"Metaphor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thoughts with which this incident naturally left me were at length and suddenly dispersed, as sad thoughts not infrequently are, by a petticoat. When I say petticoat, I use the word in its literal sense, not colloquially as a metaphor for its usual wearer, meaning thereby a dainty feminine undergarment seen only by men on rainy days, and one might add washing-days. It was indeed to the fortunate accident of its being washing-day at the pretty cottage near which ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... and a mounted troop, and with, above all, a living and sturdy esprit-de-corps. Such a Company appeared to him to be the one and only hope of regeneration for the ludicrous corps which Colonel Dearman commanded, and to change the metaphor, the sole possible means of leavening the lump by its example of high standards ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... always been looking for an Eldorado, and, however mixed the metaphor may be, has been searching for a Moses to lead it thereto. Behold, then, Jason Buford in the role of Moses. And equipped he was to carry off his part with the very best advantage, for though he might not bring water from ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... this epitrope, but pray use less metaphor and more litotes in the prosopography you dedicate to my ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... we should continue to exist upon this crowded earth. If Thoreau had simply dwelt in his house at Walden, a lover of trees, birds, and fishes, and the open air and virtue, a reader of wise books, an idle, selfish self-improver, he would have managed to cheat Admetus, but, to cling to metaphor, the devil would have had him in the end. Those who can avoid toil altogether and dwell in the Arcadia of private means, and even those who can, by abstinence, reduce the necessary amount of it to some six weeks a year, having the more liberty, have only ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... another volume of our series, like a fairy ship with a rather mixed cargo, in the hope that—to change the metaphor—like the blackbird-pie, it may prove, when opened, to be "a pretty dish to ...
— The Song of Sixpence - Picture Book • Walter Crane
... down any dirty stain before your Honour," sobbed Mrs. Twomey, recurring to her earlier metaphor; "it's that big horse that ye're afther buyin' from Docthor Mangan; they say that he gave him to ye too cheap on ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... usefulness and influence; and under the limitations and for the ends allowed in Scripture (these it is needless to repeat) he is glad to possess, observant to acquire, and careful to retain them. He considers them however, if we may again introduce the metaphor, like the precious metals, as having rather an exchangeable than an intrinsic value, as desirable not simply in their possession, but in their use. In this view, he holds himself to be responsible for that share of them which he enjoys, and, to continue the figure, as bound not ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... what is called our Saviour's agony, i.e. his devotion in the garden immediately before he was apprehended; in which narrative they all make him pray "that the cup might pass from him." This is the particular metaphor which they all ascribe to him. Saint Matthew adds, "O, my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done." (Chap, xxvi. 42.) Now Saint John does not give the scene in the garden: but when Jesus was ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... am I fanciful in discovering in the plays themselves (few examples have as yet been translated and I may be misled by accident or the idiosyncrasy of some poet) a playing upon a single metaphor, as deliberate as the echoing rhythm of line in Chinese and Japanese painting. In the 'Nishikigi' the ghost of the girl-lover carries the cloth she went on weaving out of grass when she should have opened the chamber door to her lover, and woven grass returns again and again ...
— Certain Noble Plays of Japan • Ezra Pound
... pathos in his picture of this ill-rewarded old disciplinarian (who combined a tenderness of heart with a fondness for military metaphor that frequently reminds one of 'My Uncle Toby'), the details of the ailments and the portents that attended his infantile career, and, above all, the glimpses of the wandering military life from barrack ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... in your own way—because you've been accustomed all your life yourself to the dominating act. You've always been a star of some sort, and you've never discouraged yourself—except when in the dumps—out of the belief that a fixed position was waiting for you in the stellar firmament. To vary the metaphor, you've always been in the crack regiment, even when the regiment was composed of cub reporters. . . . And you'd find yourself shrinking—shrinking—nothing but a famous woman's husband—lover, would be perhaps more ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... figure as many distinct sets of springs, each capable of vibrating in its own particular time and at a different rate from the others. If we seize this idea definitely, we shall have no difficulty in dropping the metaphor of springs, and substituting for it mentally the forces by which the atoms act upon each other. Having thus far cleared our way, let us ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... upon their native government with the same feelings as were entertained by some of the Christians of the first three centuries toward the pagan empire of Rome. To these fanatics the government of the orthodox czars came to be the reign of Satan and the dominion of Antichrist. Nor was this an empty metaphor: it was a clear, determined conviction, and it still exerts a strong religious and political influence upon the schism. The Raskolniks could see but one interpretation of the overturning of public and private order under Peter the Great, and for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... never orator Before, or since, with burning thought, In parable, and metaphor; Each simple illustration taught Some sacred truth, some truth which could By sage, or ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... hillside, in deeper shadow, was another little structure; a wooden shed with an open gable sheltering an altar with candles and flowers. Here mass is said by one of the conscript priests of the regiment, while his congregation kneel between the fir-trunks, giving life to the old metaphor of the cathedral-forest. Near by was the grave-yard, where day by day these quiet elderly men lay their comrades, the peres de famille who don't go back. The care of this woodland cemetery is left entirely to the soldiers, ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... and feeding both of the individual sheep and of the whole flock and it is not difficult to see the spiritual correspondence of these things in a general sort of way. But we find that the Bible combines the metaphor of the Shepherd with another metaphor that of "the Stone," and at first sight the two seem ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... with which he varies the silence of Treasury Bench. Well there was someone at that temperature. Committee, take it all together, in volcanic mood. Peculiarity of situation, as SAUNDERSON put it, with some mixing of metaphor, was that "it was the cucumber that kept the pot a-boiling." Whenever any sign of placidity was visible, JOSEPH sure to appear on scene, rub someone's hair the wrong way, or stir up some slumbering lion ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 20, 1893 • Various
... course, he would never have married the heroine, and we should have missed a very agreeable study of expanding adolescence. This, I take it, is the real motive of Mr. BERESFORD'S story, as exemplified by his pleasant introductory metaphor of the chicken and the egg. From the feminine point of view, indeed, the tale might be not inaptly labelled "Treatise on Cub-hunting." Anyhow, what with strange actresses and I.D.B. criminals and painted ladies and reviewers (they were a queer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... gayety, and disinterested respect for merit, which, as every body knows, distinguish your social character; nothing is said of the annual meeting of chemists, geologists, and mathematicians, so beneficial to the real interests of science, by making a turn for tumid metaphor and the love of display necessary ingredients in the character of its votaries, extirpating from among them that simplicity which was so fatal an obstacle to the progress of Newton,—and turning the newly discovered joint of an antediluvian reptile into a theme ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... use, too!" whined Dolph. "You can't row a biskit across a puddle of molasses with a couple of toothpicks," he added, with cook's metaphor ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... very strongly in the Epistle to Titus: 'The glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us that He might purify unto Himself a people for a possession.' Israel, according to one metaphor, was God's 'son,' begotten by that great redeeming act of deliverance from the captivity of Egypt (Deut. xxxii. 6-19). According to another metaphor, Israel was God's bride, wooed and won for His own by that same act. Both of these figures point ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... have had the rare virtue of being very easily satisfied. In fact, Mr Savile's discharge of his educational engagements was rather a sort of "whitewashing" than a payment in full. His passing was what is technically called a "shave," a metaphor alluding to that intellectual density which finds it difficult to squeeze through the narrow portal which admits to the privileges of a Bachelor of Arts. As Mr S. himself, being a sporting man, described it, it was "a very close run indeed;" not that he considered that circumstance to derogate, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... addition being made, no new element appears. The vowel, indeed, is changed, but nothing is added. Verbs, then, of the first sort, may be said to form their praeterites out of themselves; whilst verbs of the second sort require something from without. To speak in a metaphor, words like sang and fell are comparatively independent. Be this as it may, the German grammarians call the tenses formed by a change of vowel the strong tenses, the strong verbs, the strong conjugation, or the strong order; and those formed by the addition of d or t, the ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... old Jacob!" he groaned. "We must keep him out of the hands of the sharks, that we must!" He did not see young Jacob's irrepressible smile at this singular extension of metaphor. "He mustn't be allowed to sell that house in open market—never, sir! Confound it, I'll buy it myself before ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... I was talking of, and I was saying that there is nothing theatrical, no posing, no heroics (the thing of all others which the hero abominates), but just the short bluff word and the simple manly ways, with every expression and metaphor drawn from within his natural range of thought. What a pity it is that he, with his keen appreciation of the soldier, gave us so little of those soldiers who were his own contemporaries—the finest, ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pleasant to Horace to find even one among his friends illustrating in his life this modest Socratic creed; for he is so constantly enforcing it, in every variety of phrase and metaphor, that while we must conclude that he regarded it as the one doctrine most needful for his time, we must equally conclude that he found it utterly disregarded. All round him wealth, wealth, wealth, was ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... questions of taste—and if these poems were to be arraigned for errors of what may be called taste, they might be convicted of occasional affectation in metaphor, as where the hills are 'as a stallion stal- wart, very-violet-sweet', or of some perversion of human feeling, as, for instance, the 'nostrils' relish of incense along the sanctuary side ', or 'the Holy Ghost with warm breast and with ah! bright wings', these and a few such examples are ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... was especially happy, and it was a great privilege to share his table-talk and hospitality, for he had a great fund of kindly humor and his speech was bright with homely metaphor and apt allusions. Not only was he a great preacher, he was a leader, an inspirer, and a ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... standing comparisons and metaphors, intended to illustrate its uses and magnify its importance, but not declaring with any degree of precision what it is. It is called, for instance, the "storehouse of our ideas." The metaphor conveys undoubtedly a certain amount of truth in regard to the subject. At the same time, there are some important particulars, in which the comparison, for it is nothing more, conveys a wrong impression. Experience ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... but of the motives and grounds of the passion, wherein it differs from the same passion in low and vulgar natures, of these the actor can give no more idea by his face or gesture than the eye (without a metaphor) can speak, or the muscles utter intelligible sounds. But such is the instantaneous nature of the impressions which we take in at the eye and ear at a playhouse, compared with the slow apprehension oftentimes of the understanding in reading, that we are apt not only to sink the ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... me to be in art, to take the metaphor of the temple at Jerusalem, three gradations or regions, which may be typified by the Court, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies. Into the Court many have admittance, both writers and readers; it is just shut off from the world, but admittance is easy ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... with 'your Connection by Marriage'" (for so he continued to style him). "In public affairs we must often use sweeps to explore dark and tortuous passages. Persons who object to fyle themselves cannot be expected to clean drains. You take my metaphor? Your 'Relative by Marriage' has proved himself a useful artist in cesspools. That is all. He has not swept clean, but he has swept. He has, on several occasions, been useful to the Government when a better man would never have earned salt to his kail. Publicly, therefore, he is an estimable servant ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... more good nor more 'arm, so fer as I can see, nor a chip in a basin o' parritch." And that was just about it; sir,' said the old man, pleased for the hundredth time with his wife's bygone flight of metaphor and his ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her. 80 One needs something tangible, though, to begin on,— A loom, as it were, for the fancy to spin on; What boots all your grist? it can never be ground Till a breeze makes the arms of the windmill go round; (Or, if 'tis a water-mill, alter the metaphor, And say it won't stir, save the wheel be well wet afore, Or lug in some stuff about water "so dreamily,"— It is not a metaphor, though, 'tis a simile); A lily, perhaps, would set my mill a-going, For just at this ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Metaphors.—The subject of Metaphor is of great importance in good translation. You will find that every language possesses its own special Metaphors in addition to those which are common to most European languages. As you become familiar with Latin Authors you must try to distinguish the ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... that expressed the class cleavage of Society, and no man crossed this metaphor, back and forth, more successfully than Freddie Drummond. He made a practice of living in both worlds, and in both worlds he lived signally well. Freddie Drummond was a professor in the Sociology Department of the University of California, and it ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... last brought into that office of Her Majesty's Exchequer, which we, by a metaphor, do call the pipe ... because the whole receipt is finally conveyed into it by means of divers small pipes or quills."—BACON, The ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... metaphor had been at fault. Yet now there was to be nothing between this red ambassador and me except the subtlest and ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... rather bones (the radius and the cubitus the reader will pardon the anatomical designations), wrapped in a rough, blackened skin, and separated by some hard and cord-like veins. When he placed his hands on a table, he seemed to use a just metaphor of Pique-Vinaigre to ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... less learned, who polishes the gem and gives it its setting in pages of brilliant writing, and what is more important still, weaves it subtly into the daily life of some human being to whom it has been slowly and always painfully introduced. Or, to vary the metaphor, this new controversy is an inoculation performed by one who possesses a masterly acquaintance with the circulatory system of the spiritual anatomy, and is enabled thereby to describe with unerring accuracy ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... can hardly think that the Duke was quite candid. I have used in the concluding paragraph of my present book precisely the same argument as you have, even bringing in the bulldog,[63] with respect to variations not having been specially ordained. Your metaphor of the river[64] is new to me, and admirable; but your other metaphor, in which you compare classification and complex machines, does not seem to me quite appropriate, though I cannot point out what seems deficient. The point which seems to me strong is that all ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... published in 1658; its author, F. T., was the father of the better known Nahum Tate, the co-translator of the last authorised version of the Psalms,—a Teat which, following the metaphor of Mr. Chishull, has nourished not a few generations of the godly, but now, like a sucked orange, thrown aside for the more juicy productions of our modern Psalmists. Old Teate (or Tate, as the junior would have it) is styled in this book, "preacher at Sudbury." He seems subsequently ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... strange. Were I fortunate enough to be Miss Prism's pupil, I would hang upon her lips. [Miss Prism glares.] I spoke metaphorically.—My metaphor was drawn from bees. Ahem! Mr. Worthing, I suppose, has not returned from ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde
... inexhaustibly prolific writer is not in the least a stylist. In this respect he is inferior to Apuleius, or Tertullian, though he leaves them far behind in the qualities of sincere and deep sentiment, poetic flow, colour, the vividness of metaphor, and, besides, the emotion, the suavity of the tone. With all that, no matter how hard he tried, he could never grasp what the rhetoricians of his time understood by style. This is why his writings, as well as his addresses, were not ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... just as he had been, and watched the purple mysteries dropping on the mountains, and waited grimly for that which was to come to him. True, there was the slight moisture on his brow and on his under lip, but otherwise his agitation displayed itself only in an occasional exuberance of metaphor. ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... of that. He was a little impressed by Ann Veronica's metaphor of the string, which, indeed, she owed to Hetty Widgett. "YOU wouldn't like to be independent?" he asked, abruptly. "I mean REALLY independent. On your own. It isn't such fun as ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... picturesque metaphor is of course a striking feature of American conversation. Many of these expressions have taken firm root in England, such as "to have no use for" a man, or "to take no stock in" a theory. But fresh inventions crop up on every hand in America. ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... things, for the honour of our establishment; but no one thinks of making use of them at table. Pitt is an exception; he is equal to every thing; an incomparable man of business. Burke, or some other man of metaphor, compared him to the falcon; which, however high it may soar, always follows the prey with its eye along the ground. But two Pitts, if nature could be prolific of such magnificent monsters, would absolutely perplex us. What could be more confusing than to have two suns ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... not waste time in simile or in metaphor. She calls him a black-hearted scoundrel and clumps him over ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... be a wet blanket and throw cold water on my plans," said Patty, a little mixed in her metaphor, but smiling placidly at her stepmother. "This time it's really a most sensible undertaking ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... present case, to carry on the volant metaphor, (for I must either be merry, or mad,) is a pretty little miss just come out of her hanging-sleeve-coat, brought to buy a pretty little fairing; for the world, Jack, is but a great fair, thou knowest; and, to give thee serious reflection for serious, all its joys but tinselled hobby-horses, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... his pilgrims come to the Hill Difficulty and the Delectable Mountains, the difference is at once seen. All his nobler imagery is drawn from Scripture. As Hallam has remarked, "There is scarcely a circumstance or metaphor in the Old Testament which does not find a place bodily and literally in 'The Pilgrim's Progress,' and this has made his imagination appear more creative than it ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... will follow a little our metaphor: Christ, as I said, has put himself under the term of a physician; consequently he desireth that his fame, as to the salvation of sinners, may spread abroad, and that the world may see what he can do. And to this end, he ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan
... Vane felt overpowered by this torch in a closet. To vary the metaphor, it seemed to him, as she swept up and down, as if the green-room was a shell, and this glorious creature must burst it and be free. Meantime, the others saw a pretty actress studying her business; and Cibber saw a dramatic school-girl learning what ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... felt his arm and was satisfied that it WAS longer—"but we must do our dooty, even with difficulty to ourselves, and, perhaps, to others. Our young friend, John Bunyan, stands on a giddy height—on slippery places, and," continued Mr. Staples, with a lofty disregard to consecutive metaphor, "his feet are taking fast hold of destruction." Here the child drew a breath of relief, possibly at the prospect of being on firm ground of any kind at last; but Sister Medliker, to whom the Staples style of exordium had only ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... later Gothic being precisely what Scott knew best (in Melrose) and liked best, it is, here as elsewhere, quite as much himself[59] as Frank, that he is laughing at, when he laughs with Andrew, whose "opensteek hems" are only a ruder metaphor for his own "willow-wreaths ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... alone. It is impious to insult the vegetables, by likening them either to human creatures or animals. Besides, the fever does not strangle. 'Tis a false metaphor. For pity's sake, keep silence. Allow me to tell you that you are slightly wanting in the repose which characterizes the true English gentleman. I see that some amongst you, who have shoes out of which their toes are peeping, take advantage of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Mr. Hornblower's heavy features indicated that he had grasped Persis' metaphor. He broke out eagerly. "Now, that's just what I was saying to my wife. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... are such a powerful engine of knowledge, it is a sign of great intelligence in a writer if his similes are unusual and, at the same time, to the point. Aristotle also observes that by far the most important thing to a writer is to have this power of metaphor; for it is a gift which cannot be acquired, and it is a ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... development of obscure writing. The theme of love with which the chanso dealt is a subject by no means inexhaustible; there was a continual struggle to revivify the well-worn tale by means of strange turns of expression, by the use of unusual adjectives and forced metaphor, by the discovery of difficult rimes (rimes cars) and stanza schemes of extraordinary complexity. Marcabrun asserts, possibly in jest, that he could not always understand his own poems. A further and possibly an earlier cause of obscurity ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... in metaphor giants of learning, their office seems practically rather that of the dwarfs, as gatherers and guardians of treasure useless to themselves, but with which some luck's-child may enrich himself and his neighbors. Other analogies between them and the dwarfs, such as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... conclusion, for he murmured: "She's telling him I'm the scum of the earth, and that it's up to him to get rid of me." He added, sententiously: "She'll find, I guess, that this is about the most difficult billet a fair lady ever intrusted to a gallant knight." Whereupon, inspired by his metaphor, he proceeded to hum under his breath, by way of outlet to his amused sensibilities, ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... Venice of his prejudices—the merciless Venice of Daru, and of the historians who follow him. But I still hope that he will be pleased with the Venice he sees; and will think with me that the place loses little in the illusion removed; and—to take leave of our theatrical metaphor—I promise to fatigue him with no affairs of my own, except as allusion to them may go to illustrate Life in Venice; and positively he shall suffer no annoyance from the fleas and bugs which, in Latin countries, so often get from travelers' beds ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... it is to the West that the story must appeal it has seemed wiser to remove it from her lips and so transpose that, though it loses in lore unfortunately, it does gain something of directness and simplicity. Her satire, and most of her metaphor if always set down as she phrased it, would scandalize as well as ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... the following, copied from a REVIEW, are the works of Genius perpetually criticized in our public Prints: "Passion has not sufficient coolness to pause for metaphor, nor has metaphor ardor enough to keep pace with passion."—Nothing can be less true. Metaphoric strength of expression will burst even from vulgar and illiterate minds when they are agitated. It ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... draw in one's horns; to retract an assertion through fear: metaphor borrowed from a snail, who on the apprehension of danger, draws in his horns, and ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... brats, cross husbands, would ever discompose either of you. You ought never to marry a good-tempered man, it would be mingling honey with sugar, like sticking white roses upon a black-thorn cudgel. With this very picturesque metaphor I close my letter. Good-bye, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... "Metaphor and simile apart, there is work for a twelve-month to any man to read such a book, and for half a lifetime to digest it, and I am glad to see it brought ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... active, public-spirited youth and Heine's sleepy, amorous individualist is no more striking than the difference between Uhland's rhetorical and Heine's tropical method. Heine's poem is an elaboration of the single metaphor with which it begins: "Kingly is the herd-boy's calling." The poem Pine and Palm, in which Heine expresses his hopeless separation from the maiden of whom he dreams—incidentally attributing to Amalie a feeling ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... sense all those strong terms of self-condemnation which he employed in a theological sense. They have, therefore, represented him as an abandoned wretch, reclaimed by means almost miraculous, or, to use their favourite metaphor, "as a brand plucked from the burning." Mr. Ivimey calls him the depraved Bunyan and the wicked tinker of Elstow. Surely Mr. Ivimey ought to have been too familiar with the bitter accusations which the most pious people ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a glorious reputation with himself for bright sayings, which he always accompanied with a cock of the eye. The musician not showing any visible appreciation of the manager's metaphor, Perkins immediately proceeded ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... fuller survey of some particular provinces, and to remember that although, in travels of this sort, a lively imagination is a very agreeable companion, it is not the best guide. To speak without a metaphor, the study of history, both sacred and profane, requires a critical and laborious investigation. The composer of a set of lively and witty remarks on facts ill-examined, or incorrectly delivered, ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... and travelled upon it. Beyond this the capital of the kingdom, the eye of the monarch was arrested by another bright brass funnel, which was the chimney of the galley-fire, and indicated the exact position of the abode of the crew, or—to continue our metaphor—the populace, who, however, required no such indicator to tell of their existence or locality, for the chorus of a "nigger" melody burst from them, ever and anon, through every opening in the decks, ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... Britain's "insularity" were (like the climatic myth) originally of Continental European origin; and from the Continental European point of view, the phrase, both in fact and metaphor, was justified. England is an island. So far as the Continent of Europe is concerned, it is the island. And undoubtedly the fact of their insular position, with the isolation which it entailed, has had a marked influence on the national temperament of ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... sceptered or princess born in the purple. It pleased him to write bad poems to her as his Infanta, his royal rose, his pomegranate flower, his nestling eagle waiting for strength to fly upward to the sun—all with halting feet and strained metaphor. He drew pictures of her by the dozen, mostly symbolic and all out of drawing, but expressive of his admiration, his hope, his respect; while to Leam he was little better than a two-legged talking dog whose knowledge interested and whose goodness swayed her, but on whose neck she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... possible languages, are necessarily the images of sensations. Men have never been able to express anything but what they felt. Thus everything has become metaphor; everywhere the soul is enlightened, the heart burns, the mind wanders. Among all peoples the infinite has been the negation of the finite; immensity the negation of measure. It is evident that our five senses have ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... write, but I wish the knowledge of my being exposed to her discerning criticism may not hurt my style, by inducing too great a solicitude. I begin already to weigh my words and sentences more than I did, and am looking about for a sentiment, an illustration, or a metaphor in every corner of the room. Could my ideas flow as fast as the rain in the store closet ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... be verified by any one who can and will go to the dairy for himself. Him will the several traders declare to have no milk at all. They will bring their own wares, and challenge a trial: they want nothing but to name the judges. To vary the metaphor, those who have looked at Christianity in open day, know that all who see it through painted windows shut out much of the light of heaven and color the rest; it matters nothing that the stains are shaped into what are meant for saints ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... creaking, and so on. The Professor of Poetry and Eloquence took a pinch of snuff, and, slapping the lid to and clearing his throat, said solemnly, "My most honourable ladies and gentlemen, don't you see then where the rub is? The whole thing is an allegory, a continuous metaphor. You understand me? Sapienti sat." But several most honourable gentlemen did not rest satisfied with this explanation; the history of this automaton had sunk deeply into their souls, and an absurd mistrust of human figures began to prevail. Several lovers, in order to be fully convinced that ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... by a political despot than the war eagle, screaming across the blue dome of the everlasting heavens, will turn tail when he hears the twittering of a pewee!" Mr. Niles closed, as he always closed a speech, with the metaphor that had given ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... number. Mr. Jenkins shows an admirable command of light prose, and will undoubtedly prove one of the United's most entertaining writers. Misses Kline and McGeoch both exhibit marked poetical tendencies in prose, the latter writer having something of Mr. Fritter's facility in the use of metaphor. Mr. Porter's editorials are refreshingly naive and unaffected. His grammar is generally good, except in the one sentence where he speaks of the Toledo Times. He should say, "the newspaper which has given me much experience, and to whose publishers I ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... as I have said, was coincident or incidental only. It corresponded, however, to a current "phonetic symbol," in the expression common to the Greeks and Romans of that day, "to take up one's cross," meaning to prepare for the worst, a metaphor used ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... utter Negation? Besides, where do we differ really? All of us who think at all agree more or less. We use different terms, pursue different lines of thought, that is all. It is only the dullard, who mistakes the symbol for the idea, the letter for the spirit, the metaphor for the thought within, who is a bigot. The true thinker is an artist, the true artist is a thinker, for Art is the expression of thought in thing. The highest thought, as Connie rightly told us before ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... more—care must be taken to have this forefinger fastened to a sure, knowing, and fearless hand, worked by an arm which plays easily and loosely in a ball-socket set firmly near your backbone. To carry out the metaphor, the steam of your enthusiasm, kept in working order by the safety-valve of your experience, and regulated by the ball-governor of your art knowledge—such as composition, drawing, mass, light and dark—is then ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... Officers is the beauty of the krises with which they are armed, the handles being of carved ivory ornamented with gold, and the sheaths of beautifully polished wood, resembling satin wood. Cigars and coffee are produced, and a bichara ensues. A Quakers' meeting is no bad metaphor to describe a Malay bichara. The Pangerans sit round in a circle smoking solemnly for some time, until a question is put to them, to which a brief reply is given, ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... portion of the prison walls also. Be that, however, as it may, the writer found Poppy Lownds sitting in his big oaken arm-chair, dozing in some pleasing reverie, like a Turk over his sherbet after dinner, or "as calm and quiet as a summer's morning," to quote a favorite metaphor of the day, in regard to the guiding spirit of an often-killed but still living and breathing "monster." As the writer entered his apartment, he took a long pipe from his mouth with the most easy deliberation, ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... To change the metaphor—after the style of Mr. Jack MacKenzie's eloquence—I warrant there was not a young man of the eight crews, who did not regard that marble-cold face at the prow of the leading canoe, as his own particular ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... 'camel'. The alteration would not be worth noticing were it not for the circumstance which occasioned it. 'Facilius elephas per foramen acus', is among the Hebrew adages collected by Drusius; the same metaphor is found in two other Jewish proverbs, and this appears to determine the signification of [Greek (transliterated): chamaelos]. ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... Russian war, waged directly or indirectly by Western Europe, is an example of this sort of dementia, but I cannot help believing that sanity will reassert itself in time. At the present moment, to use a modification of Gusev's metaphor, Europe may be compared to a burning house and the Governments of Europe to fire brigades, each one engaged in trying to salve a wing or a room of the building. It seems a pity that these fire brigades should be fighting each other, and forgetting the fire in their resentment of the fact that ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... head on you, kid," I agreed; a metaphor he may or may not have understood. There was no doubt in my mind that his words, "wisdom is better than wealth," were ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... figures of various kinds, used to illustrate the subjects to which they are applied.—They embrace the Simile, Metaphor, ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... too, that whether young Henry is a pragmatist or not, he is a most understanding human being. The only way to read these "Letters" is to dip into them here and there, as the only way to make a good salad is to pour the vinegar on drop by drop. To use an oriental metaphor, the oil of appreciation is stimulated by the acid of wit, the salt of wisdom, and the pepper of humour. Frankly, since I discovered William James as a human being I have begun to read him for the same reason that ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... our coast and island people, they seem to be for the most part a little artificial in method, a little strained in metaphor perhaps so giving rise to the Scotch Gaelic saying: 'as loveless as an Irishman.' Love of country, tir-gradh, is I think the real passion; and bound up with it are love of home, of family, love of God. Constancy and affection in marriage are the rule; yet marriage 'for love' ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... their reason by fancying that God looks on them as right when they know themselves to be wrong; and who cannot help trusting that union with Christ must be something real and substantial, and not merely a metaphor and ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... sphere; but I have a strong fancy that in some future eccentric planet, the comet of happier systems than any with which astronomy is yet acquainted, you and I, among the harum scarum sons of imagination and whim, with a hearty shake of a hand, a metaphor and a laugh, shall recognise ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... metaphor, what is, and what long has been the condition of those lands the crusaders vainly boasted they had won from the followers of Mohammed? In what state do we find those vast territories of the New World conquered by Spain? ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... spoke for some minutes with a fine luxury of metaphor, and much inward complacency as to his phrases; but it happened with him, as with many another great speaker, that he found himself at last at the point from which the conversation started, and in full agreement with La Briere ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... given in a WILL, &c. I have some doubts whether reason always carries things as far as you would wish to carry this metaphor to make it a parallel. Reason sometimes moves in a small circle; and that too without being unreasonable. If the benefit is said to have been absolutely made, and reason is informed of the fact, ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... the other Side, In separating carefully one from another, Ideas wherein can be found the least Difference, thereby to avoid being misled by Similitude, and by Affinity to take one thing for another. This is a way of proceeding quite contrary to Metaphor and Allusion; wherein, for the most part, lies that Entertainment and Pleasantry of Wit which strikes so lively on the Fancy, and is therefore so acceptable to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... ordinary phases of love that spring from the absolute. So that it is not stereotyped, perfectly beautiful women who are wont to kindle great passions. Before a truly passionate feeling can exist, something is necessary that is perhaps best expressed by a metaphor in chemistry—namely, the two persons must neutralise each other, like acid and alkali to a neutral salt. Before this can be done the following conditions are essential. In the first place, all sexuality is one-sided. This one-sidedness ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer |
