impossible. Music ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... somnambule is, properly, only versed in pathology, any other skill she may discover being either a consequence of this knowledge, or the effects of observation and experience. The powers of a somnambule extend equally to the morale as well as to the physique. In this respect a phrenologist is a pure quack in comparison with a lady in a trance. The latter has no dependence on bumps and organs, but she looks right through you, at a glance, and pronounces ex cathedra, whether you are a rogue, or an honest ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... peculiarity of the Irish. In dress, although far from slovenly, he was by no means particular. Leigh Hunt, speaking of him in the prime of life, says,—"His forehead is bony and full of character, with 'bumps' of wit large and radiant enough to transport a phrenologist. His eyes are as dark and fine as you would wish to see under a set of vine-leaves; his mouth generous and good-humored, with dimples." He adds,—"He was lively, polite, bustling, full of amenities and acquiescences, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... nature. Yes, I know there were, people who agreed that it might be possible by preaching to lessen the horrors of the social evil while yet the land contained millions of women in desperate need, who had no other means of getting bread save by catering to the desires of men. I am a bit of a phrenologist, and have often wished for the chance of examining the cranial developments of a nineteenth-century philanthropist who honestly believed this, if indeed any of them ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... at work about the farm, boiling sap in the spring woods, driving the cows to pasture, or hoeing corn,—dreams of great wealth and splendor, of dress and equipage,—were also significant, but not prophetic. Probably what started these golden dreams was an itinerant quack phrenologist who passed the night at our house when I was a lad of eight or nine. He examined the heads of all of us; when he struck mine, he grew enthusiastic. "This is the head for you," he said; "this boy is going to be rich, very rich"; and much more to that effect. ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... shrubberies is now a potatoe field! The present proprietor, Mr. Young, is a wholesale tea-dealer. Even the bones of the poet, it is said, have been disturbed. The skull of Pope, according to William Howitt, is now in the private collection of a phrenologist! The manner in which it was obtained, he says, is this:—On some occasion of alteration in the church at Twickenham, or burial of some one in the same spot, the coffin of Pope was disinterred, and opened to see the state of the remains. By a bribe of L50 to the Sexton, ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... occurrence, Squire Hardy went to hear an itinerant phrenologist who lectured in the village. In the progress of his discourse, the lecturer, for purposes of illustration, introduced the skulls of several animals, mapped off in the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... being cleaned, is neither black nor fair, but a darkish dusk, the most common of any other colour. Soon afterwards we found the skull, but it was not complete. A spade had damaged it, and one of the temple quarters was wanting. I am no phrenologist, not knowing one organ from another, but I thought the skull of that wretched man no study. If it was particular for anything, it was for a smooth, almost perfect rotundity, with only a little protuberance above ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... Felicity. Her brother has never ceased to be among the first in her dear regard. He possessed the merriest black eyes: his mother's eyes, as I, a boy, remember them. No matter how immobile his features might be, these eyes of his were ever ready for laughter. His nose was clean-cut and shapely. A phrenologist would have said that his head did not lack the bump of caution; but I know better. At present he wore a beard; so this is as large an inventory of his personal attractions as I am able to give. When he shaves off his beard, I shall be pleased to add further particulars. I often marvel that ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... by a long haired phrenologist in the West who has, during his life, felt of over a hundred thousand heads. A comparison of a large number of charts given in these cases shows that so far no head examined would indicate anything less than a member of the lower house of ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... surface usually presents a slight, bony elevation or ridge (see the engraving of the skull, Chapter III.), and the lambdoid suture on the back of the head is frequently rough. A superficial practical phrenologist (of great pretensions) at Cincinnati, in examining the head of a gentleman of mild character, found the lambdoid suture quite rough, and gave him a terrifically pugnacious character, not knowing enough to distinguish between osseous and cerebral development. The occipital knob ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... is not jealousy, for I love to see her show her talents. It is not selfishness; I love her too much to be selfish to her. What is it then? "Simply lack of self-esteem" I would say if there was no phrenologist near to correct me, and point out that well-developed hump at the extreme southern and heavenward portion of my Morgan head. Self-esteem or not, Mr. Phrenologist, the result is, that Miriam is by far the best performer in Baton Rouge, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... estimating a wife or husband, and their fitness for each other, or endeavoring to understand myself and to select the right occupation, there is no advice of which I so often feel the need as that of a thoroughly able, scientific, experienced and Christian phrenologist." ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... of Parliament, wrote nine volumes of such description. His work is a storehouse of fact, useful to this day to the American historical student[18]. George Combe, philosopher and phrenologist, studied especially social institutions[19]. Joseph Sturge, philanthropist and abolitionist, made a tour, under the guidance of the poet Whittier, through the Northern and Eastern States[20]. Featherstonaugh, ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... great phrenologist, or, as some call him, Mr. Comb—perhaps on account of his being so busy about the head—has given it as his opinion, that in less than a hundred years public affairs will be (in America at least) ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... soothingly of making a discount on the bill; and I, looking at it in a strictly diplomatic light, gradually permitted myself to grow calmer. He went further, and did the handsome thing by me—as if it wasn't enough to cut under his price! A phrenologist by profession, so he said, he had resorted to barbering simply for amusement, and under the circumstances he would give me a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 29, October 15, 1870 • Various
... which looked as if they had been picked up from the rubbish-heap. There were pedlars' trays fitted with all and every sort of ware, a faro-table, a placard setting forth the fact that the renowned Professor Somebody or Other was a most remarkable phrenologist and worthy of a visit. In fact there was no saying what there was not there. Everything that was calculated to be useful to him in his profession was to be found ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... century, were horizontal grands similarly elevated. The real inventor of the upright piano, in its modern and useful form, was that remarkable Englishman, John Isaac Hawkins, the inventor of ever-pointed pencils; a civil engineer, poet, preacher, and phrenologist. While living at Border Town, New Jersey, U. S. A., Hawkins invented the cottage piano—portable grand, he called it—and his father, Isaac Hawkins, to whom, in Grove's "Dictionary," I have attributed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... public library on the top story of a tall building, and on my way home at night I often stop to read a bit before its windows. When my eyes leave my book and wander to the view of the roofs, I fancy that the giant hands of a phrenologist are feeling the buildings which are the bumps of the city. And listening, I seem to hear his dictum "Vanity"; for below is the market of fashion. The world has sunk to ankle height. I sit on the shoulders ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... the green, copper; the yellow, chrome yellow and vermilion—strong poisons all; while many other kinds of wax are equally poisonous, and, therefore dangerous. There are very many persons who are aware of the intense sufferings, for very many years past, of Mr. W. Bally, phrenologist and modeller in wax, in which latter branch he has laboured for 24 or 25 years, three of them as teacher of the art, at the Manchester Mechanics' Institution. Mr. Bally has been at times completely paralysed, and is now and has long been very nearly ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey
... cultured physician Geheimerath von Ammon was instructive and fascinating; while Rudolf von Reibisch, the most intimate friend of the family, whose great talents would have rendered him capable of really grand achievements in various departments of art, examined our skulls as a phrenologist or read aloud his last drama. Here, too, I met Major Serre, the bold projector of the great lottery whose brilliant success called into being and insured the prosperity of the Schiller Institute, the source of so ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... under any circumstances. He is going to a great temperance convention at Cincinnati; along with a doctor of whom I saw something at Pittsburgh. The doctor, in addition to being everything that the New Englander is, is a phrenologist besides. I dodge them about the boat. Whenever I appear on deck, I see them bearing down upon me—and fly. The New Englander was very anxious last night that he and I should 'form a magnetic chain,' and magnetize the doctor, for the benefit of all incredulous passengers; but ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... profession, is natural; it would be the same everywhere; this feeling, however, in the United States is usually shewn by an attack upon the character of the party, so as to influence the public against him. There was an American practising phrenology, when a phrenologist arrived from England. As this opposition was not agreeable, the American immediately circulated a report that the English phrenologist had asserted that he had examined the skulls of many Americans, and that he had never fallen in with such thick-headed ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... The day after the Lord Advocate's attack upon him in the matter of the Glasgow cotton-spinners, he received Wakley, and as he returned (through my room) from the interview, he said, 'Do you know who that was? It was Wakley. He would have felt your head if he had stopped, for he is a great phrenologist. He examined all the heads of the Glasgow men, and he said they had none of them the organ of destructiveness except one.' 'Oh,' said I, 'then that man would have committed murder.' 'No,' said he, 'for the organ of benevolence ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... support. The outset and remembrance are there—there the arms that lifted him first, and braced him best—there he returns after all his goings and comings. The sailor and traveler—the anatomist, chemist, astronomer, geologist, phrenologist, spiritualist, mathematician, historian, and lexicographer, are not poets, but they are the lawgivers of poets, and their construction underlies the structure of every perfect poem. No matter what rises or is ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman |
