Liken Quotes & Sayings

Deep violets, you liken to The kindest eyes that look on you, Without a thought disloyal. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Posthumous fame is a plant of tardy growth, for our body must be the seed of it; or we may liken it to a torch, which nothing but the last spark of life can light up; or we may compare it to the trumpet of the archangel, for it is blown over the dead; but unlike that awful blast, it is of earth, not of heaven, and can neither rouse nor raise us. — Charles Caleb Colton

I always liken it to being a referee - if you notice the referee, that's not a good thing. — Chris Harrison

When I'm not around you that is when I feel breathless. I liken it to being a fish, and you are my water. When I'm not around you, I feel as though I cannot breathe. And you have to understand the irony in that because I've never in my entire existence ever needed to. — S.L. Naeole

I've seen you around. You liken yourself a bad ass, and darlin', you are. Minus the bad. — Donna Lynn Hope

Imagine our descendants in the year 2200 or 2500. They might liken us to aliens who have treated the Earth as if it were a mere stopover for refueling, or even worse, characterize us as barbarians who would ransack their own home. — Paul J. Crutzen

True virtue would never liken its rewards to points on a loyalty card, not because it is its own reward, but because it is not something we should practice to accrue future benefits. — Julian Baggini

Ankh-Morpork! Pearl of cities! This is not a completely accurate description, of course - it was not round and shiny - but even its worst enemies would agree that if you had to liken Ankh-Morpork to anything, then it might as well be a piece of rubbish covered with the diseased secretions of a dying mollusc. — Terry Pratchett

Back then, and even now, I wonder: Am I "empowered"? If you have to hide your hypersensitivity, are you really a "strong woman"? Sometimes another voice enters my head, shooing these thoughts aside. This one tells me that the only really good performance is one where you make yourself vulnerable while pushing beyond your familiar comfort zone. I liken it to having an intense, hyper-real dream, where you step off a cliff but don't fall to your death. — Kim Gordon

He is very fond of me, almost too fond. I could do with less caressing and more rationality. I should like to be less of a pet and more of a friend, if I might choose; but I won't complain of that: I am only afraid his affection loses in depth where it gains in ardour. I sometimes liken it to a fire of dry twigs and branches compared with one of solid coal, very bright and hot; but if it should burn itself out and leave nothing but ashes behind. — Anne Bronte

The truest comparison we can make of love is to liken it to a fever; we have no more power over the one than the other, either as to its violence or duration. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

I liken an affair to the shattering of a Waterford crystal vase. You can glue it back together, but it will never be the same again. — John M. Gottman

At every stage, the world that breaks in through our senses struggles to find a footing in our brains. We might liken memories to the messages recorded on tape, but we mistake the message for the medium, or the other way round, for memory is the tape itself. When I listen to my memories now, I believe that all they tell me are the stories about themselves. — Zia Haider Rahman

Human life can be liken to that of a flower, its beautiful when it blooms, though yours may delay but when it blooms, it will be the rarest and the most beautiful of all. — Amenorhu Kwaku

The choices Israelis face and the decisions they make, day in and day out, are literally the difference between life and death. In many ways, I liken their reactions to the way I felt while serving in Iraq. — Pete Hegseth

Right up until camera time, I was sweaty and green from having to touch my own eyeballs like that. If you've never had to do it, I'd say it's not as quease-making as when you lose your first tampon string, but equally as queasish to a self-breast exam. If you are male, I would liken it to touching your own eyeball, and thank you for buying this book. — Tina Fey

Though poets might prefer a more evocative comparison, astrophysicists liken the sun to a nuclear fusion reactor. — Eric W. Sanderson

Most authors liken the struggle of writing to something mighty and macho, like wrestling a bear. Writing a book is nothing like that. It is a small, slow crawl to the finish line. Honestly, I have moments when I don't even care if anyone reads this book. I just want to finish it. — Amy Poehler

The sleep deprivation after children is so real. I liken it to what it must feel like to walk on the moon and to cry the whole time because you had heard that the moon was supposed to be great but in truth it totally sucks. — Amy Poehler

..And they spun, he and the blackness.
And as they spun supernaturally downward in a motion that Gabe could only liken to a flushing toilet, Tzaddik was engaging the enemy. This truth was lost on Gabriel Katz, but as long as he held on and fought with every ounce of his strength, every evil dot of that malevolent force, that legion of Hell sent to destroy the boy, was engaged instead with Tzaddik Gabrielus, chosen by God for that very task. — Carla Coon

Silence is one of worst, most vocal enemies, yet people go through many bouts of depression not sharing what is happening. People don't understand that, but as someone who suffers from it, I can tell you that it's difficult to be objective about the gray.
I described depression to my therapist as a misty fog that surrounds me, heavy on my shoulders, pervading everything and nothing at all. I liken depression to a bird stealing into the depths of your soul, pecking at your disposition until nothing is left.
And that is when you break into pieces. — Rachel Thompson

Numa forbade the Romans to revere an image of God which had the form of man or beast. Nor was there among them in this earlier time any painted or graven likeness of Deity, 8 but while for the first hundred and seventy years they were continually building temples and establishing sacred shrines, they made no statues in bodily form for them, convinced that it was impious to liken higher things to lower, and that it was impossible to apprehend Deity except by the intellect. — Plutarch

And she has a thousand virtues and not one acknowledged sin, But she is the sort of person you could liken to a pin. And she pricks you, and she sticks you, in a way that can't be said, When you seek for what has hurt you, why, you cannot find the head. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox

What is the end of Fame? 'tis but to fill A certain portion of uncertain paper: Some liken it to climbing up a hill, Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour: For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill, And bards burn what they call their "midnight taper," To have, when the original is dust, A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust. — Lord Byron

Sometimes a producer and an artist get together and they make magic like Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson. As far as my own music career - you could liken my chemistry with Timbaland to Marty Scorsese and Robert De Niro. — Justin Timberlake

Find your "self-culture" is hero's work. I liken it to the journey of a warrior who is preparing for battle. There is no violence in the battle, but there is a plan of attack and a methodology that you need to employ to complete the journey. Page 12 — Victoria Lorient-Faibish

I have a theory that most people disagree with. I really feel that acting for film and acting for the stage are two different crafts. I think that they share things in common. But I liken it to a painter switching over to photography. — Jordan Bridges

I liken Sleater-Kinney to a freight train. It felt like this incredible, forward-moving, powerful energy. — Janet Weiss

Well oddly enough, I liken the years at MGM, and I was there for about eight years, to doing stock, what we used to call repertory or stock, playing a whole bunch of different roles. — Angela Lansbury

Why, if one wants to compare life to anything, one must liken it to being blown through the Tube at fifty miles an hour
landing at the other end without a single hairpin in one's hair! Shot out at the feet of God entirely naked! Tumbling head over heels in the asphodel meadows like brown paper parcels pitched down a shoot in the post office! With one's hair flying back like the tail of a race-horse. Yes, that seems to express the rapidity of life, the perpetual waste and repair; all so casual, all so haphazard ...
But after life. The slow pulling down of thick green stalks so that the cup of the flower, as it turns over, deluges one with purple and red light. Why, after all, should one not be born there as one is born here, helpless, speechless, unable to focus one's eyesight, groping at the roots of the grass, at the toes of the Giants? — Virginia Woolf

Who but the sports-mad [Norman] Mailer would liken the battle between God and the Devil to a game of American football? The contest, for sure, has with [sic] own laws (so that after God and the Devil 'tackle a guy, they don't kick him in the head'), but each side is not above cheating - with God breaking the rules occasionally by throwing in 'a miracle'. Strangely, Mailer doesn't mention Jesus in this agonising analogy, but then the notion of the 'super-sub' may be an image too far even for him. — Christopher Hitchens

I liken the current situation to that of the Starship Enterprise. The shields are up and the Klingons are shooting at us and every time they land a punch they are sapping our power. — Rupert Lowe

I will make love my greatest weapon and none on whom I call can defend against its force.
My reasoning they may counter; my speech they may distrust; my apparel they may disapprove; my face they may reject; and even my bargains may cause them suspicion; yet my love will melt all hearts liken to the sun whose rays soften the coldest clay.
I will greet this day with love in my heart. — Og Mandino

I really feel that acting for film and acting for the stage are two different crafts. I think that they share things in common. But I liken it to a painter switching over to photography. There are similar things - you have to be conscious of light and color and form - but it's a whole different medium. — Jordan Bridges

I don't know if there is really an objective truth about either. I liken this to what Buddhism says about the individual, that change starts with the individual. I think it is really about purifying your own actions, and I have seen that in my own life. — Karan Bajaj

Liken had discovered that she was scared of heights, secretly read erotic stories, and had incredibly ticklish feet. — Marly Chance

Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance - not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any once place is always replete with new improvisations. — Jane Jacobs

I much prefer playing the bad guys. I think they are always the most interesting characters. I liken it to painting: if you're playing the good guy, you get three colors: red, white and blue. But if you're the bad guy, you get the whole palette. — Ronny Cox

This world-
To what may I liken it?
To autumn fields
lit dimly in the dusk
by lightning flashes. — Yu Minamoto

Then, just for a blessed few hours, he had climbed out of that chopper into the high, cold, piney air of Bhutan, and gone for a ramble in the king's Land Rover, and hiked up a misty mountain that had struck him as being straight from a 1970s album cover. And he had done some introspection about the fact that he couldn't even take such a lovely place at face value but only liken it to such pop culture references. — Neal Stephenson

We often marvel at how introverted, geeky, kid 'blossom' into secure and happy adults. We liken it to a metamorphosis. However, maybe it's not the children who change but their environments. As adults they get to select the careers, spouses, and social circles that suit them. They don't have to live in whatever culture they'er plunked into. — Susan Cain

Don't liken me to that [SOB]. Anybody that lets his public policies be mixed up with religious prejudice is a plain [GD] fool. — Huey Long

Hate. The word is thrown around as uselessly and as often as love is, and is used as a means in which to accuse and inflict damage; the weak-in-argument (weak in general) use it to discredit those with whom they disagree rather than dissect the issues for what they really are. I liken it to the predictable ad hominem attack, which is about as transparent as those who so ridiculously claim to know what's in the heart of another. — Donna Lynn Hope

I liken myself to a little girl having a tea party at the house all of the time. I actually dress up more in my home than I do walking down the street just because it is so much fun to play dress up. — Blake Lively

When describing nature, a writer should seize upon small details, arranging them so that the reader will see an image in his mind after he closes his eyes. For instance: you will capture the truth of a moonlit night if you'll write that a gleam like starlight shone from the pieces of a broken bottle, and then the dark, plump shadow of a dog or wolf appeared. You will bring life to nature only if you don't shrink from similes that liken its activities to those of humankind. — Anton Chekhov

On the haggard face of every man among these prisoners, the same expression sat. I know not what to liken it to. It had something of that strained attention which we see upon the faces of the blind and deaf, mingled with a kind of horror, as though they had all been secretly terrified. — Charles Dickens

I used to teach writing in a federal prison, and for my students' benefit, I would liken the narrative use of this highly personal point of view to a boxer's getting in close to his opponent. — Norman Lock

If you mean to be wicked, here's my first piece of advice: never fish for compliments by demeaning yourself. Assume there is no place I'd rather be than by your side."
"But I know that's not true."
"It doesn't matter what my truth is. Know your worth and assume others do, too. Modesty, if you consider it, is the most unforgivable sort of falsehood: it's a lie that does damage to no one but yourself."
She laughed. "Damage? I like that. Of course, you're a heretic by profession. Most gentlemen consider modesty very becoming to a lady."
"No doubt they do," he agreed. ... "The same gentlemen who liken ladies to flowers, no doubt." ... "Others of us," he said courteously as his hand dropped, "do not believe a woman's main aim is to decorate a room. — Meredith Duran

I liken actors and movies and TV shows to football teams. We all have our favorite ones. — Kristoffer Polaha

Chasing your tale? Sometimes we relive past accomplishments, failures and or past relationships to the point of exhaustion. When we do this, I liken it to a dog chasing its tail, just spinning round and round and going nowhere fast. Constantly chasing our own tales has the same effect on us. It leaves us in a state of dizzying immobility. When we wrap our arms so firmly around our past we leave little room to embrace our present future and that, my friends, is a sad tale to tell. ~Jason Versey — Jason Versey

COSMIC DANCER"

"I was dancing when I was twelve
I was dancing when I was aaah
I danced myself right out the womb
Is it strange to dance so soon
I danced myself right out the womb

I was dancing when I was eight
Is it strange to dance so late
I danced myself into the tomb
Is it strange to dance so soon
I danced myself into the tomb

Is it wrong to understand
The fear that dwells inside a man
What's it like to be a loon
I liken it to a balloon

I danced myself out of the womb
Is it strange to dance to soon
I danced myself into the tomb
But then again once more
I danced myself out of the womb
Is it strange to dance so soon
I danced myself out of the womb. — Marc Bolan

I liken myself to someone who built the house he will live in one day and is preparing to furnish it. — Elie Saab

To what shall
I liken the world?
Moonlight, reflected
In dewdrops,
Shaken from a crane's bill. — Dogen

To some extent I liken slavery to death. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Some people are really drawn to technology and I liken them to artists. — Mitchell Baker

I liken feedback to the effect of when you go surfing; you can get pummeled by a wave, but if you balance the forces right, you can have a dandy ride ... that's pretty much what feedback is ... — Jorma Kaukonen

If I liken the Pacific War to a football match, I can say to you that the first half is over, we have kicked off after the interval, and we are going to carry the ball into enemy territory for a smashing victory. — John Curtin

What a scraping paring affair it is to be sure! The wonder is that I've any clothes on my back, that I sit surrounded by solid furniture at this moment. Why, if one wants to compare life to anything, one must liken it to being blown through the Tube at fifty miles an hour - landing at the other end without a single hairpin in one's hair! Shot out at the feet of God entirely naked! Tumbling head over heels in the asphodel meadows like brown paper parcels pitched down a shoot in the post office! With one's hair flying back like the tail of a race-horse. Yes, that seems to express the rapidity of life, the perpetual waste and repair; all so casual, all so haphazard ... — Virginia Woolf

I teach in M.F.A. programs now, and I think that's a great way to become a novelist, but I mourn that Pete Dexter and Joan Didion's route is maybe less likely because there are fewer of those jobs. I always liken it to playing piano in some great dive jazz bar. You didn't pick the songs, you played what people asked for, but you got your chops. — Jess Walter

I've got to think that that was unethical," Joshua said.
"Josh, faking demonic possession is like a mustard seed."
"How is it like a mustard seed?"
"You don't know, do you? Doesn't seem at all like a mustard seed, does it? Now you see how we all feel when you liken things unto a mustard seed? Huh? — Christopher Moore

We liken the passion of the beginning to adolescent intoxication - both transient and unrealistic. The consolation for giving it up is the security that waits on the other side. Yet when we trade passion for stability, are we not merely swapping one fantasy for another? As Stephen Mitchell points out, the fantasy of permanence may trump the fantasy of passion, but both are products of our imagination. — Esther Perel

The sutras liken reincarnation to the relationship between teachers and students. A singing teacher teaches students how to sing. His students learn techniques and benefit from direct experiential advice from their teacher. But the teacher doesn't remove a song from his throat and insert it into a student's mouth. Similarly, reincarnation is a continuity of everything we have learnt, like lighting one candle from another, or a face and its reflection in a mirror. — Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse

I have always preferred to liken the championship to a marathon. You have to know how to start the race, how to take the strain when problems come along and to make sure you don't give any potentially dangerous rivals an advantage. My policy is to ideally have five or six men around the age of 26, a couple of youngsters, a couple round the 28 mark and one or two in their 30s. But the nucleus of the team should be experienced and not too old. — Bob Paisley

Throughout human history, in any great endeavour requiring the common effort of many nations and men and women everywhere, we have learned - it is only through seriousness of purpose and persistence that we ultimately carry the day. We might liken it to riding a bicycle. You stay upright and move forward so long as you keep up the momentum. — Ban Ki-moon

Passions are liken'd best to floods and streams:
The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb;
So, when affection yields discourse, it seems
The bottom is but shallow whence they come.
They that are rich in words, in words discover — Walter Raleigh

I liken kissing baby cheeks to kissing stripper boobies. They're both irresistible, but you're bound to catch something. Scientists say there's at least an 18% chance that the world's next deadly viral pandemic is brewing in the saliva stew of a chubby baby's cheeks, or a stripper's boobies, at this very moment. — J. Matthew Nespoli

Cable is not a robot. The metal in his body is actually organic tissue. Ed and I have talked about this a lot. We liken it to a cancer that changes your body's cellular structure. Last time we saw him, his arm had been severed. It's back with a kind of force that will play a major role in this storyline. This is a battle inside Cable's body that he has waged since the first time he appeared. — Jeph Loeb

Quiet Girl
I would liken you
To a night without stars
Were it not for your eyes.
I would liken you
To a sleep without dreams
Were it not for your songs. — Langston Hughes

And I could liken you to a lot of things
But I always come around
'Cause in the end I'm a sensible girl
I know the fiction of the fix — Fiona Apple

In many parts of the world, ghosts are not considered to be a creation of local folklore, but a fact of life. In China the dead are understood to co-exist with the living, a belief which gave rise to the practice of ancestor worship, while in South America the deceased are honoured with annual festivals known as the Day of the Dead which suggests that the material world and the spirit world might not be as distinct as we might like to believe. In the Eastern and Asiatic religions it is believed that death is not the end, but simply a transition from one state of being to another. The Hindu Upanishads, for example, liken each human soul to a lump of salt taken from the ocean which must ultimately return to the source. — Paul Roland

I liken myself to Henry Ford and the auto industry, I give you 90 percent of what most people need. — Adam Osborne

I don't mean to insinuate that you are unfeeling or stifled of life ... excuse me on
that one. I just meant to ask you how you breathe when you are down here reading or
writing."
He smiled. "I have five years more experience in breathing on this earth than you. I
know when it is I can breathe and when it is I can't and I know just what to do when
such a thing as suffocation occurs."
I can't believe it, there is actually a qualitative property to every breath
taken ... That must be wonderful. You must also know your cells are degenerating five
years faster than mine."
He smiled again, the same relaxed annoying way. "I get that you find it amusing to
liken me to my cadavers. It's not the first time you've done it, but truly we are not in
lieu to play smart."
I was wondering if you could call the cadaver of a smart man, a smart cadaver. I've
always wondered. — Dew Platt

I liken movies to playing a piano: Sometimes you're playing the chords and different notes with unresolved cadences and playing all major chords that are all over the place, and you're enjoying yourself with a great, simple melody. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I started in theater. I would liken sitcom work more to theater work than I would, perhaps, to dramatic television. It's so quick. It kind of feels like the pace of a play. — James Wolk

Cast aside those who liken godliness to whimsy and who try to combine their greed for wealth with their desire for a happy afterlife. — Khalil

I stretched up to him, and we stayed liken that for just a second, not kissing, not yet, just hovering in the moment before, only a breath apart. — Morgan Matson

A simple garb is the proper costume of the vulgar; it is cut for them, and exactly suits their measure, but it is an ornament for those who have filled up their lives with great deeds. I liken them to beauty in dishabille, but more bewitching on that account. — Jean De La Bruyere

Liken yourself to a beautiful part of creation ... — Robert J. Wicks

His [Faraday's] third great discovery is the Magnetization of Light, which I should liken to the Weisshorn among mountains-high, beautiful, and alone. — John Tyndall