Quotes and Sayings about Metaphor
"A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically."
- Diane Ackerman
(Related: Lie, Emotions, Language, Moods)
"The cartoon is a metaphor really for the fact that it's almost impossible in our celebrity obsessed culture to move around genres and sort of change you ideas, change your face, you know?"
- Damon Albarn
(Related: Change, Ideas, Celebrity, Culture, Fact, Metaphor)
"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
(Related: Travel, Open, Sense)
"The Holocaust is a central event in many people's lives, but it also has become a metaphor for our century. There cannot be an end to speaking and writing about it. Besides, in Israel, everyone carries a biography deep inside him."
- Aharon Appelfeld
(Related: People, Biography, Deep, End, Israel, Metaphor, Writing)
"No one bothered reading the books and understanding - and again, I'm not being high-falutin' about it - but I think our books are great literature with great metaphors of real life dealing with fears and hopes."
- Avi Arad
(Related: Life, Being, Books, Literature, Metaphors, Reading, Understanding)
"The family is changing, not disappearing. We have to broaden our understanding of it, look for the new metaphors."
- Mary Catherine Bateson
(Related: Family, Metaphors, Understanding)
"There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor. You can't think without metaphors."
- Mary Catherine Bateson
(Related: Metaphor, Metaphors)
"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
(Related: War, Sense, Terrorism)
"We all perform our lives in a way. And the actor is a perfect metaphor to get at that theme of 'how do we find our authentic selves?' And that we all - whether we're actors or not - perform ourselves. As a way of searching. As a way of fumbling around and trying to say, is this my voice? Is this who I am?"
- Annette Bening
(Related: Actor, Actors, Metaphor, Trying, Voice)
"The fundamental sense of freedom is freedom from chains, from imprisonment, from enslavement by others. The rest is extension of this sense, or else metaphor."
- Isaiah Berlin
(Related: Freedom, Imprisonment, Metaphor, Rest, Sense)
"Sports is a metaphor for overcoming obstacles and achieving against great odds. Athletes, in times of difficulty, can be important role models."
- Bill Bradley
(Related: Sports, Athletes, Difficulty, Metaphor, Obstacles, Overcoming)
"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
(Related: Class, Company, Reason)
"I heard my name associated with the Peter Pan syndrome more than once. But really, what's so wrong with Peter Pan? Peter Pan flies. He is a metaphor for dreams and faith."
- Mark Burnett
(Related: Dreams, Faith, Flies, Metaphor, Name, Wrong)
"God is a metaphor for that which trancends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that."
- Joseph Campbell
(Related: God, Thought, Metaphor)
"Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble."
- Joseph Campbell
(Related: Religion, Facts, Metaphors, Trouble)
"Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space."
- Orson Scott Card
(Related: Truth, Metaphors, Space)
"Most people like to read about intrigue and spies. I hope to provide a metaphor for the average reader's daily life. Most of us live in a slightly conspiratorial relationship with our employer and perhaps with our marriage."
- John Le Carre
(Related: Marriage, Life, People, Hope, Metaphor)
"The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us."
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
(Related: Idea, Progress, Growth, Metaphor)
"All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry."
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
(Related: Poetry, Metaphor, Slang)
"A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: History, Life, Ideas, Famous, Metaphor)
"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
(Related: Experience, Time, People, First, Job, Violence, Writers)
"When I can't talk sense, I talk metaphor."
- John Philpot Curran
(Related: Metaphor, Sense, Talk)
"LOVE: A word properly applied to our delight in particular kinds of food; sometimes metaphorically spoken of the favorite objects of all our appetites."
- Henry Fielding
(Related: Food, Delight, Favorite, Word)
"The metaphor of the king as the shepherd of his people goes back to ancient Egypt. Perhaps the use of this particular convention is due to the fact that, being stupid, affectionate, gregarious, and easily stampeded, the societies formed by sheep are most like human ones."
- Northrop Frye
(Related: People, Being, Fact, Metaphor, Sheep)
"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
(Related: God, Creation, Magic, Man, Metaphor)
"Their scrambled attention spans struck me as a metaphor for the way we get our doses of reality these days."
- Bill Griffith
(Related: Attention, Metaphor, Reality)
"The whole concept of the devil is a metaphor on one level."
- Taylor Hackford
(Related: Devil, Metaphor)
"It is also difficult to articulate the subtleties in cinema, because there aren't words or metaphors which describe many of the emotions you are attempting to evoke."
- Conrad Hall
(Related: Cinema, Emotions, Metaphors, Words)
"I had then and still retain an interest in science for its own sake and as a metaphor for our current lives."
- Peter Hammill
(Related: Science, Interest, Metaphor)
"Unlike metaphor, metonymy does not try to fuse images together."
- Thomas Harrison
(Related: Metaphor)
"In recent decades this symbolic or metaphorical lyric has given way to one which leans toward metonymy."
- Thomas Harrison
"Some say Hollywood movies that are made about boxing are just metaphors for other things, I think I've made one that's actually about boxing and not a metaphor."
- Walter Hill
(Related: Movies, Boxing, Hollywood, Metaphor, Metaphors)
"There is no more reason why the features belonging to a picture should be distorted for the purpose of such imaginative suggestion than that the poet's metaphors should spoil his words for the ordinary uses of man."
- William H. Hunt
(Related: Purpose, Man, Metaphors, Reason, Words)
"Language is memory and metaphor."
- Storm Jameson
(Related: Language, Memory, Metaphor)
"I think that we give the impression, to carry on your metaphor, that we go a little faster than we actually do. I'm fairly lazy so I'm always interested in slowing down."
- Ashley Judd
(Related: Impression, Metaphor)
"Writers who have nothing to say always strain for metaphors to say it in."
- Florence King
(Related: Metaphors, Nothing, Writers)
"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
(Related: Love, First, Memory, Metaphor, Metaphors, Woman, Word)
"I am heartbroken that this movie would cause anyone pain. It should be a source of joy. The story is a metaphor about how we try to stay in our own little bubbles, we don't let life in, we don't take the journey."
- Swoosie Kurtz
(Related: Life, Cause, Journey, Joy, Metaphor, Pain)
"Science is all metaphor."
- Timothy Leary
(Related: Science, Metaphor)
"In this metaphor we actually have a picture of the computational universe, a metaphor which I hope to make scientifically precise as part of a research program."
- Seth Lloyd
(Related: Hope, Metaphor, Research, Universe)
"I would suggest, merely as a metaphor here, but also as the basis for a scientific program to investigate the computational capacity of the universe, that this is also a reasonable explanation for why the universe is complex."
- Seth Lloyd
(Related: Metaphor, Universe)
"I couldn't have come up with a better metaphor for my life and my internal conflict. It amazes me how quickly we can manifest our fears; not only had I created my 'I'm never satisfied, I'll drive her away' nightmare."
- Kenny Loggins
(Related: Life, Conflict, Metaphor)
"2006 is all about getting your house in order and I mean that metaphorically."
- LaToya London
(Related: Order)
"It's possible to take that as a personal metaphor and then multiply it to a people, a race, a sex, a time. If we can keep this thing going long enough, if we can survive and teach what we know, we'll make it."
- Audre Lorde
(Related: Time, Sex, People, Metaphor, Race)
"Science always uses metaphor."
- James Lovelock
(Related: Science, Metaphor)
"While one man can discover a certain thing by himself, another is never able to understand it, even if taught by means of all possible expressions and metaphors, and during a long period; his mind can in no way grasp it, his capacity is insufficient for it."
- Maimonides
(Related: Man, Metaphors, Mind)
"Metaphors are much more tenacious than facts."
- Paul de Man
(Related: Facts, Metaphors)
"A poem in form still has to have voice, gesture, a sense of discovery, a metaphoric connection, as any poetry does."
- Robert Morgan
(Related: Poetry, Connection, Discovery, Sense, Voice)
"Poetry teaches us music, metaphor, condensation and specificity."
- Walter Mosley
(Related: Poetry, Music, Metaphor)
"People who speak in metaphors should shampoo my crotch."
- Jack Nicholson
(Related: People, Metaphors)
"Maybe we can use a metaphor for it, out of dance. I think for many years I was aware of the need, in dance and in life, to breathe deeply and to take in more air than we usually take in."
- Sharon Olds
(Related: Life, Dance, Metaphor, Years)
"If we are a metaphor of the universe, the human couple is the metaphor par excellence, the point of intersection of all forces and the seed of all forms. The couple is time recaptured, the return to the time before time."
- Octavio Paz
(Related: Time, Excellence, Metaphor, Universe)
"The strangest thing that human speech and human writing can do is create a metaphor. That is an amazing leap, is it not?"
- Dennis Potter
(Related: Metaphor, Speech, Writing)
"Metaphor is embodied in language."
- Dennis Potter
(Related: Language, Metaphor)
"Sport is a wonderful metaphor for life. Of all the sports that I played - skiing, baseball, fishing - there is no greater example than golf, because you're playing against yourself and nature."
- Robert Redford
(Related: Nature, Sports, Life, Baseball, Example, Fishing, Golf, Metaphor)
"You can't completely control the sport - Tiger Woods comes close. The test is against yourself and nature's own way. I find golf a particularly good metaphor for this story."
- Robert Redford
(Related: Nature, Control, Golf, Metaphor)
"I'm not interested in a film about golf but I am interested in golf as a metaphor."
- Robert Redford
(Related: Film, Golf, Metaphor)
"But in fact if you look at film as a metaphor, only through the negative can you have the positive print. What I'm trying to get to is the positive value of negation."
- Godfrey Reggio
(Related: Negative, Positive, Fact, Film, Metaphor, Trying, Value)
"The vampires have always been metaphors for me. They've always been vehicles through which I can express things I have felt very, very deeply."
- Anne Rice
(Related: Metaphors)
"Unregulated competition is a naive metaphor for anarchy."
- John Ralston Saul
(Related: Anarchy, Competition, Metaphor)
"The metaphor of Exodus is one that has dogged the Jews from the outset. Their very success attracts resentment."
- Jack Schwartz
(Related: Success, Metaphor, Resentment)
"We often attribute 'understanding' and other cognitive predicates by metaphor and analogy to cars, adding machines, and other artifacts, but nothing is proved by such attributions."
- John Searle
(Related: Machines, Metaphor, Nothing)
"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
(Related: Tools)
"Language operates between literal and metaphorical signification."
- Robert Smithson
(Related: Language)
"Again, one of the problems I have with television, as I mentioned before, is it's trivial in many ways, and I think that a lot of folks out there are looking for new metaphors and new ways of thinking about things."
- J. Michael Straczynski
(Related: Metaphors, Problems, Television, Thinking)
"The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us."
- Paul Valery
(Related: Discovery, Folly, Metaphor, Oracle, Paradox, Proof, Spring)
"We are such materialists that all our metaphors are going to be material."
- J. T. Walsh
(Related: Metaphors)
"I wanted to define the vocabulary of a wedding both visually and intellectually. The book is about more than weddings or wedding dresses. It's a metaphor for women's lives, their creativity."
- Vera Wang
(Related: Wedding, Women, Creativity, Metaphor, Vocabulary, Weddings)
"Flower was a good metaphor for growth. The song is obviously about sexual responsibility, so that was the main metaphor. Also, it's like knowing who someone has been and remembering and appreciating that, but really appreciating what they are now even more."
- Jody Watley
(Related: Growth, Metaphor, Now, Responsibility, Song)
"The Olympics are a wonderful metaphor for world cooperation, the kind of international competition that's wholesome and healthy, an interplay between countries that represents the best in all of us."
- John Williams
(Related: Competition, Cooperation, Countries, Metaphor, World)
"Quest is at the heart of what I do-the holy grail, and the terror that you'll never find it, seemed a perfect metaphor for life."
- Jeanette Winterson
(Related: Life, Heart, Metaphor, Quest, Terror)
"It became a metaphor for the lives of the people in this film and for the Old West, for the abandonment that occurred in the early part of the 20th century."
- Dwight Yoakam
(Related: People, Film, Metaphor, Old)