"Simile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... desirous of obtaining a Portrait of the Reformer, to accompany this volume. Hitherto all my inquiries have failed to discover any undoubted original painting, among several which have either been so described, or engraved as such.[1] In the meantime, a tolerably accurate fac-simile is given of the wood-cut portrait of Knox,[2] included by Theodore Beza, in his volume entitled "ICONES, id est, Verae Imagines Virorum Doctrina simul et Pietate illustrium," &c., published at Geneva, in the year 1580, 4to. It is the earliest of the engraved portraits, and, so far as we can ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... a very old simile, but Madam Liberality really was like a cork rising on the top of the very wave of ill-luck that had swallowed up her hopes. Her little white face and undaunted spirit bobbed up after each mischance or malady as ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... a railway, the size of which is magnified by the smoke and steam surrounding it. Well, out of the five or six millions which form your real capital, you have just lost nearly two millions, which must, of course, in the same degree diminish your credit and fictitious fortune; to follow out my simile, your skin has been opened by bleeding, and this if repeated three or four times will cause death—so pay attention to it, my dear Monsieur Danglars. Do you want money? Do you wish ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... refrain of "Winktum bolly mitch-a-kimo," or some such jumble of words. I have never heard this song in the mouth of any other man. He must have found it somewhere among the dusty trumpery of forgotten old folk-lyrics, and when he sang it one caught the force of the Hebraic simile about the crackling of ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... balmy as a day in June, and to complete the simile of the old song, he had put on a blue frock-coat, dispensing with an overcoat, after sending Adolf down three times to make sure that there was not the least suspicion of east in the wind; and the frock-coat was buttoned so tightly around his personable form, that, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... subterranean water supply, the peculiar physical formation of Australia must be borne in mind. The great flat tableland that stretches in almost unvarying monotony from shore to shore, fringed round with its strip of coastal land, resembles—to use a homely simile—nothing so much as a narrow brimmed, flat crowned hat. The moisture-laden clouds that visit us, break on the sides of this hat, giving the brim, or coast, the full benefit of their precipitation; drifting over the plateau, or crown, with rapidly decreasing bulk. Thus, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... on her white donkey, just as she felt more at ease with pleasant English maidservants than with pompous powdered footmen. It was a ridiculous simile, but it is the ridiculous which invades the mind ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... mind the empire remained the acme of Chinese civilization; and to kill it meant to lop off the head of the Chinese giant and to leave lying on the ground nothing but a corpse. It was in vain to insist that this simile was wrong and that it was precisely because Chinese civilization had exhausted itself that a new conception of government had to be called in to renew the vitality of the people. Men, and particularly diplomats, ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... stemmed, but, finding some weaker places, the cuirassiers burst through, only to be thrown back by the second line; and, when furiously charged by Cossacks, they fell back in disorder. "These Russians fight like bulls," said the French. The simile was just. Even while Murat was hacking at their centre a column of 4,000 Russian grenadiers, detaching itself from their mangled line, marched straight forward on the village of Eylau. With the same blind courage that nerved Solmes' division at Steinkirk, they beat aside the French light horse ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... few lines, likening the scattered clouds to brides blushing at the approach of the bridegroom. That would have been all right if later on they hadn't begun to turn green: it seemed the wrong colour for a bride. Later on still they went yellow, and that spoilt the simile past hope. One cannot wax poetical about a bride who at the approach of the bridegroom turns first green and then yellow: you can only feel sorry for her. I waited some more. The sky in front of me grew paler every moment. I began to fear that something had happened to that sun. ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... death. The 'flight to heaven' obscures the simile of the incense, and his breath is thought ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... action as well as vitality in this beautiful simile. SHAKSPEARE paints similarly, when ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... himself. It appears now in the form of transparent satire, ridicule of his own and other ages, now in droll reference or mock heroic detail, in an odd conception, a character sketch, an event in parody, in an antithesis or simile,—sometimes it lurks in a word, and again in a sentence. In direct pathos—the other side of humour—he is equally effective. His denunciations of sentiment remind us of Plato attacking the poets, for he is at heart the most emotional of writers, the greatest of the prose poets of England; ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... when she allows one of these causeless hysterical fits to override her tone, she plays one false at once—like a lancet that slips, or grows dull and rusty." He polished one of the needles on a soft square of new chamois-leather while he spoke, as if to give point and illustration to his simile. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... "What a 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 he's ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... for the volume just received—that with the correspondence. I hope that you restore the swan simile so ruthlessly cut ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... bodies in Scripture are not numerous, and deal with them either as time-measurers or as subjects for devout allusion, poetic simile, or symbolic use. But there is one characteristic of all these references to the phenomena of Nature, that may not be ignored. None of the ancients ever approached the great Hebrew writers in spiritual elevation; none equalled them in poetic sublimity; and few, ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... to make fun of Sir Edwin Arnold's remark that a Japanese crowd smells like a geranium-flower. Yet the simile is exact! The perfume called jako, when sparingly used, might easily be taken for the odor of a musk-geranium. In almost any Japanese assembly including women a slight perfume of jako is discernible; for the robes worn have been laid ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... roots like Lebanon." Now I take it that simile does not refer to the roots of that giant range that slope away down under the depths of the Mediterranean. That is a beautiful emblem, but it is not in line with the other images in the context. As these are ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... else, and a year on a farm would illustrate many of his allusions which the ordinary reader finds somewhat cryptic; anyone who has seen the terrified stampede of cattle with their tails erect when attacked by the gad-fly, will recognize the force of the simile. The gad-fly pierces the skin of the animal, laying its eggs beneath, just as the ichneumon makes use of a caterpillar to provide a host for its progeny. No doubt the operation is a painful one, but the caterpillar may survive, even into its chrysalis ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... liege lord's side, Out-shining all in that company, Into the mind of the old man's bride There creeps a curious simile. ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... on God's green earth the matter with you, Davie; it's the modernism of the situation that you seem unable to handle. May I use your flower simile? Once they grew in gardens and were drooping and sweet and overran trellises, to say nothing of clinging to oak trees, but we've developed the American Beauty, old man! It stands stiff and glossy and holds its head up on its own ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... wits of either Charles's days, The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease; Sprat, Carew, Sedley, and a hundred more, (Like twinkling stars the Miscellanies o'er) 110 One simile, that solitary shines In the dry desert of a thousand lines, Or lengthen'd thought that gleams through many a page, Has sanctified whole poems for an age. I lose my patience, and I own it too, When works are censured, not as bad, ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... Machiavelli. "Betterton upon this drew into his party most of the valuable actors, who, to secure their unity, enter'd with him into a sort of association to stand or fall together." In the meantime he pushed the war into Africa, or, to change the simile, determined to lead his people out of the land of bondage, as exemplified by Drury Lane, and settle down in a new theatre. Nay, the "cunning old fox" even went so far as to secure an interview with his most august sovereign, William of Orange. What an audience it ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... of the complexion of burnished gold and Arjuna dark as a mass of clouds, the comparison is exceedingly appropriate. The Vaishnava poets of Bengal never tire of this simile in speaking of Radha and Krishna in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... were immortal; each worthy of each. And the Cui viget nihil simile aut secundum of the poet, was as true of one as of the other. For, if by comparison with Rome other cities were but villages, with even more propriety it may be asserted, that after the Roman Caesars all modern kings, kesars, or emperors, are mere phantoms of royalty. ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... was excellently skilled in the noble science or study of astronomy, who told me he had some years studied for some simile, or proper allusion, to explain to his scholars the phenomena of the sun's motion round its own axis, and could never happen upon one to his mind, till by accident he saw his maid Betty trundling her mop: surprised ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... of scene" or divertisement in the programme, somebody proposed games of this and games of that, and while old Capt. Figgles was as busy as "a flea in a tar bucket"—to use the old gentleman's simile—fulminating and fabricating a rousing bowl of egg flip for the entire party, Capt. Tiller and Dr. Mutandis were sort of paired off with a party of eight, in which were the two Miss Figgleses, to get up their ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... Journal said: "Dr. Shaw, in returning thanks, said: 'It is an apt simile, for the blow will be struck on the Pacific Coast and it needs to be heard to the Atlantic and not only from the west to the east but from the north to the south. I hope it will be answered by men who, having known themselves what freedom is, wish to ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... How I wonder how you are! Up above us all so high, like a diamond in our sky, though perhaps I ought to say cyclone or race-horse, or—but there is no simile ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... 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
... decorative scheme is panelled oak and gilt-paint. The members' seating space spreads fanlike round the floor, with individual seats and desks exactly like those used by schoolboys, which is not an inappropriate simile. On the extreme right are the places of the Conservative-Junker—landowners—Party; to their left sit, in succession, the Roman Catholic Clericals (who occupy the exact centre of the floor and are thus known as the Zentrum, or ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... tension). Everything happens quite involuntarily, as if in a tempestuous outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of power and divinity. The involuntariness of the figures and similes is the most remarkable thing; one loses all perception of what constitutes the figure and what constitutes the simile; everything seems to present itself as the readiest, the correctest and the simplest means of expression. It actually seems, to use one of Zarathustra's own phrases, as if all things came unto one, and would fain be similes: 'Here do all things come caressingly to thy ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the Saviour.—Can any of your readers give me some information about an engraving of our Saviour, which may just now be seen in many of the London print-shops? It represents the side-face, and is said to be a fac-simile of a likeness engraved on an emerald by order of some Roman Emperor, and which served as the ransom of some other famous person (who, I quite forget). Is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... the Steckenpferd in a letter to Mendelssohn, November 5, 1768 (Lachmann edition, XII, p.212), and numerous other examples of direct or indirect allusion might be cited. Sterne's worn-out coin was a simile adopted ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... old days Adrian would have answered with some magnificent compliment, or far-fetched simile lifted from the pages of romancers. In truth he had thought of several such while, like a half-starved dog seeking a home, he wandered round and round the mill-house in the snow. But he was now far beyond all rhetoric ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... almost entirely lost in a very decided spermatic odor. If the flowers are crushed between the fingers this odor prevails, and is, indeed, the only one perceptible. It is not surprising that so delicious a flower has furnished Oriental poetry with many charming traits and amorous similes." Such a simile Sonnini finds in the Song of Songs, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... carelessly, with one leg over the other, and bending down towards Wildney. He had just told him that he looked like a regular little sunbeam in the smoking-room of "The Jolly Herring," and Wildney was pretending to be immensely offended by the simile. ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... no less finely expressed than it is profound. The simile is perfect, if we have the power to separate among the vast variety each state of being from every other, and if the very luxuriance of illustration in the heavens does not bewilder and overpower the mind. It was precisely this discriminating power ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... Thomas raised 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: "So! ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... Boyd said; just a shade sadly. "I know. It isn't." He seemed deep in thought, as if he were deciding whether or not to get rid of Anne Boleyn. It was, Malone thought, an unusually apt simile. Boyd, six feet tall and weighing about two hundred and twenty-five pounds, had a large square face and a broad-beamed figure that might have made him a dead ringer for Henry VIII of England even without ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... and actually supposed that Peters spent his time in Europe in searching ancient manuscripts to get material for the catalogue in question. He also attributed great importance to the conception of the catalogue, forgetting that, to use the simile of a writer in the "New York Evening Post," such a conception was of no more value than the conception of a railroad from one town to another by a man who had no capital to build it. No original investigation was required on one side or the other. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... [8] Fac-simile copies of some of the notes Oscar wrote to Warder Martin about these children are reproduced in the Appendix. The notes were written on scraps of paper and pushed under his cell-door; they are among the ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... are conversant, O monarch, with the religion of moksha cite this as a simile. Understanding this properly, a person may attain to bliss in the regions hereafter. That which is described as the wilderness is the great world. The inaccessible forest within it is the limited sphere of one's own life. Those that have ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... of the whole of the simile in Cato, of which that is the concluding line; the sandy desart had struck him so strongly. The sand has of late been blown over a good deal of meadow; and the people of the island say, that their fathers remembered much of the space which is now covered with sand, to have been ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... enough. The Adam of crystal palaces, like him of Eden, was a gardener. When Joseph Paxton raised the palm-house at Chatsworth he little suspected that he was building for the world—that, to borrow a simile from his own vocation, he was setting a bulb which would expand into a shape of as wide note as the domes of Florence and St. Sophia. And the cost of his new production was so absurdly low—eighty thousand ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... as welcome, I suppose," returned the young stranger, bitterly, "my good Catharine, your simile is a wonderfully ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... newspapers were unanimous in commending the conduct of the head of the State, the organs of the governor's own party lavishly praising him; the opposition sheets grudgingly admitting that he had more backbone than they had given him credit for. Public opinion, like the cat of the simile, had jumped, ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... and when he awoke from his reverie he was thinking that Nora Glynn had come into his life like a fountain, shedding living water upon it, awakening it. And taking pleasure in the simile, he said, 'A fountain better than anything else expresses this natural woman,' controlled, no doubt, by a law, but one hidden from him. 'A fountain springs out of earth into air; it sings a tune that cannot ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... first thing to do is, as Jesus commanded, to have one God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. That word 'love' has taken on a new meaning for me to-day, Kathie. It means an impersonal love, which, like the 'rain'—in Jesus' simile—'falls alike upon the just and ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... 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, up or down, to left or right, ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... ecstasies was like assisting a high priest of elemental mysteries reserved for him and beyond his power to impart. And yet we are beating about the bush and missing the essential man, for he was imprehensible—"Volcanic," the Bishop of Hereford calls him, and must go to the Bay of Naples to fetch home a simile: ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... occurrence, by way of simile, describes a dove haunting the cavern of a rock in such engaging numbers, that I cannot refrain from quoting the passage: and John Dryden has rendered it so happily in our language, that without farther excuse I ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... hum of the bees; and while white clouds floated in the majesty of silence across the blue deeps of the heavens. The air was so full of life and reviving, that it seemed like the crude substance that God might take to make babies' souls of—only the very simile smells of materialism, and therefore I do not ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... the first place, that the propriety of this simile is seen in the brevity of life. What more rapid and momentary than a story? It is heard, and passes. Though it beguiles us for the time, it dies away in sound, or melts from before, the eye. And this I say, strikingly illustrates the brevity ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... clever simile of Pope's about dense leaves betokening scarcity of fruit," went on Furneaux. "Of course, it might be pushed too far. Think what a poisonous Dead Sea apple the Quarry Wood contained. Your father's murder might not have been possible today ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... of woe Until the horrid deed be done— Then out and die, like Simile,[B] In thy first glance ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... The name signifies the delicacy of beauty. The simile of the botan (the tree peony) can be fully appreciated only by one who is acquainted ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... included on an average only 28.5 seeds, with a maximum of 45. Now a legitimate short-styled plant would have yielded, when legitimately fertilised, an average of 64 seeds, with a possible maximum of 74. This particular kind of infertility will perhaps be best appreciated by a simile: we may assume that with mankind six children would be born on an average from an ordinary marriage; but that only three would be born from an incestuous marriage. According to the analogy of Primula Sinensis, the children of such incestuous marriages, if they continued to marry incestuously, ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... 4. Esperanto has no personal legxdonanton kaj dependas de neniu law-giver and depends upon aparta homo. Cxiuj opinioj kaj no particular person. All verkoj de la kreinto de Esperanto opinions and works of the creator havas, simile al la opinioj kaj of Esperanto have, like the verkoj de cxiu alia Esperantisto, opinions and works of any other karakteron absolute privatan kaj Esperantist, an absolutely private por neniu devigan. ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... This simile of the Burning Bush is the more apt when we consider the rapid growth of the work. At first so very small as to seem almost insignificant, and conducted in one small rented house, accommodating thirty orphans, then enlarged ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... in so doing have pronounced judgment against them. As regards the state of the drunken man, his unfitness for partnership with any decent, diligent, well-to-do wife, his ruined condition, and shattered prospects, the simile, I think, holds good. But I refrain from saying that as the fault was originally with the drunkard in that he became such, so also has the fault been with the slave States. At any rate I refrain from so saying here, on this page. That the ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... to the first simile of my note, which I shall mention, is that by Zephaniah Smith, one of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... pinkish purple, coloured by some diversity of soil, the pretty freak of nature's gardening; whilst the common yellow blossom—commonest and prettiest of all—peeped out from amongst the boughs in the stump of an old willow, like (to borrow the simile of a dear friend, now no more) a canary bird from its cage. The wild geranium was already showing its pink stem and scarlet-edged leaves, themselves almost gorgeous enough to pass for flowers; the periwinkle, with its wreaths ...
— The Ground-Ash • Mary Russell Mitford
... called us, and the world must apply the simile as it thinks fit. The wizard of the Never-Never weaves his spells, until hardships, and dangers, and privations, seem all that make life worth living; and then holds us "tethered goats"; and every time the town calls us with promises of gaiety, and comfort, and security, "something ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... Fuller gives a pretty simile when he says that "Poetry is music in words, and music is poetry in sound"; and, in so far as melodious form and harmonious thought express and arouse emotion, he gives a ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... "A good simile, Philip," said Ralegh, with shining eyes. "'T is all very well to say, as some do, that if old King Harry were alive he'd have our Englishmen out of Spanish prisons. But in his day Spain had hardly begun her conquests over seas, and the Inquisition ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... If this simile is not enough, we may compare the imagination—"the madman at home" as it has been called—to an unbroken horse which has neither bridle nor reins. What can the rider do except let himself go wherever the horse wishes to take him? And often if the latter runs away, his mad career only comes to end ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... could not endure the salt beef; it was raw as a live Abyssinian steak, and salt as Cracow. Besides, the Feegee simile would not have held good with respect to it. It was far from being "tender as a dead man." The biscuit only could we eat; not to be wondered at; for even on shipboard, seamen in the tropics ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... That simile came to her, and she smiled, for it was appropriate that this jewel expert should have jewels for eyes. They were dark topazes, and from them gazed the spirit of the man ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... of the wagon swung his lumbering team about with all the strength of his arms, and back again came the six horses, galloping now. So thickly massed were the men who snatched at the cable, and so eagerly did they grab for it, that the simile of a hot handball scrimmage flashed into my thoughts. I will venture that balloon never did a faster homing ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... to walk, and then irritably took a hand-rail and hauled himself along it, with his legs trailing behind him like the tail of a swimming mermaid. He thought of the simile and was not impressed by ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the same lot of rubbish, purporting to come from the Fayyum, were the alleged poems of Sappho. You swallowed the bait which has waited for you so long, and, if it is any consolation to you, I will admit that in the opinion of the profession, to continue my piscatorial simile, I ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... roots are more important than the blossoms in the growth of a plant, the accomplishments without Palestine are more significant than within. To-day the Golus (Diaspora) is the root, and Palestine the stalk; some day the Zionists hope to reverse the simile—this, in short, is the essence of the ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... ambassador's, Baron von L/wenstern, I met Zedlitz. Most of the shining stars of Austrian literature I saw glide past me, as people on a railway see church towers; you can still say you have seen them; and still retaining the simile of the stars, I can say, that in the Concordia Society I saw the entire galaxy. Here was a host of young growing intellects, and here were men of importance. At the house of Count Szechenye, who hospitably invited me, I saw his brother from Pest, whose noble activity in Hungary is known. ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... tell me the exact reason. I tried to find out, but he was as close as—as—wax," said Mr. Heron, trying to find a suitable simile. "He said he was much obliged to us all for our kindness to him; had no fault to find with anything or anybody; liked the place; but, all the same, he wanted to go, and go he must. I offered him double the salary—at least, I hinted as much: ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... queer sense of bewitchment in it all. The music seemed to him oddly unartificial. It made him think of trees swept by the wind, of night breezes singing among wires and chimney-stacks, or in the rigging of invisible ships; or—and the simile leaped up in his thoughts with a sudden sharpness of suggestion—a chorus of animals, of wild creatures, somewhere in desolate places of the world, crying and singing as animals will, to the moon. He could fancy he heard the wailing, half-human cries of cats upon the tiles ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... the fancy becomes a beautiful simile; to a savage poet, it would have become a material and a very formidable fact. He stands in the valley, and looks up at the boulder on the far-off fells. He is puzzled by it. He fears it. At last he makes up his mind. It is alive. ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... easy; as a simile, compare it to the shrine of some favoured saint in a richly-endowed Catholic church. Three tables at least, full of materials in methodised confusion—all tending to the beautification of the human form divine. Tinted perfumes in every ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... To invent a new simile, it is like a pebble dropped into a placid lake; the ripples form ever-widening circles, and the influence of an influence ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... within a few hundred paces of the furious water, was surely such as none but a sailor would have chosen. We rode out the weather in the open, so to speak, with abundant sea-room. And, for the better carrying out of the simile, there presently arose, somewhere outside, a long, drawling hail, calculated, with a mariner's nicety, to overcome the wind. "Ah-o-oy! The ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... that acute analysis which knows the "properties of matter," but he knew the passions, emotions, and weaknesses of men; he knew their motives. He had the genius to mine men and strike easily the rich ore of human nature. He was poor in this world's goods, and I prize gratefully a fac-simile letter lying among the treasures of my study written by Mr. Lincoln to an old friend, requesting the favor of a small loan, as he had entered upon that campaign of his that was not done until death released the most steadfast hero of that cruel war. Men speculate ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... from Corentin, and his eyes followed his 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 ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... 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 center, lying parallel ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... receit of your letter. I have read Warner with great pleasure. What an elaborate piece of alliteration and antithesis! why it must have been a labour far above the most difficult versification. There is a fine simile of or picture of Semiramis arming to repel a siege. I do not mean to keep the Book, for I suspect you are forming a curious collection, and I do not pretend to any thing of the kind. I have not a Blackletter Book among mine, old Chaucer excepted, and am not Bibliomanist enough to like Blackletter. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... through the country like an epidemic, forgetting for the moment that those municipalities which had gone over to Communism had won general praise for their improvements in the sanitary sphere. Largely on account of this infelicitous simile he was replaced in the leadership by another, a less vigorous and less entertaining person. And this party stood in particular need of ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... suddenly short, and her eyes rested with avidity upon a large bouquet of exotic flowers, with which the good lady had enlivened the centre of the parted kerchief, whose yellow gauze modestly veiled that tender section of female beauty which poets have likened to hills of snow—a chilling simile! It was then autumn; and field, and even garden ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... intellect and small 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 ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... discovery of radio-activity has 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
... aromatics, especially the thus, or frankincense, of Arabia, occupy the xiith book of Pliny. Our great poet (Paradise Lost, l. iv.) introduces, in a simile, the spicy odors that are blown by the north-east wind from the Sabaean coast:——Many a league, Pleased with the grateful scent, old Ocean smiles. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... well that this is not the way to write an orthodox English novel. For if you hide your plot, how shall the critic be expected to see it? You must serve it on a tray; you must (to vary the simile) hit the nail on the head and ask him to be so good as to superintend the operation. That is the way to rejoice the cockles of his heart. He can then compare you to someone else who has also hit the nail on the head ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... Thou fool, Paul, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die not; for the grain that dies in the ground never does, nor can vegetate. It is only the living grains that produce the next crop. But the metaphor, in any point of view, is no simile. It is succession, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... 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
... is not very estimable; he therefore studies to disguise the coldness of his heart by the exaggeration of his language, and supplies, by an affected excess of sentiment, the total absence of it.—The gods have not (as you know) made me poetical, nor do I often tax your patience with a simile, but I think this French sensibility is to genuine feeling, what their paste is to the diamond—it gratifies the vanity of the wearer, and deceives the eye of the superficial observer, but is of little use or value, and when tried by the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... will necessarily recollect their order, and the sense will conduct them to their proper places with certainty: they cannot, for instance, make the clouds adorn the sun's rays before the sun's powerful beams have drawn up the vapours. This fixes the place of the four last lines. The simile of merit and the sun, and envy and the clouds, keeps each idea in its order; if any one escapes, it is ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... though not absolutely and altogether to my taste, has prepared me in some measure for the less tempered and guarded sentence of the world. So a man must learn to encounter a foil before he confronts a sword; and to take up my original simile, a horse must be accustomed to a feu de joie, before you can ride him against a volley of balls. Well, Corporal Nym's philosophy is not the worst that has been preached, "Things must be as they may." If my lucubrations ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... How stupid of me! Just like a bracelet goes round one's—no, that won't do. Just like a gimlet goes—no, that doesn't either. I can't think of a simile, but I quite understand. Then we have 'one whistle.' What's that for? To whistle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... bituminous solvent to its ragged edges, and literally incorporated, by a sort of paper-making process, each mouldering page into a broad leaf of fine strong paper, in which the print, according to a simile used for such occasions, seems like a small rivulet in a wide meadow of margin. This is termed inlaying, and is a very lofty department in the art of binding. Then there is, besides, the grandeur of russia or morocco, with gilding, and tooling, and marbling, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... 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 ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... 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 ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... find such a picture of life as that, unless among the originals of The Cabin?" He held up his sketch-book and showed a correct delineation of the very scene in which he had so lately been the presiding spirit. One of his best pictures contains this fac-simile of the tap-room, with its guests ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... Joseph D. Stiles, between 1854 and 1857, at the house of Josiah Brigham in Quincy, Mass., and were published at Boston in 1859, in a large volume of 459 pages, entitled "Messages from the Spirit of John Quincy Adams." The medium was in an unconscious trance, and the handwriting was a fac-simile of that of John Quincy Adams. But other spirit communications are given, and that which purports to come from Washington was in a handwriting like his own, though not of so bold and intellectual a style. I quote the portion of his message which ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... was there in its stead; and all seemed to be stained and rotten, for swarms of worms seemed creeping in and out, while the figure grew paler and paler, till my uncle, who liked his pipe, and employed the simile naturally, said the whole effigy grew to the colour of tobacco ashes, and the clusters of worms into little wriggling knots of sparks such as we see running over the residuum of a burnt sheet of paper. ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... a swan" 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 North-American species, all three of which—for there ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... 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 exists in ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... not believe it could possibly exist among sensible people, had we not become accustomed to its existence among ourselves. In truth, we can hardly bring the whole exorbitance of that viciousness and absurdity home to our own minds unless we contemplate it as reflected in the mirror of a simile. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... dark face, lined and dirty, half-covered with ragged black hair that ended in a long thin wisp like a goat's beard on his shrunken chest, was still turned to the east as though challenging the sun that was smiting a swift course through the heavens as if with a flaming sword. The simile rushed through her mind unbidden. Where would she be—what would have happened to her—by the time that sword ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... help smiling at the simile, and bent down her head. Brook was watching her, he understood and was annoyed, for he loved his mother in his ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... burn as they came, and will defy the Devil to produce;" brags of his Majesty's fine spirits;—and is, Jotting and all, as insignificant a Letter as any other portion of the "Rookery Colloquy," though its fate was a little more distinguished. Prussian Dryasdust is expected to give it in FAC-SIMILE, one day,—surely no British Under-Secretary will exercise an unwise discretion, and ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... engraved on the silver face. Whether Finiguerra was the first worker in niello to whom it occurred to fill up the lines cut in the silver with a black fluid, and then by laying on it a piece of damp paper, and forcibly rubbing it, take off the fac-simile of his design and try its effect before the final process,—this we can not ascertain; we only know that the impression of his "Coronation" is the earliest specimen known to exist, and gave rise to the practice of ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... 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 ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... matter-entangled herd. She revealed to me the glorious fact, that I am a spark of Divinity itself. A fallen star, I am, sir!' continued he, pensively, stroking his lean stomach—'a fallen star!—fallen, if the dignity of philosophy will allow of the simile, among the hogs of the lower world—indeed, even into the hog-bucket itself. Well, after all, I will show you the way to the Archbishop's. There is a philosophic pleasure in opening one's treasures to the modest young. Perhaps you will assist me by carrying this basket of fruit?' And ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... adoration; there was not an epithet or expression that a greater prude than Mrs. Ashwood would have objected to, yet every sentence seemed to end in a caress. There was not a line of poetry in it, and scarcely a figure or simile, and yet it was poetical. Boyishly egotistic as it was in attitude, it seemed to be written less OF himself than TO her; in its delicate because unconscious flattery, it made her at once the provocation and excuse. ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... edition de luxe, printed on exquisite paper, with 16 illustrations by Thomas Stothard, R.A., with an introduction by Austin Dobson. Fac-simile of the frontispiece and title-page of the original edition, original prefaces. 555pp. Extra cloth binding, $1.25. Half calf, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... had ridden all day under a scorching sun, from the effects of which we were but ill-defended by our palm-leaf hats, for our heads were aching intensely—my own being, in common parlance, "ready to split," not an inapt simile, by the way, as I often experienced in the south. Towards evening, the sultriness increased to a great degree, and respiration became painful, from the closeness of the atmosphere. A suspicious lull soon after succeeded, and we ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... simile, and liken Cornwallis to a ball between two bats. The first bat, which had knocked him up into Virginia, was Greene; the second, which sent him quite out of the game, was Washington. The remarkable movement which the latter general now proceeded to execute would have been impossible ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... comical beyond description. His quaint and sad style contributed more than anything else to render his entertainment exquisitely funny. The programme was exceedingly droll, and the tickets of admission presented the most ludicrous of ideas. The writer presents a fac-simile of an admission ticket which was presented to him ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... 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 having been brought ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... was an opportunity not at any risk to be lost. Dull Betty never suspected what they were about. They were ranging the place like two tiger-cats whose whelps had been carried off in their absence—questing, with nose to earth and tail in air, for the scent of their enemy. My simile has carried me too far: it was only a dead old gentleman's violin that a couple of boys was after—but with what eagerness, and, on the part of Robert, what alternations of hope and fear! And Shargar was ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... house, he thought how like the life offered by Auntie Sue was to the quiet waters of The Bend, and—his mind finished the simile—how like the life to which he would go was to the rapids at Elbow Rock; and, yet, he reflected, the waters could never reach the sea without enduring the turmoil of the rapids. And, again, the thought came, "The Bend is just as much the river ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... similis, like), is the likening of one thing to another, a statement of the resemblance of objects, acts, or relations; as "In his awful anger he was like the storm-driven waves dashing against the rock." A simile makes the principal object plainer and impresses it more forcibly on the mind. "His memory is like wax to receive impressions and like marble to retain them." This brings out the leading idea as to the man's memory in a very ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... expect from our royal pair," Althea broke in; "but King Ptolemy uses his paternal wealth for very different purposes than glittering gems and golden chambers. If you disdain my guidance, honoured hero, at least accept that of some genuine Alexandrian. Then you will understand Proclus's apt simile. You ought to begin with the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... modestly consider this Dedication as the expression of an inexhaustible intellect, deeply feeling and creating its own object. He was by no means dissatisfied when, after a long delay, Sardanapaius appeared without the Dedication; and was made happy by the possession of a fac-simile of it, engraved on stone, which ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... announcement that John Newbery had for "Sale to Schoolmasters, Shopkeepers, &c, who buy in quantities to sell again," "The Museum," "A new French Primer," "The Royal Battledore," and "The Pretty Book for Children." This notice—a reduced fac-simile of which is given—made Newbery's debut in Philadelphia; and it must not be forgotten that but a short period had elapsed since his first book had been printed ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... perfectly certain. It may be seen—as the crew of the Catamaran saw it—suspended on outspread wing, without any perceptible motion except in its tail; the long, forked feathers of which could be observed opening and closing at intervals; according to the sailor's simile, like the blades of a pair of scissors. But this motion might be merely muscular, and compatible with a state of slumber or unconscious repose. At all events, the bird has been seen to keep its place in the air for many minutes at a time, with no other motion observable than that of the long ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... into solitary woods, or along an unfrequented sea-shore, some of the old divines were read; and I used to take my place in the circle, though, I am afraid, not to much advantage. I occasionally caught a fact, or had my attention arrested for a moment by a simile or metaphor; but the trains of close argument, and the passages of dreary ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... 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 yielding of the Saracen power to the superior might ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... preserved, are illegible from the vast number of their corrections. I have given a fac-simile, as correct as it is possible to conceive, of one page of Pope's MS. Homer, as a specimen of his continual corrections and critical erasures. The celebrated Madame Dacier never could satisfy herself in translating ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... the rose's blush; You thought the simile was trite, untrue; But, oh, I saw each rose for pleasure flush To hear itself compared, ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... in the toils:—such is the simile by which a Polish historian describes the position of Kosciuszko. Not one word or sign of sympathy for his nation in her gallant struggle for life reached him from any quarter outside his country. Nor was he beset only by external obstacles. Difficulties inside the state ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... reclaimed from the heathen to be—a very superior donkey, I mean, with great power of speech and great natural complacency, and whose stubbornness you must admire as part of his mission. The worst is that no one will imagine anything sublime in a superior donkey, so my simile is unfair and false. Is it not strange? I love Wordsworth best, and yet Byron has the greater power ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in 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, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... pen stuck through them, of course," said she, "to make the simile more complete. Of all the ladies of my acquaintance I think Lady Dido was the most absurd. Why did she not do as Cleopatra did? Why did she not take out her ships and insist on going with him? She could not bear to lose the land she had got by ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... said Frederick and suddenly recalled the simile of the spider that Doctor Wilhelm had used in reference to Ingigerd. Miss Burns, of course, did not understand him; but Frederick broke off, and though she questioned him, refused to explain. She ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... profitably occupied in trimming the other,) kneeling before King Henry VIII. Sir Robert Peel is said to have offered a thousand pounds for the liberty of cutting out one of the heads from this picture, he conditioning to have a perfect fac-simile painted in. The room has many other pictures of distinguished members of the company in long-past times, and of some of the monarchs and statesmen of England, all darkened with age, but darkened into such ripe magnificence as only ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... processes of aeration in bread-making, the oldest and most time-honored is by fermentation. That this was known in the days of our Saviour is evident from the forcible simile in which he compares the silent permeating force of truth in human society to the very familiar household process of raising bread ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Pendleton. "That's it, Kirk! I've stood aside, considering myself unworthy, and allowed a fellow to slip by me who is as colorless as water. Allan Morris is no more fit to be her husband than—" at loss for a simile he halted for a moment, and then burst out: "Oh, ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... surprised at the comparative unimportance of questions which interest this generation. The Scholastic Philosophy cannot indeed be utilized by us in the pursuit of scientific knowledge; nor (to recur to Vaughan's simile for the great work of Aquinas) can a mediaeval cathedral be utilized for purposes of oratory or business. But the cathedral is nevertheless a grand monument, suggesting lofty sentiments, which it would be senseless and ruthless barbarism to destroy or allow to fall into decay, but which should rather ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... In the famous simile (Inferno, iii. 112-114) in which Dante compares the spirits falling from the bank of Acheron to the dead leaves fluttering from a bough in autumn, giving, as Mr. Ruskin says, "the most perfect image possible of their utter lightness, feebleness, passiveness, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... 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 sketch on a ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... wild tur-r-key in a trap," his mother was wont to comment. "Always stretchin' his neck an' lookin' up an' away—when he mought git out by looking down." And the simile was so apt that it stayed in his ...
— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... there we have a farther scope, and holde the sea can (as a looking glasse) answer with a meere simile[221] any ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... discover a mode of life for it, so that it might not only conceive of such a life, but actually enjoy it on the earth. I wished to search out a new and higher set of ideas on which the mind should work. The simile of a new book of the soul is the nearest to convey the meaning—a book drawn from the present and future, not the past. Instead of a set of ideas based on tradition, let me give the mind a new thought drawn straight ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... natural body; it is raised [or springs up, to complete the figure] a spiritual body. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven."—I once heard a distinguished botanist dispute the accuracy of this simile, inasmuch, he said, as the seed, when it is sown in the ground, does not die, but in fact then first begins to live and to display the vital force which was previously asleep in it; while the human body decays and is resolved into its primitive gaseous, mineral, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... seems to be that sacrifice proceeds more from an internal desire than from a large sum of money lying in the treasury. If the desire exists, money comes gradually for accomplishing it. The force of the simile consists in the fact that ants (probably white ants) are seen to gather and multiply from ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... 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 ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... entitled A Letter from Italy to Lord Halifax. In 1704, when Lord Godolphin was in search of a poet who should celebrate in an adequate style the striking victory of Blenheim, Addison was introduced to him by Lord Halifax. His poem called The Campaign was the result; and one simile in it took and held the attention of all English readers, and of "the town." A violent storm had passed over England; and Addison compared the calm genius of Marlborough, who was as cool and serene amid shot and shell as in ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... 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 says ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... enigmas and unsolved mysteries an answer to the enigma of self. Like life, like truth, like love, like all realities viewed from the angle of human vision, the desert is a paradox. Its vast emptiness is more than full; its unashamed sterility is but the simile ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... change contrasted with those of phonetic decay. If it is allowable to use a more homely illustration, one might say with perfect truth, that each dialect chooses its own phonetic garment, as people choose the coats and trousers which best fit them. The simile, like all similes, is imperfect, yet it is far more exact than if we compare the ravages of phonetic decay, as is frequently done, to the wear and tear of these ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... "Masaniello,") which was once, in all probability, of scarlet hue, but now almost rivals in color the jet-black locks which it confines. His face— well, we will pass that over, and, on our return to civilized life, will refer the curious inquirer for a fac-simile to the first best painting of Salvator, there to select at pleasure the most ferocious bandit countenance that he can find. And now the remainder of his person. He wears an open jacket of dirt-crusted serge, covered in front with a gorgeous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... parlammo sopra, la cui lunghezza due uomini colle braccia distese potevano misurare. Tutto all' intorno del muro vi erano degli scaffali quali si vedono ordinariamente negli archivi ad altezza d' uomo, e nel mezzo della stanza v' era un altro scaffale simile o tavola per tenervi scritture, e tale da potervi girare intorno. Il legno di questa tavola era ridotto a carboni, e cadde, come e facile ad imaginarselo, tutta in pezzi quando si tocco. Alcuni di questi rotoli di papiri si trovarono involti insieme con carta ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... folio's] margins," and that, for the purpose of making the list in question, he had "recently rexamined every line and letter of the folio." He had previously printed for private circulation a few fac-simile copies of eighteen corrected passages in the folio; and with the volume last mentioned, his publications, and, we believe, all others,—of which more anon,—upon the subject, ceased. Mr. Collier, it should be borne ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... events. Always is there an effort at vivid and artistic expression. If his statement does not kindle the imagination, it falls short of his aim. He visualizes his most subtle and abstract conceptions—sees the idea wedded to its correlative in the actual world. A new figure, a fresh simile gave him a thrill of pleasure. He went hawking up and down the fields of science, of trade, of agriculture, of nature, seeking them. He thinks in symbols, he paints his visions of the ideal with pigments ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... feathers; people passed behind him and down there in the square, black and tiny against the lions and the great column. He took in nothing of all that. What was it in her? She was like no one he had ever known—not one! Different from girls and women in society as—Simile failed. Still more different from anything in the half-world he had met! Not the new sort—college, suffrage! Like no one! And he knew so little of her! Not even whether she had ever really been in love. Her husband—where ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Eastern d'Artagnan—roamed to and fro with his band of "Black Flags," threw in his lot with the Chinese, and made harassing raids on the French side of the disputed border-line. Like the picador at a bullfight, he maddened his enemy with dart-pricks, and the Chinese, who, to continue the simile, had the toreador's part to play, reaped the enmity he provoked. The French gave them battle at Pagoda Anchorage, routed them utterly, and seized Formosa. This was the point where the I.G. first came upon the scene. Once again he was to play ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... here. What does she want?' 'She would not say, sir, and she would not send in her name. She said it did not matter.' I began to wonder what I had been doing. 'What is she like?' I asked. He looked all round as if in search of a simile, and then he answered: 'Well, sir, she's more like a picture than anything.' 'Show her ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... here that ever since I had received my Lady's message concerning this visit to St. Sava's I had been all on fire—not, perhaps, at every moment consciously or actually so, but always, as it were, prepared to break out into flame. Did I want a simile, I might compare myself to a well-banked furnace, whose present function it is to contain heat rather than to create it; whose crust can at any moment be broken by a force external to itself, and burst into raging, ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... She blushed, and fixed her eyes down upon the hole she had made in the pie, and then I observed that if there was a hole in my side as big as there was in the pie before her, she would see her image in my heart. This pretty simile did the business for me, and in a month we were married; and I never shall want a dinner as long as I live, either for myself or friend. I will put you on the free list, O'Donahue, if you can condescend to a cook's shop: ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... octavo, illustrated by numerous examples of the most exquisite Greek and Roman Coins, executed in fac-simile of the Originals, in actual relief, and in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various
... for simile renown'd, Pleasure has always sought, but never found Though all his thoughts on wine and women fall, His are so bad, sure he ne'er thinks at all. The flesh he lives upon is rank and strong; His meat and mistresses are kept too long. But sure we all mistake ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton |
