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20 Great Similes from Literature to Inspire You

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Similes, metaphors, and analogies are turns of phrase that help readers conjure images in a narrative, whether in fiction or nonfiction, but it is in the latter form that they bloom more profusely. And what’s the difference between each of the three literary devices?

A simile is a comparison between one thing and another. If you refer to a figure of speech blooming like a flower on a page, you have created a simile. If you more directly say that the figure of speech bloomed before your eyes, you have employed a metaphor. An analogy is a more practical, didactic description: “Imagine that the figure of speech is like a flower blooming on the page.” Analogy is more common in nonfiction, but simile and metaphor are found there as well.

Strive to create engaging similes and metaphors, but insert them in the service of your prose, as stars in the sky, not entire moons. They are foot soldiers, not field officers, in your campaign to inform and/or interest your readers. They are chorus members, not ingenues; extras, not stars. They are — OK, enough with the metaphors, already.

But before I share with you 20 top similes from great literature, I offer a few tips, like lanterns that serve to light your way:

  • They should be simple and clear: The ones you will read below are literally outstanding, but they’re also removed from their context, where they are mere flowers in fertile fields of great writing. Similes and metaphors should be useful, concise, and then perhaps memorable as well, in that order. And if the task of creating one becomes toil, you’re trying too hard, and your exertions will show.
  • They should stir, but they shouldn’t be mixed: When you adopt a specific theme, stick with it. A mixed metaphor is a missed opportunity, and a distraction rather than a delight.
  • They should be original: If a simile or metaphor doesn’t rise head and shoulders above a more functional description, it won’t fly. Make sure the imagery is worth the effort of creating it.
  • They should entertain: A simile or metaphor, to return to a previously employed metaphor, is like an actor with a bit part who utters a single line, but that line should be trenchant or ticklesome.
  • They should be visually arresting: Similes and metaphors are intended to paint a picture for the reader in order to endow a person, place, or thing with resonance.

Herewith, lessons in incandescent imagery:

1. “. . . she tried to get rid of the kitten which had scrambled up her back and stuck like a burr just out of reach.” — Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott

2. “Time has not stood still. It has washed over me, washed me away, as if I’m nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water.” — The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood

3. “Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East . . .” — Peter Pan, by J. M. Barrie.

4. “. . . and snow lay here and there in patches in the hollow of the banks, like a lady’s gloves forgotten.” — Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor, by R. D. Blackmore

5. “I would have given anything for the power to soothe her frail soul, tormenting itself in its invincible ignorance like a small bird beating about the cruel wires of a cage.” — Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad

6. “In the eastern sky there was a yellow patch like a rug laid for the feet of the coming sun . . .” — The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane

7. “. . . when I laid down the paper, I was aware of a flash — rush — flow — I do not know what to call it — no word I can find is satisfactorily descriptive — in which I seemed to see that bedroom passing through my room, like a picture impossibly painted on a running river. — To Be Taken with a Grain of Salt, by Charles Dickens

8. “. . . utterly absorbed by the curious experience that still clung to him like a garment.” — Magnificent Obsession, by Lloyd C. Douglas

9. “She entered with ungainly struggle like some huge awkward chicken, torn, squawking, out of its coop.” — The Adventure of the Three Gables, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

10. “He looks like right after the maul hits the steer and it no longer alive and don’t yet know that it is dead.” — As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner

11. “Past him, ten feet from his front wheels, flung the Seattle Express like a flying volcano.” — Arrowsmith, by Sinclair Lewis

12. “Her father had inherited that temper; and at times, like antelope fleeing before fire on the slope, his people fled from his red rages.” — Riders of the Purple Sage, by Zane Grey

13. “The very mystery of him excited her curiosity like a door that had neither lock nor key.” — Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

14. “Elderly American ladies leaning on their canes listed toward me like towers of Pisa.” — Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

15. “Camperdown, Copenhagen, Trafalgar — these names thunder in memory like the booming of great guns.” — Mutiny on the Bounty, by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall

16. “It was Françoise, motionless and erect, framed in the small doorway of the corridor like the statue of a saint in its niche.” — Swann’s Way, by Marcel Proust

17. “The water made a sound like kittens lapping.” — The Yearling, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

18. “Kate inched over her own thoughts like a measuring worm.” — East of Eden, by John Steinbeck

19. “He swung a great scimitar, before which Spaniards went down like wheat to the reaper’s sickle.” — The Sea-Hawk, by Rafael Sabatini

20. “. . . impressions poured in upon her of those two men, and to follow her thought was like following a voice which speaks too quickly to be taken down by one’s pencil . . .” — To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf

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18 thoughts on “20 Great Similes from Literature to Inspire You”

  1. What would literature and writing be without metaphors and similes?

    My all-time favorite:

    The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
    The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
    The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
    And the highwayman came riding—
    Riding—riding—
    The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

    The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes

  2. I enjoyed reading your list of similes. I got a laugh out of the one from The Handmaid’s Tale. Makes me want to read the book! I’m careful when using both similes and metaphors in nonfiction, but fiction is another matter. Thanks!

  3. 13. “The very mystery of him excited her curiosity like a door that had neither lock nor key.” — Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

    This one is stunning!

    Thanks!

  4. Lolita (included in this list of similes) also contains one of my favorite literary metaphors: So I tom-peeped across the hedges of years, into wan little windows.

  5. I enjoyed reading your list of similes. I got a laugh out of the one from The Handmaid’s Tale. Makes me want to read the book! I’m careful when using both similes and metaphors in nonfiction, but fiction is another matter. Thanks!

  6. Hey…..great similes, please could someone post me some fantastic nouns and adverbs i could ponder on. Lovely and many thanks. Amy.

  7. A few hour after reading this post I came across this simile from Mary McCarthy’s How I Grew (208): “I wonder what other practices … folded their tents like the Arabs and silently stole away.”

  8. I meant ‘hours’ instead of ‘hour’ and ‘the following simile’ instead of ‘this simile’. That’s what happens when one forgets to proofread (even the shortest of texts) …

  9. That was fun to read, I cam here as I can never remember to spell Similes. This is minr for the day, A chapter in my dark fantasy:

    The woman paused, her red rimmed lips parted into an odd smile, much like that of a dragon looking down at it’s next meal; she brandished two gleaming rows of delicately pointed teeth. “Then I will skin you alive.”

    (excuse the use of ‘The woman’ she hasn’t been introduced yet.)

    Not bad I’ll tinker more with it later, right now the words rush out, so later.

  10. Most of these are perfectly awful similes. The fact that they appear in celebrated works of literature makes them none the less so. Even great authors drop the ball sometimes, and it is in the creation of simile that they most often do so. Great simile is difficult.

  11. Ohhhhhh wordsssss! These are such beautiful examples of similies. I’ve been trying to stretch myself in creating more beautiful and imaginative similies for my creative writing. I use similiesmiles.com to help prompt me with interesting, out of the box words. It’s a challenge at times, thought it’s actually helped my imagination a lot!

  12. Do you have an analogous page of sample metaphors? If so, please forward it to me.
    The grandest of all time, of course, is by Shakespeare. It is universal, transcending its context. I discover a new, apropos application of it about once a week:
    “…It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

  13. I’m with Brian (December 06); most of these similes are pretty dire. My all time favourite comes from Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana: ‘A big wardrobe stood open and two white suits hung there like the last teeth in an old mouth.’ If you want a novel packed full of original similes try Rachel Kushner’s Telex From Cuba. Here’s one: ‘Paris resituated to the tropics, with its humidity, deluges and brine, was like a transplanted organ a body had begun to reject.’ And yes, I am into novels set in Cuba. I’ve even written one.

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