See Also: ATTENTION; INSULTS; MIND, DEFINED; THOUGHT

1. (You can’t concentrate. You’ve got) a brain like a hummingbird —Jane Wagner
2. Brain as heavy as a grandfather clock —Diane Wakoski
3. A brain tooled like a twenty-jewel Swiss watch —Stephen Longstreet
4. Emptied her mind, as if emptying a bottle —Mavis Gallant
5. Her mind flickered like a lizard —Elizabeth Bowen
6. Her mind was like a one-way thoroughfare, narrow and flat, maintained in repair —Mavis Gallant
7. Her mind was like a rushing stream, tumbling downhill over rocks and boulders, eddying, bouncing, shifting direction —Ward Just
8. Her mind was strangely empty … an empty room through which vague memories stalked like giants —Jean Rhys
9. His brain feels like a frail but alert invalid packed inside among a lot of deep pillows —John Updike
10. His brain was like a brightly-lit factory, full of flying wheels and precision —Edith Wharton
11. His mind [Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s] resembles a stiff spring, which has to be abducted violently from it, and which every instant it is left to itself flies right back —William James, letter to brother, Harry, November 24, 1872
12. His mind’s like the feet of a pre-civilized Chinese girl —Frank Swinnerton
13. The human mind should be like a good hotel, open the year round —William Lyon Phelps
14. It [his brain] felt like an immense dynamo running at top speed in an empty shed in the middle of the woods —Norman Mailer
15. Little minds, like weak liquors, are soonest soured —H. G. Bohn’s Hand book of Proverbs
16. Mind, as clear as mountain water —Richard Wilbur

    See Also: CLARITY

17. Mind … blank and enclosed as a bubble of glass —Jean Thompson
18. Mind flapping like a rag on a clothesline in cold wind —Saul Bellow
19. Mind … fluffy as a baby’s crib —Louis Auchincloss
20. (He stood for a moment outside the room, his) mind jerking spasmodically, like a severed nerve —Storm Jameson
21. Mind like a bent corkscrew —Roderic Jeffries
22. A mind like a puddle. Things fall in and float around in it and she fishes them up later when they’ve gotten soggy —Jean Thompson
23. A mind like a sieve —Anon
24. A mind like a sink —Agatha Christie

    Christie was thus quoted by her nephew about Miss Marple’s dark view of humankind.

25. Mind … like a sun-dial, it records only pleasantness —Anon

    See Also: CHEERFULNESS

26. A mind like a tattered concordance —Samuel Beckett
27. A mind like a wedge of iron —Louise Erdrich
28. Mind like dead ashes —Robert Silverberg
29. Mind like moths —Anon
30. Mind … like some fertile garden —Edith Wharton
31. The mind, packed away like a satin wedding dress even in blue tissue, yellowing, pressing itself into permanent folds —Diane Wakoski

    The title of the poem featuring this line is also a simile: The Mind, Like an Old Fish.

32. Minds fossilized like lava —Isak Dinesen
33. Minds [of students] so earnest and helpless that it takes them half an hour to get from one idea to its immediately adjacent next neighbor. And when they’ve got the next idea, they lie down on it with their whole weight and can get no farther, like a cow on a door-mat, so that you can get neither in nor out with them —William James, letter to his wife, 1896
34. Minds stirring like poplars in a storm —Marge Piercy
35. (Eleanor’s) mind went whirling round like a wheel on the hub of this moment —Elizabeth Bowen
36. A mind wide open to absorb all it could teach him as the flowers of the date-palm to receive the fertilizing pollen —Honoré de Balzac
37. My brain is numb as a piece of liver —W. P. Kinsella
38. (I seem to have read so little of late, that) my mind is like a desert, devoid of roses and leaves —Janet Flanner
39. Our brains are like fruit stands; all the rubbish is in front and the good stuff is in the back —Carla Lane

    Dialogue from “Solo,” British television sitcom, broadcast June 23, 1987

40. Our unconscious is like a vast subterranean factory with intricate machinery that is never ideal, where work goes on all day and night from the time we are born until the moment of our death —Milton R. Sapirstein
41. Some minds are like trunks, packed tight with knowledge, no air and plenty of moths —Life, January 31, 1918
42. There is no sea as restless as my mind —Derek Walcott

    See Also: RESTLESSNESS

43. When you have a creative mind it sometimes backs up on you like a sewer —John Farris