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4076d14
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There are metaphors more real than the people who walk in the street. There are images tucked away in books that live more vividly than many men and women. There are phrases from literary works that have a positively human personality. There are passages from my own writing that chill me with fright, so distinctly do I feel them as people, so sharply outlined do they appear against the walls of my room, at night, in shadows... I've written sentences whose sound, read out loud or silently (impossible to hide their sound), can only be of something that acquired absolute exteriority and a full-fledged soul.
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literature
metaphors
reading
words
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Pessoa Fernando |
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e99df30
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Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love.
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metaphors
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Milan Kundera |
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b9da9cf
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You see? Size defeats us. For the fish, the lake in which he lives is the universe. What does the fish think when he is jerked up by the mouth through the silver limits of existence and into a new universe where the air drowns him and the light is blue madness? Where huge bipeds with no gills stuff it into a suffocating box abd cover it with wet weeds to die? Or one might take the tip of the pencil and magnify it. One reaches the point where a stunning realization strikes home: The pencil tip is not solid; it is composed of atoms which whirl and revolve like a trillion demon planets. What seems solid to us is actually only a loose net held together by gravity. Viewed at their actual size, the distances between these atoms might become league, gulfs, aeons. The atoms themselves are composed of nuclei and revolving protons and electrons. One may step down further to subatomic particles. And then to what? Tachyons? Nothing? Of course not. Everything in the universe denies nothing; to suggest an ending is the one absurdity.
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metaphors
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Stephen King |
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a2cbbed
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...Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers... for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality... But I had gradually come by this time, i.e., 1836 to 1839, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow at sign, &c., &c., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian. ...By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported, (and that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become), that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost uncomprehensible by us, that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events, that they differ in many important details, far too important, as it seemed to me, to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eyewitnesses; by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many false religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wild-fire had some weight with me. Beautiful as is the morality of the New Testament, it can be hardly denied that its perfection depends in part on the interpretation which we now put on metaphors and allegories. But I was very unwilling to give up my belief... Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.
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atheism
autobiography
belief
charles-darwin
damnable
divine-revelation
doctrine
doubt
evidence
hell
hindu
hinduism
history
interpretation
metaphors
miracles
new-testament
old-testament
orthodox
punishment
resurrection
revelation
sacred-books
skepticism
tyrant
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Charles Darwin |
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90a4871
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"There seem to be only two kinds of people: Those who think that metaphors are facts, and those who know that they are not facts. Those who know they are not facts are what we call "atheists," and those who think they are facts are "religious." Which group really gets the message?"
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metaphors
mythology
religion
theism
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Joseph Campbell |
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1a7c393
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Up then, fair phoenix bride, frustrate the sun; Thyself from thine affection Takest warmth enough, and from thine eye All lesser birds will take their jollity. Up, up, fair bride, and call Thy stars from out their several boxes, take Thy rubies, pearls, and diamonds forth, and make Thyself a constellation of them all; And by their blazing signify That a great princess falls, but doth not die. Be thou a new star, that to us portends Ends of much wonder; and be thou those ends.
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brides
brightness
happiness
imagery
jewels
joy
light
metaphors
phoenix
radiance
stars
sun
wedding
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John Donne |
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3721935
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She looked playful and eager, but not quite sure of herself, like a new kitten in a house where they don't care much about kittens.
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metaphors
noir-style
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Raymond Chandler |
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097015d
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"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!"
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humor
metaphor
metaphors
mixed-metaphor
poirot
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Agatha Christie |
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c212f54
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Voll Bluten steht der Pfirsichbaum nicht jede wachst zur Frucht sie schimmern hell wie Rosenschaum durch Blau und Wolkenflucht. Wie Bluten geh'n Gedanken auf hundert an jedem Tag -- lass' bluhen, lass' dem Ding den Lauf frag' nicht nach dem Ertrag! Es muss auch Spiel und Unschuld sein und Blutenuberfluss sonst war' die Welt uns viel zu klein und Leben kein Genuss.
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beauty
blossoms
enjoyment
growth
ideas
innocence
metaphors
peach-tree
poetry
trees
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Hermann Hesse |
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008a465
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Metaphysics in philosophy is, of course, supposed to characterize what is real - literally real. The irony is that such a conception of the real depends upon unconscious metaphors.
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irony
metaphors
metaphysics
nature-of-reason
nature-of-theory
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George Lakoff |
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7ffb5ed
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She remembered love, though, and a feeling of warmth. It was like remembering light, or the glow that sometimes persists after a light has gone out.
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emma
jane-austen
love
love-quotes
mccall
metaphors
modern-retelling
smith
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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4d1c33f
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"That night she wrote a hasty sketch and showed it to Oliver. "It's all right," he said. "But I'd take out that stuff about Olympian mountains and the Stygian caverns of the mine. That's about used up, I should think."
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exaggeration
metaphors
mythology
writing
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Wallace Stegner |
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ee974bb
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What is it that you contain? The dead, time, light patterns of millenia opening in your gut. What is salted up in the memory of you? Memory past and memory future.
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memories
metaphors
time
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Jeanette Winterson |