United States or Brazil ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The face was the classic type of the race, for be it known there were two physiognomies characteristic of Egypt. The forehead was broad, the brows long and delicately penciled, the eyes softly black, very long, the lids heavy enough to suggest serenity rather than languor. The nose was of good length, aquiline, the nostril thin and sharply chiseled.
I stationed myself in front of it, and remained there all the rest of the afternoon, gazing in, entranced. To watch their antics, their comings and goings, their labours and amusements, to study their shrewd, alert physiognomies, to wonder about their feelings, thoughts, intentions, to try to divine the meaning of their busy twittering language it was such keen, deep delight.
Any member of a body so small must be rapidly placed in a position of command, and it is almost startling to me, when I look round on the fresh physiognomies of those who are going out, and the not less fresh physiognomies of those who have returned, to think of the contrast between your position, and that, we will say, of some of your Oxford contemporaries who are lawyers, and who have to spend ever so many years in chambers in Lincoln's Inn or the Temple waiting for briefs that do not come.
"Then think of it no more, for Heaven's sake!" cried the sculptor. "There are a thousand better and more poignant methods of being miserable than that, if to be miserable is what you wish. Nay; I question whether a monk keeps himself up to the intellectual and spiritual height which misery implies. A monk I judge from their sensual physiognomies, which meet me at every turn is inevitably a beast!
But, were you a hundred times as pleasant to look upon as are these bureaucratic physiognomies, at least, while you have your mouth shut, your eyes are open, and you have some expression in your countenance.
I read physiognomies very correctly, and I never need to see people twice to know how far they can be relied on." After a pause she added, "I wonder if I dare tell you, my dear, of an idea that has occurred to me?" "Tell me, by all means. Your ideas sometimes amuse me." "Might it not turn out that the author of a certain note, and sender of a certain thing, was M. le Comte Abel Larinski?"
I fancied, too, an intelligence and keenness in some of the Yorkshire physiognomies, akin to those characteristics in my countrymen's faces. We passed an ancient, many-gabled inn, large, low, and comfortable, bearing the name of the Devonshire House, as does our own hotel, for the Duke of Devonshire is a great proprietor in these parts.
Give him a boar to stab, and a pigeon to shoot at, a battledore or an angling rod, and he is better contented than Solomon in all his glory, and will never discover, like that sapient sovereign, that all is vanity and vexation of spirit. His courtiers in general have rather a barbaric appearance, and differ little in the character of their physiognomies from the most savage nations.
Then there was what was called in the office the `old machine, a relic of Clayhanger's predecessor, and at least eighty years old. It was one of those machines whose worn physiognomies, full of character, show at once that they have a history. In construction it carried solidity to an absurd degree. Its pillars were like the piles of a pier.
When a man wakes up in the morning, his drowsy face grotesquely surmounted by the folds of a silk handkerchief which falls over his left temple like a police cap, he is certainly a laughable object, and it is difficult to recognize in him the glorious spouse, celebrated in the strophes of Rousseau; but, nevertheless, there is a certain gleam of life to illume the stupidity of a countenance half dead and if you artists wish to make fine sketches, you should travel on the stage-coach and, when the postilion wakes up the postmaster, just examine the physiognomies of the departmental clerks!
Word Of The Day