calmness

See Also: PEACEFULNESS

1. Calm as a bathtub —George Garrett
2. Calm as a Buddhist —Elizabeth Taylor
3. Calm as a convent —Anon
4. Calm as a cud-chewing cow —Harold Adams
5. Calm as a frozen lake when ruthless winds blow fiercely —William Wordsworth
6. Calm as a gliding moon —Samuel Taylor Coleridge
7. Calm as a marble head —Eudora Welty
8. (I’m) calm as a Mediterranean sky —Frank Swinnerton
9. Calm as a mirror —Alexandre Dumas, pere
10. (The sky was) calm as an aquarium —Antoine de Saint-Exupery
11. Calm as an iceberg —Gelett Burgess
12. Calm as a slumbering babe —Percy Bysshe Shelley

    As part of our daily language this has evolved into “Calm as a sleeping baby.”

13. (Said it as) calm as a virgin discussing flower arrangement —George MacDonald Fraser
14. Calm as beauty —Robert Browning
15. Calm as dewdrops —William Wordsworth
16. Calm as fate —John Greenleaf Whittier
17. Calm as glass —Charlotte Bronte
18. Calm as ice —Nathaniel Hawthorne
19. Calm as if she were sitting for her portrait —Henry James
20. Calm as in the days when all was right —Friedrich von Schiller
21. Calm as night —Victor Hugo
22. (Voice) calm as the deepest cold —Sharon Sheehe Stark
23. Calm as the sky after a day of storm —Voltaire
24. Calm as virtue —William Shakespeare
25. Calm as water in a glass —standing water in clean cut glass —Reynolds Price
26. Calm descended (on the pool hall) as nerve shattering as if the (long barnlike) room were the ship from which Jonah had been cast into the sea —Flannery O’Connor
27. Calmed down, like a Corinthian column —John Ashbery
28. A calm … like the deep sleep which follows an orgy —Mark Twain
29. Cold as cucumbers —Beaumont and Fletcher

    In its original meaning this referred to sexual coldness. As currently used it means being calm, collected, or “Cool as a cucumber.” Poet Stevie Smith used the simile as a title for a poem which begins with this and two other cliches to describe the subject of the poem, a girl named Mary: “Cool as a cucumber calm as a mill pond sound as a bell was Mary.” (Ed: The quote from the Smith poem has no commas!)

30. Cool and collected as a dean sitting in his deanery —Ogden Nash
31. Cool and ordinary as a gallon of buttermilk —Borden Deal
32. Cool as a Buddha —Jan Epton Seale

    The simile, from a short story about a new mother entitled Reluctant Madonna, reads as follows in full context: “Christie intends to be cool as a Buddha about this baby. Unflappable.”

33. Cool as a cop with a clipboard —Gary Gildner
34. Cool as a cube of cucumber on ice —Carl Sandburg

    This extension of the familiar “Cool as a cucumber” is particularly apt in Sandburg’s epic, The People, Yes, which beautifully and cleverly incorporates many familiar similes.

35. Cool as a frozen daiquiri —Linda Barnes
36. Cool as an Easter lily —Erich Maria Remarque
37. Cool as a quarterback —Dan Wakefield
38. (He was) cool as a refrigerator —R.A.J. Walling
39. Cool as a veteran horse race jockey —Carl Sandburg
40. Cool as lettuce —Jay Parini
41. (He’s as) cool as the other side of your pillow —Merlin Olsen, NBC-TV broadcaster, about Ken O’Brien, quarterback for the Jets, January, 1987
42. Expression … as calm and collected as that of a doctor by a patient’s bedside —Stefan Zweig
43. Felt a certain calm fall over me like a cloak —R. Wright Campbell
44. Have kept composure, like captives who would not talk under torture —Richard Wilbur
45. His calmness was like the sureness of money in the bank —Anzia Yezierska
46. Looked as cool as a yellow diamond —Robert Campbell
47. Looking calm as an eggshell —Edith Wharton
48. (The April morning) mellow as milk —Sharon Sheehe Stark
49. Mellow as moonlight —Slogan, Vogan Candy Co.
50. Mellow as old brandy —Anon
51. Mild as cottage cheese —Stephen Vincent Benet
52. Mild as milk —Dame Edith Sitwell
53. Nonchalant as a shoplifter in the checkout line —Donald McCaig
54. The sea was calm like milk and water —Isak Dinesen
55. The sense of rest, of having arrived at the long-promised calm centre, filled him like a species of sleep —John Updike
56. Serene as a man who has just got a promotion and raise —Geoffrey Wolff
57. Stayed calm, like a hero before the battle when all the cameras are on him —Clancy Sigal
58. (Your opinion at the moment) worries me exactly as much as dandruff would a chopped-off head —William Mcllvanney