"Simile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said the Archbishop, slowly, "are what might be called in nubibus—cloudy, my dear boy, distinctly cloudy. I am, to adopt a homely simile, at present under a neighbor's umbrella, which is not as sound as it might be. Behold me, none the less, in that state of content to which the poet Horace has happily referred—nec vixit male qui natus moriensque fefellit. At this moment you discover me upon a pleasant bridge which spans an ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... Mistress, and not the mistress of his Patron. It had been absurd, and inconceivably unmeaning, if, when he was requested to sing the triumphs of Augustus in the Italian Wars, he should, during the brief mention of them, have adverted to old fables, uniting them, not as a simile, but in a line of continuation with the Numantian, and Carthaginian Wars; unless, beneath those fables, he shadowed forth the ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... published a special number in October, 1899, with the picture of a farmer named Krysiak, born in 1810, the year after the composer. Thereat Finck remarked that it is not a case of survival of the fittest! A fac-simile reproduction of a hitherto unpublished Polonaise in A flat, written at the age of eleven, is also included in this unique number. This tiny dance shows, it is said, the "characteristic physiognomy" of the composer. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... si cadat in ea bestia, vel aliud quid viuens, vix poterit plene mori siue submergi in octo diebus, nec nutrit in se pisces aut quid simile. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... not so much in the determination of the cabinet's personnel as in the distribution of offices among the members selected; and even here he will often be obliged to subordinate his wishes to the inclinations, susceptibilities, and capacities of his prospective colleagues. In the expressive simile of Lowell, the premier's task is "like that of constructing a figure out of blocks which are too numerous for the purpose, and which are not of shapes to ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... was not entirely neglected. They learned to read and write, though they could not write much, or very well. Their names are still found, as they signed them to ancient documents, several of which remain to the present day. The following is a fac-simile of Richard's signature, copied exactly ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... There are moments in a woman's life when even a diamond seems lustreless as your eyes, Mr. Jawkins, if you will pardon the simile." Her sleepless night had made her wrong burn so grievously that she could not refrain from sententiousness, even in the presence of this man ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... your own destiny, and for many a night your uncle fumed over it until at last he said that the child who fought for scraps in the gutter grew to be worth any two of the spoon-fed. You know how fond he is of forcible simile, and he frowned when I suggested that Canada was not a gutter. Still, it is too late to consider whether you did well, and I ask, as a last favor, if you are ever unfortunate, if only for the sake of old times, you will let us know. And now I ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... 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 ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... pikas simile al serpento per sia tusxo. Iom poste mia sango rapide ekfluas, kaj mi estas tute en harmonio kun miaj cxirkauxajxoj. Mi marsxas kontraux la blovadego kun sovagxa gxojo, kiel soldato marsxas ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 5 • Various
... Goethe wrote to M. M——, after Byron's death, he speaks of his relation with the noble poet; after saying how "Sardanapalus" appeared without a dedication, of which, however, he was happy to possess a lithographed fac-simile, he adds:— ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... as passionless as chess. And it was about then that Cecille began to draw nearer and nearer in spirit, like a bird hypnotized by a snake. The simile is hectic, I know. But it ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... years ago? That army, the most perfect that any 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 ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... simile of Ts'ao Kung is taken from the spectacle of an army of ants climbing a wall. The meaning is that the general, losing patience at the long delay, may make a premature attempt to storm the place before his ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... 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 a deuced ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... [the folio's] margins," and that, for the purpose of making the list in question, he had "recently reexamined 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 in mind, has been for forty years a professed student of Elizabethan ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... as his audience heard it, seems the suggestion or recollection of the moment. Bacon was always much more careful of the value or aptness of a thought than of its appearing new and original. Of all great writers he least minds repeating himself, perhaps in the very same words; so that a simile, an illustration, a quotation pleases him, he returns to it—he is never tired of it; it obviously gives him satisfaction to introduce it again and again. These collections of odds and ends illustrate another point in his literary habits. ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... tightly together. At the bottom I turned and waved my hat—and I know she saw that, for she immediately whirled and took to studying the southern sky-line. So I left her and galloped straight into the lion's den—to use an old simile. ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... you merely abused me for it. But I think I know one of them without being told. It is that other fac-simile of Leoline and myself who ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... burned, and the place reminded me somehow of home—particularly a big rocking-chair in which one of the guests was seated. It had an upholstered seat and back, and the high arms were made more comfortable by a covering of the same material. It was a fac-simile of a chair that we had at home, and I longed to occupy it, if only for the sake ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... my simile. "No," says he; "you shall be pilot then; you shall con the ship." "Ay," says I, "as long as you please; but you can take the helm out of my hand when you please, and bid me go spin. It is not you," says I, "that I suspect, but the laws of matrimony puts the power into your ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... stern-sheets, lends her—the pretty girl—a hand at the gangway, that has been softened by fastidious applications of solvent slush to the tint of a long envelope "on public service." "Law sheep," when we come to the binding of books, is too sallow for this simile; a little volume of "Familiar Quotations," in limp calf, (Bartlett, Cambridge, 1855,) might answer,—if the cover of the January number of the "Atlantic Monthly" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Huns. There, at Chalons, was fought the most decisive and bloody battle of that dreadful age, by which Europe was delivered from Asia, even as at a later day the Saracens were shut out of France by Charles Martel. "Bellum atrox, multiplex, immane, pertinax, cui simile nulla usquam narrat antiquitas." [Footnote: Jordanes.] Attila began the fight; on his left were the Ostrogoths under Vladimir, on his right were the Gepidae, while in the centre were stationed the Huns, with their irresistible ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... expect a tree, but you see a stream. Now, at last, it must be a great green hill, and behold! you peep down into an echoless mossy depth of glen. At the next break in the quick, up towers a height of fancy and simile! Thus the everlasting surprise goes on enchanting. From wild to wild, from passion to passion, from cavern to star, are we borne, and as we travel there is music about us—music of the true tone, ringing with all the natural pathos ...
— The Song of the Flag - A National Ode • Eric Mackay
... discover better similes in its praise. But what is the oil called which trickles down upon the hammers and stampers? And how would it console a workman who chanced to get one of his limbs caught in the mechanism to know that this oil was trickling over him? Passing over this simile as bad, let us turn our attention to another of Strauss's artifices, whereby he tries to ascertain how he feels disposed towards the universe; this question of Marguerite's, "He loves me—loves me not—loves me?" hanging on his lips the while. Now, although Strauss is not telling ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... was signed by Lord Selkirk and by five Indian chiefs, who affixed thereto drawings of the animals after which they were named, by way of signature, a fac simile of which will be found elsewhere. The surrender was to the Sovereign Lord, King George the Third. The treaty was accompanied by a map which shows that the tract surrendered extended to Grand Forks in what is now United States territory. A copy of the treaty will be found in ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... she was guileless. She reminded him of his linnet, when he gave the bird the freedom of the house: it became filled with a wild gaiety which bordered on madness. All that was needed to complete the simile was that the girl should ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... "The simile is good," confessed the Chevalier. "But there is something in the eye which should warn ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... "that it is not only un-necessary, but conceited in those who would show their reading; but this does not disprove the advantages which are obtained. The mind well fed becomes enlarged: and if I may use a simile, in the same way as your horse proves his good condition by his appearance, without ascertaining the precise quantity of oats which has been given him; so the mind shows by its general vigour and power of demonstration, that it has been ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Indian letter. Here it is." Malachi then produced a piece of birch-bark, of which the underneath drawing is a fac-simile. ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... the Origin. He was like an engineer boring a tunnel through a mountain, but ignorant of how near he was to the pleasant valley on the other side; and, above all, ignorant how rapidly he was being met by a much more mighty excavation from the other side. To use what is perhaps a more exact simile: he was like a child with half the pieces of a puzzle-map, slowly linking them together as far as they would fit, and quite ignorant that presently the remaining half would suddenly be given him, and with ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... 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 ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... What's the matter with her anyhow, Julie? She seemed promising enough as a girl. You certainly found enough in her to make you two congenial. She's no more like you than—electric light is like sunshine," said Anthony, picking up the simile with a laugh and a glance ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... This last simile had evidently particularly delighted the poet. So much so, that he brought it in at the close of every succeeding verse. The "epick" went on, of course, to unravel the threads of the "adventure," and to intimate pretty plainly who "the youth" referred to was. To any one not interested in the ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... the simile, nobody but a Siwash would let her. If she don't like some other feller better while you're ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... mostly ex-military officers. One of these assists in the administration of the Criminal Investigation Department, the remainder control districts of four or five adjoining divisions. To adopt a military simile, they may be compared to major-generals in command of brigades, with each division representing a ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... Parnassus, bell-heather. Helen always makes me think of grass of Parnassus and bell-heather, she is so solitary and delicate and strong.' He wanted Althea to realise that his real appreciation was for types very different from Lady Pickering. She smiled kindly, as if pleased with his simile, and he went on. 'You are like pansies, white ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... end? One flies to the east, the other to the west; they lose the principal, dispersing it in the crowd of incidents after an hour of tempest, they know not what they seek: one is low, the other high, and a third wide. One catches at a word and a simile; another is no longer sensible of what is said in opposition to him, and thinks only of going on at his own rate, not of answering you: another, finding himself too weak to make good his rest, fears all, refuses all, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... The simile is not a happy one. It does not help to reconcile us to an artificial approximation of books that are heterogeneous, unequal in value, and, frequently, composed under influences far removed from the after-thought that was given to them by a putative father. Balzac was not well inspired ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... be a great capital some day," said Talbot as they walked on, "but, if I may use the simile, it's a little ragged and ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... mutually dependent, it does not follow that they are equivalent. Because a certain screw is necessary for a certain machine, because the machine works when the screw is there and stops when the screw is taken away, we do not say that the screw is equivalent of the machine." Bergson's simile of a screw and a machine is quite inadequate to show the interdependence of mind and body, because the screw does cause the machine to work, but the machine does not cause the screw to work; so that their relation is not interdependence. On the contrary, body causes mind to work, ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... in the original reads: avayor antaram pasya meru sarsapor iva, "behold! the difference between us is like that between a mustard-seed and Mount Meru." In the same speech of Sakuntala the Sanskrit introduces a striking simile which Schack omits as ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... pollution, will ruin the one, while the character of the other will be strengthened and embellished—his education properly finished by a little practical acquaintance with forbidden things. Such experience, to him (to use a trite simile), will be like the storm to the oak, which, though it may scatter the leaves, and snap the smaller branches, serves but to rivet the roots, and to harden and condense the fibres of the tree. You would have us encourage our sons to prove all things by their own experience, while our daughters must ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... rhythmic stumbles against this force that constantly strives to drag him down to earth's face and keep him pressed there. Gravitation is an etheric—magnetic vibration akin to the force which holds, to use your simile again, Drake, the filing against the magnet. A walk is a constant ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... 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
... An eagle builds its aerie or nest upon a crag or inaccessible height above ordinary birds. The simile here begun before the eagle is mentioned, and the minstrel's thoughts are spoken of as born in the aerie of his brain, high above ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... "The simile is graceful. Thank you. As I say, you may do anything you please, as you are a stranger here. But if you do anything flagrantly contrary to the manners of the country, you will not find my chief disposed to help you out ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... preliminary canter may be (to borrow another horsey simile) insist on a thorough personal inspection of all parts of the machine. Test the musical capacity of the wire entanglement, screw and unscrew the turnbuckles till the seller cries for mercy, and run your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... grimly. "A simile as out-of-date as my clothes are going to be if I don't get some new ones soon. Not that the crowd minds what I wear," she added loyally. "I could dress up in ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... sight of their foe, the serpent, till each squats and hides himself close to the ground.' The picture of the storm among the trees might well have occurred to Dante's mind beneath the roof of pine-boughs. Nor is there any place in which the simile of the frogs and water-snake attains such dignity and grandeur. I must confess that till I saw the ponds and marshes of Ravenna, I used to fancy that the comparison was somewhat below the greatness of the subject; but there so grave a note of solemnity and desolation is struck, the scale ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... of cities, those monarchs. They must fancy everybody lives in a flutter of flags and walks about under triumphal arches, like as if I were to stitch shoes in my Sunday clothes." By a defiance of chronology Crowl had them on to-day, and they seemed to accentuate the simile. ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... by the majestic peaks of Athos and Olympus. It reclines on the bronze-brown Macedonian hills, white-clad, like a young Greek goddess, with its feet laved by the blue waters of the AEgean. (I have used this simile elsewhere in the book, but it does not matter.) The scores of slender minarets which rise above the housetops belie the crosses on the Greek flags which flaunt everywhere, hinting that the city, though it has passed under Christian rule, is at heart still Moslem. Indeed, ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... Brecknockshire; and Malone guesses that it was when there that he fell in with the word "Puck." Near Scethrog, there is Cwn-Pooky, or Pwcca, the Goblin's valley, which belonged to the Vaughans; and Crofton Croker gives, in his Fairy Legends, a fac-simile of a portrait, drawn by a Welsh peasant, of a Pwcca, which (whom?) he himself had seen sitting on a milestone,[45] by the roadside, in the early morning, a very unlikely personage, one would ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... 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 ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... himself, could have told or conceived what a life Ada led him. She took him up by the neck, figuratively speaking, and shook him again and again as a terrier shakes a rat, and dropped him! But here the simile ceases, for whereas the rat usually crawls away, if it can, and evidently does not want more, Glumm always wanted more, and never crawled away. On the contrary, he crawled humbly back to the feet of his tormentor, and by looks, if not words, ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... and ashamed, and yet hopeful of returning strength. That's art, a simile like that is.—Prudence writes every day, and you hide the letters. And Aunt Grace sneaks around like a convict with her hand under her apron. And you look as heavy-laden as if you were carrying Connie's conscience around ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... 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. And so with the strong draught caused by the fire, and the ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... is a poor simile. No treasures in gold and gems, though heaped waist-high all about, could produce in the greediest man, hungry for earthly pleasures, a delight, a rapture, equal to mine. For this joy was of another and higher order and very rare, and was a sense of lightness ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... it? What business is that of yours, woman? It is enough to say that I do know it, and that I will break all that sort of thing up, or I will break half a dozen heads!" This was a favorite simile of the Judge's, because it brought in the word "break" twice, in such an effective manner. "Well, Miss Emily Owen, what have you to say to all this?" It may be libel, again, to say that the Judge was sheering off his vessel ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... of the windmill go round; (Or, if 'tis a water-mill, alter the metaphor, And say it won't stir, save the wheel be well wet afore, Or lug in some stuff about water "so dreamily,"— It is not a metaphor, though, 'tis a simile); A lily, perhaps, would set my mill a-going, For just at this season, I think, they are blowing. 90 Here, somebody, fetch one; not very far hence They're in bloom by the score, 'tis but climbing a fence; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... phrases which may call up conflicting mental images. When using metaphor, simile, etc., carry one figure of speech through, instead of shifting to another, or dropping ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... The simile in lines 104-115 could have been written only by one familiar with mountain regions. Browning knew the Alps and Apennines. Did David at any time live in a ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... that simile," said the Greek scholar, smiling, "that when a bit of English gets into Greek it goes to heaven, and would better stay there. Perhaps you are right in what you say about fiction. Anyway it is very pleasant to talk with one who can ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... is the principal outlying feature of that typical little South African township. The De Aar road was one block of moving transport, and the usually quiet main street of the village was alive with troops. Of a truth a concentration was taking place, and the Dutch were not amiss in their simile when they likened a British concentration to ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... whole line fell into the scorched grass. Another line followed. They were tall men, and did not falter as they came forward, but it seemed to me they walked like men conscious of going to death. They died. The simile is outworn, but it was exactly as though some invisible ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... you I cannot bear you! Forget it not so soon!" Mime argues that such a thing is impossible, is out of nature; that what to the young bird is the old bird, which feeds it in the nest until it is fledged, that is to Siegfried, inevitably, Mime! This simile of Mime's suggests to Siegfried a further question. In asking it he has one of those brief accesses of pensiveness which endear him, disclosing the existence of a common human tenderness, after all, under that sturdy wrapping of joy befitting the child ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... immaterial gold, A city of renewed Jerusalem And not that New Jerusalem, diamond-paved With love and sapphire-walled with brotherhood, Which He, the Master, wrestled to make plain With thews of parable and simile— So ''tis the flesh that clogs him,' Judas thought (A simple, earnest man, he loved him well And slew him with great friendship in the end); 'Yea, if he chose to say the word of power, The seraphim and cherubim, invoked, Would wheel in dazzling squadrons down ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... top to bottom with notes and signatures in Greek, Latin, and English. The first in uncial Greek was by Tisisthenes, the son to whom the writing was addressed. It was, "I could not go. Tisisthenes to his son, Kallikrates." Here it is in fac-simile with its ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... 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, and grew ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... hand. "Spare me the simile. I detect a vista of curious perils such as infinitely outshines verbal brilliancy. You need my aid in some insane attempt." He considered. He said: ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... Verbal Criticism (1733), p. 14. He added the note: "See a Poem published some time ago under that title, said to be the production of several ingenious and prolific heads; One contributing a simile, Another a character, and a certain Gentleman four shrewd lines ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... his usual manner with a simile: "If well-tuned pipes should spring out of the olive, would you have the slightest doubt that there was in the olive-tree itself some kind of skill and knowledge? Or if the plane-tree could produce harmonious lutes, surely you would infer, on the same ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... a simile was unfortunate. Mrs. Beale's eyes became fixed upon a refractory button of ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... the deepest in Hester. How should he? With that deepest he had no developed relation. There were worlds of thought and feeling already in motion in Hester's universe, while the vaporous mass in him had hardly yet begun to stir. To use another simile, he was living on the surface of his being, the more exposed to earthquake and volcanic eruption that he had never yet suspected the existence of the depths profound whence they rise, while she was already ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... 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 ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... ground, the late Sir James Naesmith, baronet, chanced to pass this singular dwelling, which, having been placed there without right or leave asked or given, formed an exact parallel with Falstaff's simile of a "fair house built on another's ground;" so that poor David might have lost his edifice by mistaking the property where he had erected it. Of course, the proprietor entertained no idea of exacting such a forfeiture, but readily ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... contrast greater than the one between this modern berserk and the pampered daughter of his wealth. A Hun or a Vandal gazing down with barbaric scorn on some decadent paramour of captured Rome was the most analogous simile Farnum's brain could summon. What freak of nature, he wondered, had been responsible for so alien an offspring to this ruthless builder? And what under heaven had the two in common except the blood that ran in ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... proclamation to the year 508, when Theodoric 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)
... 'I don't like your simile, Mr. Atlee,' said Nina, while she whispered some words to the captain, and drew him in this way ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... was of a quality impossible to describe to you unless you have traveled in the high countries. I know it is trite to say that it had the exhilaration of wine, yet I can find no better simile. We shouted and whooped and breathed deep and wanted to ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... 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 ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... 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 ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... in Paradise, is His presence. Here on earth, there in Paradise, is the love and prayer and praise going forth to Him, and the strength and power of God coming back from Him. You know His own simile, "I am the Vine, ye are the branches." From the central Vine the life rises and flows to every farthest branch and twig and leaf, connecting them all in the one life. He the Sacred Vine is on earth with us and in Paradise with them. Some of the ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... sterner features of the Spanish Goth being always strongly marked. The scenery, painted with as much fidelity as truth, is sometimes brought before the eye by minute description, and sometimes, with still happier effect, by incidental touches,—an epithet or a simile, as appropriate as it is suggestive. As we follow the route of Mundejar's army, the "frosty peaks" of the Sierra Nevada are seen "glistening in the sun like palisades of silver"; while terraces, scooped out along the rocky mountain-side, are covered with "bright patches of variegated ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... "The simile would not have occurred to me, Mr Brand," observed Jerry. "I see it now, though. Still, if people do as little harm as they can, ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... war-horse at the sound of the trumpet, when I read about the capturing of rare beetles—is not this a magnanimous simile for a decayed entomologist?—It really almost makes me long ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... roof over your head? Have you got a trade? You'll take her where—to what? Even if you had a home, what then? You would have to get someone to look after her—some old crone, a wench maybe, who'd be as fit to bring up a child as I would be to—" she paused and looked round in helpless quest for a simile, when, in despair, she caught sight of Jean Jacques' watch-chain—"as I would be to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... delight over 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 ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... watery simile; but I know no other element combining, as her glances did, liquid ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... consists of only a few hairs under the chin, the above simile is correct; but in the French edition of these travels, the translator erroneously rendered the words oiseau de Chine, Chinese bird, and subsequently, a celebrated French savant raised a magnificent hypothetical edifice on the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... 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 made ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... 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 ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... good and evil spirits attending us, that is to say, a good angel and a devil, then it is no unjust reproach to say, when people follow the dictates of the latter, that the devil's in them, or that they are devils! or, to carry the simile a point farther, that as the generality, and by far the greatest number of people follow and obey the evil spirit and not the good one, and that the power predominating is allowed to be the nominating power, it must ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... "Voeu de Louis XIII," the "Thetis" of Ingres, we may compare to Voltaire's Henriade and to the Franciade of Ronsard, all belong to the category of the opus magnum that has failed, and of which its creator is proud." With the following charming simile the essay closes— ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... in the preface to his "Original Poems" (Philadelphia, 1806), "Although the war, which terminated in a separation of the two nations, inflicted wounds which, it is to be feared, still rankle, yet the more considerate of both countries have long desired (if I may be allowed a transatlantic simile) that the hatchet of animosity might be buried in the grave of oblivion" (page 6). A little further on he confesses his timidity, when, speaking of the political leaders at home, he says, "I could have enlarged on the demerits of these political impostors, but I feared ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... it is Nature; and there is a natural remedy—progress. If day by day your shores—to use Emerson's simile—widen, if you will not allow your mind to remain at a standstill, like the stagnant pond, but are constantly receiving and constantly using varied stores of knowledge and experience, you need not fear to crush your ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... with some freedom the prevailing opinions of the day, he added, "To me it appears no unjust simile to compare the affairs of this great continent to the mechanism of a clock, each state representing some one or other of the smaller parts of it, which they are endeavouring to put in fine order, without ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... that little dash of descriptive writing. In conjunction with the noun horse Cappy Ricks had employed the indefinite article a, and while a horse was a horse and Cappy might have had a Shetland pony in mind when he coined the simile, nevertheless, a still small voice whispered to Matt Peasley that at the time Cappy was really thinking of a Percheron. The longer Matt chewed the cud of anticipation the more acute grew his regret that he had threatened to throw his successor overboard. He ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... fulmosxirmilo. Lighthouse lumturo. Like ameti. Like simila. Like (adv.) tiel. Likelihood versxajno. Likeness (similarity) simileco. Likeness (portrait) portreto. Likely (adj.) ebla, versxajna. Likely (adv.) eble, versxajne. Likewise simile. Lilac siringo. Lilac (colour) siringkolora. Lily lilio. Limb membro. Lime kalko. Lime tree tilio. Limestone kalksxtono. Limit limigi. Limit limo. Limp lami, lameti. Limpid klarega. Linden tilio. Line linio. Line ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... simile that solitary shines In the dry desart of a thousand lines, Or lengthen'd thought that gleams thro' many a page, Has sanctified whole poems ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... Campagna, the author had his model made of the same material, with the inscription cut in rude characters round the margin; that is to say, such part of it as had been preserved, so that it is a perfect fac-simile. He reads ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... good, and vehemently cheered by the Government, Stanley, Duncannon, and all, all differences giving way to their zeal; Attwood, the other way, good; Graham a total failure, got into nautical terms and a simile about a ship, in which he floundered and sank. Sir J. Yorke quizzed him with great effect. To-day the City went up with their address, to which the King gave a very general answer. There was great curiosity to know what his answer would be. I rather ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... least, could think of a no more fitting simile. But the bright-eyed young girl in the window hard by sent a longing look up to the same moon, and thought of her distant home on the fjords, where the glaciers stood like hoary giants, and caught ...
— A Good-For-Nothing - 1876 • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... that "apostolic plainness" that a Christian minister's speech should have. But they and their likes are extremely beautiful—save that in literature no less than in theology South has justly perstringed Taylor's constant and most unworthy affectation of introducing a simile by "so I have seen." In the next age the phrase was tediously abused, and in the age after, and ever since, it became and has remained mere burlesque; but it was never good; and in the two fine specimen passages which follow it is ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... you will excuse a homely and a coarse simile, 'he will return like a dog to his vomit, or the sow to its wallowing in the mire.' I never knew one of that school thoroughly cured, until he became himself the subject of attack, or, by a close personal communication, was made to feel the ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... glanced at Nancy to see the effect of this simile, which was quite an inspiration, but the girl was intent on smoothing the creases out of her very old ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various |
