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Metaphor Quotes

Browse 2099 quotes about Metaphor.

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Metaphor Quotes

“Because what she dreaded now, ever since that walk down Lexington Avenue, was that the illness that had possessed, transformed, and consumed her father might also be at work in her brain. She could feel herself think differently and knew that, in the end, it did not matter whether this feeling was based on reality or fantasies. What mattered was that she was unable to stop thinking about her thoughts. Her speculations reflected one another, like parallel mirrors- and, endlessly, each image inside the vertiginous tunnel looked at the next wondering whether it was the original or a reproduction. This, she told herself, was the beginning of madness. The mind becoming the flesh for its own teeth.”

MetaphorMental IllnessInsanity
Book:Trust
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“Illness is a story we tell about ourselves. The narrative is the connective tissue that joins together the symptoms and perceptions and makes sense of them. It's how impenetrable concepts like death and life become something that can be incorporated comfortably into day-to-day existence. A serious illness is much easier to cope with if it can be slotted into a familiar structure with a beginning, middle, and end. It's also why metaphors of battle or struggle are so popular for describing sickness. It draws the line between them and us, good and evil.”

MetaphorIllnessIllness As Metaphor
Book:A Body Made of Glass: A Cultural History of Hypochondria – A Revelatory Medical Memoir and Biography of Health Anxiety
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“At the end of The Story of Little Babaji they make pancakes out of the tigers that have transformed into butter, and eat them. I think they mix the tiger-butter into the batter. Or put it on top. Maybe they even melt it in the frying pan.' But Rika's words got lost amid the sound of the pancake mix being poured into the pan. She heard the noise of the pancake being flipped and sticking again to the pan. After a while, Makoto came over with a plate in his hand. The perfectly round, golden brown pancake was steaming, the maple syrup shining, and the knob of butter on top beginning to melt. She brought her hands together, and said, 'Itadakimasu.' With a fork, Rika broke off a small piece of the pancake, revealing its bright yellow insides. The way that the batter with its structure of fine air bubbles and countless little pillars supported the surface layer, burnished to a deep brown, was proof that it had been well mixed. The butter slid around sluggishly. Rika put a tiny sliver into her mouth. She instructed her teeth to bite, and with some effort, succeeded in moving her mouth, chewing the soft, warm pancake into which the salted butter and syrup had been absorbed.”

MetaphorJapanesePancakesButterBook Title
Book:Butter
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“But hypochondria is a plotless story, a deviation from the regular progression of an illness from stage to stage. Without a firm diagnosis for my unreliable symptoms, I am stuck in the first scene of the drama, endlessly looping around the first few lines of dialogue. The compulsion to narrativize this experience is always there, but always thwarted. The comfortable point at which to tell the story never arrives, because everything is always in present tense. No narrative structure can help those who never get to turn the page on the opening line.”

MetaphorIllnessTraumaNarrativeHealth AnxietyIllness As Metaphor
Author:Caroline Crampton
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“The copper-colored dough had risen up over the top of the tin to create a mountain range whose central rift offered a peek of its golden insides. With a towel-wrapped hand, Shinoi pulled out the baking sheet. The sweetly flavored heat fanned at Rika's fringe. 'It's amazing that it's risen so well with just four ingredients. It's all thanks to your whipping.' So this was the kind of wall that Kajii had been talking about, Rika thought. They didn't have to be made of hard bricks and cold concrete. They could be made of sweet, soft dough--- and still offer protection.”

MetaphorCakeBaking
Book:Butter
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“Sometimes in life, you can’t be one hundred percent sure…” She gives me a hard, meaningful look. Something tells me she isn’t talking about floor tiles anymore. “Sometimes, you have to take a risk. Even when you aren’t ready. When you aren’t sure.” “Uh…yeah.” I turn my attention back to the work in front of me. Eventually, she sighs in frustration and spins on her heel but then she pauses again. She just can’t control herself. “You do realize that that was a metaphor, right?” I laugh deep in my throat. “Yes, Sophia. I get the deeper meaning.” She’s telling me to take a risk on Reese even though I have no idea what the hell I’m doing. She looks pleased with herself and smiles wide. “There’s more cupcakes in the kitchen if you want.” Her heels click loudly as she disappears back down the hall.”

MetaphorRisksFriendly Advice
Book:Lover Boy
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“Ask any fan, and she'll tell you there's something satisfyingly linear about baseball: three strikes, three outs. Four bases, nine innings. A lineup, for chrissake-you don't need to be an etymologist to see the meaning in that. But at the same time as that steady progression of three up, three down, then the next, then the next, it's going around and around, cycling through the order, running around the bases. Things get parabolic. There's the arc of up and down through the organization, from Single-A Carolina to the big time in Culver City, the tight arc of an infield-fly out and the majestic one of a game-winning homer.”

BaseballMetaphorGeometry Images
Book:The Cactus League
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“Most men's minds are so constituted that they have to think by means of examples ; if you do not supply these, they will supply them for themselves, and if you leave it wholly to them, they will do it badly. On the other hand, if you start from familiar things, they are very quick to make the necessary generalizations. In a sense they are making such generalizations constantly; whenever they recognize the thing before them as a chair or a lamp-post, they are leaping from the particular to the general by a process of implicit classification.”

WritingPhilosophyPsychologyMetaphor
Book:On Philosophical Style
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“Metaphor: «Entre escudos de malvivir, hizo al sayo su mal vestir» Answer: La cita sugiere que el antagonista, aunque ha acumulado riqueza y poder a través de actos sin escrúpulos, sigue siendo un ser vil y corrupto. Su "mal vestir" es un reflejo de su alma, manchada por la avaricia y el engaño, mostrando que, a pesar del oro que ha obtenido, no ha logrado escapar de la miseria moral que define su existencia.”

Metaphor
Book:La Rosa Inglesa
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“父親從鯽魚的嘴裡拔出釣鉤，將鯽魚丟進桶裡。好大的一條鯽魚。 「你看，魚從水裡撈出來以後，就不再翻騰了吧？」 「有不是這樣的魚吧？」 父親又把釣竿甩進江裡，一尾鯽魚在乾水桶裡掙扎著。 「沒有，魚如果沒有水，魚鰓就會不停開闔，翻騰一陣子之後死掉。我在蓋水庫的時候，有時要竪起棟梁，將好水抽進隧道裡，唯有這樣，才能澆灌水泥。來不及逃走的魚都會死在水底，其他一起作業的同事高興極了，紛紛抓魚回去煮湯。即便如此，數量之多也吃不完，最後就腐爛了。因為腐爛，泛出了臭味，真是噁心啊！吃下去的東西好像都要吐出來了。我想說的就是，你不要成為一條魚，要成為青蛙，在水裡能游泳，出來以後也能跳躍⋯⋯聽懂了嗎？」”

MetaphorTotalitarianismPolitical Metaphor
Book:Your Republic Is Calling You
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“Gusts of fiery winds blow, blasting a furnace of heat. The air rings with the shrill screams of my beloved carnations. Rising and falling, they shed their flower heads upon the worn, foot trodden dirt. Staring up, their heads smile sadly, their petals shedding tears. Rolling across the planks, they reach out for me. The carnation flower's scent is fragrant in the breeze. It wakes me so I escape the dark world of dreams.”

EnvironmentMysteryMetaphorFlowersConservationNature S BeautySpiritual ConnectionDark DreamsNatural SpiritCarnation Scent
Book:Fleur of Yesterday
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“Juicy apple, pear, and banana, Gooseberry ... They all speak of Death and life in the mouth ... I have a presentiment ... Read it from a child’s expression If she savours them. It comes from far, from far ... Aren’t you slowly becoming aware of something inexpressible in your mouth? Where a moment ago were words, a flowing discovery Is released, startling, from the fruit’s flesh. Venture to say what your apple is called. This sweetness, which originally condensed itself, Spreading out, slowly in being tasted rose up To achieve a clarity, awake and of transparency, Resonant of opposites, sunny, earthy, of the here and now -: Oh the experience of it, the feeling, the joy -, immense!”

MetaphorLife And DeathAppleFruit Quotes
Book:Sonnets to Orpheus
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“There are a lot of things that aren’t your fault. OR mine, either. Not the fault of prophecies, or curses, or DNA, or absurdity. We all die and disappear, but that’s because the mechanism of the world itself is built on destruction and loss. Our lives are just shadows of the guiding principle. Say the wind blows. It can be strong, violent wind or a gentle breeze. But eventually, every kind of wind dies out and disappears. Wind doesn’t have form. It’s just a movement of air.”

Life LessonsMetaphor
Author:Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
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“I wonder if the hypochondriac him or herself is a metaphor, a condensed node of ideas about illness crushed together into one individual. I am pressed between these layers of meaning like a flower preserved between the pages of a book, trapped in narratives about my sickness that have already been written.”

MetaphorIllnessNarrativeMeaningHealth AnxietyIllness As Metaphor
Book:A Body Made of Glass: A Cultural History of Hypochondria – A Revelatory Medical Memoir and Biography of Health Anxiety
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“The people here had grown emaciated with hunger and toil, and the walls of their houses sighed with grief and sorrow. All the lovely flowers of this land had been transplanted to the palace to delight the eyes of the sovereign's consort, while the plump boars had been taken and served to please her sophisticated tastes. And so, the tranquil spring sun shone in vain on the grey, deserted streets of the city. And, perched atop a hill in the centre, the palace, shining with the five colours of the rainbow, towered over the corpse of the capital like a beast of prey.”

MetaphorTyrannyInequalityExploitationDesolation
Book:The Siren’s Lament: Essential Stories
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“A message denotes a specific, concrete statement about the world. But the forms of our media, including the symbols through which they permit conversation, do not make such statements. They are rather like metaphors, working by unobtrusive but powerful implication to enforce their special definitions of reality. Whether we are experiencing the world through the lens of speech or the printed word or the television camera, our media-metaphors classify the world for us, sequencing it, frame it, enlarge it, reduce it, color it, argue a case for what the world is like.”

MetaphorMessageMedium
Book:Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
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