"Metaphorical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said to be justice in so far as the reason commands the irascible and concupiscible, and these obey reason; and in general in so far as to each part of man is ascribed what is becoming to it. Hence the Philosopher (Ethic. v, 11) calls this "metaphorical justice." ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... was quite serious—intended no joke. He evidently used the term "cold," not only in reference to temperature, but also to the amount of discomfort usually suffered from it. And that it may sometimes be used in a metaphorical sense is evident from our expressions "a cold ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... Claudius women and boys were searched to ascertain whether there were any styluses in their pen cases. Stabbing with the pen, therefore, is not merely a metaphorical expression. ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... with certain circumstances, which being mixed with sweeter ingredients, tended altogether to compose a draught that might be termed bitter-sweet; than which, as nothing can be more disagreeable to the palate, so nothing, in the metaphorical sense, can be so injurious to ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... investing with an ideal magnitude, the proportions of nature, is plainly, from what we observe in heroic poetry, painting, and sculpture, the soul itself of the superhuman and sublime. Of the justness of the metaphorical compliment implied in the delineation of the head, it is not for the author to speak; of its exquisiteness and delicacy, his sense is too strong for expression. The habitual pensiveness of the elevated eyebrows, mingled with the momentary gaiety of the rest of the ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... sceptics, that the common belief in an external world was reasonable. Brown in his lectures ridiculed Reid's claim. This 'mighty achievement,' the 'supposed overthrow of a great system,' was 'nothing more than the proof that certain phrases are metaphorical, which were intended by their authors to be understood only as metaphors.'[480] The theory was dead before Reid slew it, though the phrases were still used as a mere 'relic,' or survival of an obsolete doctrine.[481] The impossibility of constructing extension out of our sensations ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... to show the evil of disobedience before he can pardon. Christ is willing to die in order to make this impression on the minds of men. And this he accordingly does. But unfortunately, as we said, there is nothing in the Scripture, not even a metaphorical expression, to support this theory. The apostles did not have recourse for their figures and images to such usage of government, and that for the simple reason that no such usage or necessity then existed. The governments were all despotic, and no despot, wishing to pardon, had any difficulty ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... Whereat Carlotta laughed, and bent forward to get a view of the victim. I austerely directed her attention to the stage. It was a metaphorical fly whose ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... Strasbourg: these having been executed by different pens, evidently in the hands of individuals of less wrongheadedness and acrimony of feeling than the Parisian Printer. Mons. Crapelet has prefixed a Preface to his labours, in which he tells the world, that, using my more favourite metaphorical style of expression, "a CRUSADE has risen up ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... used in its narrow sense only—that of a struggle between separate individuals for the sheer means of existence. And at the very beginning of his memorable work he insisted upon the term being taken in its "large and metaphorical sense including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... of this strategic movement of Master Raymond's, was that he had a couple of very pleasant and good-humored officials to attend him all the way to Salem jail, where they arrived in the course of the evening. Proving that thus by the aid of a little metaphorical oil and sugar, even official machinery could be made to work a good deal smoother than it otherwise would. While the officers themselves expressed their utter disbelief to the people they met, of the truth of the charges that had been brought against Master Raymond; who in truth was himself "an ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... answered the Indian, in that somewhat obscure and metaphorical manner peculiar to his race. "He sleeps not soundly on the war-path. He shuts not his eyes when he enters the den of the wolf. He saw the camp-fires of ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... populations, to which it is habitually addressed. Without the education of the late Henry Hunt, he has quite as much capacity and more tact, with the single exception, that when attempting to soar to the metaphorical he is apt to enact the ludicrous blunders of Astley's clown aping the affected pomposity of the master; as v.g. in the "demon rising from the Thames with an Act of Parliament in his hands." Mr Alderman Cobden is, withal, a very ostentatious declaimer ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... say, 'has rather the air of being an invention, apres coup, to account for the Vedic text of calf Indra, born from a cow, than of being a genuine ancient myth.' The Vedic myth of Indra's amours in shape of a ram, I say 'will doubtless be explained away as metaphorical.' Nay, I will go further. It is perfectly conceivable to me that in certain cases a poetic epithet applied by a poet to a god (say bull, ram, or snake) might be misconceived, and might give rise to the worship of a god as a bull, or snake, or ram. Further, if civilised ideas ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... humanity. The miracles of the gospel could not astonish a people who held with intrepid faith the more splendid prodigies of the Mosaic law. The prophets of ancient days had cured diseases, raised the dead, divided the sea, stopped the sun, and ascended to heaven in a fiery chariot. And the metaphorical style of the Hebrews might ascribe to a saint and martyr the adoptive title ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... Thirdly, there are metaphorical uses of the word heaven, as when this name is applied to the Blessed Trinity, Who is the Light and the Most High Spirit. It is explained by some, as thus applied, in the words, "I will ascend into heaven"; whereby the evil spirit is represented ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... not in the blood of rams and of bulls, but they apparently conceived Him as requiring for His satisfaction the sighs and groans, the blood and roasted flesh of men whose forefathers had misunderstood the metaphorical character of prophecies which spoke of spiritual pre-eminence under the figure of a material kingdom. Was this the method by which Christ desired His title to the Messiahship to be commended to the hearts and understandings of the nation in which He was born? ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... the word unsoundness, in a figurative or metaphorical sense, to the human mind, yet we cannot detect in it any of the marks or indications that characterize the unsoundness of substances acknowledged to be in that state: it is, therefore, under this conviction, and with the view of increasing our knowledge of the human intellect, that, ...
— A Letter to the Right Honorable the Lord Chancellor, on the Nature and Interpretation of Unsoundness of Mind, and Imbecility of Intellect • John Haslam
... gegonos amartema]: Schol. For the metaphorical use of [Greek: akestai], cf. Soph. Ant. 1026. [Greek: Ostis es kakon Peson okeitai med' akinetos pelei]. So [Greek: eyuiatoteros dia to metapeisthenai an]. Aristot. ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... some resemblance to a bird. In fact, one did not require much imagination to note resemblance to a bird in Peter Briggs—many folks likened him to a woodpecker—for he flitted to and fro in Colonel Dodd's anteroom, among those awaiting audience, tapping here and rapping there with the metaphorical beak of questions, starting up the moths and grubs of business which men who came and waited hid under ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... that he would dislike to show the pain: but she had not the presence of mind or ready wit to give a skilful turn to the conversation. All this annoyed Roger, he could hardly tell why. He determined to take the metaphorical bull by the horns. Until that was done, his footing with Molly would always be insecure; as it always is between two friends, who mutually avoid a subject to which their thoughts ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... selection,' do not express a cause in the physical sense." "Kindred objections," he continues, "may be urged against the expression into which I was led when seeking to present the phenomena in literal terms rather than metaphorical terms—'the survival of the fittest.' In the working together of those many actions, internal and external, which determine the lives and deaths of organisms, we see nothing to which the words 'fitness' and 'unfitness' are applicable in the physical sense." And he continues: "Evidently, ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... M'riar," said Uncle Mo. He got up and went to the cupboard close at hand, to get the something, which would almost certainly have taken the form of brandy. But Aunt M'riar she said never mind her!—she would be all right in a minute. And in a metaphorical minute she pulled herself together, and went on clearing off the supper-table. Suggestions of remedies or assistance seemed alike distasteful to her, whether from Mrs. Burr or the two men, and there ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... not merely an instance of inartificial Hebrew style, but carries the lesson that God's judgment and deliverance come from the same source, and are harmonious parts of one educational process. Nor is this thought negatived by the statement in verse 18 that 'it repented the Lord.' That strong metaphorical ascription to Him of human emotion simply implies that His action, which of necessity is the expression of His will, was changed. The will of the moment before had been to punish; the will of the next moment was to deliver, because their 'groaning' showed that the punishment had done its work. But ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... mission and operation, but I do believe that very largely the glad thought of an indwelling Christ, who actually abides and works in our hearts, and is not only for us in the heavens, or with us by some kind of impalpable and metaphorical presence, but in simple, that is to say, in spiritual reality is in our spirits, has faded away from the consciousness of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... any appropriate metaphorical description of it one has to change the terminology altogether. In a very great line Mr. Kipling has ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... wearied eye of the tired magazine reader resting for a critical second on the above title will judge it to be merely metaphorical. Stories about the cup and the lip and the bad penny and the new broom rarely have anything to do with cups and lips and pennies and brooms. This story is the great exception. It has to do with an actual, material, visible and large-as-life ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... makes each separate inspiration by an effort as conscious as working a bellows. I doubt not that many men have died just at this place through absolute lack of will to continue such effort. Then the metaphorical paralysis of fear is seconded by the simulation of a literal one, extending through the limbs of one side or both; the sufferer reels, feeling one foot fail him—tries to revolve one arm like a windmill, that he may restore ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... that I use this term in a large and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny. Two canine animals, in a time of dearth, may be ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... of this kind of speaking and writing, which is called "metaphorical." The word metaphor comes from two Greek words meaning "to carry over." In "metaphorical" speech a name or description of one thing is transferred to another thing to which it could not apply in ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... hunt Honour at the view. A rare metaphorical application of the technical phrase, ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... III.15: His quietus make] Quietus means the official discharge of an account: from the Latin. Particularly in the Exchequer accounts, where it is still current. Chiefly used by authors in metaphorical senses.] ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... soon drew me so far from Safed, that I never heard how the dreadful day passed off which had been fixed for the accomplishment of the second prophecy. If the predicted spoliation was prevented, poor Mohammed Damoor must have been forced, I suppose, to say that he had prophesied in a metaphorical sense. This would be a sad falling off from the brilliant and substantial success ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... presents (together with various minor pieces of a somewhat similar kind) as striking a contrast with Troilus and Cressida, as Edward IV. does with Henry VI. His spectacles and pageants, chiefly in honour of London (London's Jus Honorarium, with other metaphorical Latin titles of the same description) are heavy, the weakness of his versification being especially felt in such pieces. His strength lies in the domestic and contemporary drama, where his pathos had free play, unrestrained by the necessity of trying to make it rise to chivalrous or heroic height, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... not take it, as it often is taken, in a vague, undefined, relative, or metaphorical sense. I use it in its scientific acceptation, and as expressing the opposite idea to property. When a portion of wealth passes out of the hands of him who has acquired it, without his consent, and without compensation, to him who has not created it, whether by force ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... laws are readily translated into natural philosophy, for often we have only to restore the primitive meaning of the words by which they are expressed, or to attend to their literal instead of their metaphorical sense. They are already supernatural philosophy. The whole body of what is now called moral or ethical truth existed in the golden age as abstract science. Or, if we prefer, we may say that the laws ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... association of ideas, they occasionally preserve the memory of a disused custom; but we cannot safely argue from them about right and wrong, matter and mind, freedom and necessity, or the other problems of moral and metaphysical philosophy. For the use of words on such subjects may often be metaphorical, accidental, derived from other languages, and may have no relation to the contemporary state of thought and feeling. Nor in any case is the invention of them the result of philosophical reflection; they ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... regarded war as an insignificant or even non-existent part of natural selection must be clear to all who have read his books. He was careful to state that he used the term "struggle for existence" in a "metaphorical sense," and the dominant factors in the struggle for existence, as Darwin understood it, were natural suitability to the organic and inorganic environment and the capacity for adaptation to circumstances; ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... than mere fine writing. It is a metaphorical representation of the incident he has previously described. In that incident he was particular struck by the actions of the lady. The young man turned his horse out of the path of the coach, but some part of the coach struck one of the wheels of the gig, and ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... are unable to procure themselves support," said Isabella, judiciously thinking that he would be most accessible to argument couched in his own metaphorical style, "what ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... here, and we do not know why it may not be in heaven, that the ones that are turned over and shook up, and the dust knocked out of them, and their metaphorical coat tail filled with boots, find that the whirligig of time has placed them above the parties who smote them, and we can readily believe that if Donaldson gets a first-class position of power, above the skies, he will make it decidedly warm for his persecutors when they ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... the intoxication which this news brought by Kinko in person, gave to all his friends, and particularly to the fair Zinca Klork. These things are expressible in no language—not even in Chinese, which lends itself so generously to the metaphorical. ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... when applied to animal motions, may properly express the quantity of resistance such motions may overcome; but that, when they are applied to mean the susceptibility or insusceptibility of animal fibres to motion, they become metaphorical terms; as in Sect. XII. 2. 1. and would be better expressed by ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... [Greek: Omous —— kataphagein].] "Eat up raw," without waiting to cook them; a metaphorical expression for to extirpate utterly and at once, taken from Homer, Il. v. 35: [Greek: Omon ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... body into another. Pythagoras is supposed not to have originated this doctrine, but to have received it from the Egyptians, by whose priesthood there is little doubt that it was generally promulgated. Some writers have suggested that this transmigration was only taught by Pythagoras in a metaphorical sense; as, for instance, when he said that the souls of men were transferred to beasts, it was only to teach us that irregular passions render us brutes; on examination, however, we shall find that there is no ground to doubt that ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the Iroquois and Algonquins were nearly coming to blows on account of the hunting-grounds. This quarrel originated from a speech which Colonel McKay, then at the head of the Indian department, had addressed to the Iroquois, in which, making use of the metaphorical language of the people, he observed that Indians of all tribes ought to live together in the utmost concord and amity, seeing they inhabited the same villages, "and ate out of the same dish." This the Iroquois interpreted in a way more suitable to their own wishes than consistent with its real meaning. ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... BELT. A metaphorical term in geography for long and proportionally narrow encircling strips of land having any particular feature; as a belt of sand, a belt of hills, &c. It is, in use, nearly synonymous with zone. Also, to beat with a colt ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... him when a wreath of metaphorical smoke, and fire, and no mean report, startled the company of supping gentlemen. At the pitch of his voice, Mr. Sullivan Smith denounced Mr. Malkin in presence for a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... poetry. It offers a complete and curious illustration of the origin and growth of figurative words and phrases, and of their transfer from one language to another. The word anchor, for instance, was one of the earliest among the Greeks, a marine people, to take on a metaphorical sense. We see this even in Pindar, who speaks of his heroes as casting anchor on the summit of happiness. M. Planche follows this typical use of the word in Virgil, in Ovid, and in Racine, the last of whom says ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... qualities; but, at pure and downright believing—at taking God at His bare and simple word—Mr. Ready-to-halt beat them all. All that flashes in upon us from one shining word that stands on the margin of our so metaphorical author. This single word, the "promises," hangs like a key of gold beside the first mention of Mr. Ready-to-halt's crutches—a key such that in a moment it throws open the whole of Mr. Ready-to-halt's otherwise lockfast and secret and ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... observed that the words, "from out my heart," involve the first metaphorical expression in the poem. They, with the answer, "Nevermore," dispose the mind to seek a moral in all that has been previously narrated. The reader begins now to regard the Raven as emblematical—but it is not until the very last line of the very last stanza, ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... over-run with the love of poetry and romance, and delights in flowery language and metaphorical flourishes: is about eighteen, wants not either sense or politeness; and has read herself into a vein, more amorous (that was Mrs. Towers's word) than discreet. Has extraordinary notions of a first sight love; and gives herself greater liberties, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... last I shall neither want breakfast, dinner, nor supper. I shall keep a couple of horses, and I shall sleep upon a bed of down. I shall be in France this year, and in Spain the next; with many other particulars too tedious to mention. You may take me in a metaphorical sense; but I would rather choose ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... phrase and the measured judgments which are traditional in French literature, yet managing to envelop everything in a penumbra of emotional suggestion. Each expression of an idea is complete in itself; yet these expressions are often varied and constantly metaphorical, so that we are led to feel that much in that idea has remained unexpressed and is ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... long and tedious was the ride, still they pushed on, hoping to reach some stream ere the tents were pitched for the night, as an abundant supply of pure fresh water was essential to the comfort of their camp. In the metaphorical strain of a certain writer—"Phoebus drove his steeds to be foddered in their western stables." Slowly twilight fell upon the earth, and, one by one, the lamps of heaven were lit. The wagon in which Dr. Bryant and Mary rode was rather in the rear of the ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... etc.; "and the last to be more than the first:" he has, nevertheless, "a few things against them,"—especially "suffering that woman Jezebel to teach." Is this "woman Jezebel" to be taken in a literal or figurative sense? Analogy seems to require a metaphorical sense. If, in the preceding epistle, "Balaam" is not to be understood literally and personally, but figuratively and representatively, so Jezebel represents an individual, or rather as that other ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... American differs from the Eastern, in which he does not, at the same time, approach the Eskimo. In the absence of the scalping-knife, the tomahawk, the council fire, the wampum-belt, the hero chief, and the metaphorical orator, the Eskimo differs from the Ojibway, the Huron, and the Mohawk. True. But the Haidah and the Chimsheyan ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... s'nim!). Set a watch before my mouth, and keep the do-o-o-r of my lips—(Whoa! You merzavitz! What did you run into that tree for? Ecca voron! Podletz! Slepoi takoi! Chart tibi vasmee!)"—and Maximof lapsed into a strain of such ingenious and metaphorical profanity that my imagination was left to supply the deficiencies of my imperfect comprehension. He did not seem to be conscious of any inconsistency between the chanted psalm and the profane interjections by which it was ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... apparent, by its permanence. It gives a lasting satisfaction instead of a merely transient satisfaction: "the true good ... is an end in which the effort of a moral agent can really find rest."[1] In this statement two points seem to be involved which the use of the rather metaphorical term 'finding rest' tends to confuse. If we are looking for the distinction simply of a good action or motive from a bad one we may point to the approval of conscience in the former case: this has a permanence—or rather an independence of time—which distinguishes it from the satisfaction ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... thought, existing in words only, as language changes, it alters through forgetfulness of the earlier meanings of words, through similarities in sounds deceiving the ear, or through a confusion of the literal with the metaphorical signification of the same word. The character of languages also favors or retards such changes, pliable and easily modified ones, such as those of the American Indians, and in a less degree those of the Aryan nations, favoring a developed mythology, while rigid and monosyllabic ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... sport, but a science." There is no sport here. Men killed like this are like men killed by plague or the eruption of a volcano. And, indeed, what else are they? They are victims of a diseased humanity of the eruption—literal and metaphorical—of its hidden fires. And wars will grow more and more like this. What can stop them and banish these scenes? Only the hate of hate, only the love that can redeem even such a sight as this when at last we remember that it is for love's ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... us go further still, and suppose that our attention is attracted to the material side of the metaphor by the choice of a relationship which is incompatible with the gender of the two words composing the metaphorical expression: we get a laughable result. Such is the well-known saying, also attributed to M. Prudhomme, "Tous les arts (masculine) sont soeurs (feminine)." "He is always running after a joke," was said in Boufflers' presence regarding a very conceited fellow. Had Boufflers replied, "He won't ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... till it came to a button-manufacturer; and now Paine is travelling round the world in the form of buttons!" This variant of the Wandering Jew myth may now be regarded as unconscious homage to the author whose metaphorical bones may be recognized in buttons now fashionable, and some even found useful in holding ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... world, offers some curious particulars as to Gypsy life in the East at a remote period, will scarcely be considered out of place if reproduced here, and the following is as close a translation of it as the metaphorical style of the original ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... though it may be that, in our festivity of last night, some of our friends, if not perchance altogether ebrii, or drunken, were, to say the least, ebrioli, by which the ancients designed those who were fuddled, or, as your English vernacular and metaphorical phrase goes, half-seas-over. Not that I would so insinuate respecting you, Captain Waverley, who, like a prudent youth, did rather abstain from potation; nor can it be truly said of myself, who, having assisted at the tables of many great generals and ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... trouble now—a wolf that follows me everywhere, always threatening to rend me to pieces with its black jaws. Not you, old friend—a great, gaunt, man-eating, metaphorical wolf, far more terrible than that beast of the ancients which came to the poor man's door. In the darkness its eyes, glowing like coals, are ever watching me, and even in the bright daylight its shadowy form is ever near ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... and more an affair of chemistry. Science has now found what bids fair to be a very "glass of fashion"—not a metaphorical, but a literal glass, at least for lean people. The chemical properties of each color in the solar spectrum have long been known, and of late years it has also been discovered that plants may be made to thrive wonderfully in green-houses constructed of blue or ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... sort!" returned Allan. "The business is going with 'a wet sheet and a flowing sea, and a wind that follows free.' I'm not joking; I'm only metaphorical. A regular accountant has poked his nose into the books, and a steady-going lawyer's clerk attends at the office once a week. That doesn't look like neglect, does it? Leave the new steward alone for the present, and just tell me which of those two tenants you would take, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... to our taste not so much so. Note the epithets in "the lank wolf," "the wan raven," "bird greedy for slaughter," "the dewy-winged eagle," "dusky-coated," "crooked-beaked," "horny-beaked," "the maid, fair-cheeked," "curly-locked," "elf-bright." To the Anglo-Saxon poet, much that we call metaphorical was scarcely more than literal statement. As the object pictured itself to his responsive imagination, he expressed it with what was to him a direct realism. His lines are filled with a profusion of metaphors of every ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... very easy for Montague to imagine a tigress in Mrs. Winnie's conservatory; unless, indeed, one were willing to take the proposition in a metaphorical sense. There are wild creatures which sleep in the heart of man, and which growl now and then, and stir their tawny limbs, and cause one to start and turn cold. Mrs. Winnie wore a dress of filmy softness, trimmed with red flowers which paled beside her own intenser colouring. She had a perfume ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... another supply, and then to testify. This summary proceeding scared the rum-dealers and, no doubt, they guarded against being caught again. But the victims of moral dry rot held up their hands in rebuke and one of the city judges wept metaphorical tears of chagrin that the Police should engage in the awful crime of enticing a youth to commit crime. The record does not show that this judge, or any other, had ever done anything to check the practice of selling liquor to minors, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... good dish too," observed Mr Snipe, whose intellect, being strictly limited to dominoes, was not quite equal to the metaphorical. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... of cotton stuffs and glass-makers, and the Rabbi was often himself a shepherd in the literal sense, teaching the Torah while at work in the fields. He must have felt embarrassed sometimes between his devotion to his metaphorical and to his literal flock. When I was at Moza, I was talking over some Biblical texts with Mr. David Yellin, who was with me. The colonists endured this for a while, but at last they broke into open complaint. One of ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... odous and planois had not been used, the line might have been explained in a metaphorical instead of an absolute sense, as we say "WAYS and means," and "wanderings" for error and confusion. But they meant literally paths or roads, such as we tread with our feet; and wanderings, such as a man makes when he loses himself in a desert, or roams from city to ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... once clear that there are four terms in the syllogism, "light" being used both in a real and in a metaphorical sense. But if the sophism takes a subtle form, it is, of course, apt to mislead, especially where the conceptions which are covered by the same word are related, and inclined to be interchangeable. ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... said I; "the three first words are metaphorical, and the fourth, lagg'd, is the old genuine Norse term, lagda, which signifies laid, whether in durance, or in bed, has nothing to do with the matter. What you have told me confirms me in an opinion which I have long entertained, that thieves' Latin is a ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... against metaphorical rocks in the nineteenth century," continued Raeburn. "I remember wondering why the old clerk in my father's church always sung that verse lustily; but you see we have exactly the same spirit now, only in a more civilized form, barbarity changed ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... started again on my journey, I was pulling up towards it. Soon I was gazing down upon the tiny patches of light green and a few solitary cottages, resembling a little beehive, and one could imagine the metaphorical wax-laying and honey-making of the inhabitants. These people were away from all mankind, living in life-long loneliness, and all unconscious of the distinguished foreigner away up yonder, who wondered at their patient toiling, but who, like them, had his Yesterday, To-day and To-morrow. There they ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... the point of one passage, not being contradicted by another directly, but only by implication, if the implication is clear, and the nature and context of the passage preclude metaphorical interpretation? (50) There are many such instances in the Bible, as we saw in Chap. II. (where we pointed out that the prophets held different and contradictory opinions), and also in Chaps. IX. and X., where we drew attention to the contradictions in the historical narratives. ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza
... they had had so many chances, and had become so very hot, that not to have answered at length would have bordered on the miraculous. The persevering governess was not displeased at this, for she would not have lost the opportunity of displaying her own skill in metaphorical illustration, for a great deal, I am very sure. The clock struck eight; there was a general movement. The three sisters folded their work, and lodged it carefully in separate drawers. The eldest then produced the table-cloth, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... so long as they can tell where Brixton is on the way home. I do not even mind whether they can put two and two together in the mathematical sense; I am content if they can put two and two together in the metaphorical sense. But all this longer statement of an obvious view comes back to the metaphor I have employed. I do not care a dump whether they know the alphabet, so long as they know the ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... production of a different branch of the human family, and indicate a different tone of thought, but they bring out very clearly the figurative character of primitive language, abounding in fanciful descriptions of natural phenomena, which, when their metaphorical, character was forgotten, passed by an easy transition into the graceful myths and legends of ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... difficulty is explained by the parallel case of Hymenaeus and Philetus, who taught that 'the resurrection had already taken place,' [120:2] or in other words, that all such terms must be understood in a metaphorical sense as applying to the spiritual change, the new birth or resuscitation of the believer in the present world'. Thus everything hangs together. But such teaching is altogether foreign to Marcion. He did indeed deny the resurrection ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... from a cold narration, is a more liberal though chaste use of these ornaments which go under the name of figurative and metaphorical expressions; and poetry distinguishes itself from oratory by words and expressions still more ardent and glowing. What separates and distinguishes poetry is more particularly the ornament of verse; it is this which gives it its character, and is an essential, ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... and were reconciled. But it was a reconciliation without cordiality, without affection—a shaking of hands across a barrier of brass; and even this hand-shaking was a strictly metaphorical one, for they do not seem ever to have got beyond the interchange of a frigid bow. The opportunities, however, for observation were few. Soon after Randolph's arrival at Orven Hall, his father entered on a life of the most absolute seclusion. The mansion is an old three-storied ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... It is doubtful whether those who aspire to a finer literary palate than is possessed by the vulgar herd are really so keenly appreciative as the innocent reader of published remarks might suppose. Hypocrisy in matters of taste—whether of the literal or metaphorical kind—is the commonest of vices. There are vintages, both material and intellectual, which are more frequently praised than heartily enjoyed. I have heard very good judges whisper in private that they have found Landor dull; and the rare citations ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... so in any case. How do I know whether the only use people may make of it (and that a metaphorical one) may not be to throw it ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... formality of a lecture, or the apparatus of a chemist. In all your attempts to instruct him in chemistry, the greatest care should be taken that he should completely understand one experiment, before you proceed to another. The common metaphorical expression, that the mind should have time to digest the food which it receives, is founded ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... plain expression of the fact; Natural Selection is a metaphorical expression of it, and to a certain degree indirect and incorrect, since, even personifying Nature, she does not so much select special variations as exterminate the most ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... This metaphorical black dog meant a bad humor. Eyebright had waked up cross and irritable. What made her wake up cross I am not wise enough to explain. The old-fashioned doctors would probably have ascribed it to indigestion, the new-fashioned ones to nerves or malaria or a "febrile tendency"; ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... "It's metaphorical-like that it's intended, Mr. Bunting. We haven't got the same facilities—no, not a quarter of ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... contraction of "governor," a father. It will, no doubt, soon supersede sire, which is at present the poetical equivalent for the name of the author of one's existence. See all the poets, passim. 9. "Said as how he'd never fight," the thing was out of the question; a metaphorical phrase, though certainly, at present, a vulgar one. 10. "Snooze," slumber personified, like "Morpheus," or "Somnus." 11. "Daddle."—Q. from daktulos, a finger—pars pro toto!—Hand, the only synonym for it that ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... is modest in his preface about his collection of verse,[32] although he is rather too elaborately metaphorical in his way of blushing properly. He says, as to the flaws in his poems, that he "has a reasonable confidence that they will not all be discovered by any one reader." This may be true from the probable fact that no one reader will read them all; we think ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... shall either have the satisfaction of meeting our friends, or be satisfied without meeting them[478].' BOSWELL. 'Yet, Sir, we see in scripture, that Dives still retained an anxious concern about his brethren.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, we must either suppose that passage to be metaphorical, or hold with many divines, and all the Purgatorians that departed souls do not all at once arrive at the utmost perfection of which they are capable.' BOSWELL. 'I think, Sir, that is a very rational ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... that's likely to come here—now you do see what I mean, don't you, now? And you won't take it the wrong way? No, I was sure you wouldn't. There, now, we'll shake 'ands over it, and be as good friends as ever.' The handshaking was metaphorical merely. Thomas smiled, and was endeavouring to shape a sentence, when he heard voices out in ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... memory may still be suggested to English poets by the sight of a butterfly, and probably will be for hundreds of years to come. Perhaps the best poem of a half-metaphorical, half-philosophical thought about butterflies is the beautiful prologue to Browning's "Fifine at the Fair," which prologue is curiously entitled "Amphibian"—implying that we are about to have a reference to creatures capable of living in two distinctive elements, yet absolutely belonging neither ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... in which all the economic positions are already possessed. History offers as the classic illustration the European Jew. The stranger is by his very nature no landowner—in saying which, land is taken not merely in a physical sense but also in a metaphorical one of a permanent and a substantial existence, which is fixed, if not in space, then at least in an ideal position within the social order. The special sociological characteristics of the stranger may ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... and it does not allow that the diseased oyster can transmit its pearl-bearing qualities and its peculiar flavors; so that the attitude of aging youth, in the stiffening of its tastes, is one of rejection toward all new bivalves, or, not to be tediously metaphorical, books." ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... explains how some metaphorical expressions, seemingly implying that there is something different from Brahman, have to ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... metaphors equally strong, without any such mystery being attached to them. I cannot but feel that I and every other vulgar reader would be sure to be exposed to the peril of suspecting that in that single case a metaphorical meaning much more probable than so ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... words the metaphorical sense has justled out the original sense altogether, so that in respect of it they are become obsolete."— Campbell's Rhet., p. 323. "Sure never any mortal was so overwhelmed with grief as I am at this present."—Sheridan's Elocution, p. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... about his wants and wishes, his views and feelings on things in general which, to you, might prove little more than amazing. As things go, he prefers to do nothing and to proffer no kind of explanation as to why he is standing there in a metaphorical mill pond very much 'longer ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... the manufacture. This implies that industry can not be employed to any greater extent than there is capital to invest. The proposition, indeed, must be assented to as soon as it is distinctly apprehended. The expression "applying capital" is of course metaphorical: what is really applied is labor; capital being an indispensable condition. The food of laborers and the materials of production have no productive power; but labor can not exert its productive power unless provided with them. There can be no more industry than is supplied with materials ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... of the Vedas is continually poetic and metaphorical. They contain a sort of metaphysics as well as ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... "the striking connection which has been pointed out between the local geological formations in Germany and the revolutionary disposition of the people has more than a metaphorical significance. Where the primeval physical revolutions of the globe have been the wildest in their effects, and the most multiform strata have been tossed together or thrown one upon the other, it is a very intelligible ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... is the one of which I am most proud. The manner in which you helped me has entitled you to my affectionate esteem. But we did scuttle the ship. Before you can quarrel with Bonteen you must be able to show that a metaphorical scuttling of a ship must necessarily be a disgraceful act. You see how he at once retreats behind the fact that ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... in New York, and knew the length of Broadway; and at the recollection, felt flattered by the thought of being conveyed in an open chariot drawn by four or even eight horses, with nodding plumes, (literal ones for the horses,—only metaphorical ones for me,) past those stately buildings fluttering with handkerchiefs, and through streets black with people thronging to see the man who had solved the riddle of Africa. And then it would be pleasant, too, to make a neat little speech to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... in a metaphorical sense that William can be described as an Anointed of the Lord. For whereas Francis-Joseph was both anointed and crowned as King of Hungary in 1867, Emperor William has never been the object of either of these ceremonies. The ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... the pertinent issue of material facts, and may inspire us with a wise sentiment in their presence. In this sense I should say that Greek mythology was true and Calvinist theology was false. The chief terms employed in psycho-analysis have always been metaphorical: "unconscious wishes", "the pleasure-principle", "the Oedipus complex", "Narcissism", "the censor"; nevertheless, interesting and profound vistas may be opened up, in such terms, into the tangle of events in a man's life, and a fresh start may be made ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... warn him, kindly, quietly, but none the less forcefully; and if he persisted Mr. Skinner would dispense with the services of that subordinate so fast the offender, nine times out of ten, would be left standing in a sort of fog and blinking at the suddenness with which the metaphorical can had, metaphorically speaking, been tied to his caudal appendage. Every large business office has its Skinner—a queer combination of decency, honesty, brains and brutality, a worshiper at the shrine of Mammon in the temple of the great god Business, a reactionary Republican, treasurer of ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... it is going too far to say that 'swift' is colloquial only in metaphorical applications, we might speak of 'a swift bowler' without exciting surprise; but it is expedient to restore this word to general use, and avoid the use of fast for denotation of speed. 'To stand fast' is very well, ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... endured any addition, and who strained their fancies in expressing the transcendency of the books of Moses, in aid of their opinion—that the founders of the doctrine borrowed their notions and phrases respecting the Bible throughout. Remove the metaphorical drapery from the doctrine of the Cabbalists, and it will be found to contain the only intelligible and consistent idea of that plenary inspiration, which later divines extend to all the canonical books; as thus:- "The ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... it could be austere. Meanness, thanklessness, loquaciousness, jealousy, an unbecoming attire, evil thoughts, whatever is sensual, whatever is coarse, any promenade in mud actual or metaphorical, severely it condemned. Particularly was avarice censured. "There are many who do not like to give," Ormuzd, in the Vendidad, confided to Zarathrustra. The high god added: ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... can imagine motives only as existing in a man's mind, and in the form of vague interior representations, analogous to those which we have of our own inward states; we can express them only by words, generally metaphorical. Here we have psychic facts, generally called feelings and ideas. Documents exhibit three kinds of such facts: (a) motives and conceptions in the authors' minds and expressed by them; (b) motives and ideas ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... agreed to drill an hour daily in addition to the prescribed work, provided Billy would "take hold" in earnest, and this was the company that, under his command, swept the boards six weeks later and left San Pedro's contingent an amazed and disgusted crowd. Then Billy went to metaphorical pieces again until the war clouds overspread the land; then like his father's son he girded up his loins, went in for a commission and won. And here he was a "sub" in Uncle Sam's stalwart infantry with three classmates serving under him in the ranks and half a dozen more, either as junior ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... them. At the same time, it is found that the great magnetic waves which cover immense distances, work even more powerfully in the light than in the dark. May it not be that these things show, that there is more than a merely metaphorical use of words, when the Bible tells us of the power of Light to dissipate, and bring to naught, the powers of Darkness, while the Light itself is the Great Power, using the forces of the universe on the widest ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... himself to them. It was he whom they ate and drank; he became the true passover, the former one having been abrogated by his blood. It is impossible to translate into our essentially determined idiom, in which a rigorous distinction between the material and the metaphorical must always be observed, habits of style the essential character of which is to attribute to metaphor, or rather to the idea ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... just, or so clear-sighted. Wordsworth's character of the happy warrior cannot be reached in the height of it but by a warrior; nay, so much is it beyond common strength that I had supposed the entire meaning of it to be metaphorical, until one of the best soldiers of England himself read me the poem,[142] and taught me, what I might have known, had I enough watched his own life, that it was entirely literal. There is nothing ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... geological arguments, with practical illustrations, to convince 'Squire Witherpee that the soil of East Hampton was somewhat feeble in the production of the precious metals—except, perhaps, in a metaphorical sense. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to a pastoral race are well nigh innumerable. Poetry has seized upon the material terms and has converted them into a host of metaphors; for "the genius of the Arabic language, like that of the Hebrew, is to form new ideas by giving a metaphorical signification to material objects (e.g. 'Azud, lit. the upper arm; met. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... punishments, I can only say, that there are many passages in Scripture, and these not metaphorical, which declare that all flesh shall be finally saved; that the word aionios is indeed used sometimes when eternity must be meant, but so is the word 'Ancient of Days,' yet it would be strange reasoning to affirm, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... a moral and preceptive character; but, although replete with noble sentiment, and finished in a style of literary excellence far more correct than that of the preceding age, they are too much infected with mythology and metaphorical affectations to suit the palate of the present day. He possessed, however, the soul of a poet; and when he abandons himself to his native redondillas, delivers his sentiments with a sweetness and grace inimitable. ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... back once more. I found myself repeating fragments of a hymn often sung by a dear Christian woman of Fairhaven when I was rebuilding the Spray. I was to hear once more and only once, in profound solemnity, the metaphorical hymn: ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... future and hers, as the basis, the condition, the circumstances, of her life and of his. An old thought of her own came to her, back from the dim region of ante-marriage days, the idea to which the Henstead doctor had given a terse, if metaphorical, expression. Quisante was their race-horse, their money was on him, they wanted a win for the stable. If this or more than this were true, then there would be no win for the stable; the horse was a grand horse, but he wouldn't stand training. What was left then? An invalid ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... C——, and that they are each and all of them individuals of too little consequence for you to hang your decisions upon, of what does a discussion of this nature consist, except first, of measures, the explanation of the most important of which is now wrapped up in metaphorical ambiguity; and secondly, of the men who are to execute them; and if these really are severally as insignificant as you deem them, what better argument can be found against putting them or keeping them in the first ranks of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... the rough old English form. At least three words in each long line were alliterative— two in the first half, and one in the second. Metaphorical phrases were common, such as war-adder for arrow, war-shirts for armour, whale's-path or swan-road for the sea, wave-horse for a ship, tree-wright for carpenter. Different statements of the same fact, different phrases for the same thing— what are called parallelisms in Hebrew poetry— ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... Lange does more justice to the religious need than Spencer does. While he sees in religion the metaphorical realization of the needs of the heart, of a "creation of a home of the spirit," he gives to the heart full play to satisfy its need, and to create and arrange for itself a spiritual home entirely ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... No longer is any but the most confirmed writer suffered to spin out volume after volume in complacent ignorance of his readers' state of mind, for these victims of eye-strain and nerves turn upon the newest book, the metaphorical last straw on the camel's load, with the exasperated cry, Why? Why? ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... Sauline period, while the difficulty of finding historical facts answering to the emphatic language is evaded, not met, by either assuming that such facts existed in some life which has left no trace, or by forcing a metaphorical sense on words which sound wonderfully like the sad language of a real sufferer. Of course, if we believe that prediction is an absurdity, any difficulty will be lighter than the acknowledgment that we have prediction here. But, unless we have ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... been sent me by a person who was of the fraternity, but is disabled by the loss of a finger, by which means he cannot, as he used to do, secure a die. But I am very much at a loss how to call some of the fair sex, who are accomplices with the Knights of Industry; for my metaphorical dogs[2] are easily enough understood; but the feminine gender of dogs has so harsh a sound, that we know not how to name it. But I am credibly informed, that there are female dogs as voracious as ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift |
