"Personify" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you invite the enlightened nineteenth century to accept the idea of a godhead that is anything else than an abstraction?" continued the weak male voice. "Why, to personify your god is to limit him. How can ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... 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 ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... further 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 ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... inclination, it is true, is suppressed by a little reflection, and only takes place in children, poets, and the antient philosophers. It appears in children, by their desire of beating the stones, which hurt them: In poets, by their readiness to personify every thing: And in the antient philosophers, by these fictions of sympathy and antipathy. We must pardon children, because of their age; poets, because they profess to follow implicitly the suggestions of their fancy: But what excuse shall we find to justify our philosophers ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... have quoted, and, upon his own theory, at any rate, replied with perfect justice, that they were also kept up by competition. The common language upon the subject is merely one instance of the fallacies into which men fall when they personify an abstraction. Competition becomes a kind of malevolent and supernatural being, to whose powers no conceivable limits are assigned. It is supposed to account for any amount of degradation. Yet if, by multiplying their numbers, workmen increase ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... assumption of 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 introduces sin into the pleroma itself, i.e., into ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... 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, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... 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 anticipates Comte. As J. S. Mill remarks,[471] this erroneous identification of 'power' ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... 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 ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... 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 ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... 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 proceeded to assert the right of his ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... moment when a great tendency is nearing its crisis and culmination. Specially gifted with qualities needed to realize the fulness of its possibilities, they so identify themselves with it by their deeds that they thenceforth personify to the world the movement which brought them forth, and of which their own achievements are at once the climax and the most dazzling illustration. Fewer still, but happiest of all, viewed from the standpoint of fame, are those whose ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... marchioness's 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 ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... 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 ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... great Asiatic Power. We have it now in evidence, written in islands among the most gorgeous of those that shine in the Southern seas—islands that are east from the Atlantic and west from the Pacific shores of the One Great Republic—that we may personify hereafter, sitting at the head of the table when the empires of the earth consult themselves as to the courses of empire. Our Course of Empire ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... and 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 ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... 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 should 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, but at once gave orders to ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... the child. She pulled her rather roughly to her feet. It was so provoking to have her sit down in the cold, and to so personify all that she wanted so ardently,—it was purely selfish, she knew that,—to put out of her mind. There seemed but one thing to do: go with ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... 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 spirit" (op. cit., ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... Timaeus and the other dialogues will not appear to be great. It is probable that the relation of the ideas to God or of God to the world was differently conceived by him at different times of his life. In all his later dialogues we observe a tendency in him to personify mind or God, and he therefore naturally inclines to view creation as the work of design. The creator is like a human artist who frames in his mind a plan which he executes by the help of his servants. Thus the language of philosophy ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... God will 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 ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... evils of 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 beneath the thrones of Concord, Justice, and Wisdom. From these controlling powers ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... to plead Sir. George's cause, a dashing Col. Rivers (meant, we were told, by the Hon. W. Sheppard, to personify Col. Henry Caldwell, of Belmont) had won the heart of Emily, who preferred true love to a coronet. Let us treasure up a few more sentences fallen from Emily's light-hearted confidante. A postscript to a letter runs thus— "Adieu, Emily, I am going to ramble in the woods ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... 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 ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... sharp-shooters, who are scarcely as courageous as they are arrogant. It was discovered that Mrs. Coningsby could be as malicious as her assailants, and far more epigrammatic. She could describe in a sentence and personify in a phrase. The mot was circulated, the nom de nique repeated. Surrounded by a brilliant band of youth and wit, even her powers of mimickry were revealed to the initiated. More than one social tyrant, whom ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... the cold room for a quarter of an hour; it became quite 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
... 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 ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... and wrong too in its specification of the objects which may be personified. For "life and action" not being peculiar to persons, there must be something else than these ascribed, to form the figure; and, surely, the objects which Fancy thinks it right to personify, are not always "inanimate." I have elsewhere defined the thing as follows: "Personification is a figure by which, in imagination, we ascribe intelligence and personality to unintelligent beings or abstract ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... 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 ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... 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 ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... a time of my life when I was 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
... families." Every one remembers the enthusiasm excited by Fanny Elssler amongst the matter-of-fact Yankees. During her last engagement at the French opera her salary was eighty thousand francs a-year. Taglioni and Elssler personify the two styles into which the present school of dancing is divided, the ballonne and the tacquete. The former is lightness combined with grace, when the dancer seems to float upon air. The tacquete is vivacity and rapidity; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various |
