'To any who had observed him before he lost his gold, it might have seemed that so withered and shrunken a life as his could hardly be susceptible of a bruise, could hardly endure any subtraction but such as would put an end to it altogether.' - What does George Eliot describe metaphorically in this excerpt from her book, Silas Marner?

A metaphor states that one thing is something else. This description, however, is too simple for the way metaphors often work in poetry, literature and speeches. You will often find something being described, or written about, as if it is something else, without the writer ever saying 'x is y' (do you see the mathematical metaphor there?).