Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Words
Words … as sweet as founts that murmur low,
To one who in the deserts drear,
With parched tongue moves faint and slow.
—Ancient Ballad of Hindustan
Sweet words are like honey; a little may refresh, but too much gluts the stomach.
—Anne Bradstreet
Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use.
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
Burning Words, like so many full-formed Minervas, issuing amid flame and splendor from Jove’s head.
—Thomas Carlyle
Words, like glass, darken whatever they do not help us to see.
—Joseph Joubert
There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one,
Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on.
—James Russell Lowell
His words, like so many nimble and airy servitors, trip about him at command.
—John Milton
Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.
—Alexander Pope
But obscene Words, too grosse to move Desire,
Like heaps of Fuel do but choak the Fire.
That Author’s Name has undeserved Praise
Who pall’d the Appetite he meant to raise.
—Lord Rochester
These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears.
—William Shakespeare
My words hang together like feathers in the wind.
—John Skelton
Thy words, like genial showers to the parch’d earth, refresh my languid soul.
—Tobias Smollett
With words as with sunbeams,—the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.
—Robert Southey
My words are like spoken roses.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
With all the rhymes like stars above you,
And all the words like flowers.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Words like swords and thunderclouded creeds.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.
—Old Testament
Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones.
—Old Testament
The words of a talebearer are as wounds, and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly.
—Old Testament