"Death's-head" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... now living can conceive how mossy and dried-up and gnarled and black and unlike a human being such an old plain-dweller could be. The skin was so drawn over brow and cheeks, that he looked almost like a death's-head, and one saw only by a faint gleam in the hollows of the eye sockets that he was alive. And the dried-up muscles of the body gave it no roundness, and the upstretched, naked arms consisted only of shapeless ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... contemplating it for some minutes, "this is a strange scarabaeus, I must confess; new to me; never saw anything like it before—unless it was a skull, or a death's-head—which it more nearly resembles than anything else that has ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... This death's-head was given me for that of the prettiest woman in all Venice. She was what you are, and you will be ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... ghastly failure, and the smile but a death's-head grin. He placed Lady Helen in the carriage—Mr. Carlyon assisted the nurse and little Mildred. Then Sir Jasper gave the order, "Home," and the stately carriage of the Kingslands, with its emblazoned ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... terror we now observed that the flag at the schooner's peak was black, with a Death's-head and cross-bones upon it. As we gazed at each other in blank amazement, the word "pirate" escaped ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... wanting which could work on his mind. His prison was built between the trenches of the principal rampart, and was of course very dark. It was likewise very damp, and, to crown all, the name of "Trenck" had been printed in red bricks on the wall, above a tomb whose place was indicated by a death's-head. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Herr Hauptmann," he deferred, and the prisoner was thrust down the bank. The old mother, her head averted, moaned softly. The old man, upholding her, smiled yet his death's-head smile. ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... of the toad, In their caves that make abode; Earthy Dun that pants for breath, With her swelled sides full of death; By the crested adders' pride, That along the clifts do glide; By thy visage fierce and black; By the death's-head on thy back; By the twisted serpents placed For a girdle round thy waist; By the hearts of gold that deck Thy breast, thy shoulders, and thy neck: From thy sleepy mansion rise, And open thy unwilling eyes, While ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... mistress, "he will never have done with his bath." The attendant goes, and utters a cry of fright, of horror: "Oh, madame, he is dead! But it is not the same man." They go, but nobody can recognise the fine gentleman who entered a short time ago, in this death's-head puppet, the head leaning on the edge of the bath, a face where the blood mingles with paint and powder, all the limbs lying in the supreme lassitude of a part played to the end—to the death of the actor. Two cuts of ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... valuable. There was one moth in particular, with spread wings, on the upper side of the thorax of which was traced in white the semblance of a human skull. Nan was almost sure that this must be the famous death's-head moth she had read about in school; but she was not confident enough to say anything to old Toby Vanderwiller. A few specimens of this rare insect have been found in the swamps of America, although it was originally supposed to be an ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... Stella, and selected a blue cup with dragons on it. "At any rate," she continued, "it is very disagreeable of you to come here and prate like a death's-head ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... quality in the hard insolence which made Francis go very red and Augus very white. Angus stared like a death's-head behind his monocle, with ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... curious trinkets, to which certain motions can be given at will by means of electricity, have recently been devised by an ingenious Frenchman, M. Trouve. Two of these are scarf pins; one has a death's-head, gold or enamel, with diamond eyes and lower articulated jaw; the other has a rabbit seated upright on a box with a little bell before it, to be struck with two rods held in the animal's fore-paws. An invisible wire connects these objects with a small hermetically closed battery, the ebonite ...
— Harper's Young People, December 2, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... extraordinary languorous beauty of the tropical vegetation; one smelt it, that African night, with its enormous moon beyond the mists. There was death on every side of him, in every breath he drew. He found what he went for, the antidote to the bite of the death's-head spider. Henceforth life in those latitudes will be robbed of one of ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... shuddered with horror at the savage slaughter at Magdeburg, the triumphant Tilly marched upon and captured the city of Leipsic. Here he fixed his headquarters in the house of a grave-digger, where he grew pale at seeing the death's-head and cross-bones with which the owner had decorated his walls. These significant emblems may have had something to do with the unusual mildness with which he treated the citizens of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... Are you there, my old death's-head on a mop-stick?" said Turpin, with a laugh. "Ain't we merry mumpers, eh? Keeping it up in style. Sit down, old ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... said Aurelius, "therefore will I turn away my eyes from vanity: renounce: withdraw myself alike from all affections." He seemed tacitly to claim as a sort of personal dignity, that he was very familiarly versed in this view of things, and could discern a death's-head everywhere. Now and again Marius was reminded of the saying that "with the Stoics all people are the vulgar save themselves;" and at times the orator seemed to have forgotten his audience, and to be ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... a small Death's-head, carved in ivory with extraordinary power and anatomical skill. Each jaw was furnished with a row of diamonds, and two rubies flashed from the deep eye-sockets. On the forehead was engraved, Ruit Hora; and ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio |
