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Similarity   /sˌɪməlˈɛrəti/   Listen
Similarity

noun
(pl. similarities)
1.
The quality of being similar.
2.
A Gestalt principle of organization holding that (other things being equal) parts of a stimulus field that are similar to each other tend to be perceived as belonging together as a unit.  Synonym: law of similarity.






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"Similarity" Quotes from Famous Books



... the hypothesis is found in Immanuel Kant's "Kritik der Urteilskraft," 1790. In paragraph 80 we find a discussion of the similarity between so many species of animals, not only in their bony structure, but also in the arrangement of their other parts, a similarity which, says Kant, "casts a ray of hope," that all forms may be traced ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner

... that a painting of the old school is in existence, having a remarkable resemblance to the scene described in the foregoing chapter, although it be nevertheless true that the similarity is in all respects casual, and that the author knew not of the existence of the painting till it was sold, amongst others, with the following description attached to ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... her first recognition of him, was quite surprised at the easy familiarity of her reception of this forgotten companion of their childhood. But he was still more concerned in noticing, for the first time, a singular sympathetic understanding of each other, and an odd similarity of occasional action and expression between them. It was a part of this monstrous peculiarity that neither the sympathy nor the likeness suggested any particular friendship or amity in the pair, but rather a ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte

... sleep of death just in the same manner as the insects awake in spring after sleeping the long and rigid winter-sleep, as a chrysalis in the bed of a cocoon spun by itself in autumn. Nature teaches us the great lesson of rebirth and the similarity between sleep and death by the rejuvenation of the chrysalis in the spring. After death the soul wakes up and puts on or manufactures the garment of a new body, just in the same manner as we put ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda

... that happiness consists in power. For all things desire to become like to God, as to their last end and first beginning. But men who are in power, seem, on account of the similarity of power, to be most like to God: hence also in Scripture they are called "gods" (Ex. 22:28), "Thou shalt not speak ill of the gods." Therefore happiness ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... psychically identical. (It is often said the female dog is more intelligent than the male; but I am almost inclined to doubt this, after long and close study of both forms.) It is at the moment when the reproductive element comes fully into play that similarity and identity cease. In the intensity of initial sex instinct they are alike; the female will leap from windows, climb walls, and almost endanger her life to reach the male who waits for her, as readily ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner

... my attached cronies. Our friendship began at the High School in 1818. Our similarity of disposition bound us together. Smith was the son of an enterprising general merchant at Leith. His father had a special genius for practical chemistry. He had established an extensive colour manufactory at Portobello, near Edinburgh, where he produced white lead, red lead, and a great variety ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... entitled "Essays in Application," written by Henry van Dyke. The book was published in 1905 of the Christian Era. From what we can make out, Van Dyke must have been a churchman. The book is a good example of what Everhard would have called bourgeois thinking. Note the similarity between the utterance of the Charleston Baptist Association quoted above, and the following utterance of Van Dyke seventy years later: "The Bible teaches that God owns the world. He distributes to every man according to His own good ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London

... is the patron saint of Scotland: he suffered on a cross, not of the usual form, but like the letter X, which has since been commonly called a St. Andrew's cross. It was supposed that the similarity of the nine of diamonds to this form occasioned its being so called. The arms of the Earl of Stair, alluded to in your publication, are exactly in the form of this cross. If this explanation should be useful, you are most welcome ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 6. Saturday, December 8, 1849 • Various

... The similarity of circumstances in the lives of Buddha and Christ also annoyed him. Both were born of virgins, both renounced the world, both were saviours. There were the same temptations, the same happenings; prophecies, miracles, celestial rejoicings, a false disciple, the seven beatitudes—a reflection of ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... portrait of Bryant we have the results of an intimacy of the most cordial kind, of years' duration,—an almost absolute unity of sentiment and similarity of habits of regarding the things most interesting to each. Of nearly the same age, Bryant and Durand have grown old together, loving the same Nature, and regarding it with the same eyes,—the painter catching inspiration from the poet's themes, and the poet in turn getting new insight into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... by a paper published in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, for 1794, vol. 5, by Mr. Eyles Irwin. It states, that when Mr. Irwin was at Canton, a young mandarin, on seeing the English chess-board, recognised its similarity with that used for a game of their own; and brought his board and equipage for Mr. Irwin's inspection, and soon after gave him a manuscript extract from a book, relating the invention of the Chinese game, called by them chong-he, or the royal game, which it attributed to a Chinese general ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various

... superhuman insight and prescience, could have foreseen the course which human civilization would pursue. All over the world, for tens of thousands of years, a culture persisted, associated with stone implements, and marked by a similarity which is often extremely striking, in races and tribes widely severed by distance and climatic conditions. The raw material of the human product in science, art, and invention was alike in texture ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various

... poet. And by placing this period directly before the creation of Hamlet, Brandes has succeeded in making the relations to the "dark lady" a crisis in Shakespeare's life. The story, which, as Brandes tells it, has a remarkable similarity to an ultra-modern naturalistic novel, becomes even more piquant since Brandes knows the name of the lady, nay, even of the faithless friend. All this information Brandes has, of course, taken from Thomas Tyler's introduction ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud

... species have small hairs, issuing like rays from their points, whence its name of barbatum; there are two others figured by DILLENIUS, whose leaves have a great similarity of structure, and which are considered by LINNAEUS as varieties of this species; our plant is the Stellatum of MILLER's Dict. ed. ...
— The Botanical Magazine v 2 - or Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis

... conceal from her eyes what offends them. A lover undoubtedly acts wisely when he tries to suit his temper to ours; a hundred acts of politeness have less influence than this unison, which makes two hearts appear as if stirred by the same feelings. This similarity firmly unites them; for we love nothing so much as what ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere

... languages and Japanese there is no visible kinship in word-form, significance, grammatical system, rhetorical arrangements. It may be said that the inspiration of the two languages is totally different. A want of similarity of customs, habits, traditions, national sentiments and traits makes the work of translation all the more difficult. A novel written in Japanese which had attained national popularity might, when rendered into English, lose its captivating vividness, ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri

... it came to be a general rule that, when she could not manage him herself, which not infrequently happened—for the very similarity in temperament and disposition between the mother and son made their conflicts, even at this early age, longer and harder—Helen brought Boy up to the Castle and left him, sometimes for hours together, in the library with Lord Cairnforth. He always came ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... specific difference between every thought of the mind, is, indeed, a necessary consequence of that law by which it perceives diversity and number; but a generic and essential difference is wholly arbitrary. The principle of the agreement and similarity of all thoughts, is, that they are all thoughts; the principle of their disagreement consists in the variety and irregularity of the occasions on which they arise in the mind. That in which they agree, ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... out the great alliances which his ancestors had formed, Philip amused himself by wondering whether Athelny was not the son of some tradesman in Winchester, auctioneer or coal-merchant, and whether a similarity of surname was not his only connection with the ancient family ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... The pungent leaf of the betel was in like manner mixed with lime when chewed. (Elphinstone, History of India, London, 1841, vol. I. p. 331.) The similarity of this social indulgence, in the remote East ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... the probability of all change in the organic, as well as in the inorganic world, being the result of law, and not of miraculous interposition. He saw the difficulty of distinguishing between species and varieties, the almost perfect gradation of form in some groups, and the great similarity of domestic breeds of animals to such species. He believed that some degree of change was produced by the physical conditions of life, the intercrossing of species, and by habits causing increased use or disuse of parts. Indeed he thought very many ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... capricious objects. Many of these are of faultless symmetry, resembling the minaret of a mosque; others are so grotesque as to provoke merriment as well as wonder. One of this latter character we named "The Devil's Hoof," from its supposed similarity to the proverbial foot of his Satanic majesty. The height of this rock from its base ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford

... engaging your Excellency's time and attention by the application of these facts and conclusions, to the case of our country. We are persuaded, that the similarity between the two will not escape your discernment, and that we shall not be thought singular in our opinion, that the example of the United Provinces merits at least in these respects the imitation as well as the approbation of the United ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various

... pleasant-scented bark, collected for the purpose of tanning hides, and I could not but marvel that such a familiar process should be practised identically on two sides of the universal ether. But as a matter of fact the similarity of many details of existence here and there was the most striking of the things I learned whilst ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... metaphors, as I often do, which, on account of their similarity to some other idea, are introduced into a speech for the sake of sweetness, or to supply a deficiency in a language. By borrowed expressions I mean those in which, for the proper word, another is substituted which has the same sense, and which is derived from some subsequent ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... prominent in the other. 3. That there was no connection between the mythology of Egypt and that of Greece. Subtract what is common to all polytheistic systems, and what is common to all systems of natural religions, and absolutely no similarity remains. On the one side are forms of human beauty, majesty, and passion, in which the original groundwork of nature-worship is as much as possible concealed by the working of a plastic imagination; on the other side are forms bestial or grotesque, featureless ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... by which she adds to the fundamental forms of construction (which often prove bad space fillers) such items as connect their outlines with the encasement or frame. With some ingenuity advocates of pure design as the basis of pictorial structure, point out the similarity of certain compositions to formal, ornamental design or type forms of plants, flowers, etc., yet omit to state how many of the best compositions they reject in their search for the happy hit or to allow for the ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... as one of the first authorities in Europe. His history is especially interesting to Americans, since not many years ago he played a prominent part in the suppression of a rebellion which, in many features, exhibited a remarkable similarity to the one with which our own Government is contending. We refer to the secession of the seven Swiss cantons forming the Sonderbund, which, like the insurrection of the Southern States, was a revolt of reactionary against liberal principles of government; it was likewise the fruit of a ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... disciplinarian—so great, indeed, I remember to have heard, as to cause more than one mutiny—and my father being a German, and coming from a people that carried military subordination to extremes, it is highly probable I was indebted, for this compliment, to a similarity of tastes between the two. I cared little for all this, however, in 1805, and thought far less of being protected by a prince of the blood royal, than of going to sea, and especially of escaping from the moral discipline of Mr. Marchinton. Finding his arguments ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper

... Their eagerness for liberty was interpreted by the more timid among the whites as the signal for disorder. A demand was made for legislation that would curtail the personal liberties of the Negroes in the evenings. It is well to produce the Act of Jan. 4, 1703, that the reader may see the similarity of the laws passed in the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... her husband by her neighbor. And Myra did not seem to care what Hollister saw. She would look frankly at him with a question in her eyes. What that question might be, Hollister refused even to consider. She never again made any remark to Doris about her first husband, about the similarity of name. But now and then she would speak of something that happened when she was a girl, some casual reference to the first days of the war, to her life in London, and her eyes would turn to Hollister. But he was always on his guard, always on the alert against these pitfalls of speech. ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... barbarous custom must have a classical origin. There can be no doubt that it is derived from those maritime people of old, the Phoenicians. Ceremonies, to which those I have described bear the strongest similarity, were practised by them at a very remote period, whenever one of their ships passed through the Straits of Gibraltar. That talented writer, David Urquhart, in his "Pillars of Hercules," asserts that the Phoenicians and Carthaginians possessed a knowledge of the virtues of the loadstone, ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... occupied by different thoughts. I was charmed with its extraordinary beauty, and wondered how it was possible that it should be so little known as not even to have a name. My companion, on the other hand, was engaged in sad reflections, which the similarity of the scene with her early recollections of her home in the far west ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... believed that Basilicas existed in some Greek cities, but no clue to their structural arrangements exists, and whence originated the idea of the plan of these buildings we are unable to state; their striking similarity to some of the rock-cut halls or temples of India has been already pointed out. They were generally (though not always) covered halls, oblong in shape, divided into three or five aisles by two or more rows of columns, the centre aisle being much wider than those at the sides: over the latter, galleries ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith

... difference between their nest-building ways and those of the tallegalla; yet, on the whole, the similarity is very striking, as may be seen from the ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... Tantrism and Saktism in another chapter. The original meaning of Tantra as applied to literary compositions is a simplified manual.[297] Thus we hear of Vishnuite Tantras and in this sense there is a real similarity between Buddhist and tantric teaching, for both set aside Brahmanic tradition as needlessly complicated and both profess to preach a simple and practical road to salvation. But in Hinduism and Buddhism alike such ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... published later, were early essays by the author whose genius displayed its full power in Arden of Feversham. A reader who will take the trouble to read the three plays together will discover many points of similarity between them. Arden is far more powerful than the two other plays; but I venture to think that the superiority lies rather in single scenes and detached passages than in general dramatic treatment. The noble scene of the quarrel and reconciliation between Alice Arden ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... manner, when Jeremy Taylor,13 after the example of many others, especially of old Licetus, argues soberly, as he does in a letter to Evelyn, for the immortality of the soul from the analogy of lamps burning in tombs for centuries with no waste of matter, there is no apposite and valid similarity, even if the instances were not a childish fable. An equally baseless argument for the existence of an independent spiritual body within the material body, to be extricated from the flesh at death and to survive in the same form and dimensions, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... among the Bantu; from the evidence of other observers, however, they seem to be Nilotic Hamites, and belong properly to the Masai.[15] This would account for the similarity of method in circumcision, which, among both Kikuyu and Masai, is incomplete. Johnston calls attention to this very peculiar method and describes it minutely ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir

... entirely different from what it had been, or what she had formerly imagined it to be; there were depths to everything now. She lost herself; she ceased to exist for a moment; darkness enveloped her much-disciplined heart; she entered upon a second existence, an existence that had no similarity with the first. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... If the picture looks like Terry, someone took it for granted that he'd be interested in the similarity. That's why it was sent. Unless they told him that he was really Black Jack's son. Did the person who sent the letter ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand

... Venetian who sailed along the Arabian shore in the fleet of Solyman Pacha. What Don Juan says about the identity of Elana and Ailan or Aylan we shall not contend about, as the authority of Strabo, and the similarity of names are strong proofs. But we shall presently see that the Arabs place Aylan at the head of a great gulf; and the distance he cites from Strabo, 1260 stadia from Gaza to Aylan, supposing it to be exact, is a proof that Aylan cannot be the same with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... in the composition of the picture, which some of the landscapes might be called with great propriety. But, if an opinion may be formed from those parts of them which I have seen, and I understood there is a great similarity throughout the whole, they fall very short of the fanciful and extravagant descriptions that Sir William Chambers has given of Chinese gardening. Much, however, has been done, and nothing that I saw could be considered as an offence ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... a longer period than the children of Israel were wandering in the desert—the two most dishonoured races in Europe were the Attic and the Hebrew, and they were the two races that had done most for mankind. Their fortunes had some similarity: their countries were the two smallest in the world, equally barren and equally famous; they both divided themselves into tribes: both built a most famous temple on an acropolis; and both produced ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli

... and he had come to them with the reputation for whistling it. Both Egbert and Lady Anne would have preferred something from The Yeomen of the Guard, which was their favourite opera. In matters artistic they had a similarity of taste. They leaned towards the honest and explicit in art, a picture, for instance, that told its own story, with generous assistance from its title. A riderless warhorse with harness in obvious disarray, staggering into a courtyard ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)

... Cassel, perhaps the most radical of the body, whose ideas on woman suffrage are much the same as those entertained in England and the United States. In fact, an American is frequently struck by the similarity between many of the features of the General Association of German Women, and the Woman's Rights Association in the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... free. Free to eat and drink and read and smoke one cigarette every three hours and, in essence, behave in about the same way as a prisoner confined in solitary. The similarity did not bother Jerry Markham, for this was honor, ...
— Instinct • George Oliver Smith

... repetitions in this work are not such in reality, but are instances brought forward to mark the resemblance between the opinions prevalent in past and present times, and to illustrate the similarity of perverted views in various parts of ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... been in consequence of Mrs. Crupp's advice, and, perhaps, for no better reason than because there was a certain similarity in the sound of the word skittles and Traddles, that it came into my head, next day, to go and look after Traddles. The time he had mentioned was more than out, and he lived in a little street near ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... them were forced out of their own countries. As a result, a large number of foreigners—Scandinavians, Dutch, Hungarians, Germans, and Italians—found themselves in Paris and in London, and astonished each other by the similarity of their views. All Europe in this period was discussing very much the same things, and not only the more intelligent among the workers but the more idealistic among the youth from the universities were in revolt, discussing ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... just what Melbury had begun to suspect: Fitzpiers had mounted the mare which did not belong to him in mistake for his own—an oversight easily explicable, in a man ever unwitting in horse-flesh, by the darkness of the spot and the near similarity of the animals in appearance, though Melbury's was readily enough seen to be the grayer horse by day. He hastened back, and did what seemed best in the circumstances—got upon old Darling, and ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... in battle, but by stealth, when he was laboring 10 to open a farm in the forest. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania. An effort to identify them with the New England family of the same name ended in nothing more definite than a similarity of Christian names in both families, such 15 as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... ventilated the idea outside my private 'den,' wherein it first arose, it was treated as far too wild a scheme for serious consideration—for 'Iceland,' to Londoners, seems much the same in point of compass as the moon! And there really is some similarity in the volcanic surface of both. Here, however, the similarity ends, for while the luminary is indeed inaccessible, the island can easily be reached without any ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... fashions in forms and colours and the relations of forms and colours; or, to put the matter more pleasantly, and more justly, there is sufficient accord in the sensibilities of an age to induce a certain similarity of forms. It seems as though there were strange powers in the air from which no man can altogether escape; we call them by pet names—"Movements," "Forces," "Tendencies," "Influences," "The Spirit of the Age"—but we never ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... undulating—in fact, it formed many parallel ridges of low, well-rounded hills with occasional deep hollows or basins between. One could not help being particularly struck by the wonderful regularity and strong similarity of the curves on the parallel hill ranges, as if all had been turned out of the same mould. The hill-range we were on was 1,500 ft. above the sea level. The others—excepting ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... deserve further discussion. With these is connected the question of date, and the poem has been placed all the way from 700 to 800 A.D., even a little before and a little after, possibly 675 to 825 A.D., so as yet there is no common agreement. The similarity of thought in the personal epilogue (II. 122 ff.) to the epilogue of the ELENE (II. 1237 ff.) is striking, and they may be compared by the curious reader. The translation is made from the Grein-Wuelker text (Vol. II., pp. 116-125), with emendations from ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous

... the similarity of Aerssens position to that of Motley 250 years later, in the biographical sketch of Motley by Oliver Wendell ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... that the two cottages comprised by the name of Harbour Terrace were (according to Mr Rogers) "as like as two peas, even down to their water-taps," and even by name distinguished only as Number 1 and Number 2: and that, taking this similarity on trust, Captain Cai had chosen Number 2, Because—well, simply because it was Number 2. If inadvertently he, being first in the field, had collared the better summer-house!—The very thought ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... may have forgotten it, but I haven't. Mr. Gryce, there's a startling similarity in the two cases if you study the essential features only. Startling, I ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green

... comparatively few in number; the distinctions, in many instances, being quite unimportant. In the color, foliage, general habit, and even in the quality, of the entire list, there is great similarity. ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr

... of myth—Various origins of man and of things—Myths of Australia, Andaman Islands, Bushmen, Ovaherero, Namaquas, Zulus, Hurons, Iroquois, Diggers, Navajoes, Winnebagoes, Chaldaeans, Thlinkeets, Pacific Islanders, Maoris, Aztecs, Peruvians— Similarity of ideas pervading all those peoples in various conditions of ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... different individuals could write in that style; it was rather the style developed for himself by a man who scorned all conventional matters, and was as self-distinct in his penmanship as he probably was in his life and thoughts. Anyway, there was an undeniable, an extraordinary similarity, and even Mr. Portlethorpe had to admit that it was—undoubtedly—there. He threw off his impatience and ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher

... A similarity in understanding and talent, as well as companionship together, had made Louise and Eva hitherto "les inseparables," both at home and abroad; of late, however, without separating herself from Louise, Eva had been drawn, ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... glance we can observe a certain similarity between this Book and the last one. There are in each three distinct portions or adventures, two very short and simple, and one very long and intricate. Each Book culminates in a fabulous being with whom the Hero has a wrestle for supremacy, and in both cases he comes out victorious. ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... various depths, of the sun's own atmosphere for each spectral ray, and are hence enabled to show, with approximate truth, I think for the first time, the original distribution of energy throughout the visible and invisible spectrum at the fount of that energy, in the sun itself. There is a surprising similarity, you will notice, in the character of the solar and telluric absorptions, and one which we could hardly have ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various

... cried, 'I have all my life been looking for a person who disliked gravy, let us swear immortal friendship.' She looked astonished, but took the oath, and kept it. 'What better foundation for friendship,' he asks, 'than similarity of tastes?' ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... his important discoveries in the management of bees. Before he communicated the particulars of these discoveries, I explained to Dr. Berg, my system of management, and showed him my hive. He expressed the greatest astonishment at the wonderful similarity in our methods of management, both of us having carried on our investigations without the slightest knowledge of each other's labors. Our hives, he found to differ in some very important respects. In the Dzierzon ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... without considerable difficulty. The smaller man managed to escape; the other we afterwards christened Sir John, because he was so anxious to make us dig out old dry wells, so that presumably they should be ready for the next rain. There seemed to us to exist a certain similarity between his views and those of the Government, which is ever ready to make use of the pioneer's labours where it might be justly expected to expend ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... infinity, they content themselves by selecting those who are, in their opinion, typical, in order that in the short time they can give to this study they may learn all of the characteristics of this most extraordinary race, who on account of the similarity of language have presumed to claim a relationship with them. They will not accept as true what much of the world believes: that Old England is in her decadence, and that her only hope is in those sons who have left her and who, away from the ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... fire, the seraphim, were on the point of descending and consuming him, when a voice from on high proclaimed, that the punishment appointed for Uzziah was unlike that meted out to Korah and his company despite the similarity of ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... clouds of human multitude when they are filled with one thought, as we find frequently in the works of the early Italian men of earnest purpose, who despising, or happily ignorant of, the sophistications of theories, and the proprieties of composition, indicated by perfect similarity of action and gesture on the one hand, and by the infinite and truthful variation of expression on the other, the most sublime strength because the most absorbing unity, of multitudinous passion that ever human heart conceived. Hence, in the cloister of St. Mark's, the intense, ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... Linie, a boy one month older than himself. The acquaintance ripened into a warm fast friendship when the two boys recognised each other again at the same school, and they continued faithful devoted friends until the day of Hoffmann's death. What tended principally to knit them together was the similarity and yet difference in their bringing up and family relations. Both grew up without the society of brothers or sisters or playfellows; but whilst Hoffmann was a son of the town, Hippel's early days had been spent in the country. In another respect, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... the edification of the reader, and it is conceived, that though some of them seem to respect subjects discussed in the next chapter, this is the best place for giving them. "Having mentioned the natives of the South-Sea Islands, I cannot but advert to the wonderful similarity observable, in many respects, between our ill-fated West Indians and that placid people. The same frank and affectionate temper, the same cheerful simplicity, gentleness, and candour;—a behaviour, devoid of meanness and treachery, of cruelty and revenge, are apparent in the character ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... not enough to follow one line. We used the fact of the striking similarity of Grell and Goldenburg to advertise for the former under the name of the latter. The mere fact of throwing the description broadcast, was calculated to make any attempt to escape more difficult. Meanwhile, we were making inquiries about every one concerned in the case ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest

... identified without much difficulty, and the identification of whom adds zest to the reading. All these three seem to me to be mistakes of fact and of judgment. In the first place, the Heptameron borrows from its original literally nothing but plan. Its stories are quite independent; the similarity of name is only a bookseller's invention, though a rather happy one; and the personal setting, which is in Boccaccio a mere framework, has here considerable substance and interest. In the second place, the accusation ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... who affirm that Agnes of Argyll was Alexander's first wife assert that Anna Macdougall, was his second. There is ample testimony to show that the latter was his first, although some confusion has again arisen in this case from a similarity of names and patronymics. Some of the family MSS. say that Alexander's second wife was Margaret, daughter of "M'Couil," "M'Chouile," or "Macdougall" of Morir, or Morar, while others, among them the Allangrange Ancient MS. have it that she was "MacRanald's ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... Varro are not to be acquitted of a certain implicit faith in tradition or of an unpractical scholasticism.(38) The connection with Greek philology consists in the imitation of its defects more than of its excellences; for instance, the basing of etymologies on mere similarity of sound both in Varro himself and in the other philologues of this epoch runs into pure guesswork and often into downright absurdity.(39) In its empiric confidence and copiousness as well as in its empiric inadequacy and want of method the Varronian vividly reminds us of the English national philology, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... rigidity of treatment. If figurative language is omitted it is because the theme does not need it, and does not show that the poem is less carefully finished than Paradise Lost. Its lack of action and similarity of subject to the longer poem sufficiently account for its not meeting with popular favor. Johnson was correct when he said, "had this poem been written not by Milton, but by some imitator, it would have claimed ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... out that these examples are far from exhausting the possibilities of linguistic structure. Nor that the fact that two languages are similarly classified does not necessarily mean that they present a great similarity on the surface. We are here concerned with the most fundamental and generalized features of the spirit, the technique, and the degree of elaboration of a given language. Nevertheless, in numerous instances we may observe this highly suggestive ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir

... the instances adduced by our author, to show similarity of action in the organic and the inorganic world, are irrelevant. The analogies are not merely imperfect; they are no analogies at all. Crystals increase by the aggregation of new particles on the external surfaces of ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen

... just as we find in our Halls of Record. The Commissioner of Patents should be called the Register of Patents. Indeed, grants of land, as they are termed, have frequently been registered by the name of patents, in our Halls of Records, so strong is the analogy, if not perfect similarity. ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various

... There was a similarity, however, between his mother's words and Hilda's, which was not so easily explained, and the coincidence was oddly in harmony with the oppressive constraint that had reigned at Greifenstein during the vacation. Greif could not help thinking very seriously of it all, as ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... heads of mastodons, apparently solely on account of the shape of the upturned snout, whose tip in many of the carvings turns forward. They certainly do not represent the heads of mastodons, but we are not ready to say that the peccary is the prototype of these carvings, although the similarity between the glyphs (Pl. 33, figs. 7, 8) and the masks is worthy of note. One point which does not favor this explanation is the fact that on the eastern facade of the Monjas at Chichen Itza where the mask-like panel is seen at its best, we find a realistic ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen

... Maya race, the Tzendals, inhabited a portion of the province of Chiapas. One of their hero-gods bore the name of Votan, a word from a Maya root, signifying the breast or heart, but from its faint resemblance to "Odin," and its still fainter similarity to "Buddha," their myth about him has given rise to many whimsical speculations. This myth was written down in the native tongue by a Christianized native, in the seventeenth century. The MS. came into the possession of Nunez de la Vega, ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton

... explaining that to make a joke of anything is not to take it in vain. As an essayist, Chesterton stands apart from his contemporaries. Of older essayists I can think of none who could in any way be said to have a similarity to Chesterton. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... remark be well-founded, that the original of Guido's female heads is the Niobe of antiquity, yet the ground of this similarity is surely no mere intentional imitation; perhaps a like aim led to ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... I was struck with the peculiar character of the picture it presented,—the overseer's house towering above the humbler cabins, seeming to protect and watch over them, suggesting the similarity of a hen ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... present fish, and those nearly related to it, advance, however, peculiar claims to the appellation. Their belly and side fins are borne upon supports which project from the body in the semblance of limbs, their similarity to which is increased by the jointed form they acquire at the point of union of the fin with its support, and still farther by the finger-like appearance of the rays of these fins, which are unconnected by membrane at their tips. This curious structure imparts ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various

... to fix a proper medium. Besides, if any one should regulate the division of property in such a manner that there should be a moderate sufficiency for all, it would be of no use; for it is of more consequence that the citizen should entertain a similarity of sentiments than an equality of circumstances; but this can never be attained unless they are properly educated under the direction of the law. But probably Phaleas may say, that this in what he himself mentions; for ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle

... one's-office-littered-with-documents-old-letters-manuscripts-blueprints-and-proofs, to call forth, if the habit has been established in one case, the identical response of "tidying up" in the other. But unless there are marked points of similarity between two different sets of circumstances, specific habits remain specific and non-transferable. There is in the laws of habit no guarantee that an industrious application to the batting averages of the major league on the part of an alert twelve-year-old will provoke the same assiduous assimilation ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... of Argo, from its extent, its important ruins, its fertility, as well as from the similarity of name, seems to be the Gora, of Juba,[Ap. Plin. ibid.] or the Gagaudes, which the explorers of Nero reported to be situated at 133 miles ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... occasionally do resemblances of persons. A momentary posture of circumstances is so far like some preceding one that we accept it as exactly the same, just as we accost a stranger occasionally, mistaking him for a friend. The apparent similarity may be owing perhaps, quite as much to the mental state at the time, as to the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... of his material nature are provided for. Beef and bread represent the means by which, in every country, this end is attained. And among the numerous forms of animal and vegetable food a wonderful similarity of chemical composition prevails. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... has already censured the ambiguity of the piece, by which what is deserving of approbation seems to be turned into ridicule. His opinion was not altogether unprejudiced; for his own character, and his behaviour towards the world, had a striking similarity to that of Alceste; and, moreover, he mistakes the essence of dramatic composition, and founds his condemnation on examples of an accidentally ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... homely reason for all this conspicuous leisure and attire on the part of women lies in the fact that they are servants to whom, in the differentiation of economic functions, has been delegated the office of putting in evidence their master's ability to pay. There is a marked similarity in these respects between the apparel of women and that of domestic servants, especially liveried servants. In both there is a very elaborate show of unnecessary expensiveness, and in both cases there is also a notable disregard ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... me not to have noted the striking similarity of this stronghold to that at the entrance to the Mediterranean. ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... section of a larynx to a trumpet or horn player and he will at once recognize its similarity to the cupped mouthpiece and tube of trumpet or horn, the cup in the larynx being formed by the ventricles or pockets above the vocal cords. Extend the picture so that it includes not only the larynx but the resonance cavities ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller

... her. Vannozza, her cherished companion, her sister, her counsellor, her bosom friend, was summoned to receive her heavenly crown; and she herself to add to all her virtues a more perfect detachment from all earthly ties. They had been united by every link that affection, sympathy, and similarity of feeling, tastes, and opinions can create between two hearts devoted to God, and through Him to each other. Their union had not been obscured by the smallest cloud. Together they had prayed, suffered, and laboured; and in trials and joys alike they had been inseparable. Francesca ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton

... perhaps circumstances in his own situation which made him enter into the subject with even more than a poet's feeling. The tears shed are drops gushing from the heart: the words are burning sighs breathed from the soul of love. Perhaps the poem to which it bears the greatest similarity in our language, is Dryden's Tancred and Sigismunda, taken from Boccaccio. Pope's Eloise will bear this comparison; and after such a test, with Boccaccio for the original author, and Dryden for the translator, it need shrink from no other. There ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... in all the varieties of British, Dutch, Belgian, Brunswick, Hanoverian, Hessian, and Prussian uniforms. Although Belgium had cast in her lot with the allies the people were by no means unanimous in their sympathies; and, indeed, the majority, from their similarity both in religion and tongue to the French, sympathized with them rather than with the allies, who were for the most part both ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty

... states, or rather of tribes, some of them herdsmen, others hunters or fishermen, very jealous of their independence, and frequently at war one with another. Among the various tribes there was a certain community of race, a resemblance of physical type, and a similarity of language. Their neighbours, the Egyptians, included them all under a single ethnic name, speaking of them as Kashi or Kushi—a term manifestly identical with the Cush or Cushi of the Hebrews. They were a race ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... Madam, is, no doubt, a rash one; but so many hearts, on the point of expiring, are by such avowals obliged to displease you, that you have ceased to punish them by the terrors of your wrath. You see in us two friends who were joined in childhood by a happy similarity of feeling, and this tender union has been strengthened by a hundred contests of esteem and gratitude. The attachment of our friendship has been proved in the severe assaults of unfavourable fortune, the contempt of ...
— Psyche • Moliere

... had nearly finished the transcription of the following pages, when I saw on a friend's table the number containing the piece from which this sentence is extracted, and, struck with a similarity of title, took it home with me and read it with indescribable satisfaction. I do not know whether I more envy M. Theuriet the pleasure of having written this delightful article, or the reader the pleasure, which I hope he has still before him, of reading it once and again, and lingering ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... caution. It follows, from the information thus acquired, that the same state of mind is expressed throughout the world with remarkable uniformity; and this fact is in itself interesting as evidence of the close similarity in bodily structure and mental disposition of ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... particularly curious to hear what you think of my explanation of Embryological similarity. On classification I fear we shall split. Did you perceive the argumentum ad hominem ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin



Words linked to "Similarity" :   homomorphism, dissimilarity, similar, isomorphism, homogeny, uniformness, sort, approach, uniformity, alikeness, homology, parallelism, Gestalt principle of organization, similitude, likeness, parallel, sameness, approximation, analog, dissimilar, correspondence, Gestalt law of organization, isomorphy, analogue, homomorphy



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