Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Ben Jonson
Ambition, like a torrent, never looks back.Blind as a beetle.My brain, methinks, is like an hour-glass,
Wherein th’ imaginations run to sands,
Filling up time; but there are turn’d and turn’d
So that I know not what to say upon,
And less to put in act.Brief as time.Circulate like oil.Common as a mart.Counsel to him is as good as a shoulder of mutton to a sick horse.Crackling, like de bay-leaf i’ de fire.Creak like the chariot wheels of Satan.But some will say, Criticks are a kind of Tinkers, that make more faults than they mend ordinarily.Deafe as an adder.Drunk as fish.Dumb as a fish.His face is like a squeezed orange.Fast as a horse can trot.Fresh as the morning.Full as a piper’s bag.Kiss as close as a scallop.Good men, like the sea, should still maintain
Their noble tastes in midst of all fresh humours,
That flow about them, to corrupt their streams,
Bearing no season, much less salt of goodness.Melancholic as midnight.Sick minds are like sick men that burn with fevers,
Who when they drink, please but a present taste,
And after bear a more impatient fit.New as day.Perisheth, and is past by, like the Pearle in the Fable.Rank as any pole-cat.A secret in his mouth is like a wild bird in a cage, whose door no sooner opens, than ’tis out.Sleek as a horn-book.Smooth as a billiard ball.Skin as smooth as any rush.Snore like a porc-pisce (porpoise).Soft … as cob-webs.Our style should be like a skeine of silke, to be carried and found by the right thred, not ravel’d and perplex’d; then all is a knot, a heape.Sudden as lightning.Sweet as drops of balme.Swell like a boil.True as a gun.My youth’s dear sweets here spent untasted,
Like a fair taper, with his own flame wasted.Valiant as fire.Whipped like tops in Lent.Bring all wits to the Rack, whose Noses are euer like Swine spoyling and rooting vp the Muses Gardens, and their whole Bodies like Moles, as blindly working vnder Earth to cast any, the least, hilles vpon Vertue.
