Metaphor: Fire
Yorick uses the metaphor of flames or fire to discuss his intense yet perhaps ephemeral love for various women. He specifically mentions Eliza, but does so in the context of Madame de L***: "It had ever, as I told the reader, been one of the singular blessings of my life, to be almost every hour of it miserably in love with some one; and my last flame happening to be blown out by a whiff of jealousy on the sudden turn of a corner, I had lighted it up afresh at the pure taper of Eliza but about three months before,—swearing, as I did it, that it should last me through the whole journey" (36).
Metaphor: Coins
Yorick uses the metaphor of coins clinking together to clarify the differences between the French and the English. He says of the French that "by jingling and rubbing one against another for seventy years together in one body’s pocket or another’s, they are become so much alike, you can scarce distinguish one shilling from another" (75). In contrast, the English "like ancient medals, kept more apart, and passing but few people’s hands, preserve the first sharpnesses which the fine hand of Nature has given them;—they are not so pleasant to feel,—but in return the legend is so visible, that at the first look you see whose image and superscription they bear" (75).
Metaphor: The Dark Entry
Yorick uses the metaphor of a person walking down a dark alley as a way to explain his view that a person should not be closed-minded or afraid of the unknown; rather, one should be open to experience because one does not know what will come of it: "The man who either disdains or fears to walk up a dark entry may be an excellent good man, and fit for a hundred things, but he will not do to make a good Sentimental Traveller" (89).
Simile: Women
"...I am as weak as a woman; and I beg the world not to smile, but to pity me" (Yorick, 18).
Simile: Royalty
"Having settled all these little matters, I got into my post-chaise with more ease than ever I got into a post-chaise in my life; and La Fleur having got one large jack-boot on the far side of a little bidet, and another on this (for I count nothing of his legs)—he canter’d away before me as happy and as perpendicular as a prince" (32).
