Quotations on / about simile

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

(Ogden Nash (1902-1971), U.S. poet. Very like a Whale (l. 1-2). . . Treasury of Great Poems, English and American, A. Louis Untermeyer, ed. (Rev. and enl. Ed., 1955) Simon and Schuster.)
More quotations from: Ogden Nash

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

(F.L. Lucas (1894-1967), critic, poet. Style, ch. 9, Macmillan (1955).)
More quotations from: F.L Lucas

Aristotle illustrates his view of the relation of metaphor to simile as follows. "When the poet say of Achilles, 'He sprang on them like a lion,' this is a simile. When he says, 'The lion sprang on them,' this is metaphor; for as both animals are brave, he has transferred the name of 'lion' to Achilles." Elsewhere he calls simile "a metaphor with a preface" and declares it inferior to metaphor on two counts: it is lengthier, therefore less pleasing; and "since it does not affirm that this is that, the mind does not inquire into the matter." Now it is true that metaphor is often (not, I think, always) preferable to simile on both these grounds, but the grounds are rhetorical not semantic ones. Terseness is more pleasing and more stimulating to thought than verbosity; that is what it comes to.

(Philip Wheelwright (1901-1970), U.S. philosopher, literary critic. The Burning Fountain: A Study in the Language of Symbolism, ch. 5, Indiana University Press (1954).)
More quotations from: Philip Wheelwright

Simile and Metaphor differ only in degree of stylistic refinement. The Simile, in which a comparison is made directly between two objects, belongs to an earlier stage of literary expression; it is the deliberate elaboration of a correspondence, often pursued for its own sake. But a Metaphor is the swift illumination of an equivalence. Two images, or an idea and an image, stand equal and opposite; clash together and respond significantly, surprising the reader with a sudden light.

(Sir Herbert Read (1893-1968), British critic, poet. English Prose Style, ch. 3, Holt (1928).)
More quotations from: Sir Herbert Read

How easily and cleverly do I write just now! I am really pleased with myself; words come skipping to me like lambs upon Moffat Hill; and I turn my periods smoothly and imperceptibly like a skilful wheelwright turning tops in a turning-loom. There's fancy! There's simile!

(James Boswell (1740-1795), Scottish author. London Journal, journal, February 9, 1763, p. 187, McGraw-Hill (1950).)
More quotations from: James Boswell

Good writing is always a breaking of the soil, clearing away prejudices, pulling up of sour weeds of crooked thinking, stripping the turf so as to get at what is fertile beneath. It would be amusing to carry the simile further. Those bulbs that flower in the sand and wither! The gay fiction annual that has to be planted again every year! Those experimental plants from Russia, France, and Greenwich Village that are always getting winter killed—confound 'em!—is it worth while planting them again? The stocky perennial that keeps coming up and coming up—so easy to grow and so ugly. Scarlet sage that gives a touch of fiery sin to the edge of the suburbanite's concrete walk! And then the good flowers—as honest as they are beautiful! The well-ordered gar den! The climbing rose that escapes and is the most beautiful of all!

(Henry Seidel Canby (1878-1961), U.S. author, editor. "Cultivate Your Garden," Definitions: Second Series, Harcourt (1924).)
More quotations from: Henry Seidel Canby

Baudelaire compared the great names in art to lighthouses posted along the track of historic time. The simile, as he used it, seizes the imagination and represents a great truth, but it allows of an interpretation which the limits of a sonnet form forbade him to develop. He takes the lights of his beacons as much for granted as the sailor does the lights of real lighthouses. But the lighthouses of art do not burn with so fixed and unvarying a lustre. The light they give is always changing insensibly with each generation, now brighter, now dimmer, and often enough growing bright once more. But we sometimes forget that the lights have to be tended or they grow faint and may expire altogether. For them to burn brightly, they must be fed by the devotion of some few spirits in each generation. If that fails for a long period they go out and become one of those dead, ineffectual names which still linger on, obstructions rather than aids to the historical voyager.

(Roger Fry (1866-1934), British painter, art critic. Transformations, Brentano's (1926).)
More quotations from: Roger Fry