Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Vain
Vain as a peacock.
—Anonymous
Vain as chasing a bug in the dark.
—Anonymous
Vain as the leaf upon the stream.
—Anonymous
Vain as the promises of a patent medicine advertisement.
—Anonymous
Vain as to water the plant when the root is dead.
—Anonymous
Vain as a rattle in a baby’s clutch.
—Henry B. Binns
Vain as the passing gale.
—Charlotte Brontë
Vain
As for a brook to cope with ocean’s flood.
—Lord Byron
As organ plaiers, vnlesse some body blowe vnto them the windie bellowes, do make no sound at all: Euen so, vaine men, vnless they be pricked forward, with commendations and praises of others, haue neuer any minde, or purpose to lend themselves to any good action.
—Anthonie Fletcher (Certain Very Proper and Profitable Similes, 1595)
Vain as Niobe.
—Foundling Hospital for Wit, 1743
Vain as the sick man’s vow, or young man’s sigh.
—Walter Harte
Vain as the summer’s glowing spoils
Flung o’er an early bier.
—Thomas Kibble Hervey
Vain your feeble cry,
As the babe’s wailings to the thundering sky.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes
Vain as a sick man’s dream.
—Horace
Vain as swords
Against the enchased crocodiles.
—John Keats
Vain … as to attempt to erase what
Time has written with the Judgment Blood.
—George Meredith
Vain and unprofitable, as is the sunshine to a dead man’s eyes.
—Henry Hart Milman
Vain as to strike an axe on a rock.
—Osmanli Proverb
Vain as a leaf from a tree,
As a fading day,
As veriest vanity,
As the froth and the spray
Of the hollow-billowed sea,
As what was and shall not be,
As what is and passes away.
—Christina Gabriel Rossetti
Vain as an idiot’s dream.
—Christopher Smart
Vain as to count the April drops of rain.
—Tobias Smollett
Vain as a dead man’s vision.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Words as vain as wind.
—Frederick Tennyson
Vain as a girl.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Troubles of this world are vain as billows in a tossing sea.
—William Wordsworth
Vain as a Frenchman newly returned from a campaign.
—William Wycherley
Vain as a gaudy-minded man.
—Edward Young