"Metaphorical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... paraseiros] is used to signify a loose horse tied abreast of another in the shaft, and is technically termed "the outrigger." The metaphorical application of it to Pylades, who voluntarily attached himself to the misfortunes of his friend, ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... 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
... a reminiscence of that metaphorical proverb which tells us that "truth lies at the bottom of a well." Perhaps these people thought that the only way to find truth in the well was to drown oneself. But on whatever thin theoretic basis, the type and period of George Gissing did certainly consider that Dickens, so far as he went, was ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... 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
... "I spoke metaphorical," explained Brother Jarrum. "Would I deceive you? No. It's the Great Salt Lake, that shines out like burnished silver, and bursts on the sight of the new pilgrims when they arrive in bands at the holy city—the emigrants from ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... 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 ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... 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
... 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, but 'to run fast' is thoroughly objectionable. ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... 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 ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... 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
... rapacious Aspect takes its Name from the Cat, that of a sharp piercing Nature from the Hawk, those of an amorous roguish Look derive their Title even from the Sheep, and we say such a[n] one has a Sheep's Eye, not so much to denote the Innocence as the simple Slyness of the Cast: Nor is this metaphorical Inoculation a modern Invention, for we find Homer taking the Freedom to place the Eye of an Ox, Bull, or Cow in one of his principal Goddesses, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... sterling stuff in him which you find in really sterling people; and in addition, he performed his brave acts in a quiet, unassuming way, so that often enough they passed unnoticed; and when he had finished, he sank back into his perfectly simple life, and never marched about in metaphorical uniform with a drawn sword, and men before him beating drums, and banging cymbals, and blowing trumpets for the people to see, and hear, and say, ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... developed forms is termed sublimation, a term, originally used for the process of raising by heat a solid substance to the state of vapour, which was applied even by such early writers as Drayton and Davies in a metaphorical and spiritual sense.[7] In the sexual sphere sublimation is of vital importance because it comes into question throughout the whole of life, and our relation to it must intimately affect our conception of morality. The element of athletic asceticism which is a part of all ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... 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 own part, we confess that we have no great ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... 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 soul immediately and ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... 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
... that threadbare word 'salvation,' which we all take it for granted that we understand, and which, like a well-worn coin, has been so passed from hand to hand that it scarcely remains legible—that well-worn word 'salvation' starts from a double metaphorical meaning. It means either—and is used for both—being healed or being made safe. In the one sense it is often employed in the Gospel narratives of our Lord's miracles, and it involves the metaphor of a sick man and his cure; in the other it involves the metaphor ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 Common Council,—letting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... the rain. I had heard a great deal, at 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 of at least four inches. I was actually compelled to lean forward ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... stewardly, 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
... is here metaphorical, and expresses, in its primary use, the breaking of a spear ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... 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 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... 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 which paled beside her own intenser colouring. She had a perfume ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... of the evening and the sweet scents of the moor. In such weather he had a trick of walking with his head high and his nostrils wide, sniffing the air like the wild ass of the desert with which the metaphorical George had erstwhile compared him. That young man meanwhile was occupied with his own reflections. His good nature had been victimized, he had been made to fetch and carry continually, and the result was that he had scarcely ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... 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 ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... answered. 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
... Temporal rhythms, apart from those of planetary motion, the alternation of seasons, and the like (which are called rhythmic by a metaphorical extension of the term), manifest themselves to us as phenomena of sound; hence the two concepts time-rhythm and sound-rhythm are commonly thought of as one ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... 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 conceive, any ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... an eye, Miss Higglesby-Browne, fallen forever from her high estate, was strewn in metaphorical fragments at our feet. I turned away, feeling it time to draw the veil of charity upon the scene. Not so Slinker. He looked about him carefully ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... suspected that he wanted to confide in me that Mrs. Valentine had made one last determined refusal to receive him as a son-in-law, and that after the next few days of sea-voyaging we should meet an irate parent at the landing in New York and that there would be metaphorical "wigs on the green." ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 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 ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... too partial admirers, is excellent. The principle on which it has been executed, that of 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 countenance, ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... 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 Boarding-House appeared. For my part, I long ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various
... get any appropriate metaphorical description of it one has to change the terminology altogether. In a very great line Mr. Kipling has spoken ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... 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 woman, (ch. xvii. ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... 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 ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... amused myself with the thought of a self-conscious Looking-glass, and the various metaphorical applications of such a fancy—and this morning it struck across the Eolian Harp of my Brain that there was something pleasing and emblematic (of what I did not distinctly make out) in two such Looking-glasses fronting, each seeing the other in itself, and itself in the other. Have you ever noticed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... 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 ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... 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 gems ...
— The Upanishads • Swami Paramananda
... performances;" it being objected that the plan and sentiments of it had too boldly vindicated, and might inflame, Republican principles. A prologue, by Dryden, to "The Prophetess," was prohibited, on account of certain "familiar metaphorical sneers at the Revolution" it was supposed to contain, at a time when King William was prosecuting the war in Ireland. Bank's tragedy of "Mary, Queen of Scotland," was withheld from the stage for twenty years, owing to "the profound penetration of the Master ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... born?" When her friend added that some of the pupils he had seen in Budapest had more than one hundred tunes in their heads, she said, laughing, "I think their heads must be very noisy." She sees the ridiculous quickly, and, instead of being seriously troubled by metaphorical language, she is often amused at her own too literal ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... a metaphorical application of the word, is not in the least the same thing as Goodness, any more than beauty (despite Keats' famous assertion) is the same thing as Truth. These three objects of the soul's pursuit have different ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... inorganic form I may be able to give, either in "Deucalion," or in my "Elements of Drawing." I wish however that the second lecture had been made the beginning of the book; and would fain now cancel the first altogether, which I perceive to be both obscure and dull. It was meant for a metaphorical description of the pleasures and dangers in the kingdom of Mammon, or of worldly wealth; its waters mixed with blood, its fruits entangled in thickets of trouble, and poisonous when gathered; and the final captivity of its inhabitants within frozen ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... stifling: partly 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
... 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 ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... 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 those horae combustae, and odd ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... the precision of 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
... is at least one of the essentials of biological science, goes back very far. The word Biology, used in our sense, would, it is true, have been an impossibility among them, for bios refers to the life of man and could not be applied, except in a strained or metaphorical sense, to that of other living things.[6] But the ideas we associate with the word are clearly developed in Greek philosophy and the foundations of biology are ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... His Reflections on the Revolution in France is also noteworthy. His prose is distinguished for the following qualities: (1) He is one of the greatest masters of metaphor and imagery in English prose. Only Carlyle surpasses him in the use of metaphorical language. (2) Burke's breadth of thought and wealth of expression enable him to present an idea from many different points of view, so that if his readers do not comprehend his exposition from one side, they may from another. He endeavors to attach what he says to something ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... 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 ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... which, turning upon nearly the same allegory, and bearing very similar titles, came into existence at or about the very same time, will plainly see their total dissimilarity. Bunyan's is a close and continued allegory, in which the metaphorical fiction is sustained with all the minuteness of a real story. In Dr. Patrick's the same plan is generally announced as arising from the earnest longing of a traveller, whom he calls Philotheus or Theophilus, whose desires are fixed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 469. Saturday January 1, 1831 • Various
... as frequent allusion is made by Demosthenes and other ancient orators to the klepshydra or water-clock, by which the time allotted to each speaker was measured. Besides, the close proximity of such an instrument would be a constant source of metaphorical allusion on the subject of time and eternity. Perhaps those of your readers who are familiar with the extant sermons of the Greek and Latin fathers, may be able to supply some illustration on this subject. At all events there appears ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 190, June 18, 1853 • Various
... knew that the passage, as we interpreted it, contained nothing contrary or repugnant to reason. If the literal meaning clashes with reason, though the passage seems in itself perfectly clear, it must be interpreted in some metaphorical sense. This doctrine he lays down very plainly in Chap. xxv. part ii. of his book More Nebuchim for he says: "Know that we shrink not from affirming that the world hath existed from eternity, because of what Scripture ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... eloquence of Burke, beyond that of all other orators and statesmen which Great Britain has produced, is featured with expressions, and characterised by qualities, as peculiar as they are immortal. So far as invention, imagination, moral fervour, and metaphorical richness of illustration, combined with that intense "pathos and ethos," which the Roman critic describes ("Huc igitur incumbat orator: hoc opus ejus, hic labor est; sine quo caetera nuda, jejuna, infirma, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... prince were branded with the contemptuous epithets of pagans. (Tacit. Hist. iii. 24, 43, 77. Juvenal. Satir. 16. Tertullian de Pallio, c. 4.) 4. The Christians were the soldiers of Christ; their adversaries, who refused his sacrament, or military oath of baptism might deserve the metaphorical name of pagans; and this popular reproach was introduced as early as the reign of Valentinian (A. D. 365) into Imperial laws (Cod. Theodos. l. xvi. tit. ii. leg. 18) and theological writings. 5. Christianity gradually filled the cities of the empire: the old religion, in the time of Prudentius ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... the 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 to a better market than the slow and tedious ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... in Herat, in Cabool, in Kashgar, or in Constantinople; you will find him the ally of the Prussian whenever Kaiser William, after the fashion of his tribe, orders his legions to obliterate the line between Holland and Germany, taking hold of that metaphorical pistol which you spent so many millions-to turn from your throat in the days of the first Napoleon. Nay, even should any woman-killing Sepoy put you to sore strait by indiscriminate and ruthless slaughter, he will be your cousin's friend, for the simple ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... trait in the treatment of objective life, swiftness of analogy, affects the Polynesian in two ways: the first is pictorial and plays upon a likeness between objects or describes an idea or mood in metaphorical terms; the second is a mere linguistic play upon words. Much nomenclature is merely a quick picturing which fastens attention upon the special feature that attracts attention; ideas are naturally reinforced ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... time we crawled stealthily through tangled vines and shrubs to the skirt of a wood, and across a fallen log sighted the Yankee picket whose bayonet point glimmered now and then far off in the moonlight. We spent a great many hours around the camp-fire counting our metaphorical scalps. ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... drawers of the mind and stuck the contents on a bill file,—one of those hard-bosomed women who stump into church as they stump into a department store with an air of "Now then, what can you show me that's new," who go about with a metaphorical set of burglar's tools in a large bag with which to break open confidences and who have no faith ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... or less 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. ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... friends, beneath these two metaphorical expressions there lies one simple condition. I put it into three words, which, for the sake of being easily remembered, I cast into an alliterative form: approach Christ, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... M. Verdier returned a suitable answer, adapting his words to their simple comprehension, yet using the metaphorical style so common among them. He was glad, he told them, that "words of peace were in their mouths; that there was a mild sky, and that the winds were low. He wished it was ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... too, that I first saw the teeth and the claws of our metaphorical man-eater. That was during the conflict between Governor Waite and the Fire and Police Board of Denver. He had the appointment and removal of the members of this Board, under the law, and when they refused to close the public gambling houses and otherwise enforce the laws against ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... formed: its members 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 ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... notice 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, when he chooses to go ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... mutual interdependence of all its members. Therefore, when a few pages back, adopting the allegorical method, we used a fabulous god as a symbol of society, our language in reality was not in the least metaphorical: we only gave a name to the social being, an organic and synthetic unit. In the eyes of any one who has reflected upon the laws of labor and exchange (I disregard every other consideration), the reality, I had almost said the personality, of the collective man is as certain as ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... Christian teaching that Christ's mission on earth was to give men Life. "I am come," He said, "that ye might have Life, and that ye might have it more abundantly." And that He meant literal Life, literal spiritual and Eternal Life, is clear from the whole course of His teaching and acting. To impose a metaphorical meaning on the commonest word of the New Testament is to violate every canon of interpretation, and at the same time to charge the greatest of teachers with persistently mystifying His hearers by an unusual use of so exact a vehicle for expressing definite thought ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... 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 ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... But metaphorical language, though nothing other will convey the extremity of his misery, or the form of his thoughts, must ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... observed a twinkle in the boy's eye; saw through him; in a metaphorical sense, and ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... hold it and will it to be "not a 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 sake only that ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... well-mannered, in comparison with the demon that takes bodily possession of me, and whose name is not 'Suset'! but a fearful Ruach demanding the ban Cherem. I once thought all that part of Scripture which referred to the casting out of devils was metaphorical; but I know better now; for the one that Luther assaulted with his inkstand was not more palpable than that which enters into my heart every now and then, and overturns the altars of the 'true, good, and beautiful,' and sets up instead a small hall ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... apprized, that the words strength 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 words ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... may have been plugging for Mars below the conscious level. A combination of chance, expediency and popular demand made Mars the next target, rather than Venus, which was, in some ways, the more logical goal. I would have given anything to have gone, but the metaphorical stout heart that one reporter once credited me with is not the same as an ...
— It's a Small Solar System • Allan Howard
... satisfactory," said I; "the three first words are metaphorical, and the fourth, lagged, 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' ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... to Demetrius Phalereus, was a metaphorical expression that denoted the secret awe which darkness and gloom inspired. The night was almost always the time fixed for their celebration; and they were ordinarily termed nocturnal ceremonies. Initiations into the Mysteries of Samothrace took place ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... interests into words, they are equipped for 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 ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... derivation. Many have been distorted by corruption, and these are the most difficult to trace: to which may be added, that the terms we now employ to express our feelings and passions, and all that depicts mind and its operations, are of a figurative or metaphorical origin. Instead of any word being insignificant, there is no one but may become the keystone in a sentence; and therefore a word blotted out in a perspicuous, that is, a properly constructed sentence, would render it unintelligible. To the composition of a sentence, whatever ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... 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 ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... reviewing the metaphorical applications of such terms as 'caustic,' 'mordant,' 'piquant,' etc., in their burning, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and old; and the 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... each object is controlled, and of every intelligent being, with regard to the exercise of his will toward or upon outward objects or his fellow-beings. Fitness and unfitness are the ultimate ideas that are involved in the terms right and wrong. These last are metaphorical terms,—right (Latin, rectus), straight, upright, according to rule, and therefore fit; wrong, wrung, distorted, deflected, twisted out of place, contrary to rule, and therefore unfit. We are so constituted that we cannot help regarding ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... 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 ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... oratory 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 ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... also, the balance became more even. She would still give him his liberty, if she believed that he wished it; for then her pride would settle the question; but she must have more conclusive evidence on the point than the Reverend Doctor's metaphorical deduction from ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... a wry face under the double pain of heart and body caused at the same moment by the material or martial, and the metaphorical or erotic arrow, of which the latter was thus barbed by a declaration more candid than flattering; but he did not choose to put in any such claim to the lady's gratitude as would bar all hopes of her love: he therefore remained silent; and the lady and ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... Hence it is easy to understand that the Torah, though as a literary product later than the historical and prophetical books, is yet as law older than these writings, which have originally and in their nature no legal character, but only acquired such a character in a sort of metaphorical way, through their association with the ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... engagement and forbade you to come here; but that was only a part of my delusion, not yours! But why did you not rescue me from these delusions? Are they not more terrible than the beasts at Ephesus? Really I know not which of us has showed less wisdom,—you who stayed to slay a metaphorical witch created of your own heated imagination, or I, with all my hopes unfulfilled, turning aside to follow one whose prophecies carry him out of the world rather than into it. And I do not know what has been the result of your mistake, but with me it has been war. I have been ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... go for 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
... comes Roger Scurvilegs. His monumental work, Euralia Past and Present, in seventeen volumes, towers upon my desk as I write. By the merest chance I picked it up (in a metaphorical sense) at that little shop near—I forget its name, but it's the third bookshop on the left as you come into London from the New Barnet end. Upon him I depend for the broad lines of my story, and I have already indicated my opinion of ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... dome," in case you prefer "burning" added to this "wave" metaphorical. The word "fiery pillar" was suggested by the "pillar of fire" in the book of Exodus, which went before the Israelites through the Red Sea. I once thought of saying "like Israel's pillar," and making it a simile, but I did not know,—the great temptation was leaving ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... words, as they appear in the printed editions of his History and in the "Ypodigma Neustriae,"[300] will be found at the foot of the page.[301] The following is probably (p. 317) as close a rendering of the original, as the strangely metaphorical, and in some cases the obscure expressions of Walsingham will bear. "On which day [of Henry's coronation] there was a very severe storm of snow, all persons marvelling at the roughness of the weather. Some considered the disturbance of the atmosphere as portending the new King's destiny to ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... Well;—we did. Of all the political acts of my life it 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 it need ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... hardly 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 cur masquerading as ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... David 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
... 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 ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... instruction to you in that single sentence in which he says, 'Mr. God's-peace was not a native of the town.' John Bunyan has gathered up many gospel Scriptures into that single allegorical sentence. He has made many old and familiar passages fresh and full of life again in that one metaphorical sentence. It is the work of genius to set forth the wont and the well known in a clear, simple, and at the same time surprising, light like that. There is a peace that is native and natural to the town of Mansoul, and to understand that peace, its nature, its grounds, its extent, and its ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • 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 ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... when he wrote his "[Greek: EKSKUBALAURON], or, The Discovery of a most Precious Jewel," etc., fancied that the world would willingly let his reverberating words faint into whispers, and, at last, into utter silence?—his "metonymical, ironical, metaphorical, and synecdochal instruments of elocution, in all their several kinds, artificially affected, according to the nature of the subject, with emphatical expressions in things of great concernment, with catachrestical in matters of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... water,—milk and water won't do. They are longing for our common mother earth, in the dear, familiar form of dirt; and it is no matter how much dirt they get on them, if they only have water enough to wash it off. The more they are allowed to eat literal dirt now, the less metaphorical dirt will they eat a few years hence. The great Free-Soil principle is good for their hearts, if not for their clothes; and which is it more important to have clean? Just make up your mind to let the clothes go; and if you can't ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... a space in the centre of the balcony, a black hole, called in metaphorical slang, an oven. No one there. Crowds everywhere except ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... satisfactory. Lunch, too, was all that could be desired. Mrs. Polkington's manners were always gracious, and to-day she had a charming air of taking Richard into the family—after having shut all the doors, actual and metaphorical, which led to anything real and personal. The Captain was rather twittery at lunch, at times inclined to talk too much, at times heavily silent and always obviously submissive to his wife. Yesterday's excitement was not enough to account for this in Julia's opinion. ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... 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
... 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
... kitten—a soft, purry kitten." Hall was heartily metaphorical, as he opened his pocket knife mechanically. "If you want to feel my claws, just ask me to vote for that damn thief! You'll think that I live in four different atmospheres. You and Bob Burroughs may be able to buy the rest ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... placed signs of differing forms which are used in senses so nearly the same as to have only a slight shade of distinction, or sometimes to be practically interchangeable. The comprehensive and metaphorical character of signs renders more of them interchangeable than is the case with words; still, like words, some signs with essential resemblance of meaning have partial and subordinate differences made by etymology or usage. Doubtless ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... 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 ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... aright the grounds on which Rabbi Abhu would fain excuse Rav Saphra for not caring at all about the Scriptures, certain passages from both Talmuds should be read, which, in the usual metaphorical style of the Rabbis, set forth the respective merits of Scripture and Tradition. The three times three in Sophrim (chap. 15), in which the Scripture is compared to water, the Mishna to wine, and the Gemara to mulled wine, and that ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... herself, and send back to her in its first available shape, much of what her students produce. As between thought and substance, the two continents interchange offices. We import the crude material her philosophers harvest or mine, work it up and return it, just as she takes the yield of our non-metaphorical fields and strata and restores it manufactured. Much of the social, political and industrial advancement of Europe within the century she may be said to owe to the United States. Her governmental reforms certainly and confessedly found here their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... may go further. 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 made from his works often betray a very ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... 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 ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... remarking, that "Sir W. T. opens all his Essays with something as foreign to the purpose as possible," he has the following criticism:—"Page 260, 'Represent misfortunes for faults, and mole-hills for mountains,'—the metaphorical and literal expression too often coupled. P. 262, 'Upon these four wheels the chariot of state may in all appearance drive easy and safe, or at least not be too much shaken by the usual roughness ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... or principle in them which overcame, were of the same nature. The pleasure of doing good to others and of bodily self-indulgence, the pleasures of intellect and the pleasures of sense, are so different:—Why then should they be called by a common name? Or, if the equivocal or metaphorical use of the word is justified by custom (like the use of other words which at first referred only to the body, and then by a figure have been transferred to the mind), still, why should we make an ambiguous word the corner-stone of moral philosophy? To ...
— Philebus • Plato
... all names which we apply to God are taken from creatures; as was explained above (A. 1). But the names of creatures are applied to God metaphorically, as when we say, God is a stone, or a lion, or the like. Therefore names are applied to God in a metaphorical sense. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... that of making many books there is no end. 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, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... imaginary similitudes, the same word is used at once in its primitive and metaphorical sense. Thus health, ascribed to the body natural, is opposed to sickness; but attributed to the body politick stands as contrary to adversity. These parallels therefore have more of genius, but less of truth; they often ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... rare in wild animals, or in a large majority of cases so quickly proves fatal, that, compared with what we call disease in our own species it is practically non-existent. The "struggle for existence," in so far as animals in a state of nature are concerned, is a metaphorical struggle; and the strife, short and sharp, which is so common in nature, is not misery, although it results in pain, since it is pain that kills or is soon outlived. Fear there is, just as in fine weather there are clouds ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... perfect woman. Although all those peculiar doctrines of Herbert, which, undisguised, must have excited so much odium, were more or less developed and inculcated in this work; nevertheless they were necessarily so veiled by the highly spiritual and metaphorical language of the poet, that it required some previous acquaintance with the system enforced, to be able to detect and recognise the esoteric spirit of his Muse. The public read only the history of an ideal ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... determined set of men went out from the cities than those who went out last May, as I did, to conquer the food problem. I don't mean to say that each and every one of us actually left the city. But we all "went forth" in the metaphorical sense. Some of the men cultivated back gardens; others took vacant lots; some went out into the suburbs; and others, like myself, went ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... and to 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 ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... 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 ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... 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 fact that no one reader will read them all; we think that we have met ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... way of closing an argument, no matter whether it was with her butcher, her grocer, of the bishop himself. Such a look is best described as imperious, although one less reserved than I but perhaps more potently metaphorical would say that she simply looked a hole through you, seeing beyond you as if you were not there at all. She had found it especially efficacious in dealing with the butcher and even the bishop, to say nothing of the effect it always had upon the commonplace ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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
... adopts, for it has had other advocates) a very probable one, at least for more northern tribes. There is no reason why men should have escaped the same law of nomenclature which gave names to the cuckoo and the pavo.[a] But when he approaches draff, he gets upon thinner ice. Where a metaphorical appropriateness is plainly wanting to one etymology and another as plainly supplies it, other considerations being equal, probability may fairly turn the scale in favor of the latter. Mr. Wedgwood is here dealing with a sound translated to another meaning ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... and his demeanour was such as to suggest to the other passengers the idea that he considered them also to be "beastly," a suggestion which they very promptly resented by sending him to Coventry. That his metaphorical seclusion in that ancient city was not of the very strictest kind was entirely due to the fact that his partner, Rex Fortescue, and the inimitable Brook wore on board. Rex bore the childish irritability of his ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... 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 ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... it rained, some pages drove in twenty cows and ten goats, with a polite metaphorical message from their king, to the effect that I had pleased him much, and he hoped I would accept these few "chickens" until he could send more,—when both Maula and N'yamgundu, charmed with their success in having brought a welcome guest to Uganda, never ceased showering eulogiums on ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... be attributed to errors in the text; again, there is an over-curious adjustment of verb and participle, noun and epithet, and other artificial forms of cadence and expression take the place of natural variety: thirdly, the absence of metaphorical language is remarkable—the style is not devoid of ornament, but the ornament is of a debased rhetorical kind, patched on to instead of growing out of the subject; there is a great command of words, and a laboured use of them; forced attempts at metaphor occur in several passages,—e.g. parocheteuein ...
— Laws • Plato
... 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 ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... 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 of the just, or committed to the regions of punishment, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... beautiful, we demand certain formal and material elements of beauty. A telegram may convey the very apex of felicity, yet be not at all felicitous in its form or in the music of its words. If in such cases, we speak of beauty, the term is altogether metaphorical and imputed; we are using it in the same analogical sense as when we speak of a "beautiful operation" or a "beautiful deed"; it is a moral rather than an aesthetic term. We may find the letter of a friend expressive of the ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... Ecclesiastes, allusion was made to food or drink, it meant study of the law, and the practise of good works. It was a saying among them—'In the time of the Messiah the Israelites will be fed by Him.' Nothing was more common in the schools and synagogs than the phrases of eating and drinking, in a metaphorical sense. 'Messiah is not likely to come to Israel,' said Hillel, 'for they have already eaten Him'—that is, greedily received His words—'in the days of Hezekiah.' A current conventionalism in the synagogs was that the just would 'eat the Shekinah.' It was peculiar ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... 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 ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... celebrity at head-quarters, I a subaltern at an isolated post. He had apparently become acclimated, and was rapidly winning respect for himself and dollars for his backers; I was winning neither for anybody, and doubtless losing both,—they go together, somehow. Van was living on metaphorical clover down near Tucson; I was roughing it out on the rocks of the Mogollon. Each after his own fashion served out his time in the grim old Territory, and at last "came marching home again;" and early in the summer of the Centennial year, and just in the midst ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... 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 scale? ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward |
