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Metaphor Quotes

Browse 2099 quotes about Metaphor.

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Metaphor Quotes

“We believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things - metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities.”

KnowsWayBelieveSpeakNatureTreeColorFlowerOriginalsMetaphorSnowEntity
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Illustrated): Friedrich Nietzsche
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“Consciousness... does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain' or 'train' do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life. Source of the expression 'stream of consciousness'.”

FirstsDoeScienceBitsConsciousnessTalkingExpressionSourceFlowRiversTrainMetaphorInstanceChainsStreamsSubjectiveHereafterStream Of Consciousness
Author:William James
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“Consider a man riding a bicycle. Whoever he is, we can say three things about him. We know he got on the bicycle and started to move. We know that at some point he will stop and get off. Most important of all, we know that if at any point between the beginning and the end of his journey he stops moving and does not get off the bicycle he will fall off it. That is a metaphor for the journey through life of any living thing, and I think of any society of living things.”

IfsThinkingKnowsMenLifeDoeImportantEndsMovingFallThreeJourneySocietyPhilosophicalMetaphorRidingBikeThree ThingsLiving ThingsBicycleCyclingBikingRiding A BicycleCyclistsBike RidingJourney Through LifeMountain Biking
Author:William Golding
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“The library is not a shrine for the worship of books. It is not a temple where literary incense must be burned or where one's one devotion to the bound book is expressed in ritual. A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life.”

ShouldBookIdeasRoomsBirthFameWorshipHistoricalBoundsLibraryMetaphorDevotionTemplesRitualBurnedLibrarianDeliveryShrinesIncenseLibrary BooksLibraries And LibrariansDelivery Room
Book:Present Tense; an American Editor's Odyssey
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“Be passive. In your passivity, God comes. Be feminine. In your femininity, God comes. Have you not watched it? Buddha looks very feminine, Krishna looks very feminine. Why? - because it is simply a metaphor. They have been depicted as feminine, graceful, to show that that is their inner quality - receptivity. When you are doing something you are being aggressive. When you are not doing anything you are non-aggressive. And God cannot be conquered; you can only allow him to conquer you.”

LooksHas BeensShowsQualityMetaphorConquerFeminineAggressivePassiveFemininityKrishnaPassivityReceptivity
Author:Rajneesh
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“One of the reasons that metaphor and symbolism are important in books is because they are also important to life. Like, for example say you're in high school and you're a boy and you say to a girl: "Do you like anyone right now?" - that's not the question you're asking. The question you're asking is, "do you like me right now."”

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Author:John Green
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“We live in a glass-soaked civilization, but as for the bird in the Chinese proverb who finds it so difficult to discover air, the substance is almost invisible to us. To use a metaphor drawn from glass, it may be revealing for us to re-focus, to stop looking through glass, and let our eyes dwell on it for a moment to contemplate its wonder.”

MayMomentsUseEyeScienceDifficultWonderFocusAirCivilizationBirdMetaphorGlassesInvisibleChineseSubstanceContemplatingRevealingChinese Proverb
Book:The Glass Bathyscaphe: How Glass Changed the World
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“Landscape pictures can offer us, I think, three verities: geography, autobiography, and metaphor. Geography is, if taken alone, sometimes boring, autobiography is frequently trivial, and metaphor can be dubious. But taken together, as in the best work of people like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, the three kinds of information strengthen each other and reinforce what we all work to keep intact - the affection for life.”

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Book:Beauty in photography: essays in defense of traditional values
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“At the heart of the WTO is an assault on everything left standing in the commons, in the public realm. Everything is now for sale. Even those areas of life that we once considered sacred like health and education, food and water and air and seeds and genes and a heritage. It is all now for sale. Economic freedom - not democracy, and not ecological stewardship - is the defining metaphor of the WTO and its central goal is humanity's mastery of the natural world through its total commodification.”

WorldHeartHumanityLeftGoalWaterNaturalDemocracyAirEconomicAreasStandingSacredMetaphorSeedsRealmsHeritageMasteryGenesAssaultDefiningStewardshipNatural WorldEcologicalEconomic FreedomCommodificationHealth And Education
Author:Maude Barlow
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“Saving Greenland is both a metaphor and a precondition for saving civilization. If its ice sheet melts, sea levels will rise 23 feet. Hundreds of coastal cities will be abandoned. The rice growing river deltas of Asia will be under water. There will be hundreds of millions of rising-sea refuges. The word that comes to mind is chaos. If we cannot mobilize to save the Greenland ice sheet; we probably cannot save civilization as we know it.”

IfsKnowsMindWaterLevelsCitiesMillionsGrowingSeaFeetCivilizationRiversChaosClimate ChangeMetaphorIceSavingRisingAbandonedRefugeSheetsAsiaRiceCoastalDeltaGreenland
Author:Lester R. Brown
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“It is no strain of metaphor to say that the love of God and the wrath of God are the same thing, described from opposite points of view. How we shall experience it depends upon the way we shall come up against it: God does not change; it is man's moral state that changes. The wrath of God is a figure of speech to denote God's unchanging opposition to sin; it is His righteous love operating to destroy evil. It is not evil that will have the last word, but good; not sorrow, but joy; not hate, but love.”

MenWayLoveDoeStatesLastsJoyHateEvilSinViewsMoralFiguresDependsSorrowSpeechOppositesMetaphorCome UpPoint Of ViewGod LoveOppositionRighteousStrainLast WordsWrathLove HateUnchangingWrath Of GodFigures Of Speech
Author:Reginald John Campbell
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“Not so many years ago there was no simpler or more intelligible notion than that of going on a journey. Travel -movement through space -provided the universal metaphor for change. One of the subtle confusions -perhaps one of the secret terrors -of modern life is that we have lost this refuge. No longer do we move through space as we once did.”

LifeYearsMovingLife IsLostChangeSpaceSecretJourneyModernMovementTravelYears AgoUniversalNotionMetaphorTerrorConfusionSubtleRefugeModern LifeTourism
Author:Daniel J. Boorstin
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“Flying has always been to me this wonderful metaphor. In order to fly you have to trust what you can't see. Up on the mountain ridges where very few people have been I have thought back to what every flyer knows. That there is this special world in which we dwell that's not marked by boundaries, it's not a map. We're not hedged about with walls and desks. So often in an office the very worst thing that can happen is you could drop your pencil. Out there's a reminder that are a lot worse things, and a lot greater rewards.”

PeopleKnowsWorldHas BeensHappensOrderGreaterWonderfulWorstSpecialWallMountainOfficeRewardsMetaphorFlyingBoundariesFlightAviationMapsDesksWorst ThingsPencilsRemindersRidgesFlyers
Author:Richard Bach
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“Your music can be played easily and well by any half-stringed harper or fumble-fingered idiot. Not that I'm maligning your songs. It's just that they're an entirely different kettle of fish-to use a seamanly metaphor-to Domick's. Don't you judge your songs against his standard! More people have already listened to your melodies and liked them than will ever hear Domick's, much less like them.”

PeopleWellsDifferentUseSongHalfMusicJudgingStandardsMetaphorFishesIdiotMelodyHarperKettles
Author:Anne McCaffrey
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“The metaphor of the king as the shepherd of his people goes back to ancient Egypt. Perhaps the use of this particular convention is due to the fact that, being stupid, affectionate, gregarious, and easily stampeded, the societies formed by sheep are most like human ones.”

PeopleHumansFactsUseAtheismStupidParticularKingsAncientMetaphorPositive AtheismDuesConventionsSheepEgyptRoyaltyShepherdsAffectionateAncient EgyptGregariousBeing Stupid
Book:Anatomy of Criticism
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“Travel, I was coming to realize, was a metaphor not only for the countless options life offers but also for the fact that choosing one option reduces you to the parameters of that choice. Thus, in knowing my possibilities, I also knew my limitations.”

FactsChoicesRealizingKnowingPossibilityOffersMetaphorLimitationParametersChoosing One
Book:Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel
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“Poetry springs directly from our primal need and capacity for communication[Poetry] mobilizes such a concentration of devices, such an intensification of language via rhythm, syntax, image and metaphor. Reading it-the best of it-can create another, very different kind of perpetual present, an awareness that can be as ongoing in the soul as the stop-time of trauma.”

NeedsKindDifferentSoulReadingLanguageAwarenessCommunicationSpringCapacityMetaphorTraumaRhythmConcentrationDevicesDifferent KindsPerpetualOngoingPrimalSyntaxStop Time
Author:Sven Birkerts
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