Quotes about metaphor (16 Quotes)


    Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else. What is the other text, the original I have no answer. I suppose it is the source, the deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them in nets of words and swings them shining into the boat... where in this metaphor they die and get canned and eaten in sandwiches.

    For me the appropriate metaphor for the inner spiritual centre is a garden, a place of potential peace and tranquility. This garden is a place where the Spirit of God comes to make self-disclosure to share wisdom, to give affirmation or rebuke, to provide encouragement, and to give direction and guidance. When this garden is in proper order, it is a quiet place, and there is an absence of busyness, of defiling noise, of confusion. The inner garden is a delicate place, and if not properly maintained it will be quickly overrun by intrusive under-growth. God does not often walk in disordered gardens. And that is why inner gardens that are ignored are said to be empty.

    I couldn't have come up with a better metaphor for my life and my internal conflict. It amazes me how quickly we can manifest our fears; not only had I created my 'I'm never satisfied, I'll drive her away' nightmare.


    I clawed the stuff out bit by painful, pink bit, ... until my knife was sunk into the leg bone up past the hilt. It made dreadful scraping noises - I felt like I could feel it in the center of my bones. A passing metaphor to explorers of the deep wilds of Africa does not seem out of place here - there was a definite Heart of Darkness quality to this. How much more interior can you get, after all, than the interior of bones It's the center of the center of things.


    Sport is a wonderful metaphor for life. Of all the sports that I played - skiing, baseball, fishing - there is no greater example than golf, because you're playing against yourself and nature.

    Not so many years ago there was no simpler or more intelligible notion than that of going on a journey. Travel movement through space provided the universal metaphor for change. One of the subtle confusions perhaps one of the secret terrors of modern life is that we have lost this refuge. No longer do we move through space as we once did.



    We all perform our lives in a way. And the actor is a perfect metaphor to get at that theme of 'how do we find our authentic selves?' And that we all - whether we're actors or not - perform ourselves. As a way of searching. As a way of fumbling around and trying to say, is this my voice? Is this who I am?




    The metaphor of the king as the shepherd of his people goes back to ancient Egypt. Perhaps the use of this particular convention is due to the fact that, being stupid, affectionate, gregarious, and easily stampeded, the societies formed by sheep are most like human ones.

    We often attribute 'understanding' and other cognitive predicates by metaphor and analogy to cars, adding machines, and other artifacts, but nothing is proved by such attributions.

    It's possible to take that as a personal metaphor and then multiply it to a people, a race, a sex, a time. If we can keep this thing going long enough, if we can survive and teach what we know, we'll make it.



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