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

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Lay asleep like green waves on the sea.

A beard like an artichoke, with dry shrivelled jaws.

Blushing like the perfumed morn.

Blush like my waistcoat.

Caught, like vipers, with a bit of red cloth.

Your character at present is like a person in a plethora, absolutely dying from too much health.

Dull as catalogues.

Envious as an old maid verging on the desperation of six and thirty.

’Tis not that she paints so ill but, when she has finished her face, she joins so badly to her neck, that she looks like a mended statue, in which the connoisseur may see at once that the head is modern, though the trunk’s antique.

Headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.

Secret as a coach-horse.

Shrinks like scorched parchment from the fiery ordeal of true criticism.

Smells of gunpowder like a soldier’s pouch.

Swollen like a bladder.

Like a clipp’d guinea, trembles in the scale.

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