Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Write
A witty writer is like a porcupine; his quill makes no distinction between friend and foe.
—Josh Billings
Our writings are as so many dishes, our readers guests, our books like beauty, that which one admires, another rejects; so are we approved as men’s fancies are inclined.
—Robert Burton
The writer, like the priest, must be exempted from secular labor. His work needs a frolic health: he must be at the top of his condition.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Write like an angel (Goldsmith).
—David Garrick
Writing or printing is like shooting with a rifle; you may hit your reader’s mind, or miss it;—but talking is like playing at a mark with the pipe of an engine; if it is within reach, and you have time enough, you can’t help hitting it.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes
Clear writers, like clear fountains, do not seem so deep as they are; the turbid looks most profound.
—Walter Savage Landor
Witty Writings, when directed to serve the good ends of Virtue and Religion, are like the Lights hung out in a Pharos, to guide the Mariners safe through dangerous Seas; but the Brightness of those, that are impious or immoral, shines only to betray, and lead Men to Destruction.
—Lord Lyttelton
This much I have discovered, that it is in writing as in building, where, after all our schemes and calculations, we are mightily deceived in our accounts, and often forced to make use of any materials we can find that the works may be kept a-going.
—Jonathan Swift