Just felt the same way about the portion after the semicolon; it's quite catchy as well! Please give a reference or else if I use this later I'll have to say it came from "some guy on hackernews".
I guess this is mine? I would hesitate to believe I made it up, but I don't remember it from anywhere. If you don't feel comfortable with that, then credit it to Michael Starbird, who was my first Moore-method professor 20-odd years ago.
This is an excellent metaphor using beautiful language. Did you just coin this yourself or is it pre-existing?