See Also: CRYING

1. Could feel the tears, like fire, coming up —James Baldwin
2. Feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full —Sylvia Plath
3. Generally men’s tears, like the droppings of certain springs, only harden and petrify what they fall on —Walter Savage Landor
4. He [a weeping man] was like a sponge saturated with water, and then squeezed —Leonid Andreyev
5. Like a summer tempest came her tears —Lord Alfred Tennyson

   This also appears as a chapter title in Kenneth Grahame’s contemporary children’s classic, The Wind in the Willows.

6. My tears like berries fell down —W. B. Yeats
7. Produce tears freely like a great actor —Erich Maria Remarque
8. Slow as the winter snow the tears have drifted to mine eyes —Elizabeth Barrett Browning
9. Suspended like shimmering icicles on Maxell’s cheeks were tears —Arthur A. Cohen
10. A teardrop hung out of each blue eye, like a fat woman leaning out of a tenement window —Tom Robbins
11. Teardrops come a-splashin’ down his cheeks like summer rain —Edward A. Guest
12. A tear had slipped down to dangle like sweat at the tip of a nostril —Truman Capote
13. A tear ran down her cheek, turning white with powder, like a tiny ball of snow —Jonathan Valin
14. Tears … brightened her eyes and made them glitter like dark stars in a stormy sky —Frank Swinnerton
15. Tears died as laughter dies away —Dante Gabriel Rossetti
16. Tears fall like soft fruit juice —Rose Tremain
17. Tears fell like a plot —Stevie Smith
18. Tears fill up her eyes like a cup —Jessie Schell
19. Tears … flailing my face like the torn ends of shattered rope —John Updike
20. Tears flooded out of his eyes like the floodwater over a levee —Pat Conroy
21. Tears … flowed down upon him like a bower of willows —Arthur A. Cohen
22. Tears … flowed like fountains —William Wordsworth

    A twist by Guy De Maupassant: “Wept like a fountain.”

23. Tears flow … like a swollen gutter gushing through the streets —Henry Fielding
24. Tears gathered like small pools in the declivation of his eye cups —Arthur A. Cohen
25. Tears glittered in her eyes, deep down, like the sinking reflection of a well —Louise Erdrich
26. Tears glittered like rhinestones on her lashes —Ross Macdonald
27. Tears, like a stream, like a ceaselessly flowing fountain, flowed and flowed —Nikolai V. Gogol
28. Tears like bits of glass formed in his eyes —Leonard Michaels
29. Tears like molten lead surged in her eyes —Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
30. Tears … like two little brooks —Carson McCullers
31. Tears … made patterns on his cheeks, like wax trickling down a candle —Julia O’Faolain
32. Tears on his lashes, like silver drops of dew —Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
33. Tears rolled down like rain —Elizabeth Spencer
34. Tears … roll one from each eye, like droplets on wax fruit —Ira Wood
35. Tears running down like lemonade —Anne Sexton
36. Tears rushed forth … like mountain mists at length dissolved in rain —Lord Byron

    This simile from Byron’s famous Don Juan has been slightly modernized and shortened. The original first line begins “The tears rush’d forth from her o’erclouded brain, like …”

37. The tears seemed to cause the features of her face to melt and soften like hot wax —George Garrett
38. Tears, silent as a china egg —Marge Piercy
39. Tears, small as sequins, glinting in her narrowed eyes —Miles Gibson
40. Tears streamed down her cheeks, soft and bland like the sides of a Guernsey —John Updike
41. Tears that slipped like melting pellets of sleet down their grieved and angered cheeks —Alice Walker
42. Tears that streamed ceaselessly like a veil to keep her from seeing too clearly —Paul Horgan
43. Tears … they deluge my heart like the rain —Emily Brontë
44. Tears welled up as freely as water from a drinking fountain —Jean Stafford
45. Though the tears had no healing power, they took off the edge of it [pain], like cold water on a burn —Margaret Drabble
46. A woman’s tears, like a dog’s limping, are seldom real —Russian proverb