Metaphoric Quotes

• All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Literature, Metaphor, Slang

  Defendant (1901) "Defence of Slang"

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The metaphor is perhaps one of man's most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Inspiring, Men, Inspire

  "The Dehumanization of Art and Ideas about the Novel". Book by Jose Ortega y Gasset. Chapter "Taboo and Metaphor", 1925.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.

  Milan Kundera

  Love, Dream, Memories

  11 Copy quote

• Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor

  Milan Kundera

  Love Is, Unbearable Lightness Of Being, Metaphor

  9 Copy quote

• The masters of information have forgotten about poetry, where words may have a meaning quite different from what the lexicon says, where the metaphoric spark is always one jump ahead of the decoding function, where another, unforeseen reading is always possible.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Reading, Different, Lexicon

  J M Coetzee (2015). “Diary of a Bad Year”, p.23, Random House

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• Where hunger is imposed by external circumstances, the act of starvation remains literal, a tragic biological event that does not serve metaphoric or symbolic purposes. It is only in a country where one is able to choose hunger that elective starvation may come to express cultural conflict or even social protest.

  Kim Chernin

  Country, May, Able

  Kim Chernin (1982). “The obsession: reflections on the tyranny of slenderness”, HarperCollins Publishers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What this means is that children, homemakers, executives, farmers, and long-living persons can all have high ego strength and good mental health if they possess the courage, humor, and flexibility of equilibrium between their rational and metaphoric minds.

  Bob Samples

  Children, Mean, Long

  5 Copy quote

• Allow humans to be themselves and celebrate that selfness. Love the metaphoric mind and respect the rational. Nurture Motivation. Consider any attempt at communication appropriate. Celebrate the whole person.

  Bob Samples

  Motivation, Communication, Mind

  4 Copy quote

• The metaphoric mind includes rationality, linearity, and logic - for it created them. But like some children, the rational mind often seems embarrassed by the presence of its parents.

  Bob Samples

  Children, Parent, Mind

  Bob Samples (1976). “The metaphoric mind: a celebration of creative consciousness”, Addison Wesley Publishing Company

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Much more than an entertaining set of exaggerated facts, fiction is a metaphoric method of describing, dramatizing and condensing historical events, personal actions, psychological states and the symbolic knowledge encoded within the collective unconscious; things, events and conditions that are otherwise too diffuse and/or complex to be completely digested or appreciated by the prevailing culture.

  Tom Robbins

  Collective Unconscious, Historical, Fiction

  6 Copy quote

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

  I. A. Richards

  Language, Metaphor, Comparison

  14 Copy quote

• Literature is conscious mythology: as society develops, its mythical stories become structural principles of story-telling, its mythical concepts, sun-gods and the like, become habits of metaphoric thought. In a fully mature literary tradition the writerenters intoa structure of traditional stories and images.

  Northrop Frye

  Principles, Stories, Literature

  1971 The Bush Garden,'Conclusion'.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ithink Isaid'All menare Jews excepttheydon't know it.'I doubt I expected anyone to take the statement literally. But I think it's an understandable statement and a metaphoric way of indicating how history, sooner or later, treats all men.

  Bernard Malamud

  Men, Thinking, Doubt

  4 Copy quote

• Our job as writers and thinkers in the time is how to bring about the occasions that let people have that first-person experience - or the metaphoric experience that allows them to see human continuity as opposed to total threat, total willingness to do violence.

  Stanley Crouch

  Jobs, People, Violence

  8 Copy quote

• Alan Moore does have a sheen of class. He's a smart guy, and I'm sure there was a metaphoric level, I'm not denying that, but let's face it. the main reason he was doing a super-hero comic was because he was working for a super-hero comic book company.

  Chester Brown

  Smart, Book, Hero

  4 Copy quote

• Names generate meaning in a short amount of space — they provoke thoughts, questions. That's something I like doing. Of course, you have to be careful. Sometimes it can alienate the reader, it can be another level of mediation, to make a character carry the great burden of a metaphoric name. The character can be a device before he or she becomes a person, and that can be a bad thing for a writer who wants to offer up a kind of emotional proximity in the work. It's a constant struggle, the desire to be playful and the desire to communicate on some very stark emotional level.

  Joshua Ferris

  Struggle, Character, Emotional

  4 Copy quote

• But, like all metaphoric wars, the copyright wars are not actual conflicts of survival. Or at least, they are not conflicts for survival of a people or a society, even if they are wars of survival for certain businesses or, more accurately, business models. Thus we must keep i mind the other values or objectives that might also be affected by this war. We must make sure this war doesn't cost more than it is worth. We must be sure it is winnable, or winnable at a price we're willing to pay.

  Lawrence Lessig

  War, People, Survival

  4 Copy quote

• I was in the studio so much, it was about the search for air in a metaphoric sense, and the breathing has more to do with travel for me, about the search musically for open air.

  Keren Ann

  Travel, Air, Breathing

  8 Copy quote

• Journeys up the Metaphoric River are hugely enjoyable and highly recommended. Since every genre is nourished by its heady waters, a paddle steamer can take even the most walk-shy tourists to their chosen destination. As a bonus, there is traditionally at least one murder on board each trip--a "consideration" to the head steward will ensure that it is not you.

  Jasper Fforde

  Journey, Genre Is, Rivers

  4 Copy quote

• A poem in form still has to have voice, gesture, a sense of discovery, a metaphoric connection, as any poetry does.

  Robert Morgan

  Discovery, Voice, Connections

  7 Copy quote

• Heinrich Zimmerhe had a little saying : The best things cant be told - because they are transcendent, inexpressible truths. The second best are misunderstood : myths, which are metaphoric attempts to point to the way toward the first. And the third best have to do with history, science, biography, and so on. The only kind of talking that can be understood is this last kind.

  Joseph Campbell

  Talking, Misunderstood, Littles

  8 Copy quote