Metaphor Quotes

Most popular metaphor quotes

Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art, if it is not art itself. - Twyla Tharp quote.
Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art, if it is not art itself.

art

If I were to give off-the-cuff advice to anyone trying to institute change, I would say, "How clear is the metaphor?" - Warren Bennis quote.
If I were to give off-the-cuff advice to anyone trying to institute change, I would say, "How clear is the metaphor?"
Warren Bennis The Unconscious Conspiracy: Why Leaders Can’t Lead

change

A metaphor is both detour and destination, a digression that gets to the point. - James Geary quote.
A metaphor is both detour and destination, a digression that gets to the point.
James Geary I is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor

destination

An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor. - Robert Frost quote.
An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.

ideas

A noble metaphor, when it is placed to an advantage, casts a kind of glory around it, and darts a luster through a whole sentence. - Joseph Addison quote.
A noble metaphor, when it is placed to an advantage, casts a kind of glory around it, and darts a luster through a whole sentence.
The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor.  It is the one thing that cannot be learned from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars. - Aristotle quote.
The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor.  It is the one thing that cannot be learned from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.
There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor.  You can't think without metaphors. - Mary Catherine Bateson quote.
There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor.  You can't think without metaphors.
Scratch the simplest expressions, and you will find the metaphor. - Samuel Butler quote.
Scratch the simplest expressions, and you will find the metaphor.
Metaphors  have a way of holding the most truth in the least space. - Orson Scott Card quote.
Metaphors  have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.
The coldest word was once a glowing new metaphor. - Thomas Carlyle quote.
The coldest word was once a glowing new metaphor.
I would like him to use certain words in a metaphorical sense, whenever it is appropriate, putting them to novel use like a gardener grafting a branch on to a healthier trunk, and so increasing their attractiveness and beauty.
All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry. - G. K. Chesterton quote.
All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.
All of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them. - George Eliot quote.
All of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them.
I love metaphor the way some people love junk food.  I think metaphorically, I feel metaphorically, see metaphorically.
The metaphor is a shorter simile, or rather a kind of magical coat, by which the same idea assumes a thousand different appearances. - Oliver Goldsmith quote.
The metaphor is a shorter simile, or rather a kind of magical coat, by which the same idea assumes a thousand different appearances.
When we are caught in conceptual traps, the best exit is often a change in metaphor...because we need a shift to more fruitful perspectives, and metaphor is often the best agent of conceptual transition. - Stephen Jay Gould quote.
When we are caught in conceptual traps, the best exit is often a change in metaphor...because we need a shift to more fruitful perspectives, and metaphor is often the best agent of conceptual transition.
Yesterday's daring metaphors are today's clichés. - Arthur Koestler quote.
Yesterday's daring metaphors are today's clichés.
We are a people captivated by the power and romance of metaphor, forever seeking the invisible through the image of the visible. - Lewis H. Lapham quote.
We are a people captivated by the power and romance of metaphor, forever seeking the invisible through the image of the visible.
I love metaphor.  It provides two loaves where there seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish. - Bernard Malamud quote.
I love metaphor.  It provides two loaves where there seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish.
Effective metaphor does more than shed light on the two things being compared. It actually brings to the mind's eye something that has never before been seen. It's not just the marriage ceremony linking two things; it's the child born from the union.
Metaphor is the energy charge that leaps between images, revealing their connections. - Robin Morgan quote.
Metaphor is the energy charge that leaps between images, revealing their connections.
The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed by man. - Jose Ortega y Gasset quote.
The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed by man.
Metaphor relies on what has been experienced before; it transforms the strange into the familiar. - Cynthia Ozick quote.
Metaphor relies on what has been experienced before; it transforms the strange into the familiar.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a metaphor is worth a thousand pictures. - Daniel H. Pink quote.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a metaphor is worth a thousand pictures.
Daniel H. Pink A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future
Metaphors and similes (puns, too, I might add) extend the dimensions and expand the possibilities of the world.  When both innovative and relevant, they can wake up a reader, make him or her aware, through elasticity of verbiage, that reality—in our daily lives as well as in our stories—is less prescribed than tradition has led us to believe. - Tom Robbins quote.
Metaphors and similes (puns, too, I might add) extend the dimensions and expand the possibilities of the world.  When both innovative and relevant, they can wake up a reader, make him or her aware, through elasticity of verbiage, that reality—in our daily lives as well as in our stories—is less prescribed than tradition has led us to believe.

puns simile

Late last night, upon the stair
I metaphor that wasn't there.
But if it's not there, how can I quote it?
"AHA!" I told myself—and wrote it.
Metaphors are the diplomats of rhetoric; they lead you urbanely to the brink, but it is you who states some unique conclusion to your own discovering self.
Everything is arbitrary except metaphor, which detects the essential kinship of all things.
Charles Simic The Uncertain Certainty: Interviews, Essays, and Notes on Poetry
The highest stretch of improvement a single word is capable of, is a high metaphor. - Laurence Sterne quote.
The highest stretch of improvement a single word is capable of, is a high metaphor.
Half the wrong conclusions at which mankind arrive are reached by the abuse of metaphors, and by mistaking general resemblance of imaginary similarity for real identity.