I Like You

Like REALLY like you!

“You know, a town with money is like the mule with a spinning wheel.” (Frinkiac)

On any given day, I guarantee you’ll hear someone use the word “like” multiple times.

Perhaps it’ll be a filler word, used at the end of a conversation, when they say “So, like, yeah…” Or it may be in place of saying the word said, as in “I was like “No way!” and she was like “Way!”

Seriously, it’s guaranteed. I’ll give you your money back if you interact with people and go one day without hearing this.

But the like I’d like to talk with you about today is the one used in similes. A simile is a figure of speech that compares one thing to another that wouldn’t usually be compared, using as or like as a connector.

Similes are related to metaphors, but we’ll cover our bases there another day. It’s too much to shake a stick at today.

Similes are magical because they provide us with vivid comparisons that not only give us a good sense of a writer’s intentions, but because they’ll stick with us long after we hear them.

Similes I Like

These are wonderful. If you like these, I’ve provided links to the sources in the authors’ names, so you can explore more if it interests you.

“Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders.” — Walter Bagehot, 1858

“Love comforteth like sunshine after rain.” — William Shakespeare, 1593

“Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night.” — Rupert Brooke, 1913

“The conversations … behaved like green logs, they fumed but would not fire.” — Truman Capote, 1958

“False economy is like stopping one hole in a sieve.” — Samuel Johnson, 1788

“Strong men are made by opposition. Like kites they go up against the wind.” —  Frank Harris, 1916

“People loll upon the beaches, ripening like gaudy peaches.” — Ogden Nash, 1941

“Pure truth, like pure gold, has been found unfit for circulation, because men have discovered that it is far more convenient to adulterate the truth than to refine themselves.” — Charles Caleb Colton, 1836

And one more, using as rather than like (simply because I like it):

“A sentence should read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.” ― Henry David Thoreau, 1849

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If you liked these, you might check out Similes Dictionary, by Elyse Sommer and Mike Sommer.

We’ll end with a Robert Burns poem, capturing the beauty and wonder of our world with a lovely simile.

A Red, Red Rose

O my Luve is like a red, red rose
   That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve is like the melody
   That’s sweetly played in tune.

So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
   So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
   Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
   And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
I will love thee still, my dear,
   While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve!
   And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my luve,
   Though it were ten thousand mile.

I hope your weekend is gorged with joy, like a pigeon too fat to fly.

There’s so much to learn,