"Metaphorically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she, alarmed at the very mention of Delvile Castle, yet affecting to understand literally what was said metaphorically, "the havoc of time upon the place could not fail ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... he said cruelly. He wanted to hurt her since she had walked over him, metaphorically, with hobnailed boots. "India is a land of ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... frightens us? Yes!—on this one day of the year we are all avenged. Rachel, metaphorically, sits on a stool and tries to please. To put off 'the Duke' by telephone!—what a horrid indignity! ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... caught swordfish. It was this that attracted me. Quite a number of fishermen have caught a swordfish. But every one of them will have something different to tell you and the information thus gleaned is apt to leave you at sea, both metaphorically and actually. Quite a number of fishermen, out after yellowtail, have sighted a swordfish, and with the assistance of heavy tackle and their boatmen have caught that swordfish. Some few men have caught a small ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... especial abundance; the blessing of the old Jesuits still rested on the waters of New France, and the fish swarmed metaphorically ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... variety of conversation than this. But, of course, the occasion counts for a good deal. It would be foolish to discharge it (metaphorically speaking) at the head of the first comer. You must watch for your opportunity. For instance, guns ought not to be talked about directly after breakfast, before a shot has been fired. Better wait till after the shooting-lunch, when a fresh start is being made, say ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... "Metaphorically, of course. Wheatfields. Acres and acres of wheat. Bread, wheat, a grass. And cornfields. Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois—not a state in the Union without corn. Milo, oats, sorghum, rye—all grasses. And the Metamorphizer will work ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Metaphors were her refuge. Metaphorically she could allow her mind to distinguish the struggle she was undergoing, sinking under it. The banished of Eden had to put on metaphors, and the common use of them has helped largely to civilize us. The sluggish in intellect detest them, but our civilization is not much indebted to that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... an hour, for if the police is not perfect in China, it is at least prompt and expeditious. Soon caught, soon hanged—and it will not do for them to hang Kinko, even metaphorically. ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... Alsace and Lorraine regained, Rheims cathedral repaired in the best modern trade style, and a prodigious indemnity in her pocket! Suppose we tow the German fleet into Portsmouth, and leave Hohenzollern metaphorically under the heel of Romanoff and actually in a comfortable villa in Chislehurst, the hero of all its tea parties and the judge of all its gymkhanas! Well, cry the Militarists, suppose it by all means: could we desire anything better? Now I happen to have ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... TRULLA 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
... touched the right note. Metaphorically, the Marchesino cast himself at her feet. With a gallant assumption of undivided adoration he burst into conversation, and, though his eyes often wandered to the blurred glass, against which pressed and swayed a blackness that told of those outside, his sense of his duty as a host ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... friends came up. They were jolly, merry, good-humored girls, who were all prepared to look up to Maggie Oliphant and to worship her beauty and cleverness if she would allow them. Maggie welcomed the girls with effusion, let them metaphorically sit at her feet and proceeded to disenchant them ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... It may metaphorically be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all that are good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... 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 then said, wrapping his watch-coat ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... "species" can only be compared metaphorically, and very imperfectly, with that of ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... of the enemy approached the reservoir, presumably to see if there were water in it. But when our gunners metaphorically advised them that there was danger of falling in, the party took the hint and retired. Later on, the Boers advised us with numerous tokens of their good-will. While this was being done a large force ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... 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 ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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
... and complex than that 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 as it stands, its parts, elements, or members are placed, ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... they talked of other things for a while until other people began to drop in, Arthur Ensart, Anne Randolph, and young Welter—Helter Skelter Welter, always, metaphorically speaking, redolent of saddle leather and reeking of sport. His theme happened to be his own wonderful trap record, that evening; and the fat, good-humoured, ardent young man prattled on about "unknown angles," ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... They had quarrels— who hadn't?—but they had usually ended in Fanny shedding some tears that warmly recemented their deep affections. This latter time, however, she had not wept—at the point of dissolving into the old surrender she had turned away from him, both in reality and metaphorically, and fallen asleep in an unexpected cold reserve. He was sorry, for it brought into their relationship a definite new quality of difference. He was aware of the thorough inconsistency of his attitude toward their marriage; again two opposed forces were present in him— one, Fanny, as, bound to ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Virginia-fence-like style of their marching when I heard a description of the feast of which they had partaken a 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. Can you wonder, after that, that every ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... 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 would ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... required of them; and if I'm not mistaken, the largest-headed man in our class is the dullest,' said Nelly, with a solemn air which produced a gale of merriment; for all knew that the young Goliath she mentioned had been metaphorically slain by this quick-witted David on many a battle-field, to the great disgust of himself ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... 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 neuroses ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... phrase, "Tous les arts sont freres" (all the arts are brothers), the word "frere" (brother) is used metaphorically to indicate a more or less striking resemblance. The word is so often used in this way, that when we hear it we do not think of the concrete, the material connection implied in every relationship. We should notice it more if we were told that "Tous les arts sont cousins," ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... 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 beyond "Raise you so and so"—"See you that." So keen, so ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... of 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 going ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... opponent. Don could sympathise with Harry, for he had endured disappointments himself during his brief football career, but it is difficult to sympathise very enthusiastically when the subject of your sympathy shows his dislike for you, and Don metaphorically shrugged his shoulders as he trotted ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... not insinuated that 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 ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... attack double their number, intrenched to the teeth in works bristling with bayonets and loaded with heavy artillery." Instead of double, he should have said half; the bayonets only "bristled" metaphorically, as less than a quarter of the Americans were armed with them; and the British breaching batteries had a heavier "load" of artillery than did the American lines. Gleig says that "to come nearer the truth" he "will choose a middle course, and suppose ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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 ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... gravely announced. Within was the well-worn 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 chirurgeon-barber, or ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... 'Metaphorically speaking. Of course they are just where other people's nerves are; but he's what you call a highly organized nervous specimen. There will be plenty of fun. Hush! he is just ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... Howard metaphorically clapped his hand over his mouth. Questions were on the tip of his tongue. If Martin were not in the mood to take him into his confidence, however, there must be a good reason for it, but,—not to know where his wife was! What on earth was at the bottom of all this? "All right," ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... many gifted women, among them many gifted authoresses, but I have not known any woman who could have surpassed Lady Russell in the varied charms of her conversation. Most of us, men and women, have usually the habit of carrying our occupations with us, metaphorically at least, wherever we go, and therefore have some difficulty in entering with full appreciation into conversational fields in which we do not find ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... thereof has been more than normally exacting and severe; but we are from private sources left in no manner of doubt that Mr. Kruger has been canvassing and stimulating the Boers to be ready for any emergency, and has been metaphorically planting a war-beacon on every hill. All scrutiny and inquiry fail to discover that he has uttered one single word which can be described as an emollient to the present critical situation. He has pandered rather to the worst racial passions of the Boer, instead of using the enormous ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... acknowledged coldness would have prevented such a scene as I have been forced to listen to, by you, to-day. You are the first who has ever dared to insult me. You are, indeed, the first man who has ever been at my feet, metaphorically speaking or otherwise; and I sincerely trust," says Lady Stafford, with profound earnestness, "you may be the last, for anything ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... Treslong, therefore, who was really the hero of this memorable adventure, persuaded De la Marck to send a message to the city of Brill, demanding its surrender. This was a bold summons to be made by a handful of men, three or four hundred at most, who were both metaphorically and literally beggars. The city of Brill was not populous, but it was well walled and fortified. It was moreover a most commodious port. Treslong gave his signet ring to the fisherman, Koppelstok, and ordered him, thus accredited as an envoy, to carry their ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... new aspects of affairs arise, in 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 ordinary ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... Metaphorically speaking, it's a symptom of the Hun To be always bent on seeking after places in the sun; But I'd rather choose to follow what my deadliest foes applaud Than to ostracise ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 3, 1916 • Various
... at the street corner, pondering over her words. What could have induced her to ask him to go back to Beryl Van Tuyn, to see Beryl Van Tuyn home? She wanted him to interfere between Miss Van Tuyn and that man, Nicolas Arabian! She tried metaphorically to push him towards Miss Van Tuyn. It was inexplicable. Lady Sellingworth was a woman of the world, past mistress of all the convenances, one in whom any breach of good manners was impossible, unthinkable! And yet she had asked ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... son of Miscomoneto, and bearing his medal and authority, then spoke, responding frankly. Odebossa, of the Upper Pukwaewa, spoke also favorably to my object, and thanking me for my visit to his village on the Namakagun, which he said, metaphorically, "had rekindled their fires, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... all. We all felt very sleepy and very chilly as we waited with expectancy the utterance which was going to seal our fate. The General soon appeared in all the magnificence and power of his position. We rose and saluted. When he metaphorically told us to "stand easy", we all sat down. I do not know what the feelings of the others were, but I had an impression that we were rather an awkward squad, neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. The General gave us a heart to heart talk. He told us he was going to send us with "the boys." From his manner ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... gone, who, poetical as he was, could not understand his own poetry; and philomathical as he was, could not read his own destiny: since the Pope, the King of France, and great part of his Court, are either literally or metaphorically defunct: since, I say, these things (not foretold by any one but yourself) have come to pass after so surprising a manner; it is with no small concern I see the original of the Staffian race so little known ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... however one subject of congratulation for which he metaphorically patted himself on the back as being "a good boy"— he had not gone to such extremes in his love-affair as could result in what is usually called "trouble" for the girl. He had left her unscathed, save in a moral and spiritual ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... so very notorious, that when in ordinary Discourse we say a Man has a fine Head, a long Head, or a good Head, we express ourselves metaphorically, and speak in relation to his Understanding; whereas when we say of a Woman, she has a fine, a long or a good Head, we speak only in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... be wondering what has become of me, and tired out of watching if I don't go home at once," said Mr. Burress, after his emotion had subsided, and accepting gracefully the civic crown with which he had been metaphorically rewarded. Mine was in store, but how could he dream ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... you are as enlivening as a Lenten service! Upon my soul, I'd sooner you turned vegetarian than developed a conscience! But believe me, I am devoted to Miss Mayhew. She is enchanting. A wild rose, half-open, with the dew still on her petals. Metaphorically, I am at her feet. Does that satisfy ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... that followed, Loder lived through a century of suggestion and indecision. His first feeling was for himself, but his first clear thought was for Chilcote and their compact. He stood, metaphorically, on a stone in the middle of a stream, balancing on one foot, then the other; looking to the right bank, then to the left. At last, as it always did, inspiration came to him slowly. He realized that by one plunge he might save both ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... of this strife cannot be a matter of chance. Evidently 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 ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... seaboard to note the mournful plight of the older 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 ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... less disciplined members of the species. All that stuff about 'honour,' 'Queensberry rules,' 'playing the game,' and what not will go by the board. And she will fight you with tooth and talon, with lies, with blows below the belt—metaphorically, ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... Miss Blackall's surprise that when she found herself ousted from the position of head nurse and the door metaphorically closed upon her, she had not a word to say, but called a hansom and had herself driven to Bayswater, where she had been living since her mother's death, ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... this aptitude in the hands of an expert gives the sea of humanity, not metaphorically but literally: the whirling of dancers in ballrooms, handkerchief-waving masses of people in balconies, hat-waving political ratification meetings, ragged glowering strikers, and gossiping, dickering people in the ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... matter with which, 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... But, metaphorically speaking, Mrs. Gum could not dry her tears. Nearly two years had elapsed since the fatal event; and though she no longer openly lamented, filling Calne with her cries and her faint but heartfelt prayers for vengeance on the head of the cruel monster, George ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... is strange. 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 not returned ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde
... deductions have 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? ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... up. But, if I must share in the hunt, I tell you now that, metaphorically speaking, I shall cling to the postmaster's daughter till torn away by ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... he appreciated the spirit of the maiden, felt a little pang of grief that even to a country he should be second,—an astonishing change from that spirit of humility which a moment since contented itself with metaphorically kissing ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... thought of him, as children do at the name of a bugbear in the dark. What sophistry this is! It is as if we should identify the trophy with the conqueror, the vestiges left in the track of a traveller with the traveller himself. Death literally makes a skeleton of man; so man metaphorically makes a skeleton of Death! All these representations of death, however beautiful, or pathetic, or horrible, are based on superficial appearances, misleading analogies, arbitrary fancies, perturbed sensibilities, not on a firm hold of realities, insight of truth, and philosophical analysis. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Commissioners, and he knew what he was talking about, others being Lord Carlingford, the Duke of Buccleuch, and the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, who presided. The peers were all used to big parks, obsequious bailiffs, and huge demesnes. I think they metaphorically picked up their coat tails and stepped carefully away from the Irish potato patches and ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... we have subtracted the manufacture of all articles made of flax and cords, and all that we just now metaphorically termed the sinews of plants, and we have also separated off the process of felting and the putting together of materials by stitching and sewing, of which the most important part ...
— Statesman • Plato
... 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 after ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Libyan tombs. And it seemed to her infinitely pathetic that these two gifted beings, who grumbled when they had to go to "marry a cousin" at the Palace of St. James or of Madrid, and hastened back breathlessly to the far-off point where, metaphorically speaking, pick-axe and spade had dropped from their royal hands—that these heirs of the ages should be unable to offer themselves the comforts of up-to-date hotel life, and should enjoy themselves "like babies" when they were invited to the other kind of "Palace," ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... 'I do apprehend that Mr. Glossin would not presume to give orders, or even an opinion, unless asked, in a matter in which Hazlewood House and the house of Hazlewood—meaning by the one this mansion-house of my family, and by the other, typically, metaphorically, and parabolically, the family itself,—I say, then, where the house of Hazlewood, or Hazlewood House, was so ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... names and faces, who recalls unlucky topics, confuses relationships, speaks of the dead as if they were living, or talks about an unlucky adventure in the family, who plunges into personalities, who metaphorically treads on a person's toes, will never succeed in society. He must ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... the truth of that remark, from the fact of his sending you here," was the reply, delivered with an air and tone intended to be witheringly sarcastic. That was enough for me, so I dropped my gloves (metaphorically speaking) and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... her I hope in her keeping her kindness for me, spite of the claims on it of all the others. And my sister, not one word of her? Somehow you must know her more thoroughly than poor, battered me, tugged at and torn to pieces, metaphorically, by so many sympathizers, real or pretended. She wants change, probably more than I do. And, but for her, I believe I should continue here, with the gardens for my place of healing. How she will enjoy the sight ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... 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 writes: "It may be metaphorically said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising 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 ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... virtue as an art of measuring (Prot.), saw no inappropriateness in conceiving the soul under the figure of a line, or the pleasure of the tyrant as separated from the pleasure of the king by the numerical interval of 729. And in modern times we sometimes use metaphorically what Plato employed as a philosophical formula. 'It is not easy to estimate the loss of the tyrant, except perhaps in this way,' says Plato. So we might say, that although the life of a good man is not to be compared to that of a bad man, yet you may measure the difference between them ...
— The Republic • Plato
... be a necessary seasoning of all repasts, and held it in so high esteem that they metaphorically called salt the wit which ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... 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 in causes the beam to rise, on which his idea ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... doctors. Of one of them, who was famed for his love of bleeding his patients, not metaphorically, but in the old-fashioned way, with the lancet, it is recorded that on the occasion of his taking a holiday two of his patients died. Lamenting the fact to a friend, the ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... 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, it becomes possible to mount the hill behind the wharf to the picturesque bungalow ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... music there certainly are figures and there are melodies: and music is concerned with harmony and rhythm, so that you may speak of a melody or figure having good rhythm or good harmony—the term is correct enough; but to speak metaphorically of a melody or figure having a 'good colour,' as the masters of choruses do, is not allowable, although you can speak of the melodies or figures of the brave and the coward, praising the one and censuring the other. And ...
— Laws • Plato
... follow 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 should believe ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... of revealing them, it often conceals them. Many people's whole intellectual life is spent in dealing with words, and they never penetrate to the thoughts at all. Still more commonly, people get lost among words, especially words which have come to be used metaphorically, and again fail to penetrate to the thought. Thus the Name is the first garment wrapped around the essential ME; and all speech, whether of science, poetry, or politics, is simply an attempt at right naming. The names by which ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... society, including the poorest. These last were specimens under spiritual duress rather than free worshippers, and it was a constant puzzle to the reverend gentleman why, in the matter of attendance, they, metaphorically speaking, sickened and died. It had never been so in England. "Bonnets!" responded one day Mrs. Hallett Taylor, who had become Mr. Glynn's leading ally in parish matters, and was noted for her executive ability. She ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... Hudson 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 of Carnarvon, ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... glass, quite unobservant of the fact that the Rev. Dr. Peewee was standing beside him without glass or old Jamaica. In truth Mr. Burt had previously been alarmed about the effect of the bottle of port—which he metaphorically called a glass—that he had drunk at dinner, and to guard against evil results he had already, that very afternoon, as he was accustomed to say with an excellent humor, been to the West ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... 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 speaking—have mingled ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... than she. "On earth there is nothing great but man, in man there is nothing great but mind." So, no doubt, the Athenian sages gained courage as well as modesty from the contact of mind with nature. And not they only, for our own Jewish treasure, the Mishnah, grew up, if not literally, at least metaphorically, in the open air, in the vineyard of Jamnia. Standing in the sordid little village which to-day occupies the site of ancient Jamnia, with the sea close at hand and the plain of Sharon and the Judean lowlands at my feet, I could ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... Eschec & mat. Checke-mate at Chests; and (metaphorically) aremedilesse disaster, miserie, ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... 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 ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... construction is not agreeable, because it is not regular: it would be more grammatical, to change on him to thereon. In the following example, the noun "wolves," which literally requires which, and not who, is used metaphorically for selfish priests; and, in the relative, the figurative or personal ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... 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. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... over their heads, young man, than under their feet. And under their feet, believe me, metaphorically, they trample the priest who does not uphold the dignity of his sacred office of preacher. 'Come down to the level of the people!' May God forgive the fools who utter this banality! Instead of saying to the people: 'Come up to the level of your priests, and be educated and refined,' they say: 'Go ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... 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 hardly condescends to see them; or he may show ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... meat and drink—he went further in 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 of thanksgiving ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... therefore is that it is the object of love; and though many other objects are in common language called beautiful, yet they are only called so metaphorically, and ought to be termed agreeable. A Grecian temple may give us the pleasurable idea of sublimity, a Gothic temple may give us the pleasurable idea of variety, and a modern house the pleasurable idea of utility; music and poetry may inspire our love by association ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... 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, ancient myths are explained as results of ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... morning I received an urgent telegram recalling me to town? My hostess was, or affected to be, overwhelmned that by my sudden departure I should miss the fete. I knew, however, that the "dyed" girl rejoiced, and in company with the objectionable man metaphorically threw up ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... perform their function of glorification and elucidation. And 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 supplement, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... looked very stand-offish; but the eager face of Bob, the only one about his own age of whom he could make a companion, was too much for him; and as Bob got up and made a place for him, Mr Ensign Long unbent a little, and really, as well as metaphorically, undid a button or two, and got ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... world; the reflex movement which seems to be self-determination, and has been hanged and howled at as such (metaphorically) for nobody knows how many centuries: until somebody shall study this as Marshall Hall has studied reflex nervous action in the bodily system, I would not give much for men's judgments of each other's ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... sometimes bad traditions," exclaimed Hetty Hancock, metaphorically flinging back the gauntlet. "We're ready to obey our monitresses on questions of school rules, but we're not Saxon serfs. Fair play is a jewel! We Juniors haven't had it yet, and we mean to get it. Girls! Be loyal to ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... sunshine into the shady side of every garden. Not their 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 ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... saloons of St. Germains. To Mary of Modena the credit is due—if credit on such account is to be assigned—for maintaining in the friends of her consort, for instilling in the breast of her son, a desire of restoration;—that word, in fact, might be found, to speak metaphorically, written in her heart. To her personal qualities, to her still youthful attractions, to her pure mind, and blameless career of conjugal duty—to the noble, maternal ambition which no worthy judge of human ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... Bruders' the millennium 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 out of him; for Mrs. Bruden, dropping ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... Fogg privately and mentally and metaphorically slapped himself on the back whenever ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... then they were presented with 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 ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... which I dislike) when he had his head, and on this occasion he entered into the matter with the zeal of a true friend, and a young man who never expected to have another occasion to sing a public "In Memoriam." It made my hair stand on end,—metaphorically, of course. From my childhood I had been extremely precocious. There were anecdotes of preternatural brightness, picked up, Heaven knows where, of my eagerness to learn, of my adventurous, chivalrous young soul, and of my arduous struggles with chill penury, which was not able (as ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Wooden Horse" (Paus. x. 26). Aeschylus also (Ag. 816) has some obscure phrases pointing in the same direction: "A horse's brood, a shield-bearing people, launched with a leap about the Pleiads' setting, sprang clear above the wall," &c. Euripides here treats the horse metaphorically as a ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides
... immemorial red flower on one side of each vessel, I fairly long for an excuse for playing with them, and for trying (positively for the last time) if the lids do come off, and whether the kettle will (literally, as well as metaphorically) hold water. Then if, by good or ill luck, there is a child flattening its little nose against the window with longing eyes, my purse is soon empty; and as it toddles off with a square parcel under one arm, and a lovely being in black ringlets and white tissue paper in the other, ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... have been quite touched. And my conversational gambit, I protest, was masterly, and would have made anybody else think, "Oh how candid is the egotism of this child!" and would have moved that person, metaphorically anyhow, to ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... father off upon him a Jest Book! This joke, bad as it was, was better than any joke in the book. It made him famous, so famous that for the next hundred years every little bon mot was laid at his door, metaphorically speaking, the puniest youngest brat of ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... name of Salamander's wool, which many, too literally apprehending, conceive some investing part or integument of the Salamander.... Nor is this Salamander's wool desumed from any animal, but a mineral substance, metaphorically so ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... books a classic. Better books are unread because the writer is not en rapport with the reader. The time has passed when either the theologian, the politician, or the critic can take the American citizen metaphorically by the shoulder and send him along the path in which they think he should go. He has become the most independent being in the world, good-humoredly tolerant of the beliefs and fancies of others, while reserving, as a matter of course, the right ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... 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 on ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... thought and care. She became absolutely "one of the family," sharing in all its 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" up from Elizabeth. ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... makes countless thousands mourn,' I have an abiding 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) ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... two, he allowed her to boss the camp 'lay-out.' It was she who spread the blankets on Wombo's beds of grass tree tops and dry herbage. Wombo and the 'big feller White Mary' (the adjective used metaphorically as expressive of distinction) made great friends in those days—out of which friendship sprang, alas! in due time, certain tragic happenings. It was Lady Bridget who would set the billy boiling and who, after ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... her impish arts of tantalisation and her wiles of fascination on Don Carlos during the remainder of her stay at Auchinleven. Sometimes she would seem, metaphorically, to throw herself at his head and appear to be eager to surrender herself, at other times she would completely ignore him, and make open love to Tony in his presence. As time went on she realised that she was driving ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... the most servile persons on ship-board," probably, metaphorically, from "Gromet or Grummet," "small rings," adds Bailey, "fastened with staples on the upper side of the yard." The latter term is still in use; the metaphorical one is, I ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... while he was proceeding to metaphorically nail up each of these men's coffins, and the curious animal alertness of it held her interest. His eyes were wide and restless, and a hardness marked the corners of his rather loose mouth. She wondered if that hardness were ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... 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 there with unbroken bones; his third, a disagreeable ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... with which the kettledrum was struck was called danka, and the king's jurisdiction was metaphorically held to extend so far as his kettledrums were beaten. Angrezi raj ka danka bajta hai or 'Where the English drum is beaten,' means 'So far as the English empire extends.' In Egypt the kettledrums were ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... groups that resemble it in whole or in part is made known, he who wishes to find other related matter must seek aimlessly with no assurance that his quest will end until the whole series shall have been investigated. Each classified group is metaphorically a pigeonhole to contain similar material. If the pigeonholes are properly labeled, one can ultimately locate those that contain the matter he is seeking if he knows the name that has been applied to it. If the pigeonholes are arranged in alphabetical order, for example, he may ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office
... 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 ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... had no particular objection to them. Only he 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 ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... forth to a surprised circle of her acquaintances on the operation of "trigonometry" (tracheotomy)—who, when she imparted a bit of scandal would add, "but that, you know, as the lawyers say, is inter alias"—and who wished that people would always say what they meant, and not talk paregorically (metaphorically). ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... and he would know; "I love," and he would enjoy. What then? Man is not master of himself, but may be of his surroundings. Let him use the wealth of Nature, since he can live only by its use; but let him abandon his pretensions to the title of proprietor, and remember that he is called so only metaphorically. ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... staircase above; whereupon I was seized with such a fit of nervousness that I hastily bid the lacquey say nothing about my presence to the General, since I would first see his son. By the time I had reached the top of the long staircase, I seemed to have grown extremely small (metaphorically, I mean, not actually), and had very much the same feeling within me as had possessed my soul when my drozhki drew up to the great portico, namely, a feeling as though drozhki, horse, and coachman had all of them grown extremely small too. I found the General's ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... down on my marrow-bones I went, metaphorically, and there and then I made my vows to old aunt Julia, and craved her help; and she dropped tears on me, Chick, like a mother. And the result was that within a month I became engaged ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... box of a coach, ribbons and whip in hand, with four smart cobs 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 ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... obvious that the twang of this fine phrase gave Jack uncommon pleasure. He repeated it again and again under his breath, flourishing his pipe, so as, allegorically and metaphorically, to set forth the ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... probable, that many classes 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 greater part of which ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... (such as goodness). It cannot exert power or give direction. Nothing can be responsible for the world except the world itself. It has created, or is creating, itself perpetually by its own arbitrary act, by a groundless self-assertion which may be called (somewhat metaphorically) will, or even original sin: the original sin of existence, particularity, selfishness, or separation from God. Existence, being absolutely contingent and ungrounded, is perfectly free: and if it ties itself up in its own habits or laws, and becomes a terrible nightmare to itself ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... merely to whip curiosity, with the result that the atmosphere of innuendo and suggestion was greatly increased. Indeed, the whole piece reeked of it, new situations had been evolved which the play had not previously contained; and a stimulated audience sat metaphorically with its eye to an eye-hole from which the key ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... 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 ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... the children had been with the toys and books. "And as for Daddy Tuggar," she said, smiling, "he has been in the clouds, literally and metaphorically, ever since you sent him the tobacco. Whenever I go to see him he says, most cheerfully, 'It's all settled, Miss Annie. It grows clearer with every pipe' (while I can scarcely see him), 'I'm all right, 'cause ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... juncture Mrs Bubsby 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 ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... in the 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 ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... such passages refer metaphorically to the versatility of his character, but even if this is so, the metaphors are drawn from the universal belief in Nagualism which then prevailed, and they do not express ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... had still a day or two to spare, this industrious gentleman, with a good deal of trouble, found out Number 3, Blue Street. For a person of his refined tastes it was in a shockingly low neighbourhood near one of the docks, and Blue Street itself was one of the shadiest—metaphorically—of its streets. ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... 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 ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... 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 ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... completely available at any given time. Whatever the 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
... motor-buses painted a khaki-tint; a "mobile" (a travelling workshop) with its dynamo humming like a top and the mechanics busy upon the lathe; an Army Postal van coming along, like a friend in need, to tow my car, stranded in the mud, with a long cable; sappers, like Zaccheus, up a tree (but not metaphorically); despatch-riders whizzing past at sixty miles an hour—these are familiar sights of the lines of communication, and they lend a variety to the monotonous countryside without which it would be dull indeed. For it is a countryside of interminable straight lines—straight ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... morning Mr. Magee, by way of experiment, had fastened upon him the suspicion of murder, and the old man had not flickered an eyelash. Not the least strange of all the strange figures that floated about Baldpate, Mr. Magee reflected, was this man who fiddled now with Chaucer while, metaphorically, Rome burned. He could not make ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... 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
... for long enough. We sat together at Mr. Davies's feet—I am speaking metaphorically, for in reality we sat opposite to him—and we thumbed our Cordery and our Nepos together, and made such progress as our natures and our application permitted. Mine, to be honest, was little enough, for I hated ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... completely 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 ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... bore him away from his thought and landed him in some swamp out of which he was wont to extricate himself, to the great delight of the semi-educated reader by some quip or quirk equally meretricious and mephitic. Thus would he, metaphorically, throw filth at himself. He felt all the time that he was pursuing the best course, bending things he despised and loathed to better purposes. Mr. Brann believed that the country was, if not in itself decadent and degenerate, under the control of decadent, degenerate and depraved men. He ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... sleep other nights, yet every minute of the days and nights you live there are men all over the world who, both literally and metaphorically, are chained, and roped, and lashed, and dungeoned; men whose lives are a racking agony, to whom day and night are alike—all night—men who have no prospect of relief to-morrow, whose only release is death, and the release they long and pray for seems never to come. And many of them are men who ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fair cousin that I shall be certain to be in, and be prepared, metaphorically, to fall at the feet of so much loveliness. By the way, that reminds me; you have heard of Bellamy's, or rather Mrs. ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... men who need awakening as to what women may do in the way of cleaning up a city, both literally and metaphorically. It takes both the man and the woman to make the model home; why ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... in those days. A Montreal 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 ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... 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 on her prettiest gowns; she refused to take her ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... Waller's great relief he was able to make his way back to the hall, very silent now as he went over the day's proceedings, and thought of the chances of the men coming back to make a fresh search, while the gardener kept on harping metaphorically upon the broken ladder, and what "master would say" when he ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... containing one large unfurnished room for guests. Here a fire is made on the hearth, (the smoke escaping, or intended to escape, through a hole in the roof, for chimneys do not exist,) and the traveler pitches his tent metaphorically in this apartment. The beds, which he carries with him, are spread on the floor, to do double duty as seats during the evening and beds by night. Thus the accommodations are reduced to their lowest terms—shelter and fire; to which add a lamb from the flock, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... flaring. There was laughing, and talking, and giggling, and simpering, and ogling, and flirting, and courting. What a full-dress party is to Fifth Avenue, a spelling-school is to Hoopole County. It is an occasion which is metaphorically inscribed with this legend: "Choose your partners." Spelling is only a blind in Hoopole County, as is dancing on Fifth Avenue. But as there are some in society who love dancing for its own sake, so in Flat Creek district ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... age—in short, that it has a history? If I consider my body in particular, I find that, like my consciousness, it matures little by little from infancy to old age; like myself, it grows old. Indeed, maturity and old age are, properly speaking, attributes only of my body; it is only metaphorically that I apply the same names to the corresponding changes of my conscious self. Now, if I pass from the top to the bottom of the scale of living beings, from one of the most to one of the least differentiated, from the multicellular organism of man to the unicellular organism of the Infusorian, ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... spiritual power. I have endeavored partly to explain this in the text of the tenth Lecture here, it is only necessary for the reader to know that the Greater Pthah more or less represents the formative power of order and measurement he always stands on a four-square pedestal, "the Egyptian cubit, metaphorically used as the hieroglyphic for truth," his limbs are bound together, to signify fixed stability, as of a pillar; he has a measuring-rod in his hand, and at Philas, is represented as holding an egg on a potter's wheel; but I do not know if this symbol occurs in older ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... annoyances of being looked upon as an important factor in work where there was no chance of my being such would no longer exist. Practically I had complete control of the work of the office, and was thus, metaphorically speaking, able to work with untied hands. It may seem almost puerile to say this to men of business experience, but there is a current notion, spread among all classes, that because the Naval Observatory has able ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... that in six months he will scrape away the hot surface sand, in order to sleep comfortably on the more temperate stratum beneath; he is the man who, with some incoherent protest and becoming invective, metaphorically makes a Raleigh-cloak of himself, to afford free and pleasant passage for the noblest work of God, namely, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy |
