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

Sudden

Sudden, like a Fate.
—Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Sudden as an April shower.
—Anonymous

Sudden as a meteor’s flight.
—Anonymous

Sudden and swift as a raging cyclone.
—Anonymous

Sudden as a sunbeam’s ray.
—Anonymous

Sudden as a tidal wave on a summer sea.
—Anonymous

Sudden as the babbling brook or robin’s whistle.
—Anonymous

Sudden as the call of spring to buried flowers.
—Anonymous

A sudden brightness, as when meteor swift opens the darkness.
—Anonymous

Sudden, as creation burst from naught.
—Thomas Campbell

Sudden as conscience.
—Gilbert K. Chesterton

Sudden as the crack of rifle.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sudden as kindling flames arise.
—Walter Harte

Sudden as a snap.
—Thomas Hood

Sudden as lightning.
—Ben Jonson

Sudden sound as of a bowstring snapped in air.
—Henry W. Longfellow

Sudden as a stab.
—James Russell Lowell

Sudden as Aphrodite from the sea.
—George MacDonald

Sudden as the slapping of a wave.
—Spencer Moore

A sudden flash, as from a sunlit jewel.
—Lewis Morris

Sudden like a pool that once gave back
Your image, but now drowns it and is clear
Again.
—Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Sudden like a hamadryad before a dull fawn.
—Henryk Sienkiewicz

Sudden as a flame.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne