Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases, Grenville Kleiser [learn to read books TXT] 📗

mock his mood

The stunning crash of the ocean saluted her

The subtle emanation of other influences seemed to arrest and chill him

The sudden rush of the awakened mind

The summit of human attainment

The sun blazed torridly

The sun goes down in flame on the far horizon

The sun lay golden-soft over the huddled hills

The sunlight spread at a gallop along the hillside

The sunset was rushing to its height through every possible phase of violence and splendor

The suspicion of secret malevolence

The swelling tide of memory

The swing of the pendulum through an arch of centuries

The tempered daylight of an olive garden

The tender grace of a day that is fled

The tension of struggling tears which strove for an outlet

The thought leaped

The timely effusion of tearful sentiment

The tone betrayed a curious irritation

The torture of his love and terror crushed him

The trees rustled and whispered to the streams

The tumult in her heart subsided

The tumult in her mind found sudden speech

The tumult of pride and pleasure

The tune of moving feet in the lamplit city

The tyranny of nipping winds and early frosts

The unmasked batteries of her glorious gray eyes

The vacant fields looked blankly irresponsive

The vast and shadowy stream of time

The vast cathedral of the world

The vast unexplored land of dreams

The velvet of the cloudless sky grew darker, and the stars more luminous

The veneer of a spurious civilization

The very pulsation and throbbing of his intellect

The very silence of the place appeared a source of peril

The vision fled him

The vivifying touch of humor

The web of lies is rent in pieces

The wheel of her thought turned in the same desolate groove

The whispering rumble of the ocean

The white seething surf fell exhausted along the shore

The whole exquisite night was his

The whole sea of foliage is shaken and broken up with little momentary shiverings and shadows

The wide horizon forever flames with summer

The wild whirl of nameless regret and passionate sorrow

The wild winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay

The wind charged furiously through it, panting towards the downs

The wind piped drearily

The wind was in high frolic with the rain

The winnowed tastes of the ages

The woods were silent with adoration

The youth of the soul

The zenith turned shell pink

Their ephemeral but enchanting beauty had expired forever [ephemeral = markedly short-lived]

Their eyes met glancingly

Their troth had been plighted

There was a kind of exhilaration in this subtle baiting

There was a mild triumph in her tone

There was a mournful and dim haze around the moon

There was a strange massing and curving of the clouds

There was a thrill in the air

There was a time I might have trod the sunlit heights

There was no glint of hope anywhere

There was no menace in the night's silvern calmness

There was something so kindly in its easy candor

There was spendthrift grandeur

These qualities were raised to the white heat of enthusiasm

They became increasingly turbid and phantasmagorical [phantasmagorical = fantastic imagery]

They escaped the baffled eye

They sit heavy on the soul

They were vastly dissimilar

This exquisite conjunction and balance

This little independent thread of inquiry ran through the texture of his mind and died away

This shadowy and chilling sentiment unaccountably creeps over me

Thought shook through her in poignant pictures

Thoughts came thronging in panic haste

Thrilled by fresh and indescribable odors

Thrilled with a sense of strange adventure

Through a cycle of many ages

Through endless and labyrinthine sentences

Thrilled to the depths of her being

Time had passed unseen

Tinsel glitter of empty titles

Tired with a dull listless fatigue

To all intents and purposes

To speak with entire candor

To stay his tottering constancy

To the scourging he submitted with a good grace

Tossed disdainfully off from young and ardent lips

Touched every moment with shifting and enchanting beauty

Touched with a bewildering and elusive beauty

Transcendental contempt for money

Transformed with an overmastering passion

Trouble gathered on his brow

Turning the world topsy-turvey

Twilight creeps upon the darkening mind

U

Unapproachable grandeur and simplicity

Unaware of her bitter taunt

Under the vivifying touch of genius

Unearthly in its malignant glee

Unfathomed depths and impossibilities

Unforced and unstudied depth of feeling

Unspoiled by praise or blame

Unspoken messages from some vaster world

Unstable moral equilibrium of boyhood

Until sleep overtakes us at a stride

Untouched by the ruthless spirit of improvement

Upon the mountain-tops of meditation

Urbanely plastic and versatile

Uttering grandiose puerilities [puerilities = childishness, silly]

V

Vain allurements of folly and fashion

Variously ramified and delicately minute channels of expression

Varnished over with a cold repellent cynicism

Vast sweep of mellow distances

Veiled by some equivocation

Vibrant with the surge of human passions

Vicissitudes of wind and weather [vicissitudes = sudden or unexpected changes]

Vigor and richness of resource

Visible and palpable pains and penalties

Voices that charm the ear and echo with a subtle resonance in the soul

Volcanic upheavings of imprisoned passions

W

Wantonly and detestably unkind

Waylay Destiny and bid him stand and deliver

Wayward and strangely playful responses

Wearing the white flower of a blameless life

What sorry and pitiful quibbling

When a pleasant countryside tunes the spirit to a serene harmony of mood

When music is allied to words

When the frame and the mind alike seem unstrung and listless

When the profane voices are hushed

When the waves show their teeth in the flying breeze

Whilst the morn kissed the sleep from her eyes

Whistled life away in perfect contentment

Wholly alien to his spirit

With a vanquished and weary sigh

Womanly fickleness and caprice

Words and acts easily wrenched from their true significance

Worn to shreds by anxiety

Wrapped in a sudden intensity of reflection

Wrapped in an inaccessible mood

Wrapped in scudding rain

Wrapt in his odorous and many-colored robe

Wrapt in inward contemplation

Wrought of an emotion infectious and splendidly dangerous

Wrought out of intense and tragic experience

Y

Yielding to a wave of pity

Your mind enthroned in the seventh circle of content

SECTION VIII STRIKING SIMILES A

A blind rage like a fire swept over him

A book that rends and tears like a broken saw

A breath of melancholy made itself felt like a chill and sudden gust from some unknown sea

A cloud in the west like a pall creeps upward

A cloud like a flag from the sky

A cluster of stars hangs like fruit in the tree

A confused mass of impressions, like an old rubbish-heap

A cry as of a sea-bird in the wind

A dead leaf might as reasonably demand to return to the tree

A drowsy murmur floats into the air like thistledown

A face as imperturbable as fate

A face as pale as wax

A face tempered like steel

A fatigued, faded, lusterless air, as of a caged creature

A few pens parched by long disuse

A figure like a carving on a spire

A fluttering as of blind bewildered moths

A giant galleon overhead, looked like some misty monster of the deep

A glacial pang of pain like the stab of a dagger of ice frozen from a poisoned well

A glance that flitted like a bird

A great moon like a red lamp in the sycamore

A grim face like a carved mask

A hand icily cold and clammy as death

A heart from which noble sentiments sprang like sparks from an anvil

A jeweler that glittered like his shop

A lady that lean'd on his arm like a queen in a fable of old fairy days

A life, a Presence, like the air

A life as common and brown and bare as the box of earth in the window there

A light wind outside the lattice swayed a branch of roses to and fro,

shaking out their perfume as from a swung censer

A lightning-phrase, as if shot from the quiver of infallible wisdom

A list of our unread books torments some of us like a list of murders

A little breeze ran through the corn like a swift serpent

A little weed-clogged ship, gray as a ghost

A long slit of daylight like a pointing finger

A memory like a well-ordered cupboard

A mighty wind, like a leviathan, plowed the brine

A mind very like a bookcase

A mystery, soft, soothing and gentle, like the whisper of a child murmuring its happiness in its sleep

A name which sounds even now like the call of a trumpet

A note of despairing appeal which fell like a cold hand upon one's living soul

A purpose as the steady flame

A question deep almost as the mystery of life

A quibbling mouth that snapped at verbal errors like a lizard catching flies

A radiant look came over her face, like a sudden burst of sunshine on a cloudy day

A reputation that swelled like a sponge

A ruby like a drop of blood

A shadow of melancholy touched her lithe fancies, as a cloud dims the waving of golden grain

A silver moon, like a new-stamped coin, rode triumphant in the sky

A slow thought that crept like a cold worm through all his brain

A smile flashed over her face, like sunshine over a flower

A soft and purple mist like a vaporous amethyst

A soft haze, like a fairy dream, is floating over wood and stream

A soul as white as heaven

A sound like the throb of a bell

A stooping girl as pale as a pearl

A sudden sense of fear ran through her nerves like the chill of an icy wind

A sweet voice caroling like a gold-caged nightingale

A thin shrill voice like the cry of an expiring mouse

A thing of as frail enchantment as the gleam of stars upon snow

A vague thought, as elusive as the smell of a primrose

A vanishing loveliness as tender as the flush of the rose leaf and as ethereal as the light of a solitary star

A voice as low as the sea

A voice soft and sweet as a tune that one knows

A white bird floats there, like a drifting leaf

Against a sky as clear as sapphire

Age, like winter weather

Agile as a leopard

Agitated like a storm-tossed ship

Air like wine

All around them like a forest swept the deep and empurpled masses of her tangled hair

All like an icicle it seemed, so tapering and cold

All my life broke up, like some great river's ice at touch of spring

All silent as the sheeted dead

All sounds were lost in the whistle of air humming by like the flight of a million arrows

All that's beautiful drifts away like the waters

All the world lay stretched before him like the open palm of his hand

All unconscious as a flower

Alone, like a storm-tossed wreck, on this night of the glad New Year

An anxiety hung like a dark impenetrable cloud

An ardent face out-looking like a star

An ecstasy which suddenly overwhelms your mind like an unexpected and exquisite thought

An envious wind crept by like an unwelcome thought

An