Figurative Language Quotes

10 quotes from 8 authors

Figurative language turns ordinary description into vivid imagination. These ten concise observations, contributed by eight different thinkers, illustrate how metaphor, simile, personification and other devices reshape meaning, offering handy examples for lessons, essays, or creative brainstorming.

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Yes, the mistrust of poetry has a long history, for a variety of reasons, but they all come down to sentiment and…

Mary Ruefle

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“I suspect that Jane Austen's practice of denying herself the aid of figurative language which, as much as any of her other…

Mary Lascelles

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“Ernest Hemingway, much like the Artisan hero in his novel, A Farewell to Arms, wanted to avoid figurative language (the language of…

David Keirsey

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I like bringing poetry's focus on figurative language and compression into the essay. Of course, the musical properties of language, the cadence…

Alison Hawthorne Deming

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I'm a failed poet. Reading poetry helps me to see the world differently, and I try to infuse my prose with figurative…

Jesmyn Ward

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“Beowulf stands out as a poem which makes extensive use of this kind of figurative language. There are over one thousand compounds…

Ronald Carter

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I feel like in the reading I did when I was growing up, and also in the way that people talk and…

Jesmyn Ward

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“Symbols are valuable tools of communication. Symbols communicate truth concisely, and they communicate it graphically. In Revelation 11 the apostle John could…

Mark Hitchcock