Metaphor Quotes - Page 21

• Military metaphors are rarely exact, but sending Republicans against Democrats when the issue hangs in the balance is nearly always as futile as sending George B. McClellan against Robert E. Lee, the Italians against Marshal Montgomery's desert rats or an Arab armored division against an Israeli rifle company. The copy desk can write the headline before the battle begins and take the rest of the night off.

  Wesley Pruden

  Military, Writing, Night

  6 Copy quote

• The vampire movies I embraced as a kid used vampirism as a metaphor that expressed deep sadness and a lot of human qualities.

  Alexandra Cassavetes

  Sadness, Kids, Vampire

  "Xan Cassavetes Makes an Un-vampire Movie" by Marshall Fine, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 3, 2013.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a pond koi can reach lengths of eighteen inches. Amazingly, when placed in a lake, koi can grow to three feet long. The metaphor is obvious. You are limited by how you see the world.

  Vince Poscente

  Nature, Lakes, Feet

  Vince Poscente (2002). “Invinceable Principles: Essential Tools for Life Mastery”, Invinceaility Series

  34 Copy quote

  Show source

• Americans don't need a metaphor for war. We have war. If anything, we use war as a metaphor for sports.

  John Hodgman

  Sports, War, Needs

  5 Copy quote

• I have more self-doubt than any writer I've ever known.... The positive aspect of self-doubt - if you can channel it into useful activity instead of being paralyzed by it - is that by the time you reach the end of a novel, you know precisely why you made every decision in the narrative, the multiple purposes of every metaphor and image.

  Dean Koontz

  Self, Decision, Doubt

  10 Copy quote

• If you remember only one thing I've said, remember that an idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor. If you have never made a good metaphor, then you don't know what it's all about.

  Robert Frost

  Ideas, Association, Height

  4 Copy quote

• When I was developing the [TV Series "Daredevil"] idea, we were really doing something closer to what was in the comic book. By that, I mean in terms of civilians in the street knew that superpowers were an everyday matter of fact. When it finally ended up at Netflix, they really decided to land it in the Marvel Universe that exists in the cinematic universe. That changes the story entirely. It was no longer about the other, which is what that metaphor was. It's really more about the character herself, which I love.

  Melissa Rosenberg

  Book, Character, Mean

  Source: deadline.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I attended [Sir Humphry] Davy's lectures to renew my stock of metaphors.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Lectures

  4 Copy quote

• Eating is our earliest metaphor, preceding our consciousness of gender difference, race, nationality, and language. We eat before we talk.

  Margaret Atwood

  Race, Differences, Language

  Margaret Atwood (1989). “The Edible Woman”, New Canadian Library

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science fiction - and the correct shortcut is 'sf' - uses actual scientific facts or theories for the source ideas or framework of the story. It has some scientific content, however speculative. If it breaks a law of physics, it knows it's doing so and follows up the consequences. If it invents a society of aliens, it does so with some respect for and knowledge of the social sciences and what you might call social probabilities. And some of it is literarily self-aware enough to treat its metaphors as metaphors.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Self, Law, Ideas

  4 Copy quote

• For some people, 'ten feet tall' is just a metaphor. For me, it's more than twice my height!

  Ruth Westheimer

  Feet, People, Height

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• A living system continually re-creates itself. But how this occurs in social systems such as global institutions depends on our level of awareness, both individually and collectively... As long as our thinking is governed by industrial, "machine age" metaphors such as control, predicatbility, and "faster is better", we will continue to re-create institutions as we have, despite their increasing disharmony with the larger world.

  Betty Sue Flowers

  Thinking, Long, Age

  8 Copy quote

• Metaphors are the weapons of cowards.

  Jose Bernardo

  Coward, Weapons

  4 Copy quote

• By the time you kill and mount what you catch, it has lost that very thing that made it worth having. I knew this only as a vague sense of disappointment at age 10; not until later did I recognize it as a metaphor for much of life.

  Anna Quindlen

  Disappointment, Age, Lost

  4 Copy quote

• The basic idea is that there is this group that, over the centuries, has learned to control reincarnation. John's character stumbles into that realization, and it's a lot closer to him than he would ever have wanted to know. It's a metaphor for when you get in a fight with your significant other and you go, "Who is this?," or you look in the mirror and go, "Why did I say that?" It's the intruder. When you threw a temper tantrum at two years old, it's them.

  Glen Morgan

  Character, Fighting, Years

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The way that I work is that I try to work in metaphors, and you can't write a metaphor unless you know where you're going, so I always think about the future.

  J.H. Wyman

  Writing, Thinking, Trying

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The saying "the cherry on top" is only a good metaphor if the person listening or reading actually likes cherries on top of their ice cream.

  Christopher Jones

  Reading, Ice Cream, Listening

  4 Copy quote

• Understanding a metaphor is like deciphering a code or unraveling a riddle.

  Max Black

  Understanding, Unraveling, Riddle

  11 Copy quote

• ...a metaphor that works in one society may seem preposterous in another.

  Max Black

  May, Seems

  7 Copy quote

• No doubt metaphors are dangerous- and perhaps especially so in philosophy. But a prohibition against their use would be a willful and harmful restriction upon our powers of inquiry.

  Max Black

  Philosophy, Doubt, Would Be

  7 Copy quote

• ... I still wish to contend that some metaphors enable us to see aspects of reality that the metaphor's production helps to constitute. But that is no longer surprising if one believes that the world is necessarily a world under a certain description - or a world seen from a certain perspective.

  Max Black

  Believe, Reality, Perspective

  Max Black (1990). “Perplexities: Rational Choice, the Prisoner's Dilemma, Metaphor, Poetic Ambiguity, and Other Puzzles”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the simplest formulation, when we use a metaphor we have two thoughts of different things active together and supported by a single word, or phrase, whose meaning is a resultant of their interaction.

  I. A. Richards

  Two, Together, Different

  33 Copy quote

• Thought is metaphoric, and proceeds by comparison, and the metaphors of language derive therefrom.

  I. A. Richards

  Language, Metaphoric, Comparison

  14 Copy quote

• I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world.

  Howard Zinn

  Giving Up, Winning, Games

  Howard Zinn (2013). “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress”, p.267, City Lights Books

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pilgrimage is a powerful metaphor for any journey with the purpose of finding something that matters deeply to the traveler.

  Phil Cousineau

  Powerful, Journey, Purpose

  Phil Cousineau (2012). “The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred”, p.25, Conari Press

  50 Copy quote

  Show source