A figure of speech in which a term is transferred from the object it ordinarily designates to an object it may designate only by comparison or analogy, as in the phrase "evening of life". 2. Figurative language; allegory or parable: the prophets used much by metaphors to set forth truth. Bunyan. -- American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
Metaphor describes the relationship between two unlike objects, ideas of situations. For example, "life is a roller coaster, full of ups and downs, is a metaphor. -- Carole Cooper with Julie Boyd, Mindful Learning, 1996
A metaphor calls a thing something it isn't life is a bowl for of cherries, Metaphors are not logical, but they create an image that can challenge what is blindly accepted, allow new links to develop and generate new ways of thinking. Metaphors are a way of understanding a situation you are a part of and helped create. They give a new language, a more poetic, less scientific language, for discussion of life. -- H. B Gellat, Creative Decision-Making
"When people say it's "just a metaphor," we really have to look at that because all science is metaphor. When you say that nature is an array of mechanisms, that's absolutely as metaphorical as saying it's a living entity. There is no way of talking about anything new without invoking metaphors. All of science is based on metaphor. If you talk about an atom as a little solar system with planets around it, or as whirlpools of energy, in the more recent descriptions, these are all metaphors. Metaphor simply means that "you take something that is familiar to you and use it as a pictograph or an image of what you are trying to describe that you don't yet understand well." -- Elisabet Sahtouris
http://www.west.net/~insight/elsa.htm
"The fact is that when you work with body and mind, or you've been forced to because you've been ill, you find that the connector is metaphor. Metaphor is the language of the soul. Shakespeare talks in metaphors, the Bible talks in metaphors. Metaphor is a physical picture of a spiritual condition." -- Marion Woodman--
http://www.now.com/issues/15/42/Ent/cover.html