Figure Of Speech Quotes

1. "I must do whatever I can to find the best partners possible." "Did you kick their butts?" He frowned. "The buttocks are among the least sensitive places to hit someone." I laughed. "It's a figure of speech." "To kick butts. Interesting."
Author: Allison Van Diepen

2. "He gave me a look of great contempt; as I supposed, for venturing, even by implication, to draw a parallel between a lack of affluence that might, literally, affect my purchase of rare vintages, and a figure of speech intended delicately to convey his own dire want for the bare necessities of life. He remained silent for several seconds, as if trying to make up his mind whether he could ever bring himself to speak to me again; and then said gruffly: 'I've got to go now."
Author: Anthony Powell

3. "He lives for you, Laurel, and that's not some kind of figure of speech. He lives every day for you. All he did every day was talk about you, worry about you, wonder what was happening, if he would ever see you again. And even when I told him I was sick of hearing about you, I could tell he was still thinking about you. Every moment of the day. And you dont appreciate that. He lost his father last spring. That was the worst part ever. He was so distraught. But he knew it would be okay, because you were going to come see him. ‘In May' he told me ‘She's coming in May'. But you didn't come in May. He waited for you every day, Laurel. And then, when you finally showed up at the end of June, the second he saw you-the instant he saw you- you were forgiven. And everytime you come and then leave- go back to your human boy- you shatter him all over again. And honestly, I dont think you even care."
Author: Aprilynne Pike

4. "Impulsively, I threw up a new wall in my head. And suddenly I saw the situation for what it really was. Dante had me backed up against a tree, allright, but I did not want to make out with him."Demonstration finished," Dante said, his smile a bit too cocky for my liking."Next time choose a more appropriate demonstration," I said tensely. "Patch would kill you if he found out about this."His smile didn't fade. "That's a figure of speech that doesn't work very well with Nephilim."I wasn't in the mood for humor. "I know what you're doing. You're trying to set him off. This petty feud between the two of you will blow up to awhole new level if you mess with me. Patch is the last person you want to antagonize. He doesn't hold grudges, because the people who cross himtend to disappear quickly. And what you just did? That was crossing him."
Author: Becca Fitzpatrick

5. "Wrong, and wrong agains,' he said. 'The likeness is already there. The metaphor only sees it. And it is not a mere figure of speech. It is the very essence of our minds as we seek to make sense of our surroundings, our experiences, ourselves, seeing similarities, parallels, connections. We cannot help it. Even as the mind fails, it goes on trying to make sense of what is happening to it."
Author: Connie Willis

6. "Also: seriously, broomsticks? He was going to fly on, basically, a line segment? Wasn't that pretty much the single most unstable shape you could possibly find, short of attempting to hold on to a point marble? Who'd selected that design for a flying device, out of all the possibilities? Harry had been hoping that it was just a figure of speech, but no, they were standing in front of what looked for all the world like ordinary wooden kitchen broomsticks. Had someone just gotten stuck on the idea of broomsticks and failed to consider anything else? It had to be. There was no way that the optimal designs for cleaning kitchens and flying would happen to coincide if you worked them out from scratch."
Author: Eliezer Yudkowsky

7. "You're an old-timer if you can remember when setting the world on fire was a figure of speech."
Author: Franklin P. Jones

8. "The hardest bones, containing the richest marrow, can be conquered only by a united crushing of all the teeth of all dogs. That of course is only a figure of speech and exaggerated; if all teeth were but ready they would not need even to bite, the bones would crack themselves and the marrow would be freely accessible to the feeblest of dogs. If I remain faithful to this metaphor, then the goal of my aims, my questions, my inquiries, appears monstrous, it is true. For I want to compel all dogs thus to assemble together, I want the bones to crack open under the pressure of their collective preparedness, and then I want to dismiss them to the ordinary life they love, while all by myself, quite alone, I lap up the marrow. That sounds monstrous, almost as if I wanted to feed on the marrow, not merely of bone, but of the whole canine race itself. But it is only a metaphor. The marrow that I am discussing here is no food; on the contrary, it is a poison."
Author: Franz Kafka

9. "- Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.- Never use a long word where a short one will do.- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.- Never use the passive where you can use the active.- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous."
Author: George Orwell

10. "By writing her self, woman will return to the body which has been more than confiscated from her, which has been turned into the uncanny stranger on display - the ailing or dead figure, which so often turns out to be the nasty companion, the cause and location of inhibitions. Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. Write your self. Your body must be heard. Only then will the immense resources of the unconscious spring forth."
Author: Hélène Cixous

11. "They understand death, they stand there in the church under the skies that have a beginningless past and go into the never-ending future, waiting themselves for death, at the foot of the dead, in a holy temple. - I get a vision of myself and the two little boys hung up in a great endless universe with nothing overhead and nothing under bbut the Infinite Nothingness, the Enormousness of it, the dead without number in all directions of existence whether inward into the atom-worlds of your own body or outward to the universe which may only be one atom in an infinity of atom-worlds and each atom-world only a figure of speech - inward, outward, up and down, nothing but emptiness and divine majesty and silence for the two little boys and me."
Author: Jack Kerouac

12. "His sensitive nature was still smarting under the lashes of an undivided and squalid way of life. His soul was still disquieted and cast down by the dull phenomenon of Dublin. He had emerged from a two years' spell of revery to find himself in the midst of a new scene, every event and figure of which affected him intimately, disheartened him or allured and, whether alluring or disheartening, filled him always with unrest and bitter thoughts. All the leisure which his school life left him was passed in the company of subversive writers whose jibes and violence of speech set up a ferment in his brain before they passed out of it into his crude writings."
Author: James Joyce

13. "Bones didn't share any of my qualms about suddenly holding an arm that wasn't attached to a body anymore. He just grabbed the ghoul by his other arm and began thumping him over the head with the loose limb. I'd heard Bones threaten to beat someone with their own limb before, but I'd always assumed that was a figure of speech. Apparently not."
Author: Jeaniene Frost

14. "Originally, the atoms of carbon from which we're made were floating in the air, part of a carbon dioxide molecule. The only way to recruit these carbon atoms for the molecules necessary to support life—the carbohydrates, amino acids, proteins, and lipids—is by means of photosynthesis. Using sunlight as a catalyst the green cells of plants combine carbon atoms taken from the air with water and elements drawn from the soil to form the simple organic compounds that stand at the base of every food chain. It is more than a figure of speech to say that plants create life out of thin air."
Author: Michael Pollan

15. "We have to look at the figures of speech a writer uses, his images and symbols, to realize that underneath all the complexity of human life that uneasy stare at an alien nature is still haunting us, and the problem of surmounting it still with us. Above all, we have to look at the total design of a writer's work, the title he gives to it, and the his main theme, which means his point in writing it, to understand that literature is still doing the same job that mythology did earlier, but filling in its huge cloudy shapes with sharper lights and deeper shadows. [p.32]"
Author: Northrop Frye

16. "...hear the language, this English, double-jointed as Bedivere's limbs. It only sounds awkward. In its ability to join one concept to another as with pegs, its dependent clauses, figures of speech and cadenced alliteration, a man can say one thing five ways and yet imply a sixth; can change meaning with an inflection, a pause or a deliberate misuse of a word, can mock, scorn and flay an opponent without uttering one overt insult."
Author: Parke Godwin

17. "I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner."
Author: Pope Francis

18. "Claire watched as Shane hunted around and came up with a small crowbar, which he used to lever open the seals on the top of the barrel. The top was hinged in the middle, Claire realized, and he flipped that part over. "Score," he said, and raised the crowbar in triumph. "Who's your daddy?"Myrnin stared at him as if he'd gone completely mental. "Excuse me?""Figure of speech," Claire said hastily."
Author: Rachel Caine

19. "All theology is a doomed but necessary attempt to express the inexpressible. God is the elusive mystery we try to capture and convey in language, but how can that ever be done? If the word water is not itself drinkable, how can the words we use to express the mystery of God be themselves absolute? They are metaphors, analogies, figures of speech, yet religious people have slaughtered and condemned each other over these experimental uncertainties. Our glory and agony as humans is that we long to find words that will no longer be words, mere signifiers, but the very experience they are trying to signify; and our tragedy is that we never succeed. This is the anguish that lies at the heart of all religion, because, though our words can describe our thirst for the absolute, they can never satisfy it."
Author: Richard Holloway

20. "I'd never describe even myself as safe when I go into the Magical Realms; no one's safe in there, not even if they're armed and armored with every protective charm on the planet. The place has this habit of changing the rules and pulling the rug from under your feet....""Is it carpeted, then?" asked Tharaman."What?""The Magical Realms, are they carpeted? It's just that you mentioned pulling a rug from somewhere and I just wondered if perhaps...""I think it's a figure of speech, my dear," said Krisafitsa. "I do believe it means to be taken by surprise when you least expect it.""Oh, I see....Odd expression..."
Author: Stuart Hill

21. "Does it ever give thee pause that men used to have a soul? Not by hearsay alone, or as a figure of speech, but as a thruth that they knew and acted upon. Verily it was another world then, but yet it is a pity we have lost the tidings of our souls. We shall have to go in search of them again or worse in all ways shall befall us."
Author: Thomas Carlyle

22. "Irony is Fate's most common figure of speech."
Author: Trevanian

23. "Dou comigo a pensar se figuras de estilo não serão, afinal, as silhuetas dos corpos humanos que tão ardentemente desejamos ou abominamos.I find myself wondering if figures of speech are not, after all, the silhouettes of human bodies which we so ardently desire or abhor."
Author: Victor Eustáquio

Figure Of Speech Quotes Pictures