Top 134 Metaphorical Quotes & Sayings

By bringing together what we know and what we don't know through analogy, metaphorical thinking strikes the spark that ignites discovery.

Creativity is the art that can give rise to visionary metaphorical relationships, as opposed to purely psy-chological ones.

A tendency to make metaphorical connections is an occupational hazard for those of us who write.

Instead of of being so metaphorical with the rhyme, I was encouraged to go straight at it and hit it dead on and not waste time trying to cover things.

We do two things in life: We race the clock and everything is a struggle. One way or not, it's a metaphorical battle all of the time.

Our songs aren't metaphorical, normally: they're literal in their interpretation.

I think sci-fi and horror are a perfect vehicle for exploring racism and injustice, the horrors of that. They are real; they are actual; they are tangible. They are also metaphorical and invisible.

If I'm writing, I'll say something metaphorical or approximate, whereas scientists are very precise.

I know the expression love bloomed is metaphorical, but in my heart in this moment, there is one badass flower, captured in time-lapse photography, going from bud to wild radiant blossom in ten seconds flat.

Theatre is more metaphorical where you have to be louder and larger than life, whereas film is more subtle and more real.

The problem is Twitter is designing the metaphorical equivalent of a Toyota Prius. A car for the masses. While I want a Formula One race car.

Updike was the first to take the penile sensorium under the wing of elaborate metaphorical prose.

My initial thoughts about what a title can do was to set mood and the prime underlying core of the film's story, to express the story in some metaphorical way.

Most good writing is clear, vigorous, honest, alive, sensuous, appropriate, unsentimental, rhythmic, without pretension, fresh, metaphorical, evocative in sound, economical, authoritative, surprising, memorable, and light.

My favorite cut is probably "Drink of Choice," and it was done by Bryan Michael Cox, it's a metaphorical type song, about a woman being a drink. I'll let your mind wander with that one.

Music, because of its specific and far-reaching metaphorical powers, can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.

Oh, a very useful philosophical animal, your average tortoise. Outrunning metaphorical arrows, beating hares in races... very handy.

Our tools are extensions of our purposes, and so we find it natural to make metaphorical attributions of intentionality to them; but I take it no philosophical ice is cut by such examples.

Myths, legends and stories are the signposts previous generations have left us so we don't have to figure out our own personal journey in solitude! They have to be metaphorical, because their interpretation will be different for each individual life!

And what is the very essence of poetry if it is not this 'metaphorical language'-this marking of the before unapprehended relations of things?

Those who truly understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical.

Science is not metaphorical. Science is scientific.

The economy is just a metaphorical device, it’s not real. That's why it's got the word con in it.

Language operates between literal and metaphorical signification.

All knowledge is ultimately rooted in metaphorical (or analogical) modes of perception and thought.

Human language is mythological and metaphorical by nature.

Think about what artists, novelists and poets have in common: the ability to engage in metaphorical thinking, linking seemingly unrelated ideas, such as, 'It is the east, and Juliet is the Sun.'

Plot does not simply move with time, but spreads out conceptually in metaphorical space.

The mind is inherently embodied. Thought is mostly unconscious. Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.

All the moral laws are readily translated into natural philosophy, for often we have only to restore the primitive meaning of thewords by which they are expressed, or to attend to their literal instead of their metaphorical sense. They are already supernatural philosophy.

Mysticism and the supernatural are embedded in the show - it's called 'Da Vinci's Demons' for a reason, and it's not just metaphorical.

A metaphorical weight lifted from his allegorical chest and Artemis Fowl felt himself again.

Metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.

Everyone's got a boulder in their life of one sort or another that they need to overcome. For most people, it's not a literal one, but there are certainly metaphorical ones.

All of us were slowly losing that intellectual light that allows you always to tell the similar from the identical, the metaphorical from the real.

I think you sense the metaphorical resonance of what you're writing without analysing it too carefully. That leads you down dead ends. You stop imagining things and start writing towards these themes.

At the millennium we partied like it was 1999. And then we had a 10 year bathtub tequila hangover, man. Just hugging the metaphorical toilet on a daily basis.

I think all writing about art is in some way dancing to architecture. It's all about similitude, being analogous, metaphorical, adjectival, etc.

If believing absurd falsehoods increase the odds of getting laid or avoiding predators, your brain will believe those falsehoods with all its metaphorical little heart.

Be aware of textural elements throughout a party, like silverware, stemware, and linens. But the biggest element is metaphorical: it's your own touch. How are you making people feel?

The fantastical images in my works are descriptive in a different way - a metaphorical way - that removes you from reality. Then, this visually removed point of view allows you to deal with a very heavy subject.

Every religion, every mythology is true in this sense: It is true as metaphorical of the human and cosmic mystery.

I think that was E.T.'s central appeal, personally. E.T. is this metaphorical journey, this strange Odysseus from another world, who just wants to go home. Obviously, home must've been better!

Clearly, America has no shortage of metaphorical opportunities for the poor.

Language operates between literal and metaphorical signification

My parents were both storytellers. They always spoke with metaphorical richness.

Poetry is the establishment of a metaphorical link between white butterfly-wings and the scraps of torn-up love-letters.

What's so exciting and unstoppable about the horror genre is that I view it all as metaphorical exploration. It's the safe place that we, as a culture, can deal with things that upset and frighten us - the darker side of our nature.

The musical mystery is: How do you marry tuned percussion and voice? On a metaphorical level, everything that's really important - like the clouds, the sky and the earth - is a giant mystery.

Mapping, both literal and metaphorical, has always been about our quest for knowing.

Cyberspace' is a metaphorical idea which is supposed to be the space where your consciousness is located when you're using computer technology on the Internet, for example, and I'm not entirely sure it's such a useful term, but I think that's what most people mean by it.

I just like, when you look at people who have long careers in film, they're able to make films that are far away from themselves, because they're metaphorical. It creates more opportunities, I think.

For me, a theme that's always circling around in my head - which is why I love the horror genre - is what we're ready to do for metaphorical and physical survival.

Everything on the radio is metaphorical in a bad way. But when I write a lyric, like "bang my box," that's pretty clear.

'Cyberspace' is a metaphorical idea which is supposed to be the space where your consciousness is located when you're using computer technology on the Internet, for example, and I'm not entirely sure it's such a useful term, but I think that's what most people mean by it.

In deference to such spectacular carnage it is perhaps perverse to dwell upon one person's death, but we are creatures so constituted that the passing of one friend or one acquaintance has a profounder effect that that of 100,000 strangers. If there is any metaphorical truth in the Jewish proverb that he who saves one life saves the whole world, then there is equal metaphorical truth in the proposition that when one person dies, the whole world dies with them.

The world appears rectilinear, but is in fact curvilinear - a literal truth in physics, and a metaphorical one in metaphysics.

Having a magical element in a realistic setting without explanation seems to me to be the hallmark of fairy tales, which present us with a kind of metaphorical look at some aspect of our lives.

I think dreams are metaphors. Everything you do in writing is metaphorical. So it seems like the same arena to me.

What haunts me is not exactly the absence of literal space so much as a deep craving for metaphorical space: release, escape, some kind of open-ended freedom.