Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in his book, "On the Art of Writing," "is to be
perpetually shuffling around in the fog and cotton-wool of abstract
terms. So long as you prefer abstract words, which express other men's
summarized concepts of things, to concrete ones which lie as near as can
be reached to things themselves and are the first-hand material for your
thoughts, you will remain, at the best, writers at second-hand. If your
language be jargon, your intellect, if not your whole character, will
almost certainly correspond. Where your mind should go straight, it will
dodge; the difficulties it should approach with a fair front and grip
with a firm hand it will be seeking to evade or circumvent. For the
style is the man, and where a man's treasure is there his heart, and his
brain, and his writing, will be also."

FIGURES OF SPEECH. To most persons the term "figure of speech" suggests
such figures as metonymy and synecdoche, which they once learned to
define, but never thought of using voluntarily in their own writing.
Figures of speech are too often regarded as ornaments suited only to
poetry or poetical prose. With these popular notions in mind, a writer
for newspapers and magazines may quite naturally conclude that
figurative expressions have little or no practical value in his work.
Figures of speech, however, are great aids, not only to clearness and
conciseness, but to the vividness of an article. They assist the reader
to grasp ideas quickly and they stimulate his imagination and his
emotions.

Association of ideas is the principle underlying figurative expressions.
By a figure of speech a writer shows his readers the relation between a
new idea and one already familiar to them. An unfamiliar object, for
example, is likened to a familiar one, directly, as in the simile, or by
implication, as in the metaphor. As the object brought into relation