Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Heart
A heart is like a fan, and why?—
’Twill flutter when a beau is nigh:
Oft times with gentle words he’ll take it;
Play with it for a while, then break it.
—Anonymous
The heart of a man is like a delicate weed,
That requires to be trampled on boldly indeed.
—Anonymous
A flinty heart within a snowy breast
Is like base mold lock’d in a golden chest.
—Francis Beaumont
The human heart is like Indian rubber: a little swells it, but a great deal will not burst it. If “little more than nothing will disturb it, little less than all things will suffice” to break it.
—Anne Brontë
The heart is like the sky, a part of heaven;
But changes, night and day, too, like the sky;
Now o’er it clouds and thunder must be driven,
And darkness and destruction as on high;
But when it hath been scorch’d and pierc’d and riven,
Its storms expire in water-drops; the eye
Pours forth, at last, the heart’s blood turn’d to tears.
—Lord Byron
A maiden’s heart is as champagne, ever struggling upward.
—Charles Stuart Calverley
The heart is like the tree that gives balm for the wounds of man, only when the iron has wounded it.
—René de François Chateaubriand
My heart is like the fair sea-shell,
There’s music ever in it.
—Eliza Cook
A woman’s heart is as intricate as a ravelled skein of silk.
—Alexandre Dumas, père
Some hearts are like a melting peach, but with a larger, coarser, harder stone.
—Julius Charles Hare
Hearts, like apples, are hard and sour,
Till crushed by Pain’s resistless power.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
The heart of a man has been compared to flowers; but unlike them, it does not wait for the blowing of the wind to be scattered abroad. It is so fleeting and changeful.
—Yohida Kenk
His heart was like a bookful of girls’ song.
—Francis Ledwidge
Her heart, like the lake, was as pure and as calm,
Till love o’er it came, like a breeze o’er the sea,
And made the heart heave of sweet Mary machree.
—Samuel Lover
The human heart is like a millstone in a mill; when you put wheat under it, it turns and grinds, and bruises the wheat into flour; if you put no wheat in it, it still grinds on; but then it is itself it grinds, and slowly wears away.
—Martin Luther
My heart is like a hearth where Cupid is making a fire … methinks Venus and Nature stand with each of them a pair of bellowes, the one cooling my low birth, the other kindling my lofty affections.
—John Lyly
The heart is like an instrument whose strings steal nobler music from life’s mystic frets.
—Gerald Massey
A wise man’s heart is like a broad hearth that keeps the coales [his passions] from burning the house.
—Sir Thomas Overbury
A heart is like a new house—the ones that dry the plastering are not the true tenants.
—Éduard Pailleron
His heart is like a mountain of iron.
—Pentaur
The hearts of pretty women, like New Year’s bonbons, are wrapped in enigmas.
—J. Petit-Senn
A woman’s heart, like the moon, is always changing, but there is always a man in it.
—Punch
Heavy hearts, like heavy clouds in the sky, are best relieved by the letting of water.
—Antoine Rivarol
My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a watered shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.
—Christina Georgina Rossetti
Her heart is like an ordered house Good fairies harbour in.
—Christina Georgina Rossetti
A noble heart, like the sun, showeth its greatest countenance in its lowest estate.
—Sir Philip Sidney
Burning lips and a wicked heart are like a potsherd covered with silver dross.
—Old Testament
A woman’s heart is just like a lithographer’s stone,—what is once written upon it cannot be rubbed out.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
My heart is like fire in a close vessel: I am ready to burst for want of vent.
—John Wesley
Her heart is like an outbound ship
That at its anchor swings.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Heart as calm as lakes that sleep,
In frosty moonlight glistening.
—William Wordsworth