"Metaphorical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tribes. There is no reason why men should have escaped the same law of nomenclature which gave names to the cuckoo and the pavo.[a] But when he approaches draff, he gets upon thinner ice. Where a metaphorical appropriateness is plainly wanting to one etymology and another as plainly supplies it, other considerations being equal, probability may fairly turn the scale in favor of the latter. Mr. Wedgwood ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... the case here, and we do not know why it may not be in heaven, that the ones that are turned over and shook up, and the dust knocked out of them, and their metaphorical coat tail filled with boots, find that the whirligig of time has placed them above the parties who smote them, and we can readily believe that if Donaldson gets a first-class position of power, above the skies, he will make it decidedly ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... Whereat Carlotta laughed, and bent forward to get a view of the victim. I austerely directed her attention to the stage. It was a metaphorical fly whose buzzing I ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... the word "culverin" has a metaphorical meaning. It derives from the Latin colubra (snake). Similarly, the light gun called aspide or aspic, meaning "asp-like," was named after the venomous asp. But these digressions should not obscure the fact that both culverins and demiculverins were highly esteemed on account of their ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... noble metaphysical and metaphorical poem, but purely German of its kind. It has been imitated, not to say travestied, at least fifty times, by crazy students and purblind professors—each of whom, in turn, has had an interview with the goddess of nature upon a hill-side. For our own part, we confess that we ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... seized, and the proper steps taken for learning the truth of the accusation, seemed to be possessed with the same infatuation as Pizarro; and he bade the governor be under no apprehension, "for no harm should come to him, while the rod of justice," not a metaphorical badge of authority in Castile, "was in his hands." 12 Still, to obviate every possibility of danger, it was deemed prudent for Pizarro to abstain from going to mass on Sunday, and to remain at home on pretence ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... experiences which we have, and use them as symbols and metaphors. The curtain is the picture. So our Lord here, in accordance with the necessary limitations of our human knowledge, contents Himself with using what lay at His hand, and taking it as giving faint shadows and metaphorical suggestions as to spiritual ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... accused them all of indolence and stupidity, in his own quaint, metaphorical style. Then he said, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... despise, the ideal prototype of everything excellent or lovely that we are capable of conceiving as belonging to the nature of man. Not only the portrait of our external being, but an assemblage of the minutest particles of which our nature is composed;[Footnote: These words are ineffectual and metaphorical. Most words are so—No help!] a mirror whose surface reflects only the forms of purity and brightness; a soul within our soul that describes a circle around its proper paradise, which pain, and sorrow, and evil dare not ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... observed that the words, "from out my heart," involve the first metaphorical expression in the poem. They, with the answer, "Nevermore," dispose the mind to seek a moral in all that has been previously narrated. The reader begins now to regard the Raven as emblematical—but it is not until the very last line of the very last stanza, that the intention ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... is at once clear that there are four terms in the syllogism, "light" being used both in a real and in a metaphorical sense. But if the sophism takes a subtle form, it is, of course, apt to mislead, especially where the conceptions which are covered by the same word are related, and inclined to be interchangeable. It is never subtle enough to deceive, if it is used intentionally; ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... not a strange thing, that while we more or less accept the meaning of that saying, so long as it is considered metaphorical, we never accept its meaning in its own terms? You know the lesson is given us under the form of a story about money. Money was given to the servants to make use of: the unprofitable servant dug in the earth, and hid ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... any gentleman to hold except to royalty. The Bishop assured their Majesties that he was devoted to their cause, that he earnestly wished for a great occasion to prove his zeal, and that he would no more swerve from his duty to them than renounce his hope of heaven. He added, in phraseology metaphorical indeed, but perfectly intelligible, that he was the mouthpiece of several of the nonjuring prelates, and especially of Sancroft. "Sir, I speak in the plural,"—these are the words of the letter to James,—"because I write my elder brother's sentiments as well as my own, and the rest of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... confirms the impression that grows on the visitor to America that Business has developed insensibly into a Religion, in more than the light, metaphorical sense of the words. It has its ritual and theology, its high places and its jargon, as well as its priests and martyrs. One of its more mystical manifestations is in advertisement. America has a childlike faith in advertising. They advertise here, everywhere, ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... this news brought by Kinko in person, gave to all his friends, and particularly to the fair Zinca Klork. These things are expressible in no language—not even in Chinese, which lends itself so generously to the metaphorical. ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... ever an ill wind for the shorn lamb. If it be true that nothing succeeds like success, it is no less sadly true that nothing fails like failure. And when one thinks of it, it is only natural, for every failure is an obstruction in the stream of life. Metaphorical writers are fond of saying that the successful ride to success on the back of the failures. It is true that many rise on stepping-stones of their dead relations—but that is because their relations have been financial successes. In truth, instead of ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... his conjecture mh for h. The Greek means "straight, or rectified," with a play on the literal and metaphorical meaning ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... about this time, too, that I first saw the teeth and the claws of our metaphorical man-eater. That was during the conflict between Governor Waite and the Fire and Police Board of Denver. He had the appointment and removal of the members of this Board, under the law, and when they refused to close the public gambling houses and otherwise enforce the laws against vice in ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... lordly, magisterial power over the Church. But the keys, &c. i.e. a stewardly, ministerial power, and their acts, binding and loosing, i.e. retaining and remitting sins on earth, (as in John it is explained;) opening and shutting are proper acts of keys; binding and loosing but metaphorical, viz. a speech borrowed from bonds or chains wherewith men's bodies are bound in prison or in captivity, or from which the body is loosed: we are naturally all under sin, Rom. v. 12, and therefore liable to death, Rom. ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... too numerous to be attributed to errors in the text; again, there is an over-curious adjustment of verb and participle, noun and epithet, and other artificial forms of cadence and expression take the place of natural variety: thirdly, the absence of metaphorical language is remarkable—the style is not devoid of ornament, but the ornament is of a debased rhetorical kind, patched on to instead of growing out of the subject; there is a great command of words, and a laboured use of them; forced attempts at metaphor occur in several passages,—e.g. ...
— Laws • Plato
... begin with the advantages of civilised society over a rude state, exemplified by the Scotch, who had no cabbages till Oliver Cromwell's soldiers introduced them, and one might thus shew how arts are propagated by conquest, as they were by the Roman arms.' Cabbage, by the way, in a metaphorical sense, might furnish a very good subject for a ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... therefore, with the archaic style of the whole narrative, and to yield a profounder and worthier meaning, if we recognise the boldness of the metaphor, and take 'sin' as the subject of the whole. Now all this puts in concrete, metaphorical shape, suited to the stature of the bearers, great and solemn truths. Let us try to translate them ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... wild animals, or in a large majority of cases so quickly proves fatal, that, compared with what we call disease in our own species it is practically non-existent. The "struggle for existence," in so far as animals in a state of nature are concerned, is a metaphorical struggle; and the strife, short and sharp, which is so common in nature, is not misery, although it results in pain, since it is pain that kills or is soon outlived. Fear there is, just as in fine weather there are clouds in ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... to reviewing the metaphorical applications of such terms as 'caustic,' 'mordant,' 'piquant,' etc., in their ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... occasionally preserve the memory of a disused custom; but we cannot safely argue from them about right and wrong, matter and mind, freedom and necessity, or the other problems of moral and metaphysical philosophy. For the use of words on such subjects may often be metaphorical, accidental, derived from other languages, and may have no relation to the contemporary state of thought and feeling. Nor in any case is the invention of them the result of philosophical reflection; they have been commonly transferred ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... diplomacy to reward the friendly, and to win over malcontents by presents or personal attention. Each day some of the chiefs dined with the governor, who gave them the food they liked, adapted his style of speech to their ornate and metaphorical language, played with their children, and regretted, through the interpreter Le Moyne, that he was as yet unable to speak their tongue. Never had such pleasant flattery been applied to the vanity of an Indian. At the same time Frontenac did not fail to insist upon his power; indeed, upon his supremacy. ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... "Wherever anything lives," says Bergson, "there is a register in which Time is being inscribed. This, it will be said, is only a metaphor. It is of the very essence of mechanism in fact, to consider as metaphorical every expression which attributes to Time an effective action and a reality of its own. In vain does immediate experience show us that the very basis of our conscious existence is Memory—that is ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... David tapped his forehead to signify that the log in question was a metaphorical one, the log of memory. Eve had him again directly. She freed a claw. "So this is your log, is it?" cried she, tapping it as hard as she could; "well, it does sound like wood of some sort. Well, then, David, dear—you wretch, I mean—promise me ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... the word, now, from its vulgar use. You may have another if you choose, a metaphorical one,—close enough it seems to Christianity, and yet still absolutely distinct from it,—[Greek: *christos*]. Suppose, as you watch the white bloom of the olives of Val d'Arno and Val di Nievole, which modern piety and economy suppose were grown by God only to supply you with fine Lucca oil, you ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... admirers, is excellent. The principle on which it has been executed, that of investing with an ideal magnitude, the proportions of nature, is plainly, from what we observe in heroic poetry, painting, and sculpture, the soul itself of the superhuman and sublime. Of the justness of the metaphorical compliment implied in the delineation of the head, it is not for the author to speak; of its exquisiteness and delicacy, his sense is too strong for expression. The habitual pensiveness of the elevated ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... really had a good deal in it. I had been in New York, and knew the length of Broadway; and at the recollection, felt flattered by the thought of being conveyed in an open chariot drawn by four or even eight horses, with nodding plumes, (literal ones for the horses,—only metaphorical ones for me,) past those stately buildings fluttering with handkerchiefs, and through streets black with people thronging to see the man who had solved the riddle of Africa. And then it would be pleasant, too, to make a neat little speech to the Common ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... enough to consider the various normal and abnormal conditions of psychical phenomena, nor to undertake the comparative study of languages, to ascertain how far their speech will reveal the primitive beliefs of various races, and the obscure metaphorical sayings which gave birth to many myths. It is also necessary to subject to careful examination the simplest elementary acts of the mind, in their physical and psychical complexity, in order to discover ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... the brig," said the other, "that isna to the point,"—for he was not of a metaphorical turn of mind—"but I've nae doot aboot bein' religious. A man in my walk o' life, in my business, ye ken, canna weel help bein' religious. He's the same as ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... (Tacit. Hist. iii. 24, 43, 77. Juvenal. Satir. 16. Tertullian de Pallio, c. 4.) 4. The Christians were the soldiers of Christ; their adversaries, who refused his sacrament, or military oath of baptism might deserve the metaphorical name of pagans; and this popular reproach was introduced as early as the reign of Valentinian (A. D. 365) into Imperial laws (Cod. Theodos. l. xvi. tit. ii. leg. 18) and theological writings. 5. Christianity gradually filled the cities of the empire: the old religion, in the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... die has lately been sent me by a person who was of the fraternity, but is disabled by the loss of a finger, by which means he cannot, as he used to do, secure a die. But I am very much at a loss how to call some of the fair sex, who are accomplices with the Knights of Industry; for my metaphorical dogs[2] are easily enough understood; but the feminine gender of dogs has so harsh a sound, that we know not how to name it. But I am credibly informed, that there are female dogs as voracious as the males, and make advances to young fellows, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... be austere. Meanness, thanklessness, loquaciousness, jealousy, an unbecoming attire, evil thoughts, whatever is sensual, whatever is coarse, any promenade in mud actual or metaphorical, severely it condemned. Particularly was avarice censured. "There are many who do not like to give," Ormuzd, in the Vendidad, confided to Zarathrustra. The high god added: "Ahriman ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... used by Bharadwaja in the question are capable of being construed as an enquiry after the next world. Bhrigu also, in his answer, uses the word Paro lokah. The reference to Himavat, therefore, is explained by the commentator as metaphorical. The whole answer of Bhrigu, however, leaves little room for doubt that the sage speaks of a region on earth and not in the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... point of one passage, not being contradicted by another directly, but only by implication, if the implication is clear, and the nature and context of the passage preclude metaphorical interpretation? (50) There are many such instances in the Bible, as we saw in Chap. II. (where we pointed out that the prophets held different and contradictory opinions), and also in Chaps. IX. and X., where we drew attention to the contradictions in the historical narratives. (51) There is no need ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza
... into his naughty old woman, who in her turn has been transformed by popular tradition into the naughty girl Silver-hair. Mr. Nutt ingeniously suggests that Southey heard the story told of an old vixen, and mistook the rustic name of a female fox for the metaphorical application to women of fox-like temper. Mrs. H.'s version to my mind has all the marks of priority. It is throughout an animal tale, the touch at the end of the shaking the paws and the name Scrapefoot are too volkstuemlich to have been ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... London streets, and especially a wet Boxing-day, can scarcely fail to afford us some tableaux vivants illustrative of English metropolitan life. In a metaphorical and technical sense, Boxing-day is always more or less "wet"—generally more, and not less; but this year the expression is used climatically, and in its first intention. Christmas-eve of the year ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... lot.' It required a lengthy series of geological arguments, with practical illustrations, to convince 'Squire Witherpee that the soil of East Hampton was somewhat feeble in the production of the precious metals—except, perhaps, in a metaphorical sense. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... do so in any case. How do I know whether the only use people may make of it (and that a metaphorical one) may not be to throw it at ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... wigging this time. But if that pompous old pump, that buckled-up basha, lets the Major know that he caught poor old Pegg in my room to-day, I'm sure to get a lecture about making too free with the men instead of going about amongst them perched up upon metaphorical stilts. Well, whatever he wants to see me about, it can't be for a wigging, or else he wouldn't have summoned me just close upon ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... her neck showed her age," whispered the major to his better half. "Why, her neck and arms are superb!" a speech that cost him metaphorical salt in his coffee for the next three days. The doctor stepped forward in his most graceful manner to meet and welcome her. Captain Bruce could not refrain from hobbling up and saying a word of admiration; even Mr. Holmes fixed his dark eyes upon her in unmistakable approval, ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... Lee's tragedy of "Lucius Junius Brutus," "was silenced after three performances;" it being objected that the plan and sentiments of it had too boldly vindicated, and might inflame, Republican principles. A prologue, by Dryden, to "The Prophetess," was prohibited, on account of certain "familiar metaphorical sneers at the Revolution" it was supposed to contain, at a time when King William was prosecuting the war in Ireland. Bank's tragedy of "Mary, Queen of Scotland," was withheld from the stage for ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... the general preference for them is justified by the peculiarly painful character of the note which they produce. It is a very loud and vibrating sound of the harshest possible quality. One feels when hearing it as if the French phrase of "skinning the ears" were not a metaphorical but a literal description of the result of listening to the sound. And when hundreds of blowers of these are wandering about the streets in all parts of the town, but especially in the neighborhood of the Piazza Navona, making night hideous with their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... Greek, Latin, and French poetry. It offers a complete and curious illustration of the origin and growth of figurative words and phrases, and of their transfer from one language to another. The word anchor, for instance, was one of the earliest among the Greeks, a marine people, to take on a metaphorical sense. We see this even in Pindar, who speaks of his heroes as casting anchor on the summit of happiness. M. Planche follows this typical use of the word in Virgil, in Ovid, and in Racine, the last of whom ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... mere fine writing. It is a metaphorical representation of the incident he has previously described. In that incident he was particular struck by the actions of the lady. The young man turned his horse out of the path of the coach, but some part ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... vital to make, he puts them under voluntary control and makes each separate inspiration by an effort as conscious as working a bellows. I doubt not that many men have died just at this place through absolute lack of will to continue such effort. Then the metaphorical paralysis of fear is seconded by the simulation of a literal one, extending through the limbs of one side or both; the sufferer reels, feeling one foot fail him—tries to revolve one arm like a windmill, that he may restore his ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... of Claudius women and boys were searched to ascertain whether there were any styluses in their pen cases. Stabbing with the pen, therefore, is not merely a metaphorical expression. ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... eye of the tired magazine reader resting for a critical second on the above title will judge it to be merely metaphorical. Stories about the cup and the lip and the bad penny and the new broom rarely have anything to do with cups and lips and pennies and brooms. This story is the great exception. It has to do with an actual, material, visible and large-as-life ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... lifted his hat and moved away, she joined in the conversation of the others, which seemed to be largely metaphorical. ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... will be rejected. In the same way an extravagant statement, when taken with a slight qualification (cum grano salis) will be tolerated by the mind. I should wish to be informed what writer first uses this phrase in a metaphorical sense—not, I ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... closing an argument, no matter whether it was with her butcher, her grocer, of the bishop himself. Such a look is best described as imperious, although one less reserved than I but perhaps more potently metaphorical would say that she simply looked a hole through you, seeing beyond you as if you were not there at all. She had found it especially efficacious in dealing with the butcher and even the bishop, to say nothing of the effect it always had upon the commonplace nobodies who ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... selection,' do not express a cause in the physical sense." "Kindred objections," he continues, "may be urged against the expression into which I was led when seeking to present the phenomena in literal terms rather than metaphorical terms—'the survival of the fittest.' In the working together of those many actions, internal and external, which determine the lives and deaths of organisms, we see nothing to which the words 'fitness' and 'unfitness' are applicable in the physical ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... BELT. A metaphorical term in geography for long and proportionally narrow encircling strips of land having any particular feature; as a belt of sand, a belt of hills, &c. It is, in use, nearly synonymous with zone. Also, to beat with a colt or ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... immortality of the soul and of the state of future rewards and punishments is indissolubly linked. More we are not to know; but neither are we prohibited from our attempts, however vain, to pierce the solemn sacred gloom. The expressions used in Scripture are doubtless metaphorical, for penal fires and heavenly melody are only applicable to bodies endowed with senses; and, at least till the period of the resurrection of the body, the spirits of men, whether entering into the perfection of the just, or committed to the regions of punishment, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... London is on the map so long as they can tell where Brixton is on the way home. I do not even mind whether they can put two and two together in the mathematical sense; I am content if they can put two and two together in the metaphorical sense. But all this longer statement of an obvious view comes back to the metaphor I have employed. I do not care a dump whether they know the alphabet, so long as they ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... primary or proper, secondary or tropical meanings, all of which must be differentiated. The primary or proper meaning has reference to specific acts, the secondary meaning refers to things done by means of these specific acts, while the tropical or metaphorical meaning departs from the specific meaning of the words and therefore cannot have reference to the specific outward acts indicated by the words. For this reason it is a law of language, recognized by all scholars, that you must give a word its primary or proper meaning when it is employed in ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... premise that I use this term in a large and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny. Two canine animals, in a time of dearth, may be truly ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... we see the cause why the cold bath gives such present strength; namely, by stopping the unnecessary activity of the subcutaneous vessels, and thus preventing the too great exhaustion of sensorial power; which, in metaphorical language, has been called bracing the system: which is, however, a mechanical term, only applicable to drums, or musical strings: as on the contrary the word relaxation, when applied to living ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... expressed is beautiful, we demand certain formal and material elements of beauty. A telegram may convey the very apex of felicity, yet be not at all felicitous in its form or in the music of its words. If in such cases, we speak of beauty, the term is altogether metaphorical and imputed; we are using it in the same analogical sense as when we speak of a "beautiful operation" or a "beautiful deed"; it is a moral rather than an aesthetic term. We may find the letter of a friend expressive of the gentleness, ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... as soon as I started again on my journey, I was pulling up towards it. Soon I was gazing down upon the tiny patches of light green and a few solitary cottages, resembling a little beehive, and one could imagine the metaphorical wax-laying and honey-making of the inhabitants. These people were away from all mankind, living in life-long loneliness, and all unconscious of the distinguished foreigner away up yonder, who wondered at their patient toiling, but who, like them, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... the maerchen. Again, the myth being a product of creative thought, existing in words only, as language changes, it alters through forgetfulness of the earlier meanings of words, through similarities in sounds deceiving the ear, or through a confusion of the literal with the metaphorical signification of the same word. The character of languages also favors or retards such changes, pliable and easily modified ones, such as those of the American Indians, and in a less degree those of the Aryan nations, favoring a developed mythology, while rigid and monosyllabic ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... purry kitten." Hall was heartily metaphorical, as he opened his pocket knife mechanically. "If you want to feel my claws, just ask me to vote for that damn thief! You'll think that I live in four different atmospheres. You and Bob Burroughs may be able to buy the rest of the Legislature, ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... can only say, that there are many passages in Scripture, and these not metaphorical, which declare that all flesh shall be finally saved; that the word aionios is indeed used sometimes when eternity must be meant, but so is the word 'Ancient of Days,' yet it would be strange reasoning to affirm, that therefore, the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... a metaphorical application of the word, is not in the least the same thing as Goodness, any more than beauty (despite Keats' famous assertion) is the same thing as Truth. These three objects of the soul's pursuit have different natures, different laws, and fundamentally different origins. But the ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... from emotional speech in a gradual, unobtrusive manner; and this is the inference to which our argument points. Further evidence to the same effect is supplied by Greek history. The early poems of the Greeks—which, be it remembered, were sacred legends embodied in that rhythmical, metaphorical language which strong feeling excites—were not recited, but chanted: the tones and the cadences were made musical by the same influences which made ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... concert and mutual interdependence of all its members. Therefore, when a few pages back, adopting the allegorical method, we used a fabulous god as a symbol of society, our language in reality was not in the least metaphorical: we only gave a name to the social being, an organic and synthetic unit. In the eyes of any one who has reflected upon the laws of labor and exchange (I disregard every other consideration), the reality, I had almost said the personality, of the collective man ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... poetry as metre constitutes its material externality; in that tendency to see things surrounded by, disguised in, a swarm, a masquerade, of associated ideas; deficient in the power of suggesting images, of conceiving figures of speech; in fancy, imagination, in the metaphorical faculty, or whatever else we may choose to call it. Nor did he perceive or describe visible things, visible effects, in their own unmetaphorical shapes and colours: not a line of description, not an adjective ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... trouble now—a wolf that follows me everywhere, always threatening to rend me to pieces with its black jaws. Not you, old friend—a great, gaunt, man-eating, metaphorical wolf, far more terrible than that beast of the ancients which came to the poor man's door. In the darkness its eyes, glowing like coals, are ever watching me, and even in the bright daylight its shadowy form is ever near me, stealing from bush to bush, or from room to room, always dogging ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... once more. I found myself repeating fragments of a hymn often sung by a dear Christian woman of Fairhaven when I was rebuilding the Spray. I was to hear once more and only once, in profound solemnity, the metaphorical hymn: ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... dying man's curse to hell," replied the crone, in that metaphorical style in which all her tribe love to speak, and of which their proper language ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... either suppose that passage to be metaphorical, or hold with many divines, and all purgatorians, that departed souls do not all at once arrive at the utmost perfection ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... of these pieces of music which are held to be truly indian. The words are largely Zapotec; Spanish words are scattered through the song, and the sentiment is largely borrowed. Most of the songs are love-songs, and they abound in metaphorical expressions. Our little trip to Huilotepec was for the purpose of photographing the curious and interesting mapa belonging to the village. We rode out over the hot and dusty river-bed road, arriving at noon. Sending for the agente and secretario, we ordered breakfast and ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... France is also noteworthy. His prose is distinguished for the following qualities: (1) He is one of the greatest masters of metaphor and imagery in English prose. Only Carlyle surpasses him in the use of metaphorical language. (2) Burke's breadth of thought and wealth of expression enable him to present an idea from many different points of view, so that if his readers do not comprehend his exposition from one side, they may from ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... leads off metaphorical fights For reform and whatever they call human rights, Both singing and striking in front of the war, And hitting his foes with the mallet of Thor. A Fable for ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... "It's metaphorical-like that it's intended, Mr. Bunting. We haven't got the same facilities—no, not a quarter of ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... equally strong, without any such mystery being attached to them. I cannot but feel that I and every other vulgar reader would be sure to be exposed to the peril of suspecting that in that single case a metaphorical meaning much more probable than so ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... which are traditional in French literature, yet managing to envelop everything in a penumbra of emotional suggestion. Each expression of an idea is complete in itself; yet these expressions are often varied and constantly metaphorical, so that we are led to feel that much in that idea has remained unexpressed and is ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... fact, characteristic of our times, that this very form, this very activity of the spirit, which is essentially ourselves, is so easily ignored or denied. Some confound the spiritual activity of man with the metaphorical and mythological activity of so-called nature, which is mechanism and has no resemblance to human activity, save when we imagine, with Aesop, that arbores loquuntur non tantum ferae. Some even affirm that they have never observed in themselves this "miraculous" activity, as though there ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... into deep water, and when an old gentleman hasn't opened a book of philosophy for nearly thirty years, he may be well excused for a certain timidity in approaching these deep questions. But, "keep to the metaphorical" has always been a great rule of mine, ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... back to her in its first available shape, much of what her students produce. As between thought and substance, the two continents interchange offices. We import the crude material her philosophers harvest or mine, work it up and return it, just as she takes the yield of our non-metaphorical fields and strata and restores it manufactured. Much of the social, political and industrial advancement of Europe within the century she may be said to owe to the United States. Her governmental reforms certainly and confessedly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... by Brathwaite from Mariano Silesio, a kind of metaphorical manual of judicial polity, is in no way pastoral. It may be remarked that in 1627 there appeared as the work of one I. D. B. an 'Eclogue, ou Chant Pastoral,' on the marriage (1625) of Charles and Henrietta Maria, in which two ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... men who fought in France speak of a certain road between Bapaume and Peronne with a metaphorical lift of the cap; a famous Irish division who came to Egypt from Salonica, utter winged words when they refer to a heart-breaking road in that malaria-stricken hole; and presumably it is the ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... reference to the carriage of enemy goods, little more need be said, except to deprecate arguments founded upon the metaphorical statement that "a vessel is part of the territory covered by her flag," a statement which Lord Stowell found it necessary to meet by the assertion that a ship is a "mere movable." There can be no possible ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... too far to say that 'swift' is colloquial only in metaphorical applications, we might speak of 'a swift bowler' without exciting surprise; but it is expedient to restore this word to general use, and avoid the use of fast for denotation of speed. 'To stand fast' is very well, but 'to run fast' is thoroughly objectionable. Such a ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... but when there occurs a true ellipsis in the construction of joint nominatives or joint antecedents, the verb or pronoun must agree with them in the plural, just as if all the words were expressed: as, "The second and the third Epistle of John are each but one short chapter."—"The metaphorical and the literal meaning are improperly mixed."—Murray's Gram., p. 339. "The Doctrine of Words, separately consider'd, and in a Sentence, are Things distinct enough."—Brightland's Gram., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... find that that threadbare word 'salvation,' which we all take it for granted that we understand, and which, like a well-worn coin, has been so passed from hand to hand that it scarcely remains legible—that well-worn word 'salvation' starts from a double metaphorical meaning. It means either—and is used for both—being healed or being made safe. In the one sense it is often employed in the Gospel narratives of our Lord's miracles, and it involves the metaphor ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... is washed by its canal. The public prison of the city forms the other side of this canal, eloquently proclaiming the nature of the government by the close approximation of the powers of legislation and of punishment. The famous Bridge of Sighs is the material, and we might add the metaphorical, link between the two. The latter edifice stands on the quay, also, and though less lofty and spacious, in point of architectural beauty it is the superior structure, though the quaintness and unusual style of the palace are most apt to ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... why must a minister's wife be supposed to utter only prunes and prisms? I shan't. Everybody on Patterson Street uses slang—that is to say, metaphorical language—and if I didn't they would think me insufferably proud ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... enlisted; and the government, through its agent, stands ready to civilize the Indians to almost any extent. But, unfortunately, the Indians are not ready to be civilized. The glow of industrial enthusiasm, which was created by the metaphorical eloquence of the commissioners in council dies away under the first experiment of hard work: an hour at the plough nearly breaks the back of the wild man wholly unused to labor: his pony, a little wilder still, jumps now on one side of the furrow ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... those which are proper, and in common use) is then said to be well chosen, when it founds agreeably, and is the best which could have been taken to express our meaning. Among borrowed and translatitious [Footnote: Words which are transferred from their primitive meaning to a metaphorical one.] words, (or those which are not used in their proper sense) we may reckon the metaphor, the metonymy, and the rest of the tropes; as also compounded and new-made words, and such as are obsolete and out of date; but obsolete words should ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... present measures. "This," said a Virginia senator,[211] "is the Act regulating our commerce, of which I complain. An export duty, which could not be laid in Charleston because forbidden by our Constitution, is laid in London, or in British ports." It was literally, and in no metaphorical sense, the reimposition of colonial regulation, to increase the revenues of Great Britain by reconstituting her the entrepot of commerce between America and Europe. "The Orders in Council," wrote John Quincy Adams ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... and shrubs to the skirt of a wood, and across a fallen log sighted the Yankee picket whose bayonet point glimmered now and then far off in the moonlight. We spent a great many hours around the camp-fire counting our metaphorical scalps. ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... was a reminiscence of that metaphorical proverb which tells us that "truth lies at the bottom of a well." Perhaps these people thought that the only way to find truth in the well was to drown oneself. But on whatever thin theoretic basis, the type and period of George Gissing did certainly consider that Dickens, so far as he went, ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... doubtless unmistakeably clear, but I think the style can hardly be thought defensible. On general topics of interest, if nothing occurs to stir the writer's bile, or if the theme be not calculated to excite the vanity of their countrymen, the language usually employed is perhaps a little metaphorical, but is at the same time grammatical and sufficiently clear; and, I believe, that as a general principle they expend liberally for information, and consequently the whole Republic may be said to be kept well informed on ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... physical qualities, are in reality so many metaphors, borrowed reciprocally, upon this analogy, from those opposite forms of expression. The very familiarity, however, of the expression, in these instances, takes away its political effect—and indeed, in substance, its metaphorical character. The original sense of the word is entirely forgotten in the derivative one to which it has succeeded; and it requires some etymological recollection to convince us that it was originally nothing else than a typical or ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... that of making many books there is no end. No longer is any but the most confirmed writer suffered to spin out volume after volume in complacent ignorance of his readers' state of mind, for these victims of eye-strain and nerves turn upon the newest book, the metaphorical last straw on the camel's load, with the exasperated cry, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... two kinds, those of manner, of course, and those which by a metaphorical use of the term may be ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... smoke stealing out of the tops of the trees to be wafted off into nothingness; they come from invisible chimneys far down in the leafy fastnesses. Up here are the huts of the newly married. Almost without exception, they are tiny affairs, scarcely larger than the metaphorical bandbox. ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... puki is also a name for the vulva which it is very indecent to utter, and it is only used in public by people under the influence of an obsessive nervous disorder. (W. Gilman Ellis, "Latah," Journal of Mental Science, Jan., 1897.) The Swahili women of Africa have a private metaphorical language of their own, referring to sexual matters (Zache, Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie, 1899, Heft 2-3, pp. 70 et seq.), and in Samoa, again, young girls have a euphemistic name for the penis, aualuma, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of frost and snow—but frost and snow is not cold in Ireland." He was quite serious—intended no joke. He evidently used the term "cold," not only in reference to temperature, but also to the amount of discomfort usually suffered from it. And that it may sometimes be used in a metaphorical sense is evident from our expressions "a cold heart," ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... the general movement and the pertinent issue of material facts, and may inspire us with a wise sentiment in their presence. In this sense I should say that Greek mythology was true and Calvinist theology was false. The chief terms employed in psycho-analysis have always been metaphorical: "unconscious wishes", "the pleasure-principle", "the Oedipus complex", "Narcissism", "the censor"; nevertheless, interesting and profound vistas may be opened up, in such terms, into the tangle of events in a man's life, and a fresh start may be made with fewer encumbrances ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... force to produce them. At the same time, it is found that the great magnetic waves which cover immense distances, work even more powerfully in the light than in the dark. May it not be that these things show, that there is more than a merely metaphorical use of words, when the Bible tells us of the power of Light to dissipate, and bring to naught, the powers of Darkness, while the Light itself is the Great Power, using the forces of the universe on the widest ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... at issue is, whether there are any limits to this variability. He will find on farther investigation, that new technical terms are coined almost daily in various arts, sciences, professions, and trades, that new names must be found for new inventions, that many of these acquire a metaphorical sense, and then make their way into general circulation, as "stereotyped," for instance, which would have been as meaningless to the men of the seventeenth century as would the new terms and images derived from steamboat and railway travelling ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... literal sense. According to the allegorical sense the "angels of peace" are the apostles and preachers who weep for men's sins. If according to the anagogical sense this passage be expounded of the blessed angels, then the expression is metaphorical, and signifies that universally speaking the angels will the salvation of mankind: for in this sense we attribute passions to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... the meaning of an elliptical metaphor, trace the word through the Bible, and find to what object such metaphorical term is applied. Example.—"And in that day there shall be a Root of JESSE, which shall stand for an ensign of the people." Isa. 11:10. Explanation.—"I [JESUS] am the Root and the offspring ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... "governor," a father. It will, no doubt, soon supersede sire, which is at present the poetical equivalent for the name of the author of one's existence. See all the poets, passim. 9. "Said as how he'd never fight," the thing was out of the question; a metaphorical phrase, though certainly, at present, a vulgar one. 10. "Snooze," slumber personified, like "Morpheus," or "Somnus." 11. "Daddle."—Q. from daktulos, a finger—pars pro toto!—Hand, the only synonym for it that we have, except "Paw," ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... Eureka Ditch and the extension of stagecoach communication from Big Bluff were events of no small importance, and were celebrated on the same day. The double occasion overtaxing even the fluent rhetoric of the editor of the "Star" left him struggling in the metaphorical difficulties of a Pactolian Spring, which he had rashly turned into the Ditch, and obliged him to transfer the onerous duty of writing the editorial on the Big Bluff Extension to the hands of the Honorable Abner Dean, Assemblyman ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... allow him the use of these words in a metaphorical and abusive meaning. But enough hath been spoken of ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... aside. I suspected that he wanted to confide in me that Mrs. Valentine had made one last determined refusal to receive him as a son-in-law, and that after the next few days of sea-voyaging we should meet an irate parent at the landing in New York and that there would be metaphorical "wigs ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... at pure and downright believing—at taking God at His bare and simple word—Mr. Ready-to-halt beat them all. All that flashes in upon us from one shining word that stands on the margin of our so metaphorical author. This single word, the "promises," hangs like a key of gold beside the first mention of Mr. Ready-to-halt's crutches—a key such that in a moment it throws open the whole of Mr. Ready-to-halt's otherwise lockfast and secret and inexplicable life. There it all ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... The metaphorical use of the word is equally expressive of its literal meaning, for it is applied to the production of new dispositions of mind and soul utterly opposite to those previously existing. "Create in me a clean heart;" which God thus ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... been very glad to have seen you off, duke, and to have thrown a metaphorical old shoe after you; but your bride seems to have taken so long to tie her bonnet strings, that she has made you miss your train. And now you can't go until the night express, and I really can't wait to see you off by that. I have an ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... or two more. In the twenty-first stanza, I prefer {p.236} Buerger's trampling the corn into chaff and dust, to your more metaphorical, and therefore less picturesque, "destructive sweep the field along." In the thirtieth, "On whirlwind's pinions swiftly borne," to me seems less striking than the still disapparition of the tumult and bustle—the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... he rode down from the Crow's Nest, he chuckled to himself over the satisfactory way in which Lenox was playing into his hands by adopting an attitude that would plainly act as a foil to his own deferentially persistent courtship; a metaphorical walking round the walls of Jericho, that must end in capitulation, ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... ludicrous an association of ideas. It was for calling this prince the son of a butcher, that Francis the First prohibited the admission of Dante's poem into his dominions. Mr. Cary thinks the king might have been mistaken in his interpretation of the passage, and that "butcher" may be simply a metaphorical term for the blood-thirstiness of Capet's father. But when we find the man called, not the butcher, or that butcher, or butcher in reference to his species, but in plain local parlance "a butcher ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... M. Verdier returned a suitable answer, adapting his words to their simple comprehension, yet using the metaphorical style so common among them. He was glad, he told them, that "words of peace were in their mouths; that there was a mild sky, and that the winds were low. He wished ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... every day more and more an affair of chemistry. Science has now found what bids fair to be a very "glass of fashion"—not a metaphorical, but a literal glass, at least for lean people. The chemical properties of each color in the solar spectrum have long been known, and of late years it has also been discovered that plants may be made to thrive wonderfully in green-houses constructed of blue ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... to the boudoir, and regale her auntie with anecdotes of the dear old, interesting people in the village, Abbie and all, some one of the young ladies knocked at the door, and hurried Miss Valeyon off, without her having asked, as she had intended, for an explanation of the puzzling, metaphorical allusions. ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... that it is indeed a resume of them all, let him consider that in its prosodial flow, measured pauses, metrical lines, varied cadences, stirring or soothing rhythms, sweet or rugged rhymes,—it is music: in its metaphorical diction, descriptive imagery, succession of shifting pictures, diversified illustration, and vivid coloring,—it is painting; while in its organic development and arrangement of parts, its complicated structure, in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... insults. The notion that he protected his wife was a pleasant fiction of the little man's, which received a generous encouragement at the hands of his wife. It was a favorite trick of hers to throw herself, in a metaphorical way, at his feet, a helpless woman, and in her feebleness implore his protection. And Samuel felt all the courage of knighthood in defending his inoffensive wife. Under cover of this fiction, so flattering ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... ceremonial served as a sort of setting of the pace, or a metaphorical shaking of a bony fist in the face of the day, as much as to say, 'If I admit you here you'll have to toe ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... preacher. After a very long, and a very tediously sung psalm, M. Rollin commenced his discourse. He is an extemporaneous preacher. His voice is sweet and clear, rather than sonorous and impressive; and he is perhaps, occasionally, too metaphorical in his composition. For the first time I heard the words "Oh Dieu!" pronounced with great effect: but the sermon was made up of better things than mere exclamations. M. Rollin was frequently ingenious; logical, and convincing; and his address to the young communicants, towards the close ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... protested Mr. Skinner would warn him, kindly, quietly, but none the less forcefully; and if he persisted Mr. Skinner would dispense with the services of that subordinate so fast the offender, nine times out of ten, would be left standing in a sort of fog and blinking at the suddenness with which the metaphorical can had, metaphorically speaking, been tied to his caudal appendage. Every large business office has its Skinner—a queer combination of decency, honesty, brains and brutality, a worshiper at the shrine of Mammon in the temple ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... present generation well occupied, so that new industries can, as it were, only be erected on the ruins of old, and a site has to be cleared of one factory before another can be built (all of which is, in a measure, only relative and metaphorical), in the United States there is always room for the newcomers. New population is pouring in to create new markets: new resources are being developed to provide the raw material for new industries; there is abundance of new land, new cities, new ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... he says, "The grand style is beautiful." Nay, many writers, otherwise of high authority, seem to have taken the same view; while others who could have had no such notion, having used the words Beauty and the Beautiful in an allegorical or metaphorical sense, have sometimes been misinterpreted literally. Hence Winckelmann reproaches Michael Angelo for his continual talk about Beauty, when he showed nothing of it in his works. But it is very evident that the Bella and Bellezza ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... the vegetative apparatus, the nerves leading to the viscera and the endocrine glands, like the solar plexus, are affected by stimuli of lower value than those which arouse the brain cells. In the metaphorical language of the old psychology, the threshold value, that is the strength or loudness of stimulus sufficient to make itself felt or heard, is less for the vegetative apparatus than for the brain. ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... widely from the Indo-European in reference to their grammar, vocabulary, and idioms. On account of the great preponderance of the pictorial element in them, they may be called the metaphorical languages, while the Indo-European, from the prevailing style of their higher literature, may be called the philosophical languages. The Semitic nations also differ from the Indo-European in their national characteristics; while they have lived with remarkable uniformity ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... tremendous self-confidence, as if they had behind them the common sense of twenty generations, together with the immediate approval of Mr. Augustus Pelham, Mrs. Vermont Bankes, William Rodney, and, possibly, Mrs. Hilbery herself. Katharine set her teeth, not entirely in the metaphorical sense, for her hand, obeying the impulse towards definite action, laid firmly upon the table beside her an envelope which she had been grasping all this time in complete forgetfulness. The address was uppermost, and a moment later she saw William's eye rest upon ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... am by practice or precept an advocate of ebriety, though it may be that, in our festivity of last night, some of our friends, if not perchance altogether ebrii, or drunken, were, to say the least, ebrioli, by which the ancients designed those who were fuddled, or, as your English vernacular and metaphorical phrase goes, half-seas-over. Not that I would so insinuate respecting you, Captain Waverley, who, like a prudent youth, did rather abstain from potation; nor can it be truly said of myself, who, having assisted ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... was he versed in the art of obtaining it except over the counter in tins. With due formality and some trepidation he had placed a pail beneath "Gentle Annie" as he called her, and had waited patiently. So had Gentle Annie, munching a reflective cud, and Sundown, in a metaphorical sense, doing likewise. He had walked around the cow inspecting her with an anxious and critical eye. She seemed healthful and voluptuously contented. Yet no milk came. Bud Shoop, having at that moment ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... to do something to show the evil of disobedience before he can pardon. Christ is willing to die in order to make this impression on the minds of men. And this he accordingly does. But unfortunately, as we said, there is nothing in the Scripture, not even a metaphorical expression, to support this theory. The apostles did not have recourse for their figures and images to such usage of government, and that for the simple reason that no such usage or necessity then existed. The governments were all despotic, and no despot, wishing ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... metaphorical description of the glass of lager regularly served at Dutch House, the waiter shouldered through the ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... really couldn't say, if I were asked, why I think so. It's a mere idea. Otherwise, it's simply impossible to help liking him." To which Sally replied, borrowing an expression from Ann the housemaid, that Fenwick was a cup of tea. It was metaphorical ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... they had had so many chances, and had become so very hot, that not to have answered at length would have bordered on the miraculous. The persevering governess was not displeased at this, for she would not have lost the opportunity of displaying her own skill in metaphorical illustration, for a great deal, I am very sure. The clock struck eight; there was a general movement. The three sisters folded their work, and lodged it carefully in separate drawers. The eldest then produced the table-cloth, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various |
