In rhetoric, antimetabole is the repetition of words in successive clauses, but in transposed grammatical order (e.g., "I know what I like, and I like what I know"). It is similar to chiasmus although chiasmus does not use repetition of the same words or phrases.
Latin: Miser ex potente fiat ex misero potensSeneca the Younger, Thyestes, Act I.10 (let it make misery from power and power from misery).
The Latinate expression of Parmenides philosophical thesis of immutability is rendered "Ex nihilo nihil fit" (from nothing nothing comes).
When a dog bites a man that is not news, but when a man bites a dog that is news. (Charles Anderson Dana, "What is News?" The New York Sun, 1882)
"Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 201961.
"The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." Jesus (Mark 2:27)
"Johnson having now explicitly avowed his opinion of Lord Chesterfield, did not refrain from expressing himself concerning that nobleman with pointed freedom: 'This man (said he) I thought had been a Lord among wits; but, I find, he is only a wit among Lords!' " James BoswellLife of Johnson
"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Winston Churchill, The Lord Mayor's Luncheon, Mansion House, November 101942.
"We didn't land on Plymouth Rock, the rock was landed on us." Malcolm X, The Ballot or the Bullet, Washington Heights, NY, March 291964.
"I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful, one hundred percent!" Dr. Seuss, Horton Hatches an Egg.
To be kissed by a fool is stupid; To be fooled by a kiss is worse. Ambrose Redmoon.
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