Allegory Quotes

As headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile. (Richard Brinsley Sheridan)
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. View quote
Manuel Puig
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. View quote
Lionel Trilling
Each character is an allegory for every aspect of human existence. View quote
Vanna Bonta
Ben's Mr. Market allegory may seem out-of-date in today's investment world, in which most professionals and academicians talk of efficient markets, dynamic hedging and betas. Their interest in such matters is understandable, since techniques shrouded in mystery clearly have value to the purveyor of investment advice. After all, what witch doctor has ever achieved fame and fortune by simply advising "Take two aspirins?" View quote
Warren Buffett
Confession is a sacred rite enhanced by allegory, exaggeration, and lies. View quote
Craig Ferguson
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. View quote
Erwin Schrödinger
The 'Bourne' movies are great in their own ways; it introduces a whole other sort of allegory about the Bush years. The secrecy and the threats of a big global organization. View quote
Chris Terrio
It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story. View quote
Haruki Murakami
That's how stories happen - with a turning point, an unexpected twist. There's only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story. View quote
Haruki Murakami
Here was irrefutable proof that he was using the Holocaust to speak of the extermination of animal life. Doomed creatures that could not speak for themselves were being given the voice of a most articulate people who had been similarly doomed. He was seeing the tragic fate of animals through the tragic fate of Jews. The Holocaust as allegory. (Yann Martel)
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. View quote
Amos Oz
Death is imposed only on creatures, not their creations, and has therefore always appeared in art in a broken form: as allegory. View quote
Theodor Adorno
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. View quote
Friedrich Schlegel
Delacroix spoke of the Greek coin being built from the center out. Vermeer has painted in this way, according to the principles of mass... How beautifully they are drawn – Vermeer does not just make a leaf and place it in the design, he relates space and leaf. [in the painting of Vermeer: 'Allegory on the New Testament']. That drapery – it is abstract – observe how this shape [a space between a shepherd and the tree] curves around the center space while the tree counter-curves opposite it, cutting an egg shape.... the spaces on the carpet that carry no figuration are, in fact, shapes of vital importance in building the whole.. View quote
Arshile Gorky
A Warning to all Close minded, petty, or malicious, great and small spirits! Just as the whole plot of Parsifal of the festal play of Richard Wagner is only an allegory, a symbolical depiction with no real occurrence in the material world, so the above explanation of the Graal-secret is not to be understood as literal, personal, material, earthly, relative to vulgar events. But it is only to be understood as totally impersonal, symbolical, and relative on purely spiritual grounds. View quote
Theodor Reuss
A novel is not an allegory ... It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won't be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing. View quote
Azar Nafisi
I don't like allegory. View quote
China Miéville
One never knows whether the Poet is speaking fact, fancy, or allegory. If fancy is clever enough, I doubt that the Poet would admit a difference between fancy and fact. View quote
Walter M. Miller, Jr.
In this allegory the seeker, trying to reach the One, is drawn by two horses, one white and noble and temperate, and the other surly, stubborn, passionate and black. The one is forever aiding him in his upward journey to the portals of heaven, the other is forever confounding him. The Chairman has not stated it yet, but he is at the point at which he must now announce that the white horse is temperate reason, the black horse is dark passion, emotion. He is at the point at which these must be described, but the false note suddenly becomes a chorus. View quote
Robert M. Pirsig
A fairytale is not an allegory. There may be allegory in it, but it is not an allegory. (George MacDonald)
I followed my inspiration to an ending I couldn't yet see, and incorporated techniques of allegory and exposition, expository essay. View quote
Vanna Bonta
Everything for me becomes allegory. View quote
Charles Baudelaire
All perishable is but an allegory. View quote
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
An allegory is not meant to be taken literally. There is a great lack of comprehension on the part of some readers. View quote
Naguib Mahfouz