Best 102 quotes in «symbolism quotes» category

The verge between sea and land marked the manifestation of the symbolic transition between the known and the unknown. Between life and death, spirit and mind, between an unlimited host of elements and forces contrary yet locked together. Lives were given to the seas, treasures were flung into their depths. And, upon the waters themselves, ships and their crews were dragged into the deep time and again.

They are talking about how we can't trust the faded women, women who can't be touched but can stand on the earth, which means they must be lying about something, they must be deceiving us somehow.

They thought more before nine a.m. than most people thought all month. I remember once declining cherry pie at dinner, and Rand cocked his head and said, 'Ahh! Iconoclast. Disdains the easy, symbolic patriotism.' And when I tried to laugh it off and said, well, I didn't like cherry cobbler either, Marybeth touched Rand's arm: 'Because of the divorce. All those comfort foods, the desserts a family eats together, those are just bad memories for Nick.' It was silly but incredibly sweet, these people spending so much energy trying to figure me out. The answer: I don't like cherries.

We have learnt that the exploration of the external world by the methods of physical science leads not to a concrete reality but to a shadow world of symbols, beneath which those methods are unadapted for penetrating. Feeling that there must be more behind, we return to our starting point in human consciousness - the one centre where more might become known. There we find other stirrings, other revelations than those conditioned by the world of symbols... Physics most strongly insists that its methods do not penetrate behind the symbolism. Surely then that mental and spiritual nature of ourselves, known in our minds by an intimate contact transcending the methods of physics, supplies just that... which science is admittedly unable to give.

Thus, Symbolism and Decadence are not a separate new school which arose in France and spread throughout all of Europe: they represent the end and culmination of a certain other school whose links were very extensive and whose roots go back to the beginning of the modern age. Symbolism, easily deduced from Maupassant, can also be deduced from Zola, Flaubert, and Balzac, from Ultra-realism as the antithesis of the previous Ultra-idealism Romanticism and "renascent" Classicism. It is precisely this element of ultra - the result of ultra manifested in life itself, in its mores, ideas, proclivities, and aspirations - that has wormed into literature and remained there ever since, expressing itself, finally, in such a hideous phenomenon as Decadence and Symbolism. The ultra without its referent, exaggeration without the exaggerated object, preciosity of form conjoined with total disappearance of content, and "poetry" devoid of rhyme, meter, and sense - that is what constitutes Decadence.

Traces of the same spiritual concepts and symbolism that enlighten the Egyptian texts are found all around the world among cultures that we can be certain were never in direct contact. Straightforward diffusion from one to the other is therefore not the answer, and 'coincidence' doesn't even begin to account for the level of detail in the similarities. The best explanation, in my view, is that we're looking at a legacy, shared worldwide, passed down from a single, remotely ancient source.

Trees lose their leaves in blizzards like these.

Unfortunately, Da Vinci was a prankster who often amused himself by quietly gnawing at the hand that fed him. He incorporated in may of his Christian paintings hidden symbolism that was anything but Christian - tributes to his own beliefs and a subtle thumbing of his nose at the Church.

When I felt I was dying, these past few days, things were no longer anthropomorphic. The telephone, which looks like a sort of upturned black snake, was merely a telephone. Every thing was just a thing. The couch, which looked like a big square face drawn by Rubens, with buttons on the cover like wicked little eyes, was just a couch, rather shabby but nothing more. At such a time things don’t matter to you; you don’t bathe everything in your presence, like an amoeba. Things become innocent because you draw away from them; experience becomes virginal, as it was for the first man when he saw the valleys and the plains. You feel you are set in a tidy world: that is a door and it behaves like a door, that is white and behaves like white. What heaven: the symbolism of meanings loses all meaning. You see objects which are comforting because they are quite free. But suddenly you are flung into a new form of suffering because, when you come to miss the meaning of, say, a stool, reality suddenly becomes terrifying. Everything becomes monstrous, unattainable.

What do I and a diamond have in common? We are tough, brilliant, and carbon based entities which evolved into something better under immense pressure, tribulation, and trials.

When a judge walks into the room, and everybody stands up, you’re not standing up to that guy, you’re standing up to the robe that he’s wearing and the role that he’s going to play. What makes him worthy of that role is his integrity, as a representative of the principles of that role, and not some group of prejudices of his own. So what you’re standing up to is a mythological character. I imagine some kings and queens are the most stupid, absurd, banal people you could run into, probably interested only in horses and women, you know. But you’re not responding to them as personalities, you’re responding to them in their mythological roles. When someone becomes a judge, or President of the United States, the man is no longer that man, he’s the representative of an eternal office; he has to sacrifice his personal desires and even life possibilities to the role that he now signifies.

When I am very sad, I tend towards symbolism.

We’re in the hands of real magicians here, and real magicians know that with symbols. with the right symbols, with the right questions. they can lead you into initiating yourself. Provided, that is, you are a person who asks questions. And, if you are, then the minute you start asking questions about the pyramids you begin to stumble into a whole series of answers which lead you to other questions, and then more answers until finally you initiate yourself… ~Robert Bauval

Whenever the nature of the subject permits the reasoning process to be without danger carried on mechanically, the language should be constructed on as mechanical principles as possible; while in the contrary case it should be so constructed, that there shall be the greatest possible obstacle to a mere mechanical use of it

When I was nineteen years old, I discovered a collection of books in the Harvard library written by Jacob Boehme. Do you know of him?" Naturally she knew of him. She had her own copies of these works in the White Acre library. She had read Boehme, though she never admired him. Jacob Boehme was a sixteenth-century cobbler from Germany who had mystical visions about plants. Many people considered him an early botanist. Alma's mother, on the other hand, had considered him a cesspool of residual medieval superstition. So there was considerable conflict of opinion surrounding Jacob Boehme. The old cobbler had believed in something he called "the signature of all things"- namely, that God had hidden clues for humanity's betterment inside the design of every flower, leaf, fruit, and tree on earth. All the natural world was a divine code, Boehme claimed, containing proof of our Creator's love. That is why so many medicinal plants resembled the diseases they were meant to cure, or the organs they were able to treat. Basil, with its liver-shaped leaves, is the obvious ministration for ailments of the liver. The celandine herb, which produces a yellow sap, can be used to treat the yellow discoloration brought on by jaundice. Walnuts, shaped like brains, are helpful for headaches. Coltsfoot, which grows near cold streams, can cure the coughs and chills brought on by immersion in ice water. 'Polygonum,' with its spattering of blood-red markings on the leaves, cures bleeding wounds of the flesh.

Who we choose to befriend symbolizes the strange dichotomy of our world. We're all snails living on the razor's edge.

Wood and fabric, a symbol of a time long gone. That was not where Masiah dwelled. Not in a temple. Not high up in the oasis hills, as some claimed. If he dwelled anywhere at all, it was not in this forsaken oasis.

Why do writers use symbolism?” Okay, so let’s say you have a headache and you wanna tell someone about it and you say, “I have a headache!” and other people are like, “Yeah, whatever. Everybody gets headaches.” But your headache is not a regular headache, it’s a serious headache, so you say, “My brain is on fire!” to try to help these people understand that this is a headache that needs attention! That’s a metaphor, right? And you use it so that you can be understood. Now let’s say you want to take those same imagistic principles but apply them to a much more complex idea than having a headache, like, for instance, the yearning that one feels for one’s dreams. And you can see the dream but you can’t cross the bay to get to the green light that embodies your dream. And you want to talk about how socio-economic class in America is a barrier – a bay-like barrier, some would say – that stands between you and the green light and makes that gap unbridgeable. Now, you can just talk about that stuff directly, but when you talk about it symbolically, it becomes more powerful, because instead of being abstract it becomes kind of observable…. So I think that’s why.

Some distance away is a white azalea bush which stuns me with its stately beauty. This is pristine natural beauty. it is irrepressible, seeks no reward, and is without goal, a beauty derived neither from symbolism nor metaphor and needing neither analogies nor associations.

You are taking things far too literally. Everything you see is merely a symbol for things you do not see. Most of the people of this world are asleep in their minds.

I have a great deal of religious symbolism in my stories because I have a very deep sense of religion and also I have a religious training. And I suppose you don't say, `I'm going to have the flowering judas tree stand for betrayal,' but of course it does.

I question the negative connotations of fabric, of ribbon, of lace. I turn these symbols of our imprisonment around.

Love wants to be confirmed with concrete symbols, but recklessness loves instability.

Any impatient student of mathematics or science or engineering who is irked by having algebraic symbolism thrust upon him should try to get along without it for a week.

Ask yourself whether our language is complete--whether it was so before the symbolism of chemistry and the notation of the infinitesimal calculus were incorporated in it; for these are, so to speak, suburbs of our language. (And how many houses or streets does it take before a town begins to be a town?) Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.

In mockery I have set A powerful emblem up, And sing it rhyme upon rhyme In mockery of a time Half dead at the top.

The profuse phallic symbolism of chess provides some fantasy gratification of the homosexual wish, particularly the desire for mutual masturbation.

The fact that an African American sits in the White House at the helm of government in the United States of America on this 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation represents both phenomenal political symbolism and a victory of faith in democracy that should not be lost on any American.

The Biblical worldview is not given to us in the discursive and analytical language of philosophy and science, but in rich and compact language of symbolism and art.

He claimed to be an atheist, but he always used religious symbolism...

There is only one thing which can master the perplexed stuff of epic material into unity; and that is, an ability to see in particular human experience some significant symbolism of man's general destiny.

We got through all of Genesis and part of Exodus before I left. One of the main things I learned from this exercise was not to begin a sentence with "And." When I pointed out that most sentences in the Bible began with "And," I was told that English had changed since the time of King James. In that case, I argued, why make us read the Bible? But it was in vain. Robert Graves at that time was very keen on the symbolism and mysticism in the Bible.

What happened to those men and women at Fort Hood had a horrible symbolism: Members of the best trained, best equipped fighting force on the planet gunned down by a guy who said a few goofy things no one took seriously. And that's the problem: America has the best troops and fiercest firepower, but no strategy for throttling the ideology that drives the enemy — in Afghanistan and in Texas.

To live in the world without becoming aware of the meaning of the world is like wandering about in a great library without touching the books. It has always seemed to me that symbolism should be restored to the structure of world education. The young are no longer invited to seek the hidden truths, dynamic and eternal, locked within the shapes and behavior of living beings.

[Winning the White House was an achievement], but as an African-American, [Barack Obama], I think the symbolism is in how he conducted himself. The symbolism was in - and this sounds really, really small, but it's actually big for African-Americans - the symbolism was not in being an embarrassment, but to being a figure that folks were actually proud of.

Anyone who symbolizes himself a hater in anything deserves no love at all

An angel is an empty comic book thought bubble. The content has to be filled in by the viewer.

... as a convention, you get up and walk to the window to make the audience believe that you're looking out. It's for the audience, not for you! And what it means to you is something emotional [...] If you went to the Actors Studio you'd spend six months seeing the snow before you could say, 'Look at the snow.' This takes a terrible burden away from the actor, who thinks he's got to see the woods and the snow. 'Give me my gun! I see a rabbit! Give me my gun!' " Meisner sounds thrilled at the possibility of a hunt. "That happens when you're still sitting there reading. Then when they put in the scenery you move to the window. Isn't that simple? How simple it is to solve the problem of seeing things when you know that it's all in you emotionally, and that walking to the window is only a convention.

Anytime you meditate, some electric jerks occur in your thigh...the symbol of premonition of an unpleasant event that has happened or will take place in future.

Arts without a spiritual relative is like frying buns with water.

As all material creation consists of out-births of things spiritual, the spiritual world being the world of causes, and the natural world that of effects, and as effects are the repositories of their causes, the natural world is the reflection of the spiritual. For this reason, from the beginning of things, the sun has stood out as a pre-eminent symbol of the things of God. Of all inanimate things it bears the closest correspondence to the Supreme Being, for what it is in the natural world the Supreme Being is in the Spiritual. Its central fire is the correspondence of the essence of the Divine Nature--DIVINE LOVE; its heat the correspondence of the heat flowing from Divine Love, which is Divine Goodness and all that that comprises; its light the correspondence of Divine Truth which is the light proceeding from Divine Wisdom; and the union of heat and light in its central essence forever symbolizes the union of the Divine Love and Wisdom resulting from that of the Divine Will and Understanding. God is the SUN from whose heat and light--His Love and Wisdom--proceed all that is spiritual, and through the spiritual, by the medium of the natural sun, all that is natural. The sun is supreme in all natural things, and its operations run through all in its own world, but the Divine SUN from which it derives its origin is supreme in all and operates through all, above and below. And as the natural sun is everywhere present in its own realm, and all things derive their life and grow in more or less perfect measure according to their forms and distances, so is the Supreme One omnipresent, filling both the spiritual and the natural world.

A Blessing Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian ponies Darken with kindness. They have come gladly out of the willows To welcome my friend and me. We step over the barbed wire into the pasture Where they have been grazing all day, alone. They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness That we have come. They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other. There is no loneliness like theirs. At home once more, They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness. I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms, For she has walked over to me And nuzzled my left hand. She is black and white, Her mane falls wild on her forehead, And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist. Suddenly I realize That if I stepped out of my body I would break Into blossom.

As the new Adam, it might be said, his final act was to cast the Apple of Knowledge into the deep blue sea.

Barack Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012 were dismissed by some of his critics as merely symbolic for African Americans. But there is nothing “mere” about symbols.

A storm came chasing the sky away. And virgin sands Drank all the water of the evening woods, God's wind blew icicles into the ponds; As I wept I saw gold,- and could not drink. - Delirium II - Alchemy of the Word

At this point Bellamy suddenly remembered another dream which at the time had made him smile. He dreamt he was a little tiny frightened animal called 'Spingle-spangle'. Later he did not smile. The little doomed creature was an image of what he most feared, insanity.

Beauty to her, as to all who have felt, lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized.

DYER. (Sits down) There was nothing that I recall save that the Sunne was a Round flat shining Disc and the Thunder was a Noise from a Drum or a Pan. VANNBRUGGHE. (Aside) What a Child is this! (To Dyer) These are only our Devices, and are like the Paint of our Painted Age. DYER. But in Meditation the Sunne is a vast and glorious Body, and Thunder is the most forcible and terrible Phaenomenon: it is not to be mocked, for the highest Passion is Terrour.

But I had no mind for these smooth things; instead, fear worked like yeast in my thoughts, and the fermentation brought to the surface, in great gobs of scum, the images of disaster; a loaded gun held carelessly at a stile, a horse rearing and rolling over, a shaded pool with a submerged stake, an elm bough falling suddenly on a still morning, a car at a blind corner; all the catalogue of threats to civilized life rose and haunted me; I even pictured a homicidal maniac mouthing in the shadows, swinging a length of lead pipe.

But is the unicorn a falsehood? It's the sweetest of animals and a noble symbol. It stands for Christ and for chastity; it can be captured only by setting a virgin in the forest, so that the animal, catching her most chaste odor, will go and lay its head in her lap, offering itself as prey to the hunters' snares." "So it is said, Adso. But many tend to believe that it's a fable, an invention of the pagans." "What a disappointment," I said. "I would have liked to encounter one, crossing a wood. Otherwise what's the pleasure of crossing a wood?