Literary notes about personal (AI summary)
In literature, the term "personal" takes on a range of nuanced meanings that emphasize individual experience and intimate connection. Authors use it to describe relationships and sentiments, whether referring to the inner ties that bind people together as in the discussion of personal relation ([1]) or highlighting individual interests and inclinations ([2], [3]). At times it denotes tangible attributes such as personal belongings or accounts of one's own history ([4], [5]), and in other instances it serves to underscore a direct, subjective involvement in events or ideas ([6], [7]). Moreover, it is applied to characterize distinct personal traits, be they emotional, physical, or intellectual, as seen when conveying personal defense ([8]), personal insignificance ([9]), or the uniqueness of personal merit ([10]). This layered usage underlines how "personal" functions as a bridge between the abstract and the individual, capturing the essence of self in diverse narrative contexts ([11], [12]).
- They all united in trying to help each other to get along the best way they could, and all they tried to save was the personal relation.
— from The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams - She found it difficult to induce Martha to speak of any of her personal interests; but at last she touched the right chord, in naming Mrs. Thornton.
— from North and South by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell - My personal interest is perhaps stronger in that of which thee writes me than in any other, but my hands are so full just now.
— from The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) by Ida Husted Harper - I have followed his manuscript closely, omitting only certain facts of family and personal history.
— from A History of Norwegian Immigration to the United States by George T. Flom - Without hesitation he gave me his personal check for all the money which he had saved for his own use.
— from Up from Slavery: An Autobiography by Booker T. Washington - Some things he could not vouch for (his friends had told him), but of others he had had personal experience.
— from Dubliners by James Joyce - It is with this second phase that the real personal life has its beginning; it is then that the child becomes conscious of himself.
— from Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - But nothing which could resemble a blow, an attack or even personal defence proceeded from his hands.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - I don't know what he said, except that he recommended each to penetrate herself with a sense of her personal insignificance.
— from Villette by Charlotte Brontë - His person was invisible, his name was yet formidable; and the anxiety of the court of Avignon supposes, and even magnifies, his personal merit.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - There are many powerful programs for personal computers that let you search your personal data for information.
— from The Online World by Odd De Presno - This division of our mind into a personal and a general consciousness affords a basis for a clear understanding of the principles of suggestion.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park
