Quotes About Physiognomy

You're either sexy or you're not. I'm very self-conscious about my physiognomy.

The number of different aspects that the face of a man has assumed may be taken almost as a physiognomical measure of his ... genius.

If we want to make a statement about a man's nature on the basis of his physiognomy, we must take everything into account; it is in his distress that a man is tested, for then his nature is revealed.

As historian Dick de Mildt argues, "By converting the criminal actors of the story into demon-like lunatics, we distance ourselves from them in a radical fashion, assuming them to belong to a different species which only remotely resembles us in physiognomy.

Not anxious to come in contact with their fangs, I sat still; but, imagining they would scarcely understand tacit insults, I unfortunately indulged in winking and making faces at the trio, and some turn of my physiognomy so irritated madam, that she suddenly broke into a fury and leapt on my knees. 

Holmes was expressing his deepest values, ones impressed on him from an early age. He had been raised to believe he and his peers were part of a hereditary aristocracy. He had learned from his father that they were part of a special caste whose refined physiognomy set them apart, and whose elevated intellect was "congenital and hereditary.

It is nevertheless my considered opinion that an experience often changes in physiognomy according to the capacity a person has for experiencing.

O flowers, country, love, inaction, O fields! I am your devotee! I always note with satisfaction Onegin's difference from me, Lest somewhere a sarcastic reader Or publisher or such-like breeder Of complicated calumny Discerns my physiognomy And shamelessly repeats the fable That I have crudely versified Myself like Byron, bard of pride, As if we were no longer able To write a poem and discuss A subject not concerning us.

John Quincy Adams's bald head was a barometer of anger; the redder it got, the madder he was.)

I leave to others the decision as to the good or evil tendencies of my character, but such as it is it shines upon my countenance, and there it can easily be detected by any physiognomist.

O my Lucy! One branch of my vanity is intirely lopt off. I must pretend to some sort of skill in physiognomy! Never more will I, for this fellow's sake, presume to depend on my judgment of peoples hearts framed from their countenances.

A spoken language is a body, a living creature, whose physiognomy is verbal and whose visceral functions are linguistic. And this creature's home is the inarticulate as well as the articulate.

I'm a modern mountebank - I believe in Physiognomy - after all, we are in control of our face - it's the map of where we've been...

She had what the Victorians would call a finely shaped head.

In earlier times, when there was a rage for physiognomy, a Gall might have dissected the brains of such chess champions to determine whether there was a special convolution in their gray matter, a kind of chess muscle or chess bump more strongly marked than in the skulls of others. And how excited such a physiognomist would

What is love at first sight but a proof of the powerful but silent language of physiognomy?

nose and a straight brow

His physiognomy had an air of requesting your attention, which it rewarded or not, according to the charm you found in a blue eye of remarkable fixedness and a jaw of somewhat angular mold, which is supposed to bespeak resolution.

Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But there is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man's and every being's face. Physiognomy, like every other human science, is but a passing fable. If then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty languages, could not read the simplest peasant's face in its profounder and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale's brow? I but put that brow before you. Read it if you can.

Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But there is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man's and every being's face. Physiognomy, like every other human science, is but a passing fable.

There was a sharp 'phut', no louder than a bubble of air escaping from a tube of toothpaste. No other noise at all, and suddenly Le Chiffre had grown another eye, a third eye on a level with the other two, right where the thick nose started to jut out below the forehead. It was a small black eye, without eyelashes or eyebrows.

The physiognomy of a deserted highway expresses solitude to a degree that is not reached by mere dales or downs, and bespeaks a tomb-like stillness more emphatic than that of glades and pools. The contrast of what is with what might be, probably accounts for this.

As round as appil was his face.

In earthly life, a person can conceal whether evil or good is active in his soul. After death, this is no longer possible. The spirit form presents after death the physiognomical expression of what the person was on earth.