Great Similes and Metaphors in Works Available Through the MCLS

"The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor.” - Aristotle in Poetics

“Similes and metaphors are both figures of speech that are used to make a comparison between two things that are not alike. The difference is that similes make the comparison by saying that something is like something else but metaphors make the comparison by saying that something is something else.

A simile says that one thing "is like" or "is as … as" another thing. A metaphor says that one thing "is" another thing. Metaphors do not use the words "like" or "as" in their comparisons.”

- Britannica’s Ask the Editor Page

There was a time, long ago, when I didn’t have much respect for the simile. To me, it was just something heard in English class when your teacher introduced you to the concept with something along the lines of, “He is fast like a cheetah.” Such examples are hardly inspiring. It wasn’t until one day when I was reading King Lear on my own time that I came across the phrase, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.” With this phrase, my eyes were opened to the beauty of similes and metaphors. These figures of speech are, of course, everywhere. They are in our songs, our stories and our everyday language. They are so ubiquitous that we don’t even think about how much we use them.

A good simile or metaphor can reveal powerful truths. Like Jean Cocteau who said the following about his discovery of jazz music: “This noise drenches us, wakens us to do something else. It shows us a lost path,” similes and metaphors speak to meaningful truths that we never knew were inside of us. They combine language and the heights of human creativity to show us something beautiful. Since I discovered my love for these figures of speech, I have been writing down my favorites in a notebook when I hear them. I encourage you to do the same – or to write anything at all that is meaningful to you.

In this post, I have collected 10 excellent similes and metaphors found in materials that you can borrow through the Mercer County Library System. This is just a small sample, and metaphors can play a fundamental role in the telling of a story rather than existing solely as a cool sentence, but these are all great examples of human creativity and the power of art. I hope you enjoy them.

“Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.” – The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin (ISBN: 9780684125299)

Many dream of changing the world. But George Orr's dreams do change it--for better or for worse. Made desperate by this unsought power, George consults a psychotherapist who promises to help him. But it soon becomes clear that the scientist has his own plans for George and his dreams. Why not, after all, forge a brave new world--one free from war, disease, overpopulation, and all human misery? But for every man-made dream of utopia, there is a terrifying, unforeseeable consequence; so George must dream and dream again, forever seeking a more perfect future as the very essence of cosmic reality begins to disintegrate.

“And your very flesh shall be a great poem.” – Leaves of Grass and Selected Poems and Prose by Walt Whitman (ISBN: 9780143107439)

This volume reprints the whole of the initial, 1855 version of Leaves of Grass (with titles and section numbers, as they would appear in later editions, supplied in brackets). Added, too, are a handful of poems from across the length of Whitman's career--these taken from the 1891-92 "Deathbed edition," though arranged chronologically--and selected prose pieces.

“Books are mirrors of the soul.” – Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf (ISBN: 9780156118705)

“Love. Hate. Peace. Three emotions made the ply of human life." Between the Acts takes place on a June day in 1939 at Pointz Hall, the Oliver family's country house in the heart of England. In the garden, everyone from the village has gathered to present the annual pageant -- scenes from the history of England starting with the Middle Ages. As the story of England unfolds, the lives of the villagers also take shape.

“If you lament over him much longer, my heart will be light as a feather.” – Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (ISBN: 9780143123163)

At the turn of eighteenth-century England, spirited Elizabeth Bennet copes with the suit of the snobbish Mr. Darcy while trying to sort out the romantic entanglements of two of her sisters, sweet and beautiful Jane and scatterbrained Lydia.

“You don’t know what’s happening on the other side of the wall, because you don’t want to know.” – I am Not Your Negro (DVD Documentary about James Baldwin) by Raoul Peck (UPC: 876964011891)

Master documentary filmmaker Raoul Peck envisions the book James Baldwin never finished. The result is a radical, up-to-the-minute examination of race in America, using Baldwin's original words and a flood of rich archival material. A journey into black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights movement to the present of #BlackLivesMatter.

“In her hands, I always became the pawn. I could only run away. And she was the queen, able to move in all directions, relentless in her pursuit, always able to find my weakest spot.” – The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (ISBN: 9780143124849)

Explores the tender and tenacious bond between four daughters and their mothers. The daughters know one side of their mothers, but they don't know about their earlier never-spoken-of lives in China. The mothers want love and obedience from their daughters, but they don't know the gifts that the daughters keep to themselves. Heartwarming and bittersweet, this is a novel for mothers, daughters, and those that love them.

“Felt some unknowable stone dropped into the pool of his destiny.” – Woman of Light by Kali Fajardo-Anstine (ISBN: 9780525511328)

Merging two multi-generational storylines in Colorado, this is a novel of family love, secrets, and survival. With Fajardo-Anstine's immense capacity to render characters and paint vivid life, set against the Sange de Cristo mountains, Woman of Light is full of the weight, richness, and complexities of mixed blood and mica clay. It delights like an Old Western, and inspires the hope embedded in histories yet-told.

“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.” – The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (ISBN: 9780395404256)

The Handmaid's Tale is not only a radical and brilliant departure for Margaret Atwood, it is a novel of such power that the reader will be unable to forget its images and its forecast. Set in the near future, it describes life in what was once the United States, now called the Republic of Gilead, a monotheocracy that has reacted to social unrest and a sharply declining birthrate by reverting to, and going beyond, the repressive intolerance of the original Puritans.

“The hands of the clock buried inside her soul ground to a halt then.” – Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami (ISBN: 9781400043668)

A tour de force of metaphysical reality, it is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky.

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. – Pleasures and Days by Marcel Proust (ISBN: 9781847493170)

Proust's only other work of fiction published in his lifetime, apart from the monumental novel cycle In Search of Lost Time, Pleasures and Days takes the reader on a journey through the high-society circles of fin-de-siecle Paris, presenting the lives, loves and attitudes of a host of unforgettable characters.

For more great similes and metaphors, check out:

- by Andrew, Lawrence Headquarters Branch

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