"Squaring The Circle" As A Metaphor
The futility of exercises aimed at finding the quadrature of the circle has lent itself to metaphors describing a hopeless, meaningless, or vain undertaking.
For example, in Spanish, the expression "descubriste la cuadratura del círculo" ("you discovered the quadrature of the circle") is often used derisively to dismiss claims that someone has found a simple solution to a particularly hard or intractable problem.
Read more about this topic: Squaring The Circle
Famous quotes containing the words circle and/or metaphor:
“It was my heaven’s extremest sphere,
The pale which held that lovely deer;
My joy, my grief, my hope, my love,
Did all within this circle move!”
—Edmund Waller (1606–1687)
“—fur-petalled chrysanthemum,
squirrel-killer—
is a metaphor only if I
force him to be one....”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)