"Metaphorical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Here we have at least an inkling of the hero's powers of discrimination, and his regard for the little niceties of life. We have also a beautiful metaphorical allusion to the postulate that "fingers were made before forks," an assertion respecting the truth of which some antiquarians have expressed a doubt. We are not prepared to decide as to the propriety of leaving the substantial of life and employing ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... reviewing the metaphorical applications of such terms as 'caustic,' 'mordant,' 'piquant,' etc., in their burning, biting, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... senses, for the great height of part of the borough and its distance from London combine to give it as wholesome and pure an air as may be found in any place in England, and an atmosphere in the metaphorical sense—a peculiar feeling of brightness and lightness which proclaims a favoured suburb. Hampstead has always been celebrated for its trees, and in spite of the great annual increase in the number of its houses these have not been wiped out of existence. Nearly every house possesses ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... extension of stagecoach communication from Big Bluff were events of no small importance, and were celebrated on the same day. The double occasion overtaxing even the fluent rhetoric of the editor of the "Star" left him struggling in the metaphorical difficulties of a Pactolian Spring, which he had rashly turned into the Ditch, and obliged him to transfer the onerous duty of writing the editorial on the Big Bluff Extension to the hands of the Honorable Abner Dean, Assemblyman from Angel's. The loss ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... the truth of the accusation, seemed to be possessed with the same infatuation as Pizarro; and he bade the governor be under no apprehension, "for no harm should come to him, while the rod of justice," not a metaphorical badge of authority in Castile, "was in his hands." 12 Still, to obviate every possibility of danger, it was deemed prudent for Pizarro to abstain from going to mass on Sunday, and to remain at home on ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... were dirty, poor men and servants must have been dirtier still. William Langlande's description of Hawkyn's one metaphorical dress in which he slept o' nightes as well as worked by day, beslobbered (or by-moled, bemauled) by children, was true of the real smock; flesh-moths must have been plentiful, and the sketch of Coveitise, as regards many men, hardly ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... The Canon of Reason and Virtue (at first entitled simply Lao Tzu), gave to the then existing scattered sporadic conceptions of the universe a literary form. His tao, or 'Way,' is the originator of Heaven and earth, it is "the mother of all things." His Way, which was "before God," is but a metaphorical expression for the manner in which things came at first into being out of the primal nothingness, and how the phenomena of nature continue to go on, "in stillness and quietness, without striving or crying." Lao Tzu is thus so far monistic, but he is also mystical, transcendental, even pantheistic. ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... line is highly metaphorical; but it is so soft and gentle, that it does not shock us as ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... audiences, the scum of town 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... the Scotch, who had no cabbages till Oliver Cromwell's soldiers introduced them, and one might thus shew how arts are propagated by conquest, as they were by the Roman arms.' Cabbage, by the way, in a metaphorical sense, might furnish a very good subject ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... sense of words is often driven out of use by their metaphorical acceptations, yet must be inserted for the sake of a regular origination. Thus I know not whether ardour is used for material heat, or whether flagrant, in English, ever signifies the same with burning; yet such are the primitive ideas of these words, which are therefore set first, though without ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... 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 ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... that grows on the visitor to America that Business has developed insensibly into a Religion, in more than the light, metaphorical sense of the words. It has its ritual and theology, its high places and its jargon, as well as its priests and martyrs. One of its more mystical manifestations is in advertisement. America has a childlike faith in advertising. They advertise ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... be 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, that the intention of making him emblematical ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... besides this literal and positive kind of death, there are others whereof divines make men- tion, and those, I think, not merely metaphorical, as mortification, dying unto sin and the world. There- fore, I say, every man hath a double horoscope; one of his humanity,—his birth, another of his Christianity,— his baptism: and from this do I compute or calculate my nativity; not reckoning ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... metaphorical—probably a quotation from Thackeray—because there was no bell in sight. But at any rate Peggy left with one of her goddess-like sweeps, and was to be heard thereafter calling Mr. Logan with a good-will. Presently the others, sitting silently, heard his voice answer gaily, and ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... forming, often become half-metaphors, as from a sort of instinct. Thus, instead of fully forming a simile, he merely suggests it; throwing in just enough of it to start the thoughts on that track, and then condensing the whole into a semi-metaphorical shape. Which seems to explain why it is that these suggestions of similes, notwithstanding the stereotyped censures of a too formal criticism, seldom trouble any reader who is so unsophisticated as to care little for the form, so he ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... the flowery expression; avoid metaphorical speech; flee from the lure of the overwrought style. In the first place it is so old-fashioned that audiences suspect it at once. It fails to move them. It may plunge its user into ridiculous failure. In the excitement of spontaneous composition a man sometimes takes ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... 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 ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza
... He is not afraid of using colloquialisms which every critic of the time would have shuddered at, and which, by their raciness and flavour, add enormously to his effects. His writing is also extremely metaphorical; technical terms are thrown in helter-skelter whenever the meaning would benefit; and the boldest constructions at every turn are suddenly brought into being. In describing the subtle spiritual sympathy which existed between Fenelon and Madame de Guyon he strikes out the unforgettable phrase—'leur ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... 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 supposition.' JOHNSON. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... soundly," said the hermit, in the same low tone as before; and repeating the words, though he had changed the meaning from that which is literal to a metaphorical sense—"he sleeps in darkness, but there shall be for him a dayspring.—O Ilderim, thy waking thoughts are yet as vain and wild as those which are wheeling their giddy dance through thy sleeping brain; but the trumpet shall be heard, and the dream ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... and it is called perception when the sense factors are the instruments of its production and the knowledge produced is of the objects with which the senses are in contact. The contact of the senses with the objects is not in any sense metaphorical but actual. Not only in the case of touch and taste are the senses in contact with the objects, but in the cases of sight, hearing and smell as well. The senses according to Nyaya-Vais'e@sika are material and we have seen ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... 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 ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... 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
... also we run perpetually to the (supposed) humour of slang, a form not used in England. If we were to analyse what we mean by slang I think it would be found to consist of the introduction of new metaphors or new forms of language of a metaphorical character, strained almost to the breaking point. Sometimes we do it with a single word. When some genius discovers that a "hat" is really only "a lid" placed on top of a human being, straightway the word "lid" goes rippling over the continent. ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... back. He is a king now, but he is the master still, and he wants to know what has become of the money that was left in the servants' hands. Now, that is but a metaphorical way of bringing to our minds that which we cannot conceive of without metaphor—viz., the retribution that lies beyond the grave for us all. Although we cannot conceive it without metaphor, we may reach, through the metaphor to some apprehension, at any rate, of the facts that lie behind ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... 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
... asserted the same thing, and more fully shown wherein the difference consists of symbolic and metaphorical, in my first Lay Sermon; and the substantial correspondence of the genuine Platonic doctrine and logic with those of Lord Bacon, in my Essays on Method, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... leads off metaphorical fights For reform and whatever they call human rights, Both singing and striking in front of the war, And hitting his foes with the mallet of Thor. A ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... out. And there is something piquant in the combination of the old Hindu metaphorical style, half mystical in allusion, with what is really a plea for the emancipation ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... deep water, and when an old gentleman hasn't opened a book of philosophy for nearly thirty years, he may be well excused for a certain timidity in approaching these deep questions. But, "keep to the metaphorical" has always been a great rule of mine, which ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... I bared my metaphorical breast, and with as close an imitation of a clear-conscienced young man revealing the harmless necessary truth as I could achieve ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... krataeras]—I have ventured the above translation for this difficult combination from the meaning of the term [Greek: paegae], found elsewhere in the Oracles, in the metaphorical sense of "source" (compare also Plato, Phaed. 245 C., 856 D., [Greek: paegae kai archae chinaeseos]—"the source and beginning of motion"), and also from the meaning of [Greek: krataer] (crater), as ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead
... with your private ledger for biographical purposes, I would think of printing it in extenso, and calling it a biography; though I should feel justified, after the varied story had been deduced and written out, in calling the product, metaphorical wise, 'The private ledger of Johannes Browne, Esquire'—a title which, by the way, is copyright and duly 'entered.' Such was my attempt, and I maintain that I have so far kept my word. Because whole shelves have been disposed ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... 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 was no doubt she was in earnest in preferring ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... shell; and whether it will ever come out a fine full-fledged chicken, or will turn addle and die before it cheeps, is one of those considerations that are but dimly revealed by the oracles of futurity. Now, don't be nonplussed by all this metaphorical mystery. I talk of a plain and everyday occurrence, though, in Delphic style, I wrap up the information in figures of speech concerning eggs, chickens etceatera, etcaeterorum. To come to the point: ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... extremely eloquent and metaphorical, Rashleigh," said Miss Vernon, who listened with unrepressed impatience; "there are only two objections to it: first, it is not true; secondly, if true, it is nothing ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Jews in the town; they were weavers and dyers 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 colonists said to me: "It is true that the ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... ministerial power, and their acts, binding and loosing, i.e. retaining and remitting sins on earth, (as in John it is explained;) opening and shutting are proper acts of keys; binding and loosing but metaphorical, viz. a speech borrowed from bonds or chains wherewith men's bodies are bound in prison or in captivity, or from which the body is loosed: we are naturally all under sin, Rom. v. 12, and therefore liable to death, Rom. vi. 23. Now sins are to the ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... it. Like Britons in general, from Dick Whittington downwards, he thinks that the capital is the place in which to seek one's fortune, and to find it. He had not expected streets paved with gold, nor yet with the metaphorical plenty of penny loaves; but an indefinite disappointment weighs upon him as he passes through quarters fully as dingy and poverty-stricken as those in his ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... Ralph don't group his metaphorical beauties, or dainties of Webster, Walker, &c., but rushes them out in torrents—rattles them down in cataracts and avalanches—bewildering, astounding, and incomprehensible. He hits you upon the left lug of your knowledge box with a metaphor so unwieldy and original, that your breath is soon ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... order can at a critical moment so rouse a horse, and so accurately place his head and hind-legs in the right position, that he can make an extraordinary effort and achieve a miraculous leap. This in metaphorical language is called lifting a horse, because, to a bye-stander, it looks like it. But when a novice, or even an average horseman, attempts this sort of tour de force, he only worries his horse, and, ten to one, throws him into ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... chosen from; they do not appear to see that though the expression natural selection must be always more or less objectionable, as too highly charged with metaphor for purposes of science, there is nevertheless a natural selection which is open to no other objection than this, and which, when its metaphorical character is borne well in mind, may be used without serious risk of error, whereas natural selection from variations that are mainly fortuitous is chimerical as well as metaphorical. Both writers speak of natural selection as though there could not possibly be any ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... 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
... 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
... 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 ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... or Gromwells, the most servile persons on ship-board," probably, metaphorically, from "Gromet or Grummet," "small rings," adds Bailey, "fastened with staples on the upper side of the yard." The latter term is still in use; the metaphorical one is, I ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... public prison of the city forms the other side of this canal, eloquently proclaiming the nature of the government by the close approximation of the powers of legislation and of punishment. The famous Bridge of Sighs is the material, and we might add the metaphorical, link between the two. The latter edifice stands on the quay, also, and though less lofty and spacious, in point of architectural beauty it is the superior structure, though the quaintness and unusual style of the palace are most apt ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Erskyll, appeared not to understand this completely. It was his impression that he was a torch-bearer of Imperial civilization, or something equally picturesque and metaphorical. As he conceived it, it was the duty of the Empire, as represented by himself, to make over backward planets like Aditya in the image of Odin or Marduk or Osiris or Baldur or, preferably, his own home ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... general preference for them is justified by the peculiarly painful character of the note which they produce. It is a very loud and vibrating sound of the harshest possible quality. One feels when hearing it as if the French phrase of "skinning the ears" were not a metaphorical but a literal description of the result of listening to the sound. And when hundreds of blowers of these are wandering about the streets in all parts of the town, but especially in the neighborhood of the Piazza Navona, making night hideous with their braying, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... from the Indo-European in reference to their grammar, vocabulary, and idioms. On account of the great preponderance of the pictorial element in them, they may be called the metaphorical languages, while the Indo-European, from the prevailing style of their higher literature, may be called the philosophical languages. The Semitic nations also differ from the Indo-European in their national characteristics; while they have lived ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... them, and then again descends, walking firmly in the region of ideas, and of ideas only, in her ascent as well as descent, and finally resting in them. 'I partly understand,' he replied; 'you mean that the ideas of science are superior to the hypothetical, metaphorical conceptions of geometry and the other arts or sciences, whichever is to be the name of them; and the latter conceptions you refuse to make subjects of pure intellect, because they have no first principle, although when resting on a first principle, they pass into the higher ...
— The Republic • Plato
... too, gain significance on the evolutionary hypothesis. "The affinity of different groups, the unity of types of structure, the representative forms through which foetus passes, the metamorphosis of organs, the abortion of others, cease to be metaphorical expressions and become intelligible ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... no doubt, his own good 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 inexplicable life. There it all is, as plain as a pike- ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... literal, since the widow's weed is close-wrapping and voluminous—partly metaphorical, since the acceptance of fate ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... the pretty and delicate game of talk. But a rare admixture of qualities is needed, and a subtle conversational effect, a sudden fancy, that throws a charming or a bizarre light on a subject, a power of pleasing metaphorical expression, the communication of an imaginative interest to a familiar topic—all these things are of the nature of instinctive art. I have heard well-informed and sensible people talk of a subject in a way that made me feel that I desired never to hear it ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Scriptures. They grew up essentially as text books of God-knowledge and Self-knowledge, and like all text books they need interpretation. Being transmitted orally from teacher to disciple, the style was necessarily extremely condensed and in the form of aphorisms. The language also was often metaphorical and obscure. Yet if one has the perseverance to penetrate beneath these mere surface difficulties, one is repaid a hundredfold; for these ancient Sacred Books contain the most precious ...
— The Upanishads • Swami Paramananda
... bundle of sacred grass, which plays an important part in the sacrificial ritual, cf. Taittirîya S. i. 7. 4, "yajamâna.h prastara.h," where Sâya.na remarks, "yajamânavad yâgasâdhanatvât prastare yajamânatvopachâra.h." This description of the grass as the sacrificer is really only meant as metaphorical praise, since the actual attributes of the sacrificer are evidently absent from the grass. (Cf. Mîmâ.msâ Sûtras, i. 4. 23.)] is said to be the sacrificer, as it is the means of performing the sacrifice; [as the Darbha grass is understood by this description,] even though the attributes thus ...
— The Tattva-Muktavali • Purnananda Chakravartin
... and debility, 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 the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... of course, vary in pitch, but tones of low pitch that are intended to be impressive are most suitably rendered in orotund quality. In its perfect manifestations, the natural quality should be clear, ringing, light, and sparkling,—if it be possible to describe its characteristics by such metaphorical words. ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... very elastic manner. The term of widest connotation is PARIN IGAT, which is equivalent to our cousin used in the wider or Scotch sense; it is applied to all blood relatives of the same generation, and is sometimes used in a metaphorical sense much as we use the term brother. There are no words corresponding to our words son and daughter, ANAK meaning merely child of either sex. There are no words corresponding to brother and sister; both are spoken ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... intrinsic merit. Not that it is by any means destitute of poetical excellence: like all the eastern poetry, it is bold, wild, and unconnected in its figures, allusions, and parts, and has all that graceful and magnificent daring which characterizes its metaphorical and comparative imagery. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... highly metaphorical and imaginative character, but they admit of being brought down to very plain facts, and they tell us the results in heart and mind of true faith and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... later—as he rode down from the Crow's Nest, he chuckled to himself over the satisfactory way in which Lenox was playing into his hands by adopting an attitude that would plainly act as a foil to his own deferentially persistent courtship; a metaphorical walking round the walls of Jericho, that must end in capitulation, soon ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... craft, if not the valour of the conqueror of half the 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 Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... not do 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 at ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... procession really had a good deal in it. I had been 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... 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; ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... tapped his forehead to signify that the log in question was a metaphorical one, the log of memory. Eve had him again directly. She freed a claw. "So this is your log, is it?" cried she, tapping it as hard as she could; "well, it does sound like wood of some sort. Well, then, David, dear—you wretch, I mean—promise ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... 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: ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... long, eventful day had been too great, and the young girl, who might have been taken as a type of incensed womanhood a few moments before, now had scarcely better resources than such remedies as Mrs. Vosburgh's matronly experience knew how to apply. Few remain long on mountain-tops, physical or metaphorical, and deep valleys lie all around them. Little else could be done for the poor girl than to bring the oblivion of sleep, and let kindly Nature nurse her child back to a more healthful condition of body ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... It is metaphorical to say that every minute seemed an hour; but so tardy did the time appear that I began to wonder why the awful event was so long delayed. Perhaps, thought I, the powder may be far down, covered over with other things—such as boxes and bales—and the fire has not yet been able to get at it? ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... This may be taken in a dietary as well as a metaphorical sense. The graminaceae provide the greater part of the sustenance of man and beast; hay and cereals, wheat, oats, rye, barley, rice, sugar cane, sorghum and corn. From an American viewpoint the greatest ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... discourse, could tell you a great many things 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 ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... diminished, we see the cause why the cold bath gives such present strength; namely, by stopping the unnecessary activity of the subcutaneous vessels, and thus preventing the too great exhaustion of sensorial power; which, in metaphorical language, has been called bracing the system: which is, however, a mechanical term, only applicable to drums, or musical strings: as on the contrary the word relaxation, when applied to living animal bodies, can only mean too small a quantity ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... alternative to which I have already referred, and which is suggested by the connection of my text with the preceding words. There is a fire that destroys and is not quenched. Christ's previous words are much too metaphorical for us to build dogmatic definitions upon. But Jesus Christ did not exaggerate. If here and now sin has so destructive an effect upon a man, O, who will venture to say that he knows the limits of its murderous power in that future life, when retribution shall ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... But metaphorical language, though nothing other will convey the extremity of his misery, or the form of his thoughts, must be ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... at p. 136 of this book, says, that an actor named SAM VALE, appearing as Simon Splatterdash, in a piece called The Boarding-House, was in the habit of "interlarding his conversation with metaphorical illustrations"—and then follow the examples. The Boarding-House, however, is not by O'KEEFE, but, as appears from a note in Sketches by Boz, was being performed when DICKENS's short tale of The ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various
... receiving the double set of words expressing the two halves of the comparison, and in carrying the one half to the other, considerable attention is absorbed. Most of this is saved, however, by putting the comparison in a metaphorical form, thus: "The white light of truth, in traversing the many sided transparent soul of the poet, is refracted ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... not 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 ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... solan-goose, solan-geese; eyetooth, eyeteeth; woodlouse, woodlice;[143] dormouse, dormice; half-penny, halfpence, half-pennies. In this way, these irregularities extend to many words; though some of the metaphorical class, as kite's-foot, colts-foot, bear's-foot, lion's-foot, being names of plants, have no plural. The word man, which is used the most frequently in this way, makes more than seventy such compounds. But there are some words of this ending, which, not being compounds of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... fallaciously describe foam, but because they faithfully describe sorrow. But the moment the mind of the speaker becomes cold, that moment every such expression becomes untrue, as being for ever untrue in the external facts. And there is no greater baseness in literature than the habit of using these metaphorical expressions in cool blood. An inspired writer, in full impetuosity of passion, may speak wisely and truly of "raging waves of the sea foaming out their own shame";[62] but it is only the basest writer who cannot speak of the sea without talking of "raging ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... especially with those of the 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 a foregone conclusion ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... 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 ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... 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, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... Little Cecilia walked by her sister's side, hand in hand, in proud surprise. Before them, an aged peasant marched solemnly, bareheaded save for his silver hair, carrying the crown destined for Julia; and with him, also bareheaded, the cure. A benediction, accompanied by a prayer that the metaphorical ceremony might have some influence in attracting the youthful people present to the practice and pursuit of virtue, having been uttered by the priest, Julia was handed to the throne, and the crown of roses was placed ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... have been very glad to have seen you off, duke, and to have thrown a metaphorical old shoe after you; but your bride seems to have taken so long to tie her bonnet strings, that she has made you miss your train. And now you can't go until the night express, and I really can't wait to see you off by that. I have an appointment at the Bank ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... reign of 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
... speech. He may not have any technical knowledge, or his technical knowledge may be so great as to debar him from meeting other men in conversation on equal grounds; but his reading of the Bible gives his speech or writing a background, a colour, a metaphorical strength, which illuminate even the commonplace. Strike the Bible from the sphere of any man's experience and he is in a measure left out of much of that conversation which helps ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... that is employed here is very significant. In its literal force it really means to 'flee to a refuge.' And that the literal signification has not altogether been lost in the spiritual and metaphorical use of it, as a term expressive of religious experience, is quite plain from many of the cases in which it occurs. Let me just repeat one of them to you. 'Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful to me, for my soul trusteth in Thee; yea, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... should be. Even Julius Broughton's audacity was not to be carried to the point of forcing himself and his friend, uninvited, upon a set of young people already carefully selected and for the time being rigidly separated from the rest of mankind by metaphorical white ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... law prescribes that when a chief dies his office shall not perish with him. This is expressed, in their metaphorical style, by an injunction that the "horns," or insignia of office, shall not be buried with the deceased chief, but shall be taken off at his death, to be transferred to his successor. This rule is laid down in the most urgent and impressive terms. "We should perhaps all perish ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... legend, I 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 perished, and ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... tolerated by the stomach, otherwise will be rejected. In the same way an extravagant statement, when taken with a slight qualification (cum grano salis) will be tolerated by the mind. I should wish to be informed what writer first uses this phrase in a metaphorical sense—not, I ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... 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 ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... is past before one by one they straggle down. Breakfast awaits each newcomer, hot and tempting. Trix eats hers with a relish. Trix possesses one of the chief elements of perpetual human happiness—an appetite that never fails, a digestion that, in her own metaphorical American language, "never goes back on her." But Edith looks fagged and spiritless. If people are to be supernaturally brilliant and bright, dashing and fascinating all night long, people must expect to pay the penalty next day, when lassitude and reaction ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... is quaint and attractive in appearance. The youthful editor has provided himself with a series of cuts of the metaphorical "Bruin" in various attitudes and various employments, these clever little pictures lending a pleasing novelty to the cover and the margins. Judiciously distributed red ink, also, aids in producing a Christmas number of truly festive quality. Mr. Dowdell's ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... cannot give any definite account of him such as could be drawn up for a Greek deity. He is not a god of fire, like Vulcan, but the Fire itself regarded as divine. The descriptions of his appearance are not really anthropomorphic but metaphorical imagery depicting shining, streaming flames. The hymns tell us that he has a tawny beard and hair: a flaming head or three heads: three tongues or seven: four eyes or a thousand. One poem says that he faces in all directions: another that he is footless and headless. He ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... am here quoting from the Quest article) remarks, "As the last line of our quotation gives us quite plainly to understand, a number of words which we have italicized are obviously used in an unusual, metaphorical, sense, that is to say as terms of the Christian Mystery language." While Harnack, admitting that the Christian character of the text is indisputable, adds significantly: "aber das Christentum der ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... claim that it is used in its literal sense of "seed," in the text. For, when the divine command was issued, there was no plant or tree, and, presumably, had been none upon the earth from which seed could have been derived. The word was used in its larger and more comprehensive (that is, metaphorical) sense, as the "germinal principle of life in matter," or precisely in the sense in which the Greek stoics used it in their philosophy. Both Theophrastus and Diogenes use the terms IfIEuroI muII1/4I-I"a?1/2II?a1/2 ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... thus a space in the centre of the balcony, a black hole, called in metaphorical slang, an oven. No one there. Crowds everywhere except in that ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... with which the 'Daily News' honored my last week's lecture, that courteous journal charged me, in the metaphorical term now classical on Exchange, with "hedging," to conceal my own opinions. The charge was not prudently chosen, since, of all men now obtaining any portion of popular regard, I am pretty well known to be precisely the one who cares least either for hedge or ditch, ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... and therefore I cannot attempt adequately to consider, the full probable meaning of the metaphorical expression with which the present 'subject' concludes,—nor do I suppose it is absolutely necessary that I should do so, for expressing the various impressions which I have formed on the subject taken as a whole, which have occurred to me in such careful meditation as I have been ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... 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 fact of the matter ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... declared that he would protect his wife from such insults. The notion that he protected his wife was a pleasant fiction of the little man's, which received a generous encouragement at the hands of his wife. It was a favorite trick of hers to throw herself, in a metaphorical way, at his feet, a helpless woman, and in her feebleness implore his protection. And Samuel felt all the courage of knighthood in defending his inoffensive wife. Under cover of this fiction, so flattering to the vanity ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... rather than sacrifices. The Christians also believed that God delighted 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? Many of ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... and nerve cells of the vegetative apparatus, the nerves leading to the viscera and the endocrine glands, like the solar plexus, are affected by stimuli of lower value than those which arouse the brain cells. In the metaphorical language of the old psychology, the threshold value, that is the strength or loudness of stimulus sufficient to make itself felt or heard, is less for the vegetative apparatus than for the brain. So we begin to glimpse why an emotion ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... required nor 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 Pentateuch is but ONE WORD, even the Word ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... slap on the mouth, Bunny's metaphorical way of showing that the secret of the young enthusiast who had come, as he believed, to fight for and rescue a lost cause, was within that casket and he ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... at this happy metaphorical description of the glass of lager regularly served at Dutch House, the waiter shouldered through the swinging doors to ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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
... The metaphorical use of the word is equally expressive of its literal meaning, for it is applied to the production of new dispositions of mind and soul utterly opposite to those previously existing. "Create in me a clean heart;" which God thus explains: "A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... a Deity, that of the immortality of the soul and of the state of future rewards and punishments is indissolubly linked. More we are not to know; but neither are we prohibited from our attempts, however vain, to pierce the solemn sacred gloom. The expressions used in Scripture are doubtless metaphorical, for penal fires and heavenly melody are only applicable to bodies endowed with senses; and, at least till the period of the resurrection of the body, the spirits of men, whether entering into the perfection ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... lord," said Plunket, "for in England the wind raises the kite, but in Ireland the kite raises the wind." The lord chancellor was no wiser than before, and the counsel was obliged to have recourse to a less metaphorical explanation. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... colors were used freely with apparent significance, whereas, in fact, the general rule in regard to the birch-bark rolls was that they were never colored at all; indeed, the bark was not adapted to coloration. The metaphorical coloring was also used by him in a manner which, to any thorough student of the Indian philosophy and religion, seems absurd. Metaphysical expressions are attached to some of the devices, or, as he calls them, symbols, which, could never ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... by Bharadwaja in the question are capable of being construed as an enquiry after the next world. Bhrigu also, in his answer, uses the word Paro lokah. The reference to Himavat, therefore, is explained by the commentator as metaphorical. The whole answer of Bhrigu, however, leaves little room for doubt that the sage speaks of a region on earth and not in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... dislike the word, now, from its vulgar use. You may have another if you choose, a metaphorical one,—close enough it seems to Christianity, and yet still absolutely distinct from it,—[Greek: *christos*]. Suppose, as you watch the white bloom of the olives of Val d'Arno and Val di Nievole, which modern piety and economy suppose were grown by God only to supply you with fine ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... the neighbourhood; and, as no one branch of the Chuzzlewit tree had ever been known to agree with another within the memory of man, there was such a skirmishing, and flouting, and snapping off of heads, in the metaphorical sense of that expression; such a bandying of words and calling of names; such an upturning of noses and wrinkling of brows; such a formal interment of good feelings and violent resurrection of ancient grievances; as had never been known in those ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... "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 degree ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 of ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... too current even in our best writers, and which (unfortunately, I think) is given as its first explanation in Dr. Johnson's Dictionary and therefore would be taken by an incautious reader as its proper sense. In Shakespeare and Milton the word is never used without some clear reference, proper or metaphorical, to ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... literally, without the use of metaphors, they invariably apply the term "grace" to these vital acts themselves and ascribe their supernatural character to an immediate act of God.(74) In perfect conformity with this teaching St. Augustine explains such metaphorical terms as vocare and tangere in the sense of credere and fides.(75) God employs no "fluent qualities" or "non-vital entities" in the dispensation of His grace, but effects the supernatural elevation of the ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... comic. But let 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 ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... Cornell Strong 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 ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... perfectly satisfactory,' 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 strange mysterious ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... 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 ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... 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 ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... Oldbuck, "does indeed strengthen your argument. It was an implement of nature's fashioning, and therefore much used among rude nations, although, it may be, the metaphorical horn is more frequent in proportion to the progress of civilisation. And this present horn," he continued, rubbing it upon his sleeve, "is a curious and venerable relic, and no doubt was intended to prove a cornucopia, or horn of plenty, to some one or other; but whether to ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... transformed by popular tradition into the naughty girl Silver-hair. Mr. Nutt ingeniously suggests that Southey heard the story told of an old vixen, and mistook the rustic name of a female fox for the metaphorical application to women of fox-like temper. Mrs. H.'s version to my mind has all the marks of priority. It is throughout an animal tale, the touch at the end of the shaking the paws and the name Scrapefoot are too volkstuemlich to have been conscious variations on Southey's tale. In introducing ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... those days. During the interview Mademoiselle de Varandeuil was taken into a closet where she found two women who were instructed to satisfy themselves as to her sex, and she showed them her breast. They then escorted her to the great Salle des Declarations, and there, after a metaphorical allocution, Chaumette baptized her Sempronie; a name which habit was destined to fasten upon Mademoiselle de Varandeuil and which ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... 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
... remainder would be a query, the produce of which would be a negative quantity, which would probably prevent both Sir and Madam from reading either the nonsense or the good sense, the poetry or the prose, the simple or the sublime, of the rhapsodical, metaphorical, allegorical genius, Hugh Trevor: for in that case I suspect Hugh Trevor would find a more pleasant and profitable employment than the honourable trade of authorship. I have read books much, but men more, and think I can bring my wit ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... name I give to that synthetic and concentrating effort of the soul by means of which the various energies of the complex vision are brought into focus and fused with one another. In accordance with my favourite metaphorical image, the "apex-thought" is the extreme point of the arrow-head of the soul; the point with which it ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... into a group 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 ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... one time and another, about the violence of tropical rainstorms, but this exceeded far beyond all bounds the utmost that I had thereby been led to anticipate. It came, not in drops or sheets, or even the metaphorical "buckets-full," but in an absolute deluge of such volume that not only were we drenched to the skin in a single instant, but almost before I was aware of it the water had risen in the bottom of the canoe to a depth ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... for style, of which it may generally be said that you cannot be too obscure, unnatural, involved, vulgar, slipshod, and metaphorical. See to it that your metaphors are mixed, though, perhaps, this attention is hardly needed. The free use of parentheses, in which a reader gets lost, and of unintelligible allusions, and of references to unread authors—the Kalevala and Lycophron, ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... in another place, for certain reasons assigned, he says, "The grand style is beautiful." Nay, many writers, otherwise of high authority, seem to have taken the same view; while others who could have had no such notion, having used the words Beauty and the Beautiful in an allegorical or metaphorical sense, have sometimes been misinterpreted literally. Hence Winckelmann reproaches Michael Angelo for his continual talk about Beauty, when he showed nothing of it in his works. But it is very evident that the Bella and Bellezza ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... Origen down to the present day, there has not been a single generation in which great divines have not been led into the most absurd expositions of Scripture, by mere incapacity to distinguish analogies proper, to use the scholastic phrase, from analogies metaphorical. [See some interesting remarks on this subject in Bishop Berkeley's Minute Philosopher, Dialogue iv.] It is curious that Bacon has himself mentioned this very kind of delusion among the idola specus; and has mentioned it in language which, we are inclined to think, shows that he knew himself ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... They were, moreover, in the present case, embittered 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 ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... says he. 'First, a leeteral trumpet; second, a heestorical trumpet; third, a metaphorical trumpet; fourth, a ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... less than three months after the death of Sir Miles St. John; November reigns in London. And "reigns" seems scarcely a metaphorical expression as applied to the sullen, absolute sway which that dreary month (first in the dynasty of Winter) spreads ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a noble metaphysical and metaphorical poem, but purely German of its kind. It has been imitated, not to say travestied, at least fifty times, by crazy students and purblind professors—each of whom, in turn, has had an interview with the goddess of nature upon a hill-side. For our ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... 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 ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... traveled further than on any previous occasion: 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 party, as the riders pressed anxiously ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... in that metaphorical style I fail to understand you," said Quentyns. "There's not the least cloud between us that I am aware of, and if you are not in the sunshine, Hilda, I am afraid it is your own fault. I have done everything in my power to meet your wishes. You profess great love for me, and great love for your ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... images of unquenchable fire and the undying worm, borrowed from the constant conflagrations and corruptions of the offal and carcases of dead animals in the valley of Hinnom, (or Gaienna,) near Jerusalem, and also the obviously metaphorical language used in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, as if necessarily teaching that worms or fire would be employed to torture for all eternity the immortal bodies of the lost. But what if there is to be no such bodily pain? though possibly there may be some kind of physical suffering immediately ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... humbling blow he dealt my vanity, for every tooth in my metaphorical jaw he knocked loose with stunning aim, I am grateful beyond any facility of expression. The hard core of human egotism is hardly to be dislodged except rudely. With its departure, the Divine finds at last an unobstructed channel. In vain It seeks ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... made, and now came the task to "hang" it. "Hang" was merely a metaphorical word, as they fitted it into place instead. The wood all around the opening was about a foot thick, and they cut it out somewhat after the fashion of the lintels of a doorway. Then they fitted in the door, which rested securely in its ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... effect. It is the "Spirit given to them that ask him," with regard to agency; it is grace, in point of character; and it is holiness or practical religion, in reference to its outward influence. Jesus Christ beautifully describes this principle in his metaphorical addresses to the woman of Samaria, by an allusion to the thirst which the water of life assuages, the inexhaustible consolation it imparts, as a "well of water;" and the perpetual and perfect blessedness with which it is connected, as "springing ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... formula would express them both. All the moral 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 of Nature are the purest morality. The Tree of Knowledge is a ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... stretch of his longing is to pass "four months on classic ground," after which he will come back to Auchinleck uti conciva satur,—a condition in which we fear the poor fellow returned thither only too often, though unhappily in no metaphorical sense. We rather think, that, apart from the pleasure of saying he had been there, Boswell was really drawn to Italy by the fact that it was classic ground, and this not so much by its association with great events as with great ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... more 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 as it did so, the lady involuntarily ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... escaped 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
... which will never be finished until His Church is perfected, and the world is redeemed. If we are a Church of Christ at all, we have Christ in very deed among us, and working through us and on us. And unless we have, in no mystical and unreal and metaphorical sense, but in the simplest and yet grandest prose reality, that living Saviour here in our hearts and in our fellowship, better that these walls were levelled with the ground, and this congregation scattered to the four winds of heaven. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... the discovery of abstractions was the great source of all mental improvement in after ages. It was the pushing aside of the old, the revelation of the new. But each one of the company of abstractions, if we may speak in the metaphorical language of Plato, became in turn the tyrant of the mind, the dominant idea, which would allow no other to have a share in the throne. This is especially true of the Eleatic philosophy: while the absoluteness of Being was asserted in every form of language, the sensible world and all ...
— Sophist • Plato
... man who was at once a prominent inventor and one of Radville's leading merchants (vide a "Personal" in the late issue of the Radville Citizen), to say nothing of the social position of his daughter—meaning Betty. And the house Duncan had his metaphorical eye upon was large enough to shelter Nat himself in addition to the Graham family. Thus they might pool their living expenses to the economical ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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 ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley |
