Best Metaphor Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 42

Source: Morton Feldman Says: Selected Interviews and Lectures 1964-1987

“To me, I took a militant attitude towards sounds. I wanted sounds to be a metaphor, that they could be as free as a human being might be free. That was my idea about sound. It still is, that they should breathe ... not to be used for the vested interest of an idea. I feel that music should have no vested interests, that you shouldn't know how it's made, that you shouldn't know if there's a system, that you shouldn't know anything about it ... except that it's some kind of life force that to some degree really changes your life ... if you're into it.”

“King in Crimson is actually an alchemical term. King Crimson is a metaphor for Devil or Satan, but at the same time it's also a metaphor for one of the statures in the purification of man and the purification of mankind soul towards union with God and with Infinite, which is the philosophical aim of alchemists.”

Men Soul Term Mankind Kings Devil Philosophical Infinite Aim Unions Metaphor Satan Alchemist Stature Purification Crimson King Crimson

Author:Bruce Dickinson

“The moment you give up your principles, and your values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period.”

Giving Moments Values Culture Principles Dying Periods Civilization Giving Up Metaphor Journalism Core Values

Author:Oriana Fallaci

“I am convinced that pilgrimage is still a bona fide spirit-renewing ritual. But I also believe in pilgrimage as a powerful metaphor for any journey with the purpose of finding something that matters deeply to the traveler. With a deepening of focus, keen prepartion, attention to the path below our feet, and respect for the destination at hand, it is possible to transform, even the most ordinary journey into a sacred journey, a pligrimage.”

Believe Stills Matter Hands Spirit Purpose Powerful Attention Path Focus Journey Feet Findings Ordinary Sacred Metaphor Convinced Destination Ritual Traveler Pilgrimage

Author:Phil Cousineau

“I've simplified much more in my writing. I say what I've got to say, not in metaphor.”

Writing Metaphor

Author:Marianne Faithfull

“Surfing is kind of a good metaphor for the rest of life. The extremely good stuff - chocolate and great sex and weddings and hilarious jokes - fills a minute portion of an adult lifespan. The rest of life is the paddling: work, paying bills, flossing, getting sick, dying.”

Kind Life Is Sex Stuff Minutes Dying Jokes Adults Sick Bills Metaphor Chocolate Portions Surfing Rest Of Life Paddling Great Sex Flossing

Book:Saltwater Buddha: A Surfers Quest to Find Zen on the Sea (Large Print 16pt)

Source: Saltwater Buddha: A Surfers Quest to Find Zen on the Sea (Large Print 16pt)

“The thing we adore about these dog-whistle kerfuffles is that the people who react to the whistle always assume it's intended for somebody else. The whole point of the metaphor is that if you can hear the whistle, you're the dog.”

People Ifs Whole Politics Dog Assuming Metaphor Adore

Author:James Taranto

“Yoga is a metaphor for life. You have to take it really slowly. You can't rush. You can't skip to the next position. You find yourself in very humiliating situations, but you can't judge yourself. You just have to breathe, and let go. It is a workout for your mind, your body and your soul.”

Mind Soul Body Next Situation Position Judging Letting Go Yoga Metaphor Breathe Your Body Your Soul Finding Yourself Workout Skip Humiliating

Author:Madonna Ciccone

“Detroit is a metaphor for America, for America's challenges and America's opportunities. It is a hothouse for new innovation, for ingenuity and risk taking. That doesn't happen in a lot of American cities. We need to be in Detroit because of that.”

Needs Happens America Opportunity Challenges Cities Risk Innovation Metaphor Detroit Ingenuity Risk-taking American Cities

Author:Darren Walker

“Never be afraid to be a poppy in a field of daffodils.”

Differences Fields Flower Metaphor Ballerina Poppies Daffodil

Author:Michaela DePrince

“And as hearbes and trees are bettered and fortified by being transplanted, so formes of speach are embellished and graced by variation.... As in our ordinary language, we shall sometimes meete with excellent phrases, and quaint metaphors, whose blithnesse fadeth through age, and colour is tarnish by to common using them.”

Sometimes Age Language Common Tree Ordinary Metaphor Excellent Phrases Colour Variation Quaint

Author:Michel de Montaigne

“You use metaphor to make yourself feel at home in the world. You use metaphor to extinguish the unknown. The problem is the unknown is where I want to be.”

World Want Feels Use Problem Home Metaphor Using Me

Author:Roni Horn

“On the stem of memory imaginations blossom.”

Mind Imagination Memories Metaphor Novelists Stem Blossoming

Book:No Earthly Estate: God and Patrick Kavanagh : an Anthology

Source: No Earthly Estate: God and Patrick Kavanagh : an Anthology

“It used to be that readers were relegated because they considered themselves far above society, and so the metaphor of the ivory tower developed. Now there's still this idea that the reader doesn't take part in the social game and in politics, the res publica, but for other reasons: he doesn't do it because he's not making any money.”

Stills Ideas Reason Used Games Social Reader Metaphor Used To Be Towers Ivory Ivory Tower

Author:Alberto Manguel

“Both the Freudian and the Platonic metaphors emphasize the considerable independence of and tension among the constituent parts of the psyche, a point that characterizes the human condition.”

Humans Psychology Conditions Independence Metaphor Tension Human Condition Constituents Platonic

Book:Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

Source: Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else. What is the other text, the original? I have no answer. I suppose it is the source, the deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them in nets of words and swings them shining into the boat... where in this metaphor they die and get canned and eaten in sandwiches.”

Writing Art Ideas Dies Felt Answers Sea Source Originals Shining Metaphor Boat Mysterious Swim Swings Translate Translations Sandwiches Art Of Writing Deep Sea

Author:Ursula K. Le Guin

“The moral immune system of this country has been weakened and attacked, and the AIDS virus is the perfect metaphor for it. The malignant neglect of the last twelve years has led to breakdown of our country's immune system, environmentally, culturally, politically, spiritually and physically.”

Years Has Beens Country Lasts Perfect Moral Metaphor Aids Our Country Neglect Twelve Viruses Immune Breakdown Immune System

Author:Barbra Streisand

“I have frequently noticed in myself a tendency to a diffuse style; a disposition to push my metaphors too far, employing a multitude of words to heighten the patness of the image, and so making of it a conceit rather than a metaphor, a fault copiously illustrated in the poetry of Cowley, Waller, Donne, and others of that ilk.”

Style Faults Metaphor Tendencies Multitudes Disposition Conceit Employing Donne

Author:Sidney Lanier

“Writers who have nothing to say always strain for metaphors to say it in.”

Writing Metaphor Strain

Author:Florence King

“I was initially planning to write about grief in terms of Eurydice and the myth thereof. By that point the overall metaphor of height and depth and flat and falling and rising was coming into being in my mind.”

Writing Mind Fall Term Grief Depth Metaphor Myth Planning Height Rising Flats

Author:Julian Barnes

“Life, as the most ancient of all metaphors insists, is a journey; and the travel book, in its deceptive simulation of the journey's fits and starts, rehearses life's own fragmentation. More even than the novel, it embraces the contingency of things.”

Book Novel Journey Fit Travel Embrace Ancient Metaphor Deceptive Simulation Contingency Fragmentation Travel Books

Book:For love & money: writing, reading, travelling, 1969-1987

Source: For love & money: writing, reading, travelling, 1969-1987

“Wherever a story comes from, whether it is a familiar myth or a private memory, the retelling exemplifies the making of a connection from one pattern to another: a potential translation in which narrative becomes parable and the once upon a time comes to stand for some renascent truth. This approach applies to all the incidents of everyday life: the phrase in the newspaper, the endearing or infuriating game of a toddler, the misunderstanding at the office. Our species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.”

“Unregulated competition is a naive metaphor for anarchy.”

Competition Metaphor Anarchy Naive

Book:The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense

Source: The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense

“Perhaps the Doors, Curtains, Surface Pictures, Panes of Glass, etc. are metaphors of despair, prompted by the dilemma that our sense of sight causes us to apprehend things, but at the same time restricts and partly precludes our apprehension of reality.”

Art Reality Causes Doors Painting Despair Sight Metaphor Glasses Surface Etc Curtains Dilemma Apprehension

Book:Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting

Source: Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting

“A spacecraft is a metaphor of national inspiration: majestic, technologically advanced, produced at dear cost and entrusted with precious cargo, rising above the constraints of the earth. The spacecraft carries our secret hope that there is something better out there-a world where we may someday go and leave the sorrows of the past behind. The spacecraft rises toward the heavens exactly as, in our finest moments as a nation, our hearts have risen toward justice and principle.”

“I have a true aversion to teaching. The perennial business of a professor of mathematics is only to teach the ABC of his science; most of the few pupils who go a step further, and usually to keep the metaphor, remain in the process of gathering information, become only Halbwisser [one who has superficial knowledge of the subject], for the rarer talents do not want to have themselves educated by lecture courses, but train themselves. And with this thankless work the professor loses his precious time.”

“Gramophone and movies were merely the mechanization of speech and gesture. But the radio and TV were not just the electronification of speech and gesture but the electronification of the entire range of human personal expressiveness. With electronification the flow is taken out of the wire and into the vacuum tube circuit, which confers freedom and flexibility such as are in metaphor and in words themselves.”

Humans Taken Media Tvs Speech Flow Metaphor Radio Range Gestures Flexibility Wire Vacuums Tubes Circuits Mechanization

Author:Marshall McLuhan

“Writers think in metaphors. Editors work in metaphors. A great reader reads in metaphors. All are continually asking, "What does this represent? What does it stand for?" They are trying to take everything one level deeper. When they get to that level, they will try to go deeper again.”

Thinking Writing Trying Doe Levels Reader Asking Metaphor Deeper Editors

Author:Steven Pressfield

“I love sports. Anytime I can combine sports with a film I'm a happy guy. It's such a natural fit, because sports always seems to be a metaphor for life. Always, always, always.”

I Can Seems Film Guy Sports Natural Fit Metaphor

Author:Dean Cain

“The metaphor for Palestine is stronger than the Palestine of reality.”

Reality Stronger Metaphor Palestine

Author:Mahmoud Darwish

“Most students of literature can pick apart a metaphor or spot an ethnic stereotype, but not many of them can say things like: 'The poem's sardonic tone is curiously at odds with its plodding syntax.”

Literature Students Picks Metaphor Spots Tone Odds Stereotype Syntax Sardonic Ethnic Stereotypes

Author:Terry Eagleton

“Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance. It is tumbleweed distress that thrives on thin air, growing despite its detachment from the nourishing earth. It can be described only in metaphor and allegory”

Earth Grief Growing Air Circumstances Depression Metaphor Despite Proportion Thrive Distress Detachment Allegory Thin Air Tumbleweeds

Book:The Noonday Demon: An Atlas Of Depression

Source: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas Of Depression

“We all start out with the same alphabet. We are all unique. Talent is not the most important thing --- discipline and dedication are. Craft can be learned but desire and longing are innate. Despite the demands of school and just being young, try to write SOMETHING every day --- a description, a captured emotion, a simile, a metaphor. Read, for crying out loud! A writer must read the way a ball player must go to the ballfield every day to practice. Everything is possible in this world of ours--- and so's publication.”

“But in fact if you look at film as a metaphor, only through the negative can you have the positive print. What I'm trying to get to is the positive value of negation.”

Ifs Trying Looks Facts Film Values Negative Metaphor Print Negation Positive Values

Author:Godfrey Reggio

“We all perform our lives in a way. And the actor is a perfect metaphor to get at that theme of "how do we find our authentic selves?" And that we all - whether we're actors or not - perform ourselves. As a way of searching. As a way of fumbling around and trying to say, is this my voice? Is this who I am?”

Way Trying Self Actors Voice Perfect Our Lives Metaphor Who I Am Theme Authentic Self

Author:Annette Bening

“I'm interested in painting the most beautifully compelling pictures and images and metaphors and stories and explanations possible that will put Jesus in language for a world that desperately needs to hear it.”

World Needs Stories Jesus Language Painting Metaphor Explanation Compelling

Author:Rob Bell

“There is something about the way that Greek poets, say Aeschylus, use metaphor that really attracts me. I don't think I can imitate it, but there's a density to it that I think I'm always trying to push towards in English.”

Thinking Way Trying I Can Use Poet Metaphor Greek Always Trying Using Me Density

Author:Anne Carson

“My poems always begin with a metaphor, but my way into the metaphor may be a word, an image, even a sound. And I rarely know the nature of the metaphor when I begin to write, but there is an attentiveness that a writer develops, a sudden alertness that is much like the feel of a fish brushing against a hook.”

Knows Way Feels Writing May Sound Metaphor Fishes My Way Hook Brushing Alertness Attentiveness

Author:Stephen Dobyns

“A tree is such a rich metaphor in a million beautiful ways. You can consider a tree growing and consider its connectedness to all things above and under the ground.”

Way Beautiful Millions Rich Growing Tree All Things Metaphor Connectedness

Author:Ann Brashares

“We're still living with the old paradigm of age as an arch. That's the old metaphor: You're born, you peak at midlife and decline into decrepitude.”

Stills Inspiration Age Motivation Born Metaphor Birthday Decline Paradigm 60th Birthday Arches Midlife

Author:Jane Fonda

“The days of the digitals are numbered. The metaphor is built into them like a self-destruct mechanism.”

Self Science Technology Built Metaphor Mechanism Self Destruct Numbered Days

Book:Arcadia

Source: Arcadia

“Fiction writers come up with some interesting metaphors when speaking of plot. Some say the plot is the highway and the characters are the automobiles. Others talk about stories that are "plot-driven," as if the plot were neither the highway nor the automobile, but the chauffeur. Others seem to have plot phobia and say they never plot. Still others turn up their noses at the very notion, as if there's something artificial, fraudulent, contrived.”

“[M]ilitary metaphors have more and more come to infuse all aspects of the description of the medical situation. Disease is seen as an invasion of alien organisms, to which the body responds by its own military operations, such as the mobilizing of immunological "defenses", and medicine is "aggressive" as in the language of most chemotherapies.”

Body Language Situation Military Health Disease Aspect Medicine Metaphor Defense Medical Aliens Operations Description Aggressive Organisms Invasion Chemotherapy Military Operations

Author:Susan Sontag

“The whole concept of the devil is a metaphor on one level.”

Whole Levels Devil Concepts Metaphor

Author:Taylor Hackford

“For me, what I am making in the novel is a place to live. When I first switched from poetry to novels, I was asked why, and the metaphor I came up with was about poems as rooms. You can make a room perfect, but then you have to shut the door and never go back, whereas a novel is like a house - it can never be perfect, but you can make a life in it.”

Firsts House Perfect Rooms Novel Doors Metaphor Places To Live

Author:Nicole Krauss

“I am always coming up with architectural metaphors when I think about writing. But I think one of the things that draw us to literature is that it gives us this very attractive illusion that there is meaning in the world - things connect.”

Thinking World Giving Writing Literature Draws Illusion Metaphor Attractive

Author:Nicole Krauss

“In literature, the ghost is almost always a metaphor for the weight of the past. I don't believe in them in the traditional sense.”

Believe Past Literature Weight Don't Believe Metaphor Ghost Traditional

Author:Tabitha King

“Holding onto and manipulating physical objects is one of the things we learn earliest and do the most. It should not be surprising that object control is the basis of one of the five most fundamental metaphors for our inner life. To control objects, we must learn to control our bodies. We learn both forms of control together. Self-control and object control are inseparable experiences from earliest childhood. It is no surprise that we should have as a metaphor-a primary metaphor-Self Control is Object Control.”

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Metaphor Quotes