IRVING STONE,
on William Jennings Bryan
Reading him is like wading through glue.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON,
on Ben Jonson
A louse in the locks of literature.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON,
on critic Churton Collins
The bosom friend of senators and congressmen
was about as daring as an early Shirley Temple movie.
JAMES THURBER,
on Will Rogers
A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg
that looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.
MARK TWAIN,
on an unidentified cruise ship passenger
Twain wrote this about a passenger who, in the middle of an 1867 Atlantic Ocean crossing, asked the captain if the ship was going to come to a halt on Sundays.
Â
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket,
and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere.
MARK TWAIN,
on Charles L. Webster
Twain formed his own publishing company in 1885 and appointed Charles L. Webster, his nephew by marriage, as president. Twain never had much respect for Webster and forced him out of the company three years later. The complete passage in which I found this observation is a metaphorical
tour de force
. It may even have stimulated the popular expression about
engaging in a battle of wits with an unarmed person
. The full passage can be found at: www.metaphoramor.com.
Â
Donald Trump's hair is to coiffure what Ashton Kutcher is to dramatic acting.
TONY VITALE
Froth at the top, dregs at bottom, but the middle excellent.
VOLTAIRE,
describing the English nation
Audrey Hepburn is the patron saint of anorexics.
ORSON WELLES
The unpleasant sound Bush is emitting as he traipses from one
conservative gathering to another is a thin, tinny
arf
âthe sound of a lap dog.
GEORGE F. WILL,
on George W. Bush
Former president George H. W. Bush was also the recipient of an insulting dog analogy. In the late 1980s, Mike Royko wrote, “He has the look about him of someone who might sit up and yip for a Dog Yummie.”
Â
Little Truman had a voice so high it could only be detected by a bat.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS,
on Truman Capote
Williams was referring to Capote's high-pitched voice. On Capote's writing ability, Katherine Anne Porter was not as generous, calling him “the pimple on the face of American literature.”
Â
With a pig's eyes that never look up,
with a pig's snout that loves muck,
with a pig's brain that knows only the sty,
and a pig's squeal that cries only when he is hurt,
he sometimes opens his pig's mouth, tusked and ugly,
and lets out the voice of God,
railing at the whitewash that covers the manure about his habitat.
WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE,
on H. L. Mencken
An improbable creature, like a human giraffe,
sniffing down his nostrils at mortals beneath his gaze.
RICHARD WILSON
(Lord Moran), on Charles de Gaulle
Mrs. Patrick Campbell is an aged British battleship sinking rapidly
and firing every available gun on her rescuers.
ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT
A hyena in syrup.
YEVGENY YEVTUSHENKO,
on Barbara Walters
This extraordinary insult first surfaced in a 1972
Time
magazine article on Walters. The piece cleverly described her this way: “Barbara is alternately breathy and brittle, cool and aggressive. Her technique is a model, to some observers, of what makes an interview great; to others, of what makes an interview grate.” The legendary Russian poet found her grating.
O
n May 25, 1843, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal:
Â
The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.
Â
One can almost imagine the scene. It is a bright May New England day. Emerson is rambling through the woods just outside his home town of Concord. With a book in one hand and his ever-present journal tucked safely away in a coat pocket, he leans against a tree, thinking about a passage he has just read or contemplating an idea that has recently occurred to him. Glancing upward, he slowly examines the vastness of the heavens above. Suddenly, an analogy flashes into his mindâas eating food nourishes the body, looking at the sky nourishes the soul.
Emerson the thinker might have been pleased with the analogy, and he might have wondered if the connection had ever occurred to anyone else. More than once he had an insight that seemed original, only to discover later that a legendary thinker had beaten him to the punch (he once said, oxymo
ronically, “Some of my best thoughts have been stolen by the ancients”).
Emerson the writer, however, may have decided to tinker with the thought, hoping to better express it. Whether the final version came to him immediately, or after several drafts and revisions, the observation that Emerson finally recorded in his journalâ
the sky is the daily bread of the eyes
âis a remarkable metaphor, and arguably the best words ever written on something we see every day but usually take for granted. It may even be regarded as the definitive observation on the subject.
In a usage note on the word
definitive
in the
American Heritage Dictionary,
the editors write:
Definitive generally refers specifically to a judgment or description that serves as a standard or reference point for others, as inâ¦the definitive biography of Nelson (i.e., the biography that sets the standard against which all other accounts of Nelson's life must be measured).
As there are definitive biographies, there are definitive quotationsâobservations that are so exceptionally well phrased they
set the bar
for all other observations on the same subjects. Emerson's
sky
metaphor deserves such a distinction. And many definitive quotations on a variety of other subjects are also metaphors.
There is even a definitive metaphorical quote on the topic of
definitions
. Before we look at it, though, here's the formal meaning, again from the
American Heritage Dictionary
:
Definition. A statement of the meaning of a word, phrase, or term, as in a dictionary definition.
It's an adequate description, yes. But like so many dictionary definitions, it's not particularly exciting. To word and language lovers, though, there is nothing unexciting about dictionary definitions. But it was not until I found
an observation in the 1912
Notebooks
of the English writer Samuel Butler that I found a metaphorical description that perfectly described the drama of the lexicographer's task:
Â
A definition is the enclosing
a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.
Â
This is a remarkable observation, conjuring up a delightfully vivid image of lexicographers as cowboys or frontier settlers, corralling wild ideas inside the confines of a series of carefully constructed words. No previous observation on the subject of definitions even comes close, making this the definitive one. That is, Butler's metaphorical observation may be considered the standard by which all other similar observations on the subject of definitions must be measured.
On many subjects, it's difficult to select a single definitive quote. For example, I have long believed that the best observation ever made on the subject of architecture was an 1829 observation by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:
Â
I call architecture frozen music.
Â
If one could freeze music, and then shape it into a form, it would seem appropriate to view it as a kind of architecture. Over the years, I've come across several additional architecture metaphors, and none could rival Goethe's spectacular creation. Then I came across this observation from Constantin Brancusi:
Â
Architecture is inhabited sculpture.
Â
Here, the legendary sculptor asserts that architecture
is
sculpture, and a kind of sculpture inhabited by people. Nobody had ever before described sculpture in this way, but when one examines the many striking office build
ings that have been built in recent years, the observation is perfectly apt. Which of the two observations is the
definitive
one? You be the judge.
You can also cast your vote for one of three observations on
faith.
They're all wonderfully phrased, and they come from three of my favorite writers. For me, selecting only one involved the pain of rejecting two, and I just didn't have the heart to do it.
Â
Faith is an oasis in the heart
which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.
KAHLIL GIBRAN
Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings while the dawn is still dark.
RABINDRANATH TAGORE
You can also weigh in on two metaphors on
fame
. They come from two of history's most graceful and stylish writers, and so far are in a dead heat:
Â
Fame is a pearl many dive for and only a few bring up.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate.
EMILY DICKINSON
Many definitive metaphors are brief and pithy, as when an anonymous wag once described a
cubicle
as “a padded cell without a door.” Or when Clifton Fadiman referred to
cheese
as “milk's leap toward immortality.” Others are slightly longer, like this spectacular observation from Canadian writer Mark Abley's delightful 2003 book,
Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages:
Â
Modern English is the Wal-Mart of languages:
convenient, huge, hard to avoid, superficially friendly,
and devouring all rivals in its eagerness to expand.
Â
A variety of metaphorical observations on the English language have made it into my personal quotation collection, including William Safire's terrific remark that “English is a stretch language; one size fits all.” As good as the others are, though, they can't match Abley's inspired observation. What it lacks in brevity it makes up in wit and originality. And, because it attempts to illuminate one thingâ
English
âby relating it to something that, at first glance, couldn't seem more dissimilarâ
Wal-Mart
âit is a perfect metaphor.
In the remainder of the chapter, I will present more metaphorical observations that, in my opinion, set the standard for all other observations on the subjects examined. Unlike other chapters in the book, the quotations here will not be arranged alphabetically by author, but by the central subject of the quote. We'll begin with
action
and end with
zeal
. Think of this chapter as a brief A-to-Z dictionary of definitive metaphorical quotations.
Â
A man's action is only a picture book of his creed.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech.
CLIFTON FADIMAN
This comes from a 1956
Reader's Digest
article titled “Beware the Awful Adjective.” Used wisely, Fadiman argued, adjectives enliven and enhance language. But when used badly, they cause a multitude of slip-ups. Quotation anthologist James Simpson hailed this as one of the “best quotes of 1956.”
Â
Adventure is the champagne of life.
G. K. CHESTERTON
All affectation is the vain and ridiculous attempt of poverty to appear rich.
JOHANN KASPAR LAVATAR
Unsolicited advice is the junk mail of life.
BERN WILLIAMS
Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of the mind.
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
SÃREN KIERKEGAARD
The aphorism is a personal observation inflated into a universal truth,
a private posing as a general.
STEFAN KANFER
An apology is the superglue of life. It can repair just about anything.
LYNN JOHNSTON
Autumn is a second spring, when every leaf is a flower.
ALBERT CAMUS
A bagel is a doughnut with the sin removed.
GEORGE ROSENBAUM
Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time.
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
Business is a combination of war and sport.
ANDRÃ MAUROIS
The cat is a dilettante in fur.
THÃOPHILE GAUTHIER
Chance is the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.
THÃOPHILE GAUTHIER
Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.
HENRY MILLER
Charm is a glow within a woman that casts a most becoming light on others.
JOHN MASON BROWN
Coincidences are spiritual puns.
G. K. CHESTERTON
The dew of compassion is a tear.
LORD BYRON
Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Conscience reigns but it does not govern.
PAUL VALÃRY
Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount.
CLARE BOOTH LUCE
I also like this one from Mignon McLaughlin: “Courage can't see around corners, but goes around them anyway.”
Â
The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word.
MATA HARI
Mata Hari was the stage name of a Dutch exotic dancer whose scantily clad dance routines and openly promiscuous life style captivated Parisian society in the early 1900s. She was found guiltyâon flimsy evidenceâof espionage and executed by a French firing squad in 1917. After Greta Garbo brought her story to the big screen in the 1931 film
Mata Hari
, she became known as a classic
femme fatale
, and her name became an eponym for a beautiful female double agent. Another memorable metaphorical observation on dancing came from George Bernard Shaw, who called it “a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.”
Â
Despair is vinegar from the wine of hope.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
The point is that people wouldn't feel despair unless they first felt hope. And just as bad wine turns into vinegar, dashed hopes often turn into despair.
Â
Doctrine is nothing but the skin of truth set up and stuffed.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
The dogâ¦is the god of frolic.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Doodling is the brooding of the mind.
SAUL STEINBERG
A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.
ALBERT SZENT-GYORGYI
The allusion here is to a famous remark from Louis Pasteur, who said in 1854: “Where observation is concerned, chance favors only the prepared mind.”
The dress is a vase which the body follows.
PIERRE CARDIN
Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.
FRANK LEAHY
Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.
QUENTIN CRISP
This is a remarkable observation in its own right, but the full passage in which it appeared is even more impressive: “Euphemisms are notâ¦useless verbiage for that which can and should be said bluntly; they are like secret agents on a delicate mission, they must airily pass by a stinking mess with barely so much as a nod of the head, make their point of constructive criticism and continue on in calm forbearance.
Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne
.”
Â
An exaggeration is a truth that has lost its temper.
KAHLIL GIBRAN
Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.
TRUMAN CAPOTE
Feedback is the breakfast of champions.
KEN BLANCHARD & SPENCER JOHNSON
The flower is the poetry of reproduction.
JEAN GIRAUDOUX
Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.
SOCRATES
A close contender here was Luther Burbank's “A flower is an educated weed.” On uneducated weeds, Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, “What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” And on weeds in general, Ella Wheeler Wilcox wrote simply, “A weed is but an unloved flower.”
Â
Freedom is the oxygen of the soul.
MOSHE DAYAN
Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite.
VICTOR HUGO
Global warming might be a fever the earth is running
in an attempt to ward off a deadly infection known as
homo sapiens
.