Personified Quotes & Sayings

Susan sighed. And you had to remember that Time probably wasn't time, in the same way that Death wasn't exactly the same as death and War wasn't exactly the same as war. She'd met War, a big fat man with an inappropriate sense of humor and a habit of repeating himself, and he certainly didn't personally attend every minor fracas. She disliked Pestilence, who gave her funny looks, and Famine was just wasted and weird. None of them ran their ... call it their discipline. They personified it. — Anonymous

Tereza's mother never stopped reminding her that being a mother meant sacrificing everything. Her words had the ring of truth, backed as they were by the experience of a woman who had lost everything because of her child. Tereza would listen and believe that being a mother was the highest value in life and that being a mother was a great sacrifice. If a mother was Sacrifice personified, then a daughter was Guilt, with no possibility of redress. — Milan Kundera

All my life I have felt a great kinship with the madman and the criminal. Practically all my life I have dwelt in big cities; I am unhappy, uneasy, unless I am in a big city. My feeling for Nature is limited to water, mountain and desert. These three form a trine which is more imperative, for me, than any spiritual alimentation. But in the city I am aware of another element which is beyond all these in power of fascination: the labyrinth. To be lost in a strange city is the greatest joy I know; to become oriented is to lose everything. To me the city is crime personified, insanity personified. I feel at home. — Henry Miller

Looking at him she felt she knew what the people of antiquity had been like. Thirty centuries or more were effaced, and there he was, the alert and predatory sub-human, further from what she believed man should be like than the naked savage, because the savage was tractable, while this creature, wearing the armor of his own rigid barbaric culture, consciously defied progress. And that was what Stenham saw, too; to him the boy was a perfect symbol of human backwardness, and excited his praise precisely because he was "pure": there was no room in his personality for anything that mankind had not already fully developed long ago. To him he was a consolation, a living proof that today's triumph was not yet total; he personified Stenham's infantile hope that time might still be halted and man sent back to his origins. — Paul Bowles

Pointlessly musing over the pointlessness of pointlessness personified seemed somehow pointless... — T.C. Filburn

We have then, in the first part of The Faerie Queene, four of the seven deadly sins depicted in the more important passages of the four several books; those sins being much more elaborately and powerfully represented than the virtues, which are opposed to them, and which are personified in the titular heroes of the respective books. The alteration which made these personified virtues the centre each of a book was probably part of the reconstruction on the basis of Aristotle Ethics.
The nature of the debt to Aristotle suggests that Spenser did not borrow directly from the Greek, but by way of modern translations. — Janet Spens

Dexter Palmer
"(T)he true enemy of humanity was not Evil, an abstract idea personified by some sort of crimson-faced creature dancing in flames, but Chance, that smoky million-handed monster forever fitting its tiny fingers into the fissures of your life, working tear it apart, loosening the fatal screw, turning that first cell cancerous, sending lightning to strike the tree that you chose for shelter from the storm. — Dexter Palmer

RJD was pretty much heavy metal personified, a tiny 5-foot-4-inch sorcerer with a mangy mane, demonic eyes and sly grin, all coupled to a simply huge, operatic voice, a diminutive powerhouse who prowled the stage like a feline elf and who was, it turns out, also finely intelligent and well spoken, an actual gentleman in a genre known all too well for its bombastic, monosyllabic doltbuckets. A rare thing indeed. — Mark Morford

Johnny Ramone's autobiography is a no holds barred, straight-forward book written in a no-nonsense style that is Johnny personified. His story is written in his own actual words, so the reader gets an insight into what made him the unique, charismatic and exciting individual that he was. It also gives a great view of The Ramones from Johnny's perspective. — Tommy Ramone

Words like "Society" and "State" are so concretized that they are almost personified. In the opinion of the man in the street, the "State," far more than any king in history, is the inexhaustible giver of all good; the "State" is invoked, made responsible, grumbled at, and so on and so forth. Society is elevated to the rank of a supreme ethical principle; indeed, it is even credited with positively creative capacities. — C. G. Jung

Old friends are memories personified. — Richard Paul Evans

The shadow of a character is defined by its maker...while a heroine is personified by its actions and relatability. So writers can create a world with a heroine that has impact and finish with everessence lights at the dims of its shadows — Raquelle Stepney

When she was relaxed, Raven was the picture of innocence. When she was feisty, she was sex kitten personified. When she was angry, I worried she would neuter me. Raven was a winning combination. — Bijou Hunter

She's taken to renaming him according to her own analysis of his mood of the day, or his mood of the hour, or his mood of the minute: according to her, he's moody. Each mood is personified and given an honorific, so he's Mr. Grumpy, Mr. Sleepy, Dr. Ironic, Sir Sardonic, and sometimes, when she's being sarcastic or possibly nostalgic, Mr. Romantic. — Margaret Atwood

Certain mystical philosophers have personified Destiny, and from this point of view each man's personal destiny is his archetype or "other self"
his "angel"
with whom he must be reunited if he is to rise above his fragmentary identity as a worldling and become whole, as he is (and always has been) in the mind of God. — Charles Le Gai Eaton

He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified. — Joseph Conrad

The Wendigo is simply the Call of the Wild personified, which some natures hear to their own destruction. — Algernon Blackwood

Yuvraj Singh is one of the best batsmen to watch in world cricket when he's in form. He is ego personified. Yuvraj doesn't just hit the ball, he lets it rebound off his aura. — Jarrod Kimber

In the days of Gary Cooper, James Stewart etc, film stars personified the better aspects of human nature. — Alexander Walker

Since I personified the savage on the stage, I tried to be as civilized as possible in daily life. — Josephine Baker

After Harding's death, the taciturn vice president, Calvin Coolidge, moved into the White House. In contrast to his predecessor's political cronyism and outgoing style, Coolidge personified austere rectitude. As vice president "Silent Cal" often sat through official functions without uttering a word. A dinner partner once challenged him by saying, "Mr. Coolidge, I've made a rather sizable bet with my friends that I can get you to speak three words this evening." Responded Coolidge icily, "You lose. — James A. Henretta

Both the Shardon and their kin, the Chuns, have similar expressions. In Shardonish, it's Chu'rosh ko'ingar ju'shingu, ishi kimush'ur ta'osh., while in Chunshar it's Cho'ros'ah ko'ingar ju'shingu, esh'i ki'mos'ah'ir ta'ah. Roughly translated, both mean the same thing; 'There is a Darkness among the stars, deeper than space itself.' — Stuart Lynn Sexton

Time, for example, is intimately connected with the goddess Kali, which partly accounts for her destructive nature. Energy - in Einstein's equation, E=MC2 - is personified in India as Shakti in her various guises. — Roger Housden

For a woman, the typical danger emanating from the unconscious comes from above, from the "spiritual" sphere personified by the animus, whereas for a man it comes from the chthonic realm of the "world and woman," i.e., the anima projected on to the world. — Carl Jung

We can land on the "right" side of a controversy and keep that personified mystery of evil, called the devil, happy. So long as we cede the territory he is trying to occupy: that this moral concern deserves our attention more than all others, that one's position on this question determines one's belonging to or leaving a faith community. When we do this - and it is standard practice in many churches today - we stigmatize an entire group of people. We're not just singling "the issue" out. We are singling people out. This pleases the hater of humanity and grieves humanity's lover. — Ken Wilson

What is more absurd and more impious than to attribute the name of Lucifer to the devil, that is, to personified evil. The intellectual Lucifer is the spirit of intelligence and love; it is the paraclete, it is the Holy Spirit, while the physical Lucifer is the great agent of universal magnetism. — Eliphas Levi

Those immediately behind number 50 were anguish personified. They let loose an endless stream of foul language and it was hard to tell whether they were cursing themselves or cursing something else. My neighbours and I in the last third of the queue only felt a pang of disappointment whereas those who just missed out on the coupon were like people who see the duck that they had cooked flap its wings and fly away. — Yu Hua

There was a dark aura about him, a hint of caged power in that deceptively casual, sprawled poise. Danger personified.
If this had been a film she would have expected to hear the warning wail of an electric guitar creep over the soft background bustle of the city. — Heather R. Blair

It is we who create value and our desires which confer value. In this realm we are kings, and we debase our kingship if we bow down to Nature. It is for us to determine the good life, not for Nature - not even for Nature personified as God. — Bertrand Russell

It has been said that on screen I personified the American woman. — Joan Crawford

The fun, joy, and humor dry up in a relationship when one of the partners is swimming in gin. To my way of thinking, it is selfishness personified to see life through the bottom of a liquor bottle. — Ginger Rogers

He watched her as she carried the stone over to one of the walls and set it down. She exhaled and wiped her brow. Then she glared at him.
He smiled - one of his best, he thought. "You ought to bend your legs when you lift the stones," he called out. "It's better for your back."
"It's better for your back," she mimicked under her breath, "lazy, good-for-nothing, stupid little - "
"Excuse me?"
"Thank you for your advice." Her voice was sweetness personified. — Julia Quinn

Searing with intelligence, they showed her a soul that was tainted by betrayal. One completely devoid of trust. And in that one single moment, she felt his sorrow inside her own heart. He wanted to trust someone. He wanted to reach out. But he'd forgotten how. Alone and cold, he was pain personified. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Beck's smile is intense and sincere, a smile with, not a smile at. Mom used to say you could tell a lot by the way a person treats the innocent, and Walt is nothing if not innocence personified. — David Arnold

She was a goddess personified, her breasts so soft and round he could've buried his head between them, suffocated, and died a happy man. — Kristin Miller

Grant liked kids - it was impossible not to like any group so openly enthusiastic about dinosaurs. Grant used to watch kids in museums as they stared open-mouthed at the big skeletons rising above them. He wondered what their fascination really represented. He finally decided that children liked dinosaurs because these giant creatures personified the uncontrollable force of looming authority. They were symbolic parents. Fascinating and frightening, like parents. And kids loved them, as they loved their parents. — Michael Crichton

Science is being daily more and more personified and anthromorphized into a god. By and by they will say that science took our nature upon him, and sent down his only begotten son, Charles Darwin, or Huxley, into the world so that those who believe in him, &c.; and they will burn people for saying that science, after all, is only an expression for our ignorance of our own ignorance. — Samuel Butler

The man who would have no imitators had legions of them, each infected with the mimetic dilemma that Rousseau personified: how to get others to notice how disinterested one is in whether they notice or not. — Paul C. Vitz

David's mouth dripped open slowly. He stood with his heels dug into my carpet, a dashed hope, a broken dream. No amount of money could top the priceless look that gathered on his face like an unmade bed. His eyebrows crumpled and furrowed like disheveled sheets. His lips curled into an acidic smirk. Confusion and shock collided in the cornea of his dilated pupils. He was a B.B. King song, personified. His entire body sang the blues. — Brandi L. Bates

Judy Garland is a singer with a capital S. And talk about soul. This woman was soul personified. Judy Garland is a class by herself. — Aretha Franklin

With life and all I've been through, I do have a belief in goodness, a good spirit. I think what people have done with religion is personified good and evil, so good's become God with 'o' out, and evil's become Devil with a 'd' added. That's my theory of religion. — Paul McCartney

Baseball outfits went through their gaudy period during the disco '70's, when the White Sox looked like softball players and the Athletics looked like 'Saturday Night Fever' personified. — George Vecsey

The ocean, whose tides respond, like women's menses, to the pull of the moon, the ocean which corresponds to the amniotic fluid in which human life begins, the ocean on whose surface vessels (personified as female) can ride but in whose depth sailors meet their death and monsters conceal themselves ... it is unstable and threatening as the earth is not; it spawns new life daily, yet swallows up lives; it is changeable like the moon, unregulated, yet indestructible and eternal. — Adrienne Rich

In order to make simple the great truths of Nature and the abstract principles of natural law, the vital forces of the universe were personified, becoming the gods and goddesses of the ancient mythologies. While — Manly P. Hall

I used to picture time as a rope you followed along, hand over hand, into the distance, but it's nothing like that. It moves outward but holds everything that's come before. Cut me open and I'm a tree trunk, rings of nostalgia radiating inward. All the years are nested inside me like I'm my own personal one-woman matryoshka doll. I guess that's true for everybody, but then I drive everybody crazy with my nostalgia and happiness. I am bittersweet personified. — Catherine Newman

The friendly, welcoming smiles she had grown to love still made her breath catch, but he'd added a new weapon to his arsenal. A secret, intimate smile that reminded her of warm kisses and strong arms. It never failed to flush her cheeks and flutter her stomach. The man was an invalid in a dressing gown convalescing amid a mound of cushions on the parlor settee; yet when he smiled at her like that, he became masculinity personified. Gideon had a dash of the rogue in him. And Adelaide adored him for it. — Karen Witemeyer

In the religious myths, the creative will appears personified in God, and man already feels himself guilty when he assumes himself to be like God, that is, to ascribe this will to himself. In the heroic myths on the contrary, man appears as himself, creative and guilt for his suffering and fall is ascribed to God, that is, to his own will. Both are only extreme reaction phenomena of man wavering between his Godlikeness and his nothingness, whose will is awakened to the knowledge of its power and whose consciousness is aroused to terror before it. — Otto Rank

He looked edible. Sex on a stick personified. Just looking at him had my heart thudding. I was lost in him again. — Adriane Leigh

Is our conception of God anything more than personified incomprehensibility? — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Mr Winckler clapped his hands together. Evil, as personified by me. Meet the new Dark Lord. But you can call me Albert. — Tom Holt

First, in Genesis 4, we have the Lamb typified in the firstlings of the flock slain by Abel in sacrifice. Second, we have the Lamb prophesied in Genesis 22:8 where Abraham said to Isaac, "God will provide himself a lamb." Third, in Exodus 12, we have the Lamb slain and its blood applied. Fourth, in Isaiah 53:7, we have the Lamb personified: here for the first time we learn that the Lamb would be a Man. Fifth, in John 1:29, we have the Lamb identified, learning who He was. Sixth, in Revelation 5, we have the Lamb magnified by the hosts of heaven. Seventh, in the last chapter of the Bible we have the Lamb glorified, seated upon the eternal throne of God, Revelation — Arthur W. Pink

His presence makes me feel thin. Not model slender. But worn, like an old cotton housedress. Thin like a specimen pressed between two plates of glass. Like a bug squashed beneath the marching boot of a soldier.
Thin and worn and silence like I've never known.
This is how I know he is not a Tick.
They are as pitiable as they are inhuman. They are fear personified. Their emotions and minds given over to rage and hunger. They are all noise. He is none.
If he is not a Tick, does that make him a Tock? — Emily McKay

I had grown up among engineers, and I could remember the engineers of the twenties very well indeed: their open, shining intellects, their free and gentle humor, their agility and breadth of thought, the ease with which they shifted from one engineering field to another, and, for that matter, from technology to social concerns and art. Then, too, they personified good manners and delicacy of taste; well-bred speech that flowed evenly and was free of uncultured words; one of them might play a musical instrument, another dabble in painting; and their faces always bore a spiritual imprint. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

It is just this characteristic way in which the brute gives itself up entirely to the present moment that contributes so much to the delight we take in our domestic pets. They are the present moment personified, and in some respects they make us feel the value of every hour that is free from trouble and annoyance, which we, with our thoughts and preoccupations, mostly disregard. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Art translates human souls. Each passing eon's public display of sophisticated hieroglyphics cast a unique depiction upon the rudimentary art of survival. Humankind cannot exist without the makeshift paradigm of innovative art, which genuine amoeba expresses elusive and unsayable thoughts. Humankind's gallery of artistic impressions ranges from the starkness of personified cave drawings to the free ranging lexis of modern art. Collection of multihued stories of the ages portrays the vivid panoply of enigmatic vitas etched by humankind's self-imposed sense of urgency. Each passing generation's effusion of trope offerings seamlessly folds its shared renderings into the shimmering panorama of the cosmos, the sparkling nightscape that houses the intangible life force all communal souls. — Kilroy J. Oldster

The deepest poverty is the inability of joy, the tediousness of a life considered absurd and contradictory. This poverty is widespread today, in very different forms in the materially rich as well as the poor countries. The inability of joy presupposes and produces the inability to love, produces jealousy, avarice - all defects that devastate the life of individuals and of the world. This is why we are in need of a new evangelization - if the art of living remains an unknown, nothing else works ... this art can only be communicated by [one] who has life - he who is the Gospel personified. — Pope Benedict XVI

[My novel] took up the sweetest part of my mind and the rarest part of my imagination; it was like being in love and better. All day long when I was busy [ ... ], I had my unfinished novel personified almost as a secret companion and accomplice following me like a shadow wherever I went, whatever I did. — Muriel Spark

I know of scarcely anything so apt to impress the imagination as the wonderful form of cosmic order expressed by the "Law of Frequency of Error." The law would have been personified by the Greeks and deified, if they had known of it. It reigns with serenity and in complete self-effacement, amidst the wildest confusion. The huger the mob, and the greater the apparent anarchy, the more perfect is its sway. It is the supreme law of Unreason. — Francis Galton

People act like Nirvana invented grunge; they just took it and personified it. — Billy Corgan

The dreamer and his dream are the same ... the powers personified in a dream are these that move the world. — Joseph Campbell

The fucking angels of memory were out. They had come out of their museums, out of their castles. They'd gone to war against whatever this incoming to-come was. The very facts of retrospection and fate that had various sides fighting were now out themselves, personified or apotheosed and smacking seven bells out of each other directly No longer solely reasons, justifications, teloi, casus belli for others to invoke or believe in: now combatants. The war had just got meta. — China Mieville

Spirituality is natural goodness. God is not a person; God is a presence personified in us. Spirituality is not a thing; it is the atmosphere of God's Presence, goodness, truth, and beauty. — Ernest Holmes

Rock 'n' roll is sexuality personified. It is attitude. It is all the things that your parents told you not to do. It's the freedom to express yourself. It's being alive. It expresses the times. It's a magazine, a newspaper that tells the truth. If you listen to rap today, it's all about the truth. And that's what we all want. Just give me a little truth. — Steven Tyler

You don't need to wait another day to figure out your calling. You're living it, dear one. Your gifts have a place right now, in the job you have, in your stage of life, with the people who surround you. Calling is virtually never big or famous work; that is rarely the way the kingdom comes. It shows up quietly, subversively, almost invisibly. Half the time, it is unplanned - just the stuff of life in which a precious human steps in, the good news personified. — Jen Hatmaker

On moonlight nights the long, straight street and dirty white walls, nowhere darkened by the shadow of a tree, their peace untroubled by footsteps or a dog's bark, glimmered in the pale recession. The silent city was no more than an assemblage of huge, inert cubes, between which only the mute effigies of great men, carapaced in bronze, with their blank stone or metal faces, conjured up a sorry semblance of what the man had been. In lifeless squares and avenues these tawdry idols lorded it under the lowering sky; stolid monsters that might have personified the rule of immobility imposed on us, or, anyhow, its final aspect, that of a defunct city in which plague, stone, and darkness had effectively silenced every voice. — Albert Camus

Then Toohey moved through the crowd, and smiled at his friends. But between smiles and sentences, his eyes went back to the man with the orange hair. He looked at the man as he looked occasionally at the pavement from a window on the thirtieth floor, wondering about his own body were it to be hurled down and what would happen when it struck against that pavement. He did not know the man's name, his profession or his past; he had no need to know; it was not a man to him, but only a force; Toohey never saw men. Perhaps it was the fascination of seeing that particular force so explicitly personified in a human body. — Ayn Rand

She was ... the arch personification of the power of Space, Time, and Matter, within whose bound all beings arise and die: the substance of their bodies, configurator of their lives and thoughts, and receiver of their dead. And everything having form or name-including God personified as good or evil, merciful or wrathful-was her child, within her womb. — Joseph Campbell

The Krishna of the Gita is perfection and right knowledge personified, but the picture is imaginary. — Mahatma Gandhi

Christlike love is the greatest need we have on this planet ... So if love is to be our watchword, as it must be, them by the word of Him who is love personified, we must forsake transgression and any hint of advocacy for it in others. — Jeffrey R. Holland

From the days of biplanes and silk scarves, the aviator has been the archetype of masculine glamour. Aviators have personified national ideals, from French elan to Soviet party discipline. They've inspired lust and admiration. They've turned sunglasses and short, utilitarian leather jackets into fashion statements. — Virginia Postrel

Iago, on the other hand, seems to be malice personified, a manifestation of manifold vice with no discernible vestiges of grace. — Williiam Shakespeare

After all, is our idea of God anything more than personified incomprehensibility?

{Said in a letter to Voltaire} — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Mom's Israeli. Dad's Brazilian. What can I say? I am Embassy Row personified. You really lucked out in the best friend department — Ally Carter

I made a decision a long time ago that I was going to choose joy. I even painted a big rectangle on my wall and printed it in big letters so I wouldn't forget to make that choice every day. The major word in that rectangle isn't joy, it's CHOOSE. It's looking around me when life is difficult and trading every complaint I have for something beautiful in my life that far outweighs it. I know, it's that Pollyanna personified thing again, but living joyful beats being cynical any day of the week. — Jessica N. Turner

He was explicit sex, personified.
I was hungered curiosity, caged.
And as long as I held onto the key, my heart would remain unscathed. — K.M. Golland

I ran up the stairs, shedding pieces of my suit as I went, determined for a shower, resolute in washing away what I'd just done, who I really was but I was certain there was nothing that could cleanse me, to launder my poisoned blood. This was who I was. Hopeless personified. — Fisher Amelie

The Inner Self
... What makes us who we are
should be glorified
personified
and sung unto the stars! — Muse

The faith in an afterlife, however much our reason ridicules it, very modestly extends our faith that each moment of our consciousness will be followed by another - that a coherent matrix has been prepared for this precious self of ours. The guarantee that our self enjoys an intended relation to the outer world is most, if not all, of what we ask from religion. God is the self projected onto reality by our natural and necessary optimism. He is the not-me personified. — John Updike

A CEO is a board of directors personified. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

My fellow Minnesotans join me in mourning the loss of America's 40th President and celebrating the life of a man who personified both the greatness and goodness of America. — Jim Ramstad

As man's love or hatred, so he. Love and hatred exist only personified. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

It was a skill useful to lawyers, and no man in all English history was more the lawyer than Coke. He personified a profession considered both so influential and so dubious that in 1372 the House of Commons had tried to bar lawyers from Parliament; little had changed when, in Coke's lifetime, Shakespeare wrote, "First, kill all the lawyers. — John M Barry

Sidney Poitier, who is class personified, said: 'Lou, you're a leading man because you're a good actor.' Brought tears to my eyes. — Lou Diamond Phillips

Because you are beauty personified. You are enchanting and I am defenseless to resist. — Grace Samuels

(T)he true enemy of humanity was not Evil, an abstract idea personified by some sort of crimson-faced creature dancing in flames, but Chance, that smoky million-handed monster forever fitting its tiny fingers into the fissures of your life, working tear it apart, loosening the fatal screw, turning that first cell cancerous, sending lightning to strike the tree that you chose for shelter from the storm. The version of Satan that embodied every ill of human life had been patched onto the Judeo-Christian tradition because the early God that Moses knew was too tough and terrible for worshippers to want to deal with. The fear that Moses had of Yahweh was as much of His caprice as of His power
He was just as likely to force the Hebrews to wander in the wilderness as He was to rescue them from the Egyptians. In short, He was not the embodiment of good, but of chance: neither good nor evil, but inscrutable and unavoidable. — Dexter Palmer

In ancient Greece, the earth was personified as a mysterious goddess called Gaia. A cosmic, procreative womb who emerged out of the primeval void called Chaos, it was believed Gaia existed before all other life. It was also believed that Gaia created all of life. In Roman mythology, she was known as Terra. At — Kris Waldherr

The alphabet Miss Poobner taught was represented on the wall above her head by a series of personified cartoonlike letters
Mr. A, Eating an Apple; Mrs. B, Buying a Broom; and so on
and something insipid about the parade of grinning letters defeated Dylan's will utterly. — Jonathan Lethem

Woman is certainly the daughter of Delay personified! — Plautus

When we built Roomba, we explicitly designed it to not have a face. We didn't want to think it was cute; we wanted people to take it seriously, so we gave it more of an industrial look. People personified their Roomba anyway. Over 80 percent of people name their robot. We did nothing to encourage people to do that, but they do it anyway. — Colin Angle

Slaughter personified to him every evil of this war. It would never end for Tom until he had dealt with Slaughter. His chance had been delayed last night. The next time he encountered the Colonel, he'd kill him. — C.G. Faulkner

Did he have to be so intimidating? Carpathian males were all enormously strong; they didn't need to look it. There was no need for his huge chest and bulging arms and thighs like oak trees. She had started out with bravado, determined not to be intimidated, but he was power personified.
"I am reading your mind," he mentioned softly.
She hated her traitorous body, the way it dissolved at the sight of him and the sound of his velvet, caressing voice. "I told you to stay out of my mind."
"It is a habit, ma petite."
She flung another pillow at him. "Don't you dare bring up the wolf. I'm sure our laws forbade such a thing. You're a cad, Gregori, and you're not even sorry."
"Remove your clothes, Savannah. — Christine Feehan

Lily, I can honestly tell you that i have never in my long life come across a creature as beguilinig as you. You are as fresh and as lovely as a budding flower by the dew of a golden morning. I breathe you in and am filled with the taste of sunshine, life, and hope. You are much more than beautiful. You are ... temptation personified. — Colleen Houck

It's been written that the most sublime figure in American history was George Washington on his knees in the snow at Valley Forge. He personified a people who knew that it was not enough to depend on their own courage and goodness, that they must also seek help from God - their Father and preserver. Where did we begin to lose sight of that noble beginning, of our conviction that standards of right and wrong do exist and must be lived up to? Do we really think that we can have it both ways, that God will protect us in a time of crisis even as we turn away from him in our day-to-day life? — Ronald Reagan

I suppose that, so long as the human mind exists, it will not escape its deep-seated instinct to personify its intellectual conceptions. The science of the present day is as full of this particular form of intellectual shadow-worship as is the nescience of ignorant ages. The difference is that the philosopher who is worthy of the name knows that his personified hypotheses, such as law, force and ether, and the like, are merely useful symbols, while the ignorant and the careless take them for adequate expressions of reality. — Thomas Henry Huxley

I have myself to respect, but to myself I am not amiable; but my friend is my amiableness personified. — Henry David Thoreau

We claim we believe in compassion, which is an abstract, and when it's personified we discredit the man — Mort Sahl

My paintings are loosely based on meta narratives. The pictures float in and out of pictorial genres. Still life's become personified, portraits become events, and landscapes become constructions. I embrace the area between which the subject is composed and decomposing, formed and formless, inanimate and alive. — Dana Schutz