"Personify" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sight of the big ungainly figure. The man seemed to personify all of the things against which his soul was in revolt and he stopped and stood crouched, a ferocious light ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... responsibility compel. We cannot omit the adventures of fairyland from our educational program. They are too well adapted to the restless, active, and unrestrained life of childhood. They take the objects which little boys and girls know vividly and personify them so that instinctive hopes and fears ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... was called to organize an Anti-Slavery society in New York City was broken up by a mob. All of those in attendance made their escape except one negro. He was caught and his captors thought it would be a capital joke to make him personify one of the big Abolitionists. He was lifted to the platform and directed to imagine himself an Anti-Slavery leader and make an Abolition speech. The fellow proved to be equal to the occasion. He ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... "the ever-varying contests between Finns and Laplanders," but that between Light and Darkness, Good and Evil, for in the poem the Finns personify Light and Good, while the Lapps are emblems of Darkness and Evil. The Sampo, which is mentioned in this poem, and which seems to have been some sort of a magic grist-mill, holds the same place in Finn mythology as the Golden Fleece in that of the Greeks. Many of the poems incorporated in this epic ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... church, a person soon contracts an attachment for the edifice. We naturally personify it, and conceive its massive walls and its dim emptiness to be instinct with a calm, and meditative, and somewhat melancholy spirit. But the steeple stands foremost, in our thoughts, as well as locally. It impresses us as a giant, with a mind comprehensive ...
— Sunday at Home (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... interesting preface is accurately reprinted with the book, the reader is referred to it without further extracts.[195] The Editor's introduction to these Sighs was written under very solemn feelings, produced by reading this searching treatise. The rich man is intended to personify those who, neglecting salvation, die in their sins, while Lazarus personates all those who humbly receive salvation as the gift of God; who, however they may suffer in this world, retain their integrity to death. In this parable, a voice is heard from the place of torment—the cry is a 'drop ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... system rest on universal suffrage,—on a suffrage which gives to classes the most ignorant a power that preponderates over all the healthful elements of knowledge. It is the tendency of all ignorant multitudes to personify themselves, as it were, in one individual. They cannot comprehend you when you argue for a principle; they do comprehend you when you talk of a name. The Emperor Napoleon is to them a name, and the prefects and officials ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... my life has been molded—for this. Though I did not then know it, I lived because I had to live. I had to live because it was written that my life should complete itself by loving you. It was not your hills that gave me health again—it was yourself. You do not personify the hills, but the hills personify you. My dream is no longer a dream, it is a ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... associate the placenta with the ka, it is of interest to note Moret's suggestion concerning the fourteen forms of the ka, to which von Bissing assigns the general significance "nourishment or offerings". He puts the question whether they do not "personify the elements of material and intellectual prosperity, all that is necessary for the health of body and ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... same society, the "historical" school was led to the discovery of solidarity (Zusammenhang).[213] But, before attempting to discover its causes by analysis, the adherents of this school assumed the existence of a permanent general cause residing in the society itself. And, as it was customary to personify society, a special temperament was attributed to it, the peculiar genius of the nation or the race, manifesting itself in the different social activities and explaining their solidarity.[214] This was ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... conscious of certain types. One was an elderly gentleman with a snow-white, short beard, pink, unwrinkled face and stony, sharp blue eyes, attired in the fashion of a gilded youth, who seemed to personify the city's wealth, ripeness and frigid unconcern. Another type was a woman, tall, beautiful, clear as a steel engraving, goddess-like, calm, clothed like the princesses of old, with eyes as coldly blue as the reflection of sunlight on a glacier. And ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... grave and inquiring, as Portia should, at her lord's unusual action and appearance, flung herself into position and out of position with a mirthfulness of behaviour wholly inconsistent with the character she was to personify. How ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... knew that his aunt would champion his cause. During the period of Betty's maiden passion his pride had caused her as much suffering as her youth and buoyant nature would permit; but as the years slipped by she felt inclined to personify that pride and burn a candle beneath it. Even before her mind had awakened, the energy and strength of her character had cured her of love for a man as supine as Jack Emory. He was charming and well read, all that she could desire in a brother, but as a husband ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... episodical figure which has hitherto baffled all conjectures, because it seems by its traits, its carriage, its odd splendour, and its inappropriateness, to personify the magic, the romantic feeling, or, if you prefer, the misrepresentation of the picture; I mean that little witch-like personage, child-like and crone-like at the same time, with her hair streaming and adorned with pearls, gliding among the guards for no apparent ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... of a priest. It was then and there, while kneeling on my knees upon that rock of Golgotha that came to me with startling force and clearness that I must be a follower of Jesus Christ and not a representative. All men may live on the Christ-like way and be happy, but the man who dares personify himself with the authorities belonging only to Jesus, that man must be a faker; "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" and I knew Jesus was my friend, the only friend left to me, while every other ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... I did not understand him would not be quite true. We English girls, who have lived with stern fathers, and with no mother for the best part of our lives, seem to learn by intuition, the saddest phases of a life's experience. We personify the heroes of our old books, until the worst of written fates, become as natural to us as though such had been items of our own existence. And so I knew immediately, that this man's life had been blighted bitterly. ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... which you find in the infancy of man you also find in the infancy of nations. It is the same. In both cases there is the same necessity of idealization, the same tendency to personify the unknown. And it may be said that between Punch and Jupiter, Mother Hubbard and Venus, there ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... for people, and, notwithstanding the luminousness of the word substituted, you take the sparkle out of the line, which sparkle is imparted by mental activity, and the poetic dash that has the delightful audacity to personify such atomies. ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... hold mastery over her; without individualism, a mere adjunct of man, the chief object of whose creation was to adorn and beautify his existence, or to minister to some form of his selfishness. This is nearly the masculine idea of womanhood, and poor womanhood strives to personify it. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... is usually regarded as the first person of the divine triad of India. The four heads with which he is represented are supposed to have allusion to the four corners of the earth which he is sometimes considered to personify. As an object of adoration Brahma has been entirely superseded by Siva and Vishnu. In the whole of India there is, I believe, but one temple dedicated to his worship. In this point the first of the Indian triad curiously resembles the last of the divine fraternity ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... from the moment at which he speaks. Democratic writers are perpetually coining words of this kind, in which they sublimate into further abstraction the abstract terms of the language. Nay, more, to render their mode of speech more succinct, they personify the subject of these abstract terms, and make it act like a real entity. Thus they would say in French, "La force des choses veut que les ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... fingers. It is of that finer sort which the inner ear alone can estimate. It seems simple, like a Greek column, because of its perfection. In a poem named "Ligeia," under which title he intended to personify the music of nature, our boy-poet gives us ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... aesthetic emotion that it can behold without admiration the wonders of the rural realm, even though a vein of sordid suffering ran through the beauteous ensemble. Of all our personal friends, the one who most adores and loves to personify Nature is a successful farmer of unceasing diligence. Mr. Ashby errs, we are certain, in taking the point of view of the unimaginative and unappreciative peasant. This sort of animal interprets Nature by physical, not mental associations, and is unfitted by heredity ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... with his grey face, protuberant eyes, and obsequious solemnity, in which lurked a callous smile. The burial of the great, the execution of the wicked, were alike to him. In him Fate seemed to personify life's revenges, its futilities, its calculating ironies. The flag-draped coffin was just about to pass, and the fanatical barber harked back to Philip. "They say it was all empty honours with him afore ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... unhappy prognostications speedily fulfilled! I was helpless and knew it. For a second time those whose dignified office it was to personify the charity of our Redeemer showed themselves the least charitable of mankind. I was chewing the sour cud of these reflections when I heard Virginia thanking the officers for their paternal resolves in her regard. ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... in proof apparently of this, Mr. Max Muller cites a passage from the Printer's Register, in which we read that to little children 'everything is alive. . . . The same instinct that prompts the child to personify everything remains unchecked in the savage, and grows up with him to manhood. Hence in all simple and early languages there are but two ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... depends. Plato and Milton, Shakspeare and Dante, and Wordsworth, had imaginations tranquil, sedate, cool, originative, penetrative, intense, which dwelt in the "highest heaven of invention." Hence it was that Chalmers could personify or paint a passion; he could give it in one of its actions; he could not, or rather he never did impassionate, create, and vivify a person—a very different thing from personifying a passion—all the difference, as Henry Taylor says, between ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... own, and refused to be displaced by spiritual exercises or physical mortifications. Had he been able to pursue the analysis yet further, it may be that, even in these days, he would have found that the forces of this world were already beginning to personify themselves for him in the attractive figure of Claudia Territon. As it was, however, this discovery was ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... have suffered more from the evils of intemperance than our brave sailors, fishermen, and rivermen. Foreigners tell our missionaries to convert our drunken sailors abroad, and when they wish to personify an Englishman, they mockingly reel about like a drunken man. And what lives have been lost through the intemperance of captains and crews! The 'St. George,' with 550 men: 'The Kent,' 'East Indiaman,' with most of her passengers and crew: ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... must have forcibly felt, what they have so well described, the charm, which natural affections, and unsophisticated feelings spread round the human character. It is this power of looking into the heart, and responsively vibrating with each emotion, that enables the poet to personify each passion, and the painter to sketch with a ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... that Nature needs some human association to appeal strongly to us, and how man's history of smiles and tears gives pathos, mystery, and romance to scenes which otherwise would be merely coldly beautiful or terribly sublime. It is for this reason, doubtless, that we are always endeavoring to personify Nature. We think of solitary trees as lonely, of storm-tossed waves as angry, and of a group of mountains as members of one family. Thus some of the Arizona mountains are called brothers. No doubt their birth was attended by the same throes of Mother Earth, and they possess certain family ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... he was at his best. His manner was clear and engaging; he moved his audience to tears and smiles. There was satire and tenderness and the marvellous insight that made him absolutely personify the writers he touched upon. ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... Heaven, earth, and T'ai I as three separate entities, an unknown Spirit, the Spirit of the Pole Star, etc., but practically the Taoists confine their T'ai I to T'ai-i Chen-jen, in which Perfect Man they personify the abstract ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... Sirens dwelt on three dangerous rocks near the island of Capraea, according to ancient authorities; or they were found on the promontory between Paestum and Elea, or even down at Cape Pelorum in Sicily. Why should they not be indeed everywhere! Then they have been supposed to personify the secret dangers of a calm sea, and their song is the music of splashing waters. Undoubtedly a physical substrate must be granted in the case of the Sirens, and in the Mythus generally; still they ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... There seemed to her nothing ridiculous in this personification of the garden, as there had formerly seemed to her nothing ridiculous in her thought of the desert as a being; but the fact that she did thus instinctively personify the nature that surrounded her gave to the garden in her eyes an aspect that was hostile and even threatening, as if she faced a love now changed to hate, a cold and inimical watchfulness that knew too much about her, to which she had once told all her happy secrets and murmured all ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... head of Demeter (Plate XVI., at the top); on the other a full figure of Zeus Aietophoros (Plate XIX., at the top); the two together signifying the sustaining strength of the earth and heaven. Look first at the head of Demeter. It is merely meant to personify fulness of harvest; there is no mystery in it, no sadness, no vestige of the expression which we should have looked for in any effort to realize the Greek thoughts of the Earth Mother, as we find them spoken by the poets. But take it merely as personified abundance;—the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... saying, if he could only impress upon the Waganda to listen to his orders, there would never be a deficiency. Upon which the king said, "If they fail to obey you, they disobey me; for I have appointed you as my orderly, and thereby you personify the orders of the king." Up jumped Maula in a moment as soon as these words were uttered, charging with his stick, then floundering and n'yanzigging as if he had been signally rewarded. I expected some piece of ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... as has hitherto been believed, but of Douglas Jerrold, under the title of "The 'Post' at the Opera." The tone of that newspaper was irresistible to the democrats of Punch; and Thackeray, Leech, and a Beckett took up the running with great glee. Jerrold and Thackeray chose to personify the paper by the creation of "Jenkins," and the "Jenkins Papers" soon became a recognised feature and one of the standard jokes of the paper. Leech's illustrations were every bit as good as the others' text; and even when the gentle Hine was ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... happier than I have ever been since. I used to think that you were just a sort of peg on which I was hanging a pleasant sentimental regret for days which could never come back. You were a memory that seemed to personify all the other memories of the best time of my life. You were the goddess of old associations. Then I met you in London, and it was different. I wanted you—you! I didn't want you because you recalled ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... so fully as now was Lincoln's greatness understood. He has come to personify for us the triumphs and glories, the sadness and the pathos, of the great struggle which he guided. His final martyrdom seems almost a fitting crown for his achievements. It has, without doubt, done much to secure him the ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... accomplish something; he feels unconsciously that he is part of the organic whole of the universe and has work to do. The charm of books like Robinson Crusoe and the Swiss Family Robinson consists in the fact they personify and epitomize the perpetual struggle of mankind with the forces of nature. The boy takes up fads; for a while all his interests are concentrated in boats, then in postage stamps, then in something else. His mind must be occupied, if we cannot fill it with good the bad will ...
— Children and Their Books • James Hosmer Penniman
... often and freely personify, and must do so. The highest feeling takes on a quality of love, and love goes to a personal object. It is sometimes as toward one divine friend and God, sometimes toward the one beloved human being, sometimes ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... If you had agreed to play for them,—which she said she was pretty sure she would make you do,—she was going to arrange that just before the curtain fell the screen should be suddenly shifted from in front of you, and you would then be in full view of the audience. You were, in fact, to personify the girl for whom the ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... by le Sieur Beaubrun, but it is difficult to conceive how the real could personify the abstract personage. The thieves were the Duke d'Amville ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... (Plate XVI., at the top); on the other a full figure of Zeus Aietophoros, (Plate XIX., at the top); the two together signifying the sustaining strength of the earth and heaven. Look first at the head of Demeter. It is merely meant to personify fullness of harvest; there is no mystery in it, no sadness, no vestige of the expression which we should have looked for in any effort to realize the Greek thoughts of the Earth Mother, as we find them spoken by the poets. But take it merely as personified ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... this race, who moved westward, seem to have had a special fondness for open air nature, and a willingness to personify the powers of nature. They were glad to live in the open air, and they specially encouraged the virtues which an open-air people prize. Thus no Roman was thought manly who could not swim, and every Greek exercised in the athletic sports of ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... region through the devotion of Sato Tadanobu, whose brother, Tsuginobu, had died to save Yoshitsune's life in the battle of Yashima. Attacked by the monks of Zo-o-do in overwhelming force, Yoshitsune had prepared to meet death when Tadanobu offered to personify him and hold the position while Yoshitsune escaped. With much difficulty Yoshitsune was induced to consent. Tadanobu not only succeeded in covering the retreat of his chief, but also managed himself to escape to Kyoto where, being discovered, he died by his own hand. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... above the man of thought are typical. His heroes, fair-haired and blue-eyed, stalwart and vigorous, relying on strength and longing for adventure, tender-hearted and contemplative when not aroused to violent action and bent on deeds of valor, personify the national ideal. His whole vision of life is Scandinavian, bright and vivid, with a tinge of melancholy. Tegner was, with Geijer and Ling, the first to adopt national subjects, to use the Scandinavian myths and folk-lore in their poetry, in opposition ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... Dr. Furnivall, on behalf of the Browning Society, to explain this allusion, answered in the fashion which he often loved to use towards such inquirers: "The 'seven spirits' are in the Apocalypse, also in Coleridge and Byron, a common image." . . . "I certainly never intended" (he also said) "to personify wisdom, or philosophy, or any other abstraction." And he summed up the, after all, sufficiently obvious meaning by saying that Numpholeptos is "an allegory of an impossible ideal object of love, accepted conventionally as such by a ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... centre of the republic, showing the great inconvenience suffered in consequence of the state of insecurity in which the people constantly live. A party of their own Indians, a most degraded band of cowardly vagabonds, that lived not a great way from the city, concluded to personify a company of northern savages, in order more successfully to plunder the inhabitants. With shoutings, these vagabonds rushed into the houses of the people, who were so paralyzed by the very sight of Indians in a hostile attitude, that, without resistance, they suffered them to plunder whatever ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... activities, answering to a bundle of detached powers, somehow standing side by side, and exerting no influence on one another. Sometimes this absolute separation of the parts of mind has gone so far as to personify the several faculties as though they were distinct entities."—Sully, Outlines ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... serve the purpose. Your God (divested of metaphysical attributes) is simply a name for your own better instincts and impulses. Many people, perhaps most, share Mr. Wells's tendency to externalize, objectivate, personify these impulses; and there may be no harm in doing so. But when it comes to asserting that your own personification is the only true one, then—I am not ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... personify abstract things, and not poets only but sculptors and painters too. All the great things of the world are ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... character of each particular race. To a rustic, pastoral people, like the Swiss, is given for their liberator a noble peasant; to a proud, aspiring race, such as the Americans, an honest soldier. Two distinct symbols, standing erect by the cradles of the two modern liberties of the world to personify their opposite natures: on the one hand Tell, with his arrow and the apple; on the other, Washington, with his sword ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... comes to life in your own consciousness, if you will clear it of the blasphemous preconceptions imposed by Christianity," answered Bernal so seriously that no one had the heart to interrupt him. "Of course we can never personify God save as a higher power of self. Moses did no more; Jesus did no more. And if we could stop with this—be content with saying 'God is better than the best man'—we should have a formula permitting endless growth, even as He permits it to us. God has been more generous ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... "Paradise Lost" the chief favourite of all. The birds must often have felt startled, when from the small swinging form perching on a branch, came out in childish tones the "Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers," of Milton's stately and sonorous verse. I liked to personify Satan, and to declaim the grand speeches of the hero-rebel, and many a happy hour did I pass in Milton's heaven and hell, with for companions Satan and "the Son," Gabriel and Abdiel. Then there was a terrace running by the side of the ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... Ah! what anxiety consumed his poor, tender, enthusiastic heart! On leaving Paris things had seemed so simple, so natural to him! He was unjustly accused, and he started off to defend himself, arrived and flung himself at the feet of the Holy Father, who listened to him indulgently. Did not the Pope personify living religion, intelligence to understand, justice based upon truth? And was he not, before aught else, the Father, the delegate of divine forgiveness and mercy, with arms outstretched towards all the children of the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... and wrong, truth and falsehood, purity and impurity; apparently they are blind to the evidence of harmony and agreement in the universe, discerning nothing anywhere but strife, conflict, antagonism. Nor is this all. They go a step further, and personify the two parties to the struggle. One is a "white" or holy "Spirit" (cpento mainyus), and the other a "dark spirit" (angro mainyus). But this personification is merely poetical or metaphorical, not real. The "white spirit" is not Ahura-mazda, and the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... not, my Lord, to suggest on this branch of my subject, that it requires the utmost delicacy to personify inanimate objects so justly, as to render them adapted in every circumstance to the occasion on which they are introduced. Your Lordship however will permit me to observe, that as the happiest effect ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... evidently also necessary not to personify "Nature" too much—though I am very apt to do it myself—since people will not understand that all such phrases are metaphors. Natural Selection is, when understood, so necessary and self-evident a principle, that it is a pity it should be in any way ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... lawlessness and tyranny, and the benefits of peace and justice, in three noble allegories. They were executed early in the fourteenth century, in the age of allegories and symbolism, when poets and painters strove to personify in human shape all thoughts and sentiments. The first great fresco represents Peace—the peace of the Republic of Siena. Ambrogio has painted the twenty-four councillors who formed the Government, standing ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... think I work for your sake?—or for the sake of prosperity, or order, or whatever it is you cowards or self-seekers like to imagine it is that you personify? No, the whole human race is not worth the powder and shot that they are ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... of dramatizing an idea; and that is by putting on the stage a human being possessed by that idea, yet none the less a human being with all the human impulses which make him akin and therefore interesting to us. Bunyan, in his Pilgrim's Progress, does not, like his unread imitators, attempt to personify Christianity and Valour: he dramatizes for you the life of the Christian and the Valiant Man. Just so, though I have shown that Wotan is Godhead and Kingship, and Loki Logic and Imagination without living Will (Brain without Heart, to put it vulgarly); yet in the drama Wotan is a religiously ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... regularly associated as one of a pair with another god. Nor is there in Varuna any religious grandeur which, so far as it exceeds that of other divinities, is not evolved from his old physical side. One cannot personify heaven and write a descriptive poem about him without becoming elevated in style, as compared with the tone of one that praises a rain-cloud or even the more confined personality of the sun. There is a stylistic but not a metaphysical descent from this ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... confusion: Christian philosophers have tried to personify this 'soul of the universe,' for God, they say, thinks and feels and knows. They try to get a personality without form or bounds or dimentions, but it all ends in vagueness and confusion. As for me, and I think I am not so different from other ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... having a public and recognized value, owe it to some humble spiritual ancestors, to some forgotten inspirers. A small number of the good, among them simple women, peasants, vanquished heroes, parents as modest as they are revered, personify for us beautiful and noble living; their example inspires us and gives us strength. The remembrance of them is forever inseparable from that conscience before which we arraign ourselves. In our hours of trial, we think of them, courageous and serene, and our ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... personify Vishnu, and perform his avatars, or labors. In the first two he was taught in allegories the legend of the Deluge: in the first he took three steps at right angles, representing the three huge steps taken by Vishnu in that ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... following the battle of the Nile, and presented by him to Lord Nelson; the same being deposited at Mitford, as a trophy of that ever-memorable action. This group is surmounted upon a pedestal of statuary marble; a circular form having been selected, as best adapted to the situation. To personify that affectionate regard which caused the present patriotic tribute to be raised, the town of Birmingham is represented in a dejected attitude, murally crowned, mourning her loss; she being accompanied by ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... especially, had some knowledge of mathematics. He was disposed to do his duty—so far as a man can do his duty, who imagines himself so entirely lifted above his fellow creatures as to owe no obligation except to exact their obedience and to personify to them the will of the Almighty. To Philip and the Pope he was ever faithful. He was not without pretensions to military talents, but his gravity, slowness, and silence made him fitter to shine in the cabinet than in the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... his criticisms of America, and particularly of New York City. For this purpose the story brought upon the scene an American family long resident in Europe whom the writer called the Effinghams. Against the vulgar background of American life the members of this family were intended to personify all the accomplishments ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... prove the reasonableness of the gradual evolution of species. The next step in the argument is "as man produces new species and forms, by breeding, culture, etc., so has Nature in a longer time produced the same effect, in the same way." This also is reasonable, although it tends to personify Nature, and to give it a mind before the ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... regarded as an attempt on the part of the artist to express, in a visible form, the idea or promise of the redemption of the human race, as existing in the Sovereign Mind before the beginning of things. They do not personify this idea under the image of Christ,—for they conceived that, as the second person of the Trinity, he could not be his own instrument,—but by the image of Mary surrounded by those attributes which were afterwards introduced into the pictures of the Conception: or setting her foot, as second ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... he finds an explanation for all in the levelling tendencies of the age. He cannot be too severe on the first French Revolution and its results. "In letters," he tells us, "it has led to materialism and anarchy, while the Bourbons personify for France peace, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... Different Collections. The preface and general introduction to the book of Proverbs reflect the immorality and evils that characterized both the Persian and Greek periods. Their background is the corrupt life of the city. The tendency to personify wisdom is also one of the marks of later Jewish thought. It is probable, therefore, that this part of the book of Proverbs was added by a late editor who lived during the Greek period. The oldest collection in the book is clearly to ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... fashion, and their coquetry behind their fans was the acme of caricature. But my pen halts when I would describe the gentlemen dancers. I believe that in reality they were not meant to represent fallen humanity at all; but were intended to personify nats, the spirits or princes of the air of Burmese mythology. They carried on their heads pagodas of tinsel and coloured glass that towered imposingly aloft. They were arrayed in tight-bodiced coats with aprons before and behind of fantastic outline, resembling ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... simile, personification, prosopopoeia[obs3], allegory, apologue[obs3], parable, fable; allusion, adumbration; application. exaggeration , hyperbole &c. 549. association, association of ideas (analogy) 514a V. employ -metaphor &c. n.; personify, allegorize, adumbrate, shadow forth, apply, allude to. Adj. metaphorical, figurative, catachrestical[obs3], typical, tralatitious[obs3], parabolic, allegorical, allusive, anagogical[obs3]; ironical; colloquial; tropical. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of their hills and their rivers; they frequently personify both, and attribute to them characters corresponding with their peculiar features. Of the Severn, the Wye, and the Rheidol, they have an apologue, intended to convey an idea of their comparative length, and also of the character of the districts through ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... your immutable condescension graciously deign to pardon the bold assurance and presumptuous liberty of an animated mass of undistinguished dust, whose fragile composition is most miraculously composed of congenial atoms so promiscuously concentred as to personify in an abstracted degree the beauteous form of man, to convey by proxy to your brilliant opthalmic organs the sincere thanks of a mild, gentle, and grateful heart for the delightful amusement I have experienced and the instruction I have reaped ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... God's Man sent down to swing the world back. Satan is trying his best to get a man—one of the original trustee class, to whom the dominion of the earth was intrusted—a man who will stand for him even as Jesus stood for God. Indeed a man who will personify himself even as Jesus was the personification of God, the express image of His person. When he shall succeed in that the last desperate crisis ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... region,' but who becomes the god of earth par excellence. When, therefore, Bel and Ea are invoked, it is equivalent, in modern parlance, to calling upon earth and water; and just as Bel is used to personify, as it were, the unification of the earthly forces, so Ea becomes, in a comprehensive sense, the watery deep. Ea and Bel assume therefore conspicuous proportions in the developed Babylonian cosmogony ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... voluntarily submitted to vanish into thin air. Scarcely had I walked three steps in the Tuileries gardens, the place which I had chosen as my destination, before I saw the prototype of the matrimonial situation which has last been described in this book. Had I desired to characterize, to idealize, to personify marriage, as I conceived it to be, it would have been impossible for the Creator himself to have produced so complete a symbol of it as I then saw ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... hostess arranges a costume scheme for the entire fete beforehand, signifying to each guest the character, historical or imaginary, that it is her pleasure he shall, for the time being, personify. In this way the perfection and beauty of the ball-room are assured beforehand, and repetitions of time-worn characters prevented from ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... legitimate thought of the dependence of finite things on the ideal of the Being of all beings, as a relation of concepts to the Idea, but, dazzled by an irresistible illusion, proceeds to realize, to hypostatize, and to personify this ideal, and, since she herself is dimly conscious of the illegitimacy of such a transformation of the mere Idea into a given object, devises arguments for the existence of God. Reason, moreover, would scarcely be induced to regard a mere creation of its thought as a real being, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... for the fray, and carefully donned a pair of well-stuffed pads and an enormously thick woollen jersey for protection, not so much against the cold as against the "flying ball," it flashed across me that I was about to personify the immortal Dumkins of Pickwick fame; whilst in my companion, the stout butler, it was impossible not to detect the complacent features and rounded form of Mr. Podder. Up to a certain point the analogy was complete. Let the Winson Invincibles equal the All Muggleton C.C., while ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... it to be given, if we may be allowed to personify, neither by Innovation nor Establishment; but by the rashness and ill temper with which these heroines have mutually maintained their positions. Innovation struck the ball at first too impetuously: but Establishment took it at the rebound, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... personify the world in general—the Mrs. Grundy of each respected reader's private circle—every one of whom can point to some families of his acquaintance who live nobody knows how. Many a glass of wine have we all of ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... divine emanations and of a differentiated divine pleroma represents the Deity as a composite, i.e.,[499] finite being; and, moreover, the personification of the divine qualities is a mythological freak, the folly of which is evident as soon as one also makes the attempt to personify the affections and qualities of man in a similar way.[500] (3) The attempt to make out conditions existing within the Godhead is in itself absurd and audacious.[501] (4) The theory of the passion and ignorance of Sophia ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... To personify Aphrodite the girl wore a long pink tunic, with a peplum of the same colour heavily embroidered. Her hair was piled high on her head, leaving the lovely nape of her neck half covered by her draperies, her exquisitely delicate arms emerging from a sleeveless tunic. To represent ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... three hundred and forty-five steps. The plinth is twenty-one feet square, and ornamented with sculpture by Cibber, representing the flames subsiding on the appearance of King Charles;—beneath his horse's feet a figure, meant to personify religious malice, crawls out vomiting fire, and above is that unjustifiable legend which called forth the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... sonnet, and found it easy, flowing, and well written. It was composed in praise of the King of Prussia, who had just conquered Silesia by a masterly stroke. As I was copying it, the idea struck me to personify Silesia, and to make her, in answer to the sonnet, bewail that Love (supposed to be the author of the sonnet of the marchioness) could applaud the man who had conquered her, when that conqueror was ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... be observed that the "Gopis" here personify the five senses. Lassen says, "Manifestum est puellis istis nil aliud significar ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... commencement of a new society, it is the legislator who makes and corrects the manners; later, it is the manners which preserve the laws." Of course, and here is the great risk that all revolutionizing people run—they must tend to despotism; "they must personify themselves in a man," is the Prince's phrase; and, according as is his temperament or disposition—according as he is a Cromwell, a Washington, or a Napoleon—the revolution becomes tyranny or freedom, prospers ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... similar, indeed, are the customs depicted throughout that these folk-records might well be taken as a picture of the social organisation among many barbarous tribes. I should like to wait to point out these resemblances, such, for instance, as the tendency to personify natural objects, the identification of human beings with animals and trees, found so often in the stories, as well as many other things—the belief in magic and the power of wise women. And what I want to make clear is the very early beginning of these folk-tales; they take ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... to be 'very good sort of people when we know them,' and all of them part on good terms with Socrates. But he is speaking of a being as imaginary as the wise man of the Stoics, and whose character varies in different dialogues. Like mythology, Greek philosophy has a tendency to personify ideas. And the Sophist is not merely a teacher of rhetoric for a fee of one or fifty drachmae (Crat.), but an ideal of Plato's in which the falsehood of all mankind ...
— Sophist • Plato
... Governor and his circle, and by its privileges and prejudices creating in those excluded from that class a spirit of opposition, which extended from its members to the whole Imperial system which they were supposed to personify. In each of the North American Colonies a small oligarchy, generally known as the "Family Compact," was able to "monopolise the Executive Council, the Legislative Council, the Bench, the Bar, and all offices of profit." It was ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... test the question with you, and, in order to do so, I will personify these powers. I will suppose them to represent ten men, all of whom are Atheists, and we will ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... dark. Then was heard a soft footstep descending the stairs; the door opened, and a lady came in, bearing a lighted lamp, which she stood upon the table. She was tall, very slender, and with a face which a painter might have used to personify the spiritual life. Its outlines were of severe perfection; its expression a confirmed grief, subdued by, and made subordinate to, the consciousness of an inward strength which could convert suffering ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... more discover power in mental than in physical sequences. The will had been supposed to be the type of causal power; but volition, according to Brown, reveals simply another succession of desires and bodily actions. The hypothesis of 'power' has been really the source of 'illusion.' The tendency to personify leads us to convert metaphor into fact, to invent a subject of this imaginary 'power,' and thus to create a mythology of beings to carry on the processes of nature. In other words, Brown here follows Hume or even ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... "She might almost personify Britannia," said he, "with her complete self-absorption and general air of comfortable somnolence. Well, au revoir, Von Bork!" With a final wave of his hand he sprang into the car, and a moment later the two golden cones ...
— His Last Bow - An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... But Herodotus of this theory says, "For my part I know of no river called Ocean, and I think that Homer or one of the earlier poets invented the name and introduced it into his poetry." (Book II., 23, and Book IV., 36.) In "Oceanus" Aeschylus seems to have intended to personify the great surrounding stream. ("Prom. Vinc.", lines 291, 308.) (32) Comp. VI., 615. (33) Sason is a small island just off the Ceraunian rocks, the point of which is now called Cape Linguetta, and is nearly ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... Russian Jacquerie, and in all the seditions which held out the hope of emancipation, the first place was taken by the Old Believers and the Cossacks, most of whom held the same faith. These two forms of national resistance are naturally akin. They equally personify the character and the prejudices of the old Russian. Their main point is their character of protests, so that an Old Believer may be described as a Cossack in religion, transporting into that domain the instincts peculiar to the wild horsemen of the Don. But ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... myself to characters more worthy of his attention, has led me far beyond my 455 first intention; but it is not unimportant to expose the false zeal which has occasioned these attacks on our elder patriots. It has been too much the fashion first to personify the Church of England, and then to speak of different individuals, who in different ages have been rulers in that church, as if in some 460 strange way they constituted its personal identity. Why should a clergyman of the present day feel interested in the defence of Laud or Sheldon? ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the Jewish accounts that we have learned to call them heathens. But, as far as we know to the contrary, they were a just and moral people, and not addicted, like the Jews, to cruelty and revenge, but of whose profession of faith we are unacquainted. It appears to have been their custom to personify both virtue and vice by statues and images, as is done now-a-days both by statuary and by painting; but it does not follow from this that they worshipped them any more than we do.—I pass ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... and certainly has produced, a great result by his methodical and unconscious means of selection, what may not natural selection effect? Man can act only on external and visible characters; Nature, if I may be allowed to personify the natural preservation or survival of the fittest, cares nothing for appearances, except in so far as they are useful to any being. She can act on every internal organ, on every shade of constitutional difference, on the whole ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... reveal their anxieties as well as their hopes; they paint with truth and love the actual condition of the human race, with its sorrows and consolations, its hopes and fears, its love and hate. They select their images from the habitual ideas of the people, and personify inanimate objects—the mountains tremble and exult, deep cries unto deep. Another characteristic of Hebrew poetry is the strong feeling of nationality it expresses. Of their two most sublime poets, one was their legislator, the other their ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... own discoveries! Was he not the very symbol of that which was making economists thin, thinkers pale, artists haggard, statesmen bald—the symbol of Indigestion Incarnate! Did he not, delicious, gross, unconscious man, personify beneath his Americo-Italian polish all those rank and primitive instincts, whose satisfaction necessitated the million miseries of his fellows; all those thick rapacities which stir the hatred of the humane and thin-skinned! And yet, one's ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... as an absolute power or principle." To this need only be added the desire to be in right relation to it. Mr. Marett's word "supernaturalism" seems to mean the same thing; "There arises in the region of human thought a powerful impulse to objectify, and even to personify, the mysterious or supernatural something felt; and in the region of will a corresponding impulse to render it innocuous, or, better still, propitious, by force of constraint (i.e. magic), communion, or conciliation." See his Threshold of Religion, ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... undoubtedly; but in order to be a genial exception one must have within oneself, and then personify with great intensity all the inspirations which, at a certain moment, are dispersed in the atmosphere. Ever since the great agitation which had shaken the moral world by Rousseau's preaching, there had been various vague ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... fountains, contributed to render the feeling of local divinity prevalent and intense. Each petty canton had its own Nile, whose influence upon fertility and culture was sufficient to become worthy to propitiate, and therefore to personify. Had Greece been united under one monarchy, and characterized by one common monotony of soil, a single river, a single mountain, alone might have been deemed divine. It was the number of its tribes—it was the variety of its natural features, which produced ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... greatest of merely dramatic artists. Others are more beautiful; others are more stately and imposing; others have been fitted by external gifts of nature to personify characters of very marked features; others are more graceful and lovely and winning; most others mingle their own personality with the characters they assume, but Rachel has this final evidence of genius, that she is always superior to what she does; her mind presides over ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... He wore a large white turban, and a white cashmere abbai, or long robe, from the throat to the ankles. As a desert patriarch he was superb, the very perfection of all that the imagination could paint, if we would personify Abraham at the head of his people. This grand old Arab with the greatest politeness insisted upon our immediately accompanying him to his camp, as he could not allow us to remain in his country as strangers. He would hear of no excuses, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... nature of Man. He may live in his animal, or exterior nature; or he may develop his spiritual, or interior nature; through service; through unselfish love. Our limited mortal consciousness is responsible for the tendency to personify everything, instead of to realize the principles underlying all expression. God and the Devil have been the personification of the two phases of the principles of Evolution, from animal ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... wearied of saying that he was "no politician." He was, none the less, one of the most forceful and successful politicians that the country has known. He was fortunate in being able to personify a cause which was grounded deeply in the feelings and opinions of the people, and also in being able to command the services of a large group of tireless and skillful national and local managers. He was willing to leave to these managers the infinite details of his ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... acquired friend, Mr. Peacock, March 24, 1875, he says: "About four days ago, a certain poem which I had vaguely ruminated for a week before took hold of me like a real James River ague, and I have been in a mortal shake with the same, day and night, ever since. I call it 'The Symphony': I personify each instrument in the orchestra, and make them discuss various deep social questions of the times, in the progress of the music. It is now nearly finished; and I shall be rejoiced thereat, for it verily racks all ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... that it must practice self-denial; that it must not lay its hands on what does not belong to it. In short, that it must as a State or as a nation be "good," in exactly the same sense in which a person is "good." In other words, they personify ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... are the Real; the only Ideal is the Ridiculous and Homely. Let us always remember this. Let us through life endeavor to personify the virtues, and always begin 'em with a capital letter. Let us, whenever we can find an opportunity, deliver our sentiments in the form of roundhand copies. Respect the Aged. Eschew Vulgarity. Admire ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... extremely interesting. Many, no doubt, went there with a prepossession, raised by the unfavourable reports of her personal appearance; and if lofty stature were indispensibly necessary to a heroine, no external appearance could be much less calculated to personify a Thalestris than Miss Brunton's—but the mighty mind soon made itself to be felt, and every idea of personal dimensions vanished. "The audience (says a British author) expected to see a mawkin, but saw a Cibber—the applause was proportionate to the surprise: every mouth emitted ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... The same mythical entifications were found in physiology, in chemistry, in nearly all the sciences. Undoubtedly these scientific myths had no anthropomorphic value, yet they are notwithstanding truly mythical entifications, inasmuch as they virtually personify laws, or ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli |
