Severed Head

Famous quotes containing the words severed and/or head:

    It was your severed image that grew sweeter,
    That floated, wing-stiff, focused in the sun
    Along uncertainty and gales of shame
    Blown out before I slept. Now you are one
    I dare not think alive: only a name
    That chimes occasionally, as a belief
    Long since embedded in the static past.
    Philip Larkin (1922–1986)

    I ask whether the mere eating of human flesh so very far exceeds in barbarity that custom which only a few years since was practised in enlightened England:Ma convicted traitor, perhaps a man found guilty of honesty, patriotism, and suchlike heinous crimes, had his head lopped off with a huge axe, his bowels dragged out and thrown into a fire; while his body, carved into four quarters, was with his head exposed upon pikes, and permitted to rot and fester among the public haunts of men!
    Herman Melville (1819–1891)