Twenty Metaphors About Time If you put any trust in proverbs, you already know that time heals, steals, and flies. And youre equally aware that time is something we all make and take, save and spend, keep, waste, kill, and lose. Habitually, almost without thinking, we explain our relationship to time through metaphors--many different metaphors. Here, if you have the time to spare, are twenty metaphorical definitions of time. • Time Is a Circus Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away. (Ben Hecht) • • Time Is a Gypsy Time, you old gipsy man, Will you not stay, Put up your caravan Just for one day? (Ralph Hodgson, Time, You Old Gipsy Man) • • Time Is a Thief Prince, I warn you, under the rose, Time is the thief you cannot banish. These are my daughters, I suppose. But where in the world did the children vanish? (Phyllis McGinley, Ballad of Lost Objects) • • Time Is a Trap But thats where I am, theres no escaping it. Times a trap, Im caught in it. (Margaret Atwood, The Handmaids Tale) • • Time Is a Reef Time is the reef upon which all our frail mystic ships are wrecked. (Noel Coward, Blithe Spirit) • • Time Is a Spinner She tried to discover what kind of woof Old Time, that greatest and longest established Spinner of all, would weave from the threads he had already spun into a woman. But his factory is a secret place, his work is noiseless, and his Hands are mutes. (Charles Dickens, Hard Times) • • Time Is a Storm Time is a storm in which we are all lost. Only inside the convolutions of the storm itself shall we find our directions. (William Carlos Williams, Introduction, Selected Essays) • Time Is a Stream Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. (Henry David Thoreau, Walden) • • Time Is a River Time is a flowing river. Happy those who allow themselves to be carried, unresisting, with the current. They float through easy days. They live, unquestioning, in the moment. (Christopher Morley, Where the Blue Begins) • • Time Is an Equal-Opportunity Employer Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people cant buy more hours; scientists cant invent new minutes. And you cant save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time youve wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow. (Denis Waitely, The Joy of Working) • Time Is a Miser Old Time, in whose banks we deposit our notes Is a miser who always wants guineas for groats; He keeps all his customers still in arrears By lending them minutes and charging them years. (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Our Banker) • • Time Is a Coin Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. (Carl Sandburg) • • Time Is Money Yesterday is a canceled check; tomorrow is a promissory note; today is the only cash you have, so spend it wisely. (Kay Lyons) • • Time Is a Fixed Income Time is a fixed income and, as with any income, the real problem facing most of us is how to live successfully within our daily allotment. (Margaret B. Johnstone) • • Time Is a School and a Fire What am I now that I was then? May memory restore again and again The smallest color of the smallest day: Time is the school in which we learn, Time is the fire in which we burn. (Delmore Schwartz, Calmly We Walk Through This April’s Day) • Time Is a Dressmaker Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations. (Faith Baldwin, Face Toward the Spring) • • Time Is a Prison Initially, I was unaware that time, so boundless at first blush, was a prison. (Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory) • • Time Is an Arrow Time is an irreversible arrow, and we can never return to the self that we sloughed off in childhood or adolescence. The man trying to wear youths carefree clothing, the woman costuming her emotions in dolls dresses--these are pathetic figures who want to reverse times arrow. (Joshua Loth Liebman, Renunciation of Immaturity, Peace of Mind) • • Time Is a Teacher Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils. (Hector Berlioz) • • Time Is a Gift Time is a gift, given to you, given to give you the time you need the time you need to have the time of your life. (Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth) Time is indeed a versatile performer, as Franklin P. Jones once observed. It flies, marches on, heals all wounds, runs out, and will tell.
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 14:12:33 +0000
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