Metaphor Quotes - Page 28

• Science always uses metaphor.

  James Lovelock

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• 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

  Mean, Men, Expression

  Moses Maimonides, Aeterna Press (1948). “The Guide for the Perplexed”, p.123, Aeterna Press

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• Fiction isn't made by scraping the bones of topicality for the last shreds and sinews, to be processed into mechanically recovered prose. Like journalism, it deals in ideas as well as facts, but also in metaphors, symbols and myths.

  Hilary Mantel

  Ideas, Lasts, Facts

  "On the one hand ..." by Hilary Mantel, www.theguardian.com. December 22, 2007.

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• For myself, the only way I know how to make a book is to construct it like a collage: a bit of dialogue here, a scrap of narrative, an isolated description of a common object, an elaborate running metaphor which threads between the sequences and holds different narrative lines together.

  Hilary Mantel

  Running, Book, Together

  "The joys of stationery" by Hilary Mantel, www.theguardian.com. March 5, 2010.

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• Bill Clinton sitting on Air Force One getting his hair cut while people around the country cooled their heels and waited for him, became a metaphor for a populist president who had gotten drunk with the perks of his own power and was sort of, you know, not sensitive to what people wanted.

  Dee Dee Myers

  Country, Cutting, Hair

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• A bridge is a meeting place . . . a possibility, a metaphor.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Bridges, Possibility, Meetings

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• Our subconscious works in metaphors, stories, and word play. That's why a particular story or movie may mean more to some people than to others. Have you considered why you quest for this tale now?

  Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Mean, Play, People

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• Don't worry about how pretty (the story) sounds, how lilting it is, and the imagery, and the metaphor, all that. Most readers don't care. It's the people in your book that matter.

  Terry McMillan

  Book, People, Worry

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• I don't expect Christians to see God as a metaphor, but that's what he is. Perhaps it might be clearer to call him a character in fiction, and a very interesting one too: one of the greatest and most complex villains of all - savage, petty, boastful and jealous, and yet capable of moments of tenderness and extremes of arbitrary affection - for David, for example. But he's not real, any more than Hamlet or Mr Pickwick are real. They are real in the context of their stories, but you won't find them in the phone book.

  Philip Pullman

  Christian, Real, Book

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• Maybe happiness too is a metaphor invented on a day of boredom

  Gustave Flaubert

  Boredom

  Gustave Flaubert (2005). “November: Fragments in a Nondescript Style”, Hesperus Press

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• When we want to give expression to a dramatic situation in our lives, we tend to use metaphors of heaviness. We say that something has become a great burden to us. We either bear the burden or fail and go down with it, we struggle with it, win or lose. And Sabina - what had come over her? Nothing. She had left a man because she felt like leaving him. Had he persecuted her? Had he tried to take revenge on her? No. Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden, but the unbearable lightness of being.

  Milan Kundera

  Revenge, Drama, Struggle

  The Unbearable Lightness of Being pt. 3, ch. 10 (1984) (translation by Michael Henry Heim)

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• All events, no matter how earthshaking or bizarre, are diluted within moments of their occurrence the the continuance of the necessary routines of day-to-day. -Fitz Most prisons are of our own making. A man makes his own freedom, too. -Chade When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool, you end up sounding like a moron instead. -Burrich We left. Walking uphill and into the wind. That suddenly seemed a metaphor for my whole life. -Fitz

  Robin Hobb

  Cutting, Men, Wind

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• Have you ever thought about the grid of Manhattan?' It's like...a metaphor for life. You think you have the freedom to walk anywhere. But in fact... you are strictly controlled. Up or down. Left or right. Nothing in between. No other options.' Life should be like an open space...you should be able to walk in whatever direction you choose.

  Sophie Kinsella

  Thinking, Space, Manhattan

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• Oh, jeez, please kill that metaphor,...Or kill me. One or the other.

  Lauren Kate

  Kill Me, Please

  Lauren Kate (2011). “The Fallen Sequence: An Omnibus Edition”, p.132, Delacorte Press

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• Cosmetic surgery is not "cosmetic," and human flesh is not "plastic." Even the names trivialize what it is. It's not like ironing wrinkles in fabric, or tuning up a car, or altering outmoded clothes, the current metaphors. Trivialization and infantilization pervade the surgeons' language when they speak to women: "a nip," a "tummy tuck."...Surgery changes one forever, the mind as well as the body. If we don't start to speak of it as serious, the millennium of the man-made woman will be upon us, and we will have had no choice.

  Naomi Wolf

  Men, Wrinkles, Names

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• When you write, it’s like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring them unity. Your fingers have still not perfected the task. Some of the braids are long, others are short. Some are thick, others are thin. Some are heavy. Others are light. Like the diverse women of your family. Those whose fables and metaphors, whose similes and soliloquies, whose diction and je ne sais quoi daily slip into your survival soup, by way of their fingers.

  Edwidge Danticat

  Writing, Light, Hair

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• They [Fairy Tales] are talking about real emotions, telling true stories, through the medium of metaphor. People used to understand metaphor better than I think we do now. But these stories are so potent, they refuse to die.

  Jane Yolen

  Real, Thinking, Talking

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• That’s what i love about poetry. The more abstract, the better. The stuff were your not sure what the poets talking about. You may have an idea, but you cant be sure. Not a hundred percent. Each word, specifically chosen, could have a million different meanings. Is it a stand-in ―a symbol for another idea? Does it fit into a larger, more hidden, metaphor? ...I hated poetry until someone showed me how to appreciate it. He told me to see poetry as a puzzle. Its up to the reader to decipher the code, or the words, based on everything they know about life and emotions.

  Jay Asher

  Talking, Ideas, Appreciate

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• Martin was dafter than a syphilitic polecat - where do I get these metaphors from?

  Steig Larsson

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• Geography is the key, the crucial accident of birth. A piece of protein could be a snail, a sea lion, or a systems analyst, but it had to start somewhere. This is not science; it is merely metaphor. And the landscape in which the protein "starts" shapes its end as surely as bowls shape water.

  Annie Dillard

  Keys, Sea, Water

  Annie Dillard (2016). “Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters”, p.92, Canongate Books

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• We don't suffer from a shortage of metaphors . . . But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters.

  John Green

  Suffering, Matter, Towns

  John Green (2013). “Paper Towns”, p.301, A&C Black

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• [T]hat state, love, is so utterly alien to that other idea without which we cannot live as human beings --- the idea of justice. It is only because love is so profoundly the enemy of justice that our minds, shrinking in horor from its true nature, try to tame it by uniting it with its opposite [...] in the hope that if we apply all the metaphors of normality, that if we heap them high enough, we shall, in the end, be able to approximate that state metaphorically.

  Amitav Ghosh

  Love Is, Opposites, Ideas

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• What do you see when you see me?' She asked him, burying her own face in his bosom. 'Do you want the truth?' She nodded. 'The firing squad.' 'That's not the whole truth. Try again.' 'Insatiability,' he said with some bitterness. 'That's oblique but altogether too simple. Once more,' she insisted. 'One more time.' He was silent for several minutes. 'The map of a country in which I only exist by virtue of the extravagance of my metaphors.' 'Now you're being too sophisticated. And, besides, what metaphors do we have in common?

  Angela Carter

  Country, Simple, Squad

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• I would like to use this little flower as a metaphor. The five petals of the little forget-me-not flower prompt me to consider five things we would be wise never to forget....first, forget not to be patient with yourself...second, forget not the difference between a good sacrifice and a foolish sacrifice...third, forget not to be happy now...fourth, forget not the why of the gospel...fifth, forget not that the Lord loves you.

  Dieter F. Uchtdorf

  Wise, Flower, Love You

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• Some burns," Clary said. "Nothing that matters" "Everything that happens to you matters to me." "Well that certainly explains why you haven't called me back once. And the last time I saw you, you ran away without telling me why. It's like dating a ghost." Jace's mouth quirked up slightly at the side. "Not exactly. Isabelle actually dated a ghost. She could tell you--" "No," Clary said. "It was a metaphor. And you know exactly what I mean.

  Cassandra Clare

  Mean, Dating, Saws

  Cassandra Clare (2011). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instrument Series (4 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass; City of Fallen Angels”, p.1485, Simon and Schuster

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