"Death's head" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nothing but hideous. It could not have been termed a smile, and what emotion it registered the Englishman was at a loss to guess. No expression whatever altered the steady gaze of those large, round eyes; there was no color upon the pasty, sunken cheeks. A death's head grimaced as though a man long dead raised his parchment-covered skull from ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Mr. Sabin said, "or talk of something more cheerful. You depress me, Felix. Let Duson bring us wine. You look like a death's head." ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... land-crab, which is found in various parts of India; one kind, that swarms in the Deccan, commits great ravages in the rice-fields. The two next tables are covered with Chinese crabs, square-bodied crabs; those crabs with fine shells known as porcelain crabs, and the curious death's head crab, which seems to build a kind of nest of sponge or shells. But upon the next table (20) the visitor will find the most remarkable of the crabs, together with an astonishing lobster. This crab is known as the hermit crab. The visitor ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... cavalry were the famous Brunswick Death's Head Hussars and their companions on many bloody fields, the Zeiten Hussars. But where was the glorious garb of the German troops, the cherry-colored uniforms of the horsemen and the blue of the infantry? ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... exhibiting "memorials of feelings which must ever command respect and admiration." Horace Walpole had in the Strawberry Hill collection, "one of the only seven mourning rings given at the burial of Charles I. It has the king's head in miniature behind a death's head; between the letters C. R. the motto, ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... out-of-date. The mantle of estate refers of course to his rank as Chancellor, as did also the bag or purse that used to hang on the wall above. The inscriptions were on the front of the tomb, whence came also the death's head panels to be seen with the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... call a heretic, reverence that holy symbol," answered Kenyon. "What I am most inclined to murmur at is this death's head. I could laugh, moreover, in its ugly face! It is absurdly monstrous, my dear friend, thus to fling the dead weight of our mortality upon our immortal hopes. While we live on earth, 't is true, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... there is the next illustration, still like a mask rather than a death's head, but making its purpose clear by the two bones, such as are nearly always employed in ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... mercilessly at his "little grey men who sit munching hearts," was bound to admit: "A man who does not contribute his quota of grim story, now-a-days, seems hardly to be free of the republic of letters." Accordingly, so that he too might wear a death's head as part of his insignia, he included in The Indicator (1819-21) a supernatural story, entitled A Tale for a Chimney Corner. Scorning to "measure talents with a leg of veal or a German sausage," ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... Pawkins, whose health had been bad for some time, published some work upon the "mesoblast" of the Death's Head Moth. What the mesoblast of the Death's Head Moth may be, does not matter a rap in this story. But the work was far below his usual standard, and gave Hapley an opening he had coveted for years. He must have worked night and day to make the ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... unholy brood which force has caused to develop. The winds of freedom are tainted by sulphurous exhalations. In all our merry-making we find with Ibsen that "there is a corpse on board." The mask is falling only to show the Death's head there concealed. Aristocracy, Democracy, Anarchy, Empire, the history of politics, is the eternal round ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan
... "death's heads," "cross bones," and "skeletons." The throne is in the East, elevated by seven steps. On the throne is the chair of state, lined with black satin, flamed with red. Before the chair is a table covered with black satin, strewed with tears. On this cloth, in front, is a "death's head" and "cross bones;" over the "death's head" is the letter I; and under the "cross bones" is the letter M. On the table is placed a naked sword, a buckler, a sceptre, a balance, and a book containing the statutes of the order. In the West is placed ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... ensuing engagement, in which they fortunately had the advantage of the weather-gage. Observing this, the pirates put themselves into a fighting posture, struck their red flag, and hoisted a black one, on which was a death's head in the centre, surmounted by a powder horn, and two cross bones underneath. They likewise formed the line, and commenced a smart action. The pirates fought very briskly for some time, as believing the Dutch ships to be merchantmen; but after ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... saving their fringed and ornamented leggings, the men rode for the most part naked, and with their breasts and arms painted in a coarse and extravagant style. Some had a rude representation of a Death's head and bones in the centre of the chest; others were streaked and spotted; while again others wore a livery of a curiously mottled fashion, that seemed to resemble the markings of a tortoise, but was intended to imitate the changing aspect of ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... the folded legs of the man at the tiller, who, roused by the commotion in the boat, was sitting up, silent, rigid, and very much like a corpse. His eyes were but two black patches, and his teeth glistened with a death's head grin between his retracted lips, no thicker than blackish ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... "I won't be a death's head at the feast," she told herself savagely. "I suppose I'm awfully wicked, but now that they are all so happy, it makes me feel dreadfully lonesome. I'm glad from my very heart for them, of course. But, oh, Paul! Oh, little Dodo! If you will only come back to Mollie, she will never ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... is to bear a trouble that comes upon a trouble than one that intrudes a death's head into the midst of a merry-making! Mrs Forbes scarcely felt it a trouble when she received a note from Robert Bruce informing her that, as he was on the point of removing to another place which offered great ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... connote "a skull". The name may have been applied with reference to topographical features, as we speak of the brow of a hill; or, if the spot was the usual place of execution, it may have been so called as expressive of death, just as we call a skull a death's head. It is probable that the bodies of executed convicts were buried near the place of death; and if Golgotha or Calvary was the appointed site for execution, the exposure of skulls and other human bones through the ravages of beasts and by other means, would ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... like it, and how many would not. I do not want to bore them with sermons, especially seeing I have always said that no sermons ought to be printed; for in print they are but what the old alchymists would have called a caput mortuum, or death's head, namely, a lifeless lump of residuum at the bottom of the crucible; for they have no longer the living human utterance which gives all the power on the minds of the hearers. But I have not, either in this or in my preceding ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald |
