"Personification" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this ill-assorted household. Oh, how different everything is from what I had planned! I wanted a cheerful home, where I should be the centre of every joy; a home like Aunty's, without a cloud. But Ernest's father sits, the personification of silent gloom, like a nightmare on my spirits; Martha holds me in disfavor and contempt; Ernest is absorbed in his profession, and I hardly see him. If he wants advice he asks it of Martha, while I sit, humbled, degraded and ashamed, wondering why he ever married me at all. And ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... besides importing quantities of wine, they made their own native drinks, e.g. [Greek: chourmi], the Irish cuirm, and braccat, both made from malt (braich).[76] These words, with the Gaulish brace, "spelt,"[77] are connected with the name of this god, who was a divine personification of the substance from which the drink was made which produced, according to primitive ideas, the divine frenzy of intoxication. It is not clear why Mars should have ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... the king was enduring their tortures in one apartment, the queen was suffering indignities and outrages equally atrocious in another. Maria Antoinette was, in the eyes of the populace, the personification of every thing to be hated. They believed her to be infamous as a wife; proud, tyrannical, and treacherous; that, as an Austrian, she hated France; that she was doing all in her power to induce foreign armies to invade the French empire with fire ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... that Men may be converted into Automatons; and if he were not very ingenious we might lose our patience. He was so delighted with this whimsical fancy of his "artificial man," that he carried it on to government itself, and employed the engraver to impress the monstrous personification on our minds, even clearer than by his reasonings. The curious design forms the frontispiece of "The Leviathan." He borrowed the name from that sea-monster, that mightiest of powers, which Job has told is not to be compared with any on earth. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... to circumstances, commonly to circumstances of a spiritual or preternatural character. A well-known and striking exemplification of the belief—in a fairly advanced stage of differentiation and involving an anthropomorphic personification of the preternatural agent appealed to—is afforded by the wager of battle. Here the preternatural agent was conceived to act on request as umpire, and to shape the outcome of the contest in accordance with some stipulated ground of decision, ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... arranged for the wedding, Kasatsky was at Tsarskoe Selo at his fiancee's country place. It was a hot day in May. He and his betrothed had walked about the garden and were sitting on a bench in a shady linden alley. Mary's white muslin dress suited her particularly well, and she seemed the personification of innocence and love as she sat, now bending her head, now gazing up at the very tall and handsome man who was speaking to her with particular tenderness and self-restraint, as if he feared by word or gesture to offend or ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy
... represent the Saviour, the Fisher of Men, because he pounces from the highest sky on fish swimming on the surface of the water and carries them up, the eagle, classed in Leviticus and Deuteronomy with the unclean beasts, is transformed, as being a bird of prey, into a personification of the Devil snatching away souls to gnaw and ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... English in India, of bad acts committed when he was absent, nay, of bad acts which he had manfully opposed and severely punished. The very abuses against which he had waged an honest, resolute, and successful war were laid to his account. He was, in fact, regarded as the personification of all the vices and weaknesses which the public, with or without reason, ascribed to the English adventurers in Asia. We have ourselves heard old men, who knew nothing of his history, but who still retained ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... are all alike in this respect. I don't suppose Mrs. Smiley realizes that 'Maudie' would be called by a doubter a falsetto disguise of her own voice, and 'Wilbur' a shrewd and humorous personification of her subconscious self; or, if she does, she probably ascribes it to the process of materialization which 'takes from' the medium. Never but once have I had the sensation of being in the presence of a real spirit personality, and that happened to me only a ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... would surprise anybody who is acquainted with the growth of human reason, or at all events, of childish reason. It does not matter how we call the tendency of the childish mind to confound the manifestation with that which manifests itself, effect with cause, act with agent. Call it Animism, Personification, Metaphor, or Poetry, we all know what is meant by it, in the most general sense of all these names; we all know that it exists, and the youngest child who beats the chair against which he has fallen, or who scolds his dog, or who sings: "Rain, rain, go to Spain," can teach us ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... was a big, burly, rough-and-ready Yorkshireman—stout, somewhat pompous, about forty, with hair wearing bald on the forehead: the personification of the successful business man. "My dear Emmie," he said, in a loud voice, with a North Country accent, "the cooks have got to live. They've got to live like the rest of us. I can never persuade you that the hands must always be humoured. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... great deliverance. And I don't believe there is any sight in all the Great Tahquamenon Swamp much funnier than a porky in a hurry—a porky who has really made up his mind that he is in danger and must hustle for dear life. He is the very personification of haste and a desire to go somewhere quick, and he picks his feet up and puts them down again as fast as ever he can; and yet, no matter how hard he works, his legs are so short and his body so fat that he can't begin to travel as fast as he ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... the human "fare." Doubtless, this effects a very great saving, and, dispensing with a cad in this country might enable the fares to be lowered; but I question if there be not very many objections to our adopting the plan; and I should miss very much that personification of pertness and civility, with his inquisitive eye, and the eccentric and perpetual gyrations of his fore finger, which ever and anon stiffens in a skyward point, as though under the magic influence of some unseen electro-biologist whose decree had gone forth—"You can't move your finger, sir, you ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... like 'Kenilworth'; it is certainly more resembling a romance than a novel; in my opinion, one of the most interesting works that ever emanated from the great Sir Walter's pen. Varney is certainly the personification of consummate villainy; and in the delineation of his dark and profoundly and artful mind, Scott exhibits a wonderful knowledge of human nature, as well as surprising skill in embodying his perceptions, so as to ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... h .. h!" said both little boys in a breath, then doubled up in noisy mirth. Laura was constantly doing something to set their young blood in amazement: they looked upon her as the personification of all that was startling and unexpected. But Pin, returning with the reel of thread, opened her eyes in a ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... call Mahadeo or Siva, Sahadeo, one of the five Pandava brothers, and the goddess Lakshmi. They say that the buffalo is Mahadeo, the cow Sahadeo, and the rice Lakshmi. This also appears to be an instance of the personification of animals and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... ruler,—the wise man, as the personification of reason,—this is the standard of virtue, and therefore also of happiness. How then shall we escape an externality in our standard, divesting it of that binding character which comes only when the law without ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... Paul Lessingham, body, soul and spirit; possibly another part was the procuration of fresh victims for that long-drawn-out holocaust. That this latter object explained the disappearance of Miss Lindon I felt persuaded. That she was designed by the personification of evil who was her captor, to suffer all the horrors at which the stories pointed, and then to be burned alive, amidst the triumphant yells of the attendant demons, I was certain. That the wretch, aware that the pursuit was in full cry, was tearing, twisting, doubling, ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... thought that I ought now, by way of contrast, to show something charming; some gentle virgin head, circled with a halo, some sweet personification of innocence, clasping the dove of peace to her bosom. No: I saw nothing of the sort, and therefore cannot portray it. The pupil in the school possessing the happiest disposition was a young girl from the country, Louise Path; she was sufficiently benevolent and obliging, but not well ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... interruption, she accordingly laid her hand lightly and affectionately on the shoulder of the Honorable Giles Montagu, aged thirteen, one of the youngest and smallest middies in the ship; but he stood very straight and rigid, the personification of dignity, and endeavored to ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Booby's "Waiting- Gentlewoman," the excellent Mrs. Slipslop. Her sensitive dignity, her easy changes from servility to insolence, her sensuality, her inimitably distorted vocabulary, which Sheridan borrowed for Mrs. Malaprop, and Dickens modified for Mrs. Gamp, are all peculiarities which make up a personification of the richest humour and the most life-like reality. Mr. Peter Pounce, too, with his "scoundrel maxims," as disclosed in that remarkable dialogue which is said to be "better worth reading than all the Works of ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... strong light the difficulties and dangers into which he was running headlong. Rochester, the champion of the Church, exerted himself to strengthen her influence. Ormond, who is popularly regarded as the personification of all that is pure and highminded in the English Cavalier, encouraged the design. Even Lady Rochester was not ashamed to cooperate, and that in the very worst way. Her office was to direct the jealousy of the injured wife towards a young lady who was perfectly innocent. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... visited Leeds, for the purpose of opening the Leeds Town Hall. The party stayed at Woodley House, the residence of the mayor, who is described in her Majesty's journal as a "perfect picture of a fine old man." In his crimson velvet robes and chain of office he looked "the personification of a Venetian doge." The Queen as usual made "the tour of the town amidst a great concourse of spectators." She remarked on the occasion, "Nowhere have I seen the children's names so often inscribed. On one large arch ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... Reverend Septimus Porkington, as it turned out, a friend of his family; and he showed that it was the Reverend Septimus himself who had sat to a photographer in Baker Street for the portrait which Charles too hastily identified as that of Colonel Clay in his personification of Mr. Richard Brabazon. He further elicited the fact that the portrait of the Count von Lebenstein was really taken from Dr. Julius Keppel, a Tyrolese music-master, residing at Balham, whom he put into the box, and who was well ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... Independence, which was not published till after his decease, amid much of common place, has some very nervous lines. The personification itself is but an awkward one. The term is scarcely abstract and general enough to be invested with the ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... disappointment more severely than she was willing to believe, she flew to Rousseau, as her only refuge from the idea of him, who might prove a friend, could she but find a way to interest him in her fate; still the personification of Saint Preux, or of an ideal lover far superior, was after this imperfect model, of which merely a glance had been caught, even to the minutiae of the coat and hat of the stranger. But if she lent St. Preux, or the demi-god of her fancy, his form, she richly repaid him by the donation ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... 318. "Kant remarks at this point," he says, "that we have no right to derive our moral ideas from the idea of God, because it is precisely from the moral ideas themselves that we are led to recognise a Supreme Being, the personification of absolute righteousness. Consequently, no-one may look upon the laws of morality as arbitrary enactments of the will of God. Virtue is not obligatory from the sole reason that it is a Divine ordinance; ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... us in different fashion, each according to the measure of his sensitiveness and powers of resistance. I translated it vaguely into a personification of the mightily disturbed elements, investing them with the horror of a deliberate and malefic purpose, resentful of our audacious intrusion into their breeding-place; whereas my friend threw it into the unoriginal form at first of a trespass on some ancient ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... contours: round her cheekbones and jaws were suggestions of previously unsuspected strength. Her tender lips had assumed an almost cruel aspect; her sunken eyes, growing ever larger in her diminishing face, were harder than gems. She was the personification of will. ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... a Latin scholar by study, much as the moderns do. Claudian is commonly called the last of the heathen poets. He has also been called the transitional link between ancient and modern, between heathen and Christian poetry.[2] One characteristic may be mentioned, namely, his personification of moral or personal qualities, a sort of allegory destined to flourish for many centuries, of which the first mature example appears in the "Soul's Fight" of Prudentius, the Christian poet, who was a contemporary of Claudian. The school study of the classics produced grammars, and ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... a poetic use. In ordinary speech personification is very frequent: the pilot speaks of his boat as feminine; the engineer speaks ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... of twenty-eight differing qualities in men. The description in each chapter was not of a man, but of a quality. The method of Theophrastus, as Casaubon said, was between the philosophical and the poetical. He described a quality, but he described it by personification, and his aim was the amending of men's manners. The twenty-eight chapters that have come down to us are probably no more than a fragment of a larger work. They describe vices, and not all of them. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... been at his shop door and seen the entry of the traveller! And it was precisely characteristic of Mr. Critchlow to jump in the dark at a horrible conclusion, and to be right after all. For Sophia Mr. Critchlow had always been the personification of malignity and malevolence, and now these qualities in him made him, to her, almost obscene. Her pride brought up tremendous reinforcements, and she approached ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... was waxing fierce in another direction. Zibe Turner led a part of the mob to the right of the fighting, and attempted a flank movement. He seemed like a personification of Satan. His black eyes glared with a terrible fury, and with his long arms outstretched he rushed on the fray. His voice of command seemed a mixture of beast and human. Women shrieked and fled before him, and he had the satisfaction of seeing them indeed fall over the rough benches. With ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... definition of the functions of the First Sea Lord which will confine his sphere to the distribution and movement of ships and the strategical and tactical training of officers, so as to compel him to become the embodiment or personification of the best possible theory or system of naval warfare. That definition adopted and enforced, there is no need to lay down regulations giving the strategist control over his colleagues who administer materiel and personnel; they will of themselves always be anxious to hear his views ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... beautiful wedding—a gorgeous gown—a perfect bride—a handsome groom; and exclaimed in their hearts: How sad the father! How lofty, proud, exultant the mother! How like her to move heaven and earth to make this marriage! The attendants posed awkwardly, a personification of the uselessness of their situation, and they pitied the bride while they envied him for whose friendship they stood. The bridesmaids graced their position and gloried in it, and serenely smiled, and thought that to be launched in life in such dazzling manner might be compensation for ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... us, nor hath Virgil, nor Horace. Is it tragedy or comedy? Why, poets, actors, theatres, all fell to dust at our touch. Have we succeeded in reviving them? Would you compare our little miserable mysteries and moralities, all frigid personification, and dog Latin, with the glories of a Greek play (on the decoration of which a hundred thousand crowns had been spent) performed inside a marble miracle, the audience a seated city, and the poet ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... effective. It beat the spear into a pruning hook. With this to leaven them, the rough habiliments were most becoming. In a word, they supplied the very setting which manhood should have; and since Anthony, sitting there at his meat, was the personification of virility, they served, as all true settings should, by self-effacement to magnify their treasure. The ex-officer might have stepped out ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... peace and good-will to all men, like a personification of Christmas in May, I started out this morning to see my lawyers. I reached them at three o'clock, having idled at second-hand bookstalls and lunched on the road. I signed their unintelligible document, and wandered ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... also be remembered that the description of this person, like that of the person and work of Satan, is from the standpoint of the holiness of God; and that which the world will hail as its glorious ideal of perfection is, in God's sight, the personification ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... bounds over the rocks, and is in the ship. The vessel moves, the wives of the pirates continue on the beach, waving their scarfs to their desolate husbands. In the foreground Medora, motionless, stands rooted to the strand, and might have inspired Phidias with a personification of Despair. ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... the case, and yet there was one circumstance which puzzled Chupin exceedingly. In former years, he had heard it asserted that Mademoiselle Flavie was the very personification of pride, and that she adored her husband even to madness. Had this great love vanished? Had poverty and sorrow broken her spirit to such a degree that she was willing to stoop to such shameful concessions! If she were acquainted with her husband's present life, how did it happen that she ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... she looked! He delighted to watch every movement of the deft fingers, to study every expression of the beautiful eyes and mobile mouth. He revelled in her beauty, because to him she was the personification of all that was lovely and noble and great. Her character he would have loved just as much had she been plain instead of beautiful, for his ideal was the inward, not the outward beauty, except as the two blended into one, ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... a moment of doubt left. She despises you." For the first time his composure wavered, and his lips parted, as if to exclaim against such an assumption. But Dorothy was already at the foot of the stairs, pale, cold and unfriendly. She was the personification of a tragedy queen as she paused at the foot of the stairs, her nand on the newell post, the lights from above shining directly into a face so disdainful that he could hardly believe it was hers. There was no warmth in her voice when she spoke to him, who stood immovable, speechless, ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... Blakeney and these Comtesse de Tournay had remained seemingly unmoved. The latter, rigid, erect and defiant, with one hand still upon her daughter's arm, seemed the very personification of unbending pride. For the moment Marguerite's sweet face had become as white as the soft fichu which swathed her throat, and a very keen observer might have noted that the hand which held the tall, beribboned stick was ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... is spread out to our view a vast panorama of symbolic forms for us to read. In whatever form, angle, or color they present themselves, the true student of Nature can interpret and understand their symbolic language aright. It has been by the personification of Nature's symbols, that man has become ignorant of their language. There is no form, sound, nor color but what has its laws of expression; and only a perfect knowledge of symbolism will enable man to know the law, power, and meaning, lying behind such manifestations. The law of ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... moccasined feet padded often from her bench in the corner to the window overlooking the road down which he might come. She sat for hours at a time upon an elevation which commanded a view of the surrounding country. Heavy-featured, moody-eyed, she was the personification of dog-like fidelity and patience. Naturally, it was she who first saw Smith jogging leisurely down the ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... closed her series of queries with a gradually rising pitch and inflection in the ringing tones of her clear, musical voice. With figure erect, eyes flashing, cheeks glowing and hands uplifted, she seemed the personification of some priestess of science. Fillmore Flagg and George Gaylord gazed at her with the admiration ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... the constant, daily witness of such ablutions would, in my limited experience, engender a slight unrest among the tuneful Nine. Yet let her gracefully lean above a woodland pool, roll back her sleeves and open the collar of her shooting shirt, and she becomes a personification of glory to him who waits near the fire he has built for their evening meal. But she must have looked danger in the face with him, slept near him beneath the stars; knowing, should she be affrighted in the night, that her call will bring his reassuring answer, but ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... he stood up as the advocate of the widow, denouncing and dooming the heartless ecclesiastics, who had made her bereavement a source of gain; and in describing the scenes of the final judgment, he selected the very personification of poverty, disease and oppression, as the test by which our regard for him should be determined. To the poor and wretched; to the degraded and despised, his arms were ever open. They had his tenderest sympathies. They had ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Christianity widely different from that of theologians. Jesus of Nazareth, as a person, he regards simply as a great teacher of this sect of philosophers; and in the Christ of the New Testament, a being endowed with supernatural powers, he sees a personification of the Spirit of Truth. The literal history of a series of supernatural events occurring in Judea two thousand years ago he transforms into sublime teachings of the great truths inherent in human nature, and which, wherever man is, are there forever ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... give descriptions of death as a female figure in dark robes, with black wings, with ravenous teeth, hovering everywhere, darting here and there, eager for prey. Such a view is a personification of the mysteriousness, suddenness, inevitableness, and fearfulness, connected with the subject of death in men's minds, rather than of death itself. These thoughts are grouped into an imaginary being, whose ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... development of the belief in water's life-giving attributes, and their personification in the gods Osiris, Ea, Soma [Haoma] and Varuna, prepared the way for the elucidation of the history of "Dragons and Rain Gods" in my next lecture (Chapter II). What played a large part in directing my thoughts dragon-wards ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... minutes Colomba continued in this strain, addressing herself sometimes to the corpse, sometimes to the family, and sometimes, by a personification frequently employed in the ballata, making the dead man himself speak words of consolation or counsel to his kinsfolk. As she proceeded, her face assumed a sublime expression, a delicate pink tinge ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... of the founders of the Houses of Shang and Kau. The character for mountains' in lines 1 and 3 is the same that occurs in the title of Yao's minister. On the statement about the mountains sending 'down a spirit, Hwang Hsuen, a critic of the Sung dynasty, says that it is merely a personification of the poet, to show how high Heaven had a mind to revive the fortunes of Kau, and that we need not trouble ourselves about whether there was such a ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... he did not "give it a personal life." Shelley also "thinks Immortality improbable," yet, Mr. Brooke says, he "glides into words in his poems which continually imply it." But this we deny. Allowing for personification and emphasis, without which there can be no poetry, we venture to affirm that there is not a single passage, line, or phrase in Shelley's later poems which is not in essential harmony with his belief in the mortality of man and the practical immortality of the race. It is one of the offences of ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... over, we retired to make a hurried dinner, and to dress for the ball. This, with some of our party, was a serious business. Willingham and Dawson were going in fancy dresses. The former was an admirable personification of Dick Turpin, standing upwards of six feet, and broadly built, and becoming his picturesque costume as if it were his everyday suit, he strutted before Mrs Jenkins's best glass, which Hanmer charitably gave up for his accommodation, with a pardonable vanity. Dawson ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... gold, like that of an officer of the palace, and the lower part of his dress like that of a boy at school; and purple shoes; he also bore a spear, and carried a small piece of purple cloth in his right hand, so that one might fancy that some theatrical figure or dramatic personification had suddenly come ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... dialogue is a perfect piece of dialectic, in which granting the 'common principle,' there is no escaping from the conclusion. It is anticipated at the beginning by the dream of Socrates and the parody of Homer. The personification of the Laws, and of their brethren the Laws in the world below, is one of the noblest and boldest figures of speech ...
— Crito • Plato
... been a great favorite with the lower classes (a popularity shared by all the famous dandies of history). The people appear to find in them the personification of all aspirations toward the elegant and the ideal. Alcibiades, Buckingham, the Duc de Richelieu, Lord Seymour, Comte d'Orsay, Brummel, Grammont-Caderousse, shared this favor, and have remained legendary characters, to ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... their all in supporting his father's cause, to pine in misery and want. He would give to a painted harlot a thousand pounds for a loathsome embrace, and to a player or buffoon a hundred for a trumpery pun, but would refuse a penny to the widow or orphan of an old Royalist soldier. He was the personification of selfishness; and as he loved and cared for no one, so did no one love or care for him. So little had he gained the respect or affection of those who surrounded him, that after his body had undergone an after-death examination, parts of it ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... Kienlung, and presented to him his credentials, without performing the prostration of the Kotow—the Chinese act of homage from the vassal to the sovereign lord. Ceremonies between superiors and inferiors are the personification of principles. Nearly twenty-five years after the repulse of Lord Macartney, in 1816, another splendid embassy was despatched by the British government, in the person of Lord Amherst, who was much more rudely dismissed, without even being admitted to the presence ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... respect whatever for HINDENBURG or anything which is his. He says that HINDENBURG and his crew have all along taken the line which any man could, but no gentleman would. In HINDENBURG he sees the personification of Prussian militarism, and for the Prussians and their militarism he has no use whatsoever. I forget what exactly is the Highland phrase for "no use whatsoever," but its meaning is even worse than its sound, and the sound of it alone is terrible to hear. Whatever befalls ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... a shadowy outline removed from humanity. One figure alone stands forth to hold and justify our attention; and he proves himself unfit for the task. Those who insist on tracing one guiding principle in all Marlowe's plays have declared that Faustus is the personification of 'thirst for knowledge' or of 'intellectual virtu', just as Tamburlaine personifies, for them, the 'thirst for power' or 'physical virtu'. Surely, if this is so, Marlowe has failed absolutely in his presentment of the character; in which case the play may be condemned out of hand, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... game, that led them many a weary tramp over the mountainous hills surrounding the town. Shortly after our arrival Vajez was captured, and a milder-mannered man never laid traps of spears and forked bamboo in the pathway of an enemy. He was the personification of gentleness and confided to the American officer in command that he would long since have taken the oath of allegiance had not circumstances, over which he had no control, prevented. The general, greatly impressed by the cogency of these remarks from a man brought in by force, ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... higher realm of thought and action. The very nature of woman makes her susceptible to religious impressions. Her lively imagination, her quick sensibilities, and her ready sympathy enable her readily to give Christ, the personification of every manly attribute and the embodiment of every virtue, a ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... the gift of formal speech-making, as Grant was, he could talk well, in clear sentences, whose mold was set by precise thought, which brought with it the eloquence that gains its point. It was more than personality, in this instance, that had appeal. He was the personification of ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... vividness of the verdure, intoxicated with the odor of vegetation, agitated by the confused music of the birds, and in this May fever of excitement, his thoughts wandered with secret delight to Reine Vincart, to this queen of the woods, who was the personification of all the witchery of the forest. Since their January promenade in the glades of Charbonniere, he had seen her at a distance, sometimes on Sundays in the little church at Vivey, sometimes like a fugitive apparition at the turn of a road. They had also exchanged formal ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... "Sunday-go-to-meetings," with their little daughter Polly, named after the mother, pretty as a picture and a great friend of Masie—most distinguished people were the Codmans, he looking like an alderman and his wife the personification of good humor, her rosy cheeks matching the tint ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... this projection of feeling is undoubtedly illustrated in the poetic interpretation of inanimate nature. The personification of tree, mountain, ocean, and so on, illustrates, no doubt, the effect of association and external suggestion; for there are limits to such personification. But resemblance and suggestion commonly bear, in this case, but a small proportion to active constructive imagination. One ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... declined even in more recent times; I cannot resist from preserving in this place a sonnet by Filicaja, which I could never read without participating in the agitation of the writer for the ancient glory of his degenerated country! The energetic personification of the close perhaps surpasses even his more celebrated sonnet, preserved in Lord Byron's notes to the fourth canto ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... great impression upon George. The latter, already esteeming himself above the average of mentality and enterprise in what he considered the "slow-poke" town of Bayport, found in the brilliant arrival from foreign parts the personification of his ideals, a satisfying specimen of that much read of genus, "the complete man of the world." He fell on his knees before that specimen and worshiped. Such idolatry could not but have some effect, even upon as blase an ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... speech; facon de parler [French], way of speaking, colloquialism. phrase &c. 566; figure, trope, metaphor, enallage[obs3], catachresis[obs3]; metonymy[Gram], synecdoche[Semant]; autonomasia|!, irony, figurativeness &c. adj.; image, imagery; metalepsis[obs3], type, anagoge[obs3], 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 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the twelve tasks, that the astronomical theory was applied to the mythus of the hero, and that he was regarded as a personification of the Sun, which passes through the twelve signs of the Zodiac. This, probably, took place during the Alexandrian period. Some resemblance between his attributes and those of the Deity, with whom the Egyptian priests were pleased to identify him, may have given occasion to this notion; and he ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... is the very personification of noble patriotism and devoted concern for the welfare of his nation. While admiring and loving the man, what sorrow on the one side and indignant execration on the other do not overwhelm one, seeing that ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... dissipated under the ardor of success; and Ben Davis, with his legs on the table, a pipe between his teeth, and his bloated face purple with a brutal contentment, might have furnished to a Teniers the personification of culminated cunning and of ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... tall, and rather slender man, measuring almost exactly six feet, with sloping shoulders, and he stood so straight, as almost to be the personification of uprightness. No soldier was ever more erect, and this without the least stiffness or conventionality. His head was not large at the base, but high-crowned and finely arched. His eyes were magnificent, and can only be compared to Hawthorne's eyes, though not so clear. Marshal von Moltke ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... Andrews College under the late Dr Jackson, who was an eminent philosopher and friendly man; also under Mr Duncan, of the Mathematical Chair, whom I regarded as a personification of unworldly simplicity, clothed in high and pure thought; and I regularly attended, though not enrolled as a regular student, the Moral Philosophy Class of Dr Chalmers. Returning to Edinburgh and its university, I became acquainted, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... I was once conversing with one who was formerly very popular with the democrats, but who was likely to be outset by another demagogue, who "went the whole hog," down to the Agrarian system. "Captain," said he, with his fist clenched, "I'm the very personification of democracy, but I'm out-Heroded by this fellow. The emigrants are a pack of visionaries, who don't know what they want. The born Americans I can deal with, but with these newcomers democracy is not sufficient; they want ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the scenes of love, affection, and benevolence, depicted in the gospels. But his mind was not formed merely on the events recorded in antiquity: it is no world doubtful of the immortality of the soul which he depicts. He is rather the personification in painting of the soul of Dante. His imagination was evidently fraught with the conceptions of the Inferno. The expression of mind beams forth in all his works. Vehement passion, stern resolve, undaunted valour, sainted devotion, infant innocence, alternately ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... not human. He is always, to me, quite unhuman. Even when he is most interested, and even enthusiastic, he is a mere personification of knowledge. Nature ought to have furnished him with an ibis' head like Tahuti; then he would have looked ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... time I saw her again; surgical bandages were gone, medical attention and a week's food and rest had done something for her, but still she was the personification of misery. ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... passion of the sea, its indifference to the earth, its swinging, definite motion, its strength, its attack, and its salt burning, seemed to provoke her to a pitch of madness, tantalizing her with vast suggestions of fulfilment. And then, for personification, would come Skrebensky, Skrebensky, whom she knew, whom she was fond of, who was attractive, but whose soul could not contain her in its waves of strength, nor his breast compel ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... equally blank look of despair; as he stood with his legs apart and his arms hanging down by his side—the very personification of imbecility. "If I wos a fly I'd know wot to do. I'd walk up the side o' that cliff till I got to a dry bit, and then I'd stick on. But, not bein' a ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... to the figures of speech, one must be struck at once with the delicacy and the vigor of Lanier's imagination. The poet's fancy personifies what at first blush seems to us incapable of personification. Thus at one time*1* he likens men to clover-leaves and the Course-of-things to the browsing ox, which makes way with the clover-heads; while at another he addresses an old red hill of Georgia as "Thou gashed and hairy Lear Whom the ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... surfeiting of desire—ove gran desir gran copia affrena, is a state less happy than misery full of hope—una miseria di speranza piena. He recalls him in the repetition of the words gentile and cortesia, in the personification of Amor, in the tendency to dwell minutely on the physical effects of the presence of a beloved object on the pulses and the heart. Above all, he resembles Dante in the warmth and intensity of his political ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... closed for the season, I resolved that my successful defence from this last imputation would be an admirable ground on which to assume the dignity of a martyr, to appeal against all uncharitable conclusions from insufficient premises, and come out as the personification of injured innocence throughout ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... that Lady Macbeth was the personification of crime, it would still have seemed to him a profanation to bring her into contact with the ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... divinity of the ancient Persians, confounded by the Greeks and Romans with the sun. He is the personification of Ormuzd, representing fecundity and perpetual renovation. Mithra is represented as a young man with a Phrygian cap, a tunic, a mantle on his left shoulder, and plunging a sword into the neck of a bull. Scaliger says the word means "greatest" ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... material prosperity had struggled in vain against the predominance of immediate interests and local prepossessions. The conflict, indeed, was not yet over. Two generations of civic strife were still to signalize the slow and painful growth of the love for "The Union"; that personification of national being, upon which can safely fasten the instinct of human nature to centre devotion upon a person and a name. But, through these years of fluctuating affections, the work of the War of 1812 was continuously felt. Men had been forced out ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... kiss) if they succeeded in effecting their escape to England—where, failing news of them, I do myself a frequent pleasure to picture them at rest upon the quiet waters of domestic felicity. But I address myself rather to you, whom (albeit on the briefest acquaintance) I shall ever regard as the personification of stability and mild repose. Heracleitus and his followers may prate of a world of flux; but there are men to whom the recollections of their fellows ever turn confidently, secure of finding them in the same place; and of such, sir, you are ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... rather is set. I have no power to aid your husband in any way. I went to F. O. to-day, and, as you know, Lord —— is very ill. Well! the people there were afraid of me, for I have written hard things to them; and though they knew all, they would say naught. I said, 'Who is the personification of Foreign Office?' They said, 'X is.' I saw 'X'; but he tried to evade my question—i.e. Would F. O. do anything to prevent the Soudan falling into chaos? It was no use. I cornered him, and he ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... morning, was the youngest daughter of Hyperion and Theia, or, according to some, of Titan and Terra. Orpheus calls her the harbinger of Titan, for she is the personification of that light which precedes the appearance of the sun. The poets describe this goddess as rising out of the ocean in a saffron robe, seated in a flame-colored car, drawn by two or four horses, expanding with her rosy fingers the ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... and is just as I have told you; but this I tell you, that to my certain knowledge, the Curate's affections"—laying stress on the word affections—"are seriously engaged;" at which Miss Lydia stared, and looked the personification of curiosity. "Engaged is he, did you say?" "No, he is not engaged," said Gratian, "but I happen to know that his affections are—" "Then," quoth she, "I suppose he has declared as much to the object." "Ah—no!—there is the very point—you are quite mistaken—she has not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... America, making his power felt as far as the provinces of the River Plata and Chile; a symbol of freedom, even in Europe where his name was like a flag to all those who fought oppression; a sincere Republican—all this was Simon Bolivar, and he was something more. He was the best personification of his own race, the Spanish race, which made him the brother of Morillo, Latorre and Rodil, a race which lives in twenty nations of the earth and in whose memory all names now stand equal, if they represent the same principles, whether ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... wise men prophesied. Marvels attended his birth, and miracles followed him in life and in death. And the appearance of the miraculous has even been heightened by the style of the chroniclers in telling us of his mental conflicts: by the personification of evil in the spirit Man, and of desire in his three ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... Fouche, in their connections with the First Consul, it might be said that the one represented the Constituent Assembly, with a slight perfume of the old regime, and the other the Convention in all its brutality. Bonaparte regarded Fouche as a complete personification of the Revolution. With him, therefore, Fouche's influence was merely the influence of the Revolution. That great event was one of those which had made the most forcible impression on Bonaparte's ardent mind, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... as the gods appeared in the universe "order" came into being. When APSU, the personification of confusion and disorder of every kind, saw this "order," he took counsel with his female associate TIAMAT with the object of finding some means of destroying the "way" (al-ka-at) or "order" of the ...
— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum
... floor, its plain deal furniture, depressed me no less than the cold, forbidding appearance of the woman who stood now motionless before me. She was paler than any woman whom I had ever seen in my life. A living person, she seemed the personification of lifelessness. Her black hair was streaked with grey; her dress, which suggested a uniform in its severity, knew no adornment save the plain ivory cross which hung from an almost invisible chain about her neck. Her expression ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... worse, and she feared far more abiding than snows could make or melt away. She thought of Hugh, alone in his mill-work that rough chilly day, when the wind stalked through the woods and over the country as if it had been the personification of March just come of age and taking possession of his domains. She thought of her uncle, doing what? in Michigan leaving them to fight with difficulties as they might why? why? and her gentle aunt at home ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... a finely cut face, and deep black eyes looked innocently from underneath long eyelashes. The fingers which played on the instrument were long and tapering, and every movement of the body was the personification of grace. ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... states is mainly evolved from his own consciousness, and is only a bad way of expressing that tendency to personification which is ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... This personification of the passion of Love, by Peyre Vidal, has been referred to as a proof of how little the Provencal poets were indebted to the authors of Greece and Rome for the imagery of ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant |
