Quotes About Similes

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

Love's language is hyperbole, but whispered, sibilant similes and promises sotto voce. It's easy to imagine you've misheard

We protect our minds by an elaborate system of abstractions, ambiguities, metaphors and similes from the reality we do not wish to know too clearly; we lie to ourselves, in order that we may still have the excuse of ignorance, the alibi of stupidity and incomprehension, possessing which we can continue with a good conscience to commit and tolerate the most monstrous crimes

As a genius St. Paul cannot be compared with either Plato or Shakespeare, as a coiner of beautiful similes he comes pretty low down in the scale, as a stylist his name is quite obscure--and as an upholsterer: well, I frankly admit I have no idea how to place him.

In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.

And her face remembered was intractable entirely; it wouldn't respond to any maneuver of his imagination, it offered no similes, as totally itself as the taste of garlic.

Stripped of its plot, the 'Iliad' is a scattering of names and biographies of ordinary soldiers: men who trip over their shields, lose their courage or miss their wives. In addition to these, there is a cast of anonymous people: the farmers, walkers, mothers, neighbours who inhabit its similes.

Inaccurate similes and metaphors have the effect of deflecting the reader's attention from the story to the words on the page. Yet when carried off, especially when a simile is original and a metaphor sings, there is no greater glory in the practice of words.

Raging like a lion or wild boar and slaughtering many enemies may be worthy of praise and honor in the world of Homer's characters, but similes claiming that the warriors are like such beasts invite the audience to consider whether it really is optimal behavior for a human being. Is it really something to brag about?

Sound is so important to creative writing. Think of the sounds you hear that you include and the similes you use to describe what things sound like . 'As she walked up the alley, her polyester workout pants sounded like windshield wipers swishing back and forth.' Cadence, onomatopoeia, the poetry of language are all so important. Learn all that you can about how to bring sound into your work.

I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which words were used partly for the sake of their own sound.

great intelligence in a writer if his similes

The tortured similes, the brooding introspection, the jaundiced view of society - nobody ever has any fun in a Ross Macdonald book.

Since my woman's world is perceived greatly through the emotions and the senses, I treat it that way in my writing - and am often overweighted with heavy descriptive passages and a kaleidoscope of similes.

Since my woman's world is perceived greatly through the emotions and the senses, I treat it that way in my writing - and am often overweighted with heavy descriptive passages and a kaleidoscope of similes.

That our work, therefore, might be in no danger of being likened to the labours of these historians, we have taken every occasion of interspersing through the whole sundry similes, descriptions, and other kind of poetical embellishments.

Similes are like songs of love: They much describe, they nothing prove.

One could not stand and watch very long without becoming philosophical, without beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hog squeal of the universe. Was it permitted to believe that there was nowhere upon the earth, or above the earth, a heaven for hogs, where they were requited for all this suffering? Each one of these hogs was a separate creature.

There are events, strange happenings, that strike The mind as emblematic. They are like Lost similes adrift without a string. Attached to nothing. Thus that northern king, Whose desperate escape from prison was Brought off successfully only because Some forty of his followers that night Impersonated him and aped his flight -

My favorite artist was probably Jay-Z. He's the one who inspired me to start writing music. He's a wordsmith. He's very clever. He uses a lot of similes and metaphors. He's a beast of a rapper.

Similes prove nothing, but yet greatly lighten and relieve the tedium of argument.

You must know that it is very injurious to begin with this branch of philosophy, viz., Metaphysics; or to explain [at first] the sense of the similes occurring in prophecies, and interpret the metaphors which are employed in historical accounts and which abound in the writings of the Prophets.

building a tower of description that was in constant danger of toppling over as more and more clauses were thrown on to it, adjectives and adverbs, bounteous, haltingly, found in pockets and pitched on, similes not spared, prepositions dangling and otherwise, metaphors