Grenville Kleiser was an instructor in Public Speaking at Yale at the turn of the 20th Century. He penned the monumental work 15,000 Useful Phrasesas well as the phenomenal Similes and Their Use. The phrase at the top of the Wheels page is a Kleiserism. You'll get a taste of Kleiser's delightful and strange style every day. Just click the button on the Home page. Enjoy!
She covered her lies with words as Eugene Aram covered the corpse of his victim with leaves.
His tricks of alliteration stick out like so many bristles.
When she curtseyed she descended into her outspread gauzes like an opera-glass shutting up.
His face, with shaven cheeks sucked-in, and smudged-in eyes, was like a ghost's under a gray bowler.
I may have posted this Kleiserism (from Similes and Their Use) before. But imagine my surprise when I came across the original source of the quotation! It comes from Dickens' Dombey and Son (chapter 1):
She was much given to the carrying about of small bags with snaps to them, that went off like little pistols when they were shut up.
Crime retreats before light like crawling vermin that dares not show its face.
He broke into the conversation like a criminal taking refuge in a sanctuary.
The clash and uproar of the disputing waters rolled in their ears like the grand, sustained bass of some huge cathedral organ. [Note from St. Pudalia: Yes, this is supposed to say "disputing".]
His mind was a chaotic as a rag-bag.
There were endless arms that waved erratically, like branches in a wind.
A broad, complacent, admiring imbecility breathed from his nose and lips.
Their minds rested upon the thought, as chasing butterflies might rest together on a flower.
Sorrowful eyes like those of wearied kine spent from the plowing (I looked up kine. It means cows, collectively.)
Hope grew fainter and fainter as the days passed, like the shadow the sun casts on the sun-dial, paling as the hours pass until it grows indiscernible.
The gleam in his cold, expressionless eyes bored through the soul of the would-be borrower of cash like a gimlet.
I dreaded a collision with her as if she had been a serpent, or a furnace of fire, or a hedge of thorns.
He stood drinking, his head thrown back, motionless and grotesque as some strange, hideous Eastern carving.
She let the soft waves of her deep hair fall like flowers from Paradise.
She questioned inimically. She recaptured herself with dignity. She regarded him stonily out of flint-blue eyes. She was stricken to the soul.
Clear as crystal, the water hurried along its channel, carrying tiny leaves and sticks like microscopic boats with it.
Each phrase is like the flash of a scimitar.
He was quaking on the precipice of a bad bilious attack. He would fall into the blackest melancholies. He writhed in the grip of a definite apprehension. Her blank gaze chilled you.
Liquid brown eyes, dewy red lips, ruddy cheeks, little head, curved, reedy, swaying figure, clad all in gossamer white, fine and light as a lace cobweb, she came over to him.
The manager grinned at him like a shark, every tooth bared.
We take the liberty of deviating from your instructions We will be glad to lay before you the fullest details.
Give me your sympathy and counsel Glorious to contemplate Good! That is at least something Gratifying, I'm sure Fulsome praise, I call it.
Your tongue is like a scarlet snake.
It was curious how the idea of some coming trouble seemed to be with me like some dark shadow walking at my side and whispering to me to be prepared.
His hair was like a badly constructed bird's nest. She hurried from him, stumbling in her haste, like a hunted thing.
His face looked like a cast admirably modeled in yellow wax. Her face was like a crumpled, whitey-brown paper bag.
He made a loathsome object. He sacrificed the vulgar prizes of life.
Your fame is as worthless as a grain of sand blown by the breath of the sea; your pride and your triumph evanescent as the mists of the morning that vanish in the heat of the sun.
The stacks of corn in brown array, like tattered wigwams on the plain.
The nurse was buxom, broad, heavy, be-ribboned, like a prize animal at a cattle show.
wallow in idolatry wanting in dignity waver in purpose weak in conception
He danced like a man in a swarm of hornets. He fell down on my threshold like a wounded stag.
Even among these dark clouds a touch of whimsical simplicity stole like a faint thread of light, and relieved my mind by at last justifying a laugh.
The solid air around me there heaved like a roaring ocean.
If you drown sorrow it haunts you like a dripping ghost for the rest of your life.
His head hung out of the window, distended and tossing like a captive balloon.
As when an avalanche bears down a on a in forest, twigs and bushes suffer with the giant trees, so in great financial disaster do little lives in remote places suffer pitiful destruction.
They wrangled and croaked above the yet warm corpse like two famished ravens.
The avaricious man is like the barren, sandy ground of the desert, which sucks in all the rain and dews with greediness, but yields no fruitful herbs or plants for the benefit of others.
There is no resisting you. This is an unexpected pleasure. This is charmingly new to me. To me it's simply outrageous.
These are the stumbling-blocks of our own making, and like mere specks of dust between us and the clear light of eternity.
It was rather a curious, thin face, soft brown, like a biscuit.
Like a buzzard's nest, their home hung over the village on the unfriendly sides of the bleak slope.
A fearful anguish nailed him to the spot, a fear to know the worst, a dread of the truth; and he did not stir, hiding as a hare, starting at the least sound.
Palm leaves like sword blades threatened the pool. He answered in a weak, low voice, with a cheek that had turned gray like the ashes of a wood-fire in the dim morning light.
An atmosphere thick with flattery and toadyism All was a vague jumble of chaotic impressions
I agree that something ought to be done. I am absolutely bewildered. I am curious to learn what his motive was. How utterly abominable!
A kind of ineffable splendor crowns the day. A hot uprush of hatred and loathing.
In that house there was a constant reverberation of wind, so that it sounded like a great shell which the inhabitants must perforce hold to their ears.
The deep murmurs of the crowd rose like the responses in some satanic litany.
Snatches of hexameters and pentameters, mixed with English melodies -- sometimes many together, sometimes singly -- like notes loosened by the different stops of an organ, filled my mind with a tumult of noiseless music, as I breathed the breath of the wild thyme and the myrtle.
The figures of the clerks, enveloped in a studious gloom, were like strange shapes at the bottom of the sea; while the little strong-room, where a lamp always burned, was like the cavern of some ocean monster looking on with a red eye at these mysteries of the deep.
The world had vanished like a phantasmagoria.
A list of our unread books torments some of us like a list of murders.
It must have been rather embarrassing. It was an unpardonable liberty. It was so incredible. It will create a considerable sensation. Might I suggest an alternative?
He was one of the smallest man-figures I ever saw, shaped like a pair of tongs.
Go straight, as if by magic, to the inner meaning
That face of yours looks like the title-page to a whole volume of roguery.
A queer, uncommon perplexity began to invade her. A remarkable fusion of morality and art. A perfect carnival of fun.
His hands were small and prehensible [sic] Her tongue on the subject was sharpness itself.
His eyes had a twinkle of reminiscent pleasantry. Her limbs ran to marble.
Oh, but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret and self-contained and solitary as an oyster.
A soft murmur of hidden creature-things rose like an invisible haze from earth, and nothing moved in all the horizon save the black kites high in the blue air and the white butterflies over the drowsy meadows.
Washing-day got into the house like a monster, befogging the passages with his breath and covering the banisters with a clammy perspiration of fear.
I had to choke back my rage at its hottest, like Vesuvius swallowing its own lava.
Like some turbulent little city of old Greece, she had made her revolution.
Dreams like echoes chased themselves in and out of the cells of his mind all night.
He climbed with hippopotamus-like agility over the fence.
Precipitated into mysterious depths of nothingness Redolent of the night lamp
It was as tho' some huge, almost invisible force wrestled with him, flung him down and held him relentlessly in the world's mire.
Shaken like a plum tree by the portly gentleman, the boy seemed likely to fall to pieces, but remained silent and resigned.
A few lofty fir trees behind the house showed their dark waving foliage above the roofs, and some yew trees that had once been trimmed as a sort of ornament to the corners, now made for it a setting of dismal festoons, like palls at a funeral.
Obedient to her will, Fate had turned like a magnetized needle.
He liked to make his money move, he loved to see it moving, as a busy globule of quicksilver that absorbs the smaller bubbles with which it comes in contact.
His conscience became suddenly and sparingly luminous, like the dial of a city clock.
She was a plain little woman, whose left eyelid dropped like a permanent wink, in curious contrast to her habitual expression of soured dignity.
Visitors dipped in and out of that cold and awful house like buckets in a well.
The city was a fairyland or a nightmare, as the mind chose to take it.
The polished table stretched out like a Dead Sea on which fruit dishes and decanters lay at anchor.
Not at all
His enthusiasms were of a fitful and perverse character, like those wet weather springs of the hill country which must need be favored by a season of replenishing rain before they bubble forth into the light of day.
It was a haunting burden, a dying fall, a murmurous refrain, sung softly in my ears as the loveliness of the autumnal trees stole into my brain like a whisper of dreams.
And silence like a poultice comes to heal the blows of sound.
He was an abominable scoundrel, with his youth already soiled, withered like a plucked flower cast out to rot on a heap of rubbish.
He had a name like the sound of a trumpet.
Discretion is like the decent clothing on the nakedness of our minds.
There are men to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner hour with a cigar.
The young moon was like a slender shaving thrown up form a bar of gold.
Extended empire, like expanded gold, exchanges solid strength for feeble splendor.
His eyebrows were like black horseshoes.
Small waves licked the land like furtive tongues seeking some dainty food with sly desire.
She flounders like a huge conger-eel in an ocean of dingy morality.
Half-suffocated by his triumph He gave himself to a sudden daydream
A forehead, compact and solid as a block of granite, over-hung small, bright, intelligent eyes of a light hazel.
From disaster, like a spent swimmer, he came desperately ashore, bankrupt of money and consideration.
Withn the deep, shadowy embrasure, like a jewel placed on dark velvet, was seated a girl spinning.
We have endeavored to serve the needs of your organization. We have not, however, had the pleasure of hearing from you. We understand your position.
As amusing as a litter of likely young pigs
Warmth of temperament Waste of opportunity Wave of depression
Jealousies and animosities which pricked their sluggish blood to tingling
Palpably and unmistakably commonplace
The manager grinned at him like a shark, every tooth bared.
Untiring enunciation of platitudes and fallacies Versed in the arts of exciting tumult and sedition Vitiated by intolerance and short-sightedness Warped by personal pretensions and self-consequence Vulgar eagerness for place
What you have just said is even truer than you realize. Why ask such embarrassing questions? What would you expect me to do? Would you permit me a brief explanation?
Like iced water on feverish flesh, the cold truth doused his ardent dream.
Absolutely vulgarized by too perpetual a parroting
The holidays came and went by like mile-posts from the windows of an express train.
She gave off antipathies as a liquid gives off vapor.
The sun poured down like molten copper.
I know I am treading on thin ice. I know full well. I know it has been questioned. I know not in what direction to look.
Gone like tenants that quit without warning
The sea reeled like a wine-vat splashing.
Thickly the flakes drive past, each like a childish ghost.
I remembered the advice to be like a block of ice.
Her skin was as the bark of birches.
The opinion in time came to be accepted, like quack medicine, mainly because it was well advertised.
I shall speak with becoming frankness. I should have forfeited my own self-respect. I should be false to my own manhood. I shall never cease to be grateful.
Pardon me, but I don't think so. Perhaps I am indiscreet. Question me, if you wish.
bits and scraps bitter and disdainful bluster and vulgarity
The sky was as a shield that caught the stain of blood and battle from the dying sun.
She was placidly dangerous, like a lake with a quicksand bottom.
His manner was like using a steam-roller on a bed of mignonette.
An inexplicable and uselessly cruel caprice of fate
Precipitated into mysterious depths of nothingness
As men strip for a race, so must an author strip for the race with time.
She stood silent a moment, dropping before him like a broken branch. Small as a grain of mustard seed.
I have seen him waving his hands like signals of distress, whilst he struggled vainly to think of the word he wanted.
His voice was harsh and dead, like the rasping sound of a wood-file on the edge of a plank.
I drank the romance of the past like a glass of mental absinthe.
Discourse buzzed round my ear like a blue-bottle.
Crows, winging above them, stood out against the sky like pencil marks on clean paper.
I cannot pretend to make a jest of what I'm going to say.
A red patch glowed angrily in either cheek, like an active wound.
An eager and thirsty ear
His heart rebuked him. His last illusions crumbled. His face torn with conflict. His mood yielded.
Laughter acts like a disinfectant on morbidity.
Irony was ten thousand leagues from my intention.
The Press screeches catchwords like a confounded company of parrots instructed by some devil with a taste for practical jokes.
She walked like a galley-slave.
His chest was as powerful as a blacksmith's bellows.
Feelings come and go like light troops following the victory of the present; but principles, like troops of the line, are undisturbed and stand fast.
taint of megalomania tardiness of speech task of conciliation tempest of passion
A gunshot rang out like an ominous voice.
He was like a human barrel-organ with a list of little tunes which he played over and over again.
Great scarlet poppies lay in drifts and heaps, like bodies fallen there in vain assault.
He conversed with colorless fluency.
No longer shall slander's venomed spite crawl like a snake across his perfect name.
A plant shot out green claws like a new kind of lobster.
They would fain see me all my life tethered to the law, like a browsing goat to a stake.
He stands in history like some figure of straw, at whose riddled reputation every aspirant for a virtuous renown lets off his pistol.
We regret that this misunderstanding has occurred. We particularly want to interest you. We must insist upon a prompt settlement. We have no desire to adopt harsh measures. We hope that you will find the enclosed booklet very interesting.
Betokening an impulsive character
She was like a date in history to a boy who remembers that it meant something, but what, is not quite sure.
He read deliberately, like one approaching with slow feet and alert eyes the glimpse of an undiscovered country.
There is no worse perversion. Think of the cool disregard.
A whole catalog of disastrous blunders.
His affection had snapped like a thread in a flame. He leaped over the wall like a tiger and fled.
Bursts of unpremeditated frankness Bring odium upon the individual By means of crafty insinuations By the common judgement of the thinking world
How like the sky she bends over her child. Huge as a hippopotamus.
The inexorable facts closed in on him like prison-warders hand-cuffing a convict.
Her arms were thin, with large elbows, like the bones of a strange bird.
The sound is like a silver-fountain that springeth in a golden basin. The sound of your running feet like that of sea-hoofs beat.
The wind howled in the stove: something howled and squeaked as tho a big dog had strangled a rat.
I need not, I am certain, assure you I need not wander far in search I neither affirm or deny I need to guard myself right here
To bargain with him was like going into a tiger's cage with a bit of raw meat in one hand.
Ruffling out his cravat with a crackle of starch, like a turkey when it spreads its feathers
He was one of the smallest man-figures I ever saw, shaped like a pair of tongs.
He has a personality as incapable of an attitude as a bedpost.
He is a poor dissembler. He is anything but obtuse. He is so ludicrously wrong. He writes uncommonly clever letters. How can I tell you how much I've enjoyed it all?
The public press would chatter and make odd ambiguous sounds like a shipload of monkeys in a storm.
Fashion and frivolity revolve like the wheel in a squirrel's cage.
Compliment was like salt on the wound of her humiliation.
Barricade the road to truth
He sat there like a gorged vulture. He absorbed and dripped water like a supersaturated sponge.
A queer, uncomfortable perplexity began to invade her A nameless sadness which is always borne of moonlight A pang of jealousy not unmingled with scorn
Fallen into the convenient oblivion of the wastebasket
The sky was as a shield that caught the stain of blood and battle from the dying sun.
We are sorry to learn from your letter We are thoroughly convinced of the need We feel sure that you will approve of our action in this matter A mystery everlastingly impenetrable
Radiance of morning Range of experience Ravages of time Ray of hope
The fluted clear lawn of her elbow sleeves was like a scented mist.
schooled in self-restraint scrupulous in conduct monstrous in dulness [sic]
That is hardly consistent. This is inconceivable. That is just like you, if you will forgive me for saying so.
She became suddenly dumbstruck, her lips tight shut like the strings of her money bag.
An afternoon of painfully constrained behavior
A new trouble was dawning on his thickening mental horizon.
Her low voice grated like the sound of a boat suddenly running on shallows. His eyebrows came down like thatched eaves above his eyes.
The acrid friendship which reigned between these two ladies had in it something like the pungency of very strong smelling-salts.
Hair as harsh as tropical grass and grey as ashes
He looked with the bland, expressionless stare of an overgrown baby.
April 20, 2016
Sometimes I like to compose little poems from phrases found in Kleiser's books. Here's one. Look for more in the future!
Let us heed the voice Let us hope and believe Let us not be fearful At this solemn moment Away with the notion
April 19, 2016
The mad throng jostled and flowed about them like leaves in autumn round a dead bird.
April 18, 2016
Sanctuaries where the passions may, like wild falcons, cover their faces with their wings
April 17, 2016
Her childish passivity was like a slow poison in his veins, creeping gradually, leaving a fire wherever it touched.
April 7, 2016
Amid the verbiage of the complicated document, she struggled like a fly in treacle.
April 8, 2016
Something resistant and inert, like the obstinate rolling over of a heavy sleeper after he has been called to get up
April 9, 2016
In the midst of the flurry on deck they heard a rumbling like an empty furniture van trotting over a bridge.
April 10, 2016
She was like a corpse washing about with slack limbs in the ugly surf of life.
April 11, 2016
She was much given to the carrying about of small bags with snaps to them, that went off like little pistols when they were shut up.
April 12, 2016
A listed jaded by gastronomical exertions
April 13, 2016
Amid the verbiage of the complicated document she struggled like a fly in treacle.
April 14, 2016
The old infamy will pop into daylight like a toad out of a fissure in the rock.
April 15, 2016
an indefinable resemblance to a goat
April 16, 2016
I drank the romance of the past like a glass of mental absinthe.
The effect made upon the spectators of this scene by the stranger's concise speech, was as if a barbarous tom-tom were suddenly struck in the middle of a piece of music.