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Famous George Campbell Quotes

“...when a person, instead of adopting metaphors that come naturally and opportunely in his way, rummages the whole world in quest of them, and piles them one upon another; when he cannot so properly be said to use metaphor as to talk in metaphor, or rather when from metaphor he runs into allegory, and thence into enigma, his words are not the immediate signs of his thought; they are at best but the signs of the signs of his thought.”

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Book:The Philosophy of Rhetoric
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“…there is a particular boldness in metaphor, which is not to be found in the same degree in any of the figures of rhetoric. Without any thing like an explicit comparison, and commonly without any warning or apology, the name of one thing is obtruded upon us, for the name of another quite different, though resembling in some quality. The consequence of this is, that as there is always in this trope an apparent at least, if it cannot be called a real impropriety, and some degree of obscurity, a new metaphor is rarely to be risked.”

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Book:The Philosophy of Rhetoric
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“And as to ordinary metaphors, or those which have already received the public sanction, and which are commonly very numerous in every tongue, the metaphorical meaning comes to be as really ascertained by custom in the particular language as the original, or what is called the literal meaning of the word. And in this respect metaphors stand on the same foot of general use with proper terms.”

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Book:The Philosophy of Rhetoric
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“The corresponding metaphor, synecdoche, or metonymy, in another language will often be justly chargeable with obscurity and impropriety, perhaps even with absurdity. … {metonymy - sail vs vellum - for ship} … These tropes therefore are of a mixed nature. At the same time that they bear a reference to the primitive signification, they derive from their customary application to the figurative sense, that is, in other words, from the use of the language, somewhat of the nature of proper terms.”

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Book:The Philosophy of Rhetoric
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“…in whatever light they [figurative words that have become literal] may be considered by the grammarian and the lexicographer, they cannot be considered as genuine metaphors by the rhetorician. I have already assigned the reason. They have nothing of the effect of metaphor upon the hearer. On the contrary, like proper terms, they suggest directly to his mind, without the intervention of any image, the ideas which the speaker proposed to convey by them.”

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Book:The Philosophy of Rhetoric
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“The frequent use of any word in this manner brings it insensibly to have all the effect of the proper term whose place it was intended to supply: no sooner is this effect produced by it, than the same principle that influenced us at first to employ it operates with equal strength in influencing us to lay it aside, and in its stead to adopt something newer and still more remote.”

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Book:The Philosophy of Rhetoric
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