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Metaphor Quotes

Browse 2099 quotes about Metaphor.

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Metaphor Quotes

“He turned his steel eyes at me. They hurt me, paralysed me, like the advancing lights of a car. I saw that his body was taut, all of it: also made of steel; that it only worked because it was at an intolerable tension, and that it was our sensation of that tension which had exhausted us, which could no longer be borne. He was the wrong spring which had been put into our machine, that had made Claude ill, George foolish, Boris an anxiety.”

Metaphor1932CharacterisationSeveral OccasionsScylla And Charybdis
Book:The Complete Stories
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“The wall rose high above us in the night, illimitable and fearsome. If we could just get across it, then we would be all right; I knew it deep in my bones. But for the moment it stood between us and our escape, and I was as frightened of it as I had been of the Volstov dragons. It was on the same scale and, beyond that, it meant just as much- a cruel, stark metaphor, the symbol of oppression. And yet it was only a wall.”

FearWallMetaphorOppressionEscapeWalls
Book:Shadow Magic
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“So endeth the story of the winning of Excalibur, and may God give unto you in your life, that you may have His truth to aid you, like a shining sword, for to overcome your enemies; and may He give you Faith (for Faith containeth Truth as a scabbard containeth its sword), and may that Faith heal all your wounds of sorrow as the sheath of Excalibur healed all the wounds of him who wore that excellent weapon. For with Truth and Faith girded upon you, you shall be as well able to fight all your battles as did that noble hero of old, whom men called King Arthur.”

TruthFaithMetaphorKing ArthurTruth And Faith
Book:The Story of King Arthur and His Knights
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“He would talk, and I would talk, and he would talk, and each of our words sounded out the deepest secret depths inside us. There are some forms of love that words can do no justice to. There are some scars that can't be seen. Perfection is in itself an imperfection. He had flaws. He was sick. He needed help. Is not everyone sick, at one time or another? That was part of his beauty, his sickness. If he had not been sick, he would not have been beautiful, in the way that consumptives are, burning themselves up in brilliant flashes of light . . . I don't expect you to be able to understand. Love is strong enough to resurrect the dead. I don't like the word scar, because it implies intent and blame. A soul as powerful as his had to burn. I have never known a love like this. You don't know. I would have done anything at all for him. You don't know. It feels so goddamn good to be needed, to have someone tell you that he has a gaping hole in him whose shape is made to fit you . . . I saw that he was burning a piece of art on me, a signature on my psyche because it filled the hole in his own, and he wanted to make me his.”

LoveRelationshipsMetaphorSicknessToxic RelationshipsDexter PalmerThe Dream Of Perpetual Motion
Book:The Dream of Perpetual Motion
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“But at that moment all I could see was the wolf in the white van, so alive, so strong. Hidden from view, unnoticed, concealed. And I thought, maybe he's real, this wolf, and he's really out there in a white van somewhere, riding around. Maybe he's in the far back, pacing back and forth, circling, the pads of his huge paws raw and cracking, his thick, sharp claws dully clicking against the raised rusty steel track ridges on the floor. Maybe he's sound asleep, or maybe he's just pretending. And then the van stops somewhere, maybe, and somebody gets out and walks around the side to the back and grabs hold of the handle and flings the doors open wide. Maybe whoever's kept him wears a mechanic's jumpsuit and some sunglasses, and he hasn't fed the great wolf for weeks, cruising the streets of the city at night, and the wolf's crazy with hunger now; he can't even think. Maybe he's not locked up in the back at all: he could be riding in the passenger seat, like a dog, just sitting and staring out the open window, looking around, checking everybody out. Maybe he's over in the other seat behind the steering wheel. Maybe he's driving.”

MetaphorMental IllnessDelusionJohn DarnielleWolf In White Van
Book:Wolf in White Van
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“Carlyle had come fluttering to the flame, lured by the false invitation Dominic had sent in Eloise's name and lured, too, by Eloise's conclusion that J.E.D.D. Mason was something not unlike a miracle. How confident the cousin was that in this golden age of peace and ever watching trackers, a virgin with a bag of gold could walk across this earth without danger. Our modern moths have bounced so many times off light bulbs they aren't prepared for torches and forget that wings can burn.”

Metaphor
Book:Seven Surrenders
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“You told me that Kafka was not a thinker, and that a "genetic" approach to his work would disclose that much of it was only a kind of very imaginative whining. That was during the period when you were going in for wrecking operations, feeling, I suppose, that the integrity of your own mental processes was best maintained by a series of strong, unforgiving attacks. You made quite an impression on everyone, in those days: you ruffled blouse, you long magenta skirt slit to the knee, the dagger thrust into your boot. "Is that a metaphor?" I asked, pointing to the dagger; you shook your head, smiled, said no.”

MetaphorKafka
Author:Donald Barthelme
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“I left the room before I could figure out exactly what bothered me about his response. Was it the way it seemed to assume a future for the two of us? A future in which I would continue to be unable to leave this house? Was it the presumption that I was making a cake for him when, really, I had no idea why I was making a cake at all?”

RelationshipsFutureMetaphorAssumptionTrappedAlexandra KleemanIntimations
Book:Intimations: Stories
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“Soft hearts provide poor harbor; tin hearts can better stand against time and bad weather, thin and hollow as they are. So you pray to change from flesh to metal, and the dying Author of the world hears your plea and performs his final miracle. He lays His hand on you and then He vanishes. And what mortal man can undo that? What human on this earth has the power to change a tin man back to flesh?”

GodMetaphorHeartsDexter PalmerDefense MechanismsThe Dream Of Perpetual MotionTin Man
Book:The Dream of Perpetual Motion
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“I didn't know what to say. I knew I had a big choice to make. I could let it all go and try to love him, try to trust him, try to make something lasting and good. He obviously had strong feelings for me or about me. And he wasn't being so bad right now. We could build something sturdy, beautiful. Or I could try to make a dash for the door by crawling under the dining room table. There was a good chance that he would kill me later either way.”

RelationshipsMetaphorSatireAlexandra KleemanIntimations
Book:Intimations: Stories
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“I got up to go back to the kitchen and put the cake in the oven. Probably it would not go well for the cake, or for whoever tried to eat the cake. It did not look as though the cake was going to turn out particularly nice, having been made for confusing reasons and lacking certain essential ingredients. But what else was there to do? Wasn't a terrible cake better than some terrible cake batter?”

MetaphorAlexandra KleemanIntimations
Book:Intimations: Stories
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“I am going to tell a story now, and though I've made a life out of writing words, this is the first time I have told a story. There are no new stories in the world anymore, and no more storytellers. There is nothing left but the fragments of phrases that signalled their telling: once upon a time; why; and then; the end. But these phrases have lost their meanings through endless repetition, like everything else in this modern, mechanical age. And this machine age has no room for stories. These days we seek our pleasures out in single moments cast in amber, as if we have no desire to connect the future to the past. Stories? We have no time for them; we have no patience.”

StoriesMetaphorStorytellingDexter PalmerModern AgeThe Dream Of Perpetual MotionNarrator
Book:The Dream of Perpetual Motion
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“For with each bite he tasted not just the irresistible sweetness of the dessert, but the deliciously agonizing negative flavor of all the imagined foodstuffs that he could have bought with that nickel instead—a turkey leg the size of his forearm, or a milkshake with a pair of deep red strawberries floating on its surface. The single relinquished nickel sat in the custard seller's till, its gold transmuted back to lead.”

RegretMetaphorPossibilitiesDissatisfactionDexter PalmerThe Dream Of Perpetual Motion
Book:The Dream of Perpetual Motion
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“This had been happening more and more often: the two of us come upon each other by accident in the early hours of the morning and take solace in each others' company, weathering out the peril of being awake at this time of night, when thoughts that are neatly ordered or justly murdered during the day come loose from their moorings and out of their graves, to tie themselves to each other in new and dangerous ways.”

ThoughtsMetaphorEarly MorningDexter PalmerPersonificationThe Dream Of Perpetual MotionFigurative LanguageLate Nights
Book:The Dream of Perpetual Motion
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“Is that true," I asked, "that song?" "It is a metaphor," said Mrs. Davis, "it has metaphorical truth." "And the end of the mechanical age," I said, "is that a metaphor?" "The end of the mechanical age," said Mrs. Davis, "is in my judgment an actuality straining to become a metaphor. One must wish it luck, I suppose. One must cheer it on. Intellectual rigor demands that we give these damned metaphors every chance, even if they are inimical to personal well-being and comfort. We have a duty to understand everything, whether we like it or not–a duty I would scant if I could." At that moment the water jumped into the boat and sank us.”

Metaphor
Book:Sixty stories
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“Left to our own devices, we are apt to backslide to our instinctive conceptual ways. This underscores the place of education in a scientifically literate democracy, and even suggests a statement of purpose for it (a surprisingly elusive principle in higher education today). The goal of education is to make up for the shortcomings in our instinctive ways of thinking about the physical and social world. And education is likely to succeed not by trying to implant abstract statements in empty minds but by taking the mental models that are our standard equipment, applying them to new subjects in selective analogies, and assembling them into new and more sophisticated combinations.”

LanguageEducationLearningMetaphorThoughtEducational PhilosophyThought ProcessAnalogy
Book:The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
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