Top 458 Literal Quotes & Sayings

All of my songs are about me and my experiences. They're very literal.

Don't swear in the Literal Heart of Jesus.

And Christ was born into the world as the literal Son of this Holy Being; he was born in the same personal, real, and literal sense that any mortal son is born to a mortal father. There is nothing figurative about his paternity; he was begotten, conceived and born in the normal and natural course of events, for he is the Son of God, and that designation means what it says.

Language operates between literal and metaphorical signification.

All religions are true but none are literal.

There's a literal track: who says what to whom, what are people wearing, etcetera. And there's the abstract track: what ideas are suggested by the literal. And the real movie takes place in the relationship between the literal and the abstract.

The stage is suspension of disbelief. Film is a literal medium.

Just as there exists in writing a literal truth and a poetic truth, there also exists in a human being a literal anatomy and a poetic anatomy. One, you can see; one, you cannot. One is made of bones and teeth and flesh; the other is made of energy and memory and faith. But they are both equally true.

Transportation made sublimation literal. It conveyed evil to another world.

I've always had a more spatial mind, mathematical, than literal.

Photographs that transcend but do not deny their literal situation appeal to me.

Compulsion in the literal Sense is maliciously misrepresented, by supposing it authorizes Violences committed against the Truth. The Answer to this; by which it is prov'd, that the literal Sense does in reality authorize the stirring up Persecutions against the Cause of Truth, and that an erroneous Conscience has the same Rights as an enlighten'd Conscience.

People take things too literal in the Bible and it's totally wrong.

Enthusiasm is the energy and force that builds literal momentum of the human soul and mind.

I find that children have very little trouble understanding non-literal stories.

I don't ever get too literal.

There is a twofold meaning in every creature, a literal and a mystical, and the one is but the ground of the other.

Most men I know rely on women to do all the literal dirty work.

A photograph is the illusion of a literal description of how the camera 'saw' a piece of time and space.

The term "globalization," like most terms of public discourse, has two meanings: its literal meaning, and a technical sense used for doctrinal purposes. In its literal sense, "globalization" means international integration. Its strongest proponents since its origins have been the workers movements and the left , which is why unions are called "internationals", and the strongest proponents today are those who meet annually in the World Social Forum and its many regional offshoots.

A glove is a very literal looking hand puppet.

Balanchine was just able to strike the balance between literal narrative and abstract dance.

I don't like literal spaces, I don't like literal anything. I still like some kind of guess work but some pieces work and they just pop.

Literally' - I'm not having it; people can't go around saying 'literally.' Otherwise, what's literal? There's not another word for literally: if it isn't figurative or metaphorical, what is it? It's literal: there's no substitute.

Theologians will protest that the story of Abraham sacrificing Issac should not be taken as literal fact. And the appropriate response is twofold: first, many, many people even to this day, do take the whole of their Scripture to be literal fact, and they have a great deal of political power over the rest of us, especially in the United States and in the Islamic world. Second, if not of literal fact, how should we take the story? As an alagory? Then an alagory for what? Surely, nothing praiseworthy. As a moral lesson? But what kind of morals could one derive from this appalling story?

Something I've always known about the screen is that if it's anything in the world, it's literal. It's so literal that there's a whole lot you can't do because you're stuck with the literalness of the screen. The stage is not literal.

A literal interpretation of the Gita lands one in a sea of contradictions.

It's not in my nature to be too literal.

Movies are too literal.

The stories I write are often literal to events that have happened or observations that I've made, and sometimes they're fantastical.

All maps are distorted, they are not literal fact.

Heaven is not as narrowly literal-minded as hell.

I believe in the literal rising of the body of Christ. It's the cornerstone of my Christian faith.

Drama is not a literal portrayal of events. It's a depiction, it's impressionistic.

Film in many ways is very literal.

This was nostalgia in the literal Greek sense: the pain of not being able to return to one's home and family.

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

The literal meaning of the Chinese characters for revolution is elimination of life

I once saw a forklift lift a crate of forks. And it was way to literal for me.

Watch the History Channel if you want it literal and historically perfect.

I do not have deep theological understanding or opinion, but I do not read the Bible as the literal word of God.

If you ever make anything too literal you might as well forget it. It loses everything.

As a whole, I am interested in the symbolic, rather than the literal use of the camera.

I tell you, Heaven is a real, literal, physical place, a city as material, as physical, as literal as Chicago or London or New York or Tokyo.

I believe the Scriptures teach that there's a literal heaven and a literal hell, just like Jesus said. And without forgiveness of sins that, yeah, the place of punishment is called hell.

Plenty of people out there think of me as the Antichrist or the devil incarnate because I do not affirm the literal patterns of the Bible. But the fact is I can no more abandon the literal patterns than I could fly to the moon. I just go beyond them.

Language operates between literal and metaphorical signification

People have become so literal because they're used to reality-based television.

I do not know why one should not hunt two hares even in the literal sense....

If there is one thing I think I have accomplished, it's that I always thought of myself as a very literal songwriter, and as I look at some of those older records, I don't hear it now the way I did when I was 20. I think it is undeniable that the songs have become more instantaneously descriptive and literal. I'd like the songs to be more storytelling, but also have the turns of phrase within them that would hopefully distance my writing from the pack. I feel like on those older records there are a lot of attempts at clever turns of phrase.

Since events are not metaphors, the literal-minded have a certain advantage in dealing with them.

We’re destroying the world because we are, in a very literal and deliberate way, at war with it.

I create fictional narratives, but it's based on literal people.

I do believe that there are places where the mythological and the literal touch.

Poets... are literal-minded men who will squeeze a word till it hurts.

Whenever you find a preacher who takes the Bible allegorically and figuratively...that preacher is preaching an allegorical gospel which is no gospel. I thank God for a literal Christ, for a literal salvation. There is literal sorrow, literal death, literal Hell, and, thank God, there is a literal Heaven.

Just as the introduction of the irrational numbers ... is a convenient myth [which] simplifies the laws of arithmetic ... so physical objects are postulated entities which round out and simplify our account of the flux of existence... The conceptional scheme of physical objects is [likewise] a convenient myth, simpler than the literal truth and yet containing that literal truth as a scattered part.

You never saw such a crazy cat. 'Up the wall' took on a literal meaning.

I do not consider myself a literal genius.

"All men are born equal and free" is not Nature's law in the literal sense.