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

the sea-hoofs beat

The spear-tongued lightning slipped like a snake

The Spring breaks like a bird

The stacks of corn in brown array, like tattered wigwams on the plain

The stars come down and trembling glow like blossoms on the waves below

The stars lay on the lapis-lazuli sky
like white flower-petals on still deep water
                            [lapis-lazuli = opaque to translucent blue,
                             violet-blue, or greenish-blue gemstone]

The stars pale and silent as a seer

The strange cold sense of aloofness that had numbed her senses suddenly gave way like snow melting in the spring

The sudden thought of your face is like a wound when it comes unsought

The sun, like a great dragon, writhes in gold

The sun on the sea-wave lies white as the moon

The surf was like the advancing lines of an unknown enemy flinging itself upon the shore

The terrible past lay afar, like a dream left behind in the night

The tide was in the salt-weed, and like a knife it tore

The time, gliding like a dream

The torrent from the hills leaped down their rocky stairways like wild steeds

The tree whose plumed boughs are soft as wings of birds

The uproar and contention pierced him like arrows

The veiled future bowed before me like a vision of promise

The velvet grass that is like padding to earth's meager ribs

The villa dips its foot in the lake, smiling at its reflection like a bather lingering on the brink

The voice of Fate, crying like some old Bellman through the world

The voice that rang in the night like a bugle call

The warm kindling blood burned her cheeks like the breath of a hot wind

The waves were rolling in, long and lazy, like sea-worn travelers

The whole truth, naked, cold, and fatal as a patriot's blade

The wind all round their ears hissed like a flight of white-winged geese

The wind comes and it draws its length along like the genii from the earthen pot

The wine flows like blood

The woman seemed like a thing of stone

The words kept ringing in my ears like the tolling of a bell

The words of the wise fall like the tolling of sweet, grave bells upon the soul

The world had vanished like a phantasmagoria

The world is bitter as a tear

The world is in a simmer, like a sea

The world wavers within its circle like a dream

The years stretched before her like some vast blank page out to receive the record of her toil

The years vanished like a May snowdrift

The yellow apples glowed like fire

Their glances met like crossed swords

Their joy like sunshine deep and broad falls on my heart

Their minds rested upon the thought, as chasing butterflies might rest together on a flower

Their music frightful as the serpent's hiss

Their touch affrights me as a serpent's sting

Then fall unheeded like the faded flower

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

Then it swelled out to rich and glorious harmonies like a full orchestra playing under the sea

Then the lover sighing like furnace

Theories sprouted in his mind like mushrooms

There is an air about you like the air that folds a star

There, like a bird, it sits and sings

There seemed to brood in the air a quiet benevolence of a Father watching His myriad children at play

There she soars like a seraph

There she stood straight as a lily on its stem

There slowly rose to sight, a country like a dragon fast asleep

There streamed into the air the sweet smell of crushed grass, as though many fields had been pressed between giant's fingers and so had been left

These eyes like stars have led me

These final words snapped like a whip-lash

These thoughts pierced me like thorns

They are as cruel as creeping tigers

They are as white foam on the swept sands

They are as white swans in the dusk, thy white hands

They are painted sharp as death

They broke into pieces and fell on the ground, like a silvery, shimmering shower of hail

They dropped like panthers

They fly like spray

They had hands like claws

They had slipped away like visions

They have as many principles as a fish has bones

They have faces like flowers

They hurried down like plovers that have heard the call [plovers = wading birds]

They look like rose-buds filled with snow

They seem like swarming flies, the crowd of little men

They seemed like floating flowers

They shine as sweet as simple doves

They stand like solitary mountain forms on some hard, perfectly transparent day

They vanished like the shapes that float upon a summer's dream

Thick as wind-blown leaves innumerable

Thickly the flakes drive past, each like a childish ghost

Thine eyes like two twin stars shining

This life is like a bubble blown up in the air

This love that dwells like moonlight in your face

This thought is as death

This tower rose in the sunset like a prayer

Those ancestral themes past which so many generations have slept like sea-going winds over pastures

Those death-like eyes, unconscious of the sun

Those eyelids folded like a white rose-leaf

Those eyes like bridal beacons shine

Thou art to me but as a wave of the wild sea

Thou as heaven art fair and young

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea

Thou must wither like a rose

Thou shalt be as free as mountain winds

Thou wouldst weep tears bitter as blood

Though bright as silver the meridian beams shine

Though thou be black as night

Thoughts vague as the fitful breeze

Three-cornered notes fly about like butterflies

Through the forest, like a fairy dream through some dark mind, the ferns in branching beauty stream

Through the moonlit trees, like ghosts of sounds haunting the moonlight, stole the faint tinkle of a guitar

Through the riot of his senses, like a silver blaze, ran the legend

Thy beauty like a beast it bites

Thy brown benignant eyes have sudden gleams of gladness and surprise, like woodland brooks that cross a sunlit spot

Thy carven columns must have grown by magic, like a dream in stone

Thy favors are but like the wind that kisses everything it meets

Thy heart is light as a leaf of a tree

Thy name burns like a gray and flickering candle flame

Thy name will be as honey on men's lips

Till death like sleep might steal on me

Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven

Time drops in decay, like a candle burnt out

Time like a pulse shakes fierce

To drag life on, which like a heavy chain lengthens behind with many a link of pain

To forsake as the trees drop their leaves in autumn

Toys with smooth trifles like a child at play

Transitory as clouds without substance

Transparent like a shining sun

Tree and shrub altered their values and became transmuted to silver sentinels

Trees that spread their forked boughs like a stag's antlers

Trembling like an aspen-leaf

Truths which forever shine as fixed stars

Turning easily and securely as on a perfect axle

U

Unbends like a loosened bow

Unbreakable as iron

Unconscious as an oak-tree of its growth

Under the willow-tree glimmered her face like a foam-flake drifting over the sea

Unheralded, like some tornado loosed out of the brooding hills, it came to pass

Unknown, like a seed in fallow ground, was the germ of a plan

Unmoving as a tombstone

Untameable as flies

Unutterable things pressing on my soul like a pent-up storm craving for outlet

Upcast like foam of the effacing tide

Uplifting the soul as on dovelike wings

Uplifting their stony peaks around us like the walls and turrets of a gigantic fortress

Urgent as the seas

Uttering wild cries like a creature in pain

V

Vague as a dream

Vague thoughts that stream shapelessly through her mind like long sad vapors through the twilight sky

Vanish into thin air, like ghosts at the cockcrow

Vanished like snow when comes a thaw

Vanished like vapor before the sun

Vibrations set quivering like harp strings struck by the hand of a master

Vociferous praise following like a noisy wave

W

Walking somewhat unsteadily like a blind man feeling his way

Waves glittered and danced on all sides like millions of diamonds

We left her and retraced our steps like faithless hounds

Weak and frail like the vapor of a vale

Wearing their wounds like stars

Weary wind, who wanderest like the world's rejected guest

When a draft might puff them out like a guttering candle
      [guttering = To melt through the side of the hollow in a candle
       formed by a burning wick; to burn low and unsteadily; flicker]

When arm in arm they both came swiftly running, like a pair of turtle-doves that could not live asunder day or night

When cards, invitations, and three-corn'd notes fly about like white butterflies

When she died, her breath whistled like the wind in a keyhole

When the fever pierced me like a knife

Where a lamp of deathless beauty shines like a beacon

Where heroes die as leaves fall

Where the intricate wheels of trade are grinding on, like a mill

Where the source of the waters is fine as a thread

Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by like windless clouds o'er a tender sky

Whistled sharply in the air like a handful of vipers

White as a ghost from darkness

White as chalk

White as dove or lily, or spirit of the light

White as the driven snow

White as the moon's white flame

White as the sea-bird's wing

White clouds like daisies

White hands she moves like swimming swans

White hands through her hair, like white doves going into the shadow of a wood

White like flame

White sails of sloops like specters

Whose bodies are as strong as alabaster

Whose hair was as gold raiment on a king

Whose laugh moves like a bat through silent haunted woods

Whose little eyes glow like the sparks of fire

Whose music like a robe of living light reclothed each new-born age

Windy speech which hits all around the mark like a drunken carpenter

Winged like an arrow to its mark

With a sting like a scorpion

With all the complacency of a homeless cat

With an angry broken roar, like billows on an unseen shore, their fury burst

With hate darkling as the swift winter hail

With music sweet as love

With sounds like breakers

With strength like steel

With the whisper of leaves in one's ear

With words like honey melting from the comb

Wits as sharp as gimlets [gimlet = small hand tool for boring holes]

Women with tongues like polar needles

Words as fresh as spring verdure [verdure = lush greenness of flourishing vegetation]

Words as soft as rain

Words like the gossamer film of the summer

Words sweet as honey from his lips distill'd

Words were flashing like brilliant birds through the boughs overhead

Wordsworth, thy music like a river rolls

Worthless like the conjurer's gold

Wrangle over details like a grasping pawnbroker

Wrinkled and scored like a dried apple

Writhing with an intensity that burnt like a steady flame

Y

Yielding like melted snow

Yonder flimsy crescent, bent like an archer's bow above the snowy summit

You are as gloomy to-night as an undertaker out of employment

You are as hard as stone

You gave me such chill embraces as the snow-covered heights receive