Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.

Thomas King

I have been servitor in a college at Salamanca, and read philosophy with the doctors; where I found that a woman, in all times, has been observed to be an animal hard to understand, and much inclined to mischief. Now as an animal is always an animal, and a captain is always a captain, so a woman is always a woman; whence it is that a certain Greek says, her head is like a bank of sand; or, as another, a solid rock; or, according to a third, a dark lanthorn: and so, as the head is the head of the body; and that body without a head, is like a head without a tail; and that where there is neither head nor tail, ’tis a very strange body; so, I say, a woman is, by comparison, do you see? (for nothing explains things like comparisons). I say by comparison, as Aristotle has often said before me, one may compare her to the raging sea; for as the sea, when the wind rises, knits its brows like an angry bull, and that waves mount upon rocks, rocks mount upon waves, that porpoises leap like trouts, and whale skip about like gudgeons; that ships roll like beer-barrels, and mariners pray like saints; just so, I say, a woman—a woman, I say, just so, when her reason is ship-wrecked upon her passion, and the hulk of her understanding lies thumping against the rock of her fury; then it is, I say, that by certain emotions, which—um—cause, as one may suppose, a sort of convulsive—yes—hurricanes—um—like—in short, a woman is the devil.

Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD