See Also: BEHAVIOR; DEJECTION; FACIAL EXPRESSIONS, SERIOUS; SADNESS

1. Bleak and uninviting as an empty hotel room —Jonathan Valin
2. Bleak as a winter hillside —F. van Wyck Mason
3. Brain which had become as inhospitable to the brighter side of life as a house without windows is to cheerful lodgers —Bertold Brecht
4. Brooded over … misfortune, like Hamlet or a character in Ibsen —Mary McCarthy
5. Brooding … like a martyr —Paul Reidinger
6. Brooding like a woman unsatisfied —Joanne Selzer The comparison as used by the author in a poem entitled Summer Heat refers to the atmosphere after a heavy storm. The simile in its full context begins as follows: “The air hung heavy after the storm, brooding …”
7. Brood like a ghost —Fannie Stearns Gifford
8. Cheerful as a turkey before Thanksgiving —Anon Variants for changing seasons include: “Cheerful as a rabbit before Easter” and “Cheerful as a goose before Christmas.”
9. Cold and gray … like the mortuary —Mike Fredman
10. Dour as a wet cat —Warren Beck
11. Felt heavy as Sunday —John Braine
12. Gloom … dark and stagnant like a bed of straw for sick livestock —Kenzaburo Oë
13. Gloom, like a poisonous mist, fills the car —Ira Wood
14. Gloomy and melancholy, like ghosts —Mark Twain
15. Gloomy as a beach resort on a wet Sunday in July —Anon This may be inspired by a much-used, also unattributed simile, “Gloomy as a graveyard on a wet Sunday afternoon.”
16. [A house] gloomy as a crypt —Michael Korda
17. Gloomy as a tick on Sunday —Grace Paley
18. Gloomy as a wet holiday —Anon
19. Gloomy as night —Homer
20. Glum as a gumboil, as sad as despair —Don Marquis
21. Glum as a student who’s fallen hopelessly behind —John Gardner
22. Glum as a tongue-tied parrot —Joseph C. Lincoln
23. Grew clouded and closed, like the dense pallid sky —Sylvia Berkman

    See Also: RESERVE

24. Ill-humor is like laziness, for it is a kind of laziness —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
25. It was the kind of day that made suicide look like a reasonable proposition —Mike Fredman

    See Also: DAY

26. Looked like he swallowed a lemon —William Diehl
27. Melancholy as a defeated politician —Herbert V. Prochnow
28. Melancholy as a gib [castrated] cat —William Shakespeare
29. Melancholy sound … like the weeping of a solitary, deserted human heart —Guy de Maupassant

    See Also: NOISE

30. Moping around like a chicken with the dropsy —Babs H. Deal
31. (The men grew silent and) morose like lumps of soft coal —Richard Ford
32. A sense of melancholy had enveloped her like a sheath —Charles Johnson
33. (My grandmother had) a permanently bleak outlook … like one of those cartoon characters with a small cloud over their heads —Susan Walton, New York Times/Hers, June 25, 1987
34. Somber and unreadable as Latin —Tony Ardizzone
35. Sour as port decanted too long —Truman Capote
36. Sulked like a bear —Anon
37. We [three motorists] drove out the lane like a funeral cortege —Ross Macdonald