Metaphorical Quotes

• Our tools are extensions of our purposes, and so we find it natural to make metaphorical attributions of intentionality to them; but I take it no philosophical ice is cut by such examples.

  John Searle

  Philosophical, Cutting, Ice

  "Minds, Brains and Programs". Book by John Searle, 1980.

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• Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.

  George Lakoff

  Thinking, People, Monday Morning

  George Lakoff, Mark Johnson (2008). “Metaphors We Live By”, p.3, University of Chicago Press

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• Metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.

  George Lakoff

  Thinking, Everyday, Ordinary

  George Lakoff, Mark Johnson (2008). “Metaphors We Live By”, p.3, University of Chicago Press

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• 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

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• Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor

  Milan Kundera

  Love Is, Unbearable Lightness Of Being, Metaphor

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• Language operates between literal and metaphorical signification

  Robert Smithson

  Artist, Language, Literal

  Robert Smithson, Jack D. Flam (1996). “Robert Smithson, the Collected Writings”, p.61, Univ of California Press

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• But it then very soon became clear that the response of a war against terrorism, initially conceived of in a metaphorical sense, began to be taken increasingly seriously and came to entail waging a real war.

  Ulrich Beck

  Real, War, Taken

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• What I love about the theatre is that it's always metaphorical. It's like going back to being a kid again, and we're all pretending in a room. Sometimes, when the pretending really works, I find it much, much more moving than something on film.

  Mark Haddon

  Moving, Kids, Theatre

  "Mark Haddon: 'What I love about theatre is that it's like being a kid again'". Interview with Carole Cadwalladr, www.theguardian.com. March 27, 2010.

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• A great brand is a story that’s never completely told. A brand is a metaphorical story that connects with something very deep – a fundamental appreciation of mythology. Stories create the emotional context people need to locate themselves in a larger experience.

  Scott Bedbury

  Inspirational, Appreciation, Business

  "If the name fits ....", www.theguardian.com. January 7, 2001.

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• All the moral laws are readily translated into natural philosophy, for often we have only to restore the primitive meaning of thewords by which they are expressed, or to attend to their literal instead of their metaphorical sense. They are already supernatural philosophy.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Law

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.271, Delphi Classics

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• I've grown up on a diet of metaphors. If young writers would find those writers who can give them metaphors by the bushel and the peck, then they'll become better writers - to learn how to capsualize things and present them in metaphorical form.

  Ray Bradbury

  Giving, Young Writers, Metaphor

  Source: www.jasonmarchi.com

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• The crucifixion saved him [Jesus]. He never had to deal with the fact that the kingdom of God wasn't ever going to come. His disciples, of course, had to deal with it, and little by little they had to realize that it's a metaphorical thing. Well, that's not what Jesus meant. I'm fairly sure he meant it literally. But he must have been the most fascinating man.

  Philip Pullman

  Jesus, Men, Littles

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• The Bible represents a fundamental guidepost for millions of people on the planet, in much the same way the Koran, Torah, and Pali Canon offer guidance to people of other religions. If you and I could dig up documentation that contradicted the holy stories of Islamic belief, Judaic belief, Buddhist belief, pagan belief, should we do that? Should we wave a flag and tell the Buddhists that the Buddha did not come from a lotus blossom? Or that Jesus was not born of a literal virgin birth? Those who truly understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical.

  Dan Brown

  Jesus, Buddhist, Islamic

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• Every religion, every mythology is true in this sense: It is true as metaphorical of the human and cosmic mystery.

  Joseph Campbell

  Religion, Mystery, Mythology

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• Myths, legends and stories are the signposts previous generations have left us so we don't have to figure out our own personal journey in solitude!
  They have to be metaphorical, because their interpretation will be different for each individual life!

  Fred Van Lente

  Journey, Solitude, Different

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• Cyberspace' is a metaphorical idea which is supposed to be the space where your consciousness is located when you're using computer technology on the Internet, for example, and I'm not entirely sure it's such a useful term, but I think that's what most people mean by it.

  Neil Postman

  Mean, Technology, Thinking

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• Metaphorical tone deafness is when people are unable to discern what is of value in something. I think I'm tone deaf to poetry, for instance. Despite having studied it into a second year of university, most of it just leaves me cold.

  Julian Baggini

  Thinking, Years, People

  "Being tone deaf to religion does matter" by Julian Baggini, www.theguardian.com. February 23, 2012.

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• On the whole, we're a murderous race. According to Genesis, it took as few as four people to make the planet too crowded to stand, and the first murder was a fratricide. Genesis says that in a fit of jealous rage, the very first child born to mortal parents, Cain, snapped and popped the first metaphorical cap in another human being. The attack was a bloody, brutal, violent, reprehensible killing. Cain's brother Abel probably never saw it coming. As I opened the door to my apartment, I was filled with a sense of empathic sympathy and intuitive understanding. For freaking Cain.

  Jim Butcher

  Brother, Children, Jealous

  Jim Butcher (2006). “Dead Beat: A Novel of The Dresden Files”, p.16, Penguin

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• All of us were slowly losing that intellectual light that allows you always to tell the similar from the identical, the metaphorical from the real.

  Umberto Eco

  Real, Thinking, Light

  Umberto Eco (2007). “Foucault's Pendulum”, p.465, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• And what is the very essence of poetry if it is not this 'metaphorical language'-this marking of the before unapprehended relations of things?

  Owen Barfield

  Essence, Language, Relation

  Owen Barfield (1973). “Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning”, p.67, Wesleyan University Press

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• I think about dying but I don't want to die. Not even close. In fact my problem is the complete opposite. I want to live, I want to escape. I feel trapped and bored and claustrophobic. There's so much to see and so much to do but I somehow still find myself doing nothing at all. I'm still here in this metaphorical bubble of existence and I can't quite figure out what the hell I'm doing or how to get out of it.

  Matthew Healy

  Thinking, Opposites, Bored

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• I think that was E.T.'s central appeal, personally. E.T. is this metaphorical journey, this strange Odysseus from another world, who just wants to go home. Obviously, home must've been better!

  Frederick Lenz

  Home, Journey, Thinking

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• Science needs the intuition and metaphorical power of the arts, and the arts need the fresh blood of science ... Interpretation is the logical channel of consilient explanation between science and the arts. The arts ... also nourish our craving for the mystical.

  E. O. Wilson

  Art, Blood, Intuition

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• As a man without forethought scarcely deserves the name of a man, so forethought without reflection is but a metaphorical phrase for the instinct of a beast.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Reflection, Men, Names

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Nelson Coleridge, John McVickar (1854). “Coleridge's Aids to reflection: with the author's last corrections”, p.2

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• With ferocity and extraordinary craft, Lizzie Harris has made a book of poems that resonates far beyond the personal stories it tells. Stop Wanting reveals, in every lyric, its author's profound metaphorical gifts. In its ironies and intensities, it brings to mind a writer like the young Sylvia Plath, though what is startling about Harris' s work is the way it combines those gifts with a muted, deft self-awareness. Most of all, these are wonderfully shaped, powerful, and surprising poems-a startling debut.

  Meghan O'Rourke

  Powerful, Book, Self

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