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Metaphor Quotes

Browse 2099 quotes about Metaphor.

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Metaphor Quotes

“Reading with an eye towards metaphor allows us to become the person we’re reading about, while reading about them. That’s why there is symbols in books and why your English teacher deserves your attention. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if the author intended the symbol to be there because the job of reading is not to understand the author’s intent. The job of reading is to use stories as a way into seeing other people as a we ourselves.”

PeopleIfsWayPersonsBookMatterStoriesUseEyeJobsReadingAttentionTeacherSeeingDeserveMetaphorSymbolsEnglish Teacher
Author:John Green
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“I like to borrow a metaphor from the great poet and mystic Rumi who talks about living like a drawing compass. One leg of the compass is static. It is fixed and rooted in a certain spot. Meanwhile, the other leg draws a huge wide circle around the first one, constantly moving. Just like that, one part of my writing is based in Istanbul. It has strong local roots. Yet at the same time the other part travels the whole wide world, feeling connected to several cities, cultures, and peoples.”

WorldWritingFirstsWholeFeelingsMovingCertainCultureStrongCitiesPoetHugeDrawsRootsMetaphorLegsConnectedWideDrawingCirclesLocalsSpotsFixedRootedCompassMysticStaticGreat PoetIstanbulConstantly Moving
Author:Elif Safak
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“I often like to think that our map of the world is wrong, that where we have centered physics, we should actually place literature as the central metaphor that we want to work out from. Because I think literature occupies the same relationship to life that life occupies to death. A book is life with one dimension pulled out of it. And life is something that lacks a dimension which death will give it. I imagine death to be a kind of release into the imagination in the sense that for characters in a book, what we experience is an unimaginable dimension of freedom.”

ThinkingWorldWantGivingShouldKindBookCharacterLife IsLiteratureImaginationImagineMetaphorWork OutPhysicsReleaseDimensionsMapsUnimaginable
Author:Terence McKenna
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“The reappearance of the crescent moon after the new moon; the return of the Sun after a total eclipse, the rising of the Sun in the morning after its troublesome absence at night were noted by people around the world; these phenomena spoke to our ancestors of the possibility of surviving death. Up there in the skies was also a metaphor of immortality.”

PeopleWorldNightMorningSunSkyPossibilityReturnMoonMetaphorAbsenceAround The WorldImmortalityRisingSunsetLife And DeathSpokesAncestorSunriseSurvivingEclipseTroublesomeNew MoonMorning AfterCrescentCrescent MoonTotal Eclipse
Author:Carl Sagan
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“When you write, it’s like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring them unity. Your fingers have still not perfected the task. Some of the braids are long, others are short. Some are thick, others are thin. Some are heavy. Others are light. Like the diverse women of your family. Those whose fables and metaphors, whose similes and soliloquies, whose diction and je ne sais quoi daily slip into your survival soup, by way of their fingers.”

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Author:Edwidge Danticat
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“That’s what i love about poetry. The more abstract, the better. The stuff were your not sure what the poets talking about. You may have an idea, but you cant be sure. Not a hundred percent. Each word, specifically chosen, could have a million different meanings. Is it a stand-in ―a symbol for another idea? Does it fit into a larger, more hidden, metaphor? ...I hated poetry until someone showed me how to appreciate it. He told me to see poetry as a puzzle. Its up to the reader to decipher the code, or the words, based on everything they know about life and emotions.”

KnowsMayDoeIdeasDifferentStuffEmotionTalkingMillionsPoetReaderFitPercentHundredAppreciateMetaphorChosenSymbolsCodeHatedNot SureAbstractPuzzlesCantDecipherDifferent Meanings
Author:Jay Asher
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“Geography is the key, the crucial accident of birth. A piece of protein could be a snail, a sea lion, or a systems analyst, but it had to start somewhere. This is not science; it is merely metaphor. And the landscape in which the protein "starts" shapes its end as surely as bowls shape water.”

EndsWaterPiecesSeaKeysBirthShapesMetaphorAccidentsLandscapeLionsCrucialBowlsGeographyProteinAnalystsSnail
Book:Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
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“What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force.”

PeopleHumansLongHas BeensSeemsForceIllusionRelationForgottenMetaphorFixedHostWornHuman RelationsBindingUsageWorn OutTruth And LiesDrainedSensuousAnthropomorphismGerman Philosopher
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Illustrated): Friedrich Nietzsche
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“[T]hat state, love, is so utterly alien to that other idea without which we cannot live as human beings --- the idea of justice. It is only because love is so profoundly the enemy of justice that our minds, shrinking in horor from its true nature, try to tame it by uniting it with its opposite [...] in the hope that if we apply all the metaphors of normality, that if we heap them high enough, we shall, in the end, be able to approximate that state metaphorically.”

IfsTryingMindHumansIdeasEndsStatesEnoughAbleJusticeHuman BeingsLove IsEnemyOppositesMetaphorAliensHatsTrue NatureShrinkingNormalityUniting
Author:Amitav Ghosh
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“What do you see when you see me?' She asked him, burying her own face in his bosom. 'Do you want the truth?' She nodded. 'The firing squad.' 'That's not the whole truth. Try again.' 'Insatiability,' he said with some bitterness. 'That's oblique but altogether too simple. Once more,' she insisted. 'One more time.' He was silent for several minutes. 'The map of a country in which I only exist by virtue of the extravagance of my metaphors.' 'Now you're being too sophisticated. And, besides, what metaphors do we have in common?”

WantTryingSaidCountryWholeFacesSimpleCommonVirtueMinutesSilentMetaphorMapsMore TimeBitternessSophisticatedBosomsTry AgainFiringExtravaganceSquadWhole TruthBurying
Author:Angela Carter
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“There's a great metaphor that one of my doctors uses: If a fish is swimming in a dirty tank and it gets sick, do you take it to the vet and amputate the fin? No, you clean the water. So, I cleaned up my system. By eating organic raw greens, nuts and healthy fats, I am flooding my body with enzymes, vitamins and oxygen.”

IfsUseBodyWaterHealthyEatingDoctorsSickCleanMetaphorFishesFatsDirtySwimmingNutsOxygenTanksVitaminsFloodingVetsFinsEnzymes
Author:Kris Carr
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“I would like to use this little flower as a metaphor. The five petals of the little forget-me-not flower prompt me to consider five things we would be wise never to forget....first, forget not to be patient with yourself...second, forget not the difference between a good sacrifice and a foolish sacrifice...third, forget not to be happy now...fourth, forget not the why of the gospel...fifth, forget not that the Lord loves you.”

FirstsLittlesUseWould BeDifferencesForgetLordFiveWiseSacrificeLove YouFlowerThirdsPatientMetaphorFoolishFourthFifthBe PatientBeing WisePetalsPromptsForget MeForget Me Not
Author:Dieter F. Uchtdorf
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“Some burns," Clary said. "Nothing that matters" "Everything that happens to you matters to me." "Well that certainly explains why you haven't called me back once. And the last time I saw you, you ran away without telling me why. It's like dating a ghost." Jace's mouth quirked up slightly at the side. "Not exactly. Isabelle actually dated a ghost. She could tell you--" "No," Clary said. "It was a metaphor. And you know exactly what I mean.”

KnowsWellsMeanSaidMatterHappensLastsSidesSawsHavensMouthsDatingMetaphorGhostRanLast TimeJace
Book:Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instrument Series (4 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass; City of Fallen Angels
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“Homesickness is not always a vague, nostalgic, almost beautiful emotion, although that is somehow the way we always seem to picture it in our mind. It can be a terribly keen blade, not just a sickness in metaphor but in fact as well. It can change the way one looks at the world; the faces one sees in the street look not just indifferent but ugly... perhaps even malignant. Homesickness is a real sickness--the ache of the uprooted plant.”

WorldWayMindWellsLooksRealFactsSeemsBeautifulFacesEmotionStreetsPlantMetaphorUglySicknessIndifferentVagueAcheBladesNostalgicHomesickness
Book:Different Seasons
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“Feelings dwell in man; but man dwells in his love. That is no metaphor, but the actual truth. Love does not cling to the I in such a way as to have the Thou only for its " content," its object; but love is between I and Thou. The man who does not know this, with his very being know this, does not know love; even though he ascribes to it the feelings he lives through, experiences, enjoys, and expresses.”

KnowsMenWayDoeFeelingsEnjoyLove IsObjectsMetaphorHis LoveTruth Love
Book:I and Thou
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“A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don't run out of energy (or in the case of the novelist-- ideas) because they have so far to run. To mix the metaphor, writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage.”

WritingLongIdeasStoriesRunningEnergyCasesNovelRichAffairMetaphorFinishedIntenseNovelistsSecondsPaceShort StoryMarathonSprintSprinters
Author:Jonathan Carroll
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“[After my mother died, I had a feeling that was] not unlike the homesickness that always filled me for the first few days when I went to stay at my grandparents'' house, and even, I was stunned to discover, during the first few months of my freshman year at college. It was not really the home my mother had made that I yearned for. But I was sick in my soul for that greater meaning of home that we understand most purely when we are children, when it is a metaphor for all possible feelings of security, of safety, of what is predictable, gentle, and good in life.”

YearsFirstsChildrenMadeSoulFeelingsHomeMotherHouseGreaterSecurityCollegeMonthsSickDiedSafetyFilledMetaphorMy SoulGentleGrandparentPredictableStunnedHomesicknessFreshmanMother DiedFreshman YearGrandparents House
Author:Anna Quindlen
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“I watched as Humphrey Bogart’s character used beans as a metaphor for the relative unimportance in the wider world of his relationship with Ingrid Bergman’s character, and chose logic and decency ahead of his selfish emotional desires. The quandary and resulting decision made for an engrossing film. But this was not what people cried about. They were in love and could not be together. I repeated this statement to myself, trying to force an emotional reaction. I couldn’t. I didn’t care. I had enough problems of my own.”

PeopleWorldTryingMadeEnoughCharacterProblemCareTogetherFilmUsedDesireForceMy OwnDecisionEmotionalLogicMetaphorSelfishReactionsStatementsRelativeCriedDecencyBeansHad EnoughDecisions MadeBergmanBogartEmotional Reactions
Author:Graeme Simsion
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“It appears to me that the subject of music, from Machaut to Boulez, has always been its construction. Melodies of 12-tone rows just don't happen. They must be constructed....To demonstrate any formal idea in music, whether structure or stricture, is a matter of construction, in which the methodology is the controlling metaphor of the composition...Only by 'unfixing' the elements traditionally used to construct a piece of music could the sounds exist in themselves--not as symbols, or memories which were memories of other music to begin with.”

IdeasMatterHappensUsedSoundMemoriesMusicPiecesSubjectsElementsStructureMetaphorSymbolsToneMelodyConstructionCompositionFormalConstructsMethodology
Author:Morton Feldman
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“Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard...Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electromagnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill...At present, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer.”

TryingWellsUseScienceBrainTechnologyChildhoodComputerModelsMetaphorBritishDigitalTelephonesTemptedAssuredComputer ScienceMillsTelegraphLatest Technology
Author:John Searle
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“Depression, when it's clinical, is not a metaphor. It runs in families, and it's known to respond to medication and to counseling. However truly you believe there's a sickness to existence that can never be cured, if you're depressed you will sooner or later surrender and say: I just don't want to feel bad anymore. The shift from depressive realism to tragic realism, from being immobilized by darkness to being sustained by it, thus strangely seems to require believing in the possibility of a cure.”

IfsWantFeelsBelieveSeemsRunningExistenceKnownDarknessPossibilityMetaphorSurrenderCuresSicknessTragicRealismSooner Or LaterDepressingMedicationCounselingClinicalsDepressive
Author:Jonathan Franzen
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“Speciation does not necessarily promote evolutionary change; rather, speciation 'gathers in' and guards evolutionary change by locking and stabilization for sufficient geological time within a Darwinian individual of the appropriate scale. If a change in a local population does not gain such protection, it becomes-to borrow Dawkins's metaphor at a macroevolutionary scale-a transient duststorm in the desert of time, a passing cloud without borders, integrity, or even the capacity to act as a unit of selection, in the panorama of life's phylogeny.”

IfsLifeDoeIndividualEvolutionIntegrityGainsCapacityCloudsMetaphorPopulationProtectionScalesLocalsPassingPassingsDesertBordersSufficientAppropriateUnitsSelectionTransientPanoramaGeological TimeSpeciation
Book:Punctuated Equilibrium
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“Rivers are inherently interesting. They mold landscapes, create fertile deltas, provide trade routes, a source for food and water; a place to wash and play; civilizations emerged next to rivers in China, India, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. They sustain life and bring death and destruction. They are ferocious at times; gentle at times. They are placid and mean. They trigger conflict and delineate boundaries. Rivers are the stuff of metaphor and fable, painting and poetry. Rivers unite and divide - a thread that runs from source to exhausted release.”

MeanPlayRunningNextStuffWaterInterestingMiddlePaintingSourceCivilizationConflictEuropeRiversDestructionIndiaTradeEnvironmentalMetaphorChinaEastBoundariesReleaseLandscapeGentleDividesMiddle EastThreadExhaustedRoutesTriggersMoldFablesFertilePlacidDeltaPainting And Poetry
Author:Edward Gargan
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