activeness

See Also: ALERTNESS, BEHAVIOR, BUSINESS, ENERGY, ENTHUSIASM, EXCITEMENT, MOVEMENT, PERSONALITY PROFILES

1. About as active as a left-over fly in January —Anon
2. About as animated as a suit on a hanger —Elyse Sommer
3. (This region was as) active as a compost heap —Julia O’Faolain
4. Active as the sun —Isaac Watts
5. Alive as a vision of life to be —Algernon Charles Swinburne
6. (He looks) dead as a stump —Pat Conroy

   In Conroy’s novel, The Prince of Tides, a character hearing someone described as above disagrees with another simile: “On the contrary, I think he looks as though he could rise up and whistle a John Philip Sousa march.”

7. Frisky as a frisbee —Helen Hudson
8. Frisky as a colt —Geoffrey Chaucer
9. He was behaving as though the party were his: like an energetic octopus, he was shaking martinis, making introductions, manipulating the phonograph —Truman Capote
10. He is like a moving light, never still. He has the temperature and metabolism of a bird —Joy Williams
11. He [James Cagney] was like fireworks going off —Television obituary, 1986
12. Lively as a boy, kind like a fairy godfather —Robert Louis Stevenson
13. Lively as a weasel —Wallace Stegner
14. Lusty as June —Wallace Stevens
15. Mechanically animated, like the masterwork of some fiendishly inventive undertaker —Sharon Sheehe Stark
16. Pert as a sparrow —Walker Percy
17. (She had) rolled up her sleeves with all the vigor of a first-class cook confronting a brand-new kitchen —Mary McCarthy
18. She is active and strong as little lionesses —William James

    From a letter describing the energy of women in Dresden, July 24, 1867.

19. She was like a strong head wind —Marguerite Young
20. Simmering … like a coal fire in the Welsh mines —Marvin Kittman about British actor Roy Marsden whose popularity thus simmers “in the collective unconscious of the American public” and bursts into flame whenever he makes an appearance in a new British import, Newsday, March 27, 1987
21. Small and sprightly, like a bantam hen —Truman Capote
22. Sprightly as a Walt Disney cricket —Jean Thompson
23. Tireless as a spider —Eudora Welty
24. Vibrant as an E string —Carl Van Vechten