See Also: DISINTEGRATION

1. As killing as the canker to the rose —John Milton
2. (Bones) breaking like hearts —Bin Ramke
3. Break [a person’s spirit] like a biscuit —Beaumont and Fletcher
4. Break like a bursting heart —Percy Bysshe Shelley
5. Break like dead leaves —Richard Howard
6. Cracked like parchment —Sin Ai
7. Cracked like the ice in a frozen daiquiri —Anon
8. (Her projects of happiness … ) crackled in the wind like dead boughs —Gustave Flaubert
9. Crack like walnuts —Rita Mae Brown
10. Crack like wishbones —Diane Ackerman
11. Cracks … like a glass in which the contents turned to ice, and shiver it —Herman Melville
12. [Fender and hood of a car] crumpled like tinfoil —T. Coraghessan Boyle
13. Crushed like an empty beer can —Anon
14. Crushed … like rats in a slate fall —Davis Grubb

    In Grubb’s novel, The Barefoot Man, the simile refers to miners who lost their lives.

15. Crushed like rotten apples —William Shakespeare
16. Crushed me like a grape —Carla Lane, British television sitcom, “Solo,” broadcast, May 19, 1987
17. (And I’ll be) cut up like a pie —Irish ballad
18. Destructive as moths in a woolens closet —Anon
19. [Time’s malevolent effect on body] dragging him down like a bursting sack —Gerald Kersh
20. (The Communists are) eating us away like an old fruit —Janet Flanner
21. (Men) fade like leaves —Aristophanes
22. Flattened her pitiful attempt like a locomotive running on a single track full steam ahead —Cornell Woolrich
23. (Creditors ready to) gnaw him to bits … like maggots at work on a carcass —George Garrett
24. The grass (at Shea Stadium) looked as if it had been attacked by animals that had not grazed for ages —Alex Yannis, New York Times, September 18, 1986

    Yannis, in reporting on the Mets’ winning the National League Eastern Division title, used the simile to describe the fans’ destruction of the playing field.

25. If I do [give up] … I’ll be like a bullfighter gone horn-shy —Loren D. Estleman
26. Like a divorce … goes ripping through our lives —Book jacket copy describing effect of Sharon Sheehe Stark’s novel, A Wrestling Season.
27. Marked for annihilation like an orange scored for peeling —Yehuda Amichai
28. My heroes [Chicago Cubs] had wilted like slugs —George F. Will
29. Pollutes … like ratbite —William Alfred
30. Self-destructing like a third-rate situation comedy —Warren T. Brookes, on Republican party, Wall Street Journal, July 15, 1986
31. Shattered like a walnut shell —Charles Dickens

    In Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, the comparison refers to a broken wine cask.

32. Shatter them like so much glass —Robert Louis Stevenson
33. Shrivel up like some old straw broom —Joyce Carol Oates
34. Snap like dry chicken bones —David Michael
35. [Taut nerves] snap like guy wires in a tornado —Nardi Reeder Campion, New York Times r/raes/Op-Ed, January, 5, 1987
36. (Then the illusion) snapped like a nest of threads —F. Scott Fitzgerald
37. Snapped off [due to frailness] like celery —Lawrence Durrell
38. (Who can accept that spirit can be) snuffed as finally as a flame —Barbara Lazear Ascher, New York Times 77mes/Hers, October 30, 1986
39. They [free-spending wife and daughter] ate holes in me like Swiss cheese —Clifford Odets
40. Wear out their lives, like old clothes —John Cheever
41. Your destruction comes as a whirlwind —The Holy Bible /Proverbs