Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.

Cruel

Cruel as a rich coxcomb in a ballroom.
—Anonymous

Cruel as winter.
—Anonymous

As cruel as Medea.
—Robert Burton

Cruel as the Tartar foe,
To death inured, and nurst in scenes of woe.
—William Collins

Cruel as Medusa’s sculptured face.
—Lord De Tabley

Cruel as Herod when he surpris’d the sleeping Children of Bethlehem.
—Sir William Davenant

Cruel as the sun.
—Maurice Hewlett

Cruel as the pinch of a painless dentist.
—Sydney Munden

Cruel as love or life.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne

Cruel as a schoolboy ere he grows
To pity.
—Alfred Tennyson

Jealousy is as cruel as the grave.
—Old Testament

Cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.
—Old Testament

Cruel as death.
—James Thomson