Пятнадцать тысяч полезных английских фраз. Часть VIII. Яркие сравнения. Виктор Евгеньевич Никитин
a sea disturbed by opposing winds
As amusing as a litter of likely young pigs
As arbitrary as a cyclone and as killing as a pestilence
As austere as a Roman matron
As beautiful as the purple flush of dawn
As blind as a mole
As brief as sunset clouds in heaven
As bright as sunlight on a stream
As busy as a bee
As cattle driven by a gadfly
As chimney sweepers come to dust
As clear as a whistle
As clear as the parts of a tree in the morning sun
As close as oak and ivy stand
As delicate and as fair as a lily
As delightful to the mind as cool well-water to thirsty lip
As diamond cuts diamond
As direct and unvarying as the course of a homing bird
As distinct as night and morning
As dry as desert dust
As dumb as a fish
As easily as the sun shines
As easy as a turn of the hand
As elastic as a steel spring
As extinct as the dodo
As faint as the memory of a sound
As familiar to him as his alphabet
As fatal as the fang of the most venomous snake
As fleeting and elusive as our dreams
As foam from a ship's swiftness
As fresh and invigorating as a sea-breeze
As full of eager vigor as a mountain stream
As full of spirit as a gray squirrel
As gay and busy as a brook
As gently as the flower gives forth its perfume
As gently as withered leaves float from a tree
As graceful as a bough
As grave as a judge
As great as the first day of creation
As high as heaven
As I dropped like a bolt from the blue
As I dwelt like a sparrow among the spires
As if a door were suddenly left ajar into some world unseen before
As impossible as to count the stars in illimitable space
As in the footsteps of a god
As inaccessible to his feet as the clefts and gorges of the clouds
As inexorable as the flight of time
As innocent as a new laid egg
As iridescent as a soap bubble
As locusts gather to a stream before a fire
As mellow and deep as a psalm
As men strip for a race, so must an author strip for the race with time
As merry as bees in clover
As nimble as water
As one who has climbed above the earth's eternal snowline and sees only white peaks and pinnacles
As pale as any ghost
As patient as the trees
As quick as the movement of some wild animal
As quiet as a nun breathless with adoration
As radiant as the rose
As readily and naturally as ducklings take to water
As reticent as a well-bred stockbroker
As ruthlessly as the hoof of a horse tramples on a rose
As shallow streams run dimpling all the way
As simple as the intercourse of a child with its mother
As sleep falls upon the eyes of a child tired with a long summer day of eager pleasure and delight
As some vast river of unfailing source
As stars that shoot along the sky
As still as a stone
As stupid as a sheep
As sudden as a dislocated joint slipping back into place
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower
As supple as a step-ladder
As swaggering and sentimental as a penny novellete [novellete = short novel]
As swift as thought
As the accumulation of snowflakes makes the avalanche
As the bubble is extinguished in the ocean
As the dew upon the roses warms and melts the morning light
As the fair cedar, fallen before the breeze, lies self-embalmed amidst the moldering trees
As the light straw flies in dark'ning whirlwinds
As the lightning cleaves the night
As the loud blast that tears the skies
As the slow shadows of the pointed grass mark the eternal periods
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance
As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again
As though Pharaoh should set the Israelites to make a pin instead of a pyramid
As unapproachable as a star
As weird as the elfin lights
As well try to photograph the other side of the moon
At extreme tension, like a drawn bow
Away he rushed like a cyclone
Awkward as a cart-horse
B
Babbling like a child
Balmy in manner as a bland southern morning
Be like the granite of thy rock-ribbed land
Beauteous she looks as a water-lily
Beautiful as the dawn, dominant as the sun
Beauty maddens the soul like wine
Beheld great Babel, wrathful, beautiful, burn like a blood-red cloud upon the plain
Beneath a sky as fair as summer flowers
Bent like a wand of willow
Black as a foam-swept rock
Black his hair as the wintry night
Blithe as a bird [blithe = carefree and lighthearted]
Bounded by the narrow fences of life
Bowed like a mountain
Breaking his oath and resolution like a twist of rotten silk
Breathed like a sea at rest
Bright as a diamond in the sun
Bright as a fallen fragment of the sky
Bright as the coming forth of the morning, in the cloud of an early shower
Bright as the sunbeams
Bright as the tear of an angel, glittered a lonely star
Brilliant and gay as a Greek
Brisk as a wasp in the sunshine
Brittle and bent like a bow
Bronze-green beetles tumbled over stones, and lay helpless on their backs with the air of an elderly clergyman knocked down by an omnibus
Brown as the sweet smelling loam
Brute