Face

“ No; in that noble face, pale from illness or from sadness, with the traces of sorrow upon it, and the marks of long vigils by the bedside of her father—in that refined face, whose expression spoke only of elevation of soul, and exhibited the perfect type of manly beauty, there was certainly nothing that could excite repugnance, but every thing that might inspire confidence. ”

“ A face—that of a woman with soft eyes, full of helpfulness, shone through the mist of his dream—the face of a woman who would one day come to him out of the Future with outstretched hands that he would yearn to clasp. ”

“ I saw these things in a single glance, and then I turned—to find myself face to face with a tallish, thin, active man, with a pale, shaven, ascetic face, dark hair, and astonishingly quick glittering black eyes. ”

“ It was the face of the man that held his gaze—a bronzed and high-boned face, full of weather-wrinkles like his own, whose dark eyes gave him look for look and in their arrogance held a peculiar glassy appearance. ”

“ The most beautiful face may sometimes, by nature's indelible portrayer, reveal itself soulless in heart and mind; and the plainest face possess an irresistible charm, if it is allowed to interpret the emotions of a truly noble heart. ”

“ It was a face to remember; a face to be the happier for having seen; a face whose beauty was blended of form and colour, of soul, feature, and expression; a face which had all that the earth has to give of its best and fairest, touched with the glory which is higher and better, which earth has not to bestow. ”

“ Your little face is like a flower in its delicate tints, and your eyes are true and tender and asking so many questions of life,—and sometimes they are veiled and misty, and then they look wise and courageous. ”

“ He was attracted by that elusive something—a line, a fold, perhaps the form of the eye, the droop of an eyelid, the curve of a cheek, that trifling trait which on no two faces on earth is alike, that in each face is the very foundation of expression, as if, all the rest being heredity, mystery, or accident, it alone had been shaped consciously by the soul within. ”

“ A face not very noteworthy but for the gray eyes, well opened and wide apart, at times lighting up his whole face with a kindly smile, at times set and stern, or now and then resting in that look as if they were gazing at something a long way off, as do the eyes of the poet or enthusiast. ”

“ Are you growing more attractive as you advance in life? Is your eye softer and deeper, is your mouth kinder, your expression more sympathetic, or are you screwing up your face in tense knots of worry? Are your eyes growing hopeless and dull, is your mouth drooping at the corners, and becoming a set thin line in the centre, and is your skin dry, and sallow, and parched? ”

“ How often have I not come upon a corbel of stone carved into the shape of a face, and that face had upon it either horror or laughter or great sweetness or vision, and I have looked at it as I might have looked upon a living face, save that it was more wonderful than most living faces. ”

“ If it be true that man's face is the canvas upon which the affections and desires of his mind are depicted as soon as they are formed, the eyes are unquestionably the central point of the picture, and it is in them, as in a looking-glass, that every sentiment that passes across our brain is reflected. ”

“ The handsome and wholesome face showed a strength of its own in the resolute curving nose and the firmly-set lips and the grave, yet kindly, eyes, with a light of purposeful intelligence glowing within their clear deeps. ”

“ The ordinary eye might see nothing in a face that was winsome, if not handsome; yet, let the dainty mouth curve in speech, and at once a subtle attraction, lit up by lustrous eyes, permeated the face. ”

“ The face, small like the face of an old, old child, waxed finer and more spiritual, yet ever more startlingly did it bear the stamp of that individuality which the spirit had held so cheap—the earthly so impenetrated with the spiritual part that the face had become a sublimation. ”

“ Further, Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you the Face-Maker, the Physiognomist, the great Changer of Countenances, who transforms the features that Heaven has bestowed upon him into an endless succession of surprising and extraordinary visages, comprehending, Messieurs et Mesdames, all the contortions, energetic and expressive, of which the human face is capable, and all the passions of the human heart, as Love, Jealousy, Revenge, Hatred, Avarice, Despair! ”

“ The difference just eyes can make! His face is the face of the drilled, of the perfect unthinking machine, the correct and well-born Oberleutnant; and out of it look the eyes of a human being who knows, or will know I'm certain before life has done with him, what exultations are, and agonies, and love, and man's unconquerable mind. ”

“ The expression of the face is all human, but wrought to the very limit of celestial enthusiasm. The wonderful richness of the coloring, the exquisite ripe fulness of the limbs, the passionate devotion of the kindling features, combine to make it the faultless ideal of a perfect human being in youth. ”

“ Walk along a crowded street and watch the different faces of the men and women as they pass by—grey faces, drab faces, white faces, yellow faces, faces sad and cross, and lined and dull, faces by the thousand blank of any expression at all, and then here and there, at rare, rare intervals, a live face that speaks. ”

“ But it was a face, so he told himself, that any man would trust,—a face that would make a man the better for looking at it,—a face which reflected a soul that no environment could make other than pure and spotless. ”

“ A man's face, with its dead, glassy eyes and streaming hair, was presented to his gaze—and he instantly sprang to his feet and ran, leaving easel, canvas, palette, and brushes to take care of themselves. ”

“ A worn look had grown over the little face, and it made its charm for him stronger. For pain and time, which trace deep lines and write a story on a human face, have a strangely different effect on one face and another. ”

“ Your face is thinner, but that only shows better its beautiful bones. Ah, now your smile is just as delicious—but don't wrinkle your forehead like that; it is full of lines. So—that is better. You make the eyes sad sometimes; eyes should be the windows that let light into the soul; they should be glad and admit only sunshine. ”

“ Still, it was hard to resist the upturned face—the face with which was associated all the passionate inspiration of my early life—the face I had carried in my mind and heart through all my wanderings, finding none to compare with it—the face which always came with flash and quickness when I felt the warm desire and longing to love somebody which youth must always know. ”

“ One face comes to my mind as I write. It is not a pretty face in the ordinary sense of the word, but the eyes are wonderful, revealing a soul full of sadness, a longing for something not attainable: eyes that might make you [220] weep as you feel them fixed upon you in unspeakable yearning for love. ”

“ It is clearly a passive face rather than an active face, a face across which moods may pass and repass rather than a face grooved and charactered into any one permanent show of relation to the outer world. ”

“ The full face of the youth is much more taking and attractive, than the somewhat too loose, too protracted half-face; the fore-part of the face in its slightest motion, tells of a highly sensitive, thoughtful, inventive, untaught, inward goodness, of a softly tremulous, wrong-abhorring love of liberty—an eager vivacity. ”

“ The spiritual prescient face, the always welcome common benevolent face,
The face of the singing of music, the grand faces of natural lawyers and judges broad at the backtop,
The faces of hunters and fishers, bulged at the brows .... the shaved blanched faces of orthodox citizens,
The pure extravagant yearning questioning artist’s face,
The welcome ugly face of some beautiful soul .... the handsome detested or despised face,
The sacred faces of infants .... the illuminated face of the mother of many children,
The face of am amour .... ”

“ In life this must have been a glorious face. The eyes are large and prominent, the brow is broad and fine, the mouth wide and obviously sensitive, the chin delicate, and the nose long, well set, and indicative of immense force of character. ”

“ The face of the man was a mask of weariness of the soul, which kills so vastly more efficiently than weariness of the body. You could see that weariness in the tired frown of the black brows, the narrowing of the dark eyes, the downward tug of the lips. ”

“ And, as I fixed my attention upon them more and more closely, heaven aid me! the features of a human face grew more and more distinctly traceable and visible, just as when, on looking at a distorted picture through a lens specially constructed, all its lines and effects then, and not till then, grow clear and sharp. ”

“ They have finely-chiselled features, deep, rather large and expressive eyes, slightly bronzed complexions, and in every curious look, gaze, or expression, there is an easy, modest dignity, such as I have never before seen, even among the rarest few. In every face there is a deep and real joy ”

“ While one eye was gazing intently in your face, the other was fixed in another direction—immovable, the more hideous because at first you mistook it for a natural eye. A smile may over spread the face, animate the lip, and lighten up the natural eye ”

“ To our way of thinking, such a face could scarcely be described as beautiful; but how much prejudice there is in our ideas of beauty! I soon came to find these brown faces, gleaming with health and fat, really pleasing. ”

“ For he had curious colours, that could give
The human face, so like, it seem'd to live. ”

“ Without pretension to actual beauty or any kind of perfection, the face was one likely to attract and then to charm; gentleness, thoughtfulness, intellectual power, might be read in those fair features, as well as an almost infantine candor and innocence, and the subtle and all too-transient bloom of extreme youth. ”

“ A hundred times I've tried to picture the face, the form, the character of the girl I'd really come to love. Always there came to my mind a face—not a child's face, but a child's face grown to a woman's. ”

“ Do not many admirers of your works express their pleasure in them to you?"
He studied her lovely face coolly and in detail—the dainty arch of the questioning eyebrows, the sensitive curve of the mouth, the clear, sweet eyes. Could it be possible that such candour masked irony? ”

“ He continued to observe, that what is usually called character in a face, is probably excess in some of its parts, and particularly of those which are under the influence of the mind, the leading passion of which marks some feature for its own. A perfectly symmetrical face bears no mark of the influence of either the passions or the understanding, and reminds you of Prometheus’s clay without his fire. ”

“ If you do recall the features, and say that an eye is blue, a chin sharp, a nose short, or a cheek sunken, I fancy that you do not succeed well in giving the impression of the person,—not so well as when you interpret at once to the heart the essential moral qualities of the face—its humor, gravity, sadness, spirituality. ”

“ Take but half the pains to recover the countenance that nature gave you, that you must have taken to disguise and deform it as you have, and the business will be done. Accustom your eyes to a certain softness, of which they are very capable, and your face to smiles, which become it more than most faces I know. ”

“ A face not handsome, but interesting. And the eyes made you hesitate to say she was not handsome, for they were large, of a dark hazel and changeable, eyes that flashed with merriment, or fell into sadness under the long eyelashes ”

“ The face is of that perfect oval admired by artists as the highest standard of beauty. Taste and refinement are the most striking qualities one reads in it; the mouth is the most individual feature, small and modelled in delicate curves. ”

“ This is as plain as a nose in a man’s face; you know it by experience; you see it. ”

“ Of all parts of the body, the face is most considered and regarded, as is natural from its being the chief seat of expression and the source of the voice. It is also the chief seat of beauty and of ugliness, and throughout the world is the most ornamented. ”

“ Faces.—Several of these denote an invitation to a party or wedding; ugly faces mean disturbances or bad news; pretty faces, pleasure and love; two faces upon one head, looking diverse ways, indicate that you may hear yourself accused of deception and falseness, or that these things may be practised upon you; a bearded face, health and strength, but an indolent nature, which is a source of vexation to those around you. ”

“ LOVE IN A LOOK Let me but feel thy look's embrace,
Transparent, pure, and warm,
And I'll not ask to touch thy face,
Or fold thee with mine arm.
For in thine eyes a girl doth rise,
Arrayed in candid bliss,
And draws me to her with a charm
More close than any kiss. ”