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Although we acquire the skill of understanding words by experience, so that we know the correlations between them and things, between words and other words, and between words and feelings and actions, we do not do it by inductive reasoning. Nor must we think that we do it by deductive reasoning... In the main, words are cues rather than clues.

— Colin Murray Turbayne The Myth of Metaphor (1962)

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More quotes by Colin Murray Turbayne

The metaphysics that still dominates science and enthralls the minds of men is nothing but a metaphor, and a limited one.

The Myth of Metaphor (1962)

In short, the use of metaphor involves both the awareness of duality of sense and the pretense that the two different senses are one.

The Myth of Metaphor (1962)

There is a remedy against the domination imposed, not by generals, statesmen, and men of action, whose power dissolves when they retire, but by the great sort-crossers, whose power increases when they die- the remedy of becoming aware of metaphor...

The Myth of Metaphor (1962)

It is a confusion to present the items of one sort in the idioms of another -- without awareness. For to do this is not just to cross two different sorts; it is to confuse them. It is to mistake, for example, the theory for the fact, the procedure for the process, the myth for history, the model for the thing and the metaphor for the face of literal truth.

The Myth of Metaphor (1962)

However appropriate in one sense a good metaphor may be, in another sense there is something inappropriate about it. This inappropriateness results from the use of a sign in a sense different from the usual...

The Myth of Metaphor (1962)

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Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Francis Bacon Meditationes sacræ (1597)

Strength of creative writing lies in the skill of handling words and articulating artistic expression of feelings.”

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The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

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Three sleepless nights I passed in sounding on,
Through words and things, a dim and perilous way.

William Wordsworth Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Colin Murray Turbayne (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.