"Simile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reader has ever seen Hogarth's Illustrations of Hudibras, and remembers the redoubtable hero as he sits on horseback, he will be at no loss in comprehending what a cruiht means. Cruiht is the Irish for harp, and the simile is taken from the projection between the shoulders of the harper which was caused by carrying ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... Crazy Horse, is a poetic simile. This leader was likened to an untrained or untouched horse, wild, ignorant of domestic uses, splendid in action, and ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... conversation was to be general, because she hated to have two conversations going on when only four people were present, since she found that she always wanted to join in the other one. This was the main principle she inculcated on Georgie, stamping it on his memory by a simile of peculiar vividness. "Imagine there is an Elizabethan spittoon in the middle of the table," she said, "and keep on firmly spitting into it. I want you when there's any pause to spit about two things, one, how dreadfully unhappy both Jacob and Jane will be without ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... On the contrary, in all the comedies of the age, the principal character for gaiety and wit is a young heir, who has totally altered the establishment of the father to whom he has succeeded, and, to use the old simile, who resembles a fountain, which plays off in idleness and extravagance the wealth which its careful parents painfully ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... upon your bitter Oesher simile, why shut your eyes to the palpable analogy suggested? Naturalists assert that the Solanum, or apple of Sodom, contains in its normal state neither dust nor ashes; unless it is punctured by an insect, (the Tenthredo), which converts the whole of ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... It is of plain wood and lacquer, with interior walls and ceiling entirely covered with gold leaf. The office building joined to the temple was suggested by the shrine of the ancient castle of Fushimi. The exhibit building north of this temple houses a complete and remarkably beautiful fac-simile of the famous temple at Nikko, one of the finest in Japan. The Mikado's private collection of Japanese art, never before opened to the public, even in Japan, is placed in the Japanese section of the Fine Arts ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... with vain pride." Joyce bit her lip to choke back a swelling in her throat. "The Dave we used to know wasn't like that. He was friendly and sweet. When folks were kind to him he was kind to them. He wasn't like—like an old poker." She fell back helplessly on the simile she ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... quadroon's eyes was rather a confused one. He was happy in a simile, however, which I felt satisfied with: "Dey am big an round—dey shine like de eyes of a deer." The nose puzzled him, but after some elaborate questioning, I could make out that it was straight and small. The eyebrows—the teeth—the complexion—were ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... 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 ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... the dear, dear old Thackeray days, when I saw him so constantly and enjoyed him so hugely; but, alas! many of them are gone, with much more that is lovely and would have been of good report, could they be now remembered;—they are dead as—(Holmes always puts your simile quite right for you),— ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... man plunged in a sound, dreamless sleep—one that leaves no impression on the physical memory and brain, because the sleeper's Higher Self is in its original state of absolute consciousness during these hours—that he too is annihilated. The latter simile answers only to one side of the question—the most material; since reabsorption is by no means such a dreamless sleep, but, on the contrary, absolute existence, an unconditional unity, or a state, to describe which human language is absolutely ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... brotherhood. He has even in some lines of Charity, which also were dear to Cobden, remarkably anticipated the sentiment of modern economists respecting the influence of free trade in making one nation of mankind. The passage is defaced by an atrociously bad simile:— ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... to describe the work of what is termed artistic printing. Every plate is a subject to be treated by itself, and no hard and fast rule can be applied. It is really a matter of artistic feeling, and to revert to the simile of the angler, one cannot explain how a trout should be played, but can only say that it depends on the fish, the water, and the circumstances. A fisherman can show you, if you are on the spot, and so ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... of the production is, doubtless, greatly enhanced by the change. A string of pearls—dropping the former simile and adopting another—is estimated according to the gems it contains, and not because of the cord that holds it together. The personal experiences and recollections that are here and there interwoven, by themselves ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... ago that acute thinker Lord Brougham remarked that in the clear sky of scepticism he saw only one small cloud drifting up and that was Modern Spiritualism. It was a curiously inverted simile, for one would surely have expected him to say that in the drifting clouds of scepticism he saw one patch of clear sky, but at least it showed how conscious he was of the coming importance of the movement. Ruskin, too, an equally agile mind, said that his assurance of ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 his Henry-like fringe of beard and his mustache. With them—thanks to the recent FBI rule ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... this subject will refer to the first volume of Kalendars and Inventories of his Majesty's Exchequer, published by the Commissioners of Public Records, they will find in the Introduction, written by Sir Francis Palgrave, at page cxlvii., a fac-simile representation of a letter upon paper from James IV. of Scotland to Henry VII., dated July 12, 1502, showing the seal encircled by a rush ring. At page cxxxvii. it is stated that in the fifteenth century a rush ring surrounding the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... the objective existence of this material Upadhi. From his standpoint it is Maya or illusion which exists as a necessary condition of Pragna. But to avoid confusion, I shall use the ordinary language; and to enable my readers to grasp my meaning clearly the following simile may be adopted. Suppose a bright light is placed in the centre with a curtain around it. The nature of the light that penetrates through the curtain and becomes visible to a person standing outside depends upon the nature of the ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... of Stonehenge has been likened to a herd of elephant browsing on the Plain. The simile is good and is particularly applicable to its aspect from the Amesbury road—the least imposing of the approaches. The straight white highway, and the fact that the Stones are a little below the observer, detract very much from the impressiveness of the scene. The usual accompaniments ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... the grandfather has just remembered and taken out a bundle of love-letters, which he too had stored away in years gone by, and then long neglected; and, behold! the letters are as faded and sorrowfully disappointing as the icicle. This is merely a simile poetically worked out; and yet it is in such as these, and some others, to be mentioned further on, that the author seems at his best. Wherever he has really written after the old model, there is ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thought and feeling; his descriptions are graphic and lifeful; his analysis of character accurate and discriminating; his aspirations noble and pure. There was a pleasing fascination in his oratory and writing which never passed away. One can hardly think of his sad story without remembering also the simile ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... The details had been worked out to a nicety. They had bent far to the south, miles farther than any man aiming at the Wyoming border would have gone, and now, having arrived at the barrier, they wheeled north again. It was getting daylight, and cowboy Pete,—in our simile the left little finger,—first to catch sight of the surface of the stream, waved in triumph to the nearest rider on ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... as he finished his simile. Then he lifted the silver cover of a dish which had just arrived, and gave his whole attention to a noble Welsh rabbit, an odd dainty for a Riviera supper—but Ciro prided himself on gratifying any whim of any ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... hujus Doctissimi Viri sententia Lamechus sese jactat propter filios suos, qui artium adeo utilium essent inventores: Cainum progenitorem suum propter caedem non esse punitum, multo minus se posse puniri, si vel simile scelus commisisset. Verba enim non significant, caedam ab eo revera esse paratam, sed sunt verba hominis admodum insolentis et profani. Ceterum facile apparet, haec verba a Mose ex quodam carmine antiquo inserta esse: tota enim oratio poeticam ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... chiefly in the metaphor, which is very pervading and seems to be almost unconscious. It seldom rises to that conscious form of metaphor which we call the Simile, and when it does it is laconically brief, as in the comparison of a ship with a bird (fugle gelicost). The later poetry begins to expand the similes somewhat after the manner of the Latin poets. In Beowulf we have four brief similes and only one ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... clouds resting on the top of its hills. The day was windless, and there they stayed, hour after hour, without any stir or motion. I remember how I was delighted at the time, and have often since that day thought on the beauty and the truthfulness of Homer's simile. ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... 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 ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... in Court, the bringing up of the prisoner for arraignment, and the fixing of the case to be taken first on Thursday in deference to the wishes of Mr. Nimble. I pass by all those preliminary proceedings which I have before attempted to describe, and which, if I might employ a racing simile, might be compared to the saddling of Mr. Bumpkin in the paddock, where, unquestionably, he was first favourite for the coming race, to be ridden by that excellent jockey, Alibi; and come at once to the great and memorable trial of Regina on the prosecution of Thomas Bumpkin against Simon Simpleman ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... thing formed say to him that formed it: Why hast thou made me thus? Or hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?" Here the Apostle really seems to have thought of predestination. But the simile must not be pressed, lest we arrive at the Calvinistic blasphemy that God positively predestined some men to heaven and others to hell. The tertium comparationis is not the act of the Divine Artificer, but the willingness ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... Gaufridi membra cubile. Seu minus aut simile nobis parat omnibus ille; Quem laurus gemina decoraverat, in medicina Lege q[u] divina, decuerunt cornua bina; Clare vir Augensis, quo sedes Ambianensis Crevit in imensis; in ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... parapet, the rifle cocked and his finger on the trigger, watched in case any of the Mexicans should expose himself again. He presented to Ned the simile of some powerful animal about to spring. The lean, muscular figure was poised for instant action, and all the whimsicality and humor were gone from the eyes ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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 ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... he said, with a leer in his wife's direction. "In reality I am the light of her eyes. The acetylene gas, as it were, of her existence. Well, well." He rose and stretched himself. "I wash my hands of the whole matter. Note the appropriate simile. Install what cistern you please. If approached properly, I may consent to test the work when complete. ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... It makes no difference. We take a certain number of other pieces, and then we are taken ourselves—always by the adversary—and tossed aside out of the game. But then, it is easy to carry out the simile, because the game itself was founded on the facts of life, by ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... princess being 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 groves ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... deep thought and feeling in phrases so terse, and with originality of style so daring; and even Michael Angelo is monotonous in the range of his ideas and uniform in his diction, when compared with the indescribable violence and vigour of Campanella. Campanella borrows little by way of simile or illustration from the outer world, and he never falls into the commonplaces of poetic phraseology. His poems exhibit the exact opposite of the Petrarchistic or the Marinistic mannerism. Each sonnet seems to have been wrenched ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... simile giguit sui simile.] And therefore it seemeth that this Northeast sea is maintained by the riuer Ob, and such like freshets, as Mare Goticum, and Mare Mediterraneum, in the vppermost parts thereof by the riuers ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... with great animation, looking at Esmond, as much as to say, "You know where that simile came from—from our talk, and our bottle of ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... he said much, sir," said Bill. "But he offered to fight this Pitman for a pot of beer. He had lost his book, too, and the receipts, and his men were all as mortal as himself. O, they were all like"—and Bill paused for a simile—"like lords! The superintendent ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... captain had led since the Roman legions left the world, defies from the gorges of Savoy, and division behind division advances through the passes and across the plains of Burgundy and Lorraine. One simile leaps to the pen of every historian who narrates that march, the approach of some vast serpent, the glancing of its coils unwinding still visible through the June foliage, fateful, stealthy, casting upon its victim the torpor of its irresistible strength. And to the Netherlands ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... sent troops into Gaul to save the remnants of the Visigothic Monarchy from the grasp of Clovis. The first sentence recalls the expression 'certaminis gaudia,' which Jordanes no doubt borrowed from Cassiodorus. For the simile at the end of the letter, cf. Deuteronomy xxxii. 11, 'As an eagle stirreth up ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... issues canned provisions to the Indians. When they extract the contents and throw the can in the water, it floats away, and Bull used that as a simile, knowing they would all understand. The deputation appeared perfectly satisfied with the explanation and went away thoroughly convinced that Boyton was supplied with no interior mechanism in the way ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... my Gertrude; but your simile might be juster. Rather let these banks be as our lives, and this river the one thought that flows eternally by both, ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the hour of two so gently, that it sounds like the tinkling of sheep-bells coming through the misty twilight air from the green meadows. With which felicitous simile we will give our hero a little sleep, after having kept him up ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... This simile nearly "finished" the party. "It's big enough to disagree with all the Sunday-schools in creation at once," remarked the doctor, between his shouts, while even Clover shook with laughter. Mrs. Watson felt that she had made a hit, ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... loves may in many respects be fitly compared to corresponding hemispheres; but as no simile squares ('nihil simile est idem'), so here the simile fails, for there is nothing in our loves that corresponds to the cold north, or the declining west, which in two hemispheres must necessarily be supposed. But an ellipse of such length will scarcely rescue the line from the charge of nonsense ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... them to proceed a mile or two, they will become callous to the first sensation; and being warm in the harness, as the said post-boy may term it, proceed as if their withers were altogether unwrung. This simile so much corresponds with the state of Waverley's feelings in the course of this memorable evening, that I prefer it (especially as being, I trust, wholly original) to any more splendid illustration with which Byshe's 'Art of Poetry' ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... 1. Simile. The simplest figure of speech is the simile. It is nothing more or less than a direct comparison by the use of such words as like ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... woman also, and he had loved what he imagined Stella Wildmere to be. Now he felt, however, like a lapidary who, while gloating over a precious stone, is suddenly shown that it is worthless paste. He may have valued it highly an hour before; now he throws it away in angry disgust. But this simile only in part explains Graydon's feelings. He not only recognized Miss Wildmere's mercenary character and selfish spirit, but also the power she would have had to thwart his life and alienate him from his ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... appropriate one, because the sun is apprehended in the water erroneously only while the antaryamin really abides within all things, and therefore must be viewed as sharing their defects (19); we reply that what the simile means to negative is merely that Brahman should, owing to its inherence in many places, participate in the increase, decrease, and so on, of its abodes. On this view both similes are appropriate (20).—Analogous similes we observe to be employed in ordinary ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... d'Ercolano di cui 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 ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... another element added to the list of disagreeables—or, to follow his simile, another card was dealt him which he would like to have discarded, but which he must keep in his hand and play with what skill he might. He was not the care-free Charming Billy Boyle who had made prune pie for Flora Bridger in the line-camp. ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... girl, from the Home. We wanted somebody for Vash to wait on, you know. She sits in a round chair, that twists, like yours; and she's—just like a lily in a vase!" Hazel finished her sentence with a simile quite unexpected ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the neat simile used by Dr. Bernhard C. Hesse, it is like cloth-making where "ten fibers make 300 yarns which are ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... sight of that propagandist document affected him, to use the old simile, as scarlet does a bull. Gilbert knew the man's prejudices, but, in his own more cultured mind, could not have conceived such frenzy of hatred as this piece of Christian doctrine excited in Bunce. For five minutes the poor fellow was possessed; sweat covered his face; ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... fast at first as the sun had not yet set, picking their way through the woods, and soon left their comrades out of sight. The twilight now came fast, adding a mournful and somber red to the vast expanse of wilderness. The simile of an Indian fight returned to Dick with increased force. This was not like any battle with white men in the open fields. It was a combat of raiders who advanced secretly under ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... anything like a simile was always emphatic, no matter whether he saw the exact point or not, and I'm afraid that brilliant folk would have thought him perilously like a fool. Happily his companions were ladies and gentlemen who were too simple to sneer, and ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... 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 have ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... he had so little to say in conversation, for he had kept the best company, and learnt all that can be got by the ear. He abused Pindar to me, and then shewed me an Ode of his own, with an absurd couplet, making a linnet soar on an eagle's wing[215]. I told him that when the ancients made a simile, they always ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... or very presence of those experiences. But many minds are, as it were, their own religious artists; and build up for themselves psychic structures answering to their intuitive apprehensions. So vivid may these structures sometimes be for them that—to revert again to our original simile—the self turns from the window and the realistic world without, and becomes for the time wholly concentrated on the symbolic drama or picture within the room; which abolishes all awareness of the everyday world. When this happens in a small way, we have what might be called a religious ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... and stop, to ascend and descend, the next thing to master is the art of preserving equilibrium, the knack of keeping the machine perfectly level in the air—on an "even keel," as a sailor would say. This simile is particularly appropriate as all aviators are in reality sailors, and much more daring ones than those who course the seas. The latter are in craft which are kept afloat by the buoyancy of the water, whether in motion or otherwise and, so long as normal conditions ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... done with it if it were won? "Get a fac-simile made, and an appropriate inscription," recommended Lord Erymanth. "Probably they would ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... uniformly successful, but, if rejected, my MSS. were courteously returned, with a note from the editor. As a sample I give the following. The original is a lithographed fac-simile of the handwriting of Mr. Dickens, printed in blue ink, the date and the title of the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... simile! We mortals cross the ocean of this world 100 Each in his average cabin of a life; The best's not big, the worst yields elbow-room. Now for our six months' voyage—how prepare? You come on shipboard with a landsman's list Of things ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... "'Simile' you mean, Mister Jacob. Well, it's all the same, and neither here nor there in the matter of a letter. The fact is, gentlemen, I wish you to know why I have sailed this ship to Ken's Archipelago, and under what circumstances I shall sail her ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... that the Constitution of the United States had been made under the dominion of the Newtonian Theory. You have only to read the papers of The Federalist to see that fact written on every page. They speak of the "checks and balances" of the Constitution, and use to express their idea the simile of the organization of the universe, and particularly of the solar system,—how by the attraction of gravitation the various parts are held in their orbits; and then they proceed to represent Congress, the Judiciary, and the President as a sort of ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... Apol. 46: "Quid simile philosophus et Christianas? Graeciae discipulus et coeli?" de praescr. 7: "Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis? Quid academiae et ecclesiae?" Minuc. 38.5: "Philosophorum supercilia contemnimus, quos corruptores ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... going on than meets the eye of a man walking through the streets. It is a unique centre of thought and religion—the intellectual and spiritual granary of this country. All that silence and absence of goings-on is the stillness of infinite motion—the sleep of the spinning-top, to borrow the simile of ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... Enclosed is a note to Chapman & Hall which will put her 'bearer' (if she can find one in London) in possession of the two volumes in question. I shall like her to have them, and she must try to find my love, as the King of France did the poison (a 'most unsavoury simile,' certainly), between the leaves. I send with them, in any case, my best love. Ah, so sorry I am that she has suffered from the weather you have had. She is a most interesting child, and of a nature which ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... between he often found excuses to pray even when the provocation seemed far-fetched to my worldly eyes—now that he was about to die I felt positive that I should witness a perfect orgy of prayer—if one may allude with such a simile to ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... more unhappy country was enslaved and ruined; but not a rupee was acquired. Instead of treasure to recruit the Company's finances, wasted by their wanton wars and corrupt jobs, they were plunged into a new war, which shook their power in India to its foundation, and, to use the Governor's own happy simile, might have dissolved it like a magic structure, if ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... These are the official letters and petitions drawn up by the chiefs in their own tongues, and forwarded to the Spanish authorities. Of these, two interesting specimens, one in the "Abolachi" tongue (a dialect of Muskokee), and the other in Timucuana, were published in fac-simile by the late Mr. Buckingham Smith, but in a very limited number of copies (only fifty in all). Others in Nahuatl and Maya, also in fac-simile, appear in that magnificent volume, the Cartas de Indias, issued by the Spanish Government in 1880. Doubtless ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... am sorry you don't like Harry White: with a great deal of cant, which in him was sincere (indeed it killed him as you killed Joe Blackett), certes there is poesy and genius. I don't say this on account of my simile and rhymes; but surely he was beyond all the Bloomfields and Blacketts, and their collateral cobblers, whom Lofft and Pratt have or may kidnap from their calling into the service of the trade. You must excuse my flippancy, for I am writing ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... rendered it highly awful. My horizon seemed a perfect circle; the terminating line several hundred miles in circumference. This I conjectured from the view of London; the extreme points of which, formed an angle of only a few degrees. It was so reduced on the great scale before me, that I can find no simile to convey an idea of it. I could distinguish Saint Paul's and other churches, from the houses. I saw the streets as lines, all animated with beings, whom I knew to be men and women, but which I should otherwise ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... that capacity. It felt very strange at first to submit to authority instead of exercising it—to obey orders instead of giving them; but I like that state of things. I returned to it with the same avidity that a cow, that has long been kept on dry hay, returns to fresh grass. Don't laugh at my simile. It is natural to me to submit, and very unnatural ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... notes never approach London in a free tide—never circulate like blood to the heart, and from thence to the extremities, but are current within a limited circle; often, indeed, so very limited, that the notes issued in the morning, to use an old simile, fly out like pigeons from the dovecot, and are sure to return in the evening to the spot which they have left at ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... simile, let us peep within the sheathing spathe, or, better still, strip it off altogether. Dr. Torrey states that the dark-striped spathes are the fertile plants, those with green and whitish lines, sterile. ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... "Your simile is no good. If Doris really loved you, it was not because she pictured you as a pretty bird. If she could love you without seeing you, if you appealed to her, why should your marred face make her turn away ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... a lamb already marked for slaughter by the Marats and Robespierres of France, but still unconscious of his doom, "pleased to the last," and who "licks the hand just raised to shed his blood." Thus far the simile is conducted with admirable force and humor. But not satisfied with his success, Burke goes further; he insists on leading us into the shambles, and makes the revolutionary butchers inquire as to their ducal victim, "how he cuts up? how he tallows in the caul or on the kidneys?" Apart ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... this simile was not altered by the fact that in this case the slave woman was an agnostic, while the patrician girl had been brought up in the creed of Christ. Sylvia had long since begun to question the formulas of a church whose very pews were rented, and whose existence, she declared, ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... laughing herself, "but it's quite true. Or perhaps it would be more 'lady-like' to say that I feel like 'a caged bird,' as people do in books. In future I shall console myself with the thought that I may be the lever which supplies the force. Is that simile right, or ridiculously wrong? It's rash of me to use engineering terms before you. I mean that I'll try to be a good influence to some man, and so inspire work, if I can't do it myself. The worst is, I know so few men! Father is abroad, all our relations are far away, and until I come out I seem ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... [cluck, cluck], an apt comparison, seeing that in suspense you are hanging, as it were, in the very region of doubt, without being able to obtain a footing even upon conjecture. Nay, we may further add another simile, although not so well borne out, which is, that the agony of suspense doth stop the breath of a man for the time, as hanging doth stop it altogether, so that it may be truly said, that suspense is put an end to by suspending." ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... some old hymn known to Calvinists. Certain poets, a certain time ago, ransacked the language for words full of life and beauty, made a vocabulary of them, and out of wantonness wrote them to death. To change somewhat the simile, they scented out a word—an earlyish word, by preference—ran it to earth, unearthed it, dug it out, and killed it. And then their followers bagged it. The very word that lives, 'new every morning,' miraculously new, in the literature of a man of letters, they killed and ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... afraid you have gone much too far. Mr Lance Distin is a gentleman, a student, and of very excellent family. A young man of excellent attainments, and about as likely to commit such a brutal assault as you speak of, as—as, well, for want of a better simile, Bates, as I am." ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... whole place; even the white stones in the aisle were glorified here and there with gorgeous patches of colour from the stained glass windows. But the strange stillness and quiet oppressed me, I did not feel nearly so much at home as in Mrs. O'Reilly's drawing-room—to use a terrestrial simile, I felt like ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... The simile is not inapt, as applied to the first efforts of the early English, or Semi-Saxon literature, during the latter part of the twelfth and the whole of the thirteenth century. That deceptive dawn, or first glimpse of the coming day, is to be ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... looked at her fully, with calm and fearless dignity. "I have no claim upon you, thank God! I am less to you than a dropped lamb, lost in a thicket of thorns, is to the sheep that bore it! That's a rough country simile,—I was brought up on a farm, you know!—but it will serve your case. Think nothing of me, as I think nothing of you! What I am, or what I may be to the world, is my ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... trees among the plants sent up by Mr. Caruthers, and I was surprised to see among them also a shrub that is the pest of Tahiti and will become so here if it is planted. In the afternoon, the rain being then only a high mist, Simile and I began to set out the things. While busy at this I saw three or four beautiful young men, followed by a troop of dogs, pass along our road towards the bush. I have seldom seen more graceful, elegant creatures than these fellows. ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... exceedingly energetic and exceedingly strenuous; he doubled his strength and said "Take your sickles" and so forth, pointed out the portion to be reaped, offered them drink, food, scent, flowers, etc., and took an equal share of the work.' The simile should be thus applied: volition is like the cultivator, the fifty-five moral states which arise as factors of consciousness are like the fifty-five strong men; like the time of doubling strength, ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... Dyaks are bred from infancy to prey on their fellow-creatures. To be strangers and defenceless is to court pillage and massacre at their hands. I think no more of shooting them than of smashing a clay pigeon. Killing a mad dog is perhaps a better simile." ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... He used this simile one morning to Warrington, as the latter sate over his pipe and book, and Pen, with much gesticulation according to his wont when excited, and with a bitter laugh, thumped his manuscript down on the table, making the tea-things rattle, and, the blue milk ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... we thought of the morrow, We counted our wagers with glee, A simile homely to borrow — 'There was plenty of milk in our tea.' You see we were green; and we never Had even a thought of foul play, Though we well might have known that the clever Division would ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... brought into that most-deadly fire, enfilade (e.g., firing across a line from a point of vantage at the flank). The guns opened without warning on the three waves, more or less in mass due to the involuntary retreat. No more adequate simile can convey the picture of the fast-falling figures than that of grass beneath the scythe. Five minutes, perhaps ten, and it was over. Bodies lay thick everywhere, and upon this area of wounded and dying shells were casting square feet of flesh ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... the horrors that were taking place, saying that everything was now in readiness for them to start, that none but cowards could hold back, that a certain amount of violence was just as necessary as the prick of the lancet to the abscess, however ripe it might be! The lancet simile was not original, but one that he had heard somewhere. He seemed to like it, and made use of it on ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... utter them aloud to his congregation; and at other seasons, when he was about to apply to the sinner some searching and fearful text of Scripture, he was tempted to withhold it, on the ground that it condemned himself also; but, withstanding the suggestion of the Tempter, to use his own simile, he bowed himself like Samson to condemn sin wherever he found it, though he brought guilt and condemnation upon himself thereby, choosing rather to die with the Philistines than to deny ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... whereas Mr. Darwin says he does not know), "and appear not in individuals subjected to new conditions" (What organism can pass through life without being subjected to more or less new conditions? What life is ever the exact fac-simile of another? And in a matter of such extreme delicacy as the adjustment of psychical and physical relations, who can say how small a disturbance of established equilibrium may not involve how great a rearrangement?), "but in the offspring of all, though more freely in the offspring of ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... trade—what there was of it—all was his. When he came to take stock, and make an inventory—in his head—of what he was worth, it was by no means such as to endanger his entrance into heaven at the proper time. Naturally enough, he thought of the Scripture simile of the rich man, and the camel getting through the eye of a needle; but it did not frighten him. His father never had much beforehand, when he had the whole place to himself; and now, behold! another knight ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... or friend does not waste time in simile or in metaphor. She calls him a black-hearted scoundrel and ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... "An absurd simile drawn from an ignorance of the formation of the biped. The heart of a chicken has a just proportion to its other organs, and the domestic fowl is, in a state of nature, a gallant bird. Ellen," he added, with a countenance so solemn as to ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... lines from you. When the newspaper came in, without your letter, we felt as if a dull neighbour had been ushered in after a knock at the door which had made us rise up and start forward to welcome some long absent friend. Indeed in Poole's case, this simile is less over-swollen than in mine, for in contempt of my convictions and assurance to the contrary, Poole, passing off the Brummagem coin of his wishes for sterling reasons, had persuaded himself fully ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... opportunely than at this point call attention to Mr. Tennyson's extraordinary felicity and force in the use of metaphor and simile. This gift appears to have grown with his years, alike in abundance, truth, and grace. As the showers descend from heaven to return to it in vapour, so Mr. Tennyson's loving observation of Nature, and his Muse, seem to have ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... pye being opened they began to sing," (This old song and new simile holds good), "A dainty dish to set before the King," Or Regent, who admires such kind of food;— And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing, But like a hawk encumbered with his hood,— Explaining Metaphysics to the nation— I wish he would ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... gloves, kissed Aunt Rachel's cold cheek, and ran out into the lane with blushes so charming and becoming that she might have been taken for the very humanized spirit of the dawn, lingering an hour or two beyond her time to make acquaintance with daylight. If this simile should seem to border on the ridiculous, the responsibility of it may be safely thrown upon Reuben, who not merely met her with it in his mind, but conveyed it to her as they walked homeward together. Ezra was even more bashful than ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... The simile is yet truer of Demetrius and the phases of his fortunes, now on the increase, presently on the wane, now filling up and now falling away. And so, at this time of apparent entire obscuration and extinction, his light again shone out, and accessions of strength, little by little, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... pole; the finest simile in nature, Sir Willmott Burrell: you were fishing for a holy one, I saw, which is what these walls don't often hear, for we've no ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... consequently, the poetic representation, unencumbered thereby, proceeds with a light and easy motion, leaving to the musician the care of a richer and fuller development. Metastasio is musical throughout; but, to follow up the simile, we may observe, that of poetical music, melody is the only part that he possesses, being deficient in harmonious compass, and in the mysterious effects of counterpoint. Or, to express myself in different terms, he is musical, but in no respect picturesque. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... 1595. Almost an unaltered copy of a Portolano from the 14th century. From Nordenskjoeld's fac-simile atlas). This illustrates the remarkable correctness in the drawing of the Mediterranean basin and the coasts of W. Europe, reached by the Italian and Balearic coast-charts, or Portolani, in the ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... believer in the divinity of genius and always opposed a stern disbelief to the objections of those petty cavillers and minor critics who wish to reduce all men to their own miserable level—"I will make a scientific simile" he would say, "[i]n the manner, if you will, of Dr. Darwin—I consider the alledged errors of a man of genius as the aberrations of the fixed stars. It is our distance from them and our imperfect means of communication that makes them appear to move; in truth they always ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... or rather has begun to do so. I thought, dear H——, that you would like to have this sketch, and I was in hopes that the first letter you received in Ireland from me would contain it; but, alas! Dick is as inconstant and capricious as a genius need be, and there lies my fac-simile in a state of non-conclusion; they all tell me it is very like, but it does appear to me so pretty that I am divided between satisfaction and incredulity. My father, I lament to say, left us last night in very bad spirits. I never saw him ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... newly introduced plaster is set the mould is carefully knocked away with chisels, and a true cast appears beneath, giving an entire fac-simile of the original model. Some skill is required in making moulds, in order to provide for projecting parts and under-cuttings; practice alone can teach the artist how to deal with those difficulties when they occur. The above general ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... As the belt was worn only at the hours of drill or parade, it followed that there were lapses of time wherein the paunch knew no such military trammel, and a side elevation of the battalion commander warranted the simile put in circulation by Lieutenant Blake: "The major looked as though he had swallowed a drum." Ray, on the contrary, was slimly, even elegantly built, a trifle taller than his bulky superior, and though ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... Roman numerals; and on the dorso, written by one of the Italian merchants to whom the warrant was addressed, the date of the payment, Feb. 1325. in Arabic numerals, of which Mr. Hunter exhibited a fac-simile at a ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... the doctor; "to continue the dental simile, they are the last aches of your youthful mentality, forced to make way for the intellect ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... declares she has been dying for a closed brougham. Offer her a five-hundred- guinea pair of cobs, and she will burst into tears and say she would have liked a 'little pug-dog—a dear, darling, little Japanese pug- dog'—she has no use for cobs. And to carry the simile further, give her a husband, and she straightway wants ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... 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! you ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... 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
... bursting upon your ears out of that horrible pandemonium of panic-born yells, mingled with the roaring of musketry and the crashing of artillery. To what may it be likened? The carol of birds in the midst of the blackest thunder-storm? No simile can be adequate. Its strains were clear and thrilling for a moment, then smothered by that fearful din, an instant later sounding bold and clear again, as if it would fearlessly emphasize the refrain, ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... at the simile, and bent down her head. Brook was watching her, he understood and was annoyed, for he loved his mother in ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... minute I felt ashamed of the heartless simile, for it reminded me of poor Bill Watkins, who, taken after the battle of Mentz, last December, had been shot by the French as a spy. Poor, rosy, burly Bill! better had he still been ingloriously driving ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... and the negation of God, and that God may be denied to him.[6] 4. God is honoured in those who have renounced everything, even holiness and the kingdom of heaven. 5. We are transformed totally into God, even as in the Sacrament the bread is converted into the Body of Christ. Unum, non simile. 6. Whatever God the Father gave to His only-begotten Son in His human nature, He has given it all to me. 7. Whatever the Holy Scripture says about Christ is verified in every good and godlike man. 8. External action is not, ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... positive and negative charges of electricity of which molecules are composed. You know some believe now that matter is really composed of electrical energy. I think I can explain it best by a simile I use with my classes. It is as though you had a ballroom in which the dancers in couples represent the neutral molecules. There are a certain number of isolated ladies and gentlemen—dissociated ions—" "Who don't know these new dances?" ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... Kirillovitch's speech was interrupted by applause. The liberal significance of this simile was appreciated. The applause was, it's true, of brief duration, so that the President did not think it necessary to caution the public, and only looked severely in the direction of the offenders. But Ippolit Kirillovitch was ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... 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
... have the exact fac-simile of a Royal Court, with its levees and drawing-rooms, where his Excellency displays the utmost extent of his affability, and his lady of her queenly airs. There may be seen, in all its original freshness and vigour, the smiling hatred of rival ladies, followed ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor |
