metaphor

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
99cd48a	Books are the mirrors of the soul.	metaphor soul	Virginia Woolf
dda2c4e	People say that eyes are windows to the soul.	life metaphor inspirational	Khaled Hosseini
9f991b8	Life is a journey. Time is a river. The door is ajar	life metaphor zen	Jim Butcher
f9a05b5	I said nothing for a time, just ran my fingertips along the edge of the human-shaped emptiness that had been left inside me.	metaphor silence	Haruki Murakami
48dce51	The sense of tragedy - according to Aristotle - comes, ironically enough, not from the protagonist's weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what I'm getting at? People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues. ... [But] we accept irony through a device called metaphor. And through that we grow and become deeper human beings.	life metaphor wisdom	Haruki Murakami
3fbd3cc	Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.	believers metaphor myth organized-religion religion theists	Joseph Campbell
1ae7acd	I wonder which is preferable, to walk around all your life swollen up with your own secrets until you burst from the pressure of them, or to have them sucked out of you, every paragraph, every sentence, every word of them, so at the end you're depleted of all that was once as precious to you as hoarded gold, as close to you as your skin - everything that was of the deepest importance to you, everything that made you cringe and wish to conceal, everything that belonged to you alone - and must spend the rest of your days like an empty sack flapping in the wind, an empty sack branded with a bright fluorescent label so that everyone will know what sort of secrets used to be inside you?	metaphor secrets simile the-blind-assassin	Margaret Atwood
fa186bb	The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.	metaphor mysticism psychosis schizophrenia	Joseph Campbell
25cf7ca	Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.	life metaphor violin	E.M. Forster
78e26ef	And now, my poor old woman, why are you crying so bitterly? It is autumn. The leaves are falling from the trees like burning tears- the wind howls. Why must you mimic them?	copy cry crying despair fall howl metaphor mimic poetic rain shakespearean simile wind wit	Mervyn Peake
5c41f33	Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.	gods humor metaphor no-mercy old-testament	Joseph Campbell
bb119d4	"The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions. And even a cursory glance at the history of the biological sciences during the last quarter of a century is sufficient to justify the assertion, that the most potent instrument for the extension of the realm of natural knowledge which has come into men's hands, since the publication of	biology business charles-darwin darwin goal history illimitable inexplicability infinite intellectual isaac-newton justification knowledge metaphor newton ocean origin-of-species possessions principia science solidity unknown	Thomas Henry Huxley
cf14ff7	Their life is mysterious, it is like a forest; from far off it seems a unity, it can be comprehended, described, but closer it begins to separate, to break into light and shadow, the density blinds one. Within there is no form, only prodigious detail that reaches everywhere: exotic sounds, spills of sunlight, foliage, fallen trees, small beasts that flee at the sound of a twig-snap, insects, silence, flowers. And all of this, dependent, closely woven, all of it is deceiving. There are really two kinds of life. There is, as Viri says, the one people believe you are living, and there is the other. It is this other which causes the trouble, this other we long to see.	forest metaphor people trees	James Salter
236ee79	When birds look into houses, what impossible worlds they see.	metaphor the-body-artist	Don DeLillo
89113df	"What's this?" he inquired, none too pleasantly. "A circus?" "No, Julius. It's the end of the circus." "I see. And these are the clowns?" Foaly's head poked through the doorway. "Pardon me for interrupting your extended circus metaphor, but what the hell is that?"	metaphor	Eoin Colfer
25fcde2	"Each life is formed by its unique image, an image that is the essence of that life and calls it to a destiny. As the force of fate, this image acts as a personal daimon, an accompanying guide who remembers your calling.	metaphor myth	James Hillman
60eda8a	And metaphors like cats behind your smile, Each one wound up to purr, each one a pride, Each one a fine gold beast you've hid inside (...)	metaphor pride purr smile	Ray Bradbury
4c4b1b0	But it is just two lovers, holding hands and in a hurry to reach their car, their locked hands a starfish leaping through the dark.	imagery inspirational love lovers metaphor suggestive	Updike John
a35d265	What has our culture lost in 1980 that the avant-garde had in 1890? Ebullience, idealism, confidence, the belief that there was plenty of territory to explore, and above all the sense that art, in the most disinterested and noble way, could find the necessary metaphors by which a radically changing culture could be explained to its inhabitants.	art avant-garde confidence culture david-foster-wallace ebullience idealism irony meta-modernism metaphor post-ironic postmodernism shia-lebouf	Robert Hughes
722c3b6	Know that diamonds and roses are as uncomfortable when they tumble from one's lips as toads and frogs: colder, too, and sharper, and they cut.	metaphor rumors truth	Neil Gaiman
d6b51eb	She's all over us like maggots on garbage, just because I interfered with one pickpocket yesterday.	followed harassment metaphor	Tamora Pierce
2c5a04c	Islands are metaphors of the heart, no matter what poet says otherwise.	jeanette-winterson metaphor poet sexing-the-cherry	Jeanette Winterson
e2a185d	I feel all agitated, like one of those snow globes you see resting peacefully on shop counters. I was perfectly happy being an ordinary, dull little Swiss village. But now Jack Harper's come and shaken me up, and there are snowflakes all over the place, whirling around until I don't know what I think anymore. And bits of glitter, too. Tiny bits of shiny, secret excitement.	love metaphor	Sophie Kinsella
2d32b81	The LSD phenomenon, on the other hand, is--to me at least--more interesting. It is an intentionally achieved schizophrenia, with the expectation of a spontaneous remission--which, however, does not always follow. Yoga, too, is intentional schizophrenia: one breaks away from the world, plunging inward, and the ranges of vision experienced are in fact the same as those of a psychosis. But what, then, is the difference? What is the difference between a psychotic or LSD experience and a yogic, or a mystical? The plunges are all into the same deep inward sea; of that there can be no doubt. The symbolic figures encountered are in many instances identical (and I shall have something more to say about those in a moment). But there is an important difference. The difference--to put it sharply--is equivalent simply to that between a diver who can swim and one who cannot. The mystic, endowed with native talents for this sort of thing and following, stage by stage, the instruction of a master, enters the waters and finds he can swim; whereas the schizophrenic, unprepared, unguided, and ungifted, has fallen or has intentionally plunged, and is drowning.	drowning lsd metaphor mysticism schizophrenia shamanism yoga	Joseph Campbell
b54a380	Stir not the bitterness in the cup that I mixed for myself,' said Denethor. 'Have I not tasted it now many nights upon my tongue, foreboding that worse lay in the dregs?	cynicism metaphor sadness	J.R.R. Tolkien
65482d5	My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know those redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges.	memory metaphor mothers	Vladimir Nabokov
b0d49c9	The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind.	humor memory metaphor recollection	Terry Pratchett
aebebaf	Such is life. We grow up. Planets like Tiny get new moons. Moons like me get new planets.	growing-up inspirational life metaphor	John Green
7f43905	She was a mind floating in an ocean of confusion.	confusion floating metaphor mind ocean sad scared	Caroline B. Cooney
ecbd6ef	I watched the moon alone, unable to share his cold beauty with anyone.	beauty beauty-in-nature loneliness metaphor moon nature sad	Haruki Murakami
7557bfd	His smile was so wide he'd have had to break it into sections to fit it through a doorway	metaphor	Jerry Spinelli
097015d	"For somewhere," said Poirot to himself, indulging in an absolute riot of mixed metaphors, "there is in the hay a needle, and among the sleeping dogs there is one on whom I shall put my foot, and by shooting the arrows into the air, one will come down and hit a glass house!"	humor metaphor metaphors mixed-metaphor poirot	Agatha Christie
90ce133	"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."	metaphor science sea-lion snail systems-analyst water	Annie Dillard
59ced71	It was a smooth silvery voice that matched her hair. It had a tiny tinkle in it, like bells in a doll's house. I thought that was silly as soon as I thought of it.	humour metaphor simile	Raymond Chandler
8e4ecc6	"Imagine for a moment that you are the proud owner of a large house which you have spent years of your life painting and decorating and filling with everything you love. It's your home. It's something you've made your own, something for you to be remembered by, something that, perhaps years later, your children and grandchildren can visit and get a view of your life in. It's part of your creativity, your hard work... it's your property. Now suppose you decide to go camping for a couple of weeks. You lock your door and assume that nobody is going to break in... but they do, and when you return home, to your horror you find that not only do these trespassers break in, but they also have quite uniquely imaginative ways of disrespecting, vandalizing and corrupting everything within your property. They light fires on your lawn, your topiary hedges are in heaps of black ashes. There's some blatantly obscene graffiti splattered across your front door, offensive images and rude words splashed on the walls and windows. Your television has been tipped over. Your photographs of family and friends have had the heads cut out of them. There's mold growing in the refrigerator, bottles of booze tipped over on the table, and cigarette smoke embedded into the carpeting. Your beloved houseplants are dead, your furniture has been stripped down and ruined. Basically, the thing you've spent years working for and creating within your lifetime has been tampered with to the point where it is just a grim joke.	books copyright fanfiction funny geek ghost grave house imagine metaphor pervy respect sherlock vandalism	Rebecca McNutt
e89c62d	Like kids who only ever get socks for Christmas, but still believe with all their hearts in Santa.	heartbreaking metaphor santa	Barbara Kingsolver
f69b291	Dark-bright fire lit eyes	brown-eyes dark-eyes description metaphor	Audre Lorde
30a3f33	I think back to the day I stood before my wife's grave for the final time, and turned away from it without regret, because I knew that what she was was not contained in that hole in the ground. I entered a new life and found her again, in a woman who was entirely her own person. When this life is done, I'll turn away from it without regret as well, because I know she waits for me, in another, different life.	death-of-a-loved-one love metaphor	John Scalzi
f814f25	GUIL (quietly): Where we went wrong was getting on a boat. We can move, of course, change direction, rattle about, but our movement is contained within a larger one that carries us along as inexorably as the wind and current...	life metaphor	Tom Stoppard
ba05990	I should have realized, when Cathal kissed me in the hallway, that my response was the first raindrop heralding a storm.	love metaphor	Juliet Marillier
5d82eac	The sky is blue,' he said, 'the grass is green.' Looking up, he saw that, on the contrary, the sky is like the veils which a thousand Madonnas have let fall from their hair; and the grass fleets and darkens like a flight of girls fleeing the embraces of hairy satyrs from enchanted woods. 'Upon my word,' he said [...], 'I don't see that one's more true than another. Both are utterly false.	metaphor	Virginia Woolf
0b42db3	"The facts of nature are what they are, but we can only view them through the spectacles of our mind. Our mind works largely by metaphor and comparison, not always (or often) by relentless logic. When we are caught in conceptual traps, the best exit is often a change in metaphor -- not because the new guideline will be truer to nature (for neither the old nor the new metaphor lies "out there" in the woods), but because we need a shift to more fruitful perspectives, and metaphor is often the best agent of conceptual transition." --	metaphor mind nature	Stephen Jay Gould
f636985	Translation error is compounded by bias error. We distort others by forcing into them our preferred ideas and gestalts, a process Proust beautifully describes: We pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him which we compose in our minds, these ideas have certainly the principal place. In the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our own ideas of him which we recognize and to which we listen.	metaphor proust psychology psychology-analysis translation-error	Irvin D. Yalom
1429aa6	Listen. Look. Desire is a house. Desire needs closed space. Desire runs out of doors or windows, or slats or pinpricks, it can't fit under the sky, too large. Close the doors. Close the windows. As soon as you laugh from nerves or make a joke or say something just to say something or get all involved with the bushes, then you blow open a window in your house of desire and it can't heat up as well. Cold draft comes in.	heat house metaphor	Aimee Bender
fb65423	It was one of those dangerous moments when speech is at once sincere and deceptive, when feeling, rising high above its average depth, leaves flood-marks which are never reached again.	metaphor	George Eliot
57cd612	"Suffering is the fuel in the engine of civilization." -Vergere"	engine fuel jacen-solo metaphor new-jedi-order new-republic pain post-return-of-the-jedi star-wars suffering the-force traitor vergere yuuzhan-vong	Matthew Woodring Stover
d11c7d9	Though sometimes, first love cauterises the heart, and all any searcher will find thereafter is scar tissue.	first-love heart heartbreak julian-barnes metaphor the-only-story trauma	Julian Barnes
5cb05f9	As I have pointed out before, characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about.	birth characters metaphor	Milan Kundera
0d94b88	Achilles might be a good papa to the family, but he was also a killer, and he never forgives. Poke knew that, though. Bean warned her, and she knew it, but she chose Achilles for their papa anyway. Chose him and then died for it. She was like that Jesus that Helga preached about in her kitchen while they ate. She died for her people. And Achilles, he was like God. He made people pay for their sins no matter what they did. The important thing is, stay on the good side of God. That's what Helga teaches, isn't it? Stay right with God. I'll stay right with Achilles. I'll honor my papa, that's for sure, so I can stay alive until I'm old enough to go out on my own.	bean forgiveness god jesus metaphor murder poke survival	Orson Scott Card
4b348df	Cognitive science has something of enormous importance to contribute to human freedom: the ability to learn what our unconscious conceptual systems are like and how our cognitive unconscious functions. If we do not realize that most of our thought is unconscious and that we think metaphorically, we will indeed be slaves to the cognitive unconscious. Paradoxically, the assumption that we have a radically autonomous rationality as traditionally conceived actually limits our rational autonomy. It condemns us to cognitive slavery - to an unaware and uncritical dependence on our unconscious metaphors. To maximize what conceptual freedom we can have, we must be able to see through and move beyond philosophies that deny the existence of an embodied cognitive unconscious that governs most of our mental lives.	cognitive-science embodied-mind freedom illusion limitation metaphor reason self-knowledge thought	George Lakoff
45c17d3	"Writers think in metaphors. Editors work in metaphors. A great reader reads in metaphors. All are continually asking, "What does this represent? What does it stand for?" They are trying to take everything one level deeper. When they get to that level, they will try to go deeper again."	metaphor readers writers	Steven Pressfield
f138e9e	You want a shadow, you got to have light and something to get in its way.	metaphor	James S.A. Corey
740f352	Until the thirst for power parched his throat, he was a fearless and noble lord.	metaphor turn-of-phrase	Lloyd Alexander
73225a1	Doubtless some ancient Greek has observed that behind the big mask and the speaking-trumpet, there must always be our poor little eyes peeping as usual and our timorous lips more or less under anxious control.	drama masks metaphor perception self-knowledge speech theatre	George Eliot
092b608	Time and sunshine healed a sore, but the process was slow, and new boils appeared if I didn't stay dry.	life-of-pi metaphor pain suffering time	Yann Martel
c98279f	... the future is a teenage crackhead who makes shit up as he goes along.	crackhead future metaphor	Chuck Klosterman
0047eb4	"I lean against my sister's shoulder. "I thought lightning wasn't supposed to strike in the same place twice." "Sure it does," Izzy tells me. "But only if you're too dumb to move." --	julia-romano lightning metaphor relationships sisters	Jodi Picoult
a9887f4	It was a high ceilinged room with tall, large-panes windows. Apart from the doorway was the desk where book had been checked out in days when books were still being checked out. He stood there for a moment looking around the silent room, shaking his head slowly. All these books, he thought, the residue of a planet's intellect, the scrapings of futile minds, the leftovers, the potpourri of artifacts that had no power to save men from perishing.	apocalypse books dead death decay empty library metaphor zombies	Richard Matheson
324b71e	"I feel I'm at the end of something -- everything is going to be different -- and terrible." "That doesn't sound like you, you ride every wave." "There is one that will drown me."	dialogue giving-up iris-murdoch metaphor resilience the-end the-green-knight	Iris Murdoch
f3aa980	Everything passed, and what trace of its passage remained? It seemed to Kitty that they were all, the human race, like the drops of water in that river and they flowed on, each so close to the other and yet so far apart, a nameless flood, to the sea. When all things lasted so short a time and nothing mattered very much, it seemed pitiful that men, attaching an absurd importance to trivial objects, should make themselves and one another so unhappy.	human-race humanity kindness metaphor triviality-of-life	W. Somerset Maugham
62bb2e1	I don't think I can marry, I'm not fit for it, I'm not real enough. That's the trouble. I'm a puppet that's realised what's wrong with itself and it's . I'm propped up somewhere all alone, watching the real people go past. I'm propped up crying in a corner.	iris-murdoch left-out metaphor misery outsider sad single the-message-to-the-planet unloved	Iris Murdoch
4c435a0	"In philosophy, metaphorical pluralism is the norm. Our most important abstract philosophical concepts, including time, causation, morality, and the mind, are all conceptualized by multiple metaphors, sometimes as many as two dozen. What each philosophical theory typically does is to choose one of those metaphors as "right," as the true literal meaning of the concept. One reason there is so much argumentation across philosophical theories is that different philosophers have chosen different metaphors as the "right" one, ignoring or taking as misleading all other commonplace metaphorical structurings of the concept. Philosophers have done this because they assume that a concept must have one and only one logic. But the cognitive reality is that our concepts have multiple metaphorical structurings."	concept embodied-mind logic metaphor philosophy reason	George Lakoff
0b09a3d	He did not recognize himself either. He was a totally new being, bald, covered with grease and blood, pink and blue eyed: he was his own baby...He was a great fat chuckling baby, and he shat and peed in his filthy trousers and kept driving.	metaphor murder	Peter Straub
32af080	"Anonymous > Quotes > Quotable Quote "I see life as a roadside inn where I have to stay until the coach from the abyss pulls up. I don't know where it will take me, because I don't know anything. I could see this inn as a prison, for I'm compelled to wait in it; I could see it as a social centre, for it's here that I meet others. But I'm neither impatient nor common. I leave who will to stay shut up in their rooms, sprawled out on beds where they sleeplessly wait, and I leave who will to chat in the parlours, from where their songs and voices conveniently drift out here to me. I'm sitting at the door, feasting my eyes and ears on the colours and sounds of the landscape, and I softly sing - for myself alone - wispy songs I compose while waiting."	melancholy metaphor	Fernando Pessoa
fc79326	Under the pathologist's microscope, life and death fight in an illuminated circle in a sort of cellular bullfight. The pathologist's job is to find the bull among the matador cells	death life metaphor microscope pathologist pathology	Yann Martel
818ecba	She was lost now, she'd been silenced- another dead branch on Cordova's warped tree.	death horror metaphor nature	Marisha Pessl
8d01b76	"Holly steps back. Being warned about a ghost and seeing him are not the same. 'What did they	death immortality life metaphor mortality speech time title	David Mitchell
d427829	Walking a short way back along the embankment, almost to where the cross stood, Smiley took another look at the bridge, as if to establish whether anything had changed, but clearly it had not, and though the wind appeared a little stronger, the snow was still swirling in all directions.	metaphor pyrrhic-victory smiley	John le Carré
1158c36	She had an idea, but it was the wrong idea. It was hardly even an idea, just a white idea balloon with no writing inside it.	idea margaret-atwood metaphor the-robber-bride	Margaret Atwood
140ef00	...maybe you believe that we fall into our future blindly, drifting from adventure to adventure, our journey zigzagging not according to plan but according to pure chance. Or just maybe, as random and haphazard as our lives seems--maybe that's exactly what the author had in mind.	metaphor	Jodi Picoult
b1534a1	We, Brandy and Alfa and me, we've been speaking English as a second language so long that we've forgotten it as our first. I have no native tongue.	metaphor	Chuck Palahniuk
35c17d9	When the sun touched the earth, it spread out along the horizon like a giant yolk oozing free of its skin.	metaphor sun	Christopher Paolini
5883112	A faint tickling on the back of his right hand caused Eragon to look down. A huge, wingless cricket clung to his glove. The insect was hideous: black and bulbous, with barbed legs and a massive skull-like head. Its carapace gleamed like oil.	metaphor	Christopher Paolini
a1a49da	The mechanism by which spirituality becomes passionate is metaphor. An ineffable God requires metaphor not only to be imagined but to be approached, exhorted, evaded, confronted, struggled with, and loved. Through metaphor, the vividness, intensity, and meaningfulness of ordinary experiences becomes the basis of a passionate spirituality. An ineffable God becomes vital through metaphor: The Supreme Being. The Prime Mover. The Creator. The Almighty. The Father. The King of Kings. Shepherd. Potter. Lawgiver. Judge. Mother. Lover. Breath. The vehicle by which we are moved in passionate spirituality is metaphor. The mechanism of such metaphor is bodily. It is a neural mechanism that recruits our abilities to perceive, to move, to feel, and to envision in the service not only of theoretical and philosophical thought, but of spiritual experience.	cognitive-science embodied-mind god metaphor religion spirituality	George Lakoff
b096101	...there is no real person whose embodiment plays no role in meaning, whose meaning is purely objective and defined by the external world, and whose language can fit the external world with no significant role played by mind, brain, or body. Because our conceptual systems grow out of our bodies, meaning is grounded in and through our bodies. Because a vast range of our concepts are metaphorical, meaning is not entirely literal and the classical correspondence theory of truth is false.	correspondence embodied-mind embodied-realism meaning metaphor objectivity reason truth	George Lakoff
859d16e	"Minigolf," she said with stone seriousness, "is a metaphor for life."	lessons life metaphor	Emily Giffin All We Ever Wanted
1e721e9	...explaining men still assume I am, in some sort of obscene impregnation metaphor, an empty vessel to be filled with their wisdom and knowledge.	mansplaining metaphor	Rebecca Solnit
2447f1e	We are all potentially demons to each other, but some close relationships are saved from this fate.	demons iris-murdoch metaphor relationships the-sea-the-sea toxic-relationships	Iris Murdoch
2dc9b4b	Of course we have an 'unconscious mind' and this is partly what my book is about. But there is no general chart of that lost continent. Certainly not a 'scientific' one.	metaphor subconscious subconscious-mind the-black-prince unknowable	Iris Murdoch
38b41d8	He suffers terribly all the time. He lives in fire.	endless-suffering iris-murdoch metaphor relentless suffering the-green-knight torture	Iris Murdoch
d4ed8c1	Teddy shuddered. The idea of the sublime little bird being plucked from the sky, of its exquisite song being interrupted in full flight, was horrible to him.	death killing metaphor senseless-death skylark waste	Kate Atkinson
e2270bb	Fracture lines etch the surface of the glass box as if a body fell from the sky and landed on it. He doesn't hear the impact, can't smell the blood.	life metaphor poetic poetic-prose reassurance recovery wintergirls	Laurie Halse Anderson
371f66c	...you must understand that not even the Jedi know all there is to be known about the Force; no mortal mind can. We speak of the as someone ignorant of gravity might say it is the will of a river to flow to the ocean; it is a metaphor that describes our ignorance. The simple truth - if any truth is ever simple - is that we do not truly know what the will of the Force may be. We can know. It is so far beyond our limited understanding that we can only surrender to its mystery.	ignorance jedi metaphor mystery obi-wan-kenobi old-ben simple-truth surrender-to-mystery the-force the-will-of-the-force truth	Matthew Woodring Stover
e3772d4	I was born with the ability to see in metaphor.	experience listen listening metaphor seeing writing	Mark Nepo
575d100	Tulips were a tray of jewels.	description e-m-forster figurative-language flowers howards-end metaphor tulips	E.M. Forster
a2cea1a	I never knew anyone actually buy cakes when they were hot ...	hotcakes metaphor	Ruth Rendell
9b44ded	If the rowan's roots are shallow, it bears no crown.	future heritage legacy metaphor past	Ursula K. Le Guin
dbe5231	"These poor souls. These poor pathetic souls." The Emperor gestured toward the passersby. "I don't understand," Tommy said. "Their time has passed and they don't know what to do. They were told what they wanted and they believed it. They can only keep their dream alive by being with others like themselves who will mirror their illusions." "They have really nice shoes," Tommy said. "They have to look right or their peers will turn on them like starving dogs. They are the fallen gods. The new gods are producers, creators, doers. The new gods are the chinless techno-children who would rather eat white sugar and watch science-fiction films than worry about what shoes they wear. And these poor souls desperately push papers around hoping that a mystical message will appear to save them from the new, awkward, brilliant gods and their silicon-chip reality. Some of them will survive, of course, but most will fall. Uncreative thinking is done better by machines. Poor souls, you can almost hear them sweating."	emperor-of-san-francisco happiness humor metaphor reality shoes	Christopher Moore
7aa4028	Her eyes narrowed until they were a faint greenish glitter, like a forest pool far back in the shadow of trees.	green-eyes metaphor	Raymond Chandler
40351c2	"in our culture, women can do anything a man can. and vice versa." don alfonso's eyebrows shot up. "i do not believe it." "it's true," sally said defiantly. "in America, the women hunt while the men have babies?"	gender-equality metaphor	Douglas Preston
ce59c1f	It is only a metaphor--or the worst of dreams; yet there are metaphors which sit more powerfully in the brain than remembered events.	julian-barnes memory metaphor reality the-only-story	Julian Barnes
b013285	He had been bruised, so to speak, so badly that the eyes of strangers lacerated him like salt.	james-baldwin metaphor wounded	James Baldwin
30bce1f	War is our backyard, famine our feast. Most fear the wind of our wings and even, in their hurt, pray for life. Only a few, a very few, truly pray for death. But we answer all their prayers with the same coin.	descriptive-writing metaphor	Jane Yolen
21a9af6	... and she was awed to see that vibrant life still struggled to thrive despite such destruction.	flowers garden inspirational metaphor wisdom	Lois Lowry
fe8ba8b	Either way, he was always staring into a bottomless pit, or into a whirlpool that forever sucked him inexorably inward to its vortex.	angst bottomless-pit dancing-with-clara despair mary-balogh metaphor rake regency regency-romance romance romance-hero	Mary Balogh

Books are the mirrors of the soul.

Virginia Woolf

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People say that eyes are windows to the soul.

life metaphor inspirational

Khaled Hosseini

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Life is a journey. Time is a river. The door is ajar

life metaphor zen

Jim Butcher

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I said nothing for a time, just ran my fingertips along the edge of the human-shaped emptiness that had been left inside me.

metaphor silence

Haruki Murakami

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The sense of tragedy - according to Aristotle - comes, ironically enough, not from the protagonist's weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what I'm getting at? People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues. ... [But] we accept irony through a device called metaphor. And through that we grow and become deeper human beings.

life metaphor wisdom

Haruki Murakami

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Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.

believers metaphor myth organized-religion religion theists

Joseph Campbell

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I wonder which is preferable, to walk around all your life swollen up with your own secrets until you burst from the pressure of them, or to have them sucked out of you, every paragraph, every sentence, every word of them, so at the end you're depleted of all that was once as precious to you as hoarded gold, as close to you as your skin - everything that was of the deepest importance to you, everything that made you cringe and wish to conceal, everything that belonged to you alone - and must spend the rest of your days like an empty sack flapping in the wind, an empty sack branded with a bright fluorescent label so that everyone will know what sort of secrets used to be inside you?

metaphor secrets simile the-blind-assassin

Margaret Atwood

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The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.

metaphor mysticism psychosis schizophrenia

Joseph Campbell

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Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.

life metaphor violin

E.M. Forster

78e26ef

And now, my poor old woman, why are you crying so bitterly? It is autumn. The leaves are falling from the trees like burning tears- the wind howls. Why must you mimic them?

copy cry crying despair fall howl metaphor mimic poetic rain shakespearean simile wind wit

Mervyn Peake

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Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.

gods humor metaphor no-mercy old-testament

Joseph Campbell

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"The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions. And even a cursory glance at the history of the biological sciences during the last quarter of a century is sufficient to justify the assertion, that the most potent instrument for the extension of the realm of natural knowledge which has come into men's hands, since the publication of

biology business charles-darwin darwin goal history illimitable inexplicability infinite intellectual isaac-newton justification knowledge metaphor newton ocean origin-of-species possessions principia science solidity unknown

Thomas Henry Huxley

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Their life is mysterious, it is like a forest; from far off it seems a unity, it can be comprehended, described, but closer it begins to separate, to break into light and shadow, the density blinds one. Within there is no form, only prodigious detail that reaches everywhere: exotic sounds, spills of sunlight, foliage, fallen trees, small beasts that flee at the sound of a twig-snap, insects, silence, flowers. And all of this, dependent, closely woven, all of it is deceiving. There are really two kinds of life. There is, as Viri says, the one people believe you are living, and there is the other. It is this other which causes the trouble, this other we long to see.

forest metaphor people trees

James Salter

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When birds look into houses, what impossible worlds they see.

metaphor the-body-artist

Don DeLillo

89113df

"What's this?" he inquired, none too pleasantly. "A circus?" "No, Julius. It's the end of the circus." "I see. And these are the clowns?" Foaly's head poked through the doorway. "Pardon me for interrupting your extended circus metaphor, but what the hell is that?"

metaphor

Eoin Colfer

25fcde2

"Each life is formed by its unique image, an image that is the essence of that life and calls it to a destiny. As the force of fate, this image acts as a personal daimon, an accompanying guide who remembers your calling.

metaphor myth

James Hillman

60eda8a

And metaphors like cats behind your smile, Each one wound up to purr, each one a pride, Each one a fine gold beast you've hid inside (...)

metaphor pride purr smile

Ray Bradbury

4c4b1b0

But it is just two lovers, holding hands and in a hurry to reach their car, their locked hands a starfish leaping through the dark.

imagery inspirational love lovers metaphor suggestive

Updike John

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What has our culture lost in 1980 that the avant-garde had in 1890? Ebullience, idealism, confidence, the belief that there was plenty of territory to explore, and above all the sense that art, in the most disinterested and noble way, could find the necessary metaphors by which a radically changing culture could be explained to its inhabitants.

art avant-garde confidence culture david-foster-wallace ebullience idealism irony meta-modernism metaphor post-ironic postmodernism shia-lebouf

Robert Hughes

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Know that diamonds and roses are as uncomfortable when they tumble from one's lips as toads and frogs: colder, too, and sharper, and they cut.

metaphor rumors truth

Neil Gaiman

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She's all over us like maggots on garbage, just because I interfered with one pickpocket yesterday.

followed harassment metaphor

Tamora Pierce

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Islands are metaphors of the heart, no matter what poet says otherwise.

jeanette-winterson metaphor poet sexing-the-cherry

Jeanette Winterson

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I feel all agitated, like one of those snow globes you see resting peacefully on shop counters. I was perfectly happy being an ordinary, dull little Swiss village. But now Jack Harper's come and shaken me up, and there are snowflakes all over the place, whirling around until I don't know what I think anymore. And bits of glitter, too. Tiny bits of shiny, secret excitement.

love metaphor

Sophie Kinsella

2d32b81

The LSD phenomenon, on the other hand, is--to me at least--more interesting. It is an intentionally achieved schizophrenia, with the expectation of a spontaneous remission--which, however, does not always follow. Yoga, too, is intentional schizophrenia: one breaks away from the world, plunging inward, and the ranges of vision experienced are in fact the same as those of a psychosis. But what, then, is the difference? What is the difference between a psychotic or LSD experience and a yogic, or a mystical? The plunges are all into the same deep inward sea; of that there can be no doubt. The symbolic figures encountered are in many instances identical (and I shall have something more to say about those in a moment). But there is an important difference. The difference--to put it sharply--is equivalent simply to that between a diver who can swim and one who cannot. The mystic, endowed with native talents for this sort of thing and following, stage by stage, the instruction of a master, enters the waters and finds he can swim; whereas the schizophrenic, unprepared, unguided, and ungifted, has fallen or has intentionally plunged, and is drowning.

drowning lsd metaphor mysticism schizophrenia shamanism yoga

Joseph Campbell

b54a380

Stir not the bitterness in the cup that I mixed for myself,' said Denethor. 'Have I not tasted it now many nights upon my tongue, foreboding that worse lay in the dregs?

cynicism metaphor sadness

J.R.R. Tolkien

65482d5

My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know those redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges.

memory metaphor mothers

Vladimir Nabokov

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The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind.

humor memory metaphor recollection

Terry Pratchett

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Such is life. We grow up. Planets like Tiny get new moons. Moons like me get new planets.

growing-up inspirational life metaphor

John Green

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She was a mind floating in an ocean of confusion.

confusion floating metaphor mind ocean sad scared

Caroline B. Cooney

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I watched the moon alone, unable to share his cold beauty with anyone.

beauty beauty-in-nature loneliness metaphor moon nature sad

Haruki Murakami

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His smile was so wide he'd have had to break it into sections to fit it through a doorway

metaphor

Jerry Spinelli

097015d

"For somewhere," said Poirot to himself, indulging in an absolute riot of mixed metaphors, "there is in the hay a needle, and among the sleeping dogs there is one on whom I shall put my foot, and by shooting the arrows into the air, one will come down and hit a glass house!"

humor metaphor metaphors mixed-metaphor poirot

Agatha Christie

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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."

metaphor science sea-lion snail systems-analyst water

Annie Dillard

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It was a smooth silvery voice that matched her hair. It had a tiny tinkle in it, like bells in a doll's house. I thought that was silly as soon as I thought of it.

humour metaphor simile

Raymond Chandler

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"Imagine for a moment that you are the proud owner of a large house which you have spent years of your life painting and decorating and filling with everything you love. It's your home. It's something you've made your own, something for you to be remembered by, something that, perhaps years later, your children and grandchildren can visit and get a view of your life in. It's part of your creativity, your hard work... it's your property. Now suppose you decide to go camping for a couple of weeks. You lock your door and assume that nobody is going to break in... but they do, and when you return home, to your horror you find that not only do these trespassers break in, but they also have quite uniquely imaginative ways of disrespecting, vandalizing and corrupting everything within your property. They light fires on your lawn, your topiary hedges are in heaps of black ashes. There's some blatantly obscene graffiti splattered across your front door, offensive images and rude words splashed on the walls and windows. Your television has been tipped over. Your photographs of family and friends have had the heads cut out of them. There's mold growing in the refrigerator, bottles of booze tipped over on the table, and cigarette smoke embedded into the carpeting. Your beloved houseplants are dead, your furniture has been stripped down and ruined. Basically, the thing you've spent years working for and creating within your lifetime has been tampered with to the point where it is just a grim joke.

books copyright fanfiction funny geek ghost grave house imagine metaphor pervy respect sherlock vandalism

Rebecca McNutt

e89c62d

Like kids who only ever get socks for Christmas, but still believe with all their hearts in Santa.

heartbreaking metaphor santa

Barbara Kingsolver

f69b291

Dark-bright fire lit eyes

brown-eyes dark-eyes description metaphor

Audre Lorde

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I think back to the day I stood before my wife's grave for the final time, and turned away from it without regret, because I knew that what she was was not contained in that hole in the ground. I entered a new life and found her again, in a woman who was entirely her own person. When this life is done, I'll turn away from it without regret as well, because I know she waits for me, in another, different life.

death-of-a-loved-one love metaphor

John Scalzi

f814f25

GUIL (quietly): Where we went wrong was getting on a boat. We can move, of course, change direction, rattle about, but our movement is contained within a larger one that carries us along as inexorably as the wind and current...

life metaphor

Tom Stoppard

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I should have realized, when Cathal kissed me in the hallway, that my response was the first raindrop heralding a storm.

love metaphor

Juliet Marillier

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The sky is blue,' he said, 'the grass is green.' Looking up, he saw that, on the contrary, the sky is like the veils which a thousand Madonnas have let fall from their hair; and the grass fleets and darkens like a flight of girls fleeing the embraces of hairy satyrs from enchanted woods. 'Upon my word,' he said [...], 'I don't see that one's more true than another. Both are utterly false.

metaphor

Virginia Woolf

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"The facts of nature are what they are, but we can only view them through the spectacles of our mind. Our mind works largely by metaphor and comparison, not always (or often) by relentless logic. When we are caught in conceptual traps, the best exit is often a change in metaphor -- not because the new guideline will be truer to nature (for neither the old nor the new metaphor lies "out there" in the woods), but because we need a shift to more fruitful perspectives, and metaphor is often the best agent of conceptual transition." --

metaphor mind nature

Stephen Jay Gould

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Translation error is compounded by bias error. We distort others by forcing into them our preferred ideas and gestalts, a process Proust beautifully describes: We pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him which we compose in our minds, these ideas have certainly the principal place. In the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our own ideas of him which we recognize and to which we listen.

metaphor proust psychology psychology-analysis translation-error

Irvin D. Yalom

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Listen. Look. Desire is a house. Desire needs closed space. Desire runs out of doors or windows, or slats or pinpricks, it can't fit under the sky, too large. Close the doors. Close the windows. As soon as you laugh from nerves or make a joke or say something just to say something or get all involved with the bushes, then you blow open a window in your house of desire and it can't heat up as well. Cold draft comes in.

heat house metaphor

Aimee Bender

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It was one of those dangerous moments when speech is at once sincere and deceptive, when feeling, rising high above its average depth, leaves flood-marks which are never reached again.

metaphor

George Eliot

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"Suffering is the fuel in the engine of civilization." -Vergere"

engine fuel jacen-solo metaphor new-jedi-order new-republic pain post-return-of-the-jedi star-wars suffering the-force traitor vergere yuuzhan-vong

Matthew Woodring Stover

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Though sometimes, first love cauterises the heart, and all any searcher will find thereafter is scar tissue.

first-love heart heartbreak julian-barnes metaphor the-only-story trauma

Julian Barnes

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As I have pointed out before, characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about.

birth characters metaphor

Milan Kundera

0d94b88

Achilles might be a good papa to the family, but he was also a killer, and he never forgives. Poke knew that, though. Bean warned her, and she knew it, but she chose Achilles for their papa anyway. Chose him and then died for it. She was like that Jesus that Helga preached about in her kitchen while they ate. She died for her people. And Achilles, he was like God. He made people pay for their sins no matter what they did. The important thing is, stay on the good side of God. That's what Helga teaches, isn't it? Stay right with God. I'll stay right with Achilles. I'll honor my papa, that's for sure, so I can stay alive until I'm old enough to go out on my own.

bean forgiveness god jesus metaphor murder poke survival

Orson Scott Card

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Cognitive science has something of enormous importance to contribute to human freedom: the ability to learn what our unconscious conceptual systems are like and how our cognitive unconscious functions. If we do not realize that most of our thought is unconscious and that we think metaphorically, we will indeed be slaves to the cognitive unconscious. Paradoxically, the assumption that we have a radically autonomous rationality as traditionally conceived actually limits our rational autonomy. It condemns us to cognitive slavery - to an unaware and uncritical dependence on our unconscious metaphors. To maximize what conceptual freedom we can have, we must be able to see through and move beyond philosophies that deny the existence of an embodied cognitive unconscious that governs most of our mental lives.

cognitive-science embodied-mind freedom illusion limitation metaphor reason self-knowledge thought

George Lakoff

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"Writers think in metaphors. Editors work in metaphors. A great reader reads in metaphors. All are continually asking, "What does this represent? What does it stand for?" They are trying to take everything one level deeper. When they get to that level, they will try to go deeper again."

metaphor readers writers

Steven Pressfield

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You want a shadow, you got to have light and something to get in its way.

metaphor

James S.A. Corey

740f352

Until the thirst for power parched his throat, he was a fearless and noble lord.

metaphor turn-of-phrase

Lloyd Alexander

73225a1

Doubtless some ancient Greek has observed that behind the big mask and the speaking-trumpet, there must always be our poor little eyes peeping as usual and our timorous lips more or less under anxious control.

drama masks metaphor perception self-knowledge speech theatre

George Eliot

092b608

Time and sunshine healed a sore, but the process was slow, and new boils appeared if I didn't stay dry.

life-of-pi metaphor pain suffering time

Yann Martel

c98279f

... the future is a teenage crackhead who makes shit up as he goes along.

crackhead future metaphor

Chuck Klosterman

0047eb4

"I lean against my sister's shoulder. "I thought lightning wasn't supposed to strike in the same place twice." "Sure it does," Izzy tells me. "But only if you're too dumb to move." --

julia-romano lightning metaphor relationships sisters

Jodi Picoult

a9887f4

It was a high ceilinged room with tall, large-panes windows. Apart from the doorway was the desk where book had been checked out in days when books were still being checked out. He stood there for a moment looking around the silent room, shaking his head slowly. All these books, he thought, the residue of a planet's intellect, the scrapings of futile minds, the leftovers, the potpourri of artifacts that had no power to save men from perishing.

apocalypse books dead death decay empty library metaphor zombies

Richard Matheson

324b71e

"I feel I'm at the end of something -- everything is going to be different -- and terrible." "That doesn't sound like you, you ride every wave." "There is one that will drown me."

dialogue giving-up iris-murdoch metaphor resilience the-end the-green-knight

Iris Murdoch

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Everything passed, and what trace of its passage remained? It seemed to Kitty that they were all, the human race, like the drops of water in that river and they flowed on, each so close to the other and yet so far apart, a nameless flood, to the sea. When all things lasted so short a time and nothing mattered very much, it seemed pitiful that men, attaching an absurd importance to trivial objects, should make themselves and one another so unhappy.

human-race humanity kindness metaphor triviality-of-life

W. Somerset Maugham

62bb2e1

I don't think I can marry, I'm not fit for it, I'm not real enough. That's the trouble. I'm a puppet that's realised what's wrong with itself and it's . I'm propped up somewhere all alone, watching the real people go past. I'm propped up crying in a corner.

iris-murdoch left-out metaphor misery outsider sad single the-message-to-the-planet unloved

Iris Murdoch

4c435a0

"In philosophy, metaphorical pluralism is the norm. Our most important abstract philosophical concepts, including time, causation, morality, and the mind, are all conceptualized by multiple metaphors, sometimes as many as two dozen. What each philosophical theory typically does is to choose one of those metaphors as "right," as the true literal meaning of the concept. One reason there is so much argumentation across philosophical theories is that different philosophers have chosen different metaphors as the "right" one, ignoring or taking as misleading all other commonplace metaphorical structurings of the concept. Philosophers have done this because they assume that a concept must have one and only one logic. But the cognitive reality is that our concepts have multiple metaphorical structurings."

concept embodied-mind logic metaphor philosophy reason

George Lakoff

0b09a3d

He did not recognize himself either. He was a totally new being, bald, covered with grease and blood, pink and blue eyed: he was his own baby...He was a great fat chuckling baby, and he shat and peed in his filthy trousers and kept driving.

metaphor murder

Peter Straub

32af080

"Anonymous > Quotes > Quotable Quote "I see life as a roadside inn where I have to stay until the coach from the abyss pulls up. I don't know where it will take me, because I don't know anything. I could see this inn as a prison, for I'm compelled to wait in it; I could see it as a social centre, for it's here that I meet others. But I'm neither impatient nor common. I leave who will to stay shut up in their rooms, sprawled out on beds where they sleeplessly wait, and I leave who will to chat in the parlours, from where their songs and voices conveniently drift out here to me. I'm sitting at the door, feasting my eyes and ears on the colours and sounds of the landscape, and I softly sing - for myself alone - wispy songs I compose while waiting."

melancholy metaphor

Fernando Pessoa

fc79326

Under the pathologist's microscope, life and death fight in an illuminated circle in a sort of cellular bullfight. The pathologist's job is to find the bull among the matador cells

death life metaphor microscope pathologist pathology

Yann Martel

818ecba

She was lost now, she'd been silenced- another dead branch on Cordova's warped tree.

death horror metaphor nature

Marisha Pessl

8d01b76

"Holly steps back. Being warned about a ghost and seeing him are not the same. 'What did they

death immortality life metaphor mortality speech time title

David Mitchell

d427829

Walking a short way back along the embankment, almost to where the cross stood, Smiley took another look at the bridge, as if to establish whether anything had changed, but clearly it had not, and though the wind appeared a little stronger, the snow was still swirling in all directions.

metaphor pyrrhic-victory smiley

John le Carré

1158c36

She had an idea, but it was the wrong idea. It was hardly even an idea, just a white idea balloon with no writing inside it.

idea margaret-atwood metaphor the-robber-bride

Margaret Atwood

140ef00

...maybe you believe that we fall into our future blindly, drifting from adventure to adventure, our journey zigzagging not according to plan but according to pure chance. Or just maybe, as random and haphazard as our lives seems--maybe that's exactly what the author had in mind.

metaphor

Jodi Picoult

b1534a1

We, Brandy and Alfa and me, we've been speaking English as a second language so long that we've forgotten it as our first. I have no native tongue.

metaphor

Chuck Palahniuk

35c17d9

When the sun touched the earth, it spread out along the horizon like a giant yolk oozing free of its skin.

metaphor sun

Christopher Paolini

5883112

A faint tickling on the back of his right hand caused Eragon to look down. A huge, wingless cricket clung to his glove. The insect was hideous: black and bulbous, with barbed legs and a massive skull-like head. Its carapace gleamed like oil.

metaphor

Christopher Paolini

a1a49da

The mechanism by which spirituality becomes passionate is metaphor. An ineffable God requires metaphor not only to be imagined but to be approached, exhorted, evaded, confronted, struggled with, and loved. Through metaphor, the vividness, intensity, and meaningfulness of ordinary experiences becomes the basis of a passionate spirituality. An ineffable God becomes vital through metaphor: The Supreme Being. The Prime Mover. The Creator. The Almighty. The Father. The King of Kings. Shepherd. Potter. Lawgiver. Judge. Mother. Lover. Breath. The vehicle by which we are moved in passionate spirituality is metaphor. The mechanism of such metaphor is bodily. It is a neural mechanism that recruits our abilities to perceive, to move, to feel, and to envision in the service not only of theoretical and philosophical thought, but of spiritual experience.

cognitive-science embodied-mind god metaphor religion spirituality

George Lakoff

b096101

...there is no real person whose embodiment plays no role in meaning, whose meaning is purely objective and defined by the external world, and whose language can fit the external world with no significant role played by mind, brain, or body. Because our conceptual systems grow out of our bodies, meaning is grounded in and through our bodies. Because a vast range of our concepts are metaphorical, meaning is not entirely literal and the classical correspondence theory of truth is false.

correspondence embodied-mind embodied-realism meaning metaphor objectivity reason truth

George Lakoff

859d16e

"Minigolf," she said with stone seriousness, "is a metaphor for life."

lessons life metaphor

Emily Giffin All We Ever Wanted

1e721e9

...explaining men still assume I am, in some sort of obscene impregnation metaphor, an empty vessel to be filled with their wisdom and knowledge.

mansplaining metaphor

Rebecca Solnit

2447f1e

We are all potentially demons to each other, but some close relationships are saved from this fate.

demons iris-murdoch metaphor relationships the-sea-the-sea toxic-relationships

Iris Murdoch

2dc9b4b

Of course we have an 'unconscious mind' and this is partly what my book is about. But there is no general chart of that lost continent. Certainly not a 'scientific' one.

metaphor subconscious subconscious-mind the-black-prince unknowable

Iris Murdoch

38b41d8

He suffers terribly all the time. He lives in fire.

endless-suffering iris-murdoch metaphor relentless suffering the-green-knight torture

Iris Murdoch

d4ed8c1

Teddy shuddered. The idea of the sublime little bird being plucked from the sky, of its exquisite song being interrupted in full flight, was horrible to him.

death killing metaphor senseless-death skylark waste

Kate Atkinson

e2270bb

Fracture lines etch the surface of the glass box as if a body fell from the sky and landed on it. He doesn't hear the impact, can't smell the blood.

life metaphor poetic poetic-prose reassurance recovery wintergirls

Laurie Halse Anderson

371f66c

...you must understand that not even the Jedi know all there is to be known about the Force; no mortal mind can. We speak of the as someone ignorant of gravity might say it is the will of a river to flow to the ocean; it is a metaphor that describes our ignorance. The simple truth - if any truth is ever simple - is that we do not truly know what the will of the Force may be. We can know. It is so far beyond our limited understanding that we can only surrender to its mystery.

ignorance jedi metaphor mystery obi-wan-kenobi old-ben simple-truth surrender-to-mystery the-force the-will-of-the-force truth

Matthew Woodring Stover

e3772d4

I was born with the ability to see in metaphor.

experience listen listening metaphor seeing writing

Mark Nepo

575d100

Tulips were a tray of jewels.

description e-m-forster figurative-language flowers howards-end metaphor tulips

E.M. Forster

a2cea1a

I never knew anyone actually buy cakes when they were hot ...

hotcakes metaphor

Ruth Rendell

9b44ded

If the rowan's roots are shallow, it bears no crown.

future heritage legacy metaphor past

Ursula K. Le Guin

dbe5231

"These poor souls. These poor pathetic souls." The Emperor gestured toward the passersby. "I don't understand," Tommy said. "Their time has passed and they don't know what to do. They were told what they wanted and they believed it. They can only keep their dream alive by being with others like themselves who will mirror their illusions." "They have really nice shoes," Tommy said. "They have to look right or their peers will turn on them like starving dogs. They are the fallen gods. The new gods are producers, creators, doers. The new gods are the chinless techno-children who would rather eat white sugar and watch science-fiction films than worry about what shoes they wear. And these poor souls desperately push papers around hoping that a mystical message will appear to save them from the new, awkward, brilliant gods and their silicon-chip reality. Some of them will survive, of course, but most will fall. Uncreative thinking is done better by machines. Poor souls, you can almost hear them sweating."

emperor-of-san-francisco happiness humor metaphor reality shoes

Christopher Moore

7aa4028

Her eyes narrowed until they were a faint greenish glitter, like a forest pool far back in the shadow of trees.

green-eyes metaphor

Raymond Chandler

40351c2

"in our culture, women can do anything a man can. and vice versa." don alfonso's eyebrows shot up. "i do not believe it." "it's true," sally said defiantly. "in America, the women hunt while the men have babies?"

gender-equality metaphor

Douglas Preston

ce59c1f

It is only a metaphor--or the worst of dreams; yet there are metaphors which sit more powerfully in the brain than remembered events.

julian-barnes memory metaphor reality the-only-story

Julian Barnes

b013285

He had been bruised, so to speak, so badly that the eyes of strangers lacerated him like salt.

james-baldwin metaphor wounded

James Baldwin

30bce1f

War is our backyard, famine our feast. Most fear the wind of our wings and even, in their hurt, pray for life. Only a few, a very few, truly pray for death. But we answer all their prayers with the same coin.

descriptive-writing metaphor

Jane Yolen

21a9af6

... and she was awed to see that vibrant life still struggled to thrive despite such destruction.

flowers garden inspirational metaphor wisdom

Lois Lowry

fe8ba8b

Either way, he was always staring into a bottomless pit, or into a whirlpool that forever sucked him inexorably inward to its vortex.

angst bottomless-pit dancing-with-clara despair mary-balogh metaphor rake regency regency-romance romance romance-hero

Mary Balogh