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

Henry Fielding

As difficult … as to preserve your purse at a gaming-table or your health at a bawdy house.

Dirty as earth.

Men of great genius as easily discover one another as freemasons can.

Dull as an ox.

As empty of ideas as an opera.

Fruitless as it would be to explain the most difficult problems of Sir Isaac Newton to one ignorant of vulgar arithmetic.

Bad habits are as infectious by example as the plague itself by contact.

Head as heavy as alderman’s.

As hollow as any trumpet in Europe.

Inaccessible as the best defended fortress.

Incapable as quicksilver of lying still.

Inconsistent as the seas or as the wind.

Kissing … is as a prologue to a play.

Light as air.

Love, like fire, when once kindled, is soon blown into a flame.

Lurking … like a concealed enemy.

Pale and meagre as a court page.

Red as beef.

Shines like a beau in a new birthday suit.

Sinful as sin.

Sober as a judge.

Strutting like a turkey cock.

Sure as the devil’s in London.

Ugly as the devil.

A voice as sweet as the evening breeze of Boreas in the pleasant month of November.

Wit, like hunger, will be with great difficulty restrained from falling into vice and ignorance, where is great plenty and variety of food.