Diccionario ingles.comDiccionario ingles.com
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Personify   /pərsˈɑnəfˌaɪ/   Listen
Personify

verb
(past & past part. personified; pres. part. personifying)
1.
Invest with or as with a body; give body to.  Synonym: body.
2.
Represent, as of a character on stage.  Synonyms: be, embody.
3.
Attribute human qualities to something.  Synonym: personate.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Personify" Quotes from Famous Books



... nature. So 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 ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... 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 ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker

... 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 burdens lighten. In clouds ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... 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 ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... 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

... his knife. It was the custom of the old trappers and hunters to personify their weapons, usually in remembrance of the locality where ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... 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 ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... you more than I love them, I love God more than I should did my supreme love find its highest object in them. In loving you, therefore, I love God so far as you possess the characteristics by which we personify that being. It is not wrong, therefore, to love you or the flower; for goodness exists in one, and beauty in the other, and they both are of God, and in ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... 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. Strange girl! She thanked Heaven, on her knees, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... 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. But ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... say that Dante meant theology By Beatrice, and not a mistress—I, Although my opinion may require apology, Deem this a commentator's fantasy, Unless indeed it was from his own knowledge he Decided thus, and show'd good reason why; I think that Dante's more abstruse ecstatics Meant to personify the mathematics. ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... does not remain content with this entirely 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 ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... said Father Payne, rather impatiently. "But you can't personify a nation like that; that personification of societies and classes and sections of the human race does no end of harm. It is all a matter of statistics, not of generalisation. Take your three statements. 'It is good for a nation ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... 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 which speaks of first and second causes is crossed by ...
— Timaeus • Plato

... 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 ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... the deities who manage physical affairs. Over and above these they personify hope, fear, love, and so forth, giving them temples and priests, and carving likenesses of them in stone, which they verily believe to be faithful representations of living beings who are only not human in being more than human. If ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... needs only a towel folded square and put on the head, and a Roman apron, easily obtained at the Campo di Fiore for a song. Flower-girls with hats turned up on the side and baskets of flowers were also popular. The handsome Prince Carl, who is six feet six, needed only a helmet to personify to perfection a youthful god Mars. Prince Oscar merely wore his naval mess-jacket. Herr Ross (the Norwegian artist) was the head and spirit of the ball and directed everything. He was dressed appropriately as a pierrot, with a ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... have felt the hatefullness of them, and measured the peril, it is a lively delight to meet with one of those noble examples which are their splendid confutation. In proportion as I respect humanity in its totality, I admire and love those glorified images of humanity which personify and set on high, under visible features and with a proper name, whatever it has of most noble and most pure. Lady Russell gives the soul this beautiful ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... 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 is only ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... 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, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... insult, of an indecency, is in itself a sort of vengeance upon the power that wrought it, and though it may sound ridiculous enough to speak of being avenged upon Nature, still the basic instinct is there, and we can, if we will, personify the immense malignity of things, and fancy that we are striking back at the gods and causing the gods some degree of perturbation; at least letting them know that we are not deceived by the illusions they ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... 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: ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich

... rub me down and to put on the bathing linen. This gave me time for thought; and as I foresaw an adventure that might perhaps lead me safely out of the scrape into which my destiny had thrown me, I let it take its course, and at once resolved to personify ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... 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 Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... 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 ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... 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 field. Henry IV., who loved his jests ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... (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 simply an hypothesis ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois

... recognized Mrs. Barker, more because there was no one else in our small community who could personify a darky so perfectly, than because there was any resemblance to her in looks or gesture. The make-up was artistic, and how she managed the quick transformation from ball dress to that of the plantation, with all its black paint and rouge, ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... a little. "Why—in trying to get close to it in our minds we personify the idea, naturally; but we certainly do not assume a Big Woman somewhere, who is God. What we call God is a Pervading Power, you know, an Indwelling Spirit, something inside of us that we want more of. Is your God a Big Man?" ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

... singing the frightful song he had sung when she was returning all in a perspiration and hideous from an adulterous meeting; it is the same blind man whom she saw at each of those meetings; the blind man who pursued her with his song and his importunity; it is he who comes now to personify human rage at the instant when Divine pity comes to her and follows her to the supreme moment of death! And this is called an outrage against public morals! But I say, on the contrary, that it is an homage to public morals, that there is nothing more moral than this; I ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various

... 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 ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Murray; but I know I ought to go; and I feel that when duty commands me to follow a path, lonely and dreary though it may seem, a light will be shed before my feet, and a staff will be put into my hands. I have often wondered what the Etrurians intended to personify in their Dii Involuti, before whose awful decrees all other gods bowed. Now I feel assured that the chief of the 'Shrouded Gods' is Duty, veiling her features with a silver-lined cloud, scorning to parley, but whose unbending figure signs our way—an unerring ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... 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, p. 11. Prof. Haddon, commenting ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... of men 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

... 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 ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... wounded in search of expiated sins and of unknown heroism. He pauses," continues his eloquent biographer in the Galleria Nazionale, "to meditate on the death of the Hungarian, Polish, Bohemian, Croatian, Austrian, and Tyrolese soldiers, who personify the nationalities oppressed by the tyranny of the house of Hapsburg. A minister of God, praying beside the corpses of two friends, Pole and Hungarian, hails the dawn of the Magyar resurrection. Then rises the grand figure of Sandor Petofi, ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... 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 ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas

... offences; and the persecution of the Quakers was again renewed. A Quaker woman had recently frightened the Old South congregation in Boston by entering that meeting-house clothed in sackcloth, with ashes on her head, her feet bare, and her face blackened, intending to personify the small-pox, with which she threatened the colony, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... 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 ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac

... Judgment. Remember, our Alfred was a proficient himself, and spied the Danish forces in the character of a harper. What scope were here for gentle airs, and stirring Saxon songs! He harangues his patriot band, and a manly Phillips would personify with admirable taste the truly royal bard: he leaves Athel-switha his wife, and a fair flock of children in sanctuary, while he rushes to the battle-field: the churchmen might receive their queenly charge with music: the Danes riot in their ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... to make a statue when I get home," she said—"a statue which will personify Nevada and represent the tameless, desolate, changeless, magnificent beauty and the self-sufficient loneliness of the desert. I can see it in my mind's eye now. It will probably be the finest statue in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... one spider, you merely make room in the overflowing economy of nature for another to pick up a dishonest livelihood? Have you ever reflected that the prime blame of spiderhood rests with Nature herself (if we may venture to personify that impersonal entity); and that she has provided such a constant supply or relay of spiders as will amply suffice to fill up all the possible vacancies that can ever occur in insect-eating circles? Unless you have considered all these points carefully, and have ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... round the 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 this ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... I am made to personify more than I like; I do not wish to say that the unconscious does this or that, but that when we have done this or that sufficiently often we do ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... 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 ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... 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 ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... 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 ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson

... although he refused her request personally, yet she imagined the scheme must be successful, when played off under the appearance of a spirit of his deceased wife; and, to deceive his imagination, she had endeavoured to personify her; for which purpose she had procured the head of a skeleton, and assumed that character which had proved the death of the man she so ardently loved, and the source of endless misery to herself. She then related the conversation that had passed between them ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... man may shut off his motor and coast downhill from his home to his office in the lower part of Birmingham, is not without symbolism. Birmingham is all business. If I were to personify the place, it would be in the likeness of a man I know—a big, powerful fellow with an honest blue eye and an expression in which self-confidence, ambition, and power are blended. Like Birmingham, this man is a little more than forty years of age. Like Birmingham, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... lovely one after the thunderstorm of the night before, and we greatly enjoyed our ride. We did not see many birds, a pretty hawk that I shot being the most noticeable. Hawks of various kinds are very abundant in the tropics, and if the small birds had to personify death, they would certainly represent him as one, for this is the form in which he must generally appear to them. Towards evening the hawk glides noiselessly along and alights on a bough, near where he hears the small birds twittering amongst the bushes. Perhaps they see him and are quiet for ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... that 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 proceeded to assert the right of his race to the privileges of human beings with ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume

... the 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 be found ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... for adoration—yes, to those who, pharisaically standing aloof from the common herd, thank their imaginary substitute for God, or whatever else it is they deem thankworthy, that they are not blind as other men are, and least of all as those dazed metaphysicians who actually personify their own mental abstractions. No wonder that such extreme provocation should try the patience of all but the stanchest disciples. No wonder that Mr. Lewes himself should seem half inclined to apostrophise his quondam master in words resembling ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... Hamadryad, the moving trunk and limbs her undulating form and beckoning arms, the drooping boughs her hair, the rustling foliage her voice. A modern poet, endowed with the same strength of sympathy, but acquainted with vegetable chemistry, might personify sap as a pale, liquid maiden, ascending through the roots and veins to meet air, a blue boy robed in golden warmth, descending through the leaves, with a whisper, to her embrace. So the personifications of death in literature, thus far, give us no penetrative glance into what it ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... 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 ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... 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 both Cossack ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... 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

... Perhaps you 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

... upon the scene at the 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, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... that forbearance been rewarded? Take one short instance: when, seven years before this present fete de grandpere, he came back from Europe, and she (this old home which we cannot help but personify), though in trouble then—a trouble that sent up the old feud flames again—opened her halls to rejoice in him with the joy of all her gathered families, he presently said such strange things in favor of indiscriminate ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... a gloomy figure with head like a minaret, red eyeballs, hooked nose, teeth like pillars, spear-like fangs, snaky locks etc. and when asked who he is he will reply, "I am the personification of thine evil acts!" (Dabistan i. 285.) The Hindus also personify everything. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... 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 ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson

... 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 friend had forsaken me. In that little cabin I felt his ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden

... always trying to make something, to 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 get in. Encourage the ...
— Children and Their Books • James Hosmer Penniman

... 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. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry



Words linked to "Personify" :   attribute, personification, typify, assign, impute, exemplify, person, symbolize, symbolise, ascribe, represent, persona, stand for



Copyright © 2024 Diccionario ingles.com