Allegory Quotes

• A man's life of any worth is a continual allegory, and very few eyes can see the mystery of his life, a life like the scriptures, figurative.

  John Keats

  Life, Eye, Men

  John Keats (1820). “The Complete Works of John Keats”, p.29

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• Allegories, when well chosen, are like so many tracks of light in a discourse, that make everything about them clear and beautiful.

  Joseph Addison

  Beautiful, Light, Track

  Joseph Addison (1856). “The works of ... Joseph Addison, with notes by R. Hurd”, p.428

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• To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.

  Socrates

  Shadow, Would Be, Said

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• A priest is he who lives solely in the realm of the invisible, for whom all that is visible has only the truth of an allegory.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Invisible, Priests, Realms

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• Each has its lesson; for our dreams in sooth, come they in shape of demons, gods, or elves, are allegories with deep hearts of truth that tell us solemn secrets of ourselves.

  Henry Timrod

  Dream, Heart, Secret

  Henry Timrod (2007). “The Collected Poems of Henry Timrod: A Variorum Edition”, p.38, University of Georgia Press

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• An allegory is not meant to be taken literally. There is a great lack of comprehension on the part of some readers.

  Naguib Mahfouz

  Taken, Reader, Comprehension

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• I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Book, Beer, Done

  1954 The Fellowship of the Ring, foreword.

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• Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Stories, Unhappiness

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• Everything for me becomes allegory

  Charles Baudelaire

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• I wrote The Same Sea not as a political allegory about Israelis and Palestinians. I wrote it about something much more gutsy and immediate. I wrote it as a piece of chamber music.

  Amos Oz

  Sea, Political, Pieces

  "Coping with Conflict: Israeli Author Amos Oz". "PBS NewsHour" with Elizabeth Farnsworth, www.pbs.org. January 22, 2002.

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• I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Manifestation, Like And Dislike, Dislike

  1954 The Fellowship of the Ring, foreword.

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• Allegories are, in the realm of thought, what ruins are in the realm of things.

  Walter Benjamin

  Ruins, Realms

  Walter Benjamin, Michael William Jennings, Brigid Doherty (2008). “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media”, p.180, Harvard University Press

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• I can work in films as long as the story doesn't have a realistic nature. If I'm working with an allegory, a fantasy, it can be developed in synthetic terms.

  Manuel Puig

  Long, Stories, Literature

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• I think cinema is closer to allegories than to reality. It's closer to our dreams.

  Manuel Puig

  Dream, Reality, Thinking

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• I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Thinking, Done, Enough

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings”, p.13, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• No self is of itself alone. It has a long chain of intellectual ancestors. The "I" is chained to ancestry by many factors ... This is not mere allegory, but an eternal memory.

  Erwin Schrodinger

  Memories, Self, Long

  "A Life of Erwin Schrödinger". Book by Walter Moore, 1994.

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• There's so much power in allegory, to form ideas and learn lessons that you can actually take and apply to real life. I think that's why I originally really loved fantasy and reading.

  Amandla Stenberg

  Real, Reading, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of this great allegory - the world? Then we pygmies must be content to have out paper allegories but ill comprehended.

  Herman Melville

  World, Paper, Adam

  Herman Melville (2003). “Moby-Dick”, p.604, Bantam Classics

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• Allegories drawn to great length will always break.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Break, Length

  Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt (1854). “Johnson's Lives of the British poets completed by W. Hazlitt”, p.196

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• Each character is an allegory for every aspect of human existence.

  Vanna Bonta

  Character, Aspect, Existence

  "Vanna Bonta Talks About Quantum fiction: Author Interview". Interview with Laurel van der Linde, 2007.

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• The credulity of the church is decreasing, and the most marvelous miracles are not either 'explained,' or allowed to take refuge behind the mistakes of the translators, or hide in the drapery of allegory.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Mistake, Miracle, Church

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.375, Library of Alexandria

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• [Allegory] is a flight by which the human wit attempts at one and the same time to investigate two objects, and consequently is fitted only to the most exalted geniuses.

  Sarah Fielding

  Two, Genius, Language

  Arnold Edwin Needham, Sarah Fielding (1943). “The Life and Works of Sarah Fielding”

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• Because, as we know, almost anything can be read into any book if you are determined enough. This will be especially impressed on anyone who has written fantastic fiction. He will find reviewers, both favourable and hostile, reading into his stories all manner of allegorical meanings which he never intended. (Some of the allegories thus imposed on my own books have been so ingenious and interesting that I often wish I had thought of them myself.)

  C. S. Lewis

  Reading, Book, Interesting

  C. S. Lewis (1964). “Reflections on the Psalms”, p.107, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• All perishable is but an allegory.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  "Faust, Part 2". Book by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Act V, 1832.

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• There's something in the human personality which resents things that are clear, and conversely, something which is attracted to puzzles, enigmas, and allegories.

  Stanley Kubrick

  Personality, Enigma, Clear

  "Kubrick, Inside a Film Artist's Maze". Book by Thomas Allen Nelson, p. 10, 2000.

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