Simply Similes

I've also been thinking about Sue's workshop and that Mildred Walker excerpt. Sue's exercise so wonderfully made us aware of the craft and the architectural genius involved (at the sentence level, at the phrase level, at the word level, etc.) in beautiful prose writing. I don't want to ask a question that induces you to leaf maddeningly through your collection of Toni Morrison novels, but can you think of any individual pieces of writing, or sentences, etc., that you might be inclined to use in a classroom either to celebrate the glories of writing, or use as illustrations of some sort?

I'm again invoking To the Lighthouse, but I often think that there can't be a more astounding simile-writer than Virginia Woolf. For example, think of how richly you could mine the following passage. It's that moment when Mr. Ramsay, in an endearing if ultimately unsucessfully way, tries to make amends with his son after having spoken to him harshly. The passage then moves into a positively stunning example of descriptive writing (amateur nature photographers like myself will appreciate the concluding image):

"Already ashamed of that petulance, of that gesticulation of the hands when charging at the head of his troops, Mr. Ramsay rather sheepishly prodded his son's bare legs once more, and then, as if he had her leave for it, with a movement which oddly reminded his wife of the great sea lion at the Zoo tumbling backwards after swallowing his fish and walloping off so that the water in the tank washes from side to side, he dived into the evening air which, already thinner, was taking the substance from leaves and hedges but, as if in return, restoring to roses and pinks a lustre which they had not had by day."

If I could write just one sentence like that in my lifetime, I would die happy ... :)