Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Sydney Smith
No more chance than a thaw in Zembla.Expensive as glory.If you were to say that man was like a time glass—that both must run out, and both render up their dust, I should listen to you with more attention, because I should feel something like surprise at the sudden relation you had struck out between two such apparently dissimilar ideas as a man and a time glass.A true sarcasm is like a sword-stick; it appears, at first sight, to be much more innocent than it really is, till, all of a sudden, there leaps something out of it—sharp and deadly and incisive—which makes you tremble and recoil.It is only the public situation which this gentleman holds which entitles me, or induces me to say a word about him. He is a fly in amber; nobody cares about the fly; the only question is, How the devil did it get there? Nor do I attack him for the love of the glory, but from the love of utility, as a burgomaster hunts a rat in a Dutch dyke, for fear it should flood a province.
