"Headless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... arrows, bead-work, trappings, &c., belonging to the deceased; quantities of food, consisting of dried fish, roots, herbs, &c., were placed with the body also. The grave was then filled up, covering the headless body; then a bundle of fagots was brought and placed on the grave by the different members of the tribe, and on these fagots the head was placed, the pile fired, and the head consumed to ashes; after this was done, the female relatives ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... intitled Sir Gawayne and the Grene Kny[gh]t follows, fol. 91. Prefixed is an illumination of a headless knight on horseback, carrying his head by its hair in his right hand, and looking benignly at an odd-eyed bill-man before him; while from a raised structure above, a king armed with a knife, his queen, an attendant ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... humanitarianism, in its origin utterly destitute of theology, has developed into a colossal system of demonology, dogmatics, eschatology, myths and legends, with a pantheon more populous than that of old Rome. Many of the images by the wayside are headless, cloven by frost, overturned by earthquakes, and so pitted by time as to resemble petrified smallpox patients rather than divinities. Nature neither respects dogma nor worships the gods made by men, and the moss and the lichens ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... church-yard, he couldn't help being curious and interfering, and then the ghosts would go somewhere where it was quieter. But we just let them come and go and don't make any fuss, and in consequence Fairfield is the ghostiest place in all England. Why, I've seen a headless man sitting on the edge of the well in broad daylight, and the children playing about his feet as if he were their father. Take my word for it, spirits know when they are well off as much as ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... there is to be a death in the family. And the ghost of a little murdered child haunts the corner up by Idlewild; it creeps up behind you and lays its cold fingers on your hand—so. Oh, Marilla, it gives me a shudder to think of it. And there's a headless man stalks up and down the path and skeletons glower at you between the boughs. Oh, Marilla, I wouldn't go through the Haunted Wood after dark now for anything. I'd be sure that white things would reach out from behind the ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and wounded the sentry, but was overpowered and sent to Salim Garh in the Emperor's litter. The latter meanwhile was seized by a savage Uzbek, named Balabash, who had been stationed within, and who sawed off the defenceless monarch's head with a knife. Then stripping off the rich robe he cast the headless trunk out of the window, where it lay for some hours upon the sands until the Kashmirian ordered its removal. The date of this tragic event is between the 10th and 30th of November, 1759 (the latter being the day given by Dowson, vol. viii. p. 243). The late Minister, ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... rose in the air, shining like fire in the sunlight; Griffo's sword fell like a falling star for swiftness, and struck Simone between the head and the shoulder, slicing into the flesh as a knife slices into an apple. It was a well-nigh headless trunk that rolled from the saddle fountaining its blood. As the dead giant fell, Griffo let his sword drop clanging on the stones and caught hold of Vittoria, and, wrenching her from the relaxing fingers, clasped her ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Ealhstan, when Osric rode up to him, bearing still a headless spear. "Let them bide till Eanulf comes. None can ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... fortune of winning her, has a right to receive her as I confide her to you; but if anyone of you should dare to offend her in the slightest degree, even by a look or a smile, remember this and take example from it," continued the Decurio, pointing with his sword to the headless body of the young man. "And now ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... his mother's side he was descended from noble old families, famous in the political and literary history of England. From childhood he lived, like Blake, in a world of fancy, so real that certain imaginary dragons and headless creatures of the neighboring wood kept him and his sisters in a state of fearful expectancy. He learned rapidly, absorbed the classics as if by intuition, and, dissatisfied with ordinary processes of learning, seems to have sought, like Faustus, the acquaintance of spirits, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... altar from Reims. He presses a bag, from which grain escapes, and on it an ox and stag are feeding. A rat is represented on the pediment above, and on either side stand Apollo and Mercury.[90] On the altar of Saintes is a squatting but headless god with torque and purse. Beside him is a goddess with a cornucopia, and a smaller divinity with a cornucopia and an apple. A similar squatting figure, supported by male and female deities, is represented on ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... Flashing light through all the heaven; The Great Serpent, the Kenabeek, With his bloody crest erected, Creeping, looking into heaven; In the sky the sun, that listens, And the moon eclipsed and dying; Owl and eagle, crane and hen-hawk, And the cormorant, bird of magic; Headless men, that walk the heavens, Bodies lying pierced with arrows, Bloody hands of death uplifted, Flags on graves, and great war-captains Grasping both the earth and heaven! Such as these the shapes ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... monsters. There they sat, for an instant, sleepily rubbing their eyes with their brazen fingers, while all the snakes on their heads reared themselves on end with surprise, and with venomous malice against they knew not what. But when the Gorgons saw the scaly carcass of Medusa, headless, and her golden wings all ruffled, and half spread out on the sand, it was really awful to hear what yells and screeches they set up. And then the snakes! They sent forth a hundred-fold hiss, with one consent, and Medusa's snakes answered them out ...
— The Gorgon's Head - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... right angles to the wall, at intervals of three or four feet, something like forty paillasses. On each, with half a dozen exceptions (where the occupants had not yet finished their coffee or were on duty for the corvee) lay the headless body of a man smothered in its ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... The headless bodies of the dead were left where they had fallen. The long Russian winter was just beginning, and for five months they lay unburied, a frightful spectacle for the eyes of ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... had a taste for the supernatural, there was ample opportunity for its gratification in this haven of tradition. He may have seen the headless man who was accustomed to walk down Green Street to Market Space, with what intention was never divulged. Every old house had its ghost, handed down through the generations, as necessary a piece of furniture as the tester-bed or the sideboard. Perhaps not all of these mysterious visitants were ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... could not open; a voice that you know crying after you from God knows where; a mass of long, fair hair visible here, a foot there, three fingers of a hand over there; the snow bright-red under foot; charred limbs and headless trunks tossed about; strong men carrying covered things by you, at sight of which other strong men have fainted; the little yellow jet that flared up, and died in smoke, and flared again, leaped out, licked the cotton-bales, tasted the oiled machinery, ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... to approach, and found the poet sunk in profound, but not silent, slumber. From such absurdities as these, or of the enthusiast who went into raptures about the head of the Elgin Ilissos (which is unfortunately a headless trunk), we are happily spared in the pages of Smollett. In him complete absence of gush is accompanied by an independent judgement, for which it may quite safely be claimed that good taste is in the ascendant in the ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,—like a tantalizing will-o'-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host. The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Ku-Klux Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes, left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... cover the table an inch or two thick. The feasters shove money, usually small pieces of silver, beneath these figures. They then kill turkeys and hens and chickens, and sprinkle the blood from the headless bodies over the munecos. This they do that Montezuma may be propitiated, and give them what they desire; the money and the munecos, sprinkled with blood, are left upon the table after the feast, the former ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... of the nineteenth Century by the actual commission of a similar deed, struck horror to the hearts of the people, and they were worked up to a pitch that had never been witnessed in this country before. Telephones and telegraph were called into service, and the finding of the headless body of a young and doubtless beautiful woman in a sequestered spot near Fort Thomas, was flashed around the world. So shocked was the country over this ghastly find that the metropolitan papers from one end of this country to the other informed their ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... strength Bradley strained at his bonds, his fascinated gaze still glued upon the shapeless bundle. No longer was there any doubt that it moved—he saw it rise in the center several inches and then creep closer to him. It sank and arose again—a headless, hideous, monstrous thing of menace. Its very silence rendered it ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... washbowl, her nerves were not strong enough. She recoiled in dismay, also, from the sight of two yellow, paper-covered books on the table, flaunting shamelessly the titles: "Jack; the Pirate of Red Island," and "Haunted by a Headless Ghost." ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... that some sculptures, even recognized masterpieces, do not please my hand. When I touch what there is of the Winged Victory, it reminds me at first of a headless, limbless dream that flies towards me in an unrestful sleep. The garments of the Victory thrust stiffly out behind, and do not resemble garments that I have felt flying, fluttering, folding, spreading in the wind. But imagination fulfils these imperfections, ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... I, "you remember in Germany how disappointed we were at not finding a ghost in that old castle, which was said to be haunted by a headless apparition? Well, I have heard of a house in London which, I have reason to hope, is decidedly haunted. I mean to sleep there to-night. From what I hear, there is no doubt that something will allow itself to be seen or to be heard,—something, ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... shuddering awe And horror, in the last defile they saw Ten pendent heads, from which the gore still run, All gashed, and grim, and blackening in the sun. These were the gallant troop that passed before, The Indians' vast encampment to explore, Led by Del Oro, now with many a wound Pierced, and a headless trunk upon the ground. The horses startled, as they tramped in blood; 160 The troops a moment half-recoiling stood. But boots not now to pause, or to retire; Valdivia's eye flashed with indignant fire: Follow! he cried, brave comrades, to the hill! And instant shouts the pealing ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... time the greatest unanimity reigned in the little headless community. Children, healthy and thriving, tenderly cared for by the inhabitants, were found in large numbers. A good word to them was sufficient to pave the way for a friendly reception in the tent. The women ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... thy soldiery perishing on either side, didst bewail, amongst thy spectacles of domestic woe, the luminaries of thy senate extinguished, the heads of thy consuls fixed upon a halberd, weeping for ages over thy self- slaughtered Catos, thy headless Ciceros (truncosque Cicerones), and unburied Pompeys;—to whom the party madness of thy own children had wrought in every age heavier woe than the Carthaginian thundering at thy gates, or the Gaul admitted within thy walls; ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... snuff-box as I glanced at him, and was offering it with a bow and a flourish to Lord Grey, as unconcernedly as though he were back once more in his London coffee-house. Buyse leaned upon his long broadsword, and looked gloomily at a headless trunk in front of him, which I recognised from the dress as being that of the preacher. As to Reuben, he was unhurt himself, but in sore distress over my own trifling scar, though I assured the faithful lad that it was ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... you up to, Hilda?" exclaimed Mrs. Bale, as she entered the nursery where her six-year-old daughter was stuffing broken toys, headless dolls, ragged clothes and general debris ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... Princess Tara in the land of headless men, creatures with the power of detaching their heads from their bodies and replacing them ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... must suspend our belief until the event determines what it should be. Shall I make this more plain to you? Consider upon what frivolous things Camacha declared our restoration to depend, and that what seems a prophecy to you is nothing but a fable, or one of those old woman's tales, such as the headless horse, and the wand of virtues, which are told by the fireside in the long winter nights; for were it anything else it would already have been accomplished, unless, indeed, it is to be taken in what I have heard called an allegorical sense: that is to say, a sense which is not ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... toes, and you see it resents the molestation in a very decided manner. Why does it so struggle to get away when I pinch its toes? Doubtless, you will say, because it feels the pinch and would rather not have it repeated. I now behead the animal with the aid of a sharp chisel. . . . The headless trunk lies as though it were dead. The spinal cord seems to be suffering from shock. Probably, however, it will soon recover from this. . . . Observe that the animal has now spontaneously drawn up its legs and arms, and it is sitting with its neck erect just as if it had not lost ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Constantine? It lasted over twelve days of fearful weather, during which no discomfort was spared us. Torrents of rain, rivers in flood, snowfalls, men dying of cold, stragglers whose shouts for help only brought us to them to find them lying headless on the ground, and last of all, a terrible outbreak of cholera, which one of the regiments in the column brought with it from France. And we had the mental agony to boot of being kept ever so long at the foot of a mountain, the Raz el Akbah, which ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... third day. The Normans were drinking in the hall of Bourne, casting lots among themselves who should espouse the fair Alftruda, who sat weeping within over the headless corpse; when in the afternoon a servant came in, and told them how a barge full of monks had come to the shore, and that they seemed to be monks from Crowland. Ivo Taillebois bade drive them back again into the barge with whips. But Hugh of Evermue ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... I spent an hour very pleasantly in the National Academy, in the same building as the National Gallery. Many of the paintings here are of a fine order. Oliver Cromwell looking upon the headless corpse of King Charles I., appeared to draw the greatest number of spectators. A scene from "As You Like it," was one of the best executed pieces we saw. This was "Rosalind, Celia, and Orlando." The artist ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... the places they so largely occupy now, and hundreds of vociferous busy-bodies will multiply. You have no choice; either you must help furnish this race from within its own ranks with thoughtful men of trained leadership, or you must suffer the evil consequences of a headless ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... to last an interminable time, and all kinds of people, heathkeepers, shopmen, policemen, the old man in the Keep, the angry man in drab, the barmaid at the Unicorn, men with flying-machines, people playing billiards in the doorways, silly, headless figures, stupid cocks and hens encumbered with parcels and umbrellas and waterproofs, people carrying bedroom candles, and such-like riffraff, kept getting in his way and annoying him, although he sounded his electric bell, and said, "Wonderful, ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... fell the king, who yet surviv'd the state, With such a signal and peculiar fate, Under so vast a ruin, not a grave, Nor in such flames a fun'ral fire to have: He whom such titles swell'd, such power made proud, To whom the sceptres of all Asia bow'd, On the cold earth lies th'unregarded king, A headless carcase, and ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... on lightning-braided pinions, 765 Scattering the liquid joy of life from his ambrosial tresses: His footsteps paved the world with light; but as I passed 'twas fading, And hollow Ruin yawned behind: great sages bound in madness, And headless patriots, and pale youths who perished, unupbraiding, Gleamed in the night. I wandered o'er, till thou, O King of sadness, 770 Turned by thy smile the worst ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... prolongs the reign of inordinate, unprincipled clans. At this period, 1888, those quill-drivers whose consciences are in their pockets hold high carnival. When news- dealers shout for class legislation, and decapitated reputa- tions, headless trunks, and quivering hearts are held up [25] before the rabble in exchange for money, place, and power, the vox populi is suffocated, individual rights are trodden under foot, and the car of the modern In- quisition rolls along the ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... tumbled over one another, "'in the land where he was bred, men would as soon take for their mark King Arthur's round table, which held sixty knights around it. A child of seven might hit yonder target with a headless ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... despotic sway over all, from the least to the greatest. She is continually upsetting the standard of neatness which was once the glory of this Home, by sprawling on the floors, dragging after her a headless doll with sawdust oozing from every pore. A dilapidated bunny and several mangled pictures complete the procession. It is hopeless to protest, for she just looks as if she could not understand how any one could object to such priceless treasures. She awakens us at unconscionable hours in ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... so quickly that by no possibility could they have intercepted him. Carthoris, fearful lest Vas Kor might similarly elude him, or Astok return immediately with reinforcements, sprang viciously in upon his antagonist, and a moment later the headless body of the Dusarian noble rolled ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... I care to occupy myself with the perennial inspection and purchase of raw edibles, when I wished to live in an ideal world and paint a great picture. Mrs. Hobbs would come to my bedside in the morning and ask me if I would like to buy a fowl. When I looked upon the fowl, limp in death, with its headless neck hanging dejectedly over the edge of the plate, its giblets and kidneys lying in immodest confusion on the outside of itself, and its liver 'tucked under its wing, poor thing,' I never wanted to buy it. But one morning, in taking my walk, I chanced upon an idyllic spot: the front ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... other Homers rise; 360 Through twilight ages hunt the Athenian fowl,[419] Which Chalcis gods, and mortals call an owl, Now see an Attys, now a Cecrops[420] clear, Nay, Mahomet! the pigeon at thine ear; Be rich in ancient brass, though not in gold, And keep his Lares, though his house be sold; To headless Phoebe his fair bride postpone, Honour a Syrian prince above his own; Lord of an Otho, if I vouch it true; Bless'd in one Niger, till ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... which case their safety would have been assured; but red-capped Pindar struck his hand hurriedly over the chords, and cried, in the shrill sharp tones, that both the prisoners remembered too well, "A la mort! a la mort!" and in ten minutes their bodies were lying headless, side by side, amidst the hootings and howlings of ten thousand demons, exemplifying to astonished Europe the perfection of civilization and philanthropy. Little more needs to be said of the Sieur Lebrun. He lived ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... Brigadier. But whilst they were at Dinner, an unfortunate Shot came from the Bastion of St. Antonio, and intirely struck off the Head of the Son. The father immediately rose up, first looking down upon his headless Child, and then lifting up his Eyes to Heaven, whilst the Tears ran down his Cheeks, he cross'd himself, and only said, Fiat voluntas tua, and bore it with a wonderful Patience. 'Twas a sad Spectacle, and truly it affects me now ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... woods, they found the bodies of the whole of their companions. All were headless, the Malays having carried off these coveted trophies. They did not attempt to bury the bodies for, in such a climate, decomposition sets in rapidly, and swarms of insects complete the work. In the grass ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... plucked his sister's walking-hat, a pert piece of millinery froward in feathers, from the trunk of the headless Victory, where she had reposed it in ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... Oct.) denounced the conspiracy in the full senate and in presence of its principal leaders. Catilina did not condescend to deny it; he answered haughtily that, if the election for consul should fall on him, the great headless party would certainly no longer want a leader against the small party led by wretched heads. But as palpable evidences of the plot were not before them, nothing farther was to be got from the timid senate, except that it gave its previous sanction in the usual ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... whose carved figures are shown seated, fully draped, and holding baskets of fruits on their knees. They are generally found in sets of three; but unfortunately they have been much mutilated, and all the examples remaining are headless. The Deae Matres would seem to correspond in some degree to the Roman Ceres and the Greek Demeter, the bountiful givers of the fruits of the earth. The majority of the altars found are, as was to be expected, dedicated ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... bodies rose up out of the corner nearest the Fianna, and nine heads rose up on the other side of the bed, and they raised nine harsh screeches together, that no one would like to be listening to. And then the hag answered to them, and the headless man answered; and if all of that music was harsh, there was none of it that you would not wish to hear sooner than the music of the one-eyed man. And the music that was sung went near to breaking the bones of their heads; and indeed it is no sweet ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... race were exterminated by the papal jealousy. Truly we may say with Michelet that the sibyl of the Renaissance kept offering her books in vain to feudal Europe. In vain, because the time was not yet. The ideas projected thus early on the modern world were immature and abortive, like those headless trunks and zoophytic members of half-moulded humanity which, in the vision of Empedocles, preceded the birth of full-formed man. The nations were not ready. Franciscans imprisoning Roger Bacon for venturing to examine ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... exterminated by the Papal jealousy. Truly we may say with Michelet that the Sibyl of the Renaissance kept offering her books in vain to feudal Europe. In vain because the time was not yet. The ideas projected thus early on the modern world were immature and abortive, like those headless trunks and zoophitic members of half-molded humanity which, in the vision of Empedocles, preceded the birth of full-formed man. The nations were not ready. Franciscans imprisoning Roger Bacon for venturing to examine what God had meant to keep secret; Dominicans preaching crusades ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... often pretends to be a castle, ornamented with quantities of fantastic gargoyles. The castle has a theatre, into which you can see; and it is fitted up with extraordinary scenery. There is a museum of strange statues, too; headless torsos, and arms thicker through than a ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... confined to no particular section, climate, or society; for it wars on all mankind. It has for its home this whole world. It has the flesh for its mother and the devil for its father. It stands out a headless, heartless, eyeless, earless, soulless monster ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... be added Rh (Sansk. Rhu, a deity to whom eclipses are ascribed) and Ked (Sansk. Ketu, the mythological name of the descending node, represented as a headless demon), monsters who are supposed by the Malays to cause eclipses by swallowing the moon. To denote the points of the compass the Malays have native, Sanskrit, and Arabic terms. Utra (uttara),[21] the north, and da[k.]sina (dakshi[n.]a), the south, are Sanskrit words; ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... being informed of Timbuctoo's mighty act of valor, had the headless bodies that had been left in the neighboring village interred at once, that it might not be discovered that they were decapitated. The Prussians returned thither the following day. The mayor and seven prominent inhabitants were shot on the spot, by way ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... of the harmless Christians in Tournay. In this regard, his conduct is vastly more entitled to our respect than that of Egmont, and he was certainly more deserving of reverence from the people, even though deserted by all men while living, and left headless and solitary in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in high festal day At his round table, when the caliph, plac'd In stately pomp, with splendid emirs grac'd, Enjoys the banquet rang'd in proud array, Slay him who lies the monarch's left beside, Dash from his headless trunk the purple tide. Then to the right draw near; with courtly grace The beauteous heiress of his throne embrace; And thrice with public kiss ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... herd? There is no tyranny so hateful as a vulgar and anonymous tyranny. It is all-permeating, all-thwarting; it blasts every budding novelty and sprig of genius with its omnipresent and fierce stupidity. Such a headless people has the mind of a worm and the claws of a dragon. Anyone would be a hero who should quell the monster. A foreign invader or domestic despot would at least have steps to his throne, possible standing-places for art and intelligence; his supercilious indifference would discountenance the popular ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... little open space before the same pool. We went to Preston, and took refuge from a thunder-plump in the old tower. I remembered the little garden where I was crammed with gooseberries, and the fear I had of Blind Harry's spectre of Fawdon showing his headless trunk at one of the windows. I remembered also a very good-natured pretty girl (my Mary Duff), whom I laughed and romped with and loved as children love. She was a Miss Dalrymple, daughter of Lord Westhall,[384] a Lord of Session; ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... through the mowing field, The headless aftermath, Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew, Half closes the garden path. And when I come to the garden ground, The whir of sober birds Up from the tangle of withered weeds Is sadder than any words. A tree beside the wall stands bare, But a leaf that ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... any real good, one day, who in a few hours pulled up enough docks to fill a cart. They came across a number of snakes, and decapitated the reptiles with their hoes, and afterwards hung them all up—tied together by the tail—to a bough. The bunch of headless snakes hangs there still, swinging to and fro as the wind plays through the oak. Vermin, too, revel in weeds, which encourage the mice and rats, and are, perhaps, quite as much a cause of their increase as any acts of ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... descriptions. You pass through the grand breadth and height of a squalid entrance-way, and perhaps see a range of dusky pillars, forming a sort of cloister round the court, and in the intervals, from pillar to pillar, are strewn fragments of antique statues, headless and legless torsos, and busts that have invariably lost what it might be well if living men could lay aside in that unfragrant atmosphere—the nose. Bas-reliefs, the spoil of some far older palace, are set in the surrounding walls, every stone of which has been ravished from the Coliseum, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lie the statues of broken gods, headless divinities. I tried to believe in Greek mythology; to fancy that the world had gone backwards, and that there were spirits of the earth and air, that took part in the life of man. But these were poetic visions that shifted and waved with every fleeting fancy. But now this would be a pleasant ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... placed over 500,000 pins a day on the web, rejecting every bent or headless pin, and did the work with greater accuracy than it was possible to do it by hand. There was not the suggestion of an eye, or a finger in the entire machine, to show that ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... last, and with their force sustained The Christians' rage, that followed them so near; Their scattered troops to safety well they trained, And while the residue fled, the brunt these bear; Dudon pursued the victory he gained, And on Tigranes nobly broke his spear, Then with his sword headless to ground him cast, So gardeners branches lop that spring ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... to the table and from a drawer took a dirty pack of cards and a homemade cribbage board, with headless matches for markers. The third took from his pocket a folded newspaper and sat down at the window opposite Hiram. He at once began reading, and seemed not to be a companion of the other two. Hiram took note that he ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... mother-in-law of Henry, and sister of Archbishop Arundel. She had never forgiven Exeter for sitting in judgment on her brother the Earl of Arundel, and she rested not now till she saw him stretched before her, a headless corpse. ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... called Cyno[ce]phali, for they have heads as hounds, and seem by the working, beasts rather than men, and some be called Cyclops, and have that name, for one of them hath but one eye, and that in the middle of the forehead, and some be all headless and noseless, and their eyen be in the shoulders, and some have plain faces without nostrils, and the nether lips of them stretch so, that they hele therewith their faces when they be in the heat of the sun: and some of them have ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... Aelfled was the widow of Brithnod, a famous Northumbrian chieftain. She gave to the cathedral of Ely, where his headless body lay buried, a large cloth, or hanging, on which she had embroidered the heroic deeds of her husband. She was the ancestress of a race of embroiderers, and their pedigree will be found in the Appendix.[573] At this time a lady of the Queen of Scotland ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... head. One party of them fixed it, like that of the vilest traitor, on an immense pole, and bore it in triumph all over Paris; while another division of the outrageous cannibals were occupied in tearing her clothes piecemeal from her mangled corpse. The beauty of that form, though headless, mutilated and reeking with the hot blood of their foul crime—how shall I describe it?—excited that atrocious excess of lust, which impelled these hordes of assassins to satiate their demoniac passions upon the remains of ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 7 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... wounded. They have proved themselves well that day. But Alexander won the greatest distinction; for he leads away four knights bound to his person and taken prisoners. And the dead lie on the strand; for many there lay headless, and ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... usually considered the reverse of a reflex or involuntary action. But for a reflex action the brain is not essential. As is well known, a snake's hinder part will move in response to a touch when completely severed from the head end; and movements of considerable complexity can be evoked in a headless frog. ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... bas-reliefs the majority of the figures have only legs and a portion of the body; their heads and shoulders have disappeared with the upper parts of the walls. But they seem to have preserved their vitality: the gesticulations, the exaggerated pantomime of the attitudes of these headless things, are more strange, more striking, perhaps, than if their faces still remained. And they have preserved too, in an extraordinary degree, the brightness of their antique paintings, the fresh tints of their costumes, of their robes of turquoise blue, or lapis, ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... would permit. All his possessions were stuffed into his best overalls with the legs tied around his waist and the pair of attached suspenders worn over his shoulders so that at first glance he presented the startling appearance of carrying a headless corpse pick-a-back. ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... may fear without more proof To tell of, but that conscience makes me firm, The boon companion, who her strong breast-plate Buckles on him, that feels no guilt within And bids him on and fear not. Without doubt I saw, and yet it seems to pass before me, A headless trunk, that even as the rest Of the sad flock pac'd onward. By the hair It bore the sever'd member, lantern-wise Pendent in hand, which look'd at us and said, "Woe's me!" The spirit lighted thus himself, And two there were in one, and one in two. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Joensson's body was found lying headless in the street, whether thus punished by Christian for his lies or by some Swede for his ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... down on a wide headless caubeen, hung on his ashplanthandle over his knee. My casque and sword. Touch lightly with two index fingers. Aristotle's experiment. One or two? Necessity is that in virtue of which it is impossible that one can be otherwise. Argal, one hat ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... perhaps better say, lest I might affront military feelings,—who is kneeling on the field of battle and delivering a despatch to Marlborough on horseback. The graceful ease with which the duke receives the message though the messenger's head be gone, and the soldier-like precision with which the headless hero finishes his last effort of military obedience, may not have been portrayed with well-drawn figures, but no finished illustration ever told its story better. Dickens has informed us that he first met Thackeray in 1835, on which occasion the young ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... sardine in his oily den, his little house of tin, Headless and heedless there he lies, no move of tail or fin, Yet full as beauteous, I ween, that press'd and prison'd fish, As when in sunny seas he ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various
... been haled to court; convicted without defense; sent headless to Charon, and was obliged, on that account, to make a ventriloquial request for a passage across the Styx; so that, in the morning, it was with genuine relief he returned the jewel to its owner and resumed his wonted meagerness of visage and ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... dirty, full, white kilts, shouldering long guns and one hand on their pistols, stalk untamed past a dozen Turkish soldiers, who look sheepish and brutal in worn cloth jacket and cotton trousers. A headless, wingless lion of St. Mark still stands upon a gate, and has left the mark of his strong clutch. Of ancient times when Crete was Crete, not a trace remains; save perhaps in the full, well-cut nostril and firm tread of that mountaineer, and I suspect that ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... peoples who had stood in their pride on this road and looked upon yonder river and the great stone wolf that guarded it, which wolf, so said the legend, howled at the approach of foes. But now he howled no more, for he lay headless beneath the waters, and there he lies to this day. Well, they were dead, everyone of them, and even their deeds were forgotten; and oh! how small the thought of it made them feel, these two young men bent upon a desperate quest in a strange and dangerous ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... headless, vague aspiration, however universal, is likely to prove quite ineffective. Of course, it is possible to suggest that the Hague Tribunal is conceivably the germ of such an overriding direction and supreme court as the peace of the world ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... battle, car-borne chiefs untimely slain, Headless trunks and heads dissevered fill the red and ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... to this point is simply a headless neck attached to a tow body, supported by natural legs fixed to a perch. I assume that your fragments are sufficiently relaxed, and the feathers cleaned and nearly dried. All the fat must, of course, have been scraped off the inside of each piece of skin. Arrange these pieces in the order they ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... rebellion from a man he both hated and despised. He was transferred to London, lodged in the Tower, and executed in a bungling manner by "Jack Ketch"—the name given for several centuries to the public executioner. He was buried under St. Peter's Chapel, in the Tower, where reposed the headless bodies of so many noted saints and political martyrs—the great Somerset, and the still greater Northumberland, the two Earls of Essex, and the fourth Duke of Norfolk, and other great men who figured in the reigns of the ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... Pelouse, smilingly critical of youth, who, when a full-blown commercial traveller suddenly threw down his samples, bought a colour-box, and became the master whom we have all admired. Marlotte, for a central figure, boasted Olivier de Penne. Only Barbizon, since the death of Millet, was a headless commonwealth. Even its secondary lights, and those who in my day made the stranger welcome, have since deserted it. The good Lachevre has departed, carrying his household gods; and long before that Gaston Lafenestre was taken from our midst by an untimely death. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heroes, and fallen steeds Rolling in death. Destruction, grim with blood, Attends his furious course. Around his head The glowing balls play innocent, while he With dire impetuous sway deals fatal blows Among the flying Gauls. In Gallic blood He dyes his reeking sword, and strews the ground With headless ranks. What can they do? Or how Withstand ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... trade is done in candles, on which names are written, which being blessed and burnt have powerful influence in the heavenly courts. It costs a trifle to hallow the tallow, but no matter. A friend has seen a muddy little well, which is fine for sore eyes. Offerings of old bottles and little headless images were planted around, but the favourite gift was a pin, stuck in the ground by way of fee. Jolly Mr. Whicker, of Dublin, who represents three Birmingham houses, saw Father McFadden, of Gweedore, waving his hat when in custody. A policeman insisted that this should cease, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... girls were fitting military caps to imaginary soldier's heads; the ensigns of glory slipped through the fingers of the humble; chevrons and epaulets were caressed never so closely by toil-worn hands. In the midst of us sits a man on a headless hobby horse, making small gray trunks bound in red leather, such boxes as might contain jewels for Marguerite, a game of lotto, or a collection of jack-straws and mother-of-pearl counters brought home from a first trip abroad. The trunk maker wears a sombrero and smokes a corn-cob pipe. He is ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... to grass ere the red glare of the war has passed away. "Where do you hail from?" would be a bootless question to put when the "hail-thrower" begins to administer throes to the breaking ranks. Worse than that; it would probably be a headless question. ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... the general purport of this legendary superstition, which has furnished materials for many a wild story in that region of shadows; and the spectre is known at all the country firesides, by the name of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow. ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... chimney now, with pleasure, They behold the tempting treasure, Headless, in the pan there, lying, ...
— Max and Maurice - a juvenile history in seven tricks • William [Wilhelm] Busch
... benches on the right Nine headless bodies rose to sight, And on the left, from grim repose, Nine heads that ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... which rested a marble altar decorated with figures in relief. Beside the basin are rooms for religious purposes. These rooms are adorned with the gods of healing, AEsculapius with an acolyte holding a cock, the Dioscuri and their horses, the head of Serapis, and a headless statue of Apollo. ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... Meteors, showering (blazing) coals, fell on the Earth from the sky. The Suns disc, O king, seemed to be always covered with dust. At its rise, the great luminary of day was shorn of splendour and seemed to be crossed by headless trunks (of human beings). Fierce circles of light were seen every day around both the Sun and the Moon. These circles showed three hues. Their edges seemed to be black and rough and ashy-red in colour. These and many other omens, foreshadowing fear and danger, were seen, O king, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... which looked to be overbalanced at the other end by a great mass of hair. It stood stone still, and for the moment Tim could not decide which end of it was head and which was tail, or even whether it were not double-tailed and headless. Then, ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... break like emerald waves against the deepening azure and amethyst of the mountain heights. The solemn grandeur of Boro-Boedoer blinds the casual observer to many details which manifest the ravages of time, the ruthlessness of war, and the decay of a discarded creed. Headless and overthrown figures, broken tees, mutilated carvings, and shattered chapels abound, but the vast display of architectural features still intact conveys an impression of ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... harp was carved and cunning, As the Celtic craftsman makes, Graven all over with twisting shapes Like many headless snakes. ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... fig. 40A. In small engines it is convenient to have the air and exhaust cams made in one casting, when one key only will be required. On some engines, instead of employing a movable roller or valve lever, the exhaust cam is fitted on side shaft with a "feather"—i.e., a headless key—and the cam being capable of longitudinal movement, such movement being controlled by a small lever or handle, ...
— Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained - An Elementary Instruction Book for Amateurs and Engine Attendants • Walter C. Runciman
... eyes the vile mass pulsed visibly; it quivered and beat. Then, sensing its danger, it darted like some headless serpent for ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... have imagined his headless address to them to be also without a distinct termination, for he seemed to have ended as abruptly as he had begun; so long was the pause before, with a wearied lifting of his body, he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... little man in an ill-fitting frock-coat, who laid his knife and fork by their tips on the edge of his plate, and picked his teeth with gusto and breathed into my face as he talked to me. The commonest of representative men. I went about that Westphalian country after that, with the conviction that headless, soulless, blood-drinking metal monsters were breeding all about me. I felt that science was producing a poisonous swarm, a nest of black dragons. They were crouching here and away there in France and England, they were crouching like beasts ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... and English strangely mingled; and Cigarette crouched on the ground, with the firelight playing all over her picturesque, childlike beauty, and her large eyes strained and savage, yet with a strange, wistful pain in them; looking out at the moonlight where the headless body lay in a cold, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... artillery-sergeant had enraged them, and then, a still more melancholy circumstance. During the few hours which had preceded the attack, it had been reported among them that the insurgents were mutilating their prisoners, and that there was the headless body of a soldier in the wine-shop. This sort of fatal rumor is the usual accompaniment of civil wars, and it was a false report of this kind which, later on, produced the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... living, livid, melancholy loads, Whose softness shock'd. Worms of all monstrous size Crawl'd round; and one, upcoil'd, which never dies. A doleful bell, inculcating despair, Was always ringing in the heavy air. And all about the detestable pit Strange headless ghosts, and quarter'd forms, did flit; Rivers of blood, from living traitors spilt, By treachery stung from poverty to guilt. I ask'd the fiend, for whom these rites were meant? "These graves," quoth he, "when life's brief oil is spent, When the dark ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... having perjured himself on the hand of Ciaran, his head fell off. He was taken to Clonmacnois, and not only lived there headless for seven years, but became the father ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... Warwick remained all the time in his castle. He had already taken his share in the cruel act of treachery. It was, however, important that Lancaster should take the responsibility for the deed. Four cobblers of Warwick piously bore the headless corpse within their town. But the grim earl sent it back, because it was not found on his fee. At last some Oxford Dominicans took charge of the body and deposited it temporarily in their convent, not daring to inter it in holy ground, as ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... one) of the symbolic form of second-sight is that in which the headless apparition of the person whose death is foretold manifests itself to the seer. An example of that class is given in Signs before Death as having happened in the family of Dr. Ferrier, though in that case, if I recollect rightly, the vision did not occur ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... the centuries the witch has held the silken threads, which bound her millions of subjects, she has been deaf—deaf to the cries of starvation, injustice and cruelty; heedless to devastation of life by her servants; smiling at piles of headless men; gloating over torture when it filled ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... Oh, poor Vaillant! His headless body was then being taken to Clamart, and the crowds for whom he had wept, worked, and died were now going quietly away, indifferent and bored. Poor Vaillant! His ideas were exaggerated ones, but they ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt |
