Personage Quotes

It is to be regretted that no mental method of daguerreotype or photography has yet been discovered by which the characters of men can be reduced to writing and put into grammatical language with an unerring precision of truthful description. How often does the novelist feel, ay, and the historian also and the biographer, that he has conceived within his mind and accurately depicted on the tablet of his brain the full character and personage of man, and that nevertheless, when he flies to pen and ink to perpetuate the portrait, his words forsake, elude, disappoint, and play the deuce with him, till at the end of a dozen pages the man described has no more resemblance to the man conceived than the signboard at the coner of the street has to the Duke of Cambridge? ~ Anthony Trollope

The bucolic mind of East Barsetshire took warm delight in the eloquence of the eminent personage who represented them, but was wont to extract more actual enjoyment from the music of his periods than from the strength of his arguments. ~ Anthony Trollope

A novel is a large diffused picture, comprehending the characters of life, disposed in different groups, and exhibited in various attitudes, for the purposes of an uniform plan, and general occurrence, to which every individual figure is subservient. But this plan cannot be executed with propriety, probability, or success, without a principal personage to attract the attention, unite the incidents, unwind the clue of the labyrinth, and at last close the scene, by virtue of his own importance. ~ Tobias Smollett

The anxiety we have for the figure we cut, for our personage, is constantly cropping out. We are showing off and are often more concerned with making a display than with living. Whoever feels observed observes himself. ~ Andre Gide

The Pakistani film International Gorillay (International guerillas), produced by Sajjad Gul, told the story of a group of local heroes - of the type that would, in the language of a later age, come to be known as jihadis, or terrorists - who vowed to find and kill an author called "Salman Rushdie" . The quest for "Rushdie" formed the main action of the film and "his" death was the film's version of happy ending.

"Rushdie" himself was depicted as a drunk, constantly swigging from a bottle, and a sadist. He lived in what looked very like a palace on what looked very like an island in the Philippines (clearly all novelists had second homes of this kind), being protected by what looked very like the Israeli Army (this presumably being a service offered by Israel to all novelists), and he was plotting the overthrow of Pakistan by the fiendish means of opening chains of discotheques and gambling dens across that pure and virtuous land, a perfidious notion for which, as the British Muslim "leader" Iqbal Sacranie might have said, death was too light a punishment. "Rushdie" was dressed exclusively in a series of hideously coloured safari suits - vermilion safari suits, aubergine safari suits, cerise safari suits - and the camera, whenever it fell upon the figure of this vile personage, invariably started at his feet and then panned [sic] with slow menace up to his face. So the safari suits got a lot of screen time, and when he saw a videotape of the film the fashion insult ~ Salman Rushdie

[A less-enlightened personage once asked Ummon What is the God-nature/Buddha/Central Truth> Ummon answered him A dried shit-stick] ~ Dan Simmons

I want to know, sir-when shall I find God?" "You have found Him." "O no, sir, I don't think so!" My guru was smiling. "I am sure you aren't expecting a venerable Personage, adorning a throne in some antiseptic corner of the cosmos! I see, however, that you are imagining that the possession of miraculous powers is knowledge of God. One might have the whole universe, and find the Lord elusive still! Spiritual advancement is not measured by one's outward powers, but only by the depth of his bliss in meditation. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

The monumental pomp of age Was with this goodly personage; A stature undepressed in size, Unbent, which rather seemed to rise In open victory o'er the weight Of seventy years, to loftier height. ~ William Wordsworth

Painting, like poetry, selects in the universe whatever she deems most appropriate to her ends. She assembles in a single fantastic personage, circumstances and features which nature distributes among many individuals. From this combination, ingeniously composed, results that happy imitation by virtue of which the artist earns the title of inventor and not of servile copyist. ~ Francisco Goya

Fennik growled. "You mock me."
Korbyn's face was innocent, like Jidali's after he sneaked a cookie from Aunt Sabisa. "I would never mock such an illustrious personage," Korbyn said. ~ Sarah Beth Durst

Mr. Phileas Fogg lived, in 1872, at No. 7, Saville Row, Burlington Gardens, the house in which Sheridan died in 1814. He was one of the most noticeable members of the Reform Club, though he seemed always to avoid attracting attention; an enigmatical personage, about whom little was known, except that he was a polished man of the world. People said that he resembled Byron - at least that his head was Byronic; but he was a bearded, tranquil Byron, who might live on a thousand years without growing old. ~ Jules Verne

The Story Girl was written in 1910 and published in 1911. It was the last book I wrote in my old home by the gable window where I had spent so many happy hours of creation. It is my own favourite among my books, the one that gave me the greatest pleasure to write, the one whose characters and landscape seem to me most real. All the children in the book are purely imaginary. The old "King Orchard" was a compound of our old orchard in Cavendish and the orchard at Park Corner. "Peg Bowen" was suggested by a half-witted, gypsy-like personage who roamed at large for many years over the Island and was the terror of my childhood. ~ L.M. Montgomery

The Mole had long wanted to make the I acquaintance of the Badger. He seemed, by all accounts, to be such an important personage and, though rarely visible, to make his unseen influence felt by everybody about the place. ~ Kenneth Grahame

I take the world to be but as a stage,Where net-maskt men do play their personage. ~ Guillaume De Salluste Du Bartas

The symbolic personage who focuses upon himself a social drama and the martyr may well be born during these days preceding the new moon. They are the incorporation of the need of their collectivity for a new birth of spirit. They call down the creative spirit; they summon forth the future-even if it be through their own death ~ Dane Rudhyar

In being able to learn from his mistakes and grow, Eisenhower "was transformed from a mere person into a personage. ~ Lynne Olson

The women in that ward were simple, ordinary refugee women. They came from villages or very small towns. Even before becoming refugees, they had been poor. They had no education. They had no notion of an outside world where life might be different. They were being treated for various ailments, but in the end, their gender was their ailment.

In the first bed, a skinny fourteen-year-old girl lay rolled into her sheets in a state of almost catatonic unresponsiveness, eyes closed, not speaking even in reply to the doctor's gentle greeting. Her family had brought her to be treated for mental illness, the doctor explained with regret. They had recently married her to a man in his seventies, a wealthy and influential personage by their standards. In their version of things, something had started mysteriously to go wrong with her mind as soon as the marriage was agreed upon – a case of demon possession, her family supposed. When, after repeated beatings, she still failed to cooperate gracefully with her new husband's sexual demands, he had angrily returned her to her family and ordered them to fix this problem.

They had taken the girl to a mullah, who had tried to expel the demon through prayers and by writing Quranic passages on little pieces of paper that had to be dissolved in water and then drunk, but this had brought no improvement, so the mullah had abandoned his diagnosis of demon possession and decided that the girl was sick. The family had brought her t ~ Cheryl Benard

Personality is a physical matter almost entirely; it lowers the people it acts on - I've seen it vanish in a long sickness. But while a personality is active, it overrides 'the next thing.' Now a personage, on the other hand, gathers. He is never thought of apart from what he's done. He's a bar on which a thousand things have been hung - glittering things sometimes, as ours are; but he uses those things with a cold mentality back of them. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

If it is the devil that tempts the young to enjoy themselves, is it not the same personage that persuades the old to condemn their enjoyment? And is not condemnation perhaps merely a form of excitement appropriate to old age? ~ Bertrand Russell

There are times, you know, it's said in the Spiritual Tradition, just a glimpse at an enlightened personage can convey immense information at the sub-conscious level that sprouts later, that we don't even know. ~ Dan Millman

Living above the world, each discovering his own weight, seeing his face brighten and darken with the day, the night, each of the four inhabitants of the house was aware of a presence that was at once a judge and a justification among them. The world, here, became a personage, counted among those from whom advice is gladly taken, those in whom equilibrium has not killed love. ~ Albert Camus

The schoolmaster is generally a man of some importance in the female circle of a rural neighborhood, being considered a kind of idle, gentlemanlike personage, of vastly superior taste and accomplishments to the rough country swains, and, indeed, inferior in learning only to the parson. ~ Washington Irving

Whether one believes that the faith he spawned is the world's only true religion or a preposterous fable, Joseph emerges from the fog of time as one of the most remarkable figures ever to have breathed American air. "Whatever his lapses," Harold Bloom argues in The American Religion, "Smith was an authentic religious genius, unique in our national history ... In proportion to his importance and his complexity, he remains the least-studied personage, of an undiminished vitality, in our entire national sage. ~ Jon Krakauer

The cult of individuality and personality, which promotes painters and poets only to promote itself, is really a business. The greater the 'genius' of the personage, the greater the profit. ~ George Grosz

Each county has usually some family, or personage, supposed to have been favoured or plagued, especially by the phantoms, as the Hackets of Castle Hacket, Galway, who had for their ancestor a fairy, or John-o'-Daly of Lisadell, Sligo, who wrote Eilleen Aroon, ~ W.B.Yeats

We have said that Athos loved d'Artagnan like a child, and this somber and inflexible personage felt the anxiety of a parent for the young man. ~ Alexandre Dumas

JACK KIRBY is also the central personage of this novel because this is not a good novel. This is a seriously mixed-up book with a central personage who never appears. The plot, like life, resolves into nothing and features emotional suffering without meaning. ~ Jarett Kobek

It's despicable of an author to kill his main personage solely for stirring imagination of indifferent or mean minds. ~ Lara Biyuts

Reading books makes us more attentive to our personage and the aesthetic world that we live in. Writers that we idolize use language, logic, and nuance to paint physical and emotional scenes with refined precision. A writer's use of vivid language creates lingering aftereffects that work their wonder on the reader's malleable mind. A stirred mind resurrects our semiconscious memories; it causes us to summon up enduring images of our family, friends, and acquaintances. Just as importantly, inspirational writing makes us recognize our own telling character traits and identify our formerly unexpressed thoughts and feelings. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

She stood in awe of her elder daughter. Lida was never tender, she spoke only about serious things; she lived her own separate life and for her mother and sister was as sacred and slightly mysterious a personage as an admiral who always remains in his cabin is for his sailors.
- The House with the Mezzanine ~ Anton Chekhov

My man!" said the stranger, "I can promise you your master will give you a good wigging when he hears that you have sent me away." "A good - what, sir? " Brown grew red with indignation; but all the same a chill little doubt stole over him. This personage, who was so very sure of his welcome, might after all turn out to be a person whom he had no right to send away. "I said a wigging, my good man. Perhaps you don't understand that in England. We do in our place. ~ Mrs. Oliphant

The ordinary procedure of the nineteenth century is that when a powerful and noble personage encounters a man of feeling, he kills, exiles, imprisons or so humiliates him that the other, like a fool, dies of grief. ~ Stendhal

Anything done in excess becomes hazardous, not only to the entity, but also to a personage; in that it brings untoward behavior to scrutiny in the hoax of trying to reach out. Even 'l love you' mislay the poise of oneness when said over and over again. ~ TinMasun

Goethe's devil is a cultivated personage and acquainted with the modern sciences; sneers at witchcraft and the black art even while employing them, and doubts most things, nay, half disbelieves even his own existence. ~ Thomas Carlyle

This book is a drama, whose leading personage is the Infinite. ~ Victor Hugo

But by the time you've worked long enough, hard enough, Real Life (which insists on being capitalized as if it were a personage with a proper name and a right to barge into this rental unit called your life) begins to reveal itself as something other than effort, other than accomplishment. Real Life wishes to be left to its own purposeless devices. ~ Patricia Hampl

All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause – there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once...Even just learning enough about a subject so you can speak against an opponent eloquently makes you an unusual personage. Start with that. Any one of you would have cried out, would have intervened, had you been in that crowd in Bashiqa. Well thanks to digital technology, you're all in it now. ~ Joss Whedon

The religious literature handed out by the earnest young missionaries in Temple Square makes no mention of the fact that Joseph Smith
still the religion's focal personage
married at least thirty-three women and probably as many as forty-eight. Nor does it mention that the youngest of these wives was just fourteen years old when Joseph explained to her that God had commanded that she marry him or face eternal damnation. ~ Jon Krakauer

The Holy Ghost is a personage of Spirit: a separate and distinct member of the Godhead. ~ Joseph B. Wirthlin

The ancients had a taste, let us say rather a passion, for the marvellous, which caused ... grouping together the lofty deeds of a great number of heroes, whose names they have not even deigned to preserve, and investing the single personage of Hercules with them ... In our own time the public delight in blending fable with history. In every career of life, in the pursuit of science especially, they enjoy a pleasure in creating Herculeses. ~ Francois Arago

Why, when it comes to Law, I have nothing to say" answered that personage. "for laws were never meant to be understood, and it is foolish to make the attempt. ~ L. Frank Baum

I found myself one evening in the dreams of the night, in that sacred building, the Temple. After a
season of prayer and rejoicing, I was informed that I should have the privilege of entering into one of
those rooms, to meet a glorious personage, and as I entered the door, I saw, seated on a raised
platform, the most glorious Being my eyes have ever beheld, or that I ever conceived existed in all the
eternal worlds. As I approached to be introduced, he arose and stepped towards me with extended
arms, and he smiled as he softly spoke my name. If I shall live to be a million years old, I shall never
forget that smile. He took me into his arms and kissed me, pressed me to His bosom, and blessed me,
until the marrow of my bones seemed to melt! When He had finished, I fell at His feet, and as I bathed
them with my tears and kisses, I saw the prints of the nails in the feet of the Redeemer of the world.
The feeling that I had in the presence of Him who hath all things in His hands, to have His love, His
affection, and His blessings was such that if I ever can receive that of which I had but a foretaste, I
would give all that I am, all that I ever hope to be, to feel what I then felt (as cited in Bryant S.
Hinckley, The Faith of Our Pioneer Fathers, pp. 226-27.) ~ Melvin J. Ballard

As Emma's final days drew near, she reported a vision in which Joseph came to her. In the dream she put on her bonnet and shawl and went with him: "I did not think that it was anything unusual. I went with him into a [beautiful] mansion, and he showed me through the different apartments." One room was a nursery, and there she saw with joy an infant in the cradle. Emma continued, "I knew my babe, my Don Carlos that was taken from me."

Emma sprang forward, caught the child up in her arms, held him to her exultant heart, and wept with joy. Recovered from the overwhelming emotion of once again holding her little one, she turned to Joseph and asked, "Joseph, where are the rest of my children?" He responded, "Emma, be patient and you shall have all of your children."

As her vision closed, Emma saw standing by Joseph's side a personage of light, even the Lord Jesus Christ. That vision must have been a final seal of peace upon Emma's heart, writing upon it her precious sealing to Joseph on that beautiful spring day in 1843.

A few days later, Emma trembled at the threshold of eternity, surrounded by her loved ones. Suddenly she raised herself up, stretched out her hand, and called, "Joseph! Joseph!" Then, sinking back into her son's arm, she clasped her hands on her chest and was gone. At last they were together once more--Joseph and Emma, hearts twined as one, never to be separated again. ~ Angela Eschler

This is the very reason that some lives end seemingly early and by their own hands because Mother Nature doesn't understand that a personage can out-age a body. It is the reason that someone unwell can look so very vibrant on the outside, giving no indication that death lurks around the corner. Souls saturated in sickness, negativity, and ill-thoughts cannot weather the years well. ~ Jess Neal Woods

I was halfway between my home and the cookhouse when a mist of cloud began to creep across the early-risen moon. It darkened the ground enough that I did not see a small depression, and I stumbled. Immedietly I was steadied by some force I could not see, and then, as if the coming night clotted into a visible personage, I perceived that Lord Death was beside me. ~ Martine Leavitt

The Holy Ghost, a personage of spirit, is their minister, who has been given the power and assigned the functions of bearing record of the Father and the Son, of revealing the truths of salvation to men on earth, and in due course, of revealing to them, all truth. ~ Bruce R. McConkie

How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely tell you. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

My dear fellow, what does it matter to me? Supposing I unravel the whole matter, you may be sure that Gregson, Lestrade, and Co. will pocket all the credit. That comes of being an unofficial personage." "But he begs you to help him." "Yes. He knows that I am his superior, and acknowledges it to me; but he would cut his tongue out before he would own it to any third person. However, ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I have always declared God to be a distinct personage, Jesus Christ a separate and distinct personage from God the Father, and the Holy Ghost was a distinct personage and a Spirit: and these three constitute three distinct personages and three Gods. ~ Joseph Smith Jr.

I am at war ... with the principal personage of traditional philosophy, that abstract subject who masquerades as everyone and anyone, but is really a male subject in disguise. ~ Pam Gems

The philosopher spends in becoming a man the time which the ambitious man spends in becoming a personage. ~ Philibert Joseph Roux

In our wide world there is but one altogether fatal personage, the dunce,
he that speaks irrationally, that sees not, and yet thinks he sees. ~ Thomas Carlyle

Clearly I am a very strong, top-of-the-line, always-rising-to-it personage. ~ Lark Voorhies

The Godhead consists of three separate, distinct personages who are one in purpose. The Father and the Son have tangible bodies of flesh and bone while the Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit. ~ Joseph B. Wirthlin

I once wanted to be a personage. Now I am comfortable being a person. ~ Anna Quindlen

After a while he pulled his hat down over his eyes and stood and placed his hands outstretched on the roof of the cab and rode in that manner. As if he were some personage bearing news for the countryside. As if he were some newfound evangelical being conveyed down out of the mountains ... ~ Cormac McCarthy

As a matter of fact it required only a tolerable show of virtue for Peter to win encomiums at any time. He would brush his curly mop of hair away from his forehead, lift his eyes, part his lips, showing a row of tiny white teeth; then a dimple would appear in each cheek and a seraphic expression (wholly at variance with the facts) would overspread the baby face, whereupon the beholder ... would cry "Angel boy!" and kiss him. He was even kissed now, though he had done nothing at all but exist and be an enchanting personage, which is one of the injustices of a world where a large number of virtuous and well-behaved people go unkissed to their graves! ~ Kate Douglas Wiggin

One of them is a very familiar personage. Her name is "Mother Church." She is, in many ways, an admirable and dedicated person, deeply concerned about her children, endlessly and tirelessly careful for every detail of their welfare. Her long experience has taught her to understand her family very well. She knows their capabilities and she knows their weakness even better. She is patient and imperturbable, quite unshockable (she has witnessed all of the considerable range of human wickedness in her time) and there are no lengths to which she ill not go to educate her family. She has a huge fund of stories, maxims and advice, all of them time-tested, and usually interesting as well. She is very talented, skilled din creating a beautiful home for her children; she can show them how to enrich their lives with the glory of music and art. And there is no doubt that she loves God, and wishes to guide her children according to his will.

On the other hand, she is extremely inclined to feel that her will and God's are identical. In her eyes there can be no better, no other, way than hers. If she is unshockable, she is frequently cynical. She is shrewd, with a thoroughly earthy and often humorous shrewdness. She knows her children's limitations so well that she will not allow them to outgrow them. She will lie and cheat if she feels it is necessary to keep her charges safe; she uses her authority 'for their own good' but if it seems to be questioned she is ruthless in suppres ~ Rosemary Haughton

Charlotte was in pain, Charlotte was in torment, but he himself had given her reason enough for that; and, in respect to the rest of the whole matter of her obligation to follow her husband, that personage and she, Maggie, had so shuffled away every link between consequence and cause that the intention remained, like some famous poetic line in a dead language subject to varieties of interpretation. What ~ Henry James