"Metaphorically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... obvious that the twang of this fine phrase gave Jack uncommon pleasure. He repeated it again and again under his breath, flourishing his pipe, so as, allegorically and metaphorically, to set forth ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... with which, both literally and metaphorically, the air is filled, we must also make allusion. The existence of micro-organisms in countless numbers is no new fact, but the influence they may exert over living tissues has only lately become the subject of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... now applied to a French soldier, means literally "a hairy one," but the term is understood metaphorically. Since time immemorial the possession of plenty of bodily hair has served to indicate a certain sturdy, male bearishness, and thus the French, long before the war, called any good, powerful fellow—"un veritable poilu." The term has been found applied to soldiers ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... supersaturated, on the contrary, they must be dilute; and third, growth leads in living organisms to cell division as soon as the mass of the cell reaches a certain limit. This process of cell division can not be claimed even metaphorically to exist in a crystal. A correct appreciation of these facts will give us an insight into the specific difference between non-living and living matter. The formation of living matter consists in the synthesis of the proteins, nucleins, fats, and carbohydrates ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... see that as clearly as a proposition in Euclid. For these believers are neither weak nor wicked. They can put up their tablet commanding Saint Joseph for his despatch, as if he were still a village carpenter; they can 'recite the required dizaine,' and metaphorically pocket the indulgence, as if they had done a job for Heaven; and then they can go out and look down unabashed upon this wonderful river flowing by, and up without confusion at the pin-point stars, which are ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Judas has been attributed to far-reaching views, and the wish to hasten his Master's declaration of himself as the Messiah. Perhaps—I will not maintain the contrary—Judas represented his motive in this way, and felt justified in his traitorous kiss; but my belief that he deserved, metaphorically speaking, to be where Dante saw him, at the bottom of the Malebolge, would not be the less strong because he was not convinced that his action was detestable. I refuse to accept a man who has the stomach for such treachery, as a hero impatient for the redemption of mankind and for ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... certainly interested now, but not as interested as he would have been the day before. The day before, this story would have moved him to pour out the tale of his own untimely and irreparable loss. He and old Mr Pennycuick would—metaphorically ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... know!' said she, as if impatient at being both literally and metaphorically followed about, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... speaking metaphorically, of course," said Edna impatiently. "He meant the human laws and customs and prejudices which a true Superman should soar above. I think you ought to be more ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... eyes lifted and strayed around the noisy, riotous dance hall. Just what exactly did the message mean? The Pippin was a bad actor—literally, as well as metaphorically. The Pippin, if asked, would probably still have styled himself an actor; but, though still young, his career on the stage had ended several years ago rather abruptly—with a year's imprisonment! Jimmie ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... deductions have been drawn indeed from our Master's doctrine: but the saner part of us receive it metaphorically, and would only set men free from the bonds of sin. For if domestic slaves were manumitted, we should neither have a dinner dressed nor a bed made, unless by our own children: and as to labour in the fields, who would cultivate them in this hot climate? We must import slaves ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... a greater variety of conversation than this. But, of course, the occasion counts for a good deal. It would be foolish to discharge it (metaphorically speaking) at the head of the first comer. You must watch for your opportunity. For instance, guns ought not to be talked about directly after breakfast, before a shot has been fired. Better wait till after the shooting-lunch, when a fresh start is being made, say for the High Covert ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... Yes, Macedonia. Slight misunderstanding. It's written from Ireland all right. There's the Irish Command stamp on it. 'Come over to Macedonia and help us.' Biblical phrase. St. PAUL, you know. Just a figure of speech. My friend meant it metaphorically." ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various
... when he was in the wilderness of Judah," simply on the strength of the words, "My soul thirsteth for thee in a dry and weary land where no water is"—words which are taken literally, though they were undoubtedly intended metaphorically. A parallel case is that of the psalm inserted in Jonah ii., obviously a church psalm whose figurative language has been ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... scarlet with exertion; her black bonnet had slipped off her head, and the thin grey hair that was ordinarily wound round her little skull as tightly as cotton on a reel, was hanging in scanty wisps from its central knot; nevertheless, she was, metaphorically speaking, pulling Bridgie across the line every time. I gave the filly to one of the audience, and took Bridgie's place at the "tink-an". Miss Trinder and I put our backs into it, and suddenly I found myself flat on mine, with the "tink-an" grasped in both hands above ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... here metaphorically, of one who acts a part in life, not, as Chapman takes it, of an ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... man's will, was altogether unequal to the contest now that he found Climene in alliance with Scaramouche, adding her insistence to his, and joining with him in reprobation of her father's sluggish and reactionary wits. Metaphorically, M. Binet threw up his arms, and cursing the day on which he had taken this young man into his troupe, he allowed the current to carry him whither it would. He was persuaded that he would be drowned in the end. Meanwhile he would drown his vexation in Burgundy. At least ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... walked up, and had a very lively and brilliant prospect over the road we had just travelled, and the town of Pistoia. Thence to this place the whole land is beautiful, and in the highest degree prosperous,—in short, to speak metaphorically, all dotted with Leghorn bonnets, and streaming with olive-oil. The girls here are said to employ themselves chiefly in platting straw, which is a profitable employment; and the slightness and quiet of the work are ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... would think they had been built in your parlor or study and were waiting to be launched. I have contrived a sort of ceremonial inclined plane for such visitors, which being lubricated with certain smooth phrases, I back them down, metaphorically speaking, stern-foremost, into their 'native element,' the great ocean of outdoors." There are social companies as hard to get rid of as this. They want to go, and every one wants them to go, but just how to make the start, no one seems to know. Dr. Holmes and his "inclined plane" ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... proclaim what has happened or what is going to happen, either in this world or in another. A prophecy about destiny is an account, however vague, of events to be actually experienced, and of their causes. The whole inspiration of Hebraic religion lies in that. It was not metaphorically that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. The promised land was a piece of earth. The kingdom was an historical fact. It was not symbolically that Israel was led into captivity, or that it returned and restored the Temple. It was not ideally that a Messiah was to come. Memory of such events ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... charge of bigamy. Public opinion was arrayed against her; she was received with abuse, jeers, and lampoons. Foote made her the object of universal ridicule by a comedy entitled, "A Trip to Calais." But the Duchess metaphorically snapped her fingers at them all. She was no woman to bow before the storm of ridicule and censure. She openly defied it to do its worst. Her splendid equipage was to be seen everywhere, with the ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... in suspense, auntie!" cried Miss Nellie rather naughtily, tossing her head indignantly, and throwing back her golden curls as if she were metaphorically pitching them at the offending old sailor. "I like to know the best or worst at once. I say, Dick, has the Captain told you anything about the treat ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... which the Mistress is filled with conceits, is very copiously displayed by Addison. Love is by Cowley, as by other poets, expressed metaphorically by flame and fire; and that which is true of real fire is said of love, or figurative fire, the same word in the same sentence retaining both significations. Thus, "observing the cold regard of his mistress's ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... too many of these parasites grow on the same tree, it languishes and dies. But several seedling mistletoes, growing close together on the same branch, may more truly be said to struggle with each other. As the mistletoe is disseminated by birds, its existence depends on them; and it may metaphorically be said to struggle with other fruit-bearing plants, in tempting the birds to devour and thus disseminate its seeds. In these several senses, which pass into each other, I use for convenience sake the general term ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... am speaking metaphorically or rhetorically, or with any other than literal and earnest meaning of words. Hear me, I pray you, therefore, for a little while, as earnestly as ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... the house, after all—my mind kept running on a story of Ann the cook's, about a man (a relative of hers, she said) who had once seen the devil. And yet the stranger had tipped me a guinea at parting, nor was it (except metaphorically) red hot in ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... of doing so or not. No critic has ever been so daft as to call any of my books a classic. Better books are unread because the writer is not en rapport with the reader. The time has passed when either the theologian, the politician, or the critic can take the American citizen metaphorically by the shoulder and send him along the path in which they think he should go. He has become the most independent being in the world, good-humoredly tolerant of the beliefs and fancies of others, while reserving, as a matter of course, the ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... Houlston, I am convinced of the wisdom of the advice. Ever since, when a difficulty has occurred, I have seized it boldly, grappled with it as we grappled with Houlston, summoned up all my courage, resolution, and strength, just as Tony and I called our companions to our assistance, and dragged it, metaphorically speaking, to the ground, gagged it as we gagged the bully, and not let it loose again till I have been convinced that it would no longer trouble me. Again, when I have had any difficult thing to do, I have done it at once, or tried my best to do it. ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... time or two, he allowed her to boss the camp 'lay-out.' It was she who spread the blankets on Wombo's beds of grass tree tops and dry herbage. Wombo and the 'big feller White Mary' (the adjective used metaphorically as expressive of distinction) made great friends in those days—out of which friendship sprang, alas! in due time, certain tragic happenings. It was Lady Bridget who would set the billy boiling and who, after one or two failures, succeeded in making excellent johnny-cakes. ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... of musical evolution which is the end, the supreme efflorescence, and not the beginning. Conceding that the evolution of the human race began with the monkey and ends with ourselves, it may be said, metaphorically, that the musical public, when left to itself, declines to monkey with the monkey, but at once proceeds to pluck the full flower of evolution, the human. For if any musical compositions are human documents that term ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... to insist upon this very matter-of-fact rendering of the "windows of heaven," that in two out of the three connections in which it occurs, the expression is certainly used metaphorically. On the occasion of the famine in the city of Samaria, Elisha ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... intention of "wiping down the bloomin' 'all" with him, and making it respectable; and, metaphorically speaking, that is what she did. Her tongue hit him between the eyes, and knocked him down and trampled on him. It curled round and round him like a whip, and then it uncurled and wound the other way. It seized him ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... before them upon the stage? I think it must be that eternal truth—the rocks of good that lie forever beneath the wild seas of evil. Those men don't know themselves; don't know that it is all useless for them to try to hide the nobility which has been put into them, to thrust it down, and, metaphorically, to dance on it. They can't get rid of it, do what they will. I like to think of goodness as the shadow of evil through life, the shadow that, at death, or perhaps long after ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... profound and complex than that of the Golden Rule, and requiring constructive imagination and rational insight of the very highest order. And with this insight goes necessarily an inevitableness, an inexorableness, and, as we say metaphorically, an imperativeness, which no amount of twisting and intellectual thimble-rigging can avoid. The logic of the system cannot be avoided any more than a step in a mathematical demonstration. . . . So long as it stands, its parts, elements, or members are placed, and there is set over each of ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... an hour, for if the police is not perfect in China, it is at least prompt and expeditious. Soon caught, soon hanged—and it will not do for them to hang Kinko, even metaphorically. ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... 29: Eschec & mat. Checke-mate at Chests; and (metaphorically) aremedilesse disaster, ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... beauty therefore is that it is the object of love; and though many other objects are in common language called beautiful, yet they are only called so metaphorically, and ought to be termed agreeable. A Grecian temple may give us the pleasurable idea of sublimity, a Gothic temple may give us the pleasurable idea of variety, and a modern house the pleasurable idea of utility; music and poetry may inspire our love by association of ideas; but none of these, ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... bonneted" is suggested, goes on the assumption that Shakespeare could not use the same word differently in different places; whereas I should conclude, that as in the passage in Lear the word is employed in its direct meaning, so here it is used metaphorically; and this is confirmed by what has escaped the editors, that it is not "I," but "my demerits" that may speak unbonneted,—without the symbol of ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... they shall lay hands on the sick, and they 38:12 shall recover." Who believes him? He was addressing his disciples, yet he did not say, "These signs shall follow you," but them- "them that believe" in all time to come. 38:15 Here the word hands is used metaphorically, as in the text, "The right hand of the Lord is exalted." It expresses spiritual power; otherwise the healing could not have 38:18 been done spiritually. At another time Jesus prayed, not for the twelve only, but for as many as ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... juncture Mrs Bubsby and her other daughter joined the party, and at once set tooth and nail on poor Billy, not literally, but metaphorically. His spirit, however, was up. He positively refused to marry the fair Angelica, or to offer any further apology than he had ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... he said. "I spoke metaphorically. I did not mean that, like Swedenborg and Mohammed, I have made excursions to Paradise. I merely meant that I once spent ten years of such serene happiness as it seldom falls to the lot of man to enjoy. But to return to our subject. You would like to ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... affairs arise, in which his powers would be called into requisition. We can always foresee in the midst of any storm, however dark and gloomy, that clear skies will certainly sooner or later come again; and this is just as true metaphorically in respect to the vicissitudes of human life, as it is literally in regard to the ordinary phenomena ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... mother to go to the city, and her father would have no power to prevent the alliance, were she bent upon it. I believe her family misunderstand and are wronging her, and I may have occasion to go down on my knees myself, metaphorically, and ask her pardon for my ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... fields are thirsty," "that the corn-fields are rejoicing," "that the crops are luxuriant." Now there is not one of these expressions which is not somewhat bold; but the thing is either like that which you use metaphorically; or else, if it has no name of its own, the expression which you use appears to have been borrowed for the sake of teaching, not of jesting. And this quiet sort of orator will use this ornament with rather more freedom ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... able to make his way back to the hall, very silent now as he went over the day's proceedings, and thought of the chances of the men coming back to make a fresh search, while the gardener kept on harping metaphorically upon the broken ladder, and what "master would say" when he ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... little service!" pleaded Camusot, down on his knees, metaphorically speaking, before the critic. "You will always find me ready to do you a good ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... the cause of it, but it disturbed her in her thoughts. Poor, kind, excellent grandpapa, she said to herself, how would he get on with Mr. Copperhead? He would touch his forelock to so rich a man. He would go down metaphorically upon his knees before so much wealth; and what a fool Clarence would be thought on every side for wanting to marry her! Even his mother, who was a romantic woman, would not see any romance in it if it was she, Phoebe, who was the poor girl whom he wanted to ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... very notorious, that when in ordinary Discourse we say a Man has a fine Head, a long Head, or a good Head, we express ourselves metaphorically, and speak in relation to his Understanding; whereas when we say of a Woman, she has a fine, a long or a good Head, we speak only in relation to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to the system of the unconscious only. These paths are constantly open and never fall into disuse; they conduct the discharge of the exciting process as often as it becomes endowed with unconscious excitement To speak metaphorically they suffer the same form of annihilation as the shades of the lower region in the Odyssey, who awoke to new life the moment they drank blood. The processes depending on the foreconscious system are destructible in a ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... for a long time that he loved her, and to-day he had told her so, almost roughly; and for some time, also, she had understood that she was growing fond of him. But now that she held out her hand, metaphorically, he would ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... 'I do apprehend that Mr. Glossin would not presume to give orders, or even an opinion, unless asked, in a matter in which Hazlewood House and the house of Hazlewood—meaning by the one this mansion-house of my family, and by the other, typically, metaphorically, and parabolically, the family itself,—I say, then, where the house of Hazlewood, or Hazlewood House, was ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Hilland, laughing; "you had nothing in common. You talked to a girl as if she were a mile off, and often broached topics that were cycles away. Now, a girl likes a fellow to come reasonably close—metaphorically, if not actually—when he chats with her. Moreover, many that you met, if they had brains, had never cultivated them. They were as shallow as a duck-pond, and with their small deceits, subterfuges, and affectations ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... looked very stand-offish; but the eager face of Bob, the only one about his own age of whom he could make a companion, was too much for him; and as Bob got up and made a place for him, Mr Ensign Long unbent a little, and really, as well as metaphorically, undid a button or two, and got into ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... Nothing; the end of the ancient fiddlesticks ending in a point; hence metaphorically used to express ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al. |
