"Simile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The simile striking her as original and clever, she made him a pretty compliment. She was very young in ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... My horizon seemed a perfect circle; the terminating line several hundred miles in circumference. This I conjectured from the view of London; the extreme points of which, formed an angle of only a few degrees. It was so reduced on the great scale before me, that I can find no simile to convey an idea of it. I could distinguish Saint Paul's and other churches, from the houses. I saw the streets as lines, all animated with beings, whom I knew to be men and women, but which I should otherwise have ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... who had started violently when Mrs. Barnes entered, turned toward the latter a face as white, so Thankful described it afterward, "as unbleached muslin." This was not a bad simile, for Miss Timpson's complexion was, owing to her excessive tea-drinking, a decided yellow. Just now it was a very ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... soul! The very finest tree in the whole forest, with the straightest stem, and the strongest arms, and the thickest foliage, wherein you choose to build and coo, may be marked, for what you know, and may be down with a crash ere long. What an old, old simile that is, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is a simile old as language itself. It would, no doubt, puzzle an Australian, used to look upon those beautiful and stately birds as being of a very different complexion. The simile holds good, however, with the ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... of simile is worth mentioning. Diderot says "that great services are like large pieces of money, that we have seldom any occasion to use. Small attentions are a current coin that we always carry in our hands." This is curiously like the saying in the Tatler that "A man endowed with great perfections without ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... their own experience or apprehension of its ill effects) was found salutary. They had a mysterious and singular appearance, with the mouth and nose covered, and the loose gown on, and yet bore out the simile of the old Turk and the seraglio all the ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... were abundantly published, and that shewed as plainly as graver matters, that the nation had awakened to a sense of its folly, was one, a fac-simile of which is preserved in the Memoires de la Regence. It was thus described by its author: "The 'Goddess of Shares,' in her triumphal car, driven by the Goddess of Folly. Those who are drawing the car are impersonations of the Mississippi, with his wooden leg, the South Sea, the Bank of England, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... horse's bridle and fell into step with her. "Principally because I like the early morning better than any other part of the day; it's fresh and sweet and unspoiled—like some Irish actresses. There—please don't mind my crude attempt at poetic—simile," for Patsy's eyes had snapped dangerously. "If you only knew how rarely poetry or compliments ever came to roost on this dry tongue, you really wouldn't want to discourage them when it does happen. Besides, there was ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... difficulty which he encountered by reason of the variety and disorder of the resolutions and charges against him with which "gentlemen from the South had pounced down upon him like so many eagles upon a (p. 278) dove,"—there was an exquisite sarcasm in the simile!—he said: "When I take up one idea, before I can give color to the idea, it has already changed its form and presents itself for consideration under other colors.... What defence can be made against this new crime of giving color to ideas?" As for trifling with the House ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... the slightest belief in Alec's innate nobility of character. Beliani likened him to Bayard, it is true, and Marulitch had scoffingly adopted the simile; but that was because each thought Bayard not admirable, but a fool. The somber history of the Kosnovian monarchy, a record of crass stupidity made lurid at times by a lightning gleam of passion, justified the belief that Alexis would follow the path that led Theodore, ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... the great dailies are edited and printed, and "Brain Street," as George Augustus Sala fitly nicknamed it, is midway between the "city" and the "West End, "—the "down town" and the "up town" of London, if such a simile is permissible as applied to a brick-and-mortar polypus whose members radiate toward every point of the compass. No part of the Temple is more than five minutes' walk from this centre of intellectual industry, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... in all directions from Chao-t'ong, the rebels had camped, and a motley crowd they were—Mohammendans, Chinese, I-pien, Hua Miao, and other hooligans. Mobilization was effected by spies taking round secret cases (the ch'uandan) containing two pieces of coal and a feather—a simile meaning that the rebels were to burn like fire and fly like birds. Meanwhile, military forces had been dispatched from Yuen-nan-fu, the capital (twelve days away), and from Ch'u-tsing-fu (seven or eight days away), ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... masses, now rolling across the moon, partially obscured the landscape, and anon, passing slowly away, let a flood of light down upon the forest, which, penetrating between the thick branches, scattered the surface of the snow, as it were, with flakes of silver. Sleep has often been applied as a simile to nature in repose, but in this case death seemed more appropriate. So silent, so cold, so still was the scene, that it filled the mind with an indefinable feeling of dread, as if there was some mysterious danger near. Once or twice during their walk the three ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... Lescott, the thought of bugles conjured up a dozen pictures of marching soldiery under a dozen flags. To Samson South, it suggested only one: militia guarding a battered courthouse, but to both the simile brought a ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... reminded of the heroes of Highland romance, as he saw the knightly figure riding calmly along the shore of the lake, guarding his flying army by the might of his presence, and the Archdeacon of Aberdeen found a simile for him in the romances of Alexander; but three men named M'Androsser, a father and two sons, all of great strength, sprang forward, vowing to slay the champion, or make him prisoner. One seized his rein, and at the same moment Bruce's sword sheared off the detaining hand, but not before ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... shone brightly in the cold blue sky, giving a warm appearance to the scene, although no sensible warmth proceeded from it, so cold was the air. Countless millions of icy particles covered every bush and tree, glittering tremulously in its rays like diamonds—psha! that hackneyed simile: diamonds of the purest water never shone like these evanescent little gems of nature. The air was biting cold, obliging us to walk briskly along to keep our blood in circulation; and the breath flew thick and white from our mouths and ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... the style was becoming as unfashionable as it had always, save on very exceptional subjects, been ungraceful. Even on Wilson, who was to the manner born of riotous spirits, it often sits awkwardly; in De Quincey's case it is, to borrow Sir Walter's admirable simile in another case, like "the forced impudence of a bashful man." Grim humour he can manage admirably, and he also—as in the passage about the fate which waited upon all who possessed anything which might be convenient to Wordsworth, if they died—can manage a certain kind of sly humour not much ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... had listened to me you would never had interceded to keep your chief clerk; he stole that abominable paper, and has, no doubt, kept a fac-simile of it. ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... case you are helpless, I fear. At any rate, talking of hanging, or the infliction of any other punishment, is quite futile so long as you do not possess the power to carry out your sentence. To return to my simile of the general: a general can order any private in his army to be hanged, and the man is taken out and hanged accordingly, but if one of the guild is to be executed, he must be condemned by an overwhelming ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... the fellow's simile. When an idea gets hold of us in Troy, we puff at it, we blow it out and distend it to a globe, pausing and calling on one another to mark the prismatic tints, the fugitive images, symbols, meanings of the wide world glassed upon our pretty toy. We launch ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and yet there are other figures and other colours. Let Meno take the examples of figure and colour, and try to define them.' Meno confesses his inability, and after a process of interrogation, in which Socrates explains to him the nature of a 'simile in multis,' Socrates himself defines figure as 'the accompaniment of colour.' But some one may object that he does not know the meaning of the word 'colour;' and if he is a candid friend, and not a mere disputant, Socrates is willing to furnish him with a simpler and more philosophical definition, ...
— Meno • Plato
... his hand. "Spare me the simile. I detect a vista of curious perils such as infinitely outshines verbal brilliancy. You need my aid in some insane attempt." He considered. He said: ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... out of that horrible pandemonium of panic-born yells, mingled with the roaring of musketry and the crashing of artillery. To what may it be likened? The carol of birds in the midst of the blackest thunder-storm? No simile can be adequate. Its strains were clear and thrilling for a moment, then smothered by that fearful din, an instant later sounding bold and clear again, as if it would fearlessly emphasize the refrain, ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... struggle to keep the Commandments and the Rules has been paving the way for this mastery; through this very struggle and sacrifice the mastery has become possible; just as, to use St. Paul's simile, the athlete gains the mastery in the contest and the race through the sacrifice of his long and arduous training. ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... delight and profound emotion what no musician, except Beethoven, has felt before." And Heinrich Heine had a keen perception of Berlioz's originality when he called him "a colossal nightingale, a lark the size of an eagle." The simile is not only picturesque, but of remarkable aptness. For Berlioz's colossal force is at the service of a forlorn and tender heart; he has nothing of the heroism of Beethoven, or Haendel, or Gluck, or even Schubert. He has all the charm of an Umbrian painter, as is shown in L'Enfance du ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... too, that her simile might invite elaboration, and she sensed the laugh in his silence, and liked him for remaining silent where he might easily have ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... what I have conceived of his bodiless admiration of beauty, and objectless enthusiasm of love. The sentiment itself is unquestionably in the highest mood of the intellectual sense of beauty; the simile is, however, anything but such an image as the beauty of woman would suggest. It is only the remembrance of some impression or imagination of the loveliness of a twilight applied to an object that awakened the same abstract general ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... not a true simile of the favour of the fickle crowd? The most brilliant phenomena are forgotten after a moment. Life and Time are full of such fireworks—religions, philosophies, fashions, dynasties. And overhead ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... degrees an accomplished scold. She often went her daily rounds through a series of deserted apartments, every creature in the house vanishing at the creak of her shoe, much more at the sound of her voice, to which the nature of things affords no simile; for, as far as the voice of woman, when attuned by gentleness and love, transcends all other sounds in harmony, so far does it surpass all others in discord, when stretched into unnatural shrillness ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... alone, or to have described but one single trajectory like that of a cannon-ball fired from a cannon. The process of evolution is, and has been from the beginning, dispersive. To borrow M. Bergson's simile, the process of evolution is not like that of a cannon-ball which followed one line, but like that of a shell, which burst into fragments the moment it was fired off; and these fragments being, as it were, themselves shells, in their turn burst into other fragments, ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... spontaneous, self-existent love, which, once lit in a woman's breast, is like the central fire hidden in the earth's bosom, enduring through all surface variations—through summer and winter, earthquakes, floods, and storms—utterly unchangeable and indestructible. And, however wildly extravagant this simile may sound—however rare the fact it illustrates, nevertheless such Love is a great truth, possible and probable, which has existed and may exist—thank God for it!—to prove that He did not found the poetry of all humanity ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... criticism became light-headed, and fairly exhausted its whole vocabulary of panegyric in giving him welcome. "There is not a page in this volume on which we cannot find some novel image, some Shakspearian felicity of expression, or some striking simile," said the critic of the "Westminster Review." "Having read these extracts," said another exponent of public opinion, "turn to any poet you will, and compare the texture of the composition,—it is a severe test, but you will find that Alexander Smith ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... fantastic shades seemed to steal out of the side and bulkheads and disappear upon my terrified gaze. Then, thought I, suppose after all that the man should be alive, the vitality in him set flowing by the heat? I minded myself of my own simile of the current checked by frost, yet retaining unimpaired the principle of motion; and getting my agitation under some small control, I approached the body on tiptoe and held the lanthorn ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... ANYthing to him but he'd just behave as if it was frightful, an' then if you'd see him out walkin' with Miss Pratt, well, he'd look like—like—" Jane paused; her eye fell upon Clematis and by a happy inspiration she was able to complete her simile with remarkable accuracy. "He'd look like the way Clematis looks at people! That's just EXACTLY the way he'd look, Genesis, when he was walkin' with Miss Pratt; an' then when he was home he got so quiet he couldn't answer questions an' wouldn't ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... [Footnote 10: This simile is nobly conceived, but expressed somewhat obscurely. As Hercules contended in vain against Antaeus, the Son of Earth,—so long as the Earth gave her giant offspring new strength in every fall,—so the soul contends in vain with evil—the natural earth-born enemy, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... gone much too far. Mr Lance Distin is a gentleman, a student, and of very excellent family. A young man of excellent attainments, and about as likely to commit such a brutal assault as you speak of, as—as, well, for want of a better simile, Bates, as ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... on the committee were Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman and Robert R. Livingston. It was by their request that he prepared the document (see fac-simile, page 49,) done on the second floor of a small building, on the corner of Market and Seventh Streets. The house and the little desk, constructed by Jefferson ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... It was an unfortunate simile to be making and Pinky should have known better, for at Pinky's last words the old major's mild eye widened and, expanding himself, he brought his chair legs down to the floor with ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... "antique manuscripts" preserved among the Chatterton papers in the British Museum, as well as the fac-simile of the "Yellow Roll," published in the Cambridge edition of Chatterton's works, are, however, so totally unlike the writing of the era to which they purport to belong, that no doubt need be entertained as to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... justify this excellent simile. God's common call is to all His creatures who live within the sound of His Gospel. His special call is when He bestows the grace, peace, and pardon of the Gospel of Christ upon His people. The brooding note is when He gathers them under His wings, warms their hearts with the comforts of His ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... premonitions of the future for the Church as well as for himself, and the horizons were dark in both outlooks. He foresaw evils from two quarters, for 'wolves' would come from without, and perverse teachers would arise within, drawing the disciples after them and away from the Lord. The simile of wolves may be an echo of Christ's warning in Matthew vii 15. How sadly Paul's anticipations were fulfilled the Epistle to the Church in Ephesus (Revelation ii.) shows too clearly. Unslumbering alertness, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... met. When his admiration was most unbridled it seemed to be offered to her as the representative of a sex entirely perfect and lovely. Everything in heaven and earth, apparently, ministered to his passion and made him talk all around the beloved subject with a wealth of simile and suggestion that she had never dreamed of. But, if he gave full expression to his agitated feelings in these ways, he was extremely delicate, respectful, reserved, in others. He wrapped up his heart in so many napkins, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... How well the simile of a genealogical tree illustrates the main ideas of Darwin's theory the following extract from the summary ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... FOURTH PICTURE represents the kátso-yisçà n, or great plumed arrows. These arrows are the especial great mystery, the potent healing charm of this dance. The picture is supposed to be a fac simile of a representation of these weapons, shown to the prophet when he visited the abode of the Tsilkè-¢igini, or young men gods, where he first saw the arrows (paragraph 47). There are eight arrows. Four are in ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... on the face of the earth. To a young man with the least fire in him that little upward lift in the middle of her red top lip was distracting, infatuating, maddening. He had never before seen a woman's lips and teeth which forced upon his mind with such persistent iteration the old Elizabethan simile of roses filled with snow. Perfect, he, as a lover, might have called them off-hand. But no—they were not perfect. And it was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... than anything you can find for your simile," he answered. "I know simply that there is no force existing that can turn me ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... passage beginning 'swa bieth geomorlic' seems to be an effort to reach a full simile, 'as ... so.' 'As it is mournful for an old man, etc. ... so the defence of the Weders (2463) bore heart-sorrow, etc.' The verses 2451 to 2463-1/2 would be parenthetical, the poet's feelings being so strong as to interrupt ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... Ayesha there began the most mysterious and thrilling of her many changes. Yet how to describe it I know not unless it be by simile. ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... untold millions of its population will it ever become the Heaven of old dreamers, in which the elect walk spaciously and nobly, loving one another. Only in such spacious and pure air is it possible for the individual to perfect himself, as a rose becomes perfect, according to Dante's beautiful simile,[261] in order that he may spread abroad for others the fragrance that has been generated within him. If one thinks of it, that seems a truism, yet, even in this twentieth century, how few, how very few, there are who ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... friend's hand. Lydie's condition can only be compared to that of a flower tenderly cherished by a gardener, now fallen from its stem, and crushed by the iron-clamped shoes of some peasant. Ascribe this simile to a father's heart, and you will understand the blow that fell on Peyrade; the tears ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... a simile offered by way of explanation. Mansfield read it in a shamefaced tone, evidently ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... as an inflammation in the body politic I disown all offensive and invidious implications. I am only using a convenient simile. You may reverse it if you like and make the disease stand for the Purbhoo, in which case the Brahmin will be the blister. Which way fits the facts best will depend upon which caste chances at the time to be nearest ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... beauties of clar. obscur., embellished thy celebrated pieces, to the delight and astonishment of the judicious multitude! Adieu, persuasive eloquence! the quaint metaphor, the poignant irony, the proper epithet, and the lively simile, are fled for ever! Instead of these, we shall have, I know not what! The illiterate will ...
— English Satires • Various
... Captain Goyles with the assurance that he would watch the weather as a mother would her sleeping babe; it was his own simile, and it struck me as rather touching. I saw him again at twelve o'clock; he was watching it from the window ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... identification of coals with money; but in the German legends of Rubezahl, there is a tale of a charcoal-burner who found them changed to gold. Coins are called shiners because they shine like glowing coals, and I dare say that the simile ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... that "death is the end of a journey," but the aptness of the simile is realized most fully in Paris. Any arrival, especially of a person of condition, upon the "dark brink," is hailed in much the same way as the traveler recently landed is hailed by hotel touts and pestered ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... for First-day last I mentioned its being an instructive meeting to me. Towards the conclusion a simile of this kind arose and spread before my view: As wax when melted by the fire or the candle is then only capable of receiving the impression of the stamp put upon it, so also are our minds only capable of receiving impressions of divine good when ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... everywhere. The legislative workshops turn out only "the latest novelties" of the season. Or perhaps a newspaper would be a still better simile. First there is the 'interpellation,'[C] once at least every day; that corresponds to the leading article. Then there are questions for ministers on this, that and the other trivial occurrence; that is the serial or ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... The chess simile has only a rhetorical value. The London workingmen to whom Huxley spoke would look around them in vain to find in their problems of life anything akin to a game of chess, or for any fruitful suggestion in the idea. ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... rays to retain their primitive lustre; it would perish from exposure to the natural changes of the atmosphere, but it would die much sooner from the incomprehensible, yet positive, effects of moral lassitude. To use a commonplace simile, gentle reader, woman's beauty is like champagne, it gets terribly into a man's head: do not, however, leave the cork out of your champagne bottle—the sparkling spirit will all evaporate; and do not quarrel with your sweet-heart if she muffles up her face sometimes, and will ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... be a great capital some day," said Talbot as they walked on, "but, if I may use the simile, it's a ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... fervid day, in his bright chariot, glittering aslant over the waves, nor scorning to throw a tribute of his golden beams on the toll-gatherer's little hermitage. The old man looks eastward, and (for he is a moralizer) frames a simile of the stage coach and the sun. While the world is rousing itself, we may glance slightly at the scene of our sketch. It sits above the bosom of the broad flood, a spot not of earth, but in the midst of waters, which rush with a murmuring sound among ...
— The Toll Gatherer's Day (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... necessarily arousing in the reader a state of mind unfit for the reception of greatness. Or again he will speak of the value of surprise in literature; "the pleasures of the mind imply something sudden and unexpected." Or he will enlarge, as in the Life of Addison, upon the definition of a simile, the use of similes in poetry, and the distinction between them and what he calls "exemplifications"; or, as in that of Pope, upon the subject of representative metres and onomatopoeic words. No one will pretend that all he ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... greedy simile," said Calton, sipping his wine; "but I'm afraid the police will have a more difficult task in discovering the man who committed the crime. In my opinion ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... was this truth in the legal simile of furniture: that the slave, though certainly a man, was in one sense a dead man; in the sense that he was moveable. His locomotion was not his own: his master moved his arms and legs for him as if he were a marionette. Now it is important in the first degree to realise here ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... for 'new types,' young men have begun to appear in our literature, determined at all hazards to be 'fresh'... as fresh as Flensburg oysters, when they reach Petersburg.... Sanin was not like them. Since we have had recourse already to simile, he rather recalled a young, leafy, freshly-grafted apple-tree in one of our fertile orchards—or better still, a well-groomed, sleek, sturdy-limbed, tender young 'three-year-old' in some old-fashioned seignorial ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... simile of the saw is only a rough one, after all, because erosion is never mathematical, some coves have bitten back far deeper than others, side coves have developed, and if you follow down the mystery of some ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... that she possessed qualities he had not hitherto encountered, which would become more precious when they were fully understood. He thought of her as steadfast and wholesome in mind; one who sought for the best; but beyond this there was an ethereal something that could not be defined. Then a simile struck him: she was like the snow that towered high into the empyrean in British Columbia. In this, however, he was wrong, for there was warm human passion in the girl, though as ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... Works, Vol. 1, p. 357. G.T. Curtis, Commentaries on the Constitution, pp. 371, 381, presents a very careful analysis of Hamilton's plan. For fac-simile copy of Hamilton's plan, see Documentary History of the Constitution (a recent Government ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... had loved what he imagined Stella Wildmere to be. Now he felt, however, like a lapidary who, while gloating over a precious stone, is suddenly shown that it is worthless paste. He may have valued it highly an hour before; now he throws it away in angry disgust. But this simile only in part explains Graydon's feelings. He not only recognized Miss Wildmere's mercenary character and selfish spirit, but also the power she would have had to thwart his life and alienate him from his brother and Madge. While she was not the pearl ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... Simile est regnu{m} celoru{m} ho{min}i pat{ri}familias. qui{195} exijt p{ri}mo mane {con}ducere op{er}arios in ...
— Selections from early Middle English, 1130-1250 - Part I: Texts • Various
... humanity. It was as though humanity had been a fortified city and the gates had been shut on me, and I was wandering round and round the unscalable smooth walls, and beating against their stone with my hands. That is a good simile, except that I could not move. Of course if I could have moved I should have gone to my wife. But I could not move. To be quite exact, I could move very slightly, perhaps about an inch or two inches, and in any direction, ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... rather to be sought for in Kansas and California. The famous Tennessee riflemen of that day were not necessarily slaveholders, and their legitimate descendants are yet to be found among the brave men who rally round the nearest approach to Andrew Jackson whom the State now boasts,—a tolerable fac-simile both as to character and etymology,—Andrew Johnson. There is no need of disparaging the personal courage of any man, and the Southern army has some good officers,—too good, probably, in spite of themselves, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... that some (mention) that which rests on Inference; we deny this because (the form) refers to what is contained in the simile of the body; and (this the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... like Holland in the jewel-box neatness of little streets and little houses—behold the Riviera, with groups of palms among tropical flowers, and feathery pepper-trees, graceful and large as giant willows! Then, when she had decided on Italy or Southern France as a simile, far-off, sharp mountain peaks, a dark, grotesquely branching pine in filmy distance, and a doll's house with a red pointed roof, suggested a ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... a fine judge of poetry, had a sight of this Work when it was only carried on as far as the applauded simile of the Angel; and approved of the Poem, by bestowing on the Author, in a few days after, the place of Commissioner of Appeals, vacant by the removal of the famous Mr. [JOHN] LOCKE ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... or other, were it even the most thick-headed moujik, who does not know that the magistrate will commence by putting all sorts of out-of-the-way questions to take him off the scent (if I may be allowed to use your happy simile), and that then he suddenly gives him one between the eyes? A blow of the ax on his sinciput (if again I may be permitted to use your ingenious metaphor)? Hah, hah! And do you mean to say that when I spoke to you about quarters provided by the ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... shallop upon a smooth sea. Such was the course that the sailor was pursuing. Very different, however, were his reflections to those he would have indulged in on board a man-o'-war; and if any man ever sneered at that simile which likens a camel to a ship, it was ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... "Your simile is no good. If Doris really loved you, it was not because she pictured you as a pretty bird. If she could love you without seeing you, if you appealed to her, why should your marred face make her turn ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... invention, is thus reduced in his hands to a phrase or to a stanza. From the enormous mass of riven or compact scorioe he extracts whatever is essential, a grain of gold or of copper as a specimen of the rest, presenting this to us in its most convenient and most manageable form, in a simile, in a metaphor, in an epigram that becomes a proverb. In this no ancient or modern writer approaches him; in simplification and in popularization he has not his equal in the world. Without departing from the usual conversational ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... with Dede Mason only seemed to languish. While delaying to grapple with the strange problem it presented, his desire for her continued to grow. In his gambling simile, his conclusion was that Luck had dealt him the most remarkable card in the deck, and that for years he had overlooked it. Love was the card, and it beat them all. Love was the king card of trumps, the fifth ace, the joker in a game of tenderfoot poker. It was the card of cards, ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... [This vivid simile of Ts'ao Kung is taken from the spectacle of an army of ants climbing a wall. The meaning is that the general, losing patience at the long delay, may make a premature attempt to storm the place before his engines of war ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... paint makes azure rainbows all about the firmament of man's own inner world; and at last an atom of gold-dust specks all the glasses with its lurid yellow, and haply leaves the old miser to his master-passion. So, ever changing day by day, every man's life is but a kaleidoscope. Stay; this simile is somewhat of the longest, but the whim is upon me, and I must have my way; the fit possesses me to try a sonnet, and I shall look far for a fairer thesis; he that hates verse—and the Muses now-a-days are too old-maidish ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... how to start and stop, to ascend and descend, the next thing to master is the art of preserving equilibrium, the knack of keeping the machine perfectly level in the air—on an "even keel," as a sailor would say. This simile is particularly appropriate as all aviators are in reality sailors, and much more daring ones than those who course the seas. The latter are in craft which are kept afloat by the buoyancy of the water, whether in ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... is a note to Chapman & Hall which will put her 'bearer' (if she can find one in London) in possession of the two volumes in question. I shall like her to have them, and she must try to find my love, as the King of France did the poison (a 'most unsavoury simile,' certainly), between the leaves. I send with them, in any case, my best love. Ah, so sorry I am that she has suffered from the weather you have had. She is a most interesting child, and of a nature which ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... persons—nay many excellent poets, have in modern times attempted to imitate the ancient Scottish ballad, but in no single case has there been a perfect fac-simile produced. The reason of the failure is obvious. An ingenious person, who is not a poet, could not for the dear life of him construct a ditty which, in order to resemble its original, must embody a strain of music, and a burst of heroic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... "Don't you know that the trunk of an elephant that can lift the most ponderous weights, disdains not to take up the most minute? This is the case with my great mind, (laughing anew,) and you must allow the simile is worthy the subject. Jesting apart, I do like a little scandal—I believe all English people do. An Italian lady, Madame Benzoni, talking to me on the prevalence of this taste among my compatriots, observed, that when she first knew the English, she thought them the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... Dupin, "abounds with very strict analogies to the immaterial; and thus some color of truth has been given to the rhetorical dogma that metaphor, or simile, may be made to strengthen an argument as well as to embellish a description. The principle of the vis inertiae, for example, seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. It is not more true, in the former, that a large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... that therefore he has not taken the means to touch the feelings; and Mr. Roscoe made what seemed to me a new and just observation, that writers of secondary powers, when they are to represent either objects of nature or feelings of the human mind, always begin by a simile: they tell you what it is like, not ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... the author's masterpiece in the kind, and it is, like that, an early and consummate example of Mr Arnold's favourite device of finishing without a finish, of "playing out the audience," so to speak, with something healing and reconciling, description, simile, what not, to relieve the strain of his generally sad philosophy and his often ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... simile, Captain Passford, and I could not have invented a better myself," returned the privateersman. "I think we understand each other perfectly, and therefore it is not necessary to use up any more time in explanations. You are too intelligent a person to fail to comprehend my plan. As an ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... Even the most creditable provincial notes never approach London in a free tide—never circulate like blood to the heart, and from thence to the extremities, but are current within a limited circle; often, indeed, so very limited, that the notes issued in the morning, to use an old simile, fly out like pigeons from the dovecot, and are sure to return in the evening to the spot which they have ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... him, grimly. "A simile as out-of-date as my clothes are going to be if I don't get some new ones soon. Not that the crowd minds what I wear," she added loyally. "I could dress up in ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... mountain slopes and tops. Their picturesqueness of form and their delight of color would beggar any thesaurus of its descriptive reserves, and yet leave their beauty almost unhinted. A drop-curtain were here a vain simile; the chromatic glories of colored postal-cards might suggest the scene, but then again they might overdo it. Nature is modest in her most magnificent moods, and I do not see how she could have a more magnificent mood than Madeira. It can never be represented by my art, but it may be measurably ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... parapet, the rifle cocked and his finger on the trigger, watched in case any of the Mexicans should expose himself again. He presented to Ned the simile of some powerful animal about to spring. The lean, muscular figure was poised for instant action, and all the whimsicality and humor were gone from the ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... translations of the Roman Classics:—and as the reader will find, in the ensuing pages, that I have been sometime past labouring under the frightful, but popular, mania of AUTOGRAPHS, I subjoin with no small satisfaction a fac-simile of the Autograph of this enthusiastic ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... I feel like I do when a wet dog comes out of the crick and is goin' to shake." The deputy felt uncommonly pleased with the simile which ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... snobberies; his giant vices and paltry self-deceptions; his sweet gentleness and long martyrdom. I cannot but think that his portrait will thus gain more in truth than it can lose in ideal beauty. Or let me come nearer to my purpose by means of a simile. Talking with Sir David Gill one evening on shipboard about the fixed stars, he pointed one out which is so distant that we cannot measure how far it is away from us and can form no idea of its magnitude. "But surely," I exclaimed, "the great modern telescopes must bring the star nearer ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... grist? it can never be ground Till a breeze makes the arms of the windmill go round; (Or, if 'tis a water-mill, alter the metaphor, And say it won't stir, save the wheel be well wet afore, Or lug in some stuff about water "so dreamily,"— It is not a metaphor, though, 'tis a simile); A lily, perhaps, would set my mill a-going, For just at this season, I think, they are blowing. 90 Here, somebody, fetch one; not very far hence They're in bloom by the score, 'tis but climbing a fence; There's a poet hard by, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... not uniformly successful, but, if rejected, my MSS. were courteously returned, with a note from the editor. As a sample I give the following. The original is a lithographed fac-simile of the handwriting of Mr. Dickens, printed in blue ink, the date and the title of the manuscript being ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... stopped before a deep irregular fissure in the earth. Here, as she bent—strange, rumbling, hoarse, and distant sounds might be heard, while ever and anon, with a loud and grating noise which, to use a homely but faithful simile, seemed to resemble the grinding of steel upon wheels, volumes of streaming and dark smoke issued forth, and rushed spirally ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... of a quality impossible to describe to you unless you have traveled in the high countries. I know it is trite to say that it had the exhilaration of wine, yet I can find no better simile. We shouted and whooped and breathed deep and wanted ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... drivers of the pleasure boat furnished by W. S. Riddick, Esq., the then agent of the Dismal Swamp Land Company, in which he was carried to the Lake. He was there some two or three days, and his writings should be read to be appreciated. It was at the Lake that we saw Uncle "Alek," of whom a fac-simile likeness is given in the book above referred to. Uncle "Alek" was a superanuated old colored man, belonging to the Reverend Jacob Keeling, Rector of the Episcopal Churches in Nansemond county, Virginia. He was quite old, and ...
— The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Early recollections - Vivid portrayal of Amusing Scenes • Robert Arnold
... years have elapsed since I have received a letter from Mons. Le Bret. Is he alive? If he be living, let him be assured of my unalterable and respectful attachment: and that I have unfeigned pleasure in annexing a fac-simile of his AUTOGRAPH—from a letter to me of the date of June 8th 1819: a letter, which I received on the 17th of the same month following—the very day of our Roxburghe Anniversary Dinner. Singularly enough, this letter begins ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Criticism (1733), p. 14. He added the note: "See a Poem published some time ago under that title, said to be the production of several ingenious and prolific heads; One contributing a simile, Another a character, and a certain Gentleman four shrewd lines ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... Brecknockshire; and Malone guesses that it was when there that he fell in with the word "Puck." Near Scethrog, there is Cwn-Pooky, or Pwcca, the Goblin's valley, which belonged to the Vaughans; and Crofton Croker gives, in his Fairy Legends, a fac-simile of a portrait, drawn by a Welsh peasant, of a Pwcca, which (whom?) he himself had seen sitting on a milestone,[45] by the roadside, in the early morning, a very unlikely personage, one would think, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... hath rolled over it, their efforts are vain. And we, likewise, O Athenians, while we are safe, with a magnificent city, plentiful resources, lofty reputation—what [Footnote: Smead remarks here on the adroitness of the orator, who, instead of applying the simile of the ship to the administration of the state, which he felt that his quick-minded hearers had already done, suddenly interrupts himself with a question, which would naturally occur to the audience.] ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... so intense a moment, his demeanor would have still been calm. Such an exhibition, however, was but to be pictured in fancy; not to be anticipated, nor desired. What I saw in him—as evidently as the indestructible ramparts of Old Ticonderoga already cited as the most appropriate simile—were the features of stubborn and ponderous endurance, which might well have amounted to obstinacy in his earlier days; of integrity, that, like most of his other endowments, lay in a somewhat heavy mass, and was just as unmalleable ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... curious and amusing that his forgeries should have deceived the learned. When Rowley talks of purchasing his house "on a repayring lease for ninety-nine years." We at once smile, and remember his fellow-forger Ireland's Shaksperian Promissory note, before such things were invented. Our fac-simile of the pretended Rowley's writing is obtained from the very curious collection of Chatterton's manuscripts in the British Museum. It is written at the bottom of some drawings of monumental slabs and notes, stated to have been "collected ande gotten for ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... heavily. What if her suspicions were but the advance guard of a painful truth! What if this keen analyst of other men's ideas—she dared not finish the thought. With a sluggish movement the music uncoiled itself like a huge boa about to engulf a tiny rabbit. The simile forced itself against her volition; all this monstrous preparation for a—rabbit! In a concert-hall the poetic idea of the tone-poem was petty. And the churning of the orchestra, foaming hysteria of the strings, bellowing of the brass—would they never cease! Such an insane chase after a ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... their own life. Science has done little to determine the laws of their growth, but, as we have seen, each nation does grow, reaches out slowly—almost insensibly—in this or that direction, and gathers to itself new interests which in their turn give new impulse to its growth. Perhaps the best simile that we can use for the foreign policy of the world is that of a rather tangled garden, where creepers are continually growing and taking root in new soil and where life is therefore always threatening and being threatened by new life. The point is that we are dealing with life—with ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... is of the color of rusty iron, incredibly bitter and disagreeable to the uneducated palate. The native calls it "real good old post and rails," the simile being obviously drawn from a stiff and dangerous jump, and regards it as ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... portion of the Tyrol commonly known as the Trentino. And that savage beak, you will note, is buried deep in the shoulder of Italy, holding between its jaws, as it were, the Lake of Garda. To continue the simile, it will be seen that the talons of the bird, formed by the Istrian Peninsula, reach out over the Adriatic in threatening proximity to Venice and the other Italian coast towns. It is to end the intolerable menace of that beak and those claws ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... little South African township. The De Aar road was one block of moving transport, and the usually quiet main street of the village was alive with troops. Of a truth a concentration was taking place, and the Dutch were not amiss in their simile when they likened a British concentration to a flight ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... superiority, any suggestion of shame at thus appearing before a common man and a mendicant was as impossible to her nature as it would have been to a queen or the goddess of his simile. His presence and his compliment alike passed her calm modesty unchallenged. The wretched scamp recognized the fact and felt its power, and it was with a superstitious reverence asserting itself through his native extravagance that he raised his ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the use which the eastern poets, particularly the Persian, make of flowers in their poetry. Their allusions are not casual, and in the way of metaphor and simile only; they seem really to hold them in high admiration. I am not aware that the flowers of Persia, except the rose, are more beautiful or more various than those of other countries. Perhaps England, including her gardens, green-houses, and fields, having introduced a vast variety from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... eagle builds its aerie or nest upon a crag or inaccessible height above ordinary birds. The simile here begun before the eagle is mentioned, and the minstrel's thoughts are spoken of as born in the aerie of his brain, high ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... German, on the south the Arab, was rending away its provinces. At last the spoilers encountered one another, each striving for the full mastery of the prey. Their conflict brought back upon the memory of Gibbon the old Homeric simile, where the strife of Hector and Patroclus over the dead body of Cebriones is compared to the combat of two lions, that in their hate and hunger fight together on the mountain tops over the carcass of a slaughtered stag; and the reluctant ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... wanted to ask outright what the trouble was, but, for some reason, he held back. As the days passed, Steve's manner became more natural and he ceased looking at Tom as though, to quote the latter's unspoken simile, he was a new sort of an animal in a zoo! But some constraint still remained, and, after awhile, Tom accepted the situation and grew accustomed to it. By that time he had grown too proud to ask for an explanation. The two chums spent less time together as a result, ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Association, gentlemen, comprises the entire population of Japat. Here is where I receive my clients; here is where they receive their daily loaf, if you will pardon the simile. I sit in the chairs; they squat on the rugs. We talk about rubies and sapphires as if they were peanuts. Occasionally we talk about our neighbours. Shall I make three mint juleps? Here, Selim! The ice, the mint and the straws—and the bottles. Sit down, gentlemen. ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... and even Michael Angelo is monotonous in the range of his ideas and uniform in his diction, when compared with the indescribable violence and vigour of Campanella. Campanella borrows little by way of simile or illustration from the outer world, and he never falls into the commonplaces of poetic phraseology. His poems exhibit the exact opposite of the Petrarchistic or the Marinistic mannerism. Each sonnet seems to have been ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... acute thinker Lord Brougham remarked that in the clear sky of scepticism he saw only one small cloud drifting up and that was Modern Spiritualism. It was a curiously inverted simile, for one would surely have expected him to say that in the drifting clouds of scepticism he saw one patch of clear sky, but at least it showed how conscious he was of the coming importance of the movement. Ruskin, too, ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... enabled us to see that Ether is not only as dense as iron, but millions of times denser than that metal, every cubic foot, or probably cubic inch, being capable of supplying millions of horse-power if it could only be tapped. A homely simile of this leak from the Infinite may be seen in a glass of aerated water, where an irregularity of surface, a crumb of bread, or a grain of sand becomes the means by which carbonic-dioxide escapes from the ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... sailors have not been sleeping on beds of roses for the last quarter of a century since her gracious Majesty Queen Victoria came to the throne." So wrote our author some forty years ago. "Up anchor, full speed ahead," is, we suppose, the modern equivalent for his nautical simile, and very prosaic and commonplace it sounds; but we shall find that the romance of the Navy did not go out with the last of the sailing frigates, and that the age of steam and electricity, of enormous ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... canned provisions to the Indians. When they extract the contents and throw the can in the water, it floats away, and Bull used that as a simile, knowing they would all understand. The deputation appeared perfectly satisfied with the explanation and went away thoroughly convinced that Boyton was supplied with no interior mechanism in the ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... mistress of his Patron. It had been absurd, and inconceivably unmeaning, if, when he was requested to sing the triumphs of Augustus in the Italian Wars, he should, during the brief mention of them, have adverted to old fables, uniting them, not as a simile, but in a line of continuation with the Numantian, and Carthaginian Wars; unless, beneath those fables, he shadowed forth the Roman Enemies ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... time were the lieutenancy and the troop. Each in its turn was the step par excellence. It appears that these same steps are those of a treadmill, where the party is always ascending and never gains the top. But the same simile would suit most ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... poor simile. No treasures in gold and gems, though heaped waist-high all about, could produce in the greediest man, hungry for earthly pleasures, a delight, a rapture, equal to mine. For this joy was of another and higher order and very rare, and was a sense of lightness and freedom from all trammels ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... be decided only by reasoning and analogy; in the other, having for his type material phaenomena, he must reproduce the things as cognizable by all, though not hereby in any way exempt from adhering absolutely to his proper perception of them. Here, even as to ideal description or simile, the reader can assert its truth or falsehood of purpose, its sufficiency or insufficiency of means: but here again he must beware of exceeding his rights, and of substituting himself to his author. He must not dictate ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... have Professor Fiske saying that "Paley's simile of a watch is no longer applicable to such a world as this" ("Idea of God"; p. 131), and Prof. Sorley telling us that "the age of Paley and of the Bridgewater Treatises is past" (Moral Values and the Idea of God; p. 327), and Mr. Balfour repudiating ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... Gordon.—"When she's coming down the big canyon under a full head of steam. I don't know if that's quite an elegant simile, in one way. Still, if you care to think how that track was built, it's not difficult to fancy there's triumph in the whistles and the roar of ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... was sincerely to be hoped that this papyrus of the Bible, probably the oldest now known to exist, would soon be published in fac-simile. ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... father, conducting him into a series of perilous mishaps and desperate dangers, to which his adventure with the jaguars and rattlesnakes, while suspended between the two tamarinds, was nothing more, according to the simile of Sancho Panza, than "tortus y pan pintado" (couleur de rose). To proceed, ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... moderately numerous. These are the official letters and petitions drawn up by the chiefs in their own tongues, and forwarded to the Spanish authorities. Of these, two interesting specimens, one in the "Abolachi" tongue (a dialect of Muskokee), and the other in Timucuana, were published in fac-simile by the late Mr. Buckingham Smith, but in a very limited number of copies (only fifty in all). Others in Nahuatl and Maya, also in fac-simile, appear in that magnificent volume, the Cartas de Indias, issued by the Spanish ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... Rachel's cold cheek, and ran out into the lane with blushes so charming and becoming that she might have been taken for the very humanized spirit of the dawn, lingering an hour or two beyond her time to make acquaintance with daylight. If this simile should seem to border on the ridiculous, the responsibility of it may be safely thrown upon Reuben, who not merely met her with it in his mind, but conveyed it to her as they walked homeward together. Ezra was even more bashful than Ruth, though ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... that he had so little to say in conversation, for he had kept the best company, and learnt all that can be got by the ear. He abused Pindar to me, and then shewed me an Ode of his own, with an absurd couplet, making a linnet soar on an eagle's wing. I told him that when the ancients made a simile, they always made it like ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... and discharged by means of a catch or trigger, which Mr. Strutt reasonably enough thinks gave rise to the lock on the modern musket. The old logicians illustrate the distinction in their quaintest fashion. Bayle, explaining the difference between testimony and argument, uses this laconic simile, "Testimony is like the shot of a long-bow, which owes its efficacy to the force of the shooter; argument is like the shot of the cross-bow, equally forcible, whether discharged by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... but cannot by any degree of ingenuity be made to serve as a basis of composition. In the same way as Euphuism is founded upon a balance of the sentence obtained by antithetical clauses, and the use of intricate alliteration, together with the abuse of simile and metaphor drawn from what has been aptly termed Lyly's 'un-natural history'; so Sidney's style in the Arcadia is based on a balance usually obtained by a repetition of the same word or a jingle of similar ones, together with the abuse of periphrasis, and, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... to the best of my recollection, refer anywhere directly to comets. Pope, indeed, who made very free with Homer's references to the heavenly bodies,[40] introduces a comet—and a red one, too!—into the simile of the heavenly portent in ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... condition. He thinks he 'gets on' with it; and in an imperfect way and degree does so. Rarely, we find, does such a one get so far as into the 'conics;' and he is not certain to be in the habit of reading reviews: if we were sure, however, that he could comprehend and would meet with our simile, we would say to him, that the tardy inclination up which he now plods painfully, must, if graphically represented, be shown by an oblique line descending, in fact, below the curve of his possibilities, more rapidly even than it ascends above the horizontal cutting through the point ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... simile, he thought of a flash of lightning, a steel hoop lying on its side, a hornet's nest—but none of these quite suited him. He made a ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... was not the simile he used. In his own thoughts from the very beginning he had used the analogy of sound—of the chord. As well might one note feel called upon to cry to another in the same chord, "Hark! I'm sounding with you!" as that Spinrobin should say to Miriam, "My heart ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... unwavering replies, less frequent, but firmer, and gravely solid. Laura spent her energy in taunts, but Vittoria spoke only of her resolve, and to the point. It was, as his military instincts framed the simile, like the venomous crackling of skirmishing rifles before a fortress, that answered slowly with its volume of sound and sweeping shot. He had the vision of himself pleading to secure her safety, and in her hearing, on the Motterone, where she had seemed so simple a damsel, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... her husband about thirty-six. He was at that time Secretary at War, and was promised promotion the first opportunity. The fortune of each was in expectation: they were, she says, "truly merchant adventurers," their whole capital being only twenty pounds; and, to preserve the simile, that capital was laid out in the articles of his trade—in pens, ink, and paper. What was wanting in money was amply supplied by prudence and affection; and there is no difficulty in believing her assurance, that they lived better than those ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe |
