Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

Eye

My eyes like the wheels of a chariot roll around.
—Æschylus (E. B. Browning)

Her eyes were like a butterfly’s gorgeous wings.
—James Lane Allen

Eyes like mountain water that’s flowing on a rock.
—William Allingham

Dovelike eyes, depths as of heaven when charged with gloom.
—Anonymous

Eyes like burnt holes in a blanket.
—Anonymous

Eyes like saucers.
—Anonymous

Eyes transparent as a cloudless sky.
—Anonymous

Eyes, brilliant and humid like the reflection of stars in a well.
—Edmondo de Amicis

Languishing eyes like those of a roe looking tenderly at her young.
—Amriolkais

Eyes like a hind’s in love-time.
—Edwin Arnold

Her sparkling eyes, like Orient pearles,
Did cast a heavenlye light.
—English Ballad

His eyes, like those of a pitiless judge, seemed to go to the very bottom of all questions, to read all natures, all feelings and thoughts.
—Honoré de Balzac

Burning eyes that blaze through a lace veil, like flame through cannon smoke.
—Honoré de Balzac

These lovely lamps, these windows of the soul.
—Seigneur du Bartas

Eyes like flames of sulphur.
—Beaumont and Fletcher

Eyes, like torches, fling their beams around.
—Beaumont and Fletcher

Blue violet, like Pandora’s eye.
—Thomas L. Beddoes

Eyes glazed over like harebells wet with dew.
—Caroline Bowles

Her eyes are bright as stars
In the blue.
—Robert Bridges (American)

Her sunken grey eyes, like reflections from the aspect of an angel.
—Charlotte Brontë

Her eyes are dark and humid,
Like the depth on depth of lustre hid i’ the harebell.
—Robert Browning

With eyes, like fresh-blown thrush-eggs on a thread,
Faint-blue and loosely floating in his head.
—Robert Browning

Doubting eyes,
Like a child that never knew but loveWhom words of wrath surprise.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Shining eyes, like antique jewels set in Parian statue-stone.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Eyes like the summer’s light blue sky.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Beautiful eyes in the face of a handsome woman are like eloquence to speech.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton

His eyes are like a balance, apt to propend each way, and to be weighed down with every wench’s looks.
—Robert Burton

Eyes like the dawn of day.
—Frances Anne Butler

Brilliant eyes, swift-darting as the stars.
—Thomas Carlyle

Twin violets by a shady brook were like her eyes.
—Alice Cary

Eyes, shining like thin skins full of blood.
—Alice Cary

What a curious workmanship is that of the eye, which is in the body, as the sun in the world; set in the head as in a watch-tower, having the softest nerves for receiving the greater multitude of spirits necessary for the act of vision.
—Stephen Charnock

Those dry eyes of his shining more like poisoned stones than living tissue.
—Joseph Conrad

Expectant yellow eyes, like a cat watching the preparation of a saucer of milk.
—Joseph Conrad

Her eyes are sapphires set in snow.
—Henry Constable

An eye like the polar star.
—Eliza Cook

O my love has an eye,Like a star in the sky.
—Barry Cornwall

Honest eyes … Blue like the tropic skies.
—Gabriel D’Annunzio

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

Her eyes grew bright and large,
Like springs rain-fed that dilate their marge.
—Aubrey De Vere

Her eyes, like stars in midnight waters glossed.
—Aubrey De Vere

Her eyes are bright as beryl stones that in the tankard wink.
—Austin Dobson

Eyes like the morning.
—Austin Dobson

Eyes like live coals.
—Alexandre Dumas, père

Her eyes like shadows in the light of torches on the Mount of Doom.
—Maurice Francis Egan

Old men’s eyes are like old men’s memories, they are strongest for things a long way off.
—George Eliot

When a man speaks the truth in the spirit of truth, his eye is as clear as the heavens. When he has base ends, and speaks falsely, the eye is muddy, and sometimes asquint.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

An eye can threaten like a loaded and levelled gun, or can insult like hissing or kicking; or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance with joy.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

But oh, to see his solar eyes
Like meteors which chose their way
And rived the dark like a new day.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Her eyes like the radiance the sunbeams bring.
—Ancient Erse

Eyes like the summer skies when twin stars beam above.
—Francis A. Fahy

Eyes as azure as the wave.
—Violet Fane

Eyes like dark blue pansies.
—Norman Gale

Eyes as greye as glasse.
—George Gascoigne

A burning eye, yellow and phosphoric like the eye of a crocodile or a lion.
—Théphile Gautier

The most dazzling stars are pebbles without lustre beside the diamonds of her eyes.
—Joseph A. de Gobineau

His eyes were like the eyes of doves when washed by the dews of the morning.
—Oliver Goldsmith

Mary with her cheerful eyes,
Like heartsease where a dew drop lies.
—Edmund Gosse

Azure eyes, like stars upon the river’s brink.
—Edmund Gosse

Her eyes, fair eyes, like to the purest lights,
That animate the sun, or cheer the day;
In whom the shining sunbeams brightly play,
Whiles fancy doth on them divine delights.
—Robert Greene

Her eyes two twinkling stars in winter nights.
—Robert Greene

Her eyes like glassy streams.
—Robert Greene

The dame had eyes like lightning, or the flash
That runs before the hot report of thunder.
—Robert Greene

Two eyes,
Like heaven’s bright lamps in matchless beauty shining.
—Robert Greene

His eyes were grey,
Like Titan in a Summer day.
—Robert Greene

Eyes like violets steep’d in dew.
—J. C. Guthrie

Her eyes, like moonbeams glowing.
—Shraz Hfiz

Eyes that mock the diamond’s blaze.
—John Harrington

Eyes like twin blue stars.
—Heinrich Heine

Ambiguous … blue eyes like the china dog on the mantel piece.
—O. Henry

Eyes frosty blue, like a winter sea that is made bright, not warm, by the sun.
—Maurice Hewlett

Eyes like a hare’s, that look sideways for danger.
—Maurice Hewlett

Eyes like stars, robed in dull red.
—Maurice Hewlett

Shrewd old party … eyes like gimlets.
—Headon Hill

The lack-lustre eye, rayless as a Beacon street door-plate in August.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes

An eye as clear and steady as the evening star.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes

Eyes … mild as a gazelle’s.
—Thomas Hood

Brilliant eyes,
As deeply dark as desert skies.
—Laurence Hope

Dreaming, wistful eyes,
Dark and deep as mysterious skies,
Seen from a vessel at sea.
—Laurence Hope

Wistful eyes,
As luminous and tender as Kotri’s twilight spies.
—Laurence Hope

His eyes … deep sunk beneath his lowering brows,
Like caverns by a moonlit sea.
—Richard Monckton Milnes

Eyes … overflow like two cups filled above the brim.
—Victor Hugo

Sweet eyes … tender as the deeps in yonder skies.
—Jean Ingelow

The sophist’s eye,
Like a sharp spear, went through her utterly,
Keen, cruel, perceant, stinging.
—John Keats

Eyes like two streams of liquid light.
—Frances Anne Kemble

Eyes like the dawn of day.
—Frances Anne Kemble

Her eye
Flames like a fresh caught hind’s.
—Charles Kingsley

Eyes that droop like summer flowers.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Eyes like the flower that was Rousseau’s delight.
—Andrew Lang

O lovely eyes of azure,
Clear as the waters of a brook that run
Limpid and laughing in the summer sun!
—Henry W. Longfellow

I dislike an eye that twinkles like a star. Those only are beautiful which, like the planets, have a steady, lambent light—are luminous, but not sparkling.
—Henry W. Longfellow

Eyes dilated, as if the spirit-world were open before him, and some beauteous vision were standing there.
—Henry W. Longfellow

Like the stars that nightly shine,
Thy sweet eyes shed light divine.
—Samuel Lover

Flaw-seeing eyes, like needle points.
—James Russell Lowell

Eyes pe[a]rcing like the Sun beames.
—John Lyly

Blue eyes, like Delft saucers.
—Maarten Maartens

His eyes like meteors of night.
—James Macpherson

Bright eyes
Which were like lotus-blossoms.
—Mahabharata

Eyes … like restless stars in the pit of night.
—Edwin Markham

Vacant eyes, blue as the flowers of the flax plant.
—Guy de Maupassant

Unfathomable eyes, which hid their secrets under the undisturbed serenity of majestic repose, like a mountain lake, whose waters seem black on account of their depth.
—Guy de Maupassant

Her eye beams as kindly and bright,
As the sun in the azure-tinged sky.
—Catulle Mendès

Blessed eyes, like a pair of suns,
Shine in the sphere of smiling.
—Thomas Middleton

And the bright dew-bead on the bramble lies, like liquid upon beauty’s eyes.
—James Montgomery

Eyes like setting planets, weak and dim.
—Charles L. Moore

Each bright eye,
Like violets after morning’s shower,
The brighter for the tears gone by.
—Thomas Moore

Eyes, whose sleepy lid like snow on violets lies.
—Thomas Moore

Eyes as soft as doves.
—Dinah Maria Mulock

Eyes, like reflected moonbeams on a distant lake.
—Ossian

Eyes flashed like the sun playing on water.
—Ouida

Eyes like blue heavens in a night of frost.
—Ouida

Eyes shining like the planets.
—Ouida

Her eyes were of a deep brown hue, like the velvety brown of a stag’s throat.
—Ouida

Her eyes are like free-booters, living upon the spoile of stragglers.
—Sir Thomas Overbury

Eyes like an orange-grove
In whose enchanted bowers the magic fire-flies rove.
—Sir Thomas Overbury

What eyes! [Daniel Webster’s] like charcoal fire in the bottom of a deep, dark well.
—Theodore Parker

Eyes blazed like a bale-fire.
—John Payne

Her black eyes sparkled like sunbeams on a river: a clear, deep, liquid radiance, the reflection of ethereal fire.
—Thomas L. Peacock

Eyes … stared like windows at the peep of day.
—Stephen Phillips

The eye, like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of its sorrow.
—Edgar Allan Poe

Luminous eyes,
Brightly expressive as the twins of Leda.
—Edgar Allan Poe

The eye is the window of the soul; the mouth, the door; the intellect, the will, are seen in the eye.
—Hiram Powers

The eyes are the pioneers that first announce the soft tale of love.
—Propertius

Eyes glittering like basilisks.
—Charles Reade

Her eye worked like an ice gimlet in her daughter’s face.
—Charles Reade

Her eyes are blue and dewy as the glimmering Summer-dawn.
—James Whitcomb Riley

Eyes as fresh and clear as morning skies.
—James Whitcomb Riley

With a pair o’ eyes like two fried eggs.
—James Whitcomb Riley

Her eyes are like the open heaven
Holy and pure from sin.
—Christina Georgina Rossetti

Dim dried eyes like an exhausted well.
—Christina Georgina Rossetti

Eyes
As of the sky and sea on a gray day.
—Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters stilled at even.
—Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Her dazzling eye;
As liquid in its brilliancy as the deep blue of midnight ocean,
When underneath, with trembling motion,
The phosphor light floats by.
—John Ruskin

Her eyes were like a heaven, where sunlight always glows.
—A. J. Ryan

His eyes like those that Houris wear.
—Sadi

Thine eyes
Mirage of sultry prisons, flashing in—
And out, like fulg’rous lightning through dark skies.
—Francis S. Saltus

As a moonbeam white,
As a starbeam white,
Was her eye of iris ray.
—Francis S. Saltus

An eye, like Mars, to threaten and command.
—William Shakespeare

Her eyes, as murder’d with the view,
Like stars ashamed of day, themselves withdrew.
—William Shakespeare

Thy eyes’ windows fall,
Like death, when he shuts up the day of life.
—William Shakespeare

His eye
Red as ’twould burn Rome.
—William Shakespeare

His eyes, like glow-worms, shine when he doth fret.
—William Shakespeare

Her eyes, like marigolds, had sheath’d their light,
And canopied in darkness sweetly lay,
Till they might open to adorn the day.
—William Shakespeare

Eyes as fair
As star-beams among the twilight trees.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley

His faint eyes,
Like dew upon a sleeping flower.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley

Thine eyes are like the deep, blue boundless heaven.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley

Eyes like kindling flame.
—Lydia Huntley Sigourney

In her hazel eyes her thoughts lay clear
As pebbles in a brook.
—Alexander Smith

Her goodly eyes like sapphires shining bright.
—Edmund Spenser

An eye is, for all the world, exactly like a cannon, in this respect, That it is not so much the eye or the cannon, in themselves, as it is the carriage of the eye, and the carriage of the cannon; by which both the one and the other are enabled to do so much execution.
—Laurence Sterne

An old light smolders in her eye
There! she looks up. They grow and glow
Like mad laughs or a rhapsody
That flickers out in woe.
—Trumbull Stickney

Eyes as glad as summer.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne

Gold-eyed as the shore-flower shelterless
Whereon the sharp-breathed sea blows bitterness,
A storm-star that the seafarers of love
Strain their wind-wearied eyes for glimpses of.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne

Your grave majestic eyes
Like a bird’s warbled words
Speak, and sorrow dies.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne

Eyes,
Pale as the skies.
—Arthur Symons

His threatening eyes
Like flaming torches burned.
—Torquato Tasso

Eyes … clear as the unshadowed Grecian heaven.
—Bayard Taylor

Like a blue spot in the sky
Was her clear and loving eye.
—Sir Henry Taylor

Eyes like heaven’s own blue.
—Esaias Tegner

His eyes are like the eyelids of the morning.
—Old Testament

Thine eyes are like the fish-pools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bathrabbim.
—Old Testament

Eyes like unto a flame of fire.
—Old Testament

But woe’s me, and woe’s me,
For the secrets of her eyes!
In my visions fearfully
They are ever shown to be
As fringèd pools, whereof each lies
Pallid—dark beneath the skies
Of a night that is
But one blear necropolis
And her eyes a little tremble, in the wind of her own sighs.
—Francis Thompson

Like pansies dark i’ the June o’ the year, grow my Love’s glad eyes.
—James Thomson

Her eyes are like the statues,—mild, grave, and wide.
—Paul Verlaine

Eyes, dark and mysterious as Night’s; but, like Night’s own eyes, ready, I thought, to call up the throbbing fires of a million stars.
—Theodore Watts-Dunton

Eyes flashing like sapphires.
—Theodore Watts-Dunton

Eyes like English skies, where seemed to play
Deep azure dreams behind the tender grey.
—Theodore Watts-Dunton

O deep eyes,
Darker and softer than the bluest dusk
Of August violets, darker and deeper
Like crystal fathomless lakes in summer moons.
—Augusta Webster

How brilliant and mirthful the light of her eye,
Like a star glancing out from the blue of the sky.
—John Greenleaf Whittier

Eyes like a bright blue-bell.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Your eyes are like fantastic moons that shiver in some stagnant lake.
—Oscar Wilde

Eyes half veiled …
Like bluest waters seen, through mists of rain.
—Oscar Wilde

Blue eyes shimmer with angel glances
Like spring violets over the sea.
—Constance F. Woolson

Her eyes as stars of twilight fair.
—William Wordsworth

Eyes
Like the harebells bathed in dew.
—William Wordsworth

Eyes like sunbeams.
—Johann Zschokke