Simile Quotes - Page 4

• Actually if a writer needs a dictionary he should not write. He should have read the dictionary at least three times from beginning to end and then have loaned it to someone who needs it. There are only certain words which are valid and similes (bring me my dictionary) are like defective ammunition (the lowest thing I can think of at this time).

  Ernest Hemingway

  Time, Writing, Thinking

  Ernest Hemingway (1981). “Selected Letters, 1917-1961”

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• Time has not stood still. It has washed over me, washed me away, as if I'm nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water.

  Margaret Atwood

  Time, Children, Water

  Margaret Atwood (2016). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.352, Random House

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• Poetic simile was strictly limited to statements like 'his mighty steed was as fleet as the wind on a fairly calm day, say about Force Three,' and any loose talk about a beloved having a face that launched a thousand ships would have to be backed by evidence that the object of desire did indeed look like a bottle of champagne.

  Terry Pratchett

  Wind, Desire, Ships

  Terry Pratchett (2012). “The Wit and Wisdom of Discworld”, p.17, Harper Collins

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• The poet, however, uses these two crude, primitive, archaic forms of thought (simile and metaphor) in the most uninhibited way, because his job is not to describe nature, but to show you a world completely absorbed and possessed by the human mind.

  Northrop Frye

  Jobs, Two, Mind

  Northrop Frye (1996). “Collected Works of Northrop Frye: The educated imagination and other writings on critical theory 1933-1963”

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• Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

  George Orwell

  Speech, Use, Metaphor

  George Orwell (1968). “The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: In front of your nose, 1945-1950”

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• As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move…similes arise, the paper is covered. Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle.

  Honore de Balzac

  Coffee, Struggle, Moving

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• We speak now or I do, and others do. You've never spoken before. You will. You'll be able to say how the city is a pit and a hill and a standard and an animal that hunts and a vessel on the sea and the sea and how we are fish in it, not like the man who swims weekly with fish but the fish with which he swims, the water, the pool. I love you, you light me, warm me, you are suns. You have never spoken before.

  China Mieville

  Love You, Animal, Men

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• Plastic metaphors and carbon copy similes that aren't going to do anything for anybody and it doesn't showcase creativity; it showcases the fact that the soul of the music has been compromised to control the industry.

  Immortal Technique

  Creativity, Soul, Facts

  Source: www.hiphopcanada.com

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• One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
  Would be a more restricted employment by authors of simile and>metaphor.

  Ogden Nash

  Would Be, Employment, Literature

  1945 Many LongYears Ago,'Very Like A Whale'.

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• Each reader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy his similes.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Done, Littles

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.64, Xist Publishing

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• When you're looking around for metaphor or simile, I do think it's often helpful to keep inside the world of the book, to gather your comparisons from the stuff particular to that world - be they king salmon and aviation fuel, or pot roasts and spatulas.

  Leigh Newman

  Kings, Book, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Looking for an entirely reliable informant is like looking for a chaste mistress.

  Cassandra Clare

  Mistress, Chaste, Informants

  Cassandra Clare (2013). “The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Angel; Clockwork Prince; Clockwork Princess”, p.206, Simon and Schuster

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• I don't know a whole lot about symbolism. There seems to me to be a potential danger in symbolism. I feel more comfortable with metaphors and similes.

  Haruki Murakami

  Symbolism, Metaphor, Danger

  Source: www.bookbrowse.com

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• The fundamentals of hip-hop still play an important role, cause it's about those similes, those metaphors, those parallels. And to some people it's just about, "Man, I'm really relating to the lifestyle."

  Pusha T

  Men, Play, People

  Source: www.wbur.org

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• Grinning like a necrophiliac in a morgue.

  Terry Pratchett

  Grinning, Morgues

  "The Light Fantastic (Discworld, Book 2)". Book by Terry Pratchett, 1986.

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• To me, it appears no unjust simile to compare the affairs of this great Continent to the mechanism of a clock, each state representing some one or other of the smaller parts of it which they are endeavoring to put in fine order without considering how useless & unavailing their labor is unless the great Wheel or Spring which is to set the whole in motion is also well attended to & kept in good order.

  George Washington

  Spring, Order, Useless

  George Washington, John Clement Fitzpatrick, David Maydole Matteson, United States George Washington Bicentennial Commission (1779). “The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799”, p.301

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• One has to regard a man as a Master who can produce on average three uniquely brilliant and entirely original similes to every page.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Men, Average, Three

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• Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.

  Terry Pratchett

  Jobs, Disease, Discworld

  Terry Pratchett (2008). “Hogfather: (Discworld Novel 20)”, p.38, Random House

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• We only really know what is new, what suddenly introduces to our sensibility a change of tone which strikes us, that for which habit has not yet substituted its pale fac-similes.

  Marcel Proust

  Tone, Introducing, Habit

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• I use a lot of similes and metaphors when I work, simply because it's my best way of describing a building or a scene. I'm terrible at describing landscapes - trees, buildings. The inanimate things don't interest me: I always think, "Oh, no, here comes another building I have to describe." So I usually use a simile or metaphor.

  Robert Cormier

  Thinking, Tree, Use

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• But there are still many who continue to marvel at the wisdom of God in so planning the universe that big rivers run by great towns, and that death comes at the end of life instead of in the middle of it. Divest pleas ... of their semi-philosophic jargon, reduce his illustrations to homely similes, and he is marvelling at the wisdom of God who so planned things that the two extremities of a piece of wood should come at the ends instead of in the middle.

  Chapman Cohen

  Running, Illustration, Two

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• To borrow a simile from the football field, we believe that men must play fair, but that there must be no shirking, and that the success can only come to the player who hits the line hard.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Football, Believe, Men

  Speech, Oyster Bay, N.Y., Oct. 1897

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• I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of thought without profound study of the mathematical ideas of successive epochs is like omitting Hamlet from the play which is named after him. That would be claiming too much. But it is certainly analogous to cutting out the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly exact. For Ophelia is quite essential to the play, she is very charming . . . and a little mad.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Success, Cutting, Math

  Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.20, Simon and Schuster

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• It's no use telling us that something was 'mysterious' or 'loathsome' or 'awe-inspiring' or 'voluptuous.' By direct description, by metaphor and simile, by secretly evoking powerful associations, by offering the right stimuli to our nerves (in the right degree and the right order), and by the very beat and vowel-melody and length and brevity of your sentences, you must bring it about that we, we readers, not you, exclaim, 'how mysterious!' or 'loathsome' or whatever it is. Let me taste for myself, and you'll have no need to tell me how I should react.

  C. S. Lewis

  Powerful, Offering, Order

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• This coffee falls into your stomach, and straightway there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move like the battalions of the Grand Army of the battlefield, and the battle takes place. Things remembered arrive at full gallop, ensuing to the wind. The light cavalry of comparisons deliver a magnificent deploying charge, the artillery of logic hurry up with their train and ammunition, the shafts of with start up like sharpshooters. Similes arise, the paper is covered with ink; for the struggle commences and is concluded with torrents of black water, just as a battle with powder.

  Honore de Balzac

  Struggle, Moving, Fall

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