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Metaphor Quotes

Browse 2099 quotes about Metaphor.

Metaphor Quotes

“You can approach 'The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death' in a variety or combination of ways: as a startlingly eccentric hobby; as a series of unresolved murder mysteries; as the manifestation of one woman's peculiar psychic life; as a lesson in forensics; as a metaphor for the fate of women; as a photographic study.”

Way Study Fate Mystery Lessons Approach Murder Series Metaphor Variety Combination Manifestation Peculiar Hobbies Psychics Eccentric One Woman Unexplained Forensics Murder Mysteries

Author:Robert Gottlieb

“Food is a great metaphor for the consolidation of corporate power in the hands of very few, who are mostly interested in their own profits and not the wellbeing of the animals they're slaughtering, or the land and the water they're using or abusing, or the workforce they're exploiting or even the people eating it.”

People Hands Water Animal Land Eating Metaphor Profit Corporate Wellbeing Workforce Consolidation

Author:Robert Kenner

“It has always seemed to me that if you could talk about your work in fully-formed phrases, you wouldn't write it. The writing is the statement, you see, and it seems to me that the poem or the story or the novel you write is the kind of metaphor you cast on life.”

Ifs Writing Kind Stories Seems Novel Casts Metaphor Statements Phrases

Author:Hortense Calisher

“Symbol and metaphor are as much a part of the architectural vocabulary as stone and steel.”

Stones Metaphor Architecture Symbols Steel Vocabulary

Author:Ada Louise Huxtable

“No metaphor reinvents the job of the nurture of children except to muddy or mock.”

Children Jobs Metaphor Nurture Mock Muddy

Book:Begin Again: Collected Poems

Source: Begin Again: Collected Poems

“For the perception of the beautiful we have the term "taste"--a metaphor taken from that which is passive in the body and transferred to that which is active in the mind.”

Mind Body Beautiful Term Taken Taste Perception Metaphor Active Passive

Author:Thomas Reid

“Gardening is peaceful, yet there is a great element of failure. It's the perfect metaphor for life -- a lot of pleasure, then it's over. There's great satisfaction in tending something, feeling it needs you, even if it's just a plant on your windowsill.”

Ifs Needs Feelings Perfect Pleasure Elements Plant Metaphor Satisfaction Peaceful Gardening Need You

Author:Jane Kaczmarek

“Sisterhood is a powerful metaphor; it ought not become a synonym for groupthink.”

Powerful Feminism Ought Metaphor Sisterhood Synonym Groupthink

Book:Beyond the Double Bind: Women and Leadership

Source: Beyond the Double Bind: Women and Leadership

“Model building is the art of selecting those aspects of a process that are relevant to the question being asked. As with any art, this selection is guided by taste, elegance, and metaphor; it is a matter of induction, rather than deduction. High science depends on this art.”

Art Matter Process Building Depends Taste Models Aspect Metaphor Relevant Selection Elegance Deductions

Book:Hidden order: how adaptation builds complexity

Source: Hidden order: how adaptation builds complexity

“Since the journey is a metaphor - the most ambiguous and seductive of metaphors, we tell ourselves - it can also be born of immobility. There is no need to drag our bodies around so much, all dressed up. It's hot, there are flies, diseases. It is enough to close our eyes, seated on a chair in the shade, to float on the waves of imagination. Isn't that what books are there for?”

Needs Book Enough Body Eye Born Imagination Journey Disease Hot Metaphor Wave Chairs Shade Drag Floats Seductive Ambiguous Dressed Up

Book:The Silent Duchess

Source: The Silent Duchess

“Effective metaphor does more than shed light on the two things being compared. It actually brings to the mind's eye something that has never before been seen. It's not just the marriage ceremony linking two things; it's the child born from the union.”

Mind Children Doe Two Light Eye Born Unions Metaphor Two Things Shed Ceremony Marriage Ceremony

Book:Word Painting

Source: Word Painting

“metaphors for God drawn from human experience can easily be literalized. While we are immediately aware that the personal God is not really a rock or a mother eagle, it is easy enough to imagine that God is really a king or a father.”

Humans Enough God Mother Religion Father Easy Imagine Rocks Kings Metaphor Imagine That Human Experience Eagles

Book:Women and the Word: The Gender of God in the New Testament and the Spirituality of Women

Source: Women and the Word: The Gender of God in the New Testament and the Spirituality of Women

“As a direct line to human feeling, empathic experience, genuine language and detail, poetry is everything that headline news is not. It takes us inside situations, helps us imagine life from more than one perspective, honors imagery and metaphor - those great tools of thought - and deepens our confidence in a meaningful world.”

World Humans Helping Feelings Poetry Language Lines Situation Imagine Perspective Honor News Tools Direct Metaphor Details Meaningful Genuine Poetry Is Imagery Headlines

Author:Naomi Shihab Nye

“"Terrorism" is a metaphor, it's an abstract noun. It's like having a war on dandruff. It's something from advertising, it's meaningless.”

War Metaphor Terrorism Advertising Abstract Meaningless Nouns

Author:Gore Vidal

“Economically, legally, and politically powerless throughout much of western history, women have been linked to nature and the unknowable through metaphors of the body while the masculine has signified culture and mental activity.”

Has Beens Art Body Culture Activity Western Metaphor Sexism Linked Powerless Masculine

Author:Whitney Chadwick

“Ask yourself... If my body were a metaphor for my life, what would the message be?”

Ifs Body Asks Messages Metaphor

Book:Unlock the Secret Messages of Your Body!: A 28-Day Jump-Start Program for Radiant Health and Glorious Vitality (Large Print 16pt)

Source: Unlock the Secret Messages of Your Body!: A 28-Day Jump-Start Program for Radiant Health and Glorious Vitality (Large Print 16pt)

“An epithet or metaphor drawn from nature ennobles art; an epithet or metaphor drawn from art degrades nature.”

Art Metaphor Degrade Epithet

Book:The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper: Including the Series Edited with Prefaces, Biographical and Critical

Source: The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper: Including the Series Edited with Prefaces, Biographical and Critical

“Pretty conceptions, fine metaphors, glittering expressions, and something of a neat cast of verse are properly the dress, gems, or loose ornaments of poetry.”

Poetry Expression Fine Dresses Casts Metaphor Conception Verses Neat Ornaments Gems

Book:The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq. In Verse and Prose: Containing the Principal Notes of Drs. Warburton and Warton: Illustrations, and Critical and Explanatory Remarks, by Johnson, Wakefield, A. Chalmers, F.S.A. and Others. To which are Added, Now First Published, Some Original Letters, with Additional Observations, and Memoirs of the Life of the Author

Source: The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq. In Verse and Prose: Containing the Principal Notes of Drs. Warburton and Warton: Illustrations, and Critical and Explanatory Remarks, by Johnson, Wakefield, A. Chalmers, F.S.A. and Others. To which are Added, Now First Published, Some Original Letters, with Additional Observations, and Memoirs of the Life of the Author

“Well, I've been blessed with good hair, or at least some people think it is. It is the way it is, sort of does what it wants to. So, yeah, I guess it is [a metaphor for your views on art and life].”

People Thinking Way Want Wells Doe Art Views Hair Yeah Blessed Metaphor Art And Life Good Hair

Author:David Lynch

“Dead metaphors make strong idols.”

Strong Metaphor Idols

Author:Marcia Falk

“Im a person of faith, and the language that I use to define my faith, the symbols and metaphors that I rely upon to express my faith, are those provided by Islam because they make the most sense to me.”

Persons Use Language Islam Metaphor Symbols Rely Rely Upon

Author:Reza Aslan

“Sport is a seductive metaphor (life as a game in which we gain victory through hard work, discipline, and visualizing success). but the older metaphor of farming (life as hard labor that is subject to weather and quirks of blind fate and may return no reward whatsoever and don't be surprised) is still in our blood.”

May Stills Hard Games Sports History Fate Blood Subjects Hard Work Return Victory Discipline Gains Labor Blind Rewards Metaphor Weather Farming Seductive Quirks Visualizing

Author:Garrison Keillor

“I think zombies have always been an easy metaphor for hard times. Because they're this big, faceless, brainless group of evil things that will work tirelessly to destroy you and think of nothing else.”

Thinking Hard Bigs Evil Easy Groups Metaphor Hard Times Zombie Evil Things Faceless Brainless

Author:Seth Grahame-Smith

“The minds of stone lovers had colonised stones as lichens clung to them with golden or grey-green florid stains. The human world of stones is caught in organic metaphors like flies in amber. Words came from flesh and hair and plants. Reniform, mammilated, botryoidal, dendrite, haematite. Carnelian is from carnal, from flesh. Serpentine and lizardite are stone reptiles ; phyllite is leafy-green.”

World Mind Humans Hair Lovers Stones Green Plant Metaphor Caught Flesh Golden Grey Stains Amber Reptiles

Book:A Stone Woman (Storycuts)

Source: A Stone Woman (Storycuts)

“The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is a metaphor, not just for books but for ideas, for language, for knowledge, for beauty, for all the things that make us human, for collecting memory”

Humans Book Ideas Language Memories Forgotten Metaphor Collecting Cemetery

Author:Carlos Ruiz Zafon

“I am completing a book I began back in 2002 called 'Poems in the Manner of.' 'The Matador of Metaphor' is from this manuscript. It is an homage to Wallace Stevens that appropriates certain of his techniques.”

Book Certain Metaphor Technique Manuscripts Homage Completing Matadors

Author:David Lehman

“I had very literal parents and I wanted to survive with metaphor and art, and there was a real sense of shame around it.”

Art Real Wanted Parent Shame Metaphor Literal

Author:Amanda Palmer

“You don't see something until you have the right metaphor to perceive it.”

Metaphor Perceive

Author:Robert Shaw

“The traditional metaphor for careers is a ladder, but I no longer think that metaphor holds. It just doesn’t make sense in a less hierarchical world... Build your skills, not your resume. Evaluate what you can do, not the title they’re going to give you. Do real work. Take a sales quota, a line role, an ops job. Don’t plan too much, and don’t expect a direct climb. If I had mapped out my career when I was sitting where you are, I would have missed my career.”

“There are congregations on nearly every corner. I'm not sure we need more churches. What we need is a church. I say one church is better than fifty. I have tried to remove the plural form churches from my vocabulary, training myself to think of the church as Christ did, and as the early Christians did. The metaphors for her are always singular - a body, a bride. I heard one gospel preacher say it like this, as he really wound up and broke a sweat: "We've got to unite ourselves as one body. Because Jesus is coming back, and he's coming back for a bride not a harem.”

Thinking Needs Body Christian Form Jesus Christ Church Heard Training Metaphor Corners Wounds Broke Not Sure Fifty Remove Sweat Preacher Vocabulary Coming Back Brides Congregation Harem

Author:Shane Claiborne

“Images are not quite ideas, they are stiller than that, with less implication outside themselves. And they are not myth, they do not have the explanatory power; they are nearer to pure story. Nor are they always metaphors; they do not say this is that, they say this is.”

Ideas Stories Pure Metaphor Myth Implications

Author:Robert Hass

“It is also difficult to articulate the subtleties in cinema, because there aren't words or metaphors which describe many of the emotions you are attempting to evoke.”

Difficult Emotion Metaphor Cinema Attempting Evoke Subtlety

Author:Conrad Hall

“Questions, inside the larger mystery of sorrow, which contains us and our daily transit, and is large enough indeed to contain the whole shifting tidal theater where I make small constructions, my metaphors, my defenses. Against which I play out theories, doubts, certainties bright as high tide in sunlight, which shift just as that brightness does, in fog or rain.”

Doe Enough Play Whole Doubt Mystery Theory Sorrow Rain Theater Metaphor Defense Certainty Construction Tides Sunlight Fog Shifting Brightness

Author:Mark Doty

“In golf, as in life, you get out of it what you put into it.”

“The dictionary contains no metaphors.”

Metaphor Dictionary

Book:The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language

Source: The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language

“I'm just fascinated by houses. In another life, I'd have probably trained as an architect. If I had enough money, I'd collect them like other people collect teapots. I don't know why I love them so much. I'm just very interested in the idea of a house as a metaphor for the way one lives.”

People Ifs Knows Way Ideas Enough House Metaphor Fascinated Architect Had Enough Another Life Teapots

Author:Frances Mayes

“We say that time passes, time goes by, and time flows. Those are metaphors. We also think of time as a medium in which we exist.”

Thinking Flow Metaphor Mediums Time Passes Time Goes By

Book:Time Travel: A History

Source: Time Travel: A History

“Matterhorn is my metaphor of the Vietnam War - we built it, we abandoned it, we assaulted it, we lost, and then we abandoned it again.”

War Lost Built Metaphor Vietnam Abandoned Vietnam War Matterhorn

Author:Karl Marlantes

“The recognition that no knowledge can be complete, no metaphor entire, is itself humanizing. It counteracts fanaticism. It grants even to adversaries the possibility of partial truth, and to oneself the possibility of error.”

Possibility Errors Metaphor Oneself Recognition Grants Adversaries Fanaticism Partial Truth

Author:Alvin Toffler

“In all aspects of life... we define our reality in terms of metaphors and then proceed to act on the basis of the metaphors. We draw inferences, set goals, make commitments, and execute plans, all on the basis of how we in part structure our experience, consciously and unconsciously, by means of metaphor.”

Mean Reality Goal Term Plans Draws Commitment Aspect Bases Structure Metaphor Setting Goals Aspects Of Life Inference

Author:George Lakoff

“The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.”

Kind Understanding Term Essence Metaphor

Book:Metaphors We Live By

Source: Metaphors We Live By

“Metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.”

Thinking Action Language Term Ordinary Everyday Metaphor Everyday Life Metaphorical Thoughts And Actions

Book:Metaphors We Live By

Source: Metaphors We Live By

“I started to think of Grace of Monaco as a metaphor for women in general.”

Thinking Grace Metaphor Monaco

Author:Olivier Dahan

“Science is a victim of its own reductive metaphors: 'Big Bang,' 'selfish gene' and so on. Richard Dawkins' selfish gene fitted with the Thatcherite politics of the time. It should actually be the 'altruistic gene,' but he'd never have sold as many books with a title like that.”

Should Book Bigs Victim Metaphor Selfish Titles Genes Bangs Selfish Gene

Author:Charles Jencks

“I explain at the parties that I believe knitting is a transformative and intriguing act that can change the life and brain of the person doing it, and that knitting is a perfect metaphor for life and insight into some better ways through it.”

Way Believe Persons I Believe Perfect Party Brain Metaphor Insight Better Ways Intriguing Knitting

Author:Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

“Life is like an elevator. On your way up, sometimes you have to stop and let some people off.”

People Way Life Sometimes Life Is Metaphor Lifts Stopping Life Is Like Elevators

Author:Ziad K. Abdelnour

“Lakoff's idea is that most of our thought is guided by underlying conceptual mappings between two domains that share some content, that overlap in the sets of their attributes. ... Contrary to the assertions of Lakoff and some of the cognitive metaphor theorists, people can read through to an underlying mapping, but only when the surface metaphor is new to them.”

People Two Ideas Poetry Literature Share Metaphor Surface Contrary Attributes Our Thoughts Domain Assertion Cognitive Theorists Mapping

Author:Don Paterson

“I believe that a work of art, like metaphors in language, can ask the most serious, difficult questions in a way which really makes the readers answer for themselves; that the work of art far more than an essay or a tract involves the reader, challenges him directly and brings him into the argument.”

Way Believe Art Asks Language I Believe Difficult Challenges Answers Serious Reader Argument Metaphor Works Of Art Essays Difficult Questions

Author:George Steiner

“People will listen to sophisticated physicists, using God as a kind of metaphor for the deep constants, the deep problems, the deep principles of physics, and say that in that sense I believe in God. The reaction is, "Oh, this great physicist believes in God - that means I'm free to believe in the trinity and in the crucifixion and in the reincarnation of Christ" - and all that stuff, which of course has nothing whatever to do with the fundamental constants of physics, which is what these physicists are talking about.”

“When I was 40, I wrote my first book, The Pilgrimage, and I said to myself, "why did it take so long for me to write this book?" Because my dream, since I was 10 years old, was to be a writer. I said, I have to revisit my life using a metaphor, and the metaphor was basically this boy that has a dream and has to go far away to realize that his dream is close to him.”

Writing Years Firsts Long Said Book Dream Realizing Boys Metaphor Far Away Pilgrimage

Author:Paulo Coelho