Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Cruel
Cruel as a rich coxcomb in a ballroom.
—Anonymous
Cruel as winter.
—Anonymous
As cruel as Medea.
—Robert Burton
Cruel as the Tartar foe,
To death inured, and nurst in scenes of woe.
—William Collins
Cruel as Medusa’s sculptured face.
—Lord De Tabley
Cruel as Herod when he surpris’d the sleeping Children of Bethlehem.
—Sir William Davenant
Cruel as the sun.
—Maurice Hewlett
Cruel as the pinch of a painless dentist.
—Sydney Munden
Cruel as love or life.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Cruel as a schoolboy ere he grows
To pity.
—Alfred Tennyson
Jealousy is as cruel as the grave.
—Old Testament
Cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.
—Old Testament
Cruel as death.
—James Thomson