This metaphor of Menenius Agrippa's became, history records, matter of fact in 1689, when rats pervaded the Eternal City from garret to cellar, and

From the numerous instances illustrative of tree-descent, it is evident, as Mr. Keary points out, that, "there was once a fuller meaning than metaphor in the language which spoke of the roots and branches of a family, or in such expressions as the pathetic "Ah, woe, beloved shoot!" of Euripides."

If I may borrow a metaphor from her own favourite theme, she is for ever dashing off on some alluring cross-scent.

While it may not provide us with a template for sure-fire business and marketing solutions, the rise of interactive media does provide us with the beginnings of new metaphors for cooperation, new faith in the power of networked activity and new evidence of our ability to participate actively in the authorship of our collective destiny.

He loves such gloomy metaphors as the following:

But to take this as an adequate explanation; to force the metaphor to its logical consequences, to the exclusion of every other reasonable though non-rational assent, is the commonest but most fatal form of intellectual provincialism and narrowness.

What dull stone that ever lived darkling in a mine is fit to be named even in metaphor with this pale yet brilliant arch that so softly leans above us?

So far from it being irreverent to use silly metaphors on serious questions, it is one's duty to use silly metaphors on serious questions.

He stops a metaphor like a suspected person in an enemy's country.

It is not improbable, that Shakespeare put these forced and unnatural metaphors into the mouth of Macbeth, as a mark of artifice and dissimulation, to show the difference between the studied language of hypocrisy, and the natural outcries of sudden passion.

Both hymns illustrate the imagery and metaphor out of which grew the mythology of primeval Babylonia, and offer curious parallels to the Aryan hymns of the Rig-Veda.

"Of all the English authors, none is more happy in his metaphors than Addison.