Metaphor Quotes - Page 6

• If your life were a book, and you were the author, how would you want your story to go?

  Amy Purdy

  Life, Book, Stories

  Twitter post from Jan 01, 2017

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• Faith and prayer are the vitamins of the soul; man cannot live in health without them.

  Mahalia Jackson

  Faith, Prayer, Health

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• There's an undeniable pleasure in stepping into an open-top sports car driven by a beautiful woman. It feels like you're climbing into a metaphor.

  Hugh Laurie

  Beautiful, Sports, Climbing

  Hugh Laurie (1998). “The Gun Seller”, p.133, Simon and Schuster

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• Kind of like love before first sight.” and “Butterflies in your stomach. That was such a crappy metaphor. More like killer bees.

  Kami Garcia

  Butterfly, Sight, Like Love

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• Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you - even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition.

  Neil Gaiman

  Football, Dream, Father

  "American Gods". Book by Neil Gaiman, June 19, 2001.

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• A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don't run out of energy (or in the case of the novelist-- ideas) because they have so far to run. To mix the metaphor, writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage.

  Jonathan Carroll

  Running, Writing, Ideas

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• Rivers are inherently interesting. They mold landscapes, create fertile deltas, provide trade routes, a source for food and water; a place to wash and play; civilizations emerged next to rivers in China, India, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. They sustain life and bring death and destruction. They are ferocious at times; gentle at times. They are placid and mean. They trigger conflict and delineate boundaries. Rivers are the stuff of metaphor and fable, painting and poetry. Rivers unite and divide - a thread that runs from source to exhausted release.

  Edward Gargan

  Running, Mean, Europe

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• We believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things - metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Nature, Believe, Flower

  Friedrich Nietzsche “Delphi Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Illustrated): Friedrich Nietzsche”, Delphi Classics

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• This garden is no metaphor - more a task that swallows you into itself, earth using, as always, everything it can.

  Jane Hirshfield

  Garden, Essentials, Tasks

  Jane Hirshfield (2011). “Of Gravity & Angels”, p.36, Wesleyan University Press

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• The bigger point here is that golf is a good metaphor for one's life. The challenge of golf for me is trying to learn new rules. It's something you always have to work at; you don't get perfect at golf. It's the never-ending quest for betterment.

  Morgan Freeman

  Golf, Perfect, Challenges

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• As history shows, dead metaphors make good idols.

  Elizabeth A. Johnson

  Idols, Shows

  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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• The dictionary contains no metaphors.

  Paul Ricoeur

  Dictionary

  Paul Ricoeur (2004). “The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language”, p.112, Routledge

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• In all aspects of life... we define our reality in terms of metaphors and then proceed to act on the basis of the metaphors. We draw inferences, set goals, make commitments, and execute plans, all on the basis of how we in part structure our experience, consciously and unconsciously, by means of metaphor.

  George Lakoff

  Mean, Commitment, Reality

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• Any supreme insight is a metaphor.

  Charles Henry Parkhurst

  Insight, Supreme

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• Key metaphors help determine what and how we perceive and how we think about our perceptions.

  M. H. Abrams

  Thinking, Keys, Perception

  "Honored literary scholar M.H. Abrams continues his labors (of love)" by Linda Grace-Kobas, news.cornell.edu. June 11, 1999.

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• The poet…is the man of metaphor: while the philosopher is interested only in the truth of meaning, beyond even signs and names, and the sophist manipulates empty signs…the poet plays on the multiplicity of signifieds.

  Jacques Derrida

  Men, Play, Names

  Jacques Derrida (1982). “Marges de la Philosophie”, p.248, University of Chicago Press

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• The family is changing not disappearing. We have to broaden our understanding of it, look for the new metaphors.

  Mary Catherine Bateson

  Cute, Understanding, Looks

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• A simile is just a metaphor with the scaffolding still up.

  James Geary

  Smile, Simile, Stills

  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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• Running is the greatest metaphor for life, because you get out of it what you put into it.

  Oprah Winfrey

  Motivational, Running, Fitness

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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 Laux

  Writing, Simple, Premises

  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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• For what is the program of the bourgeois parties? A bad poem on springtime, filled to bursting with metaphors.

  Walter Benjamin

  Party, Springtime, Program

  Walter Benjamin, Marcus Paul Bullock, Michael William Jennings, Howard Eiland, Gary Smith (1999). “Gesammelte Schriften”, p.216, Harvard University Press

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• Metaphors hide in plain sight, and their influence is largely unconscious. We should mind our metaphors, though, because metaphors make up our minds.

  James Geary

  Sight, Mind, Influence

  "Metaphors in Mind". The Macmillan Dictionary blog, www.macmillandictionaryblog.com. April 11, 2011.

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• Of course, I could never suggest that only poor people are misogynistic; too many rich folk are just as hateful of women as any poor person might be. I don't know if social problems are only circular; perhaps other geometric metaphors might better describe the triangular effects of social vulnerability, political oppression, and racial disadvantage. I think you're right - we've got to focus on both analyses and solutions. And sometimes, an adequate analysis goes far along in suggesting a suitable solution.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Thinking, People, Focus

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• I've always felt that the writing I responded to most - the novels and stories that compelled me, that felt like they described the world I live in, with all of its subjectivity, irrationality, and paradox, were those which made free use of myths and symbols, fantastic occurences, florid metaphors, linguistic experiments, etcetera - to depict the experiences of relatively 'realistic' characters - on the level of their emotions and psychology, rather than in terms of what kinds of lives they led or what kind of events they experience.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Writing, Character, Psychology

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• There is no metaphor for death. All comparisons are odious, but I'll do one anyway. We all have these moments of harsh clarity where we realize that something is gone, whether that is youth, whether that is someone we care about, whether that is where we literally lose someone we care about to death. Or we end a relationship that we thought would last forever, or have one ended for us. We all have these moments in life where it seems impossible to fill up the time that we have left for us, and yet we have to do it somehow.

  John Hodgman

  Forever, Care, Impossible

  Source: www.avclub.com

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