Quotes About Literal

One is taught to refrain from irony, because mankind does tend to take it literally.

It is discouraging that many of the precepts whose sacred character is thus uncritically acknowledged should be such as to inflict much wholly unnecessary misery. If men's kindly impulses were stronger, they would find some way of explaining that these precepts are not to be taken literally, any more than the command to "sell all that thou hast and give to the poor.

When I started the band, the name 'Silver Jews' had no literal meaning - it was just an abstraction.

I started doing sculpture in 1959. I had no commissions then. They were painted, similar in style to the paintings... At a certain point, I decided I didn't want an edge between two colors, I wanted color differences in literal space.

The Scripture makes it clear that this planet would already be a literal hell on earth were it not for the presence of the Holy Spirit in the world.

Within the Christian tradition, fundamentalism arose in the 19th century as an effort to push back against modern' readings of the Bible that suggested everything in the text wasn't true in some literal sense.

Most times when people pitch you as being perfect for a part... they don't look at you as an actor who can transform. A lot of people are so literal.

Transportation made sublimation literal. It conveyed evil to another world.

Any documentary; any capturing of a non-fiction event, is a hyper-realistic condensation of reality that hopefully reveals an emotional truth. It's never the actual literal truth of an event.

In order to deliver the emotional truth in the story, you have to include some of the literal truth.

Strict and literal truthfulness was a trivial game and might even be a disagreeable neurotic affliction.

I was simply in love with my daughter and how she viewed her world. The literal way in which she took it all in and took it on. I knew it wouldn't last long and so I treasured every moment I saw and heard of it.

The low lintels of the cottage have many disadvantages, but they have one supreme advantage. They afford an immediate topic of conversation. They make things start, quite literally, with a bang.

When you describe a chili as hot, you are being more literal than you might suppose. Your brain interprets it as being actually burned.

People in the U.K. share my bemusement with the United States that America doesn't share with itself. They have a sense of irony, which America doesn't have, seeing as it's being run by fundamentalists who take things literally.

I sort of took the literal term of 'The Cleaner,' and I started bringing janitorial items to the ring with me, so I took garbage bags and brooms and mops.

Science does nothing for man spiritually, and organized religion demands blind faith in illogical liturgy that was never meant to be taken literally!

I go to 'SNL' with Alec. I literally watch on a feed from his room. I'm not in the audience. I watch in his room. I get so cozy.

If realistic fiction is primarily metonymic, fantasy is inescapably metaphoric; because the presence of the impossible blocks a literal reading, we are invited to look at Fred and his world as some sort of iconic stand-in for everyday life, rather than as an extension from it. By

I never did very well in math-I could never seem to persuade the teacher that I hadn't meant my answers literally.

Giving him the distinction of being the only human to be literally kicked out of hell.

Torschlusspanik," Simon said. "Okay," Sam said. "I'll bite." "Don't encourage him," Ant said. "What's Torschlusspanik?" Sam said. "It means 'gate-shut panic,' " Simon said. "It's the fear that time is running out and that you're going to miss an opportunity. Literally, the gate is closing, and you'll never get in.

I don't even know if we have a broom closet, Mrs. Levin," said Tasha. "Tasha, honestly! In this world, to be overly literal is a profound weakness. It doesn't have to be a broom closet. Just put her somewhere out of the way until I get there. It could be a basement. It could be the roof. It could be a neglected cubicle. The location of your motherfucking choosing!" Embeth hung up the phone. This girl was hopeless.

Sometimes a piece of literature is intended to be factual or historical, sometimes poetic or figurative, oftentimes both. So it is the literary context that determines how a scripture should be understood, not our expectations that we bring to the text. Since the Bible is literature with different genres and styles of writing, we should be literary in our interpretation, not literal.