Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Beauty
Beauty is like an almanac; if it lasts a year, it is well.
—Thomas Adam
Beauty without modesty is like a flower broken from its stem.
—Anonymous
Beauty is as summer fruits, which are easy to corrupt and that cannot last.
—Francis Bacon
Beauty, like truth and justice, lives within us; like virtue and like moral law, it is a companion of the soul.
—George Bancroft
As amber attracts a straw, so does beauty admiration, which only lasts while the warmth continues; but virtue, wisdom, goodness, and real worth, like the loadstone, never lose their power.
—Robert Burton
Beauty in a modest woman is like fire or a sharp sword at a distance; neither doth the one burn, nor the other wound, those that come not too near them.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Beauty, like ice, our footing does betray:
Who can tread sure in the smooth slippery way?
Pleased with the passage, we slide swiftly on,
And see the dangers which we cannot shun.
—John Dryden
We cannot get at beauty. Its nature is like opaline doves’-neck lustres, hovering and evanescent.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thy beauty lies
Veiled like a violet nestling in the moss.
—Clayton Hamilton
The made-up beauties we commonly meet, like artificial flowers, are all show, and no fragrance.
—Thomas Holcroft
Beauty’s a slipp’ry good, which decreaseth
Whilst it is increasing resembling the
Medlar, which, in the moment of its full
Ripeness, is known to be in a rottenness.
—John Lyly
Beautie is like the blackberry, which seemeth red, when it is not ripe, resembling precious stones that are polished with honie, which the smoother they looke, the sooner they breake.
—John Lyly
Beauty,—like a beacon burns above the dark of strife.
—Gerald Massey
Beauty, like the fair Hesperian tree,
Laden with blooming gold, hath need the guard
Of dragon watch with unenchanted eye,
To save her blossoms and defend her fruit
From the rash hand of bold incontinence.
—John Milton
A chaste beauty is like the bellows, whose breath is cold, yet makes others burn.
—Sir Thomas Overbury
Her beauties were like sunlit snows,
Flush’d but not warm’d with my desire.
—Coventry Patmore
Beauties, like tyrants, old and friendless grown,
Yet hate repose, and dread to be alone.
—Alexander Pope
Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure and no pace perceived.
—William Shakespeare
Beauty, like truth, never is so glorious as when it goes plainest.
—Laurence Sterne
Beauty, like supreme dominion,
Is best supported by opinion.
—Jonathan Swift
Beauty passes like a breath.
—Alfred Tennyson
A beauty masked, like the sun in eclipse, gathers together more gazers than if it shined out.
—William Wycherley