Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.

Alexandre Dumas, père

Agile as a monkey.

Black as ebony.

Brilliant as a mirror.

Buried, like Topeca beneath the bucklers of Sabines.

Calm as a mirror.

Calm as a virgin who has never told a lie.

Cheeks pearly as those of Pallas of Virgil.

Cleaving it like a ploughshare.

Confusion of voices, like the chirping of young birds when the brood is just hatched under the down.

Courtiers are, with regard to court rumours, like old soldiers who distinguish through blasts of wind and moaning of leaves the sound of distant steps of an armed troop.

Darkened, like the earth on a splendid day when a cloud flits across the sun.

Darted like a serpent.

Differ as a breastplate and a piecrust.

Disappeared, like a cloud driven by the wind.

Drooping like plumes.

Dropped like a flower cut down by the sickle.

Duped, like a monkey cheated out of an empty nutshell.

Eyes like live coals.

Jussaic fell like a mass of dead flesh.

Eyes immovably fixed … like a miser torn away from his coffers, or like a mother separated from her child about to be led away to death.

Fleshless as bars of steel.

Furious … like a wounded bull in an arena.

Gay as a chaffinch.

Glance like lightning.

Glittered like fish from the sweep-net.

Growls, roars and breaks itself, like our eternal and powerless despair.

A woman’s heart is as intricate as a ravelled skein of silk.

Heaved like the surface of the sea.

Hospitable as an old Siracusan.

Inoffensive as the stone with which, at play, a boy makes ducks and drakes.

Intercede like an angel of mercy.

Laugh on one side, like the masks of the ancients.

Lively as a chaffinch.

Mean as an earth-worm.

Motionless, like one who sees but does not understand.

As mute as the tomb.

Naked as a worm.

Overwhelmed, like the miner upon whom a roof has just fallen.

Pale as a ghost.

Pale as a sheet.

Mouth parched like a shade that comes to salute friends of former days.

Passed like a meteor.

Patient as a god.

Pervading his frame like a raging fever.

Kings will lose their privilege, as stars which have completed their time lose their splendor.

Proud as Gascon.

Restless, like a dog whose master is absent.

Retreated … like a panther which draws back to take its spring.

Riddled with thrusts like a sieve.

State secrets are like mortal poison: as long as that poison is in its box and the box closed, it is not injurious; out of the box, it kills.

Serious as a doctor.

Head shaking like one of those drunken satyrs in the pictures of Rubens.

Profound sigh, like a man unloosed from the tightest bonds.

Soft and caressing as a melody.

Starting as at the sight of an enemy.

Stiff as the corpse of a hanged man.

Stooped, like a bird with a broken wing.

Sure as the gospel.

Trembling like a little child.

Undulating, like the mane of a lion.

Hands … white, as if the blood began to chill there.

As white as teeth of twenty-five years old.

Wide-awake as mice.

Withers like debauchery.

Yelling like a maniac.

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