quotes about Metaphor
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I am not writing in metaphors. I am writing about catastrophes.
-- Aharon Appelfeld -
Vampires are total sexual metaphors; there's just no way around that.
-- Alan Ball -
I'll buy metaphor, but simile's a cop-out used by scaredycats who won't commit to anything. Simile's for cowards.
-- Alan Garner -
The recognition that no knowledge can be complete, no metaphor entire, is itself humanizing. It counteracts fanaticism. It grants even to adversaries the possibility of partial truth, and to oneself the possibility of error.
-- Alvin Toffler -
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You have to put your own oxygen mask before you put on others... It's a good metaphor for parenting
-- Amanda Peet -
Under his (Marc Chagall, ed.) sole impulse metaphor made its triumphal entry into modern painting.
-- Andre Breton -
Right now, I'm standing behind the glass, and I guess that's a metaphor for how my life will be going forward.
-- Angela Ruggiero -
A world ends when its metaphor has died.
-- Archibald MacLeish -
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The greatest thing in style is to have a command of metaphor.
-- Aristotle -
The price of metaphor is eternal vigilance.
-- Arturo Rosenblueth -
If you really understand something, you can: 1) explain it using a clear metaphor and 2) explain the strongest counter-argument to the idea.
-- Ben CasnochaSource : Twitter post from Jul 10, 2012
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I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish.
-- Bernard Malamud -
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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.
-- Carl Sagan -
Any supreme insight is a metaphor.
-- Charles Henry Parkhurst -
God has neither form nor shape under which we can know Him; when he speaks of Himself in metaphors and similes, He is adapting Himself to our foolishness, our limited capacity.
-- Christina, Queen of Sweden -
Did you ever think about life as a metaphor for television?
-- Chuck Palahniuk -
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It is also difficult to articulate the subtleties in cinema, because there aren't words or metaphors which describe many of the emotions you are attempting to evoke.
-- Conrad Hall -
I talk a lot in metaphors. I get my words out but sometimes they don't make sense.
-- David BoreanazSource : Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. May 12, 2014.
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I am completing a book I began back in 2002 called 'Poems in the Manner of.' 'The Matador of Metaphor' is from this manuscript. It is an homage to Wallace Stevens that appropriates certain of his techniques.
-- David Lehman -
I loved to press the shutter, to freeze time, to turn little slices of life into rectangle rife with metaphor.
-- Deborah CopakenSource : Deborah Copaken Kogan (2002). “Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War”, Random House Incorporated
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Ask yourself... If my body were a metaphor for my life, what would the message be?
-- Denise LinnSource : Denise Linn (2010). “Unlock the Secret Messages of Your Body!: A 28-Day Jump-Start Program for Radiant Health and Glorious Vitality (Large Print 16pt)”, p.14, ReadHowYouWant.com
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The strangest thing that human speech and human writing can do is create a metaphor. That is an amazing leap, is it not?
-- Dennis Potter -
The word and the shadow of the word / makes a thing both itself and something else / till we are metaphors and not ourselves . . .
-- Derek Walcott -
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Good writing works from a simple premise: your experience is not yours alone, but in some sense a metaphor for everyone's.
-- Dorianne LauxSource : Kim Addonizio, Dorianne Laux (2010). “The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry”, p.21, W. W. Norton & Company
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I would say to those who don't like the metaphor This is reality.
-- Eliot Spitzer -
As history shows, dead metaphors make good idols.
-- Elizabeth A. JohnsonSource : Elizabeth A. Johnson (2011). “Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God”, p.26, Bloomsbury Publishing USA
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Writers who have nothing to say always strain for metaphors to say it in.
-- Florence King -
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I’ll always marvel at the liveliness of southern speech-so full of metaphor and hyperbole, quirks and vividness.
-- Frances Mayes -
What a different result one gets by changing the metaphor!
-- George Eliot -
Early human thought proceeded by metaphor,
-- Gerald Edelman -
Metaphors and Similes are the beginning of the democratic system of envy.
-- Giannina BraschiSource : "United States of Banana". Book by Giannina Braschi, 2011.
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The plane of consistency is the abolition of all metaphor; all that consists is Real.
-- Gilles Deleuze -
The war against terror is like a war against dandruff. It's a metaphor. It's not about anything.
-- Gore Vidal -
No metaphor reinvents the job of the nurture of children except to muddy or mock.
-- Grace Paley -
But metaphors help eliminate what separates you and me.
-- Haruki Murakami -
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The fundamental sense of freedom is freedom from chains, from imprisonment, from enslavement by others. The rest is extension of this sense, or else metaphor.
-- Isaiah Berlin -
We are such materialists that all our metaphors are going to be material.
-- J. T. Walsh -
People who speak in metaphors should shampoo my crotch.
-- Jack NicholsonSource : "Literally speaking" by Simon Barrow, www.theguardian.com. December 25, 2007.
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A simile is just a metaphor with the scaffolding still up.
-- James GearySource : James Geary (2011). “I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How it Shapes the Way We See the World”, p.8, Harper Collins
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We say that time passes, time goes by, and time flows. Those are metaphors. We also think of time as a medium in which we exist.
-- James Gleick -
The worst of gardening is that it's so full of metaphors one hardly knows where to begin.
-- Jan StrutherSource : Jan Struther (1940). “Mrs. Miniver”
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Football is very masculine and, to me, a metaphor for war.
-- Jane Lynch -
This is a magical and inspiring metaphor through which adult readers will identify anger issues and discover practical methods to energize enduring change.
-- Jeffrey K. Zeig -
There are so many ways to go wrong. All we've got are metaphors, and they're never exactly right. You can never just Say. The. Thing.
-- Jennifer Egan -
All that is transitory is but a metaphor.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
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There is a terrible sameness to the euphoria of alcohol and the euphoria of metaphor.
-- John Cheever -
When I can't talk sense, I talk metaphor.
-- John Philpot Curran -
Unregulated competition is a naive metaphor for anarchy.
-- John Ralston Saul -
Every myth is psychologically symbolic. Its narratives and images are to be read, therefore, not literally, but as metaphors.
-- Joseph Campbell -
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It is by metaphor that language grows.
-- Julian JaynesSource : Julian Jaynes (2000). “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, p.59, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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If technology is not a metaphor for memory, what is it?
-- K.K. Raghava -
Matterhorn is my metaphor of the Vietnam War - we built it, we abandoned it, we assaulted it, we lost, and then we abandoned it again.
-- Karl MarlantesSource : "A Vietnam Epic Uncovers Old Wounds: An Interview with Karl Marlantes". Interview with Evan James, www.motherjones.com. April 30, 2010.
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That to fly requires chaotic, sometimes even violent passages--becomes a metaphor for all of life's most meaningful endeavors.
-- Kelly Corrigan -
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The system metaphor is a story that everyone--customers, programmers, and managers--can tell about how the system works.
-- Kent Beck -
It is one thing, then, to say, "The Bible contains the religion revealed by God ," and quite another to say, "Whatever is contained in the Bible is religion, and was revealed by God." If the latter be accepted, metaphor and allegory become literal statements and the errors and absurdities of bibliolatry follow.
-- Lionel TrillingSource : Lionel Trilling (1939). “Matthew Arnold”
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A man's whole life / may be a metaphor - but a woman's lot / is symbol.
-- Lorna Dee CervantesSource : Francisco X. Alarcón, Lorna Dee Cervantes (1989). “Chicanas Y Chicanos en Diálogo”
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There's a metaphor for the American public in here," Gansey murmered darkly, "but it escapes me at the moment.
-- Maggie Stiefvater -
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The metaphor for Palestine is stronger than the Palestine of reality.
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
I've simplified much more in my writing. I say what I've got to say, not in metaphor.
-- Marianne Faithfull -
I heard my name associated with the Peter Pan syndrome more than once. But really, what's so wrong with Peter Pan? Peter Pan flies. He is a metaphor for dreams and faith.
-- Mark BurnettSource : Mark Burnett (2001). “Dare to Succeed: How to Survive and Thrive in the Game of Life”, Hyperion
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He [Peter Pan] is a metaphor for dreams and faith.
-- Mark Burnett -
All words, in every language, are metaphors.
-- Marshall McLuhan -
The family is changing not disappearing. We have to broaden our understanding of it, look for the new metaphors.
-- Mary Catherine Bateson -
There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor. You can't think without metaphors.
-- Mary Catherine Bateson -
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Metaphor is not, and never has been, a mere literary term. It is an event.
-- Mary RuefleSource : Mary Ruefle (2012). “Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures”, p.131, Wave Books
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A system of metaphor (pointing to a higher power) that one takes inside oneself as the truth and through its rules one aligns ones inner and outer behavior, submitting ones ego or will to the will of a higher power.
-- Mason Jennings -
A powerful enough metaphor grows its own truth.
-- Matthew Woodring StoverSource : Matthew Woodring Stover (2008). “Blade of Tyshalle”, p.379, Del Rey
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Certainly, the history of my life and the works of art which have especially enriched it is precisely that: the depiction or incantation of a handful of metaphors whose spendour rests upon their intonation.
-- Michael AyrtonSource : Michael Ayrton (1971). “The Rudiments of Paradise: Various Essays on Various Arts”
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Most music is metaphor, but Wolff is not. I am not metaphor either. Parable, maybe. Cage is sermon.
-- Morton FeldmanSource : Morton Feldman (2006). “Morton Feldman Says: Selected Interviews and Lectures 1964-1987”
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What I'm concerned about now is creating a metaphor for what the figure really is.
-- Nathan Oliveira -
It seems clear that the Bible belongs to an area of language in which metaphor is functional, and were we have to surrender precision for flexibility.
-- Northrop FryeSource : "The Great Code: The Bible and Literature". Book by Northrop Frye, 1981.
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I started to think of Grace of Monaco as a metaphor for women in general.
-- Olivier DahanSource : "Olivier Dahan: 'I don't read the Grace of Monaco critics'". Interview with Andrew Pulver, www.theguardian.com. May 29, 2014.
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Metaphors are much more tenacious than facts.
-- Paul de ManSource : Paul De Man (1979). “Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust”, p.5, Yale University Press
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The dictionary contains no metaphors.
-- Paul RicoeurSource : Paul Ricoeur (2004). “The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language”, p.112, Routledge
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I had then and still retain an interest in science for its own sake and as a metaphor for our current lives.
-- Peter Hammill -
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The mind is a metaphor of the world of objects.
-- Pierre BourdieuSource : Pierre Bourdieu (1977). “Equisse D'une Théorie de la Pratique”, p.91, Cambridge University Press
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We are prisoners of our own metaphors, metaphorically speaking...
-- R. Buckminster Fuller -
The #‎ knuckleball can be a metaphor of what it's like to let go.
-- R.A. Dickey -
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Metaphor is awkward, but emotion, by its nature, leaves you no more scalable approach.
-- Rachel Hartman -
The most colossal display of wise, inspiring, and humorous metaphors ever exhibited in one place.
-- Richard Lederer -
We're trapped in linguistic constructs... all that is is metaphor.
-- Robert Anton Wilson -
Unless you are educated in metaphor, you are not safe to be let loose in the world.
-- Robert Frost -
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I simply like the monumentality of the subjects - the opportunity for metaphor and the varied light that comes with high altitudes.
-- Robert Genn -
Images are not quite ideas, they are stiller than that, with less implication outside themselves. And they are not myth, they do not have the explanatory power; they are nearer to pure story. Nor are they always metaphors; they do not say this is that, they say this is.
-- Robert Hass -
Story is metaphor for life and life is lived in time.
-- Robert McKee -
You don't see something until you have the right metaphor to perceive it.
-- Robert Shaw -
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I don't like seeing myself on television and I don't enjoy filming. What I actually enjoy is thinking about how I am going to express something or how we are going to make the visual metaphor.
-- Robert WinstonSource : "What I see in the mirror: Robert Winston" by Robert Winston, www.theguardian.com. April 13, 2012.
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Metaphor is the energy charge that leaps between images, revealing their connections.
-- Robin Morgan -
You are not made of metaphors, Not apologies, not excuses.
-- Sarah KaySource : Sarah Kay (2016). “The Type”, p.13, Hachette UK
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But I quite like the way you can talk about science without necessarily using mathematics, but using metaphors instead.
-- Scarlett ThomasSource : Scarlett Thomas (2008). “The End Of Mr. Y”, p.26, Canongate Books
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I would suggest, merely as a metaphor here, but also as the basis for a scientific program to investigate the computational capacity of the universe, that this is also a reasonable explanation for why the universe is complex.
-- Seth Lloyd -
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.
-- Sidney Lanier -
Martin was dafter than a syphilitic polecat - where do I get these metaphors from?
-- Steig Larsson -