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Metaphor Quotes

Browse 2099 quotes about Metaphor.

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Metaphor Quotes

“The Saint whose water can light lamps, the clairvoyant whose lapse in recall is the breath of God, the true paranoid for whom all is organized in spheres joyful or threatening about the central pulse of himself, the dreamer whose puns probe ancient fetid shafts and tunnels of truth all act in the same special relevance to the word, or whatever it is the word is there, buffering, to protect us from. The act of metaphor than was a thrust at truth and a lie, depending where you were: inside, safe or outside, lost.”

LightLyingLostWaterSpecialProtectSafeBreathsAncientSaintMetaphorOrganizedDreamerSpheresJoyfulRecallsThreateningLampsRelevancePulseThrustTunnelsParanoidPunLapsesClairvoyant
Author:Thomas Pynchon
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“But that's typical of me. "This is going to end in tears," I tell myself every time I balance a cup of coffee on the upholstered arm of the chair I'm sitting on. And then, lo and behold, the cup topples and even before it lands, I tell myself, "Told me so!" Not to spell out, or spill out, one of the metaphors of my life, but I always do the stupid thing and then I do it again. I never learn.”

EndsLandStupidTearsArmsBalanceSittingMetaphorCoffeeCupsChairsSpellsTypicalSpillsCoffee CupStupid Things
Book:Him Her Him Again The End of Him
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“So I should be aware of the dangers of self-consciousness, but at the same time, I’ll be plowing through the fog of all these echoes, plowing through mixed metaphors, noise, and will try to show the core, which is still there, as a core, and is valid, despite the fog. The core is the core is the core. There is always the core, that can’t be articulated. Only caricatured.”

ShouldTryingStillsSelfShowsConsciousnessDangerMetaphorCoreNoiseDespiteEchoesFogSelf ConsciousnessPlowing
Book:A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius: A Memoir Based on a True Story
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“Television is our culture's principal mode of knowing about itself. Therefore -- and this is the critical point -- how television stages the world becomes the model for how the world is properly to be staged. It is not merely that on the television screen entertainment is the metaphor for all discourse. It is that off the screen the same metaphor prevails. (92)”

WorldCultureKnowingStageTelevisionModelsMetaphorEntertainmentCriticalScreensPrincipalDiscourse
Author:Neil Postman
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“The fairy tale emanates from specific struggles to humanize bestial and barbaric forces, which have terrorized our minds and communities in concrete ways, threatening to destroy free will and human compassion. The fairy tale sets out to conquer this concrete terror through metaphors.”

WayMindHumansForceCommunityCompassionStruggleMetaphorTerrorTalesConquerFairyFree WillFairy TaleConcreteThreateningBarbaricEmanateHuman Compassion
Book:When Dreams Came True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their Tradition
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“Running is the greatest metaphor for life, because you get out of it what you put into it.”

MotivationalRunningExerciseMetaphorTrackFitnessRunnersMarathonInspirational RunningMotivational RunningJoggingTrack And FieldKeep RunningRunning MarathonMarathon RunnersDistance RunnerDistance RunningGreat RunningCross Country RunningInspirational RunnerMarathon RunningRunning TrainingTraining For A MarathonTrack RunningRunning TrackMotivational Cross Country RunningTrack RunnersCross Country MotivationalExercise And HealthInspirational TrackRunning FunnyExercise HealthFunny RunningRelay RacesRace MotivationalMetaphors Of LifeMotivational TrainingFunny Cross Country RunningInspirational Training
Author:Oprah Winfrey
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“To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.”

WritingArtSpeakLanguageStruggleInvolvedMetaphorSentencesGreekPhrasesLatinWornObscurityLureAdjectivesWorn OutSpeak EnglishEncroachmentVaguenessLatin And Greek
Author:George Orwell
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“The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful ... Love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.”

FirstsMightBeautifulMemoriesBrainRecordsOur LivesSpecialAreasMetaphorCharmPoeticUnbearableBeautiful LifeLightnessUnbearable Lightness Of BeingBeautiful LoveUnbearable LightnessUnbearable Things
Author:Milan Kundera
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“I sat on the bench outside of class today and talked to Jon. I read to him from my journal, it was the part about the accordian player I was watching on the street last weekend. He said that an accordian is such a perfect metaphor for Love, because you are always opening, and closing, shifting, and getting air, and that's how the music happens. True.”

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Author:Sabrina Ward Harrison
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“And so I began to read,' Sorkar said. 'And at first the complete works were like a jungle, the language was quicksand. Metaphors turned beneath my feet and became biting snakes, similes fled from my grasp like frightened deer, taking all meaning with them. All was alien, and amidst the hanging, entangling creepers of this foreign grammar, all sound became a cacophany. I feared for myself, for my health and sanity, but then I thought of my purpose, of where I was and who I was, of pain and I pressed on.”

FirstsSaidPainPurposeLanguageSoundFeetMetaphorAliensFrightenedSanitySnakesGrammarJungleSimileDeerBitingQuicksandCreepers
Book:Red Earth and Pouring Rain
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“When King Lear dies in act five, do you know what Shakespeare has written? He has written, 'He dies.' No more. No fanfare, no metaphor, no brilliant final words. The culmination of the most influential piece of dramatic literature is, 'He dies.' Now I am not asking you to be happy at my leaving but all I ask you to do is to turn the page and let the next story begin. -- Mr. Magorium”

KnowsStoriesDiesTurnsNextAsksLiteratureFivePiecesWrittenKingsPagesAskingFinalsLeavingMetaphorBrilliantDramaticDo You KnowInfluentialLearCulminationFinal WordsFanfare
Author:Suzanne Weyn
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“The trickle-down theory of economics has it that it's good for rich people to get even richer because some of their wealth will trickle own, through their no doubt lavish spending, upon those who stand below them on the economic ladder. Notice that the metaphor is not that of a gushing waterfall but of a leaking tap: even the most optimistic endorsers of this concept do not picture very much real flow, as their language reveals" pg. 102.”

PeopleRealLanguageWealthRichDoubtEconomicTheoryConceptsEconomicsFlowMetaphorSpendingOptimisticNo DoubtLaddersRich PeopleWaterfallsTrickle Down
Author:Margaret Atwood
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“Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out always cut it out. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.”

IfsThinkingLongUseUsedVoiceBreakCuttingSeeingFiguresSpeechEverydayMetaphorActivePhrasesPrintPassiveSay AnythingSimileJargonFigures Of SpeechLong WordsPassive Voice
Book:Shooting an Elephant: And Other Essays
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“If gold has been prized because it is the most inert element, changeless and incorruptible, water is prized for the opposite reason -- its fluidity, mobility, changeability that make it a necessity and a metaphor for life itself. To value gold over water is to value economy over ecology, that which can be locked up over that which connects all things.”

IfsHas BeensReasonValuesWaterEconomyElementsAll ThingsGoldOppositesMetaphorLockedEcologyLocked UpMobilityFluidity
Book:Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics
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“I don't expect Christians to see God as a metaphor, but that's what he is. Perhaps it might be clearer to call him a character in fiction, and a very interesting one too: one of the greatest and most complex villains of all - savage, petty, boastful and jealous, and yet capable of moments of tenderness and extremes of arbitrary affection - for David, for example. But he's not real, any more than Hamlet or Mr Pickwick are real. They are real in the context of their stories, but you won't find them in the phone book.”

BookRealMomentsCharacterStoriesMightChristianInterestingFictionExampleCapableComplexesMetaphorPhonesAffectionExtremesJealousVillainTendernessSavagesPettyArbitraryVery Interesting
Author:Philip Pullman
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“When we want to give expression to a dramatic situation in our lives, we tend to use metaphors of heaviness. We say that something has become a great burden to us. We either bear the burden or fail and go down with it, we struggle with it, win or lose. And Sabina - what had come over her? Nothing. She had left a man because she felt like leaving him. Had he persecuted her? Had he tried to take revenge on her? No. Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden, but the unbearable lightness of being.”

MenWantGivingUseWinningLeftFeltLosesSituationStruggleOur LivesFailingExpressionBearsDramaLeavingMetaphorBurdenRevengeDramaticUnbearablePersecutedLightnessWin Or LoseHeavinessUnbearable Lightness Of BeingUnbearable LightnessLeaving HimDramatic Situations
Author:Milan Kundera
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“All events, no matter how earthshaking or bizarre, are diluted within moments of their occurrence the the continuance of the necessary routines of day-to-day. -Fitz Most prisons are of our own making. A man makes his own freedom, too. -Chade When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool, you end up sounding like a moron instead. -Burrich We left. Walking uphill and into the wind. That suddenly seemed a metaphor for my whole life. -Fitz”

MenEndsMatterWholeMomentsLeftPiecesCuttingEventsWindFoolWalkingPrisonMetaphorWhole LifeDay To DayBizarreMoronContinuance
Author:Robin Hobb
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“Creativity is more about taking the facts, fictions, and feelings we store away and finding new ways to connect them. What we're talking about here is metaphor. Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art, if it is not art itself. Metaphor is our vocabulary for connecting what we are experiencing now with what we have experienced before. It's not only how we express what we remember , it's how we interpret it - for ourselves and others.”

IfsWayArtFactsFeelingsRememberFictionTalkingCreativityFindingsMetaphorStoresNew WaysVocabularyConnecting
Book:The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life
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“In a way, her strangeness, her naiveté, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of an idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings, had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like an artist with no art form, she became dangerous.”

WayArtMightFormArtistImaginationHalfDangerousDisciplineActivityConsequencePaintCuriosityMetaphorStringsIdleEquationsClayCravingOther HalfWhimRestlessnessPreoccupationStrangeness
Author:Toni Morrison
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“So many indigenous people have said to me that the fundamental difference between Western and indigenous ways of being is that even the most open-minded westerners generally view listening to the natural world as a metaphor, as opposed to the way the world really is. Trees and rocks and rivers really do have things to say to us.”

PeopleWorldWaySaidNaturalDifferencesViewsTreeRocksListeningRiversFundamentalsWesternMetaphorIndigenousNatural WorldOpen MindedIndigenous PeopleWesterners
Book:What We Leave Behind
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“What has our culture lost in 1980 that the avant-garde had in 1890? Ebullience, idealism, confidence, the belief that there was plenty of territory to explore, and above all the sense that art, in the most disinterested and noble way, could find the necessary metaphors by which a radically changing culture could be explained to its inhabitants.”

WayArtCultureBeliefLostMetaphorNoblePlentyTerritoryIdealismAvant GardeDisinterested
Book:The Spectacle of Skill: New and Selected Writings of Robert Hughes
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