Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
World
The world is like yon children’s merry-go-round; what men admire are carriages and hobbies.
—Philip James Bailey
The world is like the shifting scenes of a panorama: ten years convert the population of the schools into men and women, and make and mar fortunes; twenty years converts infants into lovers, fathers, and mothers, and decide men’s fortunes; thirty years turn fascinating beauties into bearable old women, and convert lovers into grandfathers; forty years change the face of all society; and fifty years will, alas! find us in a world of which we know nothing, and to which we are unknown.
—James Anthony Froude
The world is like a great staircase, some go up and others go down.
—Hipponax
This world is like carrion, round which are thousands of vultures: this one strikes that one with his claws, that one darts at this one with his beak, till at length they all fly away, and all that remains is the carcass.
—Pilpay
The world is like a tree trunk full of ants; he who comes into it knows nothing; he who goes from it, comes not again.
—Osmanli Proverb
Everything in the world is like a hollow nut; there is little kernel anywhere, and when it does exist, it is still more rare to find it in the shell.
—Arthur S. Schopenhauer
Worlds on worlds are rolling ever
From creation to decay,
Like the bubbles on a river,
Sparkling, bursting, borne away.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
The World is not unfitly compared to a fishing-net, the end of the world to be the drawing up of the nets. While the nets are down, there is nothing said to be caught; for the nets may break, and the fish escape: But at the end of the world, when the nets are drawn up, it will then evidently appear, what every man hath caught.
—John Spencer (Things New and Old; or, A Store-house of Similes, 1658)