Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was one of twentieth-century Europe’s most fascinating figures. Born in 1900 to aristocratic parents who had fallen on hard times, he attended Jesuit schools in Switzerland and France. A poor student as well as a discipline problem, he was drifting through adolescence when he became fascinated with the new world of flight. In 1921, he joined the French Army, and a year later he was commissioned as a pilot in the nation’s newly established Air Force. When he finished military service in 1926, he became a commercial pilot, initially flying airmail routes from France to Morocco and West Africa, and eventually to South America. He was also a test pilot for Air France, where his fearlessness made him a legend in his profession.
These days, Saint-Exupéry is best remembered as a writer. In the decades before World War II, he authored several books that celebrated the fancy of flight and the bravery of aviators. After the fall of France in 1940, he fled to the United States, where he produced his two most famous books, Letter to a Hostage, a call for French resistance to the Nazis, and the wildly successful The Little Prince, a child’s fable for adults. Shortly after both books were published in 1943, he joined the allied forces in North Africa and was presumably killed when his plane crashed at sea in 1944. Saint-Exupéry was a stylish and imaginative writer, penning many spectacular observations. One of my favorites appeared in his 1942 book Flight to Arras:
Man is a knot, a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied.
This is a triple threat of a metaphor, immediately provoking a host of visual images and a flurry of associations. The first is about people tying the knot, a popular metaphor for marriage. In ancient times, however, it was an actual practice—a priest or family patriarch would symbolize the marital union by tying together the garments of the bride and groom. We can easily pursue the metaphor further:
Like the knot of a shoelace or rope around a cargo container, relationships can be well tied or poorly tied. When tied skillfully and effectively, knots as well as relationships somehow hold together, even through periods of turbulence. But when they are tied carelessly—or poorly by people who lack the essential skills—even the most precious cargo is not secure.
We could take the same approach with the web and mesh metaphors. Reflecting on the interpersonal world, a web of relationships seems an appropriate way to describe one of life’s most persistent realities—we are most deeply affected by people who are close to us, but are often keenly aware of things that happen to those on the outskirts of our lives. While mesh is a word that is used infrequently, almost everyone is familiar with what happens when the gears of a machine—or the personalities of two people—don’t mesh. And in my mind, the popular psychological concept of being enmeshed always evokes the image of a fish snared in the mesh of a fishing net (technically, the term means being entangled or hopelessly caught up in a relationship or other vexing situation).
When people create metaphors, they find similarities between things that, on the surface, are dissimilar. A good metaphor is like a bridge that links two territories that have been separated by a body of water or a deep canyon. Once the bridge is connected, people can travel freely back and forth. In her 1982 book Anatomy of Freedom, Robin Morgan expressed it this way:
Metaphor is the energy charge that leaps between images,
revealing their connections.
While many relationship metaphors are serious, others are comedic. In the 1977 film Annie Hall, Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) says to Annie (Diane Keaton):
A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know?
It has to constantly move forward or it dies.
And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.
The line never fails to elicit a laugh, no matter how many times the film is viewed. But it also never fails to provoke a thought, cleverly reminding us that relationships which stand still often fail to survive.
Of all human relationships, those between men and women have probably received the most attention—and they have definitely inspired the most memorable observations. One of the most famous is this analogy:
A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.
The point, of course, is that women don’t need men at all. The saying is usually attributed to Gloria Steinem, and sometimes to lawyer Florynce Kennedy, both of whom used it frequently in the 1970s. The feminist slogan, as it is often called, has always been familiar to baby-boomers, but it was brought to a whole new generation when it showed up in the 1991 U2 song Tryin’ to Throw Your Arms Around the World. While Steinem and Kennedy have gone to great lengths to deny authorship, attributions to them continue to the present day. Steinem once even wrote a letter to Time magazine to identify the woman who first said it: an Australian writer, filmmaker, and former politician named Irina Dunn.
As the news of Dunn’s authorship has become better known, a fascinating story about the saying’s provenance has also emerged. While studying English Literature at Sydney University more than thirty years ago, Dunn came across a book by a nineteenth-century freethinker that contained these words:
A man needs god like a fish needs a bicycle.
Dunn was so impressed with the analogy that she felt a slight rewording of it could serve as a perfect counter-argument to women who believed they needed a man to lead a complete life. The first appearance of her version came in the form of graffiti she scrawled on the walls of two women’s restrooms in Sydney—one at a university theater and the other at a popular student drinking establishment. Regarding the slogan’s humble origins, Dunn later told a reporter, “I only wrote it in those two spots, and it spread around the world.” Like the fellow who invented the happy face image in the 1960s, Dunn never copyrighted the saying, so up until now she has been only rarely credited as the author of the line. But her story is a wonderful example of how a well-crafted analogy can take on a life of its own and capture the imagination of millions. A decade or so after her line became a staple of feminist thought, it also inspired a number of clever spin-offs, including this from an unknown American male:
A man needs a woman like a neck needs a pain.
Friendship is another type of human relationship that has proved amenable to metaphorical description. In Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, written in the third century, Diogenes Laertius wrote of the Greek philosopher Aristotle:
To the query, “What is a friend?”
his reply was “A single soul dwelling in two bodies.”
Aristotle couldn’t have known it, but around the same time on the other side of the known world, the Chinese sage Mencius said virtually the same thing: “Friendship is one mind in two bodies.” It’s an illustration of the adage that great minds often do think alike, and it’s also evidence that great minds often turn to figurative language when describing life’s most important realities. The Aristotle and Mencius observations are among the most famous words ever written on friendship, but they are hardly the only eloquent words on the topic, or the only metaphorical ones:
A faithful friend is the medicine of life.
Friendship is Love without his wings!
A friend is, as it were, a second self.
Friendship is a sheltering tree.
A friend is a present you give yourself.
All human beings are caught up in a wide array of relationships, and all of them have been the subject of analogical and metaphorical observations. In the three chapters following this one, we will delve deeper into the subjects of love, marriage & family life, and sex. But in the remainder of this chapter, we will focus our attention on what people have had to say about relationships in general, the nature of friendship, romantic relationships, and the many fascinating things that men and women have said about each other.
Jealousy in romance is like salt in food.
A little can enhance the savor, but too much can spoil the pleasure
and, under certain circumstances, can be life-threatening.
This comes from Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now (1993). In a 1922 book, Little Essays of Love and Virtue, British psychologist Havelock Ellis warned couples about “the demon of jealousy, that dragon which slays love under the pretense of keeping it alive.”
Wishing to be friends is quick work,
but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit.
Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue
as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter,
to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.
A pseudo-friend is the social equivalent of fast food:
a useful creature who can be called upon to deliver
a tasty illusion of friendship without the expense and bother.
Man without woman would be like playing checkers alone.
It has been said that a pretty face is like a passport.
But it’s not; it’s a visa, and it runs out fast.
Don’t smother each other. No one can grow in the shade.
Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
She understood, as women often do more easily than men,
that the declared meaning of a spoken sentence is only its overcoat,
and the real meaning lies underneath its scarves and buttons.
This observation, from Carey’s 1989 novel Oscar and Lucinda, demonstrates that novelists are generally better than social scientists at describing why men and women have trouble communicating.
The heart of another is a dark forest, always,
no matter how close it has been to one’s own.
A woman is like your shadow—
follow her, she flies; fly from her, she follows.
This eighteenth-century observation is also a lovely example of chiasmus, one of my very favorite rhetorical devices (see www.chiasmus.com).
A woman watches her body uneasily,
as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love.
It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness
to the mechanisms of friendship.
Colette was the pen name of a Parisian music-hall dancer who became famous for her plays and novels (Gigi, her best-remembered work, was made into a popular 1958 movie starring Leslie Caron). Writing in 1898, African-American writer Frances E. W. Harper penned an equally impressive analogy on the subject: “True politeness is to social life what oil is to machinery, a thing to oil the ruts and grooves of existence.”
The firmest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity,
as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame.
This is from Colton’s Lacon (1820), where he also wrote: “True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.”
In the sex war, thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male,
vindictiveness of the female.
Women are like tricks by sleight of hand,
Which, to admire, we should not understand.
The male is a domestic animal which,
if treated with firmness and kindness,
can be trained to do most things.
The Emotional Bank Account represents
the quality of the relationship you have with others.
It’s like a financial bank account in that you can
make “deposits,” by proactively doing things that build trust…
or “withdrawals,” by reactively doing things that decrease the level of trust.
This comes from The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families (1997), a sequel to the 1990 best-seller, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, where Covey introduced the concept of an emotional bank account. It’s a powerful metaphor and a helpful reminder that we should strive to make more deposits and fewer withdrawals.
The happiest moment in any affair takes place
after the loved one has learned to accommodate the lover
and before the maddening personality of either party
has emerged like a jagged rock from the receding tides of lust and curiosity.
The woman who too easily and ardently yielded her devotion
will find that its vitality, like a bright fire, soon consumes itself.
A quarrel between friends, when made up,
adds a new tie to friendship, as experience shows that
the callosity formed round a broken bone makes it stronger than before.
Callosity means “the condition of being callused” and refers to the hardened tissue that develops around a fractured bone as it heals. Wallace Stegner made the same point about broken hearts: “Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.”
Once a woman has forgiven her man,
she must not reheat his sins for breakfast.
Romance has been elegantly defined as the offspring of fiction and love.
This observation, which is commonly misattributed to Benjamin Disraeli, comes from Curiosities of Literature, a six-volume study of history and literature by one of England’s foremost historians and critics (and also the father of Benjamin Disraeli). Here are two other metaphorical observations on the same subject:
“Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze.” Elinor Glyn
“Romance, like alcohol, should be enjoyed, but should not be allowed to become necessary.” Edgar Z. Friedenberg
A woman who has known but one man
is like a person who has heard only one composer.
Relationships are hard. It’s like a full-time job, and we should treat it like one.
If your boyfriend or girlfriend wants to leave you,
they should give you two weeks’ notice.
There should be severance pay, and before they leave you,
they should have to find you a temp.
A man has every season,
while a woman has only the right to spring.
Men are like pay phones.
Some of them take your money. Most of them don’t work,
and when you find one that does, someone else is on it.
A single man has not nearly the value he would have in a state of union.
He is an incomplete animal. He resembles the odd half of a pair of scissors.
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
The man who discovers a woman’s weakness
is like the huntsman in the heat of the day who finds a cool spring.
He wallows in it.
Caresses, expressions of one sort or another,
are necessary to the life of the affections, as leaves are to the life of a tree.
If they are wholly restrained, love will die at the roots.
He was a baked potato—solid…
I was a fancy dessert—mocha chip ice cream.
A woman…should be like a good suspense movie.
The more left to the imagination, the more excitement there is.
This should be her aim—to create suspense.
The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon,
but its echo lasts a great deal longer.
Another spectacular kiss metaphor came in a 1955 observation from Jeanne Bourgeois, the French singer and dancer better known as Mistinguette: “A kiss can be a comma, a question mark, or an exclamation point. That’s basic spelling every woman ought to know.”
A man…should keep his friendship in constant repair.
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact
of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
Everything that reminds me of her goes through me like a spear.
When you get back together with an old boyfriend, it’s pathetic.
It’s like having a garage sale and buying your own stuff back.
Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes;
there’s too much fraternizing with the enemy.
Kissinger may have been inspired by a famous seventeenth-century line from George Savile (Lord Halifax): “Love is a passion that hath friends in the garrison.” In a 1970 Esquire article, Sally Kempton looked at the same phenomenon from the other side of the gender gap: “It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.”
The relation of man to woman is the flowing of two rivers side by side,
sometimes mingling, then separating again, and traveling on.
Absence lessens the minor passions and increases the great ones,
as the wind douses a candle and kindles a fire.
This was La Rochefoucauld’s attempt to settle the debate between those who believe “absence makes the heart grow fonder” or “out of sight, out of mind.”
Men kick friendship around like a football,
but it doesn’t seem to crack.
Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces.
Life without a friend is death without a witness.
On the wall of our life together hung a gun
waiting to be fired in the final act.
McCarthy wrote this about her relationship with Partisan Review editor Philip Rahv in her 1992 book Intellectual Memoirs: New York, 1936–38. Despite the title, the book is less about her intellectual development than about her sexual adventures.
The worldly relations of men and women often form an equation
that cancels out without warning
when some insignificant factor has been added to either side.
If dating is like shopping,
being engaged is like having a guy put you on lay-a-way.
Like saying, “I know I want it.
I just want to delay taking it home as long as possible.”
No love, no friendship can cross the path of our destiny
without leaving some mark on it forever.
Women’s hearts are like old china, none the worse for a break or two.
The allurement that women hold out to men
is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors:
they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating.
When women kiss it always reminds one of prize-fighters shaking hands.
Finding a man is like finding a job;
it’s easier to find one when you already have one.
A face is too slight a foundation for happiness.
In every man’s heart there is a secret nerve
that answers to the vibrations of beauty.
G. K. Chesterton, without formally mentioning beauty, said pretty much the same thing: “There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.”
The quarrels of lovers are like summer storms.
Everything is more beautiful when they have passed.
There are two things a real man likes—danger and play;
and he likes women because she is
the most dangerous of playthings.
A home-made friend wears longer than one you buy in the market.
Never date a woman you can hear ticking.
This observation, from a Providence Journal columnist, is one of the best things ever written on one the most popular metaphors of our time: the biological time clock.
A woman is a foreign land,
Of which, though there he settle young,
A man will ne’er quite understand
The customs, politics, and tongue.
Women are like dreams—
they are never the way you would like to have them.
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy;
they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
Giving a man space is like giving a dog a computer:
the chances are he will not use it wisely.
A man’s heart may have a secret sanctuary where only one woman may enter,
but it is full of little anterooms which are seldom vacant.
Human relations just are not fixed in their orbits like the planets—
they’re more like galaxies, changing all the time, exploding into light for years, then dying away.
Though friendship is not quick to burn,
It is explosive stuff.
That common cold of the male psyche, fear of commitment.
Breaking up is like knocking over a coke machine.
You can’t do it in one push.
You’ve gotta rock it back and forth a few times, and then it goes over.
What is a date, really, but a job interview that lasts all night?
Seinfeld added: “The only difference is that in not many job interviews is there a chance you’ll wind up naked.” Comedian Eddie Murphy put it more coarsely, but his metaphor enjoys great popularity among college boys and young adult men: “When you’re dating, you’re just leasing the pussy with an option to buy.”
It is assumed that the woman must wait,
motionless, until she is wooed.
That is how the spider waits for the fly.
Dating is a lot like sports.
You have to practice; you work out; you study the greats.
You hope to make the team, and it hurts to be cut.
The game women play is men.
Going out with a jerky guy
is kind of like having a piece of food caught in your teeth.
All your friends notice it before you do.
Glances are the heavy artillery of the flirt:
everything can be conveyed in a look,
yet that look can always be denied,
for it cannot be quoted word for word.
Some looks, however, cannot be denied. One was famously described by the French writer known as Colette: “When she raises her eyelids, it’s as if she were taking off all her clothes.”
The great majority of men, especially in France,
both desire and possess a fashionable woman,
much in the way one might own a fine horse—
as a luxury befitting a young man.
Man is the hunter; woman is his game.
Friends do not live in harmony, merely, as some say, but in melody.
Indeed, we do not really live unless we have friends surrounding us
like a firm wall against the winds of the world.
Talking with a man is like trying to saddle a cow.
You work like hell, but what’s the point?
The first time you buy a house you think how pretty it is and sign the check.
The second time you look to see if the basement has termites.
It’s the same with men.
Be courteous to all, but intimate with few,
and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.
True friendship is a plant of slow growth
and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity
before it is entitled to the appellation.
This comes from a 1783 letter. You may be more familiar with another plant metaphor from Washington: “Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.” Also on the roots theme, George Eliot wrote in Daniel Deronda (1874): “Friendships begin with liking or gratitude—roots that can be pulled up.”
Assumptions are the termites of relationships.
This is a fabulous metaphor from an unexpected source, perfectly describing how assumptions can slowly eat away at the foundation of a relationship. Winkler inserted the line in the middle of a 1995 commencement address he gave at his alma mater, Emerson College in Boston.
What magic there is in a girl’s smile. It is the raisin which,
dropped in the yeast of male complacency, induces fermentation.