Saying one thing through another, without a word of comparison: instead of saying that something is like another thing, one says that it is. The image transfers to the subject the qualities of the thing it has been identified with.
In The Red and the Black
I have been here for fifty-six years; I have baptized nearly all the inhabitants of the town, which was no more than a village when I arrived. Every day I perform the marriage of young people whose grandparents were married by me. Verrières is my family
By saying "Verrières is my family", the curé calls an entire town a family, and the image carries weight because it translates the bond of fifty-six years of baptisms and marriages, quite unlike the post that Rênal and Valenod see.
Book I, Chapter 3: A curé, Abbé Chélan
The collection of Grande Armée bulletins and the Memorial of Saint Helena completed his Koran. He would let himself be killed for these three works. He had never believed in any other.
Book I, Chapter 5: A negotiation, the narrator
I won a battle, he said to himself as soon as he found himself in the wood, far from the eyes of men. I won a battle!
Book I, Chapter 10: A great heart, Julien Sorel
She is good and kind, she has a lively affection for me, but she was raised in enemy territory.
Book I, Chapter 17: The deputy mayor, Julien Sorel (in thought)
It is with blows of public contempt that a husband kills his wife in the nineteenth century, closing the doors of the salons to her.
Book I, Chapter 21: Dialogue with a master, the narrator
If Julien is a fragile reed, let him break; if he is a man of character, let him manage on his own.
Book II, Chapter 3: First steps, Abbé Pirard (in thought)
Well then, sir, a novel is a mirror carried along a high road. It can reflect, in your eyes, the blue of the sky or the filth of the mud in the road. Could the man who carries the mirror in his luggage be accused of immorality? The mirror shows the dirt, and you accuse the mirror? You should accuse the long road where the mud forms and, above all, the road inspector who lets the water rot and the slime pile up.
Book II, Chapter 19: The Opéra Bouffe, the narrator
"Politics", continues the author, "is a stone tied around the neck of literature that, in less than six months, makes it sink. Politics, among the interests of the imagination, is a pistol shot in the middle of a concert. That noise is dissonant without being energetic. It does not harmonize with the sound of any instrument. This politics will mortally offend half the readers and bore the other half, who found it far more interesting and lively in the morning paper." "If your characters do not speak of politics", continues the editor, "they will no longer be Frenchmen of 1830, and your book will no longer be a mirror, as you wished…"
Book II, Chapter 22: The argument, the author and the editor, in a feigned dialogue
TO FRIGHTEN HER, he suddenly exclaimed, throwing the book far away. The enemy will obey me only in proportion as I frighten him, so he will not dare to despise me.
Book II, Chapter 31: To frighten her, Julien Sorel
After all, he thought, my novel is finished, and the merit is all mine.
Book II, Chapter 34: A man of wit, Julien Sorel (in thought)
Ambition was dead in his breast, another passion had risen again from the ashes; he called it remorse for having shot Madame de Rênal.
Book II, Chapter 39: The intrigue, the narrator
when he could have been so happy on our walks in the woods of Vergy, an impetuous ambition carried my soul into imaginary regions. [...] No, I would die without knowing happiness if you had not come to see me in this prison.
Book II, Chapter 45, Julien Sorel
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