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Metaphors Quotes

Browse 86 quotes about Metaphors.

Metaphors Quotes

“Andy: ugh I’ve never felt so old and slimy. Sinter: You’re 25. That isn’t old to a 19 year old Andy: Old. And slimy. Slimy like a slug. Like seaweed. Sinter: Are you done with your metaphors Andy: I think these are similes Though he’d been a computer science major, he’d also been, like me, an English minor. It made him remarkably hot at moments such as this. Sinter: Right, you’re right Andy: And no. There are many slimy things and I’m like them all. Slimy like mayo Sinter: Gross Andy: Exactly, I am gross Sinter: Ha no, mayo is gross Andy: Slimy like a dog’s tongue. Sinter: Seriously stop.”

“He rejected traditional religious beliefs (Jewish, Christian, and Islamic) not on the basis of any reasoned argument, nor even with an expression of emotional antipathy, for he loved to use religious expressions and metaphors, but simply by saying that they are naive.”

“One of the fundamental findings of cognitive science is that people think in terms of frames and metaphors […] The frames are in the synapses of our brains, physically present in the form of neural circuitry. When the facts don’t fit the frames, the frames are kept and the facts ignored.”

“I reckon anger is the cigarette smoking of emotions. It's toxic, self-destructive, offensive, socially unacceptable, and harmful to others; it costs a lot and always leaves a bad taste in the mouth. It's also a mongrel to try to quit.”

“The world had changed its attire last spring and what it was wearing now was a perfect fit to what it was deep inside: a controlling old slag who didn't care about anyone’s wishes and ignored everyone who won't live by her rules. Tom was finished with that cunt: the world behind the fogged up windows. He used to live in one of his own: a dirty, but well-protected world that no one had ever entered and everyone who even tried was to get shot before they made it over the threshold. ~ As the moon began to rust”

“After a bad trip, don't carry your luggage on board the next flight. Stay grounded til you figure out a new way to travel.”

“...Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers... for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality... But I had gradually come by this time, i.e., 1836 to 1839, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow at sign, &c., &c., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian. ...By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported, (and that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become), that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost uncomprehensible by us, that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events, that they differ in many important details, far too important, as it seemed to me, to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eyewitnesses; by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many false religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wild-fire had some weight with me. Beautiful as is the morality of the New Testament, it can be hardly denied that its perfection depends in part on the interpretation which we now put on metaphors and allegories. But I was very unwilling to give up my belief... Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.”

“Sometimes it can be as brutally overwhelming as a tidal wave flooding every orifice, the suffocation, the pressure, the immensity of this damnable depression like an ocean, unsurmountable. It swallows me whole and gnaws at my very bones. It floods me over and over, drowning me over and over... It is a torturous broken record player with a scratched disc on repeat, the wailing disrupting any possible good remaining after the tsunami. It wails and wails inside my ribcage and inside my skull. I cannot make it stop.”

“Voll Blüten steht der Pfirsichbaum nicht jede wächst zur Frucht sie schimmern hell wie Rosenschaum durch Blau und Wolkenflucht. Wie Blüten geh'n Gedanken auf hundert an jedem Tag -- lass' blühen, lass' dem Ding den Lauf frag' nicht nach dem Ertrag! Es muss auch Spiel und Unschuld sein und Blütenüberfluss sonst wär' die Welt uns viel zu klein und Leben kein Genuss.”

“Portland was a dream both in the literal sense and the metaphorical sense, both tangible and not - a fleeting affair you want to hold on to but can't, so you try memorizing her every detail only to fail to do so in the consumption, in the savoring, in the absorbing of yourself into her. When she's gone, she comes to you in snippets, replaying in your mind like a fragmented picture show.”

“There are metaphors more real than the people who walk in the street. There are images tucked away in books that live more vividly than many men and women. There are phrases from literary works that have a positively human personality. There are passages from my own writing that chill me with fright, so distinctly do I feel them as people, so sharply outlined do they appear against the walls of my room, at night, in shadows... I've written sentences whose sound, read out loud or silently (impossible to hide their sound), can only be of something that acquired absolute exteriority and a full-fledged soul.”

“He spun her world in silver-blue Catching in the light the faintest hues A maiden from a castle tall Its towers spun of silk But it could not stand against the winds Without foundation laid more firm And so the tide rushed forward And took it far from view Far, far away from view. She bent before the boat Laughter once in her eyes Silenced in the morning still And so she stepped into its web An echo of another age And weaving through the waters soft Like the Lady of Shalott Her Camelot in mind’s eye Too lost in silver-turned shadow gray To note the one who stood afar Beside the willowy tree behind Eyes cast in farther distance still Not far from where she lay. Her heart knew only the web that spun And onward she rowed, longer she held. Of silk, a flimsy dash of hope Of silk, a hope dashed in its midst Oh, its towers spun of silk. It could not stand It could not stand For, it was not a rock.”

“Mon général,” Mathieu said quietly, “ever since Greek mythology, Prometheus, Sisyphus, and then Faust, and all the rest— not forgetting, of course, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and other fables— everything, including Oedipus and atom, everything, has always begun as a poetic license, as a . . . metaphor and then invariably it became a hard, down-to-earth reality. The whole purpose of science, indeed, seems to be a validation of metaphors. Sodom and Gomorrah, materialistic West and materialistic East, all the parables and fables . . . as if all the metaphors were pointing to some historical and scientific truth. Mankind told itself everything about itself almost from the start, but it never believed it. If it comes to perish one day, it will be through sheer disbelief . . .”

“I killed it," Athan lamented. "I am a fool." His righteous anger, his arguments, his adoration for the being who claimed Eldaloth's name faded and disintegrated with all the suffering life behind him. A poisonous dread seeped as deep into his soul as the exultant honor and pride he had felt just minutes before. The vast gap between the two emotions a crater into which his very soul plummeted in free-fall.”