“… a metaphor… is like lying but more decorative.”
Source: Guards! Guards!
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Terry Pratchett796
English author 1948–2015Related quotes
Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator
"City of My Youth" (1984)
Context: It would be more decorous not to live. To live is not decorous,
Says he who after many years
Returned to the city of his youth. There was no one left
Of those who once walked these streets
And now they had nothing, except his eyes.
Stumbling, he walked and looked, instead of them,
On the light they had loved, on the lilacs again in bloom.
“Cooking is like decorating — it never bores me.”
Robert Denning (1927–2005) American interior designer
"Denning's Pot-au-Feu – A decorator indulges his passion for cuisine bourgeoise", by Suzanne Hart, House & Garden, March 1992
“Pictures deface walls more often than they decorate them.”
William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet
This is only a slightly misquoted version of "Pictures deface walls oftener than they decorate them", written by Frank Lloyd Wright in the magazine Architectural Record in March 1908.
Misattributed
Muhammad al-Taqi (811–835) ninth of the Twelve Imams of Twelver Shi'ism
al-Shahid al-Tustari, Ihqaqul-Haq, vol.12, p. 434
General
Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist
Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)
“A writer without confidence is like a metaphor without something to compare itself to.”
Neil Simon (1927–2018) playwright, writer, academic
Rewrites (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996) p. 105