Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Sad
Sad as the sunless sea.
—Franklin P. Adams
Sad as a subpœna.
—Anonymous
Sad as a wail over the dead.
—Anonymous
Sad as doom.
—Anonymous
As sad as Fate.
—Anonymous
Sad as if steering to dim eternity.
—Anonymous
Sad as the eyeball of sorrow behind a shroud.
—Anonymous
A song as sad as the wild waves be.
—Anonymous
Sad as silence when a song is spent.
—Alfred Austin
Sad as death.
—Aphra Behn
Sad as the groans of dying innocence.
—Aphra Behn
Sad as a thousand sighs, when the dark winds sob through the yews.
—Henry Brooke
Sad as wisdom cut off from fellowship.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sad as Melancholy.
—Robert Burton
Sad as angels for the good man’s sin.
—Thomas Campbell
Serenely sad as eternity.
—Thomas Carlyle
Sad as bull liver.
—William Carr (The Dialect of Craven)
Sad as twilight.
—George Eliot
Sad as the gust that sweeps the clouded sky.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes
Sad as eve.
—Victor Hugo
Sad as an image of despair.
—Sigmund Krasinski
Sad as raindrops on a grave.
—George P. Lathrop
My heart is as sad as a black stone under the blue sea.
—Samuel Lover
Sad as the tears the sullen Winter weeps.
—George Mac-Henry
Sad, like the sun in the day of mist, when his face is watery and dim.
—James Macpherson
Sad as the wind that sighs
Through cypress trees under rainy skies.
—Philip B. Marston
Sad as the shriek of the midnight blast.
—Gerald Massey
Sad as wailing winds.
—Gerald Massey
Sad as the last line of a brave romance.
—George Meredith
Sad … as the ghostly past.
—Owen Meredith
Sad my thoughts as willows bending,
O’er the borders of the tomb.
—George P. Morris
Sad as tears to the eyes that are bright.
—A. J. Ryan
Sad
Like the echo mad
Of some plaintive spirit strain.
—Francis S. Saltus
Sad as night.
—William Shakespeare
Sad as a lump of lead.
—Edmund Spenser
Sad as twilight on the deep.
—George Sterling
Sad as a soul estranged.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Sad as a wintry withering moon.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Bare and sad as banishment.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Sad as doom.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Sadder than a banquet skeleton.
—Frederick Tennyson