"Liken" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... TRUEBRIDGE. I do not mean to liken him to CHARSLEY, for no more unselfish and kind-hearted being than JOHNNIE ever breathed. But was there ever a stone that rolled more constantly and gathered less moss? Yet no stroke could subdue his inconquerable cheerfulness. Time after time ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... great discovery is the Magnetization of Light, which I should liken to the Weisshorn ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... said, A teller and not a maker, one that trusts and loves the past; I might liken myself to our ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... of a few warm countries, where this animal grows to a large size, and is highly valued, the Jackass or Donkey is everywhere considered a stupid beast, a lazy beast, an obstinate beast, and very often a vicious beast. To liken any one to a Jackass is to use very ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... "Do you dare to liken me to a common robber and murderer? Take care you do not experience the same fate as that with which you threaten me, with this difference only, that the hangman—the common hangman of Lancaster—shall serve your turn. I am come hither to arrest a notorious ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... feelings, rises to the sublimity of duty, and, ministering to the wants of another with an unselfish vigilance almost perfect, earns that meed of praise from men, which from time to time persists, in grateful hyperbole, to liken her ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... built in many strange and differing fashions, and again unbuilt: piled high, to give me height; twisted low, in a vain endeavor to liken me to the Greeks; curled, plaited, frizzed, and again unfrizzed. I institute a searching and critical examination of my wardrobe, rejecting this and that; holding one color against my cheek, to see whether my pallor will be able to bear it; turning ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... life endured. Emerson had emerged from the popular darkness which had so long held him a hopeless mystic, and was shining a lambent star of poesy and prophecy at the zenith. Hawthorne, the exquisite artist, the unrivalled dreamer, whom we still always liken this one and that one to, whenever this one or that one promises greatly to please us, and still leave without a rival, without a companion, had lately returned from his long sojourn abroad, and had given us the last of the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... also I knew, that my betters were more concerned than I was in that satire; and, lastly, because Mr. Smith and Mr. Johnson, the main pillars of it, were two such languishing gentlemen in their conversation, that I could liken them to nothing but to their own relations, those noble characters of men of wit and pleasure about the ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... the drops of rain or the sands of the sea are the only fit comparison; and hence it is almost a proverbial mode of expression in the East (as may be illustrated by the sacred pages to which we just now referred), by way of describing a vast invading army, to liken it to the locusts. So dense are they, when upon the wing, that it is no exaggeration to say that they hide the sun, from which circumstance indeed their name in Arabic is derived. And so ubiquitous are they when they have alighted on ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... kingdom of God is greater than he. 29 And all the people when they heard, and the publicans, justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John. 30 But the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected for themselves the counsel of God, being not baptized of him. 31 Whereunto then shall I liken the men of this generation, and to what are they like? 32 They are like unto children that sit in the marketplace, and call one to another; who say, We piped unto you, and ye did not dance; we wailed, and ye did not weep. 33 For John the Baptist is came eating no bread nor drinking wine; and ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... Hafiz declares that "the rose lost its color at sight of her cheeks and the jasmines silver bud turned pale." A beauty in the Arabian Nights, however, turns the tables on the flowers. "Who dares to liken me to a rose?" ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... pastures, heard Echoed by the mocking-bird In dim thickets dense with bloom And blurred cloyings of perfume. If she sigh—a zephyr swells Over odorous asphodels And wan lilies in lush plots Of moon-drown'd forget-me-nots. Then, the soft touch of her hand— Takes all breath to understand What to liken it thereto!— Never roseleaf rinsed with dew Might slip soother-suave than slips Her slow palm, the while her lips Swoon through mine, with kiss on kiss Sweet as ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... longed to fly and sit down by you, and behold your faces in the body; but I said, "The will of the Lord, not mine, be done." When I look within myself, and see not a place worthy to cherish gratitude to God for his great mercy and grace, which he hath wrought for us, sinful and unworthy, I liken myself to the slothful servant, who did not the will of his Lord. Yet, O, my sisters, though I have not done the will of my Saviour, I have hope in him that I shall do it, and serve him henceforth so long as I am in this world—fleeting ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... repeated over and over. There was a flickering look about the eyes that made Brent catch his breath. It seemed for just a passing second that they had been converted into little balls of trembling red quicksilver; that was the only thing to which he could liken those eyes just then—red quicksilver. But this passed so quickly that it might have been a reflection from the lamp. At any rate, Dale was continuing: "Why, Brent, I can't go to jail! Nor I can't run away! Miss ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... "I cannot liken it to aught," answers Fer rogain, "unless it be the fire of a king. May God not bring that man there tonight! 'Tis a pity to ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... for the Balliol Scholarships: a great institution of which you may possibly have heard. To what shall I liken it? It is not unlike a man casting into the sea a great dragnet, and when it is full of fish, pulling it up again and taking out fishes, good, bad and indifferent, and throwing the bad and indifferent back again into the sea. Among the good fish there ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... called to account and indeed, were there in this world one living and abiding for ever, he would not prefer it to the next world." Q "Can the future life subsist permanently without the present?"—"He who hath no present life hath no future life; and indeed I liken this world and its folk and the goal to which they fare with certain workmen, for whom an Emir buildeth a narrow house and lodgeth them therein, commanding each of them to do a certain task and assigning to him a set term and appointing one to act as steward over them. Whoso doeth the work appointed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... immense bounty and wealth." Thus it is clear how "eternity," species, and "use" are attributed or appropriated to the persons, but not essence or operation; because, being common, there is nothing in their concept to liken them to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... not those of a common mortal. She grew thinner, and we all fancied, taller; her complexion was white, and almost transparent, with a tender bloom on her cheek, which I can only liken to a young rose-leaf or the first faint blush of sunrise. Her eyes are still wonderfully clear and bright. It always seems to me as if they looked beyond the heaven and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... truncated. From the exact middle of the mansion it soars from the cellar, right up through each successive floor, till, four feet square, it breaks water from the ridge-pole of the roof, like an anvil-headed whale, through the crest of a billow. Most people, though, liken it, in that part, to a razed ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... no resemblance between the situation of prisoners in a pen, and that of soldiers in bivouac. The latter build shelters of rails or of brushwood, if they have no shelter-tents, and they are very rarely stinted in firewood. Their active life helps to preserve their vigor. To liken these to men without shelter of any kind and without fire enough to cook by, herded inside a ring-fence in winter weather, is an abuse of words. Enough of the ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... thousand virtues and not one acknowledged sin, But she is the sort of person you could liken to a pin, And she pricks you, and she sticks you, in a way that can't be said— When you seek for what has hurt you, why, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... art as conscious as I am that thou mightest as well compare the hat on thy brow to the brain it hides as liken the stolid Dorcis to the fiery ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... furnished any woman with a clew; but, since you have not availed yourself of their aid, I must lift the shroud that hides the corpse of my youth, my happiness, my faith in man, my hope in God. Ah! unto what shall I liken it? This ruined, wretched thing I call my life? To the Tauk e Kerra,—standing in a dreary waste, lifting its vast, keyless arch helplessly to heaven? Even such a crumbling arch, beautiful and grand in its glorious promise, is ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... teaching the people. He had taught them many wonderful truths, which you will find written in the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of Matthew; and in closing He said, "Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man who built his house upon a rock. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth ...
— Mother Stories from the New Testament • Anonymous
... undergone an entire reconstruction. We know now that life is a constant death and a renewing,—that our every-day nutrition involves millions of molecular deaths and as many millions of births,—although to liken that which is so exquisitely managed, so undisturbingly done, to the coarser phenomena of death and birth ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... the lash, the merciless driver seeks to force the animal to efforts of which it is plainly incapable. Can we stand by and witness such a scene in philosophic calm? Shall we say that the wretch is the product of circumstances, and cannot be expected to act otherwise than he does? Shall we liken evildoers generally, as at present is customary in certain quarters, to the sick? Shall we say that such men are the outcome of their heredity, their education, their environment? I have known of a husband who in a state of ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... hardly find the like in the artist's more highly elaborated and ambitious productions. Not that one would speak of it, however, as of a drawing upon toned paper in neutral tint, or as of a picture pencilled in sepia or with crayons; one would rather liken it to a radiant water-colour, chequered with mingled storm and sunshine, sparkling with lifelike effects, and glowing with brilliancy. And yet the little work is one, when you come to look into it, that is but the product of a seemingly artless abandon, in which without an effort ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... secure to himself the undivided honor of the scalps—the trophies of victory—taken by his own hand in battle. For, colored though he was, with a nose inclining neither to the Roman nor Grecian, our hero showed that he cherished a genuine, therefore jealous, love of glory. In this respect, we may liken the Fighting Nigger to such godlike specimens of our race as Alexander the Great; to Napoleon the Great; or, perhaps more fitly still, to Mumbo Jumbo the Great, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... be my meed now At home—What home? I have no home, no kin, No kind—not made like other creatures, or To share their sports or pleasures. Must I bleed, too, Like them? Oh, that each drop which falls to earth Would rise a snake to sting them, as they have stung me! Or that the Devil, to whom they liken me, 40 Would aid his likeness! If I must partake[206] His form, why not his power? Is it because I have not his will too? For one kind word From her who bore me would still reconcile me Even to this hateful aspect. Let ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... identical. Its form is cumbrous in the extreme, and large tracts of it have little claim to the name of poetry. Wordsworth compares the Excursion to a temple of which his smaller poems form subsidiary shrines; but the reader will more often liken the small poems to gems, and the Excursion to the rock from which they were extracted. The long poem contains, indeed, magnificent passages, but as a whole it is a diffused description of scenery which the poet has elsewhere caught in brighter glimpses; a diffused ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... municipal officers, mercantile big-wigs, whom he had occasion to introduce, were all alike denigrated, all served but as reflectors to cast back a flattering side-light on the house of Cauldstaneslap. The Provost, for whom Clem by exception entertained a measure of respect, he would liken to Hob. "He minds me o' the laird there," he would say. "He has some of Hob's grand, whunstane sense, and the same way with him of steiking his mouth when he's no very pleased." And Hob, all unconscious, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... what but to Dante's "Inferno" can we liken this steamboat-cabin, with its double row of pits, and its dismal captives? What are these sighs, groans, and despairing noises, but the alti guai rehearsed by the poet? Its fiends are the stewards who rouse us from our perpetual torpor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... outside shell. Posidonius, a later member of the school, objected to the metaphor from the vineyard on the ground that the fruit and the trees and the wall were all separable whereas the parts of philosophy were inseparable. He preferred therefore to liken it to a living organism, logic being the bones and sinews, physic the flesh and blood, ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... the puppy, to liken small things to great, was the coming of Blucher in Kate's life, for the battle turned, and all in five minutes she had gone from defeat to victory. She sat by the fire with Joan sleeping in her arms, and ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... same reason the Inflexible could not support the Carleton. The Americans, in the aggregate distinctly inferior, were thus permitted a concentration of superior force upon part of their enemies. It is needless to enlarge upon the mortifying incident of Arnold's escape that evening. To liken small things to great,—always profitable in military analysis,—it resembled Hood's slipping away from de ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... presented to the Invalides, amongst whom there still lingered a few who had been defeated by FREDERICK at Rosbach. Certainly the relics took no shame from such a seizure and such a guardianship. But the palace at Potsdam was not destroyed and stands to this day. I do not wish to liken myself to FREDERICK, nor do I compare you with NAPOLEON, but I tell you the story, which is true, for what it is worth. I wonder if ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... divided into four classes, each class marking an advance in receptive power on the part of the listener and poetic subtlety on that of the composer. We may liken the first stage to that of the savage Indians who depict their exploits in war and peace on the rocks, fragments of bone, etc. If the painter has in mind, say, an elephant, he carves it so that its principal characteristics are vastly exaggerated. A god in such delineation is twice ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... profited by the diversity of its uses to liken the central compartment in the Green Box to the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... in science, and an illustration of some of the manifold errors and absurdities which their hasty assumption is apt to involve—considerations probably equivalent to those which induced Lord Bacon to liken final causes to "vestal virgins." So, if any one, it is here Bacon that "sitteth in the seat of the scornful." As to Darwin, in the section from which the extracts were made, he is considering a subsidiary ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... To liken Best Society to a fraternity, with the avoidance of certain seemingly unimportant words as the sign of recognition, is not a fantastic simile. People of the fashionable world invariably use certain ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... find in the ashes a worm; and the second day next after, men find a bird, quick and perfect; and the third day next after, he flieth away. And so there is no more birds of that kind in all the world but that alone. And, truly, that is a great miracle of God. And men may well liken that bird unto God, because there is no God but one, and also that our Lord arose from death the third day. This bird men see often flying in those countries; and he is not much more than an eagle. And he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... grindstone there is a certain special velocity depending upon its actual materials and character, at which it would inevitably fly in pieces. I have once before likened our earth to a wheel; now let me liken it to a grindstone. There is therefore a certain critical velocity of rotation for the earth at which it would be on the brink of rupture. We cannot exactly say, in our ignorance of the internal constitution of the earth, what ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... grain, according as it is cultivated or left in a state of nature. Towards the south the view over the region has been thus described: "From Ramleh there is a wide view on every side, presenting a prospect rarely surpassed in richness and beauty. I could liken it to nothing but the great plain of the Rhine by Heidelberg or, better still, to the vast plains of Lombardy, as seen from the cathedral of Milan and elsewhere. In the east the frowning mountains of Judah rose abruptly ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... hands aloft in the air frantically. If she had trudged before, now she trotted, now she cantered; but if the cantering of the old mare was fitly likened to that of a cow, to what thing, to what manner of motion under the sun, shall we liken the cantering of Mrs. Ducklow? It was original; it was unique; it was prodigious. Now, with her frantically waving hands, and all her undulating and flapping skirts, she seemed a species of huge, unwieldy bird attempting to fly. Then she sank ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... sapling liken I And set my hope to win thee or to die. Distraught, I follow thee, and sore afraid, Lest any look on thee with ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... valley of the Arno, perhaps twenty-five miles long, and five or six broad, lying like a long elliptical basin sunk among the hills. I can liken it to nothing but a vast sea; for a dense, blue mist covered the level surface, through which the domes of Florence rose up like a craggy island, while the thousands of scattered villas resembled ships, with spread sails, ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... likenesses of Wordsworth will readily remark this resemblance. A greater length of ear would liken the Lake poet to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... difficult game to describe. I should liken it, in some respects, to billiards on a grand scale, except that the balls have to be put into holes instead of pockets; that they have to be struck with the side instead of with the end of a club, and that there is no such thing ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... bearing, Does not heed her mother's wishes; Straightway hastens to the court-yard, There to weep in bitter sorrow, All alone to weep in anguish. Waiting long the wailing Aino Thus at last soliloquizes: "Unto what can I now liken Happy homes and joys of fortune? Like the waters in the river, Like the waves in yonder lakelet, Like the crystal waters flowing. Unto what, the biting sorrow Of the child of cold misfortune? Like the spirit of the sea-duck, Like the icicle in winter, Water in the well imprisoned. Often ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... nine show up well, particularly Raymond and Weir, who have springs in their feet and arms like whips. Altogether Arthurs' varsity is a strangely assorted, a wonderfully chosen group of players. We might liken them to the mechanism of a fine watch, with Ward as the mainspring, and the others with big or little parts to perform, but each dependent upon the other. Wayne's greatest ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... learned from me that it is to be found in truth and a high but gentle spirit. Such are the lessons I have striven to teach; and I have thought it might best be done by representing to my readers characters like themselves,—or to which they might liken themselves. ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... privileged home; no young girl, whose mind was properly balanced, could have considered it otherwise. Its owner was cheerful as the lark, industrious as the bee, thoughtful and provident as the ant, benevolent as!—well, I won't liken her to any of our four-footed friends; indeed, just at this moment, I must confess that no comparison occurs to me: but Aunt Mary loved her nieces, delighted to impart to them those stores of knowledge to which she was herself constantly ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... comparatio, from comparare, to liken to: a variation in the form of an adjective or adverb to express degrees of quantity ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... door into the general office, where the clerks looked like a swarm of bees around a honeycomb (if I may liken affairs of Government ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... moon Ever pale and lovely: you are like these Because you are free and live by your own law; While I, desiring life and half alive, Dream, hope, regret and fear and blunder on. Your beauty is your life and my content, And I will liken you to an apple-tree, Mary and Margaret playing under the branches, And everywhere soft shadows like your eyes, And scattered ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... "He shall feed his flock like a shepherd," sang the Prophet Isaias; "he shall gather together the lambs with his arms, and shall take them up in his bosom, and he himself shall carry them that are with young."(1) In like manner did Jeremias, referring to the comforting advent of Christ, liken the offices which the Saviour would perform towards His people to those of shepherds towards their flocks. "I will set up pastors over them," said the Prophet, speaking in the name of Jehovah, "and they shall ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... Chamber, that "he very well understood what a juste milieu meant, in any particular case; it meant neither more nor less than the truth, in that particular case: but as to a political party's always taking a middle course, under the pretence of being in a juste milieu, he should liken it to a discreet man's laying down the proposition that four and four make eight, and a fool's crying out, 'Sir, you are wrong, for four and four make ten;' whereupon the advocate for the juste milieu on system, would be obliged to say, 'Gentlemen, you are equally in extremes, ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... abundance of exercise; always out of doors; though, it is true, seldom in the open air. I say, that the motion of a Sperm Whale's flukes above water dispenses a perfume, as when a musk-scented lady rustles her dress in a warm parlor. What then shall I liken the Sperm Whale to for fragrance, considering his magnitude? Must it not be to that famous elephant, with jewelled tusks, and redolent with myrrh, which was led out of an Indian town to do honor to ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... inducted into office by the pouring of oil on their heads, but, as a mouthpiece and representative of the deity, he is inferior to the prophet; at best, flattery, such as that of the woman of Tekoa, might liken him to an angel.[633] The epithet el gibbor (English Bible, "mighty God"), applied to a Jewish prince, must probably be rendered 'mighty hero.'[634] The title 'gods' has been supposed to be given to men (judges) a couple of times in the Psalter,[635] but the reference ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... done; had sprung at another from stone to stone, requiring no help; and then, on a sudden, had become so powerless that he had been forced almost to carry her in his arms. That, probably, must have been the moment which induced Mr. Gowran to liken her to ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... as he brought the precious parchment to light, and smoothed it out upon the table before him, 'you will observe that I commence with an invocation to the emperor, whom I call the most illustrious of all the Caesars, and liken to Jove. I then congratulate the spectators, not only upon the joy of living in his time, but also upon being there to bask in the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... remember as we stood in the mouldy big Circus, having sundry of the lousy population idling within, whereby I did then liken it to a venerable cheese, in which is some faint stir of maggotry, that thou didst make a memorable speech against the land, where the only vocation of a nobleman is to defile the streets and be pimp to ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... about. Cedar is the common Firing, and all the Houses are built with it. The very Meat we eat, when set on the Table, if it be native, I mean of the Country, perfumes the whole Room; especially a little Beast call'd an Armadillo, a Thing which I can liken to nothing so well as a Rhinoceros; 'tis all in white Armour, so jointed, that it moves as well in it, as if it had nothing on: This Beast is about the Bigness of a Pig of six Weeks old. But it were endless to give an Account of all the divers wonderful and strange Things that Country affords, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... worth hearing), she has trotted up-stairs again to the nest, and is as busy as ever. Possibly Clara might do the greater part of what she does, and do it better: but still, are they not her children? Let those who will call a mother's care mere animal instinct, and liken it to that of the sparrow or the spider: shall we not rather call it a Divine inspiration, and doubt whether the sparrow and the spider must not have souls to be saved, if they, too, show forth that ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley |
