George Orwell Quotes About Metaphor

Quotes about: Metaphor

• By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself.

  George Orwell

  Writing, Effort, Leaving

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.279, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.

  George Orwell

  Art, Latin, Struggle

• Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out always cut it out. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

  George Orwell

  Cutting, Thinking, Passive Voice

  George Orwell (1953). “Shooting an Elephant: And Other Essays”

• There exists a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves.

  George Orwell

  People, Phrases, Trouble

• Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

  George Orwell

  Speech, Use, Metaphor

  George Orwell (1968). “The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: In front of your nose, 1945-1950”

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin