50 Ways to Use Personification

The following sentences use the personification technique. See if you can identify which part
of the word or phrase is the personification. The answers are below:

1. The stars danced playfully in the moonlit sky.

2. The run down house appeared depressed.
3. The first rays of morning tiptoed through the meadow.
4. She did not realize that opportunity was knocking at her door.
5. He did not realize that his last chance was walking out the door.
6. The bees played hide and seek with the flowers as they buzzed from one to another.
7. The wind howled its mighty objection.
8. The snow swaddled the earth like a mother would her infant child.
9. The river swallowed the earth as the water continued to rise higher and higher.
10. Time flew and before we knew it, it was time for me to go home.
11. The ocean waves lashed out at the boat and the storm continued to brew.
12. My computer throws a fit every time I try to use it.
13. The thunder grumbled like an old man.
14. The flowers waltzed in the gentle breeze.
15. Her life passed her by.
16. The sun glared down at me from the sky.
17. The moon winked at me through the clouds above.
18. The wind sang through the meadow.
19. The car was suffering and was in need of some TLC.
20. At precisely 6:30 am my alarm clock sprang to life.
21. The window panes were talking as the wind blew through them.
22. The ocean danced in the moonlight.
23. The words appeared to leap off of the paper as she read the story.
24. The phone awakened with a mighty ring.
25. The funeral raced by me in a blur.
26. While making my way to my car, it appeared to smile at me mischievously.
27. The car, painted lime green, raced by screaming for attention.
28. The butterflies in the meadow seemed to two-step with one another.
29. The waffle jumped up out of the toaster.
30. The popcorn leapt out of the bowl.
31. When the DVD went on sale, it flew off the shelves.
32. I tripped because the curb jumped out in front of me.
33. Time creeps up on you.
34. The news took me by surprise.
35. The fire ran wild.
36. The thunder clapped angrily in the distance.
37. The tornado ran through town without a care.
38. The door protested as it opened slowly.
39. The evil tree was lurking in the shadows.
40. The tree branch moaned as I swung from it.
41. Time marches to the beat of its own drum.
42. The storm attacked the town with great rage.
43. My life came screeching to a halt.
44. The baseball screamed all the way into the outfield.
45. The blizzard swallowed the town.
 46. The tsunami raced towards the coastline.
47. The avalanche devoured everything in its path.
48. The pistol glared at me from its holster.
49. The car beckoned me from across the showroom.
50. I could hear Hawaii calling my name.

Personification in Literature
"Ah, William, we're weary of weather," / said the sunflowers, shining with dew. / "Our
traveling habits have tired us. / Can you give us a room with a view?" - "Two Sunflowers
Move into the Yellow Room", Nancy Willard

Ten thousand (daffodils) saw I at a glance, / Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. / The
waves beside them danced; but they / Out-did the sparkling waves in glee - "I Wandered
Lonely as a Cloud", William Wordsworth

The fog comes / on little cat feet. / It sits looking / over harbor and city / on silent haunches
/ and then moves on. - “The Fog”, Carl Sandburg

The little dog laughed / To see such sport, / And the dish ran away with the spoon. - Nursery
Rhyme

The night was creeping on the ground! / She crept and did not make a sound - “Check”,
James Stephens

"And then one day the boy came back and the tree shook with joy." - The Giving Tree, Shel
Silverstein

Personification in Advertising
 Oreo: Milk's favorite cookie - Oreo
 Nothing hugs like Huggies - Huggies diapers
 Goldfish: The snack that smiles back - Goldfish snack crackers
 Kleenex says bless you - Kleenex facial tissues
 The car that cares - Kia
 Unwrap a smile - Little Debbie snack cakes
 Carvel: It's what happy tastes like - Carvel ice cream
 What do you feed a machine with an appetite this big? - Indesit washing machine and
Ariel Liquitabs, laundry detergent (UK)

Simple Metaphor Examples For Kids

Here is a list of simple metaphor examples you can use to help teach your child about new
things.
 1. Max is a pig when he eats.
2. You are my sunshine.
3. It’s raining cats and dogs.
4. Even a child could carry my dog around for hours. He is a feather.
5. He is the Tiger Woods of his golf team.
6. Mary’s hair was a fierce lion’s main; always sticking out in wild directions.
7. He tried to help but his legs were rubber.
8. Her eyes were fireflies.
9. I was lost in a sea of nameless faces.
10. My teacher is a dragon.
11. Their home was a prison.
12. Life is a rollercoaster.
13. America is a melting pot.
14. His eyes were ice.
15. The world is a stage.
16. Life is a fashion show.
17. My kid’s room is a disaster.
18. The alligator’s teeth are white daggers.
19. Time is money.
20. The wheels of justice turn slowly.
21. She cut him down with her words.
22. The teacher planted the seed of wisdom.
23. The clouds sailed across the sky.
24. Laughter is the music of the soul.
25. He is a chicken.

Metaphor Examples for Intermediate Readers

The slashes indicate line breaks.

1. The detective listened to her tales with a wooden face.

2. She was fairly certain that life was a fashion show.
3. The typical teenage boy’s room is a disaster area.
4. What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep.
5. The children were roses grown in concrete gardens, beautiful and forlorn.
6. Kisses are the flowers of love in bloom.
7. His cotton candy words did not appeal to her taste.
8. Kathy arrived at the grocery store with an army of children.
9. Her eyes were fireflies.
10. He wanted to set sail on the ocean of love but he just wasted away in the desert.
11. I was lost in a sea of nameless faces.
12. John’s answer to the problem was just a Band-Aid, not a solution.
13. The cast on Michael’s broken leg was a plaster shackle.
14. Cameron always had a taste for the fruit of knowledge.
15. The promise between us was a delicate flower.
16. He’s a rolling stone, and it’s bred in the bone.
17. He pleaded for her forgiveness but Janet’s heart was cold iron.
18. She was just a trophy to Ricardo, another object to possess.
19. The path of resentment is easier to travel than the road to forgiveness.
20. Katie’s plan to get into college was a house of cards on a crooked table.
21. The wheels of justice turn slowly.
22. Hope shines–a pebble in the gloom.
23. She cut him down with her words.
24. The job interview was a rope ladder dropped from heaven.
25. Her hair was a flowing golden river streaming down her shoulders.
26. The computer in the classroom was an old dinosaur.

Knowledge is the key to success.

27. Laughter is the music of the soul.

28. David is a worm for what he did to Shelia.
29. The teacher planted the seeds of wisdom.
30. Phyllis, ah, Phyllis, my life is a gray day
31. Each blade of grass was a tiny bayonet pointed firmly at our bare feet.
32. The daggers of heat pierced through his black t-shirt.
33. Let your eyes drink up that milkshake sky.
34. The drums of time have rolled and ceased.
35. Her hope was a fragile seed.
36. When Ninja Robot Squad came on TV, the boys were glued in their seats.
37. Words are the weapons with which we wound.
38. She let such beautiful pearls of wisdom slip from her mouth without even knowing.
39. Scars are the roadmap to the soul.
40. The quarterback was throwing nothing but rockets and bombs in the field.
41. We are all shadows on the wall of time.
42. My heart swelled with a sea of tears.
43. When the teacher leaves her little realm, she breaks her wand of power apart.
44. The Moo Cow’s tail is a piece of rope all raveled out where it grows.
45. My dreams are flowers to which you are a bee.
46. The clouds sailed across the sky.
47. Each flame of the fire is a precious stone belonging to all who gaze upon it.
48. And therefore I went forth with hope and fear into the wintry forest of our life.
49. My words are chains of lead.
50. But into her face there came a flame; / I wonder could she have been thinking the same?
Metaphor Examples for Advanced Readers

Here are fifty more challenging examples of metaphors. The slashes indicate line breaks.

1. The light flows into the bowl of the midnight sky, violet, amber and rose.
2. Men court not death when there are sweets still left in life to taste.
3. In capitalism, money is the life blood of society but charity is the soul.
4. Whose world is but the trembling of a flare, / And heaven but as the highway for a shell,
5. Fame is the fragrance of heroic deeds, / Of flowers of chivalry and not of weeds!
6. So I sit spinning still, round this decaying form, the fine threads of rare and subtle thought.
7. And swish of rope and ring of chain /
Are music to men who sail the main.
8. Still sits the school-house by the road, a ragged beggar sunning.
9. The child was our lone prayer to an empty sky.
10. Blind fools of fate and slaves of circumstance, / Life is a fiddler, and we all must dance.
11. Grind the gentle spirit of our meek reviews into a powdery foam of salt abuse.
12. Laugh a drink from the deep blue cup of sky.
13. Think now: history has many cunning passages and contrived corridors.
14. You are now in London, that great sea whose ebb and flow at once is deaf and loud,
15. His fine wit makes such a wound that the knife is lost in it.
16. Waves of spam emails inundated his inbox.
17. In my heart’s temple I suspend to thee these votive wreaths of withered memory.
18. He cast a net of words in garish colours wrought to catch the idle buzzers of the day.
19. This job is the cancer of my dreams and aspirations.
20. This song shall be thy rose, soft, fragrant, and with no thorn left to wound thy bosom.
21. There, one whose voice was venomed melody.
22. A sweetness seems to last amid the dregs of past sorrows.
23. So in this dimmer room which we call life,
24. Life is the night with its dream-visions teeming, / Death is the waking at day.
25. Then the lips relax their tension
and the pipe begins to slide, /
Till in little clouds of ashes,
it falls softly at his side.
26. The olden days: when thy smile to me was wine, golden wine thy word of praise.
27. Thy tones are silver melted into sound.
28. Under us the brown earth / Ancient and strong, / The best bed for wanderers;
29. Love is a guest that comes, unbidden, / But, having come, asserts his right;
30. My House of Life is weather-stained with years.
31. See the sun, far off, a shriveled orange in a sky gone black;
32. Three pines strained darkly, runners in a race unseen by any.
33. But the rare herb, Forgetfulness, it hides away from me.
34. The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman
35. Life: a lighted window and a closed door.
36. Some days my thoughts are just cocoons hanging from dripping branches in the grey woods
of my mind.
37. Men and women pass in the street glad of the shining sapphire weather.
38. The swan existing is a song with an accompaniment.
39. At night the lake is a wide silence, without imagination.

40. The cherry-trees are seas of bloom and soft perfume and sweet perfume.
41. The great gold apples of light hang from the street’s long bough, dripping their light on the
faces that drift below, on the faces that drift and blow.
 42. From its blue vase the rose of evening drops.
43. When in the mines of dark and silent thought / Sometimes I delve and find strange fancies
there,
44. The twigs were set beneath a veil of willows.
45. He clutched and hacked at ropes, at rags of sail, / Thinking that comfort was a fairy tale,
46. O Moon, your light is failing and you are nothing now but a bow.
47. Life is a dream in the night, a fear among fears, / A naked runner lost in a storm of spears.
48. This world of life is a garden ravaged.
49. And therefore I went forth, with hope and fear / Into the wintry forest of our life;
50. My soul was a lampless sea and she was the tempest.

Simile Examples for Intermediate Readers

Slashes indicate line-breaks.

1. “Food?” Chris inquired, popping out of his seat like a toaster strudel.
2. Then I knew those tiny voices, clear as drops of dew.
3. If seen from above the factory, the workers would have looked like clock parts.
4. She went like snow in the springtime on a sunny hill.
5. A mist about your beauty clings like a thin cloud before a star.
6. Cassie talked to her son about girls as though she were giving him tax advice.
7. Alan’s jokes were like flat soda to the children, surprisingly unpleasant.
8. My mother’s kitchen was like a holy place: you couldn’t wear your shoes, you had to sit there
at a certain time, and occasionally we’d pray.
9. The bottle rolled off the table like a teardrop.
10. The handshake felt like warm laundry.
11. The gray of the sea, and the gray of the sky, / A glimpse of the moon like a half-closed eye.
12. Yes, the doors are locked and the ashes are white as the frost.
13. The classroom was as quiet as a tongue-tied librarian in a hybrid car.
14. The flowers were as soft as thoughts of budding love.
15. The clouds were like ice-cream castles in the sky.
16. The music burst like a bent-up flood.
17. When he reached the top of the hill, he felt as strong as a steel gate.
18. When the tree branch broke, Millie fell from the limb like a robin’s egg.
19. She swam through the waters like she was falling through a warm dream.
20. The curtains stir as with an ancient pain.
21. Mikhail scattered his pocket change in front of the beggars like crumbs of bread.
22. But now her hands like moonlight brush the keys with velvet grace.
23. I flitted like a dizzy moth.
24. The man held the blanket like a memory.
25. The ice sculptor’s hands fluttered like hummingbird wings.

Simile Examples for Advanced Readers

Here are fifty examples of similes for advanced readers. Remember: a simile is a
comparison between two different things using like or as to make the comparison.

1. I dream of silent verses where the rhyme glides noiseless as an oar.

2. Though they knew it not, their baby’s cries were lovely as jeweled butterflies.
3. He kissed her as though he were trying to win a sword fight.
4. The paparazzi circled like vultures above a tottering camel.
 5. She was as distant as a remote tropical island, uncivilized, unspoiled.
6. Our hearts, though stout and brave, still, like muffled drums, are beating funeral marches to
the grave.
7. He had hidden his wealth, heaped and hoarded and piled on high like sacks of wheat in a
granary.
8. Pieces of silver and of gold / Into the tinkling strong-box fell / Like pebbles dropped into a
well;
9. The cabin windows have grown blank as eyeballs of the dead.
10. What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
11. Each face was like the setting sun, / As, broad and red.
12. Barefooted, ragged, with neglected hair, she was a thin slip of a girl, like a new moon.
13. A fatal letter wings its way across the sea, like a bird of prey.
14. I will sing a slumberous refrain, and you shall murmur like a child appeased.
15. For she knows me! My heart, clear as a crystal beam / To her alone, ceases to be inscrutable.
16. Leaf-strewing gales utter low wails like violins,
17. He spit out his teeth like stones.
18. Talk of your cold: through the parka’s fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
19. Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh.
20. Like winged stars the fire-flies flash and glance, / Pale in the open moonshine.
21. The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers, / Her touch was as electric poison.
22. Then, as a hunted deer that could not flee, I turned upon my thoughts and stood at bay,
wounded and weak and panting;
23. There are thick woods where many a fountain, rivulet, and pond are as clear as elemental
diamond.
24. Years heap their withered hours, like leaves, on our decay.
25. The ripples wimple on the rills, like sparkling little lasses.
26. She was like a modest flower blown in sunny June and warm as sun at noon’s high hour.
27. And the face of the waters that spread away / Was as gray as the face of the dead.
28. As in depths of many seas, my heart was drowned in memories.
29. Then like a cold wave on a shore, comes silence and she sings no more.
30. And shout thy loud battle-cry, cleaving the silence like a sword.
31. My soul is lost and tossed like a ship unruddered in a shoreless sea.
32. The clouds like crowds of snowy-hued and white-robed maidens pass
33. Dreams, like ghosts, must hide away; / ‘Tis the day.
34. The evening stretches before me like a road.
35. I would have hours that move like a glitter of dancers.
36. Toby manipulated the people in his life as though they were chess pieces.
37. And only to think that my soul could not react, but turned on itself like a tortured snake.
38. There are strange birds like blots against a sky.
39. She goes all so softly like a shadow on the hill, a faint wind at twilight.
40. The horse-chestnuts dropped their buds like tears.
41. They walk in awful splendor, regal yet, wearing their crimes like rich and kingly capes.
42. Death is like moonlight in a lofty wood that pours pale magic through the shadowy leaves.
43. I was sick of all the sorrow and distress that flourished in the City like foul weeds.
44. As I read it in the white, morning sunlight, the letters squirmed like snakes.
45. Oh, praise me not the silent folk; / To me they only seem / Like leafless, bird-abandoned oak.
46. The windflowers and the lilies were yellow striped as adder’s tongue.
47. I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep.
48. For the world’s events have rumbled on since those days like traffic.
49. And dance as dust before the sun, light of foot and unconfined.
50. The fishes skim like umber shades through the undulating weeds.
51. Gather up the undiscovered universe like jewels in a jasper cup.

The Road Not Taken – Robert Frost

Dua Jalan bercabang dalam remang hutan kehidupan,
Dan sayang aku tidak bisa menempuh keduanya
Dan sebagai pengembara, aku berdiri lama
dan memandang ke satu jalan sejauh aku bisa
Ke mana kelokannya mengarah di balik semak belukar

Kemudian aku memandang yang satunya, sama bagusnya

Dan mungkin malah lebih bagus
Karena jalan itu segar dan jarang terjamahi
bagi yang sudah pernah melewati
mungkin sama saja rasanya dengan yang tadi

Dan pagi itu keduanya sama sama membentang

Di bawah hamparan dedauan rontok yang belum terusik
Oh, kusimpan jalan pertama untuk kali lain !
Meski tahu semua jalan berkaitan
Aku ragu jika aku harus kembali.

Aku akan menuturkannya sambil berdesah

Suatu saat berabad-abad mendatang
Dua jalan bercabang di hutan, dan aku …
Aku menempuh jalan yang jarang dilalui
Dan itu mengubah segalanya.

A narrow Fellow in the Grass

A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides—
You may have met him? Did you not
His notice instant is—

The Grass divides as with a Comb—

A spotted Shaft is seen,
And then it closes at your Feet
And opens further on—

He likes a Boggy Acre—

A Floor too cool for Corn—
But when a Boy and Barefoot
I more than once at Noon

Have passed I thought a Whip Lash

Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled And was gone—
Several of Nature’s People
I know and they know me
I feel for them a transport
Of Cordiality

But never met this Fellow

Attended or alone
Without a tighter Breathing
And Zero at the Bone.

Seorang rekan sempit di rumput

Kadang-kadang rides-
Anda mungkin telah bertemu? Apakah Anda tidak
pemberitahuan adalah- instan nya
The Grass membagi sebagai dengan sisir
Sebuah Shaft tutul terlihat,
Dan kemudian menutup di Kaki Anda
Dan membuka on- lanjut
Dia menyukai Boggy Acre-
Sebuah Lantai terlalu dingin untuk Jagung
Tapi ketika sebuah Boy dan Barefoot
Saya lebih dari sekali di tengah hari
Telah berlalu saya pikir Cambuk Lash
Mengurai di Sun
Ketika membungkuk untuk mengamankan itu
Ini keriput Dan itu pergi-
Beberapa Orang Alam
Saya tahu dan mereka tahu saya
Saya merasa untuk mereka transportasi yang
dari Cordiality
Tetapi tidak pernah bertemu Fellow ini
Dihadiri atau sendirian
Tanpa Bernapas ketat
Dan Zero di Bone.