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Metaphor Quotes

Browse 2099 quotes about Metaphor.

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Metaphor Quotes

“Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. We have found, on the contrary, that 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.”

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Book:Metaphors We Live By
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“Cancer's life is a recapitulation of the body's life, its existence a pathological mirror of our own. Susan Sontag warned against overburdening an illness with metaphors. But this is not a metaphor. Down to their innate molecular core, cancer cells are hyperactive, survival-endowed, scrappy, fecund, inventive copies of ourselves.”

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Book:The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
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“I see the origin of the irresistible attraction of metaphor and analogy, the explanation of our strange and permanent need to find similarities in things. I can scarcely refrain from suspecting some ancient, diffused magnetism; a call from the center of things; a dim, almost lost memory, or perhaps a presentiment, pointless in so puny a being, of a universal syntax.”

NeedsI CanLostMemoriesStrangeUniversalAncientMetaphorAttractionPermanentExplanationPointlessIrresistibleSimilarityRefrainAnalogiesSyntaxMagnetism
Book:The writing of stones
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“Clay can be a metaphor for many things. I made it a metaphor for flesh and earth, and these are two kinds of generic givens of life, if you look at it poetically, biblically, the idea of the life of beings, of man, being transitory, the earth abides-ashes to ashes, dust to dust-man returns to earth, grows out of earth like a flower, wilts, goes back to the earth... We are frail, transitory creatures with aspirations of immortality, conscious of our inevitable death, and we have to deal with it somehow.”

IfsMenLooksKindMadeTwoIdeasEarthGivenGrowsDealsFlowerReturnCreaturesConsciousMetaphorFleshDustMade ItInevitableImmortalityAspirationAshesClayFrailTransitoryGenericDust To DustInevitable Death
Author:Stephen De Staebler
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“PRETTY LITTLE LIARS works as a metaphor for our central human experience: we have no way to objectively know about anything, no way to move forward with certainty, and yet move forward we must. We stumble through life, trying to find our own way, not knowing whom to listen to, whom to trust, whom to suspect, what to believe. But in that process we discover our most authentic selves.”

KnowsWayTryingBelieveHumansLittlesSelfMovingProcessKnowingMetaphorMoving ForwardCertaintyLiarsSuspectsNot KnowingHuman ExperienceAuthentic SelfWhom To Trust
Author:Norman Buckley
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“Ever since we crawled out of that primordial slime, that's been our unifying cry: "More light." Sunlight. Torchlight. Candlight. Neon. Incandescent. Lights that banish the darkness from our caves, to illuminate our roads, the insides of our refrigerators. Big floods for the night games at Soldier's field. Little tiny flashlight for those books we read under the covers when we're supposed to be asleep. Light is more than watts and footcandles. Light is metaphor... Light is knowledge. Light is life. Light is light.”

LittlesBookBigsLightNightGamesKnowledgeDarknessCryFieldsSoldierMetaphorTinySupposed To BeSunlightFloodCavesExposureRefrigeratorsUnifyingDarkness To LightNeonSlimeFlashlightsCandlelightCandle LightsNeon Lights
Author:Diane Frolov
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“With Head Off & Split, Nikky Finney establishes herself as one of the most eloquent, urgent, fearless and necessary poets writing in America today. What makes this book as important as anything published in the last decade is the irresistible music, the formal dexterity and the imaginative leaps she makes with metaphor and language in these simply stunning poems. This is a very, very important achievement.”

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Author:Kwame Dawes
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“Metaphor isn't just a fancy turn of speech. It shapes our thoughts and feelings, reaches out to grasp new experience, and even binds our five disparate senses. James Geary's fascinating and utterly readable I is an Other brings the news on metaphor from literature and economics, from neuroscience and politics, illuminating topics from consumer behavior to autism spectrum disorders to the evolution of language. As a writer, as a teacher, and as someone just plain fascinated by how our minds work, I've been waiting years for exactly this book.”

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Author:James Richardson
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“A society that could heal the dismembered world would recognize the inherent value of each person and of the plant, animal and elemental life that makes up the earth's living body; it would offer real protection, encourage free expression, and reestablish an ecological balance to be biologically and economically sustainable. Its underlying metaphor would be mystery, the sense of wonder at all that is beyond us and around us, at the forces that sustain our lives and the intricate complexity and beauty of their dance.”

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Author:Starhawk
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“Marathoning is a metaphor for life, so there are a lot of parallels you can draw. I tell people to follow your dream, follow your heart, follow your passion, run your own race and believe in yourself. I think anybody who wants to succeed has to have passion. My love for this sport, you can't instill it in someone else.”

PeopleThinkingWantLoveLifeBelieveHeartDreamMotivationalRunningPassionSportsRaceSucceedDrawsMetaphorFollowingYour DreamsBelieve In YourselfRacingBelieve In YouFollow Your DreamsParallelsMarathonFollow Your HeartInstillMotivational RunningFollow Your Passion
Author:Joan Benoit
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“To Forget Venice is a tour de force of ventriloquism. Elegant, contemporary, and wry, the voice at its center is also capable of disarming flights of imagination as it enters and inhabits other lives across time and gender. The glittering, fetid city emerges as a complex metaphor for the human heart’s simultaneous tenderness and capacity for cruelty, its ‘silver glow / a local specialty: filth / disguised as ornament.’ This Venice is unforgettable.”

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Author:Chase Twichell
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“Highly creative people have a gift for connecting supposedly unrelated elements and ideas. They cross borders without regard for customs posts or No Trespassing signs. They throw suspension bridges across great distances. These elegant and unexpected combinations flow together beautifully in the twilight zone, where metaphor and resemblance rules in place of logic and classification.”

PeopleIdeasTogetherCreativeElementsFlowCrossesLogicRegardDistanceMetaphorPostsCombinationBridgesBordersUnexpectedZoneCustomsTwilightElegantConnectingCreative PeopleResemblanceClassificationSuspensionTwilight ZoneTrespassing
Book:Dreamgates: Exploring the Worlds of Soul, Imagination, and Life Beyond Death
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“Too many of us have lost the passion and emotion of the remarkable things we-ve done in space. Let us not tear up the future, but rather again heed the creative metaphors that render space travel a religious experience. When the blast of a rocket launch slams you against the wall and all the rust is shaken off your body, you will hear the great shout of the universe and the joyful crying of people who have been changed by what they-ve seen.”

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Author:Ray Bradbury
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“Countries like ours are full of people who have all of the material comforts they desire, yet lead lives of quiet (and at times noisy) desperation, understanding nothing but the fact that there is a hole inside them and that however much food and drink they pour into it, however many motorcars and television sets they stuff it with, however many well-balanced children and loyal friends they parade around the edges of it. . . it aches!”

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Author:Bernard Levin
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