See Also: COLDNESS, EVIL

1. (He’s always been) a bigger shit than two tons of manure —William Mcllvanney
2. Cruel and cold as the judgment of man —Lord Byron
3. Cruel as death —James Thomson

   This is from a double simile, the second part being “Hungry as the grave.”

4. Cruel as love or life —Algernon Charles Swinburne
5. Cruel as old gravestones knocked down and scarred faceless —James Wright
6. (Nothing so) cruel as panic —Robert Louis Stevenson
7. (She knew well the virtues of her singular attractiveness, as) cruel as shears —George Garrett
8. Cruel as winter —Lewis J. Bates
9. Crueller than hell —Algernon Charles Swinburne
10. Cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness —The Holy Bible

    The ostrich reference appears both in Lamentations and the Book of Job.

11. Cruelty on most occasions is like the wind, boisterous in itself, and exciting a murmur and bustle in all the things it moves among —Walter Savage Landor
12. Evil, like good, has its own heroes —Francois, Due de La Rochefoucauld
13. Had a persoality like a black hole —Jonathan Valin

    In his novel, Natural Causes, from which this is taken, Valin expands upon the simile with “He sucked in everything around him and gave nothing back in return.”

14. A heart like a snake —Michael V. Gazzo
15. Her coarseness, her cruelty, was like bark rough with lichen —Virginia Woolf
16. He’s like a cobra. No conscience —William Diehl

    See Also: EVIL

17. Mean as a man who’d make knuckle-bones out of his aunt —Anon
18. Mean as a snake —John D. MacDonald
19. Mean as cat shit —James Kirkwood
20. Mean as cat’s meat —Somerset Maugham, quoted in New York Times Magazine article by Thomas F. Brady, January 24, 1954
21. (That old scoundrel’s) mean as ptomaine —Richard Ford
22. Mean as the man who tells his children that Santa Claus is dead —Anon
23. Merciless as ambition —Joseph Joubert
24. Merciless as bailiffs —Erich Maria Remarque
25. Ordered her about like a convict —Nicholas Monsarrat
26. Ruthless as a Gestapo thug —Raymond Chandler
27. Ruthless as any sea —Beryl Markham
28. So mean he would steal a dead fly from a blind spider —Anon
29. Spiteful as a monkey —Frank Swinnerton
30. Spiteful as the devil —Walter Savage Landor
31. Treat us like mud off the bottom of the Hudson River —Rebecca West

    (E) Use men ruthlessly like pawns —Honoré de Balzac

32. Walk all over [another person] like a carpet —Elyse Sommer
33. Whipping and abuse are like laudanum; you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline —Harriet Beecher Stowe
34. Wickedness burns like fire —The Holy Bible/Isaiah

    The above has been modernized from “Wickedness burneth as the fire.”

35. Would cut me down like a piece of grass —Jimmy Sangster