Allegory Quotes

'Ever seen a leaf - a leaf from a tree?' 'Yes.' I saw one recently - a yellow one, a little green, wilted at the edges. Blown by the wind. When I was a little boy, I used to shut my eyes in winter and imagine a green leaf, with veins on it, and the sun shining ...' 'What's this - an allegory?' "No; why? Not an allegory - a leaf, just a leaf. A leaf is good. Everything's good.'

It is remarkable how a man cannot summarize his thoughts in even the most general sort of way without betraying himself completely, without putting his whole self into it, quite unawares, presenting as if in allegory the basic themes and problems of his life.

Much scientific truth proved to be as hypothetical as poetic allegory. The relationshiip of those rod-connected blue and red balls to an actual atomic structure was about the same as the relationship of Christianity to the fish or the Lamb.

There is a great difference, whether the poet seeks the particular for the sake of the general or sees the general in the particular. From the former procedure there ensues allegory, in which the particular serves only as illustration, as example of the general. The latter procedure, however, is genuinely the nature of poetry; it expresses something particular, without thinking of the general or pointing to it.

Freemasonry is 'veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols' because these are the surest way by which moral and ethical truths may be taught. It is not only with the brain and with the mind that the initiate must take Freemasonry but also with the heart.

The reason for you complaint lies, it seems to me, in the constraint which your intellect imposes upon your imagination. Here I will make an observation, and illustrate it by an allegory. Apparently, it is not good-and indeed it hinders the creative work of the mind-if the if the intellect examines too closely the ideas pouring in, as it were, at the gates.

By a symbol I do not mean an allegory or a sign, but an image that describes in the best possible way the dimly discerned nature of the spirit. A symbol does not define or explain; it points beyond itself to a meaning that is darkly divined yet still beyond our grasp, and cannot be adequately expressed in the familiar words of our language.

Death is imposed only on creatures, not their creations, and has therefore always appeared in art in a broken form: as allegory.

A symbol is indeed the only possible expression of some invisible essence, a transparent lamp about a spiritual flame; while allegory is one of many possible representations of an embodied thing, or familiar principle, and belongs to fancy and not to imagination: the one is a revelation, the other an amusement.

We each create a story - a narritive, a picture, an allegory, a model - for what's going on in the universe. And then we fight - sometimes to the death - to make others believe in that model, or to be able to keep believing in it ourselves. In other words, we try to erase contradictory evidence to that model.

Are we all not, when we sit in the cinema, in the position of humans in The Matrix, tied to chairs, immersed in the spectacle run by a machine? However, a more appropriate allegory is that of the viewer himself: beneath the illusion that we "just look" at the perceived objects from a safe distance, freely sliding along them, there is the reality of the innumerable ties that bind us to what we perceive.

Analogy and allegory always seem to be a much more expressive way of reflecting reality. I think Star Trek team have this ability to represent through analogy and extending things to the scientific extreme. They comment on things that are very present in a really powerful way.

I don't want to make a film that offends people, but the whole world is so politically correct - I'm not going to not do something because it may be politically incorrect. At some point, the metaphors and allegories break down. They disappear, and you just have science fiction.

A superhero is someone who, at some point or in some way, inspires hope or is the enemy of cynicism. Even if you bog it down with political allegory, or even if you're doing celebrity allegory. You still need to take the cynical out of it.

Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance. It is tumbleweed distress that thrives on thin air, growing despite its detachment from the nourishing earth. It can be described only in metaphor and allegory

If you sit in on a film class with students, their big complaint is "That's not like real life." They don't realize that they don't really want to watch real life. They don't want to sit and watch a security camera. There's a strong gravity in all of us as viewers - even in myself now and then - to want to see real life depicted. But you're looking for it in the wrong places. It's in little allegories, in something removed.

You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: and allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power.

Allegory dwells in a transparent palace.

Now, if the book of Genesis is an allegory, then sin is an allegory, the Fall is an allegory and the need for a Savior is an allegory - but if we are all descendants of an allegory, where does that leave us? It destroys the foundation of all Christian doctrine-it destroys the foundation of the gospel.

It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

A little allegory of the soul - wherever it hides, God will find it.

A man's life of any worth is a continual allegory.

There's something in the human personality which resents things that are clear, and conversely, something which is attracted to puzzles, enigmas, and allegories.

All perishable is but an allegory.

Because, as we know, almost anything can be read into any book if you are determined enough. This will be especially impressed on anyone who has written fantastic fiction. He will find reviewers, both favourable and hostile, reading into his stories all manner of allegorical meanings which he never intended. (Some of the allegories thus imposed on my own books have been so ingenious and interesting that I often wish I had thought of them myself.)

[Allegory] is a flight by which the human wit attempts at one and the same time to investigate two objects, and consequently is fitted only to the most exalted geniuses.

The credulity of the church is decreasing, and the most marvelous miracles are not either 'explained,' or allowed to take refuge behind the mistakes of the translators, or hide in the drapery of allegory.

Each character is an allegory for every aspect of human existence.

Allegories drawn to great length will always break.

There's so much power in allegory, to form ideas and learn lessons that you can actually take and apply to real life. I think that's why I originally really loved fantasy and reading.

No self is of itself alone. It has a long chain of intellectual ancestors. The "I" is chained to ancestry by many factors ... This is not mere allegory, but an eternal memory.

I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

I think cinema is closer to allegories than to reality. It's closer to our dreams.

I can work in films as long as the story doesn't have a realistic nature. If I'm working with an allegory, a fantasy, it can be developed in synthetic terms.

Allegories are, in the realm of thought, what ruins are in the realm of things.

I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations.

I wrote The Same Sea not as a political allegory about Israelis and Palestinians. I wrote it about something much more gutsy and immediate. I wrote it as a piece of chamber music.

Everything for me becomes allegory

Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.

An allegory is not meant to be taken literally. There is a great lack of comprehension on the part of some readers.

Each has its lesson; for our dreams in sooth, come they in shape of demons, gods, or elves, are allegories with deep hearts of truth that tell us solemn secrets of ourselves.

A priest is he who lives solely in the realm of the invisible, for whom all that is visible has only the truth of an allegory.

To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.

Allegories, when well chosen, are like so many tracks of light in a discourse, that make everything about them clear and beautiful.

A man's life of any worth is a continual allegory, and very few eyes can see the mystery of his life, a life like the scriptures, figurative.

Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of this great allegory - the world? Then we pygmies must be content to have out paper allegories but ill comprehended.

An acquired taste, this dense Jabberwocky-ish word salad is a political allegory about a populace that's been pharmaceutically duped into believing its wretched world is wonderful.

It is one thing, then, to say, "The Bible contains the religion revealed by God ," and quite another to say, "Whatever is contained in the Bible is religion, and was revealed by God." If the latter be accepted, metaphor and allegory become literal statements and the errors and absurdities of bibliolatry follow.

The moment in the account of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis is when they realize they're naked and try and cover themselves with fig leaves. That seemed to me a perfect allegory of what happened in the 20th century with regard to literary modernism. Literary modernism grew out of a sense that, “Oh my god! I'm telling a story! Oh, that can't be the case, because I'm a clever person. I'm a literary person! What am I going to do to distinguish myself?...a lot of modernism does seem to come out of a fear of being thought an ordinary storyteller.