Simile Quotes - Page 2

• Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Witty, Clever

  Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.922, GENERAL PRESS

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• Old Marley was dead as a doornail... The wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile.

  Charles Dickens

  Book, Language, Marley

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• Insanity hovered close at hand, like an eager waiter at an expensive restaurant.

  Arundhati Roy

  Hands, Insanity, Restaurants

  Arundhati Roy (2002). “The God of Small Things”, p.207, Penguin Books India

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• Old Marley was as dead as a doornail. Mind! I don't mean to say that, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail.

  Charles Dickens

  Country, Mean, Hands

  Charles Dickens (1858). “A Christmas Carol”, p.1

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• Telling someone about what a symbol means is like telling someone how music should make them feel.

  Dan Brown

  Mean, Should, Feels

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• My stern chase after time is, to borrow a simile from Tom Paine, like the race of a man with a wooden leg after a horse.

  John Quincy Adams

  Horse, Men, Race

  John Quincy Adams, William Harwood Peden (1946). “The Selected Writings of John and John Quincy Adams”

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• Fear is like a giant fog. It sits on your brain and blocks everything - real feelings, true happiness, real joy. They can't get through that fog. But you lift it, and buddy, you're in for the ride of your life.

  Albert Brooks

  Life, Happiness, Fear

  "Fictional character: Bob Diamond". "Defending Your Life", www.imdb.com. March 22, 1991.

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• I know no other way out of what is both the maze of the eternal present and the prison of the self except with a string of words.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Self, Mazes, Way

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• There's an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine -- "Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté.

  Margaret Atwood

  Disappointment, Ducks, Office

  Margaret Atwood (2002). “Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing”, p.35, Cambridge University Press

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• By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself.

  George Orwell

  Writing, Effort, Leaving

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.279, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Peeing is like a good book in that it is very, very hard to stop once you start.

  John Green

  Real, Book, Towns

  John Green (2013). “Paper Towns”, p.183, A&C Black

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• Thou hast the most unsavoury similes.

  William Shakespeare

  Sassy

  'Henry IV, Part 1' (1597) act 1, sc. 2, l. [89]

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• It is surprising to see what superficial, inconsequential reasonings satisfy the most part of mankind. A piece of wit, a jest, a simile, or a quotation of an Author, passes for a mighty argument.... This weakness and effeminacy of mankind in being persuaded where they are delighted, have made them the sport of orators, poets, and men of wit.

  John Arbuthnot

  Sports, Men, Pieces

  George Atherton Aitken, John Arbuthnot (1892). “The Life and Works of John Arbuthnot, M.D.: Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians”

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• Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn't there, and finding it.

  Oscar Wilde

  Inspirational, Funny, Cat

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• Writing is like sausage making in my view; you'll all be happier in the end if you just eat the final product without knowing what's gone into it.

  George R. R. Martin

  Writing, Views, Knowing

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• Oft on the dappled turf at ease I sit, and play with similes, Loose type of things through all degrees.

  William Wordsworth

  Play, Degrees, Ease

  'To the Same Flower [Daisy]' (With little here to do, 1807)

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• And so I began to read,' Sorkar said. 'And at first the complete works were like a jungle, the language was quicksand. Metaphors turned beneath my feet and became biting snakes, similes fled from my grasp like frightened deer, taking all meaning with them. All was alien, and amidst the hanging, entangling creepers of this foreign grammar, all sound became a cacophany. I feared for myself, for my health and sanity, but then I thought of my purpose, of where I was and who I was, of pain and I pressed on.

  Vikram Chandra

  Pain, Snakes, Feet

  Vikram Chandra (2011). “Red Earth and Pouring Rain”, p.277, Faber & Faber

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• Vamps who are dying, or think they are, give a piercing, eardrum-bursting shriek, like the love child of a screech owl and a mountain lion on crystal meth, amplified like a seventies rock band.

  Faith Hunter

  Children, Thinking, Rocks

  Faith Hunter (2012). “Raven Cursed: A Jane Yellowrock Novel”, p.307, Penguin

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• The simile has to match the tone of its surroundings and has to be like a little joke. Writing a simile that isn't funny on some level is quite hard.

  Ned Beauman

  Writing, Levels, Littles

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• It is a curious fact, but a fact it is, that your witty people are the most hard-hearted in the world. The truth is, fancy destroys feeling. The quick eye to the ridiculous turns every thing to the absurd side; and the neat sentence, the lively allusion, and the odd simile, invest what they touch with something of their own buoyant nature. Humor is of the heart, and has its tears; but wit is of the head, and has only smiles - and the majority of those are bitter.

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  Witty, Heart, Humor

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1854). “The Complete Works of L. E. Landon: Containing Romance and Reality, Francesca Carrara, Traits and Trials of Early Life, Ethel Church, the Book of Beauty, Improvisatrice, the Troubadour, Venetian Bracelet, Golden Violet, Vow of the Peacock, Easter Gift, &c., &c”, p.401

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• A plot without action is like pasta without garlic, like Dolly Parton without cleavage, and like a writer without his similes.

  Dean Koontz

  Writing, Pasta, Garlic

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• The simile sets two ideas side by side; in the metaphor they become superimposed.

  F. L. Lucas

  Ideas, Two, Sides

  F. L. Lucas (2012). “Style: The Art of Writing Well”, Harriman House Limited

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• I felt like one of Apollo's sacred cows- slow, dumb, and bright red.

  Rick Riordan

  Dumb, Apollo, Cows

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• Oh my luve's like a red, red rose,
  That's newly sprung in June;
  Oh my luve's like the melodie
  That's sweetly played in tune.

  Robert Burns

  Love, Life, Wedding

  'A Red Red Rose' (1796) (derived from various folk-songs)

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• And than suddenly he was there, charging down the hallway like death in a cowboy duster.

  Richelle Mead

  Cowboy, Vampire Academy, Hallways

  Richelle Mead (2013). “Vampire Academy: The Complete Collection”, p.174, Penguin

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