Allegory Quotes - Page 2

• A man's life of any worth is a continual allegory.

  John Keats

  Men

  Letter to George and Georgiana Keats, 19 February 1819, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) 'The Letters of John Keats' (1958) vol. 2, p. 67

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• A little allegory of the soul - wherever it hides, God will find it.

  Eileen Atkins

  Death, Soul, Dying

  9 Copy quote

• It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

  Haruki Murakami

  Happiness, Stories, Said

  "Kafka on the Shore". Book by Haruki Murakami, September 12, 2002.

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• Now, if the book of Genesis is an allegory, then sin is an allegory, the Fall is an allegory and the need for a Savior is an allegory - but if we are all descendants of an allegory, where does that leave us? It destroys the foundation of all Christian doctrine-it destroys the foundation of the gospel.

  Ken Ham

  Christian, Book, Fall

  39 Copy quote

• Allegory dwells in a transparent palace.

  Antoine-Marin Lemierre

  Speech, Palaces, Transparent

  "La Peinture". Poem by Antoine-Marin Lemierre, 1769.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: and allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Fate, Evil, Waiting

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2014). “The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien”, p.121, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you sit in on a film class with students, their big complaint is "That's not like real life." They don't realize that they don't really want to watch real life. They don't want to sit and watch a security camera. There's a strong gravity in all of us as viewers - even in myself now and then - to want to see real life depicted. But you're looking for it in the wrong places. It's in little allegories, in something removed.

  Guy Maddin

  Strong, Real, Students

  Source: film.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Andrew Solomon

  Depression, Grief, Air

  Andrew Solomon (2014). “The Noonday Demon: An Atlas Of Depression”, p.16, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• A superhero is someone who, at some point or in some way, inspires hope or is the enemy of cynicism. Even if you bog it down with political allegory, or even if you're doing celebrity allegory. You still need to take the cynical out of it.

  Mark Waid

  Political, Cynical, Superhero

  "Mark Waid on his personal digital-comics revolution". Interview With Oliver Sava, www.avclub.com. July 10, 2012.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't want to make a film that offends people, but the whole world is so politically correct - I'm not going to not do something because it may be politically incorrect. At some point, the metaphors and allegories break down. They disappear, and you just have science fiction.

  Neill Blomkamp

  People, World, Film

  Source: www.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Analogy and allegory always seem to be a much more expressive way of reflecting reality. I think Star Trek team have this ability to represent through analogy and extending things to the scientific extreme. They comment on things that are very present in a really powerful way.

  Lydia Wilson

  Powerful, Team, Reality

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Are we all not, when we sit in the cinema, in the position of humans in The Matrix, tied to chairs, immersed in the spectacle run by a machine? However, a more appropriate allegory is that of the viewer himself: beneath the illusion that we "just look" at the perceived objects from a safe distance, freely sliding along them, there is the reality of the innumerable ties that bind us to what we perceive.

  Slavoj Žižek

  Running, Distance, Reality

  6 Copy quote

• We each create a story - a narritive, a picture, an allegory, a model - for what's going on in the universe. And then we fight - sometimes to the death - to make others believe in that model, or to be able to keep believing in it ourselves. In other words, we try to erase contradictory evidence to that model.

  Douglas Rushkoff

  Believe, Fighting, Trying

  31 Copy quote

• A symbol is indeed the only possible expression of some invisible essence, a transparent lamp about a spiritual flame; while allegory is one of many possible representations of an embodied thing, or familiar principle, and belongs to fancy and not to imagination: the one is a revelation, the other an amusement.

  William Butler Yeats

  Spiritual, Expression, Flames

  William Butler Yeats, Richard J. Finneran, George Bornstein (2007). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays”, p.88, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Death is imposed only on creatures, not their creations, and has therefore always appeared in art in a broken form: as allegory.

  Theodor Adorno

  Art, Broken, Creation

  9 Copy quote

• By a symbol I do not mean an allegory or a sign, but an image that describes in the best possible way the dimly discerned nature of the spirit. A symbol does not define or explain; it points beyond itself to a meaning that is darkly divined yet still beyond our grasp, and cannot be adequately expressed in the familiar words of our language.

  Carl Jung

  Mean, Psychology, Doe

  Carl Gustav Jung (1981). “The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: Structure and dynamics of the psyche”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The reason for you complaint lies, it seems to me, in the constraint which your intellect imposes upon your imagination. Here I will make an observation, and illustrate it by an allegory. Apparently, it is not good-and indeed it hinders the creative work of the mind-if the if the intellect examines too closely the ideas pouring in, as it were, at the gates.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Lying, Ideas, Imagination

  4 Copy quote

• Freemasonry is 'veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols' because these are the surest way by which moral and ethical truths may be taught. It is not only with the brain and with the mind that the initiate must take Freemasonry but also with the heart.

  Carl H. Claudy

  Heart, Brain, Mind

  25 Copy quote

• There is a great difference, whether the poet seeks the particular for the sake of the general or sees the general in the particular. From the former procedure there ensues allegory, in which the particular serves only as illustration, as example of the general. The latter procedure, however, is genuinely the nature of poetry; it expresses something particular, without thinking of the general or pointing to it.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Thinking, Illustration, Differences

  4 Copy quote

• Much scientific truth proved to be as hypothetical as poetic allegory. The relationshiip of those rod-connected blue and red balls to an actual atomic structure was about the same as the relationship of Christianity to the fish or the Lamb.

  Tom Robbins

  Truth, Blue, Balls

  4 Copy quote

• It is remarkable how a man cannot summarize his thoughts in even the most general sort of way without betraying himself completely, without putting his whole self into it, quite unawares, presenting as if in allegory the basic themes and problems of his life.

  Thomas Mann

  Men, Self, Way

  Thomas Mann (1995). “The magic mountain: a novel”, Random House, Inc.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• 'Ever seen a leaf - a leaf from a tree?' 'Yes.' I saw one recently - a yellow one, a little green, wilted at the edges. Blown by the wind. When I was a little boy, I used to shut my eyes in winter and imagine a green leaf, with veins on it, and the sun shining ...' 'What's this - an allegory?' "No; why? Not an allegory - a leaf, just a leaf. A leaf is good. Everything's good.'

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Eye, Winter, Boys

  11 Copy quote

• Ben's Mr. Market allegory may seem out-of-date in today's investment world, in which most professionals and academicians talk of efficient markets, dynamic hedging and betas. Their interest in such matters is understandable, since techniques shrouded in mystery clearly have value to the purveyor of investment advice. After all, what witch doctor has ever achieved fame and fortune by simply advising 'Take two aspirins'?

  Warren Buffett

  Doctors, Two, Advice

  Chairman's Letter to the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., www.berkshirehathaway.com. 1987.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Society or Fraternity of Freemasons is more in the nature of a system of Philosophy or of moral and social virtues taught by symbols, allegories, and lectures based upon fundamental truths, the observance of which tends to promote stability of character, conservatism, morality and good citizenship.

  William Howard Taft

  Philosophy, Character, Fundamentals

  23 Copy quote

• Masonry, according to the general acceptation of the term, is an art founded on the principles of geometry, and devoted to the service and convenience of mankind. But Freemasonry, embracing a wider range and having a nobler object in view, namely, the cultivation and improvement of the human mind, may with more propriety be called a science, inasmuch as, availing itself of the terms of the former, it inculcates the principles of the purest morality, though its lessons are for the most part veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols.

  William Howard Taft

  Art, Views, Mind

  10 Copy quote