Metaphor & Analogy Quotes (177 Quotes)

I think it's a great analogy.

I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of thought without profound study of the mathematical ideas of successive epochs is like omitting Hamlet from the play which is named after him. That would be claiming too much. But it is certainly analogous to cutting out the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly exact. For Ophelia is quite essential to the play, she is very charming ... and a little mad.

It's certainly getting grown-ups like you talking about Barbie, and the metaphor that they are using reflects the majority of people's fascination with celebrity.

Weight is the physical reality for the character, but it's also a metaphor for all the ways women feel they don't fit in,

One good analogy is worth three hours discussion.

The cartoon is a metaphor really for the fact that it's almost impossible in our celebrity obsessed culture to move around genres and sort of change you ideas, change your face, you know?

Life is like an analogy.

I think what has happened to him is out of line. They've blown this out of proportion big time. He didn't mean any harm. Anybody who knows him knows he's a sarcastic person. What he said was more of an analogy.

Taken in context, what I was saying was that, compared to Europe, America is a very young country and we are still growing as a nation. It is a shame that the metaphor I used was taken so radically out of context and slung about irresponsibly by the news media. There was no anti-American sentiment. In fact, it was just the opposite. I am an American. I love my country and have great hopes for it. It is for this reason that I speak candidly and sometimes critically about it. I have benefited greatly from the freedom that exists in my country and for this I am eternally grateful.

The cider house rules are the metaphor for those rules that you feel you have to oppose because you feel they don't make sense to you.

The hard part is, from the outside, the expectation is that it is going to be very easy, you're just going to roll out there with your talent, ... That can lead to a lot of angst when things don't go well. There's a lot more to being a team than talent. I used the analogy of the Olympics with them. We have a lot of good individual players, but that is not going to be enough.

I was trying to think of a title for it, which is a hard thing. Limbo is basically a metaphor, anyway ... it's this place where you're neither here nor there ... and so many people live that kind of life.

I am heartbroken that this movie would cause anyone pain. It should be a source of joy. The story is a metaphor about how we try to stay in our own little bubbles, we don't let life in, we don't take the journey.

In an interesting way, the operation becomes almost a metaphor for hope and optimism. A little child can have a new face with a smile restored, and suddenly his mother's smile is restored and his father's and the outer family's... and they bring him back to the village and the village is delighted... The ripples and effects of this are fantastic.

The garden is a metaphor for life, and gardening is a symbol of the spiritual path.

You know me. Hostility makes me shrink up like a... pauses I can't think of a non-sexual metaphor.

Let us suppose that an ichthyologist is exploring the life of the ocean. He casts a net into the water and brings up a fishy assortment. Surveying his catch, he proceeds in the usual manner of a scientist to systematise what it reveals. He arrives at two generalisations (1) No sea-creature is less than two inches long (2) All sea-creatures have gills. These are both true of his catch, and he assumes tentatively that they will remain true however often he repeats it. In applying this analogy, the catch stands for the body of knowledge which constitutes physical science, and the net for the sensory and intellectual equipment which we use in obtaining it. The casting of the net corresponds to observation for knowledge which has not been or could not be obtained by observation is not admitted into physical science. An onlooker may object that the first generalization is wrong. 'There are plenty of sea-creatures under two inches long, only your net is not adapted to catch them.' The icthyologist dismisses this objection contemptuously. 'Anything uncatchable by my net is ipso facto outside the scope of icthyological knowledge. In short, 'what my net can't catch isn't fish.' Or - to translate the analogy - 'If you are not simply guessing, you are claiming a knowledge of the physical universe discovered in some other way than by the methods of physical science, and admittedly unverifiable by such methods. You are a metaphysician. Bah'

Unlike metaphor, metonymy does not try to fuse images together.

The London equity market is very interested in this space. An analogy with the dot com boom has been mentioned.

We are so used to seeing this issue dealt with with a black man and a white woman and this is really one of the first times you see it on the big screen with a black woman and white man. The difference is it's usually the couple against the world but in this case it's really her. Her friends are really not against her. Her family is really not giving her too much trouble. It's really her own prejudices ... her own struggle with it. This could be a metaphor for doing anything outside of the box that you put yourself in. It could be a relationship with someone of a different religion or dating somebody outside of your class lines ... anything. When you step outside of your 'comfort zone,' how do you deal with that

It's extremely difficult to put Anderson in a box and explain him definitely in a one hour film and I guess this room is a metaphor for that.

One simile, that solitary shines; In a dry desert of a thousand lines.

Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.

I take the walk to be the externalization of an interior seeking so that the analogy is first of all between the external and the internal.

Nationality is the miracle of political independence; race is the principle of physical analogy.

I heard my name associated with the Peter Pan syndrome more than once. But really, what's so wrong with Peter Pan? Peter Pan flies. He is a metaphor for dreams and faith.

The whole concept of the devil is a metaphor on one level.

C. S. Lewis put it well when he gave us the analogy of remodeling the human soul and a living house 'Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently, He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage but He is building a palace.' (Mere Christianity New York Macmillan, 1960, p. 174.)

Using a metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like a red flag to a bull, was like putting something very annoying in front of someone who was annoyed by it

Consider a man riding a bicycle. Whoever he is, we can say three things about him. We know he got on the bicycle and started to move. We know that at some point he will stop and get off. Most important of all, we know that if, at any point between the beginning and the end of his journey he stops moving and does not get off the bicycle, he will fall off it. That is a metaphor for the journey through life of any living thing, and I think of any society of living things.

Maybe we can use a metaphor for it, out of dance. I think for many years I was aware of the need, in dance and in life, to breathe deeply and to take in more air than we usually take in.

It's a metaphor for our culture. This is where we get a lot of images we use in popular culture.

Did you ever think about life as a metaphor for television

It's a metaphor for time-based, often highly reductive, early video that kind of puts you to sleep, ... You are supposed to drift off with him. It's a very funny thing. As he is falling asleep, the lights of the city are beginning to get brighter. Things run rather counter.

In politics, what gets bad gets worse. And we've been on a a bad roll for quite some time. We're in an environment now where every mistake is a metaphor.

I would be very hard pressed to think of a good historical analogy. I don't think there is one.

Most Hollywood boxing movies are metaphors. Your movie is not a metaphor. It's really about boxing.

And the other great thing that we're allowed to do and you're not is use metaphor.

Imagine a school with children that can read or write, but with teachers who cannot, and you have a metaphor of the Information Age in which we live.

Science always uses metaphor.

The body is like an elaborate metaphor. One may be able to taste and not swallow, like the anorexic, or to swallow and not integrate, like the bulimic or obese.

The shoes are a metaphor for these two women who have the kind of dynamic that a lot of women have with each other where one is thinner, the other is smarter. One is more attractive, the other has more money.

PASS THE PEAS. I think I am the only one in the band who enjoys black-eyed peas, ... When I am having a good soul-food meal, that is always on the menu. The guys aren't as fond of them. I think with them it's more of a metaphor.

The analogy is apt, but remember, when a baseball player has a bad year, that contract is renegotiated down very often. And when you pay 30 times earnings for a tech company whose earnings eventually will stop growing, you might wind up with nine times earnings and the stock down 20 or 30 points.

Divine life is in touch with the whole universe on the analogy of the soul's contact with the body.

The river is a metaphor for life in general, ... all the bullshit that you deal with from being a kid growing up. The whole thing's just about life and death.

The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. You can always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase, the leaping simile.

An analogy would be when you're scanning the radio dial and you get the same station separated by a small blank space. The size of the blank space is directly proportional to the strength of the magnetic field at the location in space where the station is being broadcast.

The list is a metaphor for troubled national parks all across the nation, ... Some of our national parks are becoming a national disgrace.

There is a similarity, if I may be permitted an excursion into tenuous metaphor, between the feel of a chilly breeze and the feel of a knife's blade, as either is laid across the back of the neck. I can call up memories of both, if I work at it. The chilly breeze is invariably going to be the more pleasant memory.