Book 11
1.79
Complete immobility in the eyebrows is a fault, as also is excess of mobility or the tendency to raise one and lower the other, as in the comic mask which I mentioned just now: while it is a further blemish if they express a feeling out of keeping with the words we utter. For they show anger by contraction, grief by depression and cheerfulness by their expansion. They are also dropped or raised to express consent or refusal respectively.
1.80
It is not often that the lips or nostrils can be becomingly employed to express our feelings, although they are often used to indicate derision, contempt or loathing. For to wrinkle the nostrils (as Horace says), Ep. I. v. 23. or blow them out, or twitch them, or fret them with our finger, or snort through them with a sudden expulsion of the breath, or stretch them wide or push them up with the flat of the hand are all indecorous, since it is not without reason that censure is passed even on blowing the nose too frequently.
