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

Alphonse Daudet

Blazing like a brace of suns.

Bleeding as if he had been through a thicket of troubles.

Brown as a pineapple.

Children are like grown people; the experience of others is never of any use to them.

Discordant as the cries of a gull.

Empty as a church on a week-day.

Eyes, gleaming and sparkling like lizards’ eyes in the crevices of old walls.

Flutterings as in a slumbering aviary.

Gentle and placid as Socrates.

Glittering as snow in the sunshine.

Irritating as a hundred needles forgotten in an armchair.

Lifting his feet like a knife grinder.

Rattled like a pair of castanets.

Rigid as embodied duty.

Rigid as his starched collar.

Smoking like a crater.

Softly as if over a pavement of down.

Thrilled in ecstasy, like an Oriental saint.

Trustful as Don Juan’s famous Monsieur Dimanche.

Vast as cathedrals.