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Metaphor Quotes by Famous Authors

1. “You may feed the wolf as you will; he has always a hankering for the woods.”

Ivan Turgenev

Nature, Instinct, Freedom, Wildness, Metaphor

2. “A burrito is a sleeping bag for ground beef.”

Mitch Hedberg

Burrito, Food, Beef, Metaphor, Humor

3. “A metaphor is like a simile.”

Steven Wright

Language, Metaphor, Simile, Comparison, Humor

4. “You know when you’re sitting on a chair and you lean back so you’re just on two legs and you lean too far so you almost fall over but at the last second you catch yourself? I feel like that all the time...”

Steven Wright

Anxiety, Balance, Life, Metaphor, Experience

5. “I went to San Francisco. I found someone’s heart.”

Steven Wright

Travel, Cities, Metaphor, Discovery, Humor

6. “The raft is used to cross the river. It isn’t to be carried around on your shoulders. The finger which points at the moon isn’t the moon itself.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

Wisdom, Detachment, Understanding, Journey, Metaphor

7. “A stone is frozen music.”

Pythagoras

Nature, Music, Metaphor, Beauty, Structure

8. “Lamentation is the only musician that always, like a screech-owl, alights and sits on the roof of any angry man.”

Plutarch

Grief, Anger, Sorrow, Emotion, Metaphor

9. “Life is half delicious yogurt, half crap, and your job is to keep the plastic spoon in the yogurt.”

Scott Adams

Life, Balance, Perception, Reality, Metaphor

10. “Every time you grab at love you will lose a snowflake of your memory.”

Leonard Cohen

Love, Memory, Loss, Experience, Metaphor

11. “In our rags of light, all dressed to kill.”

Leonard Cohen

Survival, Struggle, Appearance, Reality, Metaphor

12. “I loved you when you opened like a lily to the heat; you see I’m just another snowman standing in the rain and sleet who loved you with his frozen love, his second-hand physique, with all he is and all he was a thousand kisses deep.”

Leonard Cohen

Love, Devotion, Loss, Emotion, Metaphor

13. “There are no letters in the mailbox And there are no grapes upon the vine And there are no chocolates in your boxes anymore And there are no diamonds in the mine.”

Leonard Cohen

Loss, Emptiness, Absence, Metaphor, Desolation

14. “All men will be sailors then Until the sea shall free them.”

Leonard Cohen

Freedom, Destiny, Journey, Metaphor, Exploration

15. “It is difficult to strike a match against a crumbling stone.”

Anton Chekhov

Difficulty, Obstacles, Metaphor, Struggle, Persistence

16. “He read like a man afloat on the sea, surrounded by the wreckage of his ship, trying to save his life by desperately clutching first to one fragment and then another.”

Anton Chekhov

Reading, Struggle, Survival, Desperation, Metaphor

17. “Narrative prose is a legal wife, while drama is a posturing, boisterous, cheeky and wearisome mistress.”

Anton Chekhov

Literature, Drama, Storytelling, Contrast, Metaphor

18. “Leaves die, but trees do not. They only undress.”

Henry Ward Beecher

Nature, Life, Change, Metaphor, Renewal

19. “Maybe happiness too is a metaphor invented on a day of boredom.”

Gustave Flaubert

Happiness, Metaphor, Illusion, Boredom, Perception

20. “My goal is to create a metaphor that changes our reality by charming people into considering their world in a different way.”

Chuck Palahniuk

Metaphor, Change, Creativity, Reality, Art

21. “The cancer I don’t have is everywhere now.”

Chuck Palahniuk

Cancer, Health, Metaphor, Fear, Life

22. “You have endless ways you can commit suicide without dying.”

Chuck Palahniuk

Suicide, Dying, Metaphor, Life, Struggle

23. “Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.”

Chuck Palahniuk

Identity, Metaphor, Self, Perception, Humor

24. “Auntie had a tongue like hungry scissors eating silk cloth.”

Amy Tan

Metaphor, Language, Personality, Expression, Imagery

25. “Because love is the meeting point of truth and magic. Truth, as in photography; magic, as in ballooning.”

Julian Barnes

Love, Truth, Magic, Photography, Metaphor

26. “A pier is a disappointed bridge.”

Julian Barnes

Metaphor, Architecture, Disappointment, Perspective, Bridges

27. “You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Volcanoes, Exhausted, Flame, Metaphor, Stillness

28. “Why should one say that the machine does not live? It breathes, for its breath forms the atmosphere of some towns.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Technology, Industry, Progress, Metaphor, Innovation

29. “Life is a marshmallow, easy to chew but hard to swallow.”

Francis Bacon

Life, Challenges, Difficulty, Metaphor, Simplicity

30. “The bee enclosed and through the amber shown Seems buried in the juice which was his own.”

Francis Bacon

Nature, Life, Transformation, Metaphor, Beauty

31. “If Cash nails the box up, she is not a rabbit.”

William Faulkner

Box, Cash, Metaphor, Identity, Clarity

32. “Adam and Eve are like imaginary numbers, like the square root of minus one. If you include it in your equation, you can calculate all manners of things, which cannot be imagined without it.”

Philip Pullman

Symbolism, Religion, Mathematics, Philosophy, Metaphor

33. “The sea was walking the earth with a heavy heel.”

Zora Neale Hurston

Nature, Power, Metaphor, Imagery, Movement

34. “When I pitched headforemost into the world I landed in the crib of Negroism.”

Zora Neale Hurston

Race, Birth, Identity, Metaphor, Social Construct

35. “That was the rock she was battered against.”

Zora Neale Hurston

Adversity, Struggle, Metaphor, Resilience, Concise Description

36. “I have been in Sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and sword in my hands.”

Zora Neale Hurston

Suffering, Triumph, Experience, Metaphor, Contrast

37. “It looked so quiet and peaceful around. But the stillness was the sleep of swords.”

Zora Neale Hurston

Deception, Danger, Peace, Metaphor, Observation

38. “Learning without wisdom is a load of books on a donkey's back.”

Zora Neale Hurston

Education, Wisdom, Knowledge, Metaphor, Critique

39. “Everybody is two beings: one lives and flourishes in the daylight and stands guard. The other being walks and howls at night.”

Zora Neale Hurston

Duality, Human Nature, Psychology, Metaphor, Hidden Self

40. “Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.”

Zora Neale Hurston

Hope, Dreams, Perspective, Metaphor, Human Desire

41. “Let the sun go down on you like King Harold at the battle of Hastings – fighting gloriously. Maybe a loser but what a loser! Greater in defeat than the conqueror. Certainly not a coward that rusted out lurking in his tent.”

Zora Neale Hurston

Courage, Defeat, Dignity, Historical Reference, Metaphor

42. “Love is like the sea. It's a moving thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from the shore it meets, and it's different with every shore.”

Zora Neale Hurston

Love, Adaptation, Relationships, Metaphor, Nature

43. “Stillness was the sleep of swords.”

Zora Neale Hurston

Peace, Potential Violence, Metaphor, Tension, Poetic Description

44. “I did not just fall in love. I made a parachute jump.”

Zora Neale Hurston

Love, Risk, Intention, Metaphor, Boldness

45. “Half Gods are worshipped with wine and Flowers. Real Gods require Blood.”

Zora Neale Hurston

Religion, Sacrifice, Belief, Hierarchy, Metaphor

46. “Where is de house where de mouse is de leader?”

Zora Neale Hurston

Power, Hierarchy, Metaphor, Dialect, Rhetorical Question

47. “You are alive aren't you? Well, so long as you have no grave you are covered by the sky. No limit to your possibilities. The distance to heaven is the same everywhere.”

Zora Neale Hurston

Potential, Optimism, Life, Metaphor, Philosophical Observation