50 Simile Examples to Sharpen Your Writing Like a Knife

Similes are a type of figure of speech that uses “like” or “as” to compare two things. They help make ideas more concrete by linking them to familiar images. In fact, you probably hear dozens of simile examples every week, from “She’s fresh as a daisy” to “He’s like a bull in a china shop.” 

They are not to be confused with a metaphor, a similar literary device in which one thing is described as another. Here are some examples to illustrate the difference between similes vs. metaphors:

Idea	Simile	Metaphor
Intelligence 🧠	Her mind was like a sponge, soaking up information.	Her mind was a sponge, soaking up information.
Fear 😨	He froze, like a deer in headlights.	He was a deer in headlights, frozen.
Time ⌛	The days pass leisurely, like a slow-moving river.	The days are a slow-moving river, passing by leisurely.
Anger 😡	His anger spread like wildfire, impossible to contain.	His anger was a wildfire, impossible to contain.
Confidence 💪	She stood firm as a rock.	She was a rock, standing firm.

To master the art of a good simile, in this post, we’ve compiled 50 examples of similes from everyday expressions, literature, poetry, music, and film. Let's take a look at similes in action.

Simile examples in everyday expressions

As mentioned, similes turn up all the time in everyday speech. Phrases like “sleep like a log” use comparison for quick, shared understanding. Here are even more beloved similes that you should know.

1. Uncomfortable as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs

This simile (a favorite of ours) illustrates a comedic yet justified panic: someone hyper-aware that danger could strike at any second.

2. Busy as a bee

Bees never cease their back-and-forth trips from the hive. Using this simile is a cheerful way of saying someone is terribly occupied.

3. Blind as a bat

Here, we have an exaggerated jab at terrible eyesight or total obliviousness. Needless to say, no actual bats were harmed in the making of this simile.

4. Cool as a cucumber

Ever seen a uncool cucumber? Me neither. And so this simile was born to describe someone calm under pressure, relaxed, and composed.

5. Light as a feather

This simple, sensory comparison conveys the idea of weightlessness.

6. Like watching paint dry

Imagine the most soul-numbing, pointless activity in the world. This simile has rightly become the gold standard for complete and utter boredom.

7. Strong as an ox

Whoever gets called “strong as an ox” could probably lift furniture without breaking a sweat — or plow fields days on end!

8. Like a fish out of water

A fish out of water immediately flails and flops — as do humans when we’re outside our comfort zone. This simile captures that discomfort of being in unfamiliar territory.

9. Slippery as an eel

Eels are famously slimy and evasive. Being compared to one might mean you’re hard to pin down, physically or morally. It’s usually not a good thing.

10. Like herding cats

This humorous simile exaggerates the difficulty of organizing people or tasks. It might sound simple, but the real cat-people out there know it’ll likely turn into chaos.

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Simile examples in literature

Great writers have always relied on similes to make descriptions sharper, emotions clearer, and scenes more memorable. Below are famous simile examples in literature drawn from a wide range of books — from ancient epics to modern fiction.

11. Homer, The Iliad

“What are the children of men, but as leaves that drop at the wind's breath?”

By comparing soldiers to falling leaves, Homer captures the scale and inevitability of death in war, as well as the fragility of life.

12. Homer, The Odyssey

“down from his brow she ran his curls like thick hyacinth clusters full of blooms”

Hyacinths are rich with symbolism such as abundance, renewal, and divine presence. This simile elevates Odysseus from a weathered wanderer into a figure of beauty and vitality. 

13. William Shakespeare, "The Passionate Pilgrim"

“It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night

Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear.”

Jewels are bright and expensive. This comparison shows the intensity of the poet’s admiration for the woman.

14. Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“The man took strong sharp sudden bites, just like the dog. He swallowed, or rather snapped up, every mouthful, too soon and too fast…”

Comparing the man to a dog conveys his pitiful upbringing and emphasizes his base, animal nature. It's a stereotype that quickly establishes an image the reader can picture.

15. Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees—my love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath—a source of little visible delight, but necessary.”

This simile shows how Catherine’s love for Linton is flimsy and changeable, while her love for Healthcliff is unmovable and constant.

16. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened — then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.”

We get a deep sense of melancholy and regret from this simile. It’s not simply the physical light leaving Daisy’s face, but also the figurative light of joy and affection.

17. Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“There was fighting in the mountains and at night we could see the flashes from the artillery. In the dark it was like summer lightning, but the nights were cool and there was not the feeling of a storm coming.”

Here, artillery fire is described as a summer lightning storm. This gives the reader a foreboding sense of what’s coming in the otherwise peaceful landscape of the Spanish mountains.

18. John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“As though nature concealed a trap, Cathy had from the first a face of innocence...”

By comparing Cathy to a trap of nature, Steinbeck warns readers to view her as a bigger threat — like the apple in the Garden of Eden. 

19. George Orwell, 1984

“Her voice seemed to stick into his brain like jagged splinters of glass.”

A voice won’t let Winston focus as he’s trying to write his thoughts down. Comparing it to jagged glass splinters helps the reader understand the depth of the psychological terror in the world of 1984.

20. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Aunt Alexandra fitted into the world of Maycomb like a hand into a glove, but never into the world of Jem and me.”

The hand-in-glove simile pulls double duty: it shows how Aunt Alexandra is just like most (white) adult people in Maycomb and implies that Jem and Scout are not like that.

21. Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

“Their conversation is like a gently wicked dance: sound meets sound, curtsies, shimmies, and retires. Another sound enters but is upstaged by still another: the two circle each other and stop. Sometimes their words move in lofty spirals; other times they take strident leaps, and all of it is punctuated with warm-pulsed laughter—like the throb of a heart made of jelly. The edge, the curl, the thrust of their emotions is always clear to Frieda and me.”

This extended simile — a simile that continues over several lines — brings the conversation to life as something fluid, physical, and expressive. Like a dance, it is both performance and interaction.

22. Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“This might sound a pretty innocuous sort of response, but actually it was like she’d suddenly got up and hit me, and for the next few moments I felt hot and chilly at the same time. ”

As Kathy recounts a past conflict with Ruth, the reader understands the impact it had on Kathy. She felt Ruth’s snub (and still remembers it) like a literal slap.

23. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“It was like being in an elevator cut loose at the top. Falling, falling, and not knowing when you will hit.”

This imagery of a free-falling elevator puts readers in the fear-filled minds of these characters, as they get caught fleeing across the Canadian border.

24. Rufi Thorpe, Margo’s Got Money Troubles

“The sadness from the morning didn’t exactly go away; it dried on me and slowly crumbled, leaving me covered in little flakes, like if you eat a glazed donut in a black shirt. That was how it was being a grown-up.”

The sheer unexpectedness of sadness being like donut flakes is probably what strikes you first — and makes you think twice about how messy unresolved feelings can be.

25. Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

“In more than one house, children, off from school, ran out to greet him, as though he was Santa Claus, just bringing the bag of coal.”

Here, Keegan subverts the idea of bad children getting coal for Christmas, showing how it can be a blessing to some.

Simile examples in poetry

Similes have long been one of poetry’s most powerful tools, turning abstract ideas into images we can see, feel, and hear. The examples below show how poets across centuries have used similes to express their ideas.

26. William Wordsworth, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

As the first-person voice of this poem compares himself to floating clouds, the reader gets a sense of emotional isolation. It also physically separates the narrator from the crowd by placing the “I” above the crowd.

27. Alfred Lord Tennyson, “In Memoriam A.H.H.”

I sometimes hold it half a sin

   To put in words the grief I feel;

   For words, like Nature, half reveal

And half conceal the Soul within.

 

But, for the unquiet heart and brain,

   A use in measured language lies;

   The sad mechanic exercise,

Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.

 

In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,

   Like coarsest clothes against the cold:

   But that large grief which these enfold

Is given in outline and no more.

For context, Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote this poem in response to the death of his close friend Arthur Hallam. Tennyson is trying to express that language, like dull narcotics, is an imperfect but natural tool for grief.

28. Sylvia Plath, “Morning Song”

 Love set you going like a fat gold watch.

By comparing the you of the poem — perhaps a child? — to a watch, Plath blends parental tenderness with mechanical time. Love may spark life but it cannot stop its steady, ticking progression.

29. Robert Burns, “A Red, Red Rose”

O my Luve is like a red, red rose

   That’s newly sprung in June;

O my Luve is like the melody

   That’s sweetly played in tune.

Comparing the poet’s “Luve” to a rose and a melody, Burns creates musical repetition that also reinforces the imagery and jovial tone of the poem.

30. Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind”

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Shelley reinforces the poem’s central idea of the West Wind as both a destroyer and a catalyst for renewal. It is sweeping away what is dead to make way for transformation.

31. Ted Hughes, “Wind”

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note

That any second would shatter it. Now deep

In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip

Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Hughes likens sound to a fine green goblet that could shatter at “any second.” This heightens the tension of the poem by presenting a potential imminent destruction.

32. Langston Hughes, “Harlem”
What happens to a dream deferred?

      Does it dry up

      like a raisin in the sun?

      Or fester like a sore—

      And then run?

      Does it stink like rotten meat?

      Or crust and sugar over—

      like a syrupy sweet?

 

      Maybe it just sags

      like a heavy load.

 

      Or does it explode?

A deferred dream is first compared to a dried raisin, then a festering sore, rotten meat, a syrupy sweet, and a heavy load. As the similes escalate in intensity, the idea of a postponed dream becomes increasingly urgent.

33. John Donne, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”

If they be two, they are two so

   As stiff twin compasses are two;

Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show

   To move, but doth, if the other do.

Who else but Donne could convey the commitment and balance of lovers through the needles of compasses? That’s what this love poem does in the name of soulmates. 

34. W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, 

Through the gaze of this creature, we feel its merciless power, like the sun. This underpins the poem’s overarching apocalyptic vision where all things will eventually fall apart.

35. Seamus Heaney, “Digging”

Between my finger and my thumb   

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

By likening his pen to a weapon, Heaney gives writing itself a sense of weight and power — and puts his readers directly in his line of fire. 

36. Elizabeth Bishop, “The Fish”

Like medals with their ribbons

frayed and wavering,

a five-haired beard of wisdom

trailing from his aching jaw.

Comparing fish hook scars to fraying medals transforms damage into honor. But Bishop also subtly asks the reader to question whether it’s truly a desirable honor.

37. Carol Ann Duffy, “Valentine”

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

 

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Much like we peel an onion, Duffy captures love as a “careful undressing.” This undressing is both physical and emotional — which is at once the premise and promise of love.

38. Lucille Clifton, “the garden of delight”

for some

it is stone

bare smooth

as a buttock

rounding

into the crevasse

of the world

Spiritual longing is fused with bodily images in this poem. It grounds abstract longing in the senses and makes the poem’s theme of transcendence feel intimate, tactile, and human.

39. Pablo Neruda, “One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII”

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,   

or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:   

I love you as one loves certain obscure things,   

secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

Neruda shows that similes can also be negative comparisons. Love here is like worshipping an obscure, secret thing. Neruda’s form of love is inward and private, rather than openly performed. 

40. Ocean Vuong, “Telemachus”

Like any good son, I pull my father out

of the water, drag him by his hair

Vuong jolts expectations by likening himself to “any good son” before quickly turning to violent, blunt imagery. The effect is to confront inherited responsibility and trauma head-on.

Simile examples in songs

Just like poets, songwriters often rely on similes to compress emotion into a single, memorable image. Let’s take a look at the most famous examples. 

41. Bob Dylan, “Like a Rolling Stone”

How does it feel

To be without a home

Like a rolling stone?

Dylan sings directly to the listener and compares them to a rolling stone. He invites them to explore what rootlessness feels like.

42. Simon & Garfunkel, “Bridge Over Troubled Water”

When you're weary, feeling small,

When tears are in your eyes, I will dry them all;

I'm on your side. When times get rough

And friends just can't be found,

Like a bridge over troubled water

I will lay me down.

While people are not bridges, this simile suggests that good friends would do anything to help each other through rough patches.

43. Alanis Morissette, “Ironic”

It's like rain on your wedding day

It's a free ride when you've already paid

It's the good advice that you just didn't take

And who would've thought? It figures

In this iconic (see what we did there?) song, Alanis Morissette humorously compares “it” to rain on a wedding day. She humorously blends similes and metaphors to show the extent of life’s curveballs.

44. Idina Menzel (Frozen), “Let It Go”

The wind is howling like this swirling storm inside

Couldn’t keep it in, heaven knows I’ve tried

Don’t let them in, don’t let them see

The image of the raging storm makes Elsa’s suppressed emotions feel even more powerful and uncontrollable. Weather imagery is often used to display internal conflict like this.

45. Pharell Williams, “Happy”

Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof
(Because I’m happy)

The idea of feeling like a home without a roof creates a sense of freedom and joy, without limits or constraints.

Simile examples in films

Films often use similes, especially in dialogue, because, well, it’s part of how people speak. Let’s take a look at some examples.

46. Forrest Gump (1994)

“Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

One of the famous simile examples on this list, this sweet, innocent image invites the audience to think of unpredictability as something exciting. Who knows what treat life has in store for us?

47. Mean Girls (2004)

“It’s like I have ESPN or something. My breasts can always feel when it’s going to rain.”

The faulty simile — it should be ESP (extrasensory perception), not ESPN — creates comedy out of Karen’s cluelessness. This reinforces her already naïve persona and turns supposed “intuition” into a joke.

48. Shrek (2001)

“Ogres are like onions.”

Put simply, this simile says that ogres have layers just like onions do! It’s this thoughtfulness and self-awareness that makes Shrek so relatable and endearing to the audience.

49. The Wizard of Oz (1939)

“There’s no place like home.”

This one is actually a bit of a false simile, as Dorothy is saying that nothing compares to home. Still, the simplicity of this line distills the film’s heart: adventure dazzles, but belonging endures.

50. The Breakfast Club (1985)

“See I get treated differently because Coach thinks I'm a winner. So does my old man. I'm not a winner because I wanna be one... I'm a winner because I got strength and speed. Kinda like a race horse.”

This comparison reduces Andy to a prize animal, and captures the pressure — and loss of agency — he feels as a student athlete.

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Similes work best when they’re specific, not flashy. In all forms of communication, whether written or spoken, they help translate emotion and abstraction into something instantly imaginable. They can also clarify tone, deepen character, and sharpen voice — often in a single line. It’s a real power tool to add to your belt.

Looking to refine your figurative language further? Check this article out on metaphors or this course on showing, not telling: