'The semblance of a
human face to be formed on the side of a mountain, or in the fracture of a small stone, by a lusus naturae [freak of nature].
Much as the old cavalry officer had seen in the course of his soldier's career, he felt a thrill of surprise and horror at the sight of a
human face which could never have been lighted up with thought--a livid face in which a look of dumb suffering showed so plainly--the same look that is sometimes worn by a child too young to speak, and too weak to cry any longer; in short, it was the wholly animal face of an old dying cretin.
He who led the mules and acted as carter was a hideous demon; the cart was open to the sky, without a tilt or cane roof, and the first figure that presented itself to Don Quixote's eyes was that of Death itself with a
human face; next to it was an angel with large painted wings, and at one side an emperor, with a crown, to all appearance of gold, on his head.
When, still a little fellow, he had dragged himself tortuously and by jerks beneath the shadows of its vaults, he seemed, with his
human face and his bestial limbs, the natural reptile of that humid and sombre pavement, upon which the shadow of the Romanesque capitals cast so many strange forms.
We reach in desperation beyond the fog, beyond the very stars, the voids of the universe are ransacked to justify the monster, and stamped with a
human face. London is religion's opportunity--not the decorous religion of theologians, but anthropomorphic, crude.
The last notion I dismissed almost as soon as I had conceived it, for not having seen any appearance of sensitiveness in any
human face since my arrival in Belgium, I had begun to regard it almost as a fabulous quality.
His keen eye still played with facility in its deep-sunk orbit; and fat, which levels all the characteristic saliences of the
human face, had not yet touched either his high cheek-bones, the sign of cunning and cupidity, or his pointed chin, the sign of acuteness and perseverance.
Like a
human face - angry or pleased, sullen or joyful.
Then it seemed to him, as it often happens in that first sleep, so light and gentle, which raises the body above the couch, and the soul above the earth - it seemed to him, we say, as if the god Morpheus, painted on the ceiling, looked at him with eyes resembling human eyes; that something shone brightly, and moved to and fro in the dome above the sleeper; that the crowd of terrible dreams which thronged together in his brain, and which were interrupted for a moment, half revealed a
human face, with a hand resting against the mouth, and in an attitude of deep and absorbed meditation.
He had no particular business, however, with the old Sheik and so he did not propose following him--the further from men he could stay the better pleased he would be--he wished that he might never see a
human face again.
There were other places where the Lord fell, and others where he rested; but one of the most curious landmarks of ancient history we found on this morning walk through the crooked lanes that lead toward Calvary, was a certain stone built into a house--a stone that was so seamed and scarred that it bore a sort of grotesque resemblance to the
human face. The projections that answered for cheeks were worn smooth by the passionate kisses of generations of pilgrims from distant lands.
A rap at that time of night and in that weather might have surprised an ordinary mortal who had dwelt two years in the gulch without seeing a
human face, and could not fail to know that the country was impassable; but Mr.