Common Metaphors Quotes & Sayings

And as hearbes and trees are bettered and fortified by being transplanted, so formes of speach are embellished and graced by variation ... As in our ordinary language, we shall sometimes meete with excellent phrases, and quaint metaphors, whose blithnesse fadeth through age, and colour is tarnish by to common using them ... — Michel De Montaigne

Would you buy potato chips that listed potato by-product or potato digest as an ingredient — Michelle T. Bernard

A picture without sky has no glory. This present, unless we see gleaming beyond it the eternal calm of the heavens, above the tossing tree tops with withering leaves, and the smoky chimneys, is a poor thing for our eyes to gaze at, or our hearts to love, or our hands to toil on. — Alexander MacLaren

Many books condemn 'secular' culture, just as many books advocate (consciously or unconsciously) accommodating ourselves to culture. Brett has written something much different: a biblically informed and culturally savvy approach to consuming culture in a God-honoring, community-building, and mission-advancing way. — Mike Erre

I never used to sleep much. I think we all go through a bit of a time like that where we rage about. If we don't, I don't think you've ever really lived. — Diane Cilento

Though men may be deep, mentally they are slow. — Camille Paglia

Another reason we know that language could not determine thought is that when a language isn't up to the conceptual demands of its speakers, they don't scratch their heads dumbfounded (at least not for long); they simply change the language. They stretch it with metaphors and metonyms, borrow words and phrases from other languages, or coin new slang and jargon. (When you think about it, how else could it be? If people had trouble thinking without language, where would their language have come from-a committee of Martians?) Unstoppable change is the great given in linguistics, which is not why linguists roll their eyes at common claims such as that German is the optimal language of science, that only French allows for truly logical expression, and that indigenous languages are not appropriate for the modern world. As Ray Harlow put it, it's like saying, Computers were not discussed in Old English; therefore computers cannot be discussed in Modern English. — Steven Pinker

Not all lucid dreams are useful but they all have a sense of wonder about them. If you must sleep through a third of your life, why should you sleep through your dreams, too? — Stephen LaBerge

Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the windows of my apartment. (I live on the twenty-first floor). — Alan Sokal

How can I begin to tell you how much I miss you without using those three common words that can't even start to express the magnitude nor the depth of my emotions. How can I write in my own blood while wanting to revert its color. The color of blood is similar to "I miss you". It has been raped by writers and lovers constantly, ever since Cain and Abel. I want to be able to create a new alphabet that can simply stand in front of you without bowing. I want to use new metaphors that would erupt like volcanoes between the phrases of my readers' souls. Metaphors such as your absence is similar to eating salt straight from the shaker while thirst is devouring my tongue. Metaphors such as the lack of your presence is like being straddled behind the glass of my own senses. — Malak El Halabi

Symbology and ritual, at best, can only mimic the Truth ... and cannot, and never has had, any mastery over the manifestations of Divinity. — Gabriel Brunsdon

Western business people often don't get the importance of establishing human relationships. — Daniel Goleman

It's perfect! But you know what this means, don't you?"
"What?"
"This mean I have the upper hand when we play war."
Franz reached for a pillow. "I'm older, and taller. You'll never have the upper hand. I will always be able to catch you. — Jack Lewis Baillot

The first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism reads, "What is the chief end of man?" The Catechism's answer: "Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever."[10] God graciously linked the pursuit of our chief purpose with our greatest experience of joy. — Hugh Ross

Despite having been awarded the dubious honor of arthood, all photography is still perceived as having one foot in the real world, a toe in the chilly waters of verisimilitude, no matter how often it is demonstrated that photographs can and do lie. — Lucy R. Lippard

I've tried to use sex in place of language, but no one yet has been capable of processing the imagery, references, and metaphors I imbue into my thrusts, so I've returned to common English. — Jacqueline Novak

If you just take ... the feeling of legitimacy away from them, if you turn it around so they feel like they are committing a crime by watching ... they'll be confused and scared and worried and they'll just return to their ... quietly desperate lives. — John Green

Just as we build a house or a cathedral with the same kind of stone, so we may use the same common and homely metaphors and images to convey truths on widely separated planes of discourse. ...And the highest is often best conveyed in terms of the lowest... In exploring the highest reaches of experience, we need a language as fresh and living as the truths with which we are in contact. For most mystics, this is the language of nerve tips.

E.W.F. Tomlin on Simone Weil's use of language. — E.W.F. Tomlin

say. "No, wait," says Finnick. "Let's do it together. Put our faces right in front of his." Well, there's so little opportunity for fun left in my life, I agree. We position ourselves — Suzanne Collins

What do you see when you see me?' She asked him, burying her own face in his bosom.
'Do you want the truth?'
She nodded.
'The firing squad.'
'That's not the whole truth. Try again.'
'Insatiability,' he said with some bitterness.
'That's oblique but altogether too simple. Once more,' she insisted. 'One more time.'
He was silent for several minutes.
'The map of a country in which I only exist by virtue of the extravagance of my metaphors.'
'Now you're being too sophisticated. And, besides, what metaphors do we have in common? — Angela Carter

I think, as written, 'Assassins' simply acknowledges the very human need to be acknowledged. As director, I've got to put aside any particular biases or prejudices that, as a moral human being, this is not an appropriate or acceptable way to get what you want. — Joe Mantello