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Simile

noun
(pl. similes)
1.
A figure of speech that expresses a resemblance between things of different kinds (usually formed with 'like' or 'as').






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Simile" Quotes from Famous Books



... swan" is a simile old as language itself. It would, no doubt, puzzle an Australian, used to look upon those beautiful and stately birds as being of a very different complexion. The simile holds good, however, with the North-American species, all three of which—for ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... purporting to come from the Fayyum, were the alleged poems of Sappho. You swallowed the bait which has waited for you so long, and, if it is any consolation to you, I will admit that in the opinion of the profession, to continue my piscatorial simile, I have landed the ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... thinking," he said to me, with a smile, "that I am going to get the upper hand in this bargain; and I know there seems a greater chance of it. But then I have hopes—I—" The dreamy look, which I have described by the simile of a haze, gathered and increased on his fair ingenuous young face, and his eyes quite ignored me for a moment, being fixed on some imaginary outlook very entrancing to him, until he recalled his flagging voice, to ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... Roger Purdee's land, held under an original grant from the State, would be processioned according to law some twenty days after date, and the boundaries thereof defined and established. The fac-simile of the notice, too, was posted on the court-house door in the county town twenty miles away, for there were those who journeyed so far ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... exultation in the affluence of physical vitality and of spiritual freedom that so often seems to lift her above the common earth. There have been moments when it seemed not amiss to apply Shakespeare's own beautiful simile to the image of queen-like refinement, soft womanhood, and spiritualised intellect that this wonderful actress presented—"as if an angel dropped down from the clouds." Her Portia was stately, yet fascinating; a woman to inspire awe and yet to captivate every ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... One 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 ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie

... a simile a threat was employed that if you gentlemen concluded that these five Socialist Assemblymen should not sit in this chamber as members of this Assembly a general strike might be called. In the whole history devoted to the development of this idea there has been no more frank ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... them. Poetry is dying first. It'll be absorbed into prose sooner or later. For instance, the beautiful word, the colored and glittering word, and the beautiful simile belong in prose now. To get attention poetry has got to strain for the unusual word, the harsh, earthy word that's never been beautiful before. Beauty, as the sum of several beautiful parts, reached its apotheosis in Swinburne. It ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... Guide; for, even in the second, he had exhausted his whole stock of inspiration, and has never written any thing tolerable since. When Such unequal authors print their works together, one man may apply in a new light the old hacked simile of Mezentius, who tied together ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... and behold! the tree at whose foot I lay had opened its rocky side, and in the cleft, like a long lily-bud sliding from its green sheath, stood a dryad, and my speech failed and my breath went as I looked upon her beauty, for which mortality has no simile. Yet was there something about her of the earth-sweetness that clings even to the loveliest, star-ambitious, earth-born thing. She was not all immortal, as man is not all mortal. She was the sweetness of the strength of the oak, the ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne

... over. It was covered from 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 ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... or "Khayzaran" the rattan-palm. Those who have seen this most graceful "palmijuncus" in its native forest will recognize the neatness of the simile. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... more unique, and difficultly comprehensible, are liable to stand alone; they succumb to accidents in their isolation, and seldom propagate themselves. One must appeal to immense opposing forces, in order to thwart this natural, all-too-natural PROGRESSUS IN SIMILE, the evolution of man to the similar, the ordinary, the ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... edition there are added about forty reproductions in fac-simile of autographs of distinguished singers and instrumentalists, including Sarasate, Joachim, Sir Charles Halle, Paderewsky, Stavenhagen, Henachel, Trebelli, ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... may in many respects be fitly compared to corresponding hemispheres; but as no simile squares ('nihil simile est idem'), so here the simile fails, for there is nothing in our loves that corresponds to the cold north, or the declining west, which in two hemispheres must necessarily be supposed. But an ellipse of such length will scarcely rescue the line ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... to St. Patrick—has at least an antiquarian interest. It was given by the architect, and includes, in the lower section, a picture of Renwick presenting the plans of the Cathedral to Cardinal McClosky. The rose window is said to be a fac-simile of the rose window at Rheims, recently destroyed by German bombs; a provenance that may be the more securely claimed since the original has been immolated. As a matter of fact, it too bears the stigma of the Centennial period, of ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice

... simile is more like me,' said Hazel, 'however, if you prefer this But given the spots, the pleasure ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner

... whispers; but there was one place in the camp, Hal found, where they could not keep silence, where their sense of outrage battled with their fear. This place was the solar plexus of the mine-organism, the centre of its nervous energies; to change the simile, it was the judgment-seat, where the miner had sentence passed upon him—sentence either to plenty, or ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair

... "'Simile' you mean, Mister Jacob. Well, it's all the same, and neither here nor there in the matter of a letter. The fact is, gentlemen, I wish you to know why I have sailed this ship to Ken's Archipelago, and under what circumstances I shall sail her ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton

... standpoint it is Maya or illusion which exists as a necessary condition of Pragna. But to avoid confusion, I shall use the ordinary language; and to enable my readers to grasp my meaning clearly the following simile may be adopted. Suppose a bright light is placed in the centre with a curtain around it. The nature of the light that penetrates through the curtain and becomes visible to a person standing outside ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... from the Miss Minetts, and—if it is permissible slightly to labour the simile—their pores were permanently open. Owing both to her antecedent and existing situation, it may be added, Theresa Bilson was precious in their sight. For had she not in the past, like themselves, sounded the many mortifications of a governess' lot; and was she not ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... breeze makes the arms 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; There's a poet hard by, who does nothing but fill his Whole garden, from one end to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... band of "Black Flags," threw in his lot with the Chinese, and made harassing raids on the French side of the disputed border-line. Like the picador at a bullfight, he maddened his enemy with dart-pricks, and the Chinese, who, to continue the simile, had the toreador's part to play, reaped the enmity he provoked. The French gave them battle at Pagoda Anchorage, routed them utterly, and seized Formosa. This was the point where the I.G. first came upon the scene. Once again he was to play his old part of peacemaker. ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon

... To the names of Chopin's friends and acquaintances to whom I am indebted for valuable assistance, those of Madame Peruzzi and Madame Schumann have, therefore, to be added. My apologies as well as my thanks are due to Mr. Felix Moscheles, who kindly permitted a fac-simile to be made from a manuscript, in his possession, a kindness that ought to have been acknowledged in the first edition. I am glad that a second edition affords me an opportunity to repair this much regretted omission. The manuscript in question ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... the usual pictorial representations in children's books of the Tower of Babel. It is a happy simile, and conveys a better idea of the building than chapters of laboured description. Nothing can exceed the grace and lightness of the structure; nothing can be more remarkable than its general appearance. In the course ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... 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

... or two of the choicest blossoms fell on the unperturbed head of one Mr. Graves, a stony young assistant he usually carried about with him; with a second nosegay he gifted another young gentleman in his train—an interesting fac-simile of himself, being indeed his own son; but the full corbeille of blushing bloom fell to the lot of ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... Sunday on the stool of repentance, would there not be a sort of glory, an infernal apotheosis in so conspicuous a shame? Was not Richelieu in disgrace more idolised than ever by the dames of Paris? and when was the highwayman most acclaimed but on his way to Tyburn? Or, to take a simile from nearer home, and still more exactly to the point, what could even corporal punishment avail, administered by a cold, abstract, unearthly schoolmaster, against the influence and fame of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Buddha contemplating his navel. It is a story within whose implications lies all that has ever been said, or ever will be said, about censorship. The copy-readers and make-up men, it seems, could see nothing especially infamous in their reviewer's little simile. As poor George Sampson said of the outraged Mrs. Wilfer's under-petticoat: "We know it's there." At all events, the offending word passed all the sentries and was printed as written, when, too late, it caught the horrified eye of the proprietor. ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... thought how like the life offered by Auntie Sue was to the quiet waters of The Bend, and—his mind finished the simile—how like the life to which he would go was to the rapids at Elbow Rock; and, yet, he reflected, the waters could never reach the sea without enduring the turmoil of the rapids. And, again, the thought came, ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright

... courses diverged more and more painfully. By one way the Roman Catholic portion of the world were seen trooping to bliss; the other ended in a steep bottomless precipice over which the Protestants might be seen falling. [Footnote: A fac-simile of a similar picture appeared in the Church Missionary Gleaner, of March, 1880.] Upon the more sensible and advanced of the Indians, teaching such as this had little effect. I remember the chief of the Shuswap tribe, ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock

... fellow's simile. When an idea gets hold of us in Troy, we puff at it, we blow it out and distend it to a globe, pausing and calling on one another to mark the prismatic tints, the fugitive images, symbols, meanings of the ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... hour of two so gently, that it sounds like the tinkling of sheep-bells coming through the misty twilight air from the green meadows. With which felicitous simile we will give our hero a little sleep, after having kept him ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... simile, but he reflected that Aurora looked much more like a butterfly than a caterpillar, a fact which, if it meant anything, should signify that he knew the worst beforehand. Ercole declined to enter into any account of his conjugal experiences, ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford

... a man on the occasion. Nothing was spared in the way of expense, and when he made that celebrated speech, in which he declared that the republican virtue of the New World had linked itself in a happy alliance with the aristocratic splendour of the Old, and went on with a simile about the lion and the lamb, everybody accepted it with good humour in spite of its being a little ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... 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. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... il fine della qoale sia con bene e perfettione, secondo il suo desiderio. Le mando vna salutacion di pace, cosi honorata, che non basta tutta la copia di rosignoli con le loro musiche ariuare, non che con questa carta: l'amore singulare che e conciputo fra noi, e simile a vn'horto di Vccelli vagi; che il Signor Dio la faci degna di saluacione, e il fine suo sia tale, che in questo mondo e nel' futuro sia con pace. Doppo comparsi li suoi honorati presenti da la sedia de la ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt

... creatures weakened by dwelling in it so long. It is not till the driving back of the evil and the strengthening of the weak, as the light gradually wins its way, that the true results can be seen. It is, to use a simile of a graceful modern writer,[71] "As when you raise with your staff an old flat stone, with the grass forming a little hedge, as it were, around it as it lies. Beneath it, what a revelation! Blades of grass flattened down, colorless, matted together, as if they had been ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... But the simile of the saw is only a rough one, after all, because erosion is never mathematical, some coves have bitten back far deeper than others, side coves have developed, and if you follow down the mystery of some brown brook, ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... the pietistic ingenuity of such poets as Adam de Sancto Victore and George Herbert, who delight in taking some biblical symbol, and developing from it a score of applications which the original user never dreamt of. In such hands a chance simile ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... portal formed 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, ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell

... still been calm. Such an exhibition, however, was but to be pictured in fancy; not to be anticipated, nor desired. What I saw in him—as evidently as the indestructible ramparts of Old Ticonderoga, already cited as the most appropriate simile—was the features of stubborn and ponderous endurance, which might well have amounted to obstinacy in his earlier days; of integrity, that, like most of his other endowments, lay in a somewhat heavy mass, and was just as unmalleable or unmanageable as a ton of iron ore; and ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... masons' yards altogether the same in value to the hearts of the French people as that which the eyes of St. Louis saw lifted to its place? Would a loving daughter, in mere desire for gaudy dress, ask a jeweler for a bright fac-simile of the worn cross which her mother bequeathed to her on her deathbed?—would a thoughtful nation, in mere fondness for splendor of streets, ask its architects to provide for it fac-similes of the temples which for centuries had given joy ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... for First-day last I mentioned its being an instructive meeting to me. Towards the conclusion a simile of this kind arose and spread before my view: As wax when melted by the fire or the candle is then only capable of receiving the impression of the stamp put upon it, so also are our minds only capable of receiving ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley

... these hard, cold things and take hold of and seize them, we know that we have, to use a homely simile, eaten our cake. The supply of pearls is continuous, and under the control of the cruel ingenuity of man they grow to an ordinary size in less than ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... "massed," as Miss Prescott says of her jewels. Every man's legs sprawl drowsily, every woman's head (but mine,) nods, till it finally settles on somebody's shoulder, a new proof of the truth of the everlasting oak and vine simile; children fret; lovers whisper; old folks snore, and somebody privately imbibes brandy, when the lamps go out. The penetrating perfume rouses the multitude, causing some to start up, like war horses ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott

... the hectic flush of fever, and if a girl's complexion were as white as a lily she would be shunned as a leper. In hyperbole the step between the sublime and the ridiculous is often a very short one; yet the rose and lily simile is perpetrated by erotic ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... Nordenskjoeld's fac-simile atlas). This illustrates the accuracy of the 14th century ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... striving in the toils:—such is the simile by which a Polish historian describes the position of Kosciuszko. Not one word or sign of sympathy for his nation in her gallant struggle for life reached him from any quarter outside his country. Nor was he beset only by external obstacles. Difficulties inside the state ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner

... and paltry self-deceptions; his sweet gentleness and long martyrdom. I cannot but think that his portrait will thus gain more in truth than it can lose in ideal beauty. Or let me come nearer to my purpose by means of a simile. Talking with Sir David Gill one evening on shipboard about the fixed stars, he pointed one out which is so distant that we cannot measure how far it is away from us and can form no idea of its magnitude. "But surely," I exclaimed, "the great modern telescopes must bring the ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... hog on ice." Long smiled, but not at his simile. "I hardly knowed what to do when we got to the hotel. I thought she was accepting my invite, you see, when, lo and behold, at settling time she drawed out her money and insisted on planking down her part to a fraction of a cent. ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... was of it—all was his. When he came to take stock, and make an inventory—in his head—of what he was worth, it was by no means such as to endanger his entrance into heaven at the proper time. Naturally enough, he thought of the Scripture simile of the rich man, and the camel getting through the eye of a needle; but it did not frighten him. His father never had much beforehand, when he had the whole place to himself; and now, behold! another knight of the steel-bar had come from—nobody knew where—a place often talked of, yet still ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... her will she must soon be drawn back again into the storm and stress of life. And knowing it, she waited, strengthening her defences day by day, counting each day as a respite while she devoted herself to the child and rejoiced to see the change so quickly wrought in her. Tudor's simile of the building of a sea-wall often recurred to her. She told herself that the foundation thereof should be as secure as human care could make it, so that when the tide came back it should stand ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... If this simile is not enough, we may compare the imagination—"the madman at home" as it has been called—to an unbroken horse which has neither bridle nor reins. What can the rider do except let himself go wherever the horse wishes to take him? And often if the latter runs away, his ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue

... immediately after their return from the South Pole. The Government had immediately acquiesced to their proposition to seek the South Pole, and even urged that they get out as soon as possible. The aluminum pole, a fac-simile of the one already planted, was ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman

... said that some (mention) that which rests on Inference; we deny this because (the form) refers to what is contained in the simile of the body; ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... here, as often, the simile put BEFORE that which it illustrates,—an effective rhetorical, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... his spring. Something struck our plank bridge so hard as to set it quivering like a harp-string; there was half a gasp and half a sob in mid-air beneath our feet; and then a sound far below that I prefer not to describe. I am not sure that I could hit upon the perfect simile; it is more than enough for me that I can hear it still. And with that sickening sound came the loudest clap of thunder yet, and a great white glare that showed us our enemy's body far below, with one white hand spread like a starfish, ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... stirring 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)

... 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 torpor of its irresistible strength. And to the ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... world; and at last an atom of gold-dust specks all the glasses with its lurid yellow, and haply leaves the old miser to his master-passion. So, ever changing day by day, every man's life is but a kaleidoscope. Stay; this simile is somewhat of the longest, but the whim is upon me, and I must have my way; the fit possesses me to try a sonnet, and I shall look far for a fairer thesis; he that hates verse—and the Muses now-a-days are too old-maidish to look many lovers—may ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... mitch-a-kimo," or some such jumble of words. I have never heard this song in the mouth of any other man. He must have found it somewhere among the dusty trumpery of forgotten old folk-lyrics, and when he sang it one caught the force of the Hebraic simile about the crackling ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... che di gentile Amorosa colomba il collo cinge, Mai non si scorge a se stessa simile, Ma in diversi colori al sol si tinge: Or d'accesi rubin sembra un monile, Or di verdi smeraldi il lume finge, Or insieme li mesce, e varia e vaga In cento modi i ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... 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, ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... Queen of Sheba before Solomon. Fac-simile of a Miniature from the Breviary of Cardinal Grimani, attributed to Memling. Costumes ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... half-digested information does not raise the general level of intelligence, which can only be raised to any purpose by thorough self-culture, by assimilation, digestion, meditation. The busy bee is a favorite simile with us, and we are apt to overlook the fact that the least important part of his example is buzzing around. If the hive simply got together and buzzed, or even brought unrefined treacle from some cyclopaedia, let us say, of treacle, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... to a drunken peasant, who, falling from one side of his horse, and set straight on his seat by one desirous of helping him, instantly falls again on the other side. The simile—if limited to periods of transition—is most just. The youth of Italy, suddenly emancipated from the servile education of more than three centuries, and intoxicated with their moral liberty, find ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... 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 suddenly back into ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever

... thought best to omit Heyne's notes, as they concern themselves principally with conjectural emendations, substitutions of one reading for another, and discussions of the condition of the Ms. Until Wlker's text and the photographic fac-simile of the original Ms. are in the hands of all scholars, it will be better not to introduce such matters in the school room, where ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.

... "Poetic simile: I'm going fast," conceded Kirkwood; but he did not smile. It was becoming quite too serious a matter for laughter. For her sake, he was in the game "for keeps"; especially in view of the fact that everything—his own ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... 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 wholly made up ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted

... first thought in vain for a simile, and then, having found one to his liking, emitted with great earnestness that the beggar, Blizzard, looked exactly like "the wrath of God." Whatever the boy's simile may convey to the reader, to Barbara, fresh from seeing the man himself, ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... great care the introduction of what is commonly called mere poetry, and I imagine there will scarcely be found a detached simile or a single isolated description, unless Beatrice's description of the chasm appointed for her father's murder should be judged to ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... year (1903) the walls and fences of Crowborough were covered with the placards of a firm of estate agents describing the neighbourhood (in the manner of the great George Robins) as "Scotland in Sussex." The simile may be true of the Ashdown Forest side of the Beacon (although involving an unnecessary confusion of terms), but "Hampstead in Sussex" would be a more accurate description of Crowborough proper. Never was a ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... sofa by the fire, fit the ottoman to your feet, and adjust the light. If the reader be thus prepared he is ready to commence reading 'The Day of Small Things.' What is this neat and unpretending volume by the authoress of 'Mary Powell?' It is a string of pearls. Yes. Yet the simile will not be perfect unless the thread on which they are strung be golden. Then we will accept the resemblance.... The authoress of 'Mary Powell,' and, we add, 'The Day of Small Things,' feels her own power, and knows ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous

... under me, and loved me. But the whirlpool of Carthaginian habits had, when he lived there, drawn him into follies of the circus. One day as I sat teaching my scholars, he entered and listened attentively, while I by chance had in hand a passage which, while I was explaining, suggested to me a simile from the circensian races, not without a jibe at those who were enthralled by that folly. Alpius took it wholly to himself, and he returned no more to the filths of the circensian pastimes in Carthage. But he had gone before me to Rome, and there ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... Carolina to help fight the battles of Freedom. How well he acted his part, we are not informed. We only know that, after the war was over, in the reconstruction of North Carolina, Abram was promoted to a seat in its Senate. He died in office only a few months since. The portrait is almost a "fac-simile." ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... This simile has occurred to poets in all lands, in all ages. In an old Chinese poem (JOLOWICZ, der Poetische Orient, s. 7) we are told that 'in the south there lives a tree, the Ivy Ko clings and winds around it, bringing the most excellent of joys and happiness in excess.' Owing to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Thee The Heron and the Weather-Vane The Three Mirrors The Two Clocks Sacrifical: on the Execution of Two Greek Sailors at Swansea Wales to "Punch" Welcome! Change False as Fair Heads and Hearts Fall of Sebastopol To Lord Derby Unrequited The Household Spirit Had I a Heart A Bridal Simile Song I would my Love Death in Life Song of the Strike Nature's Heroes: the Rhondda Valley Disaster Elegy on the Death of a Little Child Magdalene Love Walks with Humanity Yet The Two Trees Stanzas Verses, written after Reading a Biography of His Grace the Duke ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... breath—and gasped, for the pungent fumes, acrid and penetrating, of sulphuric and nitric acids, stabbed her lungs. It was like the breath of hell, to fit the simile, and aptly Professor Burr seemed the devil himself, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

... experiments. The long distance experiments may consist either of the receiving of single words, names, etc., or else distinct, clear messages or ideas. Some find it no more difficult to reproduce simile geometrical designs, such as circles, squares, triangles, etc., than to reproduce words ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi

... and with this somewhat far-fetched simile, does a German tourist, Edward Boas by name, commence his narrative of a recent pilgrimage to the far north. Undeterred by the disadvantageous accounts given of those regions by a traveller who had shortly before visited them, and unseduced by the allurements of more southerly climes, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... PICTURE represents the kátso-yisçà n, or great plumed arrows. These arrows are the especial great mystery, the potent healing charm of this dance. The picture is supposed to be a fac simile of a representation of these weapons, shown to the prophet when he visited the abode of the Tsilkè-¢igini, or young men gods, where he first saw the arrows (paragraph 47). There are eight arrows. Four are in the center, lying parallel to one another—two ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews

... you are in a position to appreciate the full force of this last simile; and, for myself, I should have taken the chef's word for it, without experiment. Mr Hamerton ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... think it was Tom who employed that truly Suffolk simile—"I look upon this here chapel as the biler, yeou togither as the dumplins, and I'm the ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome

... Vol. 1, p. 357. G.T. Curtis, Commentaries on the Constitution, pp. 371, 381, presents a very careful analysis of Hamilton's plan. For fac-simile copy of Hamilton's plan, see Documentary History of the Constitution (a recent Government publication), ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... the simile fits not; you meant to say: Fair as the flame of sunset. "They call me Mimi; (like an echo) They call me Mimi, ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica

... the extreme. Each had, in her own favorite fashion, "kicked over the traces," as the matron's son said in town-meeting (much to the joy of the village fathers), and to such purpose that, to continue the light-minded simile, very little harness was left to guide them withal. Mrs. Blair, being "high sperited," like all the Coxes from whom she sprung, had now so tyrannized over the last of her series of room-mates, so browbeaten and intimidated her, that the latter had actually taken to her bed with a slow-fever ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... 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

... 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 scythe ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... the coming crisis, volunteers a confession, but invites you to a comparison of the heads. With his outrageous Tory hatred of the Yankees, he, of course, declares there's no comparison; ridicules the fac-simile, and hastily seizing what he mistakes for the counterfeit, confounds the company by a quotation from the Latin of "Terence"—that very small fragment of the Eunuchus which Plunkett forced into his head through the opposite pole of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... clanging ... that I ought to wait, say a week at least having killed all your mules for you, before I shot down your dogs—but not being exactly Phoibos Apollon, you are to know further that when I did think I might go modestly on, ... [Greek: omoi], let me get out of this slough of a simile, never mind with what dislocation of ancles! Plainly, from waiting and turning my eyes away (not from you, but from you in your special capacity of being written-to, not spoken-to) when I turned again you had grown formidable somehow—though that's ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... in my office like a nigger and by mid-day had got almost as black as my simile! We are coaling and life has grown dark and noisy. In the middle of it, Ashmead-Bartlett came aboard to see me. He has his quarters on the Queen Elizabeth as one of the Admiralty authorised Press Correspondents, or rather, as the only authorised correspondent. In Manchuria he was known and his ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... looking at Esmond, as much as to say, "You know where that simile came from—from our talk, and our bottle ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... semantic or grammatical parallelism, but there is a general binary pattern throughout. Typically, the first unit is a simple sentence, the second almost any grammatical structure—an appositive, a prepositional phrase, a participle, the second element of a compound verb, a dependent clause. A simile—in grammatical terms, an adverbial phrase—sometimes constitutes the second element. These pairs are often balanced roughly by the presence of two, three, or four accents in each constituent; there are a large number of imbedded iambic and anapestic feet, which ...
— Fragments Of Ancient Poetry • James MacPherson

... and experience justify this excellent simile. God's common call is to all His creatures who live within the sound of His Gospel. His special call is when He bestows the grace, peace, and pardon of the Gospel of Christ upon His people. The brooding note is when He gathers ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... friendship which strikes its fibres into the soil underlying passion, and godlike in its endurance. The friendship of the two young men passed into a proverb, a proverb which is the crystallization of history. As David and Jonathan, is friendship's strongest simile. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... accompanied by a half-grown boy, carrying a young fawn she had brought me as a present. I was delighted with the pretty creature—with its soft eyes and dappled coat; but having often heard the simile, "as wild as a fawn," I did not anticipate much success in taming it. To my great surprise, it soon learned to follow me like a dog. Wherever I went, there Fan was sure to be. At breakfast, she would ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

... yesterday, as I said, we walked forth through the ancient street of Linlithgow, and, coming to the market-place, stopped to look at an elaborate and heavy stone fountain, which we found by an inscription to be the fac-simile of an old one that used to stand on the same site. Turning to the right, the outer entrance to the palace fronts on this market-place, if such it be; and close to it, a little on one side, is the church. A young ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the fragment of the neck, is quite perfect; it has been impressed with a seal in reddish-coloured wax; a portion of it remains, with a partly obliterated inscription, in Roman characters, of which we have been enabled to give the accompanying fac-simile. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various

... He laughed at this simile, and continued: 'I shall be all new again. My illness has given me a fine cleaning. But what was it you were asking me? No, nobody was there. I was suffering all by myself at the bottom of a black hole. Nobody, nobody. And beyond that, nothing—I can see ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... cannot but take notice of the great Use it is to an Audience, that a Person should thus preside over their Heads like the Director of a Consort, in order to awaken their Attention, and beat time to their Applauses; or, to raise my Simile, I have sometimes fancied the Trunk-maker in the upper Gallery to be like Virgil's Ruler of the Wind, seated upon the Top of a Mountain, who, when he struck his Sceptre upon the Side of it, roused an Hurricane, and set the whole Cavern in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... mango trees among the plants sent up by Mr. Caruthers, and I was surprised to see among them also a shrub that is the pest of Tahiti and will become so here if it is planted. In the afternoon, the rain being then only a high mist, Simile and I began to set out the things. While busy at this I saw three or four beautiful young men, followed by a troop of dogs, pass along our road towards the bush. I have seldom seen more graceful, elegant creatures than these fellows. They ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

... respects the fac-simile of our Charles the Second. Like Charles, he was a good-natured man, uttl destitute of sensibility. Like Charles, he had good natural talents, which a deplorable indolence rendered useless to the state. Like Charles, he thought all men corrupted and interested, and yet did ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... infer from 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 ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton

... artists work seriatim; some can work only when the pen is in their hands; and the blotted page speaks eloquently enough of the artistic processes of mind to which their most passionate passages are subjected before they come to the reader's eye. Think of the fac-simile of Byron's handwriting in "Childe Harold"! It shows a soul rapt almost beyond the power of writing. But the blots and erasures were not made by a "fine frenzy"; they speak no less eloquently for an artistic taste and skill excited and alert, and able to guide the frenzy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... be aware that the style was becoming as unfashionable as it had always, save on very exceptional subjects, been ungraceful. Even on Wilson, who was to the manner born of riotous spirits, it often sits awkwardly; in De Quincey's case it is, to borrow Sir Walter's admirable simile in another case, like "the forced impudence of a bashful man." Grim humour he can manage admirably, and he also—as in the passage about the fate which waited upon all who possessed anything which might be convenient to ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... brought her up, than he is to say mass." For here L'Isle's eye fell on a fat priest, toiling up the hill beside him. "Though he may be as fit for that as some of these gentry. No more fit," continued he, struggling after another simile, "than for a professor of Greek literature." For during his late solitude his thoughts had often wandered back to his old haunts, before he had broken off a promising career at Oxford, to join the first British expedition ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... is no identification of coals with money; but in the German legends of Rubezahl, there is a tale of a charcoal-burner who found them changed to gold. Coins are called shiners because they shine like glowing coals, and I dare say that the simile exists in ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... the bees; and while white clouds floated in the majesty of silence across the blue deeps of the heavens. The air was so full of life and reviving, that it seemed like the crude substance that God might take to make babies' souls of—only the very simile smells of materialism, and therefore I ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald

... 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 almost no trouble would at once fit into the gaps he had necessarily left, and transform a ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... 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 ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... can stay,' he said slowly. 'You can't tear love up by the roots and plant it in a pot and call it friendship. If you try, something will happen. Excuse me if the simile sounds lyric, but I don't happen to think of a better one, on the spur of the moment. I'll behave all right before the others, but I had better go away to-morrow morning. The thing will only get worse if I keep on ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... clear and simple style how these extraordinary pictures are taken through solids. Full description is given of the apparatus used, and the text is profusely illustrated with half tone illustrations giving fac-simile copies of the pictures taken from the negatives of the author. ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue

... he had the attraction to quicken his steps homewards of a pretty young wife and two little twin daughters, Mary and Annie, as like each other as two rosebuds partially opened, and as like their mother, too, as the objects of our simile are ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... Robson persisted in calling it. It was seldom that Bell was taken with a humorous idea; but this once having hatched a solitary joke, she was always clucking it into notice—to go on with her own poultry simile. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... hour, it may be mentioned here that this is a social rock on which many English people strike. I use this nautical simile advisedly since, not so very long ago, no less a person than a British Admiral wishing to follow the hours to which he was accustomed paid his official call on the Dutch Naval Commander at five o'clock. The Dutch Admiral, who was not ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser



Words linked to "Simile" :   figure of speech, image, figure, trope



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