"Metaphorically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... men are metaphorically varied by storms and calms, clouds and sunshine, and so in reality was the existence of our two young friends on the raft. The night passed away quietly, and towards morning the old man, in spite of his intentions to keep watch, ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... stav'd, &c.] Staving and Tailing are terms of art used in the Bear-Garden, and signify there only the parting of dogs and bears: Though they are used metaphorically in several other professions, for moderating; as law, divinity, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... relapsed into silence as they cut for the deal. It was an education in the game to observe each man as he, metaphorically speaking, donned his mask of impassive reserve. As the game progressed any one of those four men might have been a graven image as far as the expression of countenance went. No word was spoken ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... don't know how to manage it. One would think they had been built in your parlour or study, and were waiting to be launched. I have contrived a sort of ceremonial inclined plane for such visitors, which being lubricated with certain smooth phrases, I back them down, metaphorically speaking, stern-foremost, into their "native element," the great ocean of out-doors. Well, now, there are poems as hard to get rid of as these rural visitors. They come in glibly, use up all the serviceable rhymes, day, ray, beauty, duty, skies, eyes, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... shakes his head, and pouts his lip, and clinches his fist, and "calls names" in a shrill and rasping tone. Other members, who ought to know better, pretend to regard his performances as worthy of applause, and metaphorically pat him on the back and cry, "St, boy!" They only share—and in a greater degree, because they know better—the contempt with which ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... moral quiver of the organization to reach the conscience of the people, and that was the appointment of an agent to spread the doctrines of the new propaganda of freedom. In August the board of managers, metaphorically speaking, shot this arrow by making Garrison the agent of the society to lecture on the subject of slavery "for a period not exceeding three months." This was the first drop from a cloud then no bigger than a hand, ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... world, as if they had been put in with a smutty finger, as the saying goes. He revolved the problem in his mind, and a moment later came upon the solution, so he told himself. An Irish mother, and an Italian father, so he decreed, metaphorically patting himself on the back the while ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... languishes and dies. But several seedling mistletoes, growing close together on the same branch, may more truly be said to struggle with each other. As the mistletoe is disseminated by birds, its existence depends on them; and it may metaphorically be said to struggle with other fruit-bearing plants, in tempting the birds to devour and thus disseminate its seeds. In these several senses, which pass into each other, I use for convenience sake the general ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... about health and police regulations I was talking metaphorically. I suppose my real idea is that the moral force of the community—public opinion—ought to be strong enough to compel a man to live so that such laws would be unnecessary. His own public spirit, his conscience, or whatever you call it, should influence him to use ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... the way of acknowledgment. A glow of very vital gratitude swept over him, so that looking at the majestic church—secular witness to the soul's faith in and need of Almighty God's protective mercy and goodness—he took off his hat, no longer metaphorically but actually, and bowed himself together over the pommel of the saddle with an irresistible movement ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the whole course of his days, virtually or physically, or even metaphorically, reminded that he was not a millionaire; much less still was he ever reminded ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... strength—a battle that came near being the end of both of them. There was a doe just vanishing among the bushes when the fuss began, and the question at issue was which should follow her and which shouldn't. It would be easy enough to find her, for, metaphorically speaking, "her feet had touched the meadows, and left the daisies rosy." Wherever she went, a faint, faint fragrance clung to the dead leaves, far too delicate for a human nose to detect, yet quite strong enough for a buck to follow. But the trail wasn't broad enough for two, and the first ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... to the soft embrace of Bacchus, the god of sleep," he replied, mixed metaphorically. "As for me, my dear, I'm ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... have gone down to the village straight, to inquire into it. As things turned out, he smoked another pipe, and took his wife into his confidence. But their united sagacity could make nothing of it, and they went to bed—metaphorically—in the dark. But several times that night, when a waggon or other vehicle came through, and the driver asked the tollkeeper 'What news?' he looked at the man by the light of his lantern, to assure himself that he had an interest in the subject, and ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... toilet-articles, to the use of which the heroes of folk-tales do not appear to have been greatly addicted. But it is evident that like produces like in the transformation in question. In the oldest form of the story, the Sanskrit, a handful of earth turns into a mountain, a cup of water into a river. Now, metaphorically speaking, a brush may be taken as a miniature wood; the common use of the term brushwood is a proof of the general acceptance of the metaphor. A comb does not at first sight appear to resemble a mountain, but its indented outline may have struck the fancy ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... too literally," he said. "I spoke metaphorically. I did not mean that, like Swedenborg and Mohammed, I have made excursions to Paradise. I merely meant that I once spent ten years of such serene happiness as it seldom falls to the lot of man to enjoy. But to return to our subject. You would like to know more of my past; but ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... close to Him, and that life makes you, in derived and subordinate fashion, but in a very real and profound sense, what Jesus Christ was in the world. The whole blessedness and secret of the gifts which our Lord comes to bestow upon men may be summed up in that one thought, which is metaphorically and picturesquely set forth in the language of my text, and which I put into plainer and more prosaic English when I say—they that come near Christ become as Christ. As 'living stones' they, too, share in the life which flows from Him. Touch Him, and His quick Spirit passes into our hearts. Rest ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... stepping to the music of jingling harness, with bandy-legged grooms on the boot, and beside her some perfectly tailored creature in a glistening top-hat. It was a gallant picture, and one in which there was no part for me. Metaphorically I hurled at it a missile of the common clay of which, after all, we were both made. Surely fishing was a subject on which her ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... had wrought for him a coat of cheerful effrontery which passed for hardihood; a coat patched with slang and gaping with inconsistencies, which he put on or off at will. Out on the starlit mesas he had metaphorically shed his coat. He was at home. Here there were no men to joke about his awkwardness and his ungainly height. A wanderer by nature, he looked upon space as his kingdom. Great distances were but the highways of his heritage, ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... high authority the Lord imposed the regulations of his material and intelligent kingdoms, and the laws by which his moral creatures are governed. Hence, terms strictly applicable only to the government of the one, are metaphorically applied to the control of the other. And his dispensations to some are employed as symbols of his operations towards the rest. Thus, in language primarily used in reference to the firmness or security of a building, his word, and, consequently, his covenant, the arrangements of which it embodies, ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... is to be taken literally—as it was—that which is to replace it must also be taken literally, or else one code would be abolished, and there would be none to succeed it, so that the State would be left in a condition of lawlessness. Suppose, however, that we allow that the passage is to be taken metaphorically, what then? A metaphor must mean something: what does this metaphor mean? It can scarcely signify the exact opposite of what it intimates, and yet the exact opposite is true morality. Only a system of taking Christ's words "contrariwise" can make them useful as civil ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... merchant and his wife were spending an evening at a very highly-esteemed farmer's house. At the proper time supper was announced, and the visitors, with the family, were gathered round the table, which groaned, metaphorically speaking, under the load it bore. There were turkey, beef and ham, bread and the favourite short cake, sweet cakes in endless variety, pies, preserves, sauces, tea, coffee, cider, and what not. The visitors were amazed, as they might well be, at the lavish display of cooking, and they were ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... house, after all—my mind kept running on a story of Ann the cook's, about a man (a relative of hers, she said) who had once seen the devil. And yet the stranger had tipped me a guinea at parting, nor was it (except metaphorically) red ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... all, in approving benediction, brooded the wide smile of the greatest of statesmen and the great smile of the widest of statesmen— these two, metaphorically, hand in hand, floated high above their people, scattering encouraging ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... old housekeeper, Gillian—and her tongue has wagged for a solid hour by the clock. I am now au fait with everything that has happened at the Towers since I was here last—do your ears burn, Peter?—metaphorically she has dragged me at her heels from garrets to cellars and back to the garrets again. She is pathetically pleased to have ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... it, there is a Hill, the first on the road from Florence; which we walked up, and had a very lively and brilliant prospect over the road we had just travelled, and the town of Pistoia. Thence to this place the whole land is beautiful, and in the highest degree prosperous,—in short, to speak metaphorically, all dotted with Leghorn bonnets, and streaming with olive-oil. The girls here are said to employ themselves chiefly in platting straw, which is a profitable employment; and the slightness and quiet of the work are said to be much ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... found it difficult to remember all their names. When Geoffrey entered the drawing-room there were no fewer than five of them, to say nothing of two stray ladies, all superbly dressed and sitting metaphorically at Honoria's very pretty feet. Otherwise their contributions to the general store of amusement did not amount to much, for her ladyship did most of ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... all other changes in my dreams were accompanied by deep- seated anxiety and gloomy melancholy, such as are wholly incommunicable by words. I seemed every night to descend, not metaphorically, but literally to descend, into chasms and sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it seemed hopeless that I could ever reascend. Nor did I, by waking, feel that I had reascended. This I do not dwell upon; because the state of gloom which attended these gorgeous spectacles, amounting ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... who had the tastes of a parrot and gobbled up radishes and burnt almonds and pecked at the meat upon her plate, had monthly table bills amounting to five thousand francs. The wildest waste went on in the kitchen: the place, metaphorically speaking was one great river which stove in cask upon cask of wine and swept great bills with it, swollen by three or four successive manipulators. Victorine and Francois reigned supreme in the kitchen, whither they invited friends. In addition to these ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... physical forces; and in the single passage quoted, he speaks of Natural Selection "as intently watching" "picking out with unerring skill," and "carefully preserving." It is true, he tells us this is all to be understood metaphorically. ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... your position, Mr. Moore," he said, "but this is a hard thing that you ask me to do. I cannot trample upon a boy, even metaphorically, in the presence of five thousand people. What will they think ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... to us.[54] In these, which are short and not specially interesting, there is hardly a word as to Milo's debts; but much abuse of Clodius, with some praise of Cicero himself, and some praise also of Pompey, who was so soon to take up arms against Cicero, not metaphorically, but in grim reality of sword and buckler, in this matter of his further defence of Milo. We cannot believe that Milo's debts stood in the way of his election, but we know that at last he was not elected. Early in the year Clodius ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... placed under the equinoctial line; or under that band of the heavens metaphorically called by the ancients "the table of the sun," [397] comprising the space between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, beyond which the sun never passed in his annual course. Here would reign a uniformity of nights ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... available at any given time. However it is recorded, however completely every bit of data may be recorded during a lifetime, much of it is unavailable because it is incompletely cross-indexed or, in some cases, labeled Do Not Scan. Or, metaphorically, the file drawer may be locked. It may be that, in many cases, if a given bit of data remains unscanned long enough it fades into illegibility, never reinforced by the scanning process. Sensory data, coming in from the outside world as it does, is probably permanent. ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... respectable burgess of Bridgnorth, engaged in working a trow from that place to Bristol, fell under suspicion owing to the mysterious disappearance of a portion of the cargo, which consisted of china. The rest of the crew being metaphorically as well as literally in the same boat, the consignee's agent, on the trow's arrival at Bristol, hinted at a more than alliterative connection between china and chests, which he was proceeding to search when Onions objected, very rightly urging ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... considered salt to be a necessary seasoning of all repasts, and held it in so high esteem that they metaphorically called salt the wit which gives flavour ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... its solution in a similar manner, classification becoming the expression of a genealogical relationship. Finally, by this theory—and as yet by this alone—can any explanation be given of that extraordinary phenomenon which is metaphorically termed mimicry. Mimicry is a close and striking, yet superficial resemblance borne by some animal or plant to some other, perhaps very different, animal or plant. The "walking leaf" (an insect belonging to the grasshopper and cricket order) is a well-known and conspicuous instance ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... but not as interested as he would have been the day before. The day before, this story would have moved him to pour out the tale of his own untimely and irreparable loss. He and old Mr Pennycuick would—metaphorically ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... as if his religious convictions were recent, and never took his eyes off Sally all through the service—that is, if he did as she supposed, and peeped all the while that his head ought to have been, as she metaphorically expressed ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... number of people were expected later, and Merton and the heiress had been on what, as he ruefully reflected, were very kind terms—rather more than kind, he had hoped, or feared, now and then. Merton saw that he had annoyed her, and thrown her, metaphorically speaking, into the arms of the Irish minstrel. All the better, perhaps, he thought, ruefully. The poet was handsome enough to be one that 'limners loved to paint, and ladies to look upon.' He generally ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... commercial powers—the German and Italian city-states. As for the former, the Hanseatic League, despoiled of its Baltic commerce by enterprising Dutch and English merchants, its cities restless and rebellious, gradually broke up. In 1601 an Englishman metaphorically observed: "Most of their [the league's] teeth have fallen out, the rest sit but loosely in their head,"—and in fact all were soon lost except Luebeck, Bremen, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... those individuals or varieties having some advantage over their competitors will stand the best chance to live, while those destitute of these advantages will be liable to destruction. Nature may be said (metaphorically) to choose (like the will of man in artificial selection) which shall be preserved ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... glory. They came in their own carriage, and with their own horses; all in silk and silver, purple and fine linen, "with rings on their fingers and bells on their toes," as the old song has it. We pause to caution our readers that this last clause is to be interpreted metaphorically. ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Norman Kingsley!" rang from lip to lip of those who recognized him; and all drew closer, and looked at him as if they really could not make up their mind to believe their eyes. As for Sir Norman himself, that gentleman was destined literally, if not metaphorically, to fall on his legs that night, and had alighted on the crimson velvet-carpet, cat-like, on his feet. In reference to his feelings—his first was one of frantic disapproval of going down; his second, one of intense astonishment of finding himself ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... leather chair for customers, the guitar, then called a ghittern or cittern, with which a customer might amuse himself till his predecessor was dismissed from under Benjamin's hands, and which, therefore, often flayed the ears of the patient metaphorically, while his chin sustained from the razor literal scarification. All, therefore, in this department, spoke the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... the job that the business man is allowed. Four or five hours of intense application a day stands for a great deal more expenditure of energy and thought than eight or nine hours broken up with periods when one's feet are literally or metaphorically on the desk and genial conversation is flowing. Most of the men and women who make a living out of free lancing earn every blessed cent of it; and the amount upon which they pay an income tax is, as a rule, proportioned rather justly ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... "Gromets 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 believe, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... briefly and metaphorically, she whistled her dog back to her heels. I am not skilled in understanding or describing the artifices of ladies; but even I saw the transformation in Pamela. She put forth her strength and put ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... mat. Checke-mate at Chests; and (metaphorically) aremedilesse disaster, miserie, or ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... of your feelings. We are all friends here, and will go at once into executive session. Let all who have a story to tell, an anecdote to relate, or a joke to perpetrate, feel free to do so. The galleries shall be cleared, and reporters and the public excluded—metaphorically speaking," he added hastily, turning to the newspaper men, who wore a pained expression, "metaphorically speaking, of course." The skies journalistic cleared at once, and then Colonel Manysnifters, a born diplomat, whispered ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... It did not seem to take one second for Dr. Hilary to whirl the padrona out into the entry, where they could be heard going at each other like two furious cats. Hiss, roll, sputter, recrimination, objurgation! In five minutes Madame Frulini was, metaphorically speaking, on her knees, and the doctor standing over her with drawn sword, making her take back every word she had said and every ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... dense forest. One is inclined to feel a trifle small and overcome when this fraction of Mother Earth is put into one's hands (metaphorically), with orders to know all about it and to be able to answer all questions as to what is ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... ain't, gramma, we ain't," proclaimed the children in a shrill shout. They danced around the table, removing the knives and forks; their innocent, pinky faces were full of cherubic glee. This occasion was, metaphorically speaking, a whole flock of jubilant infantile larks for them. They loved company with all their souls, and they also felt always a pleasant titillation of their youthful spirits when they saw their grandmother ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of phrases, and dost deal in remnants of remnants, like a maker of pincushions; thou art in truth (metaphorically speaking) ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... began to sift the white sand through his fingers, which came so near mine that they made me catch my breath for fear he might clasp them. On the contrary, he gave up the temptatious exercise, and throwing a generous restraint on himself, began to talk metaphorically and metaphysically about many things, especially about gathering maple-sap, of which he questioned me tenderly, veiling the hidden meaning in his heart, by a seeming interest ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... should expect that the hero thrown up from the underworld, should have brought with him the drink of knowledge. This is actually the case, as he has indeed gained the thing whose constitution is metaphorically worked out in the whole story, that is, the philosopher's stone. The wanderer is a true ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... suffering the most tyrannical weapon in the armoury of destiny? Our happiness mainly depends on the freedom that reigns within us; a freedom that widens with every good deed, and contracts beneath acts of evil. Not metaphorically, but literally, does Marcus Aurelius free himself each time he discovers a new truth in indulgence, each time that he pardons, each time he reflects. Still less of a metaphor is it to declare that Macbeth enchains himself anew with every fresh crime. And if this ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... recording process is, however completely every bit of data may be recorded during a lifetime, much of it is unavailable. It may be incompletely cross-indexed, or, in some instances, labeled DO NOT SCAN. Or, metaphorically, the file drawer may be locked. It may be that, in many cases, if a given bit of data remains unscanned for a long enough period, it fades into illegibility, never reinforced by the scanning process. Sensory data, coming in from the outside world as it does, is probably ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... medical science a pleasant device known as a counter-irritant. If the patient has an aching and rheumatic joint he is counselled to put some hot burning application on the skin, which smarts so agonizingly that the ache is quite extinguished. Metaphorically, Mr. Hopkins was thermogene to Miss Mapp's outraged and aching consciousness, and the smart occasioned by the knowledge that Withers must have encouraged Mr. Hopkins (else he could scarcely have written a letter so familiar and amorous), ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... the quiet of the night. Of course, she did not know the cause of it, but it disturbed her in her thoughts. Poor, kind, excellent grandpapa, she said to herself, how would he get on with Mr. Copperhead? He would touch his forelock to so rich a man. He would go down metaphorically upon his knees before so much wealth; and what a fool Clarence would be thought on every side for wanting to marry her! Even his mother, who was a romantic woman, would not see any romance in it if it was she, Phoebe, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... who habitually, and from a strong sense of duty, live on the shady side of life. Metaphorically speaking, the sunshine may almost touch the very path on which they are treading, but they shrink from and avoid it, having a strong preference for the shade, but considering themselves martyrs while they live in ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... Fogg privately and mentally and metaphorically slapped himself on the back whenever ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... of it that strikes me most. Neither Stein nor I had a clear conception of what might be on the other side when we, metaphorically speaking, took him up and hove him over the wall with scant ceremony. At the moment I merely wished to achieve his disappearance; Stein characteristically enough had a sentimental motive. He had a notion of paying off (in kind, I suppose) the old debt he had never forgotten. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... have before made an apology for this language, which we here repeat for the last time; though the heart may, we hope, be metaphorically used here with more propriety than when we apply those passions to the body which belong to ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... assumption that Shakspeare could not use the same word differently in different places; whereas I should conclude, that as in the passage in Lear the word is employed in its direct meaning, so here it is used metaphorically; and this is confirmed by what has escaped the editors, that it is not 'I,' but 'my demerits' that may speak unbonnetted,—without the symbol of ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... this—we have had enough of the past in government. It is time to change. Literally almost, more than metaphorically, the "times are rotten ripe." We come to-day to demand—first an extension of the right of suffrage to every American citizen, of whatever race, complexion or sex. Manhood or male-hood suffrage is not a remedy ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... on through the street towards the sign-post with "To Oxford" inscribed thereon. And whether he spoke literally of the knapsack, or metaphorically of duty, he murmured, as ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for, and feared were, the Quarter Circle KT's prospective guests, had caused a psychic effect on his feelings toward Ophelia. The sense of relief that came when he found that the cook was not Ophelia, together with the widow's unexpected graciousness, had instantly disarmed his suspicions and, metaphorically speaking, hurled his heart into her lap. He had found the widow charming, interesting, very feminine, and already dreams had shaped themselves in his mind. The sudden revelation that Parker had made brought tremendous disappointment. Ophelia had not shown the least indication of obnoxious ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... general the Jews regarded God as unique. The idea of a Son of God in any physical sense, such as seemed natural enough to the heathen world, would have been unthinkable to them, but they believed that God himself had used the phrase metaphorically to describe the relation between him and his chosen people. It was a moral sonship, not a physical one in the heathen sense, or a metaphysical one in ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake
... that children too (the most foolish of God's creatures) have this intuitive knowledge; they say that to drink hot tea makes you cooler, that it is more tiring going down-hill than up, that honesty is the best policy, that love makes the world go round, that "literally" bears the same meaning as "metaphorically" ("she was literally a mother to him," they will say), that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, that those who say least feel most, that one must live. There is truly no limit to what "they," in their folly, will say. So Henry, wincing ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... Providence watched perpetually over the whole universe. We were taught—some of us at least—by Holy Scripture, to believe that the whole history of the universe was made up of special Providences. If, then, that should be true which Mr Darwin eloquently writes—"It may be metaphorically said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up that which is good, silently and incessantly working whenever and wherever opportunity ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... of the Golden Rule, and requiring constructive imagination and rational insight of the very highest order. And with this insight goes necessarily an inevitableness, an inexorableness, and, as we say metaphorically, an imperativeness, which no amount of twisting and intellectual thimble-rigging can avoid. The logic of the system cannot be avoided any more than a step in a mathematical demonstration. . . . So long ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... to see the name of the Queen thus metaphorically dragged in triumph at the chariot wheels of the Triumvirate, but it is satisfactory to know that the spectacle is not appreciated in England: since, on a question in the House of Lords, by the Earl ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... both literally and metaphorically, the air is filled, we must also make allusion. The existence of micro-organisms in countless numbers is no new fact, but the influence they may exert over living tissues has only lately become the subject of earnest attention. So long as they were not known to have ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... miserable—a sort of ecstatic misery. It took away my appetite, made sleep impossible and filled my life with wavering hopes and fears. The suspense was killing me! At the first opportunity I threw myself, metaphorically, at her feet, and unburdened myself about in ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... morning Elsie awoke, as was her custom,—when the very faintest hue of dawn streaked the horizon. A hen who has seen a hawk balancing his wings and cawing in mid-air over her downy family could not have awakened with her feathers, metaphorically speaking, in a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... persisted Mr. Skinner would dispense with the services of that subordinate so fast the offender, nine times out of ten, would be left standing in a sort of fog and blinking at the suddenness with which the metaphorical can had, metaphorically speaking, been tied to his caudal appendage. Every large business office has its Skinner—a queer combination of decency, honesty, brains and brutality, a worshiper at the shrine of Mammon in the temple of the great god ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... want, oh! heart of mine?" said Jan Cuxson, exulting in the sensation that his hands alone held her metaphorically and actually safe from the depths beneath. "And that is what I am going to give you, beloved, and more, much more in exchange for the treasure you will put into my hands. ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... in the dark, literally as well as metaphorically in the dark, had now been continued for three-quarters of an hour from the time when the crippled Apprentice had met with his accident. Mr. Idle, with all the will to conquer the pain in his ankle, and to hobble on, found the power rapidly failing him, and felt that another ten minutes ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... little cask had been whispering across the lagoon for some weeks; at last it began to shout. Mr Button, metaphorically speaking, stopped his ears. He busied himself with the children as much as possible. He made another garment for Emmeline, and cut Dick's hair with the scissors (a job which was generally performed once ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... which his powers would be called into requisition. We can always foresee in the midst of any storm, however dark and gloomy, that clear skies will certainly sooner or later come again; and this is just as true metaphorically in respect to the vicissitudes of human life, as it is literally in regard to the ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... singularly little bearing on his declaration to von Kerber, who metaphorically stuck his talons into that portion of Royson's utterance which interested him. He bent across the table, leaning on his curved fingers, spread ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... Dodson female herself against his going to law could have heightened his disposition toward it so much as the mere thought of Wakem, continually freshened by the sight of the too able attorney on market-days. Wakem, to his certain knowledge, was (metaphorically speaking) at the bottom of Pivart's irrigation; Wakem had tried to make Dix stand out, and go to law about the dam; it was unquestionably Wakem who had caused Mr. Tulliver to lose the suit about the right of road and the bridge that made a thoroughfare ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... psychic acts belonging to the system of the unconscious only. These paths are constantly open and never fall into disuse; they conduct the discharge of the exciting process as often as it becomes endowed with unconscious excitement To speak metaphorically they suffer the same form of annihilation as the shades of the lower region in the Odyssey, who awoke to new life the moment they drank blood. The processes depending on the foreconscious system are destructible in a different way. The psychotherapy of the ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... hours we found ourselves with a full creel of eels and oura, and I a trifle dismayed at facing the march home. Raiere relieved Tahitua of the burden, and a song shortened the way. I gave them the ditty of the New-Zealand Maori, who metaphorically toasted ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... beady black eyes of the Italian shot from Standish to me, and from me to Standish. In an instant his alert mind grasped the situation. Metaphorically I had been waved aside. I was not there in any official capacity, and he saw in a moment with what an opaque intellect he had to deal. The Italian closed his mouth like a steel trap, and refused to utter a word. ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... imagined he had discovered Grump's motive, and so earnest was he in exposing that nefarious wretch, that one of his opponents changed hands with him. Even the barkeeper mixed the bottles badly, and on one occasion, just as the boys were raising their glasses, he metaphorically dashed the cup from their lips by a violent, "I tell you what" and an unsatisfactory theory. ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... a picture, in a small matter, of the very heart of the gospel. 'He layeth not hold of angels, but He layeth hold of the seed of Abraham.' It is a lesson for all who would help their fellows, that they must not be too dainty to lay hold of the dirtiest hand, both metaphorically and literally, if they want their sympathy to be believed. His hand banishes not only the disease, but its consequences. Immediate convalescence and restoration to strength follow; and the strength is used, as it should be, in ministering ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... them that be- lieve; . . . they shall lay hands on the sick, and they 38:12 shall recover." Who believes him? He was addressing his disciples, yet he did not say, "These signs shall follow you," but them- "them that believe" in all time to come. 38:15 Here the word hands is used metaphorically, as in the text, "The right hand of the Lord is exalted." It expresses spiritual power; otherwise the healing could not have 38:18 been done spiritually. At another time Jesus prayed, not for the twelve only, but for as many as ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... which had once borne an oil lamp, and at whose sides were iron extinguishers, into which, in the bygone days when Ramillies was a fashionable street, footmen had thrust their smoking links. But fashion had gone afar, and Ichabod was written metaphorically upon the door of that old Queen Anne house, while really there was a tarnished brass plate bearing the inscription "Dr Chartley," with blistered panels above and below. Arched over the doorstep was an architect's ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... are great sufferers from over-sensitiveness. Remarks of parents, or school committees, or little bits of gossip which are reported to them make them feel as if people were sticking pins in them, metaphorically speaking, all the time. Writers, authors, and other people with artistic temperaments, are usually very sensitive. I have in mind a very strong, vigorous editorial writer who is so prone to take offense that he can not hold a position either on a magazine or a daily paper. He is cut ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... score stands alone in the extent of the use and the consistency with which Japanese melody has been made the foundation of the music. When Signor Illica, one of the librettists, followed Sar Peladan and d'Annunzio into Nippon seeking flowers for "Iris," he took Mascagni with him—metaphorically, of course. But Mascagni was a timid gleaner. Puccini plucked with a bolder hand, as indeed he might, for he is an incomparably greater adept in the art of making musical nosegays. In fact, I know of only one score that ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... one of them, and proved herself a neat-handed Phillis, though for a time slightly bewildered by the gastronomic performances she beheld. Babies ate pickles, small boys sequestered pie with a velocity that made her wink, women swam in the tea, and the men, metaphorically speaking, swept over the table like a swarm of locusts, while the host and hostess beamed upon one another and their robust descendants with an honest pride, which ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... perfumes and garlands of flowers; and then they drank wine, accompanied with the singing of the paean and the sound of flutes. Such adjuncts, with us, would for the most part be out of place and time; but some of them might be taken metaphorically, and others entirely changed—such as the libation to the gods—to suit a new religious feeling, and a new form of manners. The modern coena might thus be made to surpass that of the ancients in refinement and elegance; and it would include, as a matter of course, some of the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... rocks of good that lie forever beneath the wild seas of evil. Those men don't know themselves; don't know that it is all useless for them to try to hide the nobility which has been put into them, to thrust it down, and, metaphorically, to dance on it. They can't get rid of it, do what they will. I like to think of goodness as the shadow of evil through life, the shadow that, at death, or perhaps long ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... men not college-bred. We think we see what these inventors have done: no, we see only the visible vast frontage of their work; behind it is their far vaster work, and it is invisible to the careless glance. They have reconstructed this nation— made it over, that is—and metaphorically speaking, have multiplied its numbers almost beyond the power of figures to express. I will explain what I mean. What constitutes the population of a land? Merely the numberable packages of meat and bones in it called by courtesy men and women? Shall a million ounces ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... financier" to juggle profits out of other men's losses. He is merely applying to the telephone business the same hard sense that any farmer uses in the management of his farm. He is building a Big Barn, metaphorically, for ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... delight is it to work the limelight. Rather they prefer to cast a shadow—when they can't turn out the lights altogether. And, strangely enough, these people are the very people whose life is passed in the pleasantest places. It may be that, metaphorically speaking, they have been so long used to the Powers of existence that they delight in treasuring the weeds. Well, I, for one, wish that they could live among these weeds for just so long a time as to ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... unexperienced in the Art of Love, that this Art consists of three principal Points: First, to select a proper Mistress: Secondly, to win her Affections: And, Thirdly, to preserve your mutual Affection. Of all these therefore we will treat; or, to speak metaphorically, through these three Roads we will drive the Chariot we have undertaken ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... lapels aside, and took a long, deep breath, as if he were inhaling the free air of liberty. There were one or two shrewd and observant folk amongst the onlookers—it seemed to them that this unconscious action typified that Cotherstone felt himself throwing off the shackles which he had worn, metaphorically speaking, ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... is banished, pleasure is varied, not extinguished? I recollect, said I; but you spoke in admirable Latin, indeed, but yet not very intelligibly; for varietas is a Latin word, and properly applicable to a difference of colour, but it is applied metaphorically to many differences: we apply the adjective, varias, to poems, orations, manners, and changes of fortune; it is occasionally predicated also of pleasure, when it is derived from many things unlike one another, which cause ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... where, thirdly, there is a contradiction between the other means of knowledge and what mantras and arthavdas state (as when, e.g. a text of the latter kind says that 'the sacrificial post is the sun'), the intention of the text is metaphorically to denote, by means of those apparently unmeaning terms, certain other qualities which are not excluded by the other means of knowledge; and in this way the function of glorification and elucidation is again accomplished. Now what the injunction of a sacrificial action demands as its ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... come to his last legs. And he was one of the few aristocrats of his generation who had ever (metaphorically speaking) had any legs worth considering. When O'Donovan Rourke had been President of the British Republic, that good-natured Irishman, who had been at school with Ripon's father, had given him a position in the legation at Paris; but when the Radicals overthrew Rourke's government, Ripon ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... came with Dennis. Metaphorically the fatted calf was killed; their plain little room was trimmed with evergreens, and when he entered he was greeted by such a jubilant, triumphant chorus of welcomes as almost took away his breath. What little he had left was suddenly squeezed ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... and her other daughter joined the party, and at once set tooth and nail on poor Billy, not literally, but metaphorically. His spirit, however, was up. He positively refused to marry the fair Angelica, or to offer any further apology than he had ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... sleeping rough or poorly (as in a "doss-house") doughboy: kind of dumpling drover: one who "droves" cattle or sheep. droving: driving on horseback cattle or sheep from where they were fattened to a a city, or later, a rail-head. drown the miller: to add too much water to flour when cooking. Used metaphorically ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... different senses. But these are not two kinds of names, but only two modes of using them; for an aequivocal name is two names accidentally coinciding in sound. An intermediate case is that of a name used analogically or metaphorically, that is, in two senses, one its primary, the other its secondary sense. The not perceiving that such a word is really two has produced ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... eyes to see who it really was that had made it. Then another spoke, and the response led her to speak again and again; and soon the entire party were describing their drive and living over its pleasantest features; and before the meal ended they were all gathered, metaphorically, around the mystical, maple-wood fire that burned on the hearth of a nature that seemed so hospitable and kindly as to have no other mission ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... He thought of everything. Furstenheimer had been a trailing sleuth. He had fooled Kirtley completely. It was a masterly piece of work. Gard metaphorically took off his hat to the German Secret Service. Notwithstanding the Jim Deming episode and Anderson's animadversions, this had been a highly expert demonstration of ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... term for Deity, and this [15] term should seldom be employed except where the word God can be used and make complete sense. The word Soul may sometimes be used metaphorically; but if this term is warped to signify human quality, a substitution of sense for soul clears the meaning, and assists one to [20] understand Christian Science. Mary's exclamation, ""My soul doth magnify the Lord," is rendered in Sci- ence, "My spiritual sense doth magnify the Lord;" for ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... which I have imagined one could apply it as 'exquisite music,' 'a piece of exquisite poetry,' 'the exquisite taste of a peach,' 'the exquisite beauty of a woman.' Similarly, in Egyptian, 'a town neterit is 'a divine town;' 'an arm netsri' is 'a divine arm,' and neteri is employed metaphorically in Egyptian as is [the word] 'divine' in French, without its being any more necessary to attribute to [the word] neteri the primitive meaning of 'strong,' than it is to attribute to [the word] 'divine' the primitive meaning of 'exquisite.'" [Footnote: La Mythologie ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... injuries heaped on the holy head of Hibernia by the scoffing Yankee, the wrongful possessor of the American soil. A meeting of distinguished Irish emigrants, who have from time to time favoured the States with their notice, was recently convened in New York, not on this exceptional occasion to metaphorically devour the succulent Saxon, nor to send his enemies a dollar for bread, and ten dollars for lead, nor yet to urge the Gotham nurses and scullerymaids to further contributions in favour of patriot Parliamentarians, but to protest with all the fervour of the conveners' ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... itself and not led—or led astray—by pedants begins at the right end of musical evolution which is the end, the supreme efflorescence, and not the beginning. Conceding that the evolution of the human race began with the monkey and ends with ourselves, it may be said, metaphorically, that the musical public, when left to itself, declines to monkey with the monkey, but at once proceeds to pluck the full flower of evolution, the human. For if any musical compositions are human documents that term is applicable to the "Second Rhapsody" and to the "Tannhaeuser" overture. ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... Rhodes as a prisoner of war, the man who had curbed and checked on every side the expansion of the Republics, who had taken Matabeleland on the north and Bechuanaland on the west into the fold of the British Empire, would be more than a prize, would be a triumph. Rhodes metaphorically in chains, and actually paraded as a captive in the streets of Bloemfontein and Pretoria was an ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... been drawn indeed from our Master's doctrine: but the saner part of us receive it metaphorically, and would only set men free from the bonds of sin. For if domestic slaves were manumitted, we should neither have a dinner dressed nor a bed made, unless by our own children: and as to labour in the fields, who would cultivate them in this hot climate? We ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... to a French soldier, means literally "a hairy one," but the term is understood metaphorically. Since time immemorial the possession of plenty of bodily hair has served to indicate a certain sturdy, male bearishness, and thus the French, long before the war, called any good, powerful fellow—"un veritable ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... weak as they were, attempted to rally, and found themselves reinforced by a considerable number of moderate and sensible Cavaliers. Words, it was said, may easily be misunderstood by a dull man. They may be easily misconstrued by a knave. What was spoken metaphorically may be apprehended literally. What was spoken ludicrously may be apprehended seriously. A particle, a tense, a mood, an emphasis, may make the whole difference between guilt and innocence. The Saviour of mankind himself, in whose blameless life malice ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the object being to show that regicide was of no very distant date. Shakespeare's company was persuaded to revive the play at the "Globe" just before the abortive rising in favour of Essex, who, having lost his head metaphorically, was now to lose it literally. Happily for England, Shakespeare himself was not involved in the trouble. Oddly enough, he published in the year of Essex's death and Southampton's imprisonment a curious poem, "The Phoenix and the Turtle." Nobody has been able to fathom its meaning, ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... certain number of words for its proper elaboration, and neither more nor less will do. Just what the limit for any particular story may be, the writer must decide for himself. "It seems to me that a short story writer should act, metaphorically, like this—he should put his idea for a story into one cup of a pair of balances, then into the other he should deal out his words; five hundred; a thousand; two thousand; three thousand; as the case may be—and when the number of words thus paid ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... concerns. From its small and few carnal luxuries—such as the cake, fruit, or pot of preserve, votive offerings from pupils' parents—up to the newspaper and the borrowed book, nothing was either literally or metaphorically "locked" ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... never finished the sentence. An imperative gesture closed my lips physically as well as metaphorically, and I was glad to turn the subject enough to sit down to tea with the children. After the bread and butter we agreed what we might and what we might not tell, and then I wrote what the reader is ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... end (she being an extravagant type), he was left without a scrap of brain to call his own and so expired. The man was, of course, supposed to be a writer, and the brain of gold his ideas. It made me feel quite uneasy to think that Henry, too, might be, metaphorically speaking, steadily divesting himself of brain day by day in order to support The Kid and me ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... modulation, being borrowed from music, are not to be applied too literally to the art of versification. They represent metaphorically, however, certain important qualities of verse which, with the exception of rime, cannot from their very impalpability be formally explained, but can only be suggested and partially described. They are not the determining and fundamental characteristics of verse—those have already been ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... is not common among races that are the most uncivilized. By existing savages, surrounding objects, motions, and changes, are habitually used to convey ideas respecting human transactions. It needs but to read the speech of an Indian chief to see that just as primitive men name one another metaphorically after surrounding objects, so do they metaphorically describe one another's doings as though they were the doings of natural objects. But assuming a contrary habit of thought to be the dominant one, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... accuracy with which I could march across the forest by compass. I knew that at that spot we were only 6 kil. from the river. We indulged there in the last tin of the sweet guyabada, which I had kept for an emergency. After that we metaphorically flew through the forest, so fast did we march—if stumbling along constantly and even occasionally falling can be called flying. Even at that last moment, when our hearts were rejoiced, our progress was impeded by a thunderstorm, which broke out with such force that ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... "Metaphorically only, my friend, for the French are no lions, and this island is not a jaw—unless, indeed, it may prove to be, what I greatly fear may come true, the jaw-bone ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... let us know what was up. Our ammunition had already given out, and we had to face the last few hundred yards without protection, meager though it had been throughout. We knew there was not a man in that trench who had a bullet left. We knew that as far as we were concerned, we were done. We metaphorically shook hands with ourselves and wished friend self a long good-by. We looked at the sun and said "Tra-la-la" to it, and we wondered in a flash of thought what the old world would be like without us. We wondered where we ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... "antichine," and always containing indications of mineral oil. Dutch and English Companies work this valuable product; fortunes are quickly made, and the industrious inhabitants, absorbed in dreams of a golden future, appear untroubled by any consciousness of metaphorically sleeping on the brink of a volcano. Iced soda-water, and a brief siesta, revive drooping spirits after the broiling exertions of the morning, and as the shadows of the palm-trees lengthen on the edge of the jungle, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... conviction that he had just been victimized at a 'Reception,' or 'German,' or 'Kettle-drum,' or 'Masque Ball,'—or some such fine occasion, where people are amused by treading on each other's toes, and gnawing (metaphorically) their nearest neighbour's vertebrae." ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... emotions, Pride, perhaps, is the most plainly expressed. A proud man exhibits his sense of superiority over others by holding his head and body erect. He is haughty (haut), or high, and makes himself appear as large as possible; so that metaphorically he is said to be swollen or puffed up with pride. A peacock or a turkey-cock strutting about with puffed-up feathers, is sometimes said to be an emblem of pride.[13] The arrogant man looks down on others, and with lowered eyelids ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... nothing and got himself subject to a calling down, a thing which he had avoided scrupulously since coming to camp, but he was so miserable over the other matter that it seemed a thing of no moment to him now. He was altogether occupied with metaphorically kicking himself for having answered that letter; for having mailed it so soon without ever stopping to read it over or give himself a chance to reconsider. He might have known, he might have remembered that Ruth Macdonald was no comrade for him; that she was a neighbor ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... often metaphorically comes also from this idea of siege warfare. In all fortified places there are holes at intervals along the walls of defence, through which the defenders may shoot at the attackers. These are called "loop-holes." ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... Were I fortunate enough to be Miss Prism's pupil, I would hang upon her lips. [Miss Prism glares.] I spoke metaphorically.—My metaphor was drawn from bees. Ahem! Mr. Worthing, I suppose, has ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde
... an otter amongst marsupials. In such cases external resemblance and habit of life and the final end of whole organization very strong, yet no relation{136}. Naturalists cannot avoid these terms of relation and affinity though they use them metaphorically. If used in simple earnestness the natural system ought to be a genealogical ; and our knowledge of the points which are most easily affected in transmission are those which we least value in considering the natural system, and practically when we find they do ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... these walls of flesh, wherein the soul doth seem to be immured before the resurrection, it is nothing but an elemental composition, and a fabrick that must fall to ashes. "All flesh is grass," is not only metaphorically, but literally, true; for all those creatures we behold are but the herbs of the field, digested into flesh in them, or more remotely carnified in ourselves. Nay, further, we are what we all abhor, anthropophagi, and cannibals, devourers not only ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... repeat the whole of the long and tangled conversation that ensued. The Captain tried to explain, tumbled down, metaphorically speaking, got up again, and started off on another tack. In his anxiety to make his position perfectly clear, he quoted from Elsie's remarks of the previous evening, and then, thinking perhaps he had gone too far, tried to smooth these over by more explanations. ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... which English Bards, etc., shall be New Milk, in comparison. Your present literary world of mountebanks stands in need of such an Avatar." Hence the somewhat ambiguous title. The word "Avatar" is not only applied ironically to George IV. as the "Messiah of Royalty," but metaphorically to the poem, which would descend in the "Capacity of Preserver" (see Sir W. Jones, Asiatic Research, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... the said agents happened to spy our little crowd, and with that true Southern gallantry for which wine agents are so noted, he sent over a quart bottle for each one of the party, but in the excitement of the moment forgot to include glasses, so rather than look a gift horse in the mouth, metaphorically speaking, we did not mention the oversight and contented ourselves with drinking out of the bottles in true democratic spirit. Did you ever imbibe Tiffany Water direct from its native heath, as it were? No? Then ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... the Arab gentleman in the poem?' said Mark lightly. 'He agreed to sell his steed, but when the time came it didn't come off—he didn't come off, either—he "flung them back their gold," and rode away. I shall fling Uncle Solomon back his gold, metaphorically, and gallop off ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... been redeemed by irrigation—Egypt, for example, and Mesopotamia and parts of the Sudan—but the people of all those regions lay stretched out in the shade of a convenient palm, metaphorically speaking, and waited for some one with more energy than themselves to come along and do the work. But the Arizonians, mindful of the fact that God, the government, and Carnegie help those who help themselves, spent their days wielding the pick and ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... within certain limits, to anticipate the route which an invading craft will follow: the course is practically as obvious as if the vessel were condemned to a narrow lane marked out by sign-posts. Moreover, if approaching under cover of night or during thick weather, it will metaphorically "hug the ground." To attempt to complete its task at a great height is to court failure, as the range of vision is ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... supersaturated, on the contrary, they must be dilute; and third, growth leads in living organisms to cell division as soon as the mass of the cell reaches a certain limit. This process of cell division can not be claimed even metaphorically to exist in a crystal. A correct appreciation of these facts will give us an insight into the specific difference between non-living and living matter. The formation of living matter consists in the synthesis of the ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... between France and the French—between the simple, abridged, and abstract denomination of all the individualities, and these individualities themselves—relations as of father to son, tutor to his pupil, professor to his scholar? I know it is often said, metaphorically, "the country is a tender mother." But to show the inanity of the constitutional proposition, it is only needed to show that it may be reversed, not only without inconvenience, but even with advantage. Would it be ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... few hours before. A friend of mine, who stepped into the tent where they were dining, said that the board—really, board—was arranged with a bottle of claret at each plate, and, after the cloth (metaphorically speaking, I mean, for table-linen is a mere myth in the mines) was removed, a twenty-gallon keg of brandy was placed in the center, with quart dippers gracefully encircling it, that each one might help himself as he pleased. ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... these believers are neither weak nor wicked. They can put up their tablet commanding Saint Joseph for his despatch, as if he were still a village carpenter; they can 'recite the required dizaine,' and metaphorically pocket the indulgence, as if they had done a job for Heaven; and then they can go out and look down unabashed upon this wonderful river flowing by, and up without confusion at the pin-point stars, ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... friends, that to this day there is scarcely man or woman on Manhattan Island who will confess a liking for Tennyson, Mrs. Barrett Browning, or Robert Browning, simply because these poets were taken up and patronized (metaphorically speaking, of course,) by the 'Mutual Admiration ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... founded upon Maeterlinck's play of that name, the action of which it follows closely, but not closely enough, it seems, to please the poet, who publicly dissociated himself from the production of Debussy's opera and, metaphorically speaking, cursed it root and branch. Golaud, the son of King Arkel, wandering in the wood finds the damsel Melisande sitting by a fountain. He falls in love with her and carries her back to the castle as his wife. At the castle dwells also Pelleas, Golaud's brother, ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... of the brute creation possess discriminating sounds, by which they can convey to each other notices of such objects as concern their food, shelter, or safety. Yet we hesitate to call the aggregate of such sounds a language, otherwise than metaphorically. The best part of human language, properly so called, is derived from reflection on the acts of the mind itself. It is formed by a voluntary appropriation of fixed symbols to internal acts, to processes and results of imagination, the ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the despairing exiles to God as the source of national resurrection. But we must not force deeper meaning on Ezekiel's words than they properly bear. The spirit promised in them is simply the source of life,—literally, of physical life; metaphorically, of national life. However that national restoration was connected with holiness, that does not enter into the prophet's vision. Israel's restoration to its land is all that Ezekiel meant by it. True, that restoration was to lead to clearer recognition by Israel of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Larry was now, metaphorically, or otherwise, in such a case. He was, as he told himself, quite prepared to go through with the job, but, he likewise told himself, it was a rotten sort of business dressing for your wedding with not a soul, bar the servants, to say good morning to, and even they looked ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross |
