"Symbolism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... figure of Christ and the symbol of the Holy Ghost, the centre towards which every line, every attitude in the picture converges. Towards the holy spot walk, on the right, the pilgrims and the hermits, on the left, the good judges and the soldiers of Christ. The symbolism of the picture which enfolds the majestic plan of the redemption of man through Christ's sacrifice, of the second creation through the Spirit, as contrasted with the first creation through the flesh, ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... observance at different times and in different lands are entertainingly shown by one trained in choosing and presenting the best to younger readers. The symbolism, good cheer, and sentiment of the grandest of holidays are shown as they appeal in similar fashion to those whose lives seem so widely diverse. The first chapter tells of the Yule-Tide of the Ancients, and the eight succeeding ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... suggestive of persecution; the fortified nave, a symbol of the body which prays, but is not afraid to fight; and the chapelle superieure, the holy place of the saints of heaven, the Christian counsellors in whose care man has been confided. This, at any rate, is the professional description of the symbolism, and whether one be churchman or not he is bound to see the logic ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... of nature the soul of man responds by being happy, seeing in every flower and hearing in every harmony some exquisite symbol of human life. "Il Penseroso" takes us over the same ground at twilight and at moonrise. The air is still fresh and fragrant; the symbolism is, if possible, more tenderly beautiful than before; but the gay mood is gone, though its memory lingers in the afterglow of the sunset. A quiet thoughtfulness takes the place of the pure, joyous sensation of the morning, a thoughtfulness ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... be composed a short mythical poem, as for example a poem on Proserpine or Psyche: but never an epic so full of traditions and historical memories, so intimately connected with the life of the people, as the Ramayan.(1183) Excessive readiness to find allegory whenever some traces of symbolism occur, where the myth partly veils the historical reality, may lead and often has led to error. What poetical work of mythical times could stand this mode of trial? could there not be made, or rather has there not been made a work altogether ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... only right to warn them that in all probability they will find the treasure formula in ogham characters or serpentine markings, and that as the first has long ago been deciphered and the second is pure symbolism they will waste their time and money ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... taken visible shape, or become, so to speak, conscious of its own purposes. But its doctrinal views, its peculiar vein of religious sentiment, its respect for antiquity and tradition, its proneness to casuistry, its taste for symbolism, were already potent influences working on the more susceptible of the younger minds. On Mr. Gladstone they told with full force. He became, and never ceased to be, not merely a High-churchman, but what may be called an Anglo-Catholic, in his theology, deferential ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... that deliberate and almost ceremonial contempt of ceremony in which that age found a true expression of its mood, though later and perhaps more corrupt times have inevitably found such symbolism merely comic. It was observed as striking the note of the new epoch that the President rejected all that semi-regal pomp which Washington and Adams had thought necessary to the dignity of their office. It is said that he not only ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... Go up to the Parliament House and you will hear the advocates and judges talking to one another in a professional speech that the learned layman no more than the ignorant can understand. Our doctors, again, have a shorthand symbolism that only themselves and the chemists understand. And so it is with every business and profession; each several trade strikes out a language for itself. And so does divinity, and, especially, experimental divinity, ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... original, more various, more fantastic; but it is too great a strain on the imagination to be a general favorite. We have said that feeling is the element in which Heine's poetic genius habitually floats; but he can occasionally soar to a higher region, and impart deep significance to picturesque symbolism; he can flash a sublime thought over the past and into the future; he can pour forth a lofty strain of hope or indignation. Few could forget, after once hearing them, the stanzas at the close of "Deutschland," in which he warns the ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... After a moment's thought, he added, "We have our own emotions, and our own work—that's all. We do not care for jewels, or for decoration for its own sake. The things we use and see daily are beautiful in themselves, through their perfect utility and their outward symbolism of utility and creation. Our tools and our furniture are beautiful according to our own conceptions of beauty—as you can see." He made a gesture about ...
— The Chamber of Life • Green Peyton Wertenbaker
... The symbolism of this fire burnt out, that had warmed and cheered none, oppressed his fancy, and he left the small maid-of-all-work to triumph ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The opal is from Australia, the platinum from Siberia, the diamonds from Africa, the setting was designed in Paris. And here it is, the circle of the world has been made to secure this little thing of beauty for you. What symbolism! ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... though he wished to call attention to the danger of reversing the correct proportions, for instance, by the symbolic obtaining the preponderance in tragedy, or pathos in the epopee, or to the danger of exaggerating these proportions, until there was too much tragic pathos, or too much epic symbolism. But a scientific definition of the expressions used was altogether lacking, and I had to devote a whole chapter to the examination of the meaning of ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... orbit, and wrote as he inspired. The dazzling sunbursts of Richter's imagination, however,—its gigantic procession of imagery, moving along in sublime and magnificent marches from earth to heaven, from heaven to earth,—the array, symbolism, and embodiment of his manifold ideas, ceased in the end to enslave, though they still captivated Carlyle's mind; and he turns from him to the thinkers who deal with God's geometry, and penetrate into the abysses of being,—to primordial Kant, and his behemoth brother, Fichte. Nor does Hegel, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... custom, I endeavoured to find tongues in the mosquitos (no difficult matter); books in the patches of cutting-grass; sermons in the Scotch thistles; and good in everything. Light and Darkness!—aptest of metaphors! And see how the symbolism permeates our language, from the loftiest poetry to the most trifling colloquialism. "There is no darkness but ignorance," says the pleasantest of stage fools; "in which thou art more puzzled than the Egyptians in their fog." And what many-languaged millions of passably brave men ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... church everything speaks of early times: the few frescoes are of the twelfth or thirteenth century: the only noteworthy picture is by the serious Mantegna. In the upper church Saint Zeno sits in his episcopal chair with a long fishing-rod in his hand, whence the Veronese, ignorant of sacred symbolism, infer that he was fond of the sport, and have invented an appropriate legend. He was an African by birth, became bishop of Verona A. D. 362, and is said to have suffered martyrdom twenty years afterward under the emperor Julian: his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... structures, commemorating the peaceful meeting of the nations through that great waterway, have fitly been made to represent the art of the entire world, yet with such unity and originality as to give new interest to the ancient forms, and with such a wealth of appropriate symbolism in color, sculpture and mural painting as to make its great courts, towers and arches an inspiring story of ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... What this strange symbolism meant, or whence it derived its origin, Aunt Jane did not know. The cross was there, and the Trinity, though Jane was scarcely conscious of these, at this moment, as religious emblems. But she hoped, on general principles, ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... sculptured group, now much defaced, representing two rampant lions flanking a singular column which tapers downward. This symbolic group has relations with Hittite and Phrygian sculptures, and with the symbolism of the worship of Rhea Cybele. The masonry of the wall is carefully dressed but not regularly coursed. Other primitive walls and gates showing openings and embryonic arches of various forms, are found widely ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... knows that the three eastern lights mean, as they did to St. Barbara, the blessed Trinity; but few people recognize that all numbers, whether in beams, pillars, sides, arches, or decoration had a well recognised symbolism, which had come down, hall-marked by St. Augustine and St. Bernard, to the building and worshipping generations of those and much ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... we light two hanging lamps of religious symbolism, which burn till daylight, before our ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... that effervescent period which is so necessary a concomitant of growth. The young business man indulges in a hundred wild schemes, to be corrected by older heads. The young artist paints strange impressionism, stranger symbolism, and perhaps a strangest other-ism, before at last he reaches the medium of his individual genius. The young writer thinks deep and philosophical thoughts which he expresses in measured polysyllabic language; he dreams wild dreams of ideal motive, which he sets forth in beautiful allegorical tales ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... you my son that I was aware of the jargon of symbolism before these goslings were hatched," ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... occult significance to even trifling details mentioned in scripture, and particularly as regards the life of Christ, has led to many fanciful suggestions concerning the gold and frankincense and myrrh specified in this incident. Some have supposed a half-hidden symbolism therein—gold a tribute to His royal estate, frankincense an offering in recognition of His priesthood, and myrrh for His burial. The sacred record offers no basis for such conjecture. Myrrh and frankincense are aromatic resins derived from ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... latter theory I incline at a scholarly angle. This Cycle may be taken, perhaps, not so much as a living record of human experience as a lofty parable sounding the key-note of all human life. Gill the Grip is the Iago, the Mefistofele, the symbolism of a malevolent destiny. Maxy the Firebug may be the Poet's interpretation of the Social Unrest, of Doubt, of progressive irresponsibility. Would it be going too far, then, to say that Pansy stands to us as the symbol of ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor • Wallace Irwin
... as a dramatic representation. Even in Tintoret's great Crucifixion in the School of St. Roch, the group of fainting women forms a kind of pedestal for the Cross. The flying angels in the composition before us are thus also treated with a restraint hardly passing the limits of decorative symbolism. The fading away of their figures into flame-like cloud may perhaps be founded on the verse, "He maketh His angels spirits; His ministers a flame of fire" (though erroneously, the right reading of that verse being, "He maketh the winds His messengers, and the flaming fire ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... fragment will give some idea of the mysterious symbolism by which she was interiorly directed. During a portion of the year 1820 she performed many labours in spirit, for several different parishes; her prayers being represented under the figure of most severe labour ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... said Harkless, as he took the manuscript. "Have you finished your paper on the earlier Christian symbolism? I hope the 'Herald' may have the honor of printing it." This ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... up his hands and pointed. "Behold the glory of Ippling that can be yours!" He held onto the halo, trying to get them to follow the symbolism. "Look upwards!" He screamed at them, but they watched the brush fire that swept the hill top. It was a goodie. It would wipe out a number ...
— The Glory of Ippling • Helen M. Urban
... the symbolism of those canonical hours which recalled every day to the Christian the shortness of life in summing up for him its image ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... who was still young enough to show to your Men Friends but old enough to cut out all the prevalent Mushgush about the Irish Drama and Norwegian Art and Buddhism and the true Symbolism of ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... romance written in the second century. By placing the scene of the opera in Egypt, the belief of Freemasons that their order originated in that unspeakably ancient land was humored, while the use of some of its symbolism (such as the conflict between light and darkness) and the proclamation of what were believed to be some of its ethical principles could safely be relied upon to delight the knowing and irritate the curiosity of the uninitiated. The change also led to ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... her true ground again, when she took to doing instead. The lamp burned dimly overhead, throwing down a light confused with frost upon the hall, all encumbered with the goods of the wandering family. Perhaps it was with a certain unconscious symbolism that Nettie buried her own personal wardrobe deep in the lowest depths, making that the foundation for all the after superstructure. Smith stood by, ready to hand her anything she might want, gazing at her with doubtful amazement. ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Thursday when he was at work all day, the young man painted no more. Beyond St. Ursula, St. Eulalia of Saragossa, Virgin and Martyr, had been sketched in, with a strange force of line and some suggestions both of colour and symbolism that held Laura fascinated. But the sketch remained ghostlike on the wall. The high stool was ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... While Growing Roses in a Cabbage Lot; confusing, perhaps at first reading, but here again may the student employ the device of symbolism with great advantage. The Roses may be taken for the flowers of fancy, the Cabbage Lot for the field of sordid reality. As a staple vegetable, the rose can never compete ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... Jesus The Gods Knowledge of Occult Law Evanescence of Mere Beliefs The Fount of Inspiration for All Man versus Death Fear of Death Test of Character Character Forming Man the Final Earth Product Superstitions Self-Justice Symbolism Love Ideals of Love The Needs of Woman Man versus Woman Natural Cruelty of the Undeveloped The Worst Sin Reincarnation Processes of Reincarnation Education of Children Egotism Responsiveness Hell The Commonplace Petroleum Law Communism Happiness Pain Foes in the Household The ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... there to find in the symbolism and the persuasion to choice each suitor employs that Portia's father has used the wisdom of a seer in prescribing the choice from ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... The mythological symbolism of antique thought was full of this pictorial tendency and even now the shrewdest of modern thinkers are compelled to use images drawn from antique mythology. Poetic thought may go astray. But it can never negate itself into quite the thin simulacrum of reality into ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... image of another double-headed eagle, floating from the highest flag-staff above the building, betrayed to the initiated the fact that a Russian Grand Duke was concealed somewhere on the premises. Unannounced by heraldic symbolism but unconcealable by reason of nature's own blazonry, were several citizens and citizenesses of the great republic of the Western world. One or two Cobdenite members of the British Parliament engaged in the useful task of proving that the cost of living in Vienna was ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... father, however, Christina took, either by the operation of some law of heredity or from early association with the author of ‘Il Mistero dell’ Amor Platonico del Medio Evo’ and ‘La Beatrice di Dante,’ that passion for symbolism which is one of the chief features of her poetry. There is, perhaps, no more striking instance of the inscrutable lines in which ancestral characteristics descend than the way in which the passion for symbolism was inherited ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... be found here and there superficial accounts of strange customs and ceremonies, of which the symbolism or inner meaning was largely hidden from the observer; and there has been a great deal of material collected in recent years which is without value because it is modern and hybrid, inextricably mixed with Biblical legend and Caucasian philosophy. Some of it has even been invented ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... the lover should first think of its durability and then of its sweet symbolism. It should be the best he can afford, and the small detail of fit is not to be ignored. The choice of stones and style will depend upon taste and the money available, but, personally, I like an engagement ring ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... suggest, the scene of the future glories of redeemed humanity, it may be the theatre of a fulfilment of such visions as this. But we cannot dogmatise on a subject of which we know so little, nor be sure of the extent to which symbolism enters into this sweet picture. Enough that there surely comes a time when the King of men and Lord of nature shall bring back peace between both, and restore 'the fair music that all creatures ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... symbolism represented by this staff," he continued, "I invest you both with the supreme authority. And further, I call all men to witness that, the hand of Soaring Eagle rests above that of the Giver of Life, which signifies that his word shall outweigh ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... The natural symbolism of the wind, to popular apprehension the least material of all material forces, and of which the connection with the immaterial part of a man's personality has been expressed in all languages, points to a divine, to an immaterial, to a mighty, to a life-giving power ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Sometimes this purpose is dimly veiled in allegory, but even when his stories are sermons in allegory, like The Snow Image, he so invests them with poetic fancy or spiritual beauty as to make them works of art. His extensive use of symbolism and allegory has been severely criticized. It is unfortunate that he did not learn earlier in life what The Scarlet Letter should have taught him, that he did not need to rely on these supports. He becomes one of the great masters when he paints character from the inside with a touch so ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... armies prepared to fight to establish one distinct meaning. 'Violets are over, so I send you roses'; she writes you simple fact. Nay, 'Our time of violets is over, now for us the roses'; she gives you heavenly symbolism. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... We find, accordingly, that it is only when a theory is avowedly unreal, and does not ask to be believed, that the value of it is pragmatic; since in that case belief passes consciously from the symbols used to the eventual facts in which the symbolism terminates, and for ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... blowing his trumpet beside the moon, or wearing a golden crown as in "The Seven Brothers." He had never heard of "The Seven Brothers," and nobody in the world wore crowns except kings. As for the old eagle, it is doubtful whether George had ever felt the symbolism of his presence on a silver coin, or that he had ever linked him in his heart ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... malefactors first, and then, coming to Jesus, found that the great cry had been indeed his last, and that he was dead already. They did not therefore break his legs, and thus unwittingly preserved the symbolism of that Paschal lamb, of which he was the antetype, and of which it had been commanded that "a bone of it shall not be broken." And yet, as he might be only in a syncope—as instances had been known in which men ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... thought to the Innumerables whose ghosts had been rendered up in vain struggles to obey the law which required them to come and make proof of faith before this Stone! The Innumerables, lost at sea, lost in the desert—lost body and soul, as in their dying they themselves had imagined! Symbolism! An invention of men—a necessity of necromancers! God had his ministers and priests, the living media of ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... symbolism in their intent.... The man they called a usurper must die on the very tree that gave their home its significance, and no other instrument of vengeance would satisfy them. The old bitterness had begun generations ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... This piece of symbolism became a sort of fixed language with him; "the Snake" was a name by which it amused him to be known among his friends. The clash of the two opposites is crudely and narrowly conceived, with no suggestion yet of some more tremendous force behind ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... chief courts of the main architectural ensemble, the two minor courts, the Court of Palms and the Court of Flowers, while lacking the more imposing size, dignity and symbolism of the three interior courts, largely compensate by their sense of intimacy, warmth and quiet charm. With their sheltered location and sunny atmosphere, due to southern exposure, and with the enchantment of architecture, sculpture, painting, color and landscape effects with ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... believe that Almighty God could specially prepare a great fish which should rescue His servant, to whom He meant to give another chance, from the depths of the sea, and land him in due course upon the shore. (Applause).' These crude views, which ignored the symbolism of Nineveh as a fish, now universally accepted by educated people, were not, however, endorsed by Dr. Beeching, the learned Dean of Norwich, who in the same gathering expressed the point of view of more scholarly Christians:—'He would ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... riper work than the elder friend had produced; but Mary Stuart in Scotland (1864) had marked a step backward, and now Ibsen had once more shot far ahead of his rival. When we have admitted some want of clearness in the symbolism which runs through Brand, and some shifting of the point of view in the two last acts, an incoherency and a turbidity which are natural in the treatment of so colossal a theme, there is very little but praise to be given to a poem ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... 12:4, it is stated that he belonged to the priestly family of Iddo. This conclusion is confirmed by the character of his prophecies. Like the priest-prophet Ezekiel he is exceedingly fond of apocalyptic symbolism. He is also deeply interested in the priesthood and in its ceremonial purity. Furthermore, it is exceedingly probable that he was a descendant of one of the many priests carried as exiles to Babylon. This is shown by his keen ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... spoke before his bishop, and indeed he had plenty of time to speak before his bishop. "Because you will not set yourselves to understand the symbolism of her ritual," ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... Rumphius, smiling, "were wonderful architects, amazing artists, and great scholars. A priest of Memphis and of Thebes could have taught even our German scholars; and as regards symbolism, they were greater than any symbolists of our day. But we shall succeed eventually in deciphering their hieroglyphs and penetrating their mysteries. The great Champollion has made out their alphabet; ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... mystical. I think his Swedenborgian studies had crossed his notions of religion with strange lights. I never could follow him quite in these excursions into the region of symbolism. I only recollect that he talked of the deluge and the waters of Mara, and said, 'I am washed—I am sprinkled,' and then, pausing, bathed his thin temples and forehead with eau de Cologne; a process which was, perhaps, suggested by his imagery ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... adventure, more even than a satire on Roman life. The transformation of the hero into an ass, at the moment when he was plunging headlong into a licentious career, and the recovery of his manhood again through divine intervention, suggest a serious symbolism. The beautiful episode of 'Cupid and Psyche,' which would lend salt to a production far more corrupt, is also suggestive. Apuleius perfected this wild flower of ancient folk-lore into a perennial plant ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the hands and feet of their dead enemies are devoured. These are carefully cooked and eaten as delicacies along with monkey meat, birds, fish, and other things prepared for a feast in honor of a victory. The eating of human flesh seems to be symbolism rather than savagery. Furthermore, they do not range the jungle hunting for victims. They eat only those who ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... when they were adequately prepared by cleansing, inunction and fumigation. This lengthy and exhausting preparation, partly dietetic, partly suggestive, was accompanied by a solemn service of prayer and sacrifice, whose symbolism tended highly ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... wind-harp. No writing surpasses his in the extent to which it takes hold of the concrete, the real, the familiar, and none surpasses his in its elusive, mystical suggestiveness, and its cryptic character. It is Yankee wit and shrewdness on one side, and Oriental devoutness, pantheism, and symbolism on the other. Its cheerful and sunny light of the common day enhances instead of obscures the light that falls from the highest heaven of the spirit. Saadi or Hafiz or Omar might have fathered him, but only a New ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... poem is thus twofold, though the allegorical form in which the appeal is conveyed is the same. In the first part all the love-poetry of troubadour and trouvere is gathered up and presented under the guise of a graceful dreamy symbolism, a little though not much sicklied o'er with learning. In the second the satiric tendency of the Fabliaux and Renart is carried still further, with an admixture of not often apposite learning to a much greater extent. Narcissus was superfluous where ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... divisions have this purpose. While perhaps not much stress is laid by the artist upon this symbolism, its existence can hardly be questioned. Note the five divisions of the universe in Smith's Miscellaneous Texts, p. 16. The water certainly represents the Apsu. Allatu rests upon the bark. We do not find among the Babylonians ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... necessary to introduce by name the illustrious artist who has justly earned the title of "Premier Painter of Polynesia." A whole school of painters have attempted to reproduce the exotic color and charm of these entrancing isles. It remained for Herman Swank, by his now famous method of diagrammatic symbolism, to bring the truth fully home. This he accomplished by living, to the limit, the native life of the Filbertese. Clad only in the light lamitu, or afternoon wrap of the islands, it was the artist's custom to spend entire days inhaling the perfume ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... the symbolism of the heavenly bodies, and of the sacred numbers, and of the temple and its details, you must wait patiently until you advance in Masonry, in the mean time exercising your intellect in studying them for yourself. To study ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Honorius III. may say: Forma rosae est inferius angusta, superius ampla et significat quod Christus pauper fuit in mundo, sed est Dominus super omnia et implet universa. Nam sicut forma rosae, etc. (Horoy, t. i., col. xxiv. and 804), and make a whole sermon on the symbolism of the rose; these overstrained dissertations have nothing to do with the feeling for nature. It is the arsenal of mediaeval rhetoric used to dissect a word. It is an intellectual effort, not a song of love. The Imitation would ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... sacred in all American religions, and the key to their symbolism.—Derived from the CARDINAL POINTS.—Appears constantly in government, arts, rites, and myths.—The Cardinal Points identified with the Four Winds, who in myths are the four ancestors of the human race, and the four celestial rivers watering the ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... Osiris was naturally conceived as a god of creative energy in general, since men at a certain stage of evolution fail to distinguish between the reproductive powers of animals and of plants. Hence a striking feature in his worship was the coarse but expressive symbolism by which this aspect of his nature was presented to the eye not merely of the initiated but of the multitude. At his festival women used to go about the villages singing songs in his praise and carrying obscene images of him which they set in motion by ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... ungodly, many things seem to be said in the Book of Revelation; but from being expressed in symbolic language, they are generally "hard to be understood." I shall make no attempt to give explanations of the details of this symbolism, such an inquiry not being necessary for my present purpose; but a few remarks on the contents of the Apocalypse which have a general relation to the purpose and effect of judgment may here be appropriately introduced ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... just citified," Mrs. Thomas hastened to affirm; "but the veil and the bow together's got a meaning that I think is real sweet." She waited a moment, almost pathetically anxious for Pearl to see the symbolism of her two incongruous adornments, but her listener was too genuinely bored and also too self-absorbed to make the attempt. "It's this," said Mrs. Thomas, determined to explain. "The pink bow kind o' shows that I'm in the world again and," bridling ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... liberation of Italy had or had not existed in German forests eight hundred years before; age and mystery, however, have a great popular attraction, the first as an object of reverence, the second as food for curiosity with the profane, and a bond of union among the initiated. The religious symbolism of the Carbonari, their oaths and ceremonies, and the axes, blocks and other furniture of the initiatory chamber, were well calculated to impress the poorer and more ignorant and excitable of the brethren. The Vatican ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... thought; and one could certainly not convey the correct idea of the group to a listener if the most important words in it were not stressed so as to stand out more vividly than the others. Although not so readily understood because of the absence of symbolism, phrasing is quite as important an element in the expressive rendition of music as it is in the case of language. In order to interpret properly the conductor must first of all determine what tones belong together ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... others besides elephants are subject), lower himself painfully on to his knees. "Salaam karo" ("Salute me"), piped the white child, and the great pachyderm instantly obeyed, lifting his trunk high in salute; which, if you think it out, may have a certain symbolism about it. ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... window. As the track crossed a country road a farmer appeared momentarily in his wagon; he was chewing on a straw and was apparently the same farmer they had passed a dozen times before, sitting in silent and malignant symbolism. As Anthony turned to ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... that the events foreseen are invariably unpleasant ones—death being the commonest of all; I do not recollect a single instance in which the second-sight has shown anything which was not of the most gloomy nature. It has a ghastly symbolism which is all its own—a symbolism of shrouds and corpse-candles, and other funereal horrors. In some cases it appears to be to a certain extent dependent on locality, for it is stated that inhabitants of the Isle of Skye who possess the faculty often lose it when they leave ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... told, is not to be taken literally—all is symbolism and has a meaning other than the more direct one. But the fact remains, as can be testified by the present writer from three years' residence as a university student in Germany, that the rank and file as well as the aristocracy—from laborers and small shopkeepers, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... the dream life is held by Freud to be the chief outlet for the suppressed wishes; for then the Censor sleeps and "the mice can play". Even so, they dare not show themselves in their true shape and color, but disguise themselves in innocent-appearing symbolism. That lightning may stand for something much more personal. Let your mind play about that "being knocked down by lightning and getting up again", and ask yourself what experience of childhood it calls ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... has counted her chickens, and how promptly the demand is conveyed to each one of the thousands throughout the empire who, in spite of neglect, cherish a sneaking kindness for their old college. There is symbolism in the very look of her, square and massive, grim and grey, with never a pillar or carving to break the dead monotony of the great stone walls. She is learned, she is practical, and she is useful. There is little sentiment or romance in her composition, ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... been as a rule so closely annexed to religion—though all spectacular delights and ceremonies have the same quality—that it has never been reckoned among artistic predilections. The aim of ritual is, I believe, a high poetry of which the essence is symbolism and mystery. The movement of forms solemnly vested, and with a background of architecture and music, produces an emotion quite distinct from other artistic emotions. It is a method, like all other arts, through which a human being arrives at a sense of mysterious ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Hebrews, are not mutually consistent, and Paul is not always consistent with himself. The principal thing they have in common is their belief that the death of Jesus was of vital efficacy in the doing away of sin. The symbolism in which they set forth this truth is borrowed mainly from the Old Testament, and we have already seen what underlay that symbolism even in its earliest use. Old Testament language about sacrifice supplies the mental dialect ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... not only through the prayer book, but by the yearly round of feast, festival and fast, of which, like a great panorama the acts and incidents in the life of her Lord are constantly set forth before those who have ears to hear and eyes to see. More than that, she teaches through symbolism. Many persons, and a considerable number of Negroes are here included, are endowed with but little brain. But they have eyes, and what they take in with their eyes help to rivet and fasten in their memories what they seize upon with what brain they possess. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... authorship, and that the vital necessity for self-expression is to have a knowledge, acquired or instinctive, of the extremely symbolical and even traditional methods and processes of representation. Vivid life is not the same thing as vivid art; art is a sort of recondite and narrow symbolism, by which the word, the phrase, the salient touch, represents, suggests, hints the larger vision. It is in the reducing of broad effects to minute effects that the mastery ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... extinction in the fourth and fifth centuries of our era, schools of immorality, in which at intervals glimpses of the divine world were obtained by a sort of poetic intuition. Egypt, notwithstanding an apparent kind of Fetichism, had very early metaphysical dogmas and a lofty symbolism. But doubtless these interpretations of a refined theology were not primitive. Man has never, in the possession of a clear idea, amused himself by clothing it in symbols: it is oftener after long reflections, ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... there is no elaborate ritual or suggestion of symbolism. The animal is beheaded and the inference is that Kali likes it. Similarly simple is the offering of coco-nuts to Kali. The worshipper gives a nut to the pujari who splits it in two with an axe, spills the milk and hands back half the nut to the worshipper. This ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... and Achievement; Its Architecture, Sculpture, Symbolism, and Music; Its Gardens, Palaces, ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... his chain in the forgotten forests of the north. Of these theological equalisations I have to speak afterwards. Here it is enough to notice that if some small mistake were made in doctrine, huge blunders might be made in human happiness. A sentence phrased wrong about the nature of symbolism would have broken all the best statues in Europe. A slip in the definitions might stop all the dances; might wither all the Christmas trees or break all the Easter eggs. Doctrines had to be defined within strict limits, even in order that man might enjoy general human liberties. The ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... the traditional happy abode of their primeval ancestors—that 'Paradise of Eden toward the East,' as we find expressed in the Hebrew. And, let us ask, what better picture, or more significant characters, in the complicated alphabet of symbolism, could have been selected for the purpose than a circle and a cross: the one to denote a region of absolute purity and perpetual felicity; the other, those four perennial streams that divided and watered the several quarters of it?" ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... battle with his brother, the drops of blood which fell from his wounds were changed into flints.[1] Here the flint had the same meaning which I have already pointed out in Algonkin myth, and we find, therefore, an absolute identity of mythological conception and symbolism between the two nations. ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... makes the twain one, and binds them together amid all the chances and changes of this earthly life.[12] In the teaching of both Christ and {225} the apostles marriage is presented as a high vocation, ordained by God for the enrichment of character, and invested with a holy symbolism. According to St. Paul it is the emblem of the mystic union of Christ and His Church, and is overshadowed by the presence of God, who is the archetype of those sacred ideas which we associate with the name ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... sob at the roughness of life. The withered pink rose fell on the floor. Rebecca looked at it and thought to herself, "Just like my happy day!" Nothing could show more clearly the kind of child she was than the fact that she instantly perceived the symbolism of the rose, and laid it in the drawer with the dress as if she were burying the whole episode with all its sad memories. It was a child's poetic instinct with a dawning hint of woman's sentiment ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... position by an illustration of the use (as also abuse) of symbols spiritual and material; Carlyle retorts somewhat impatiently that in thinking of God we have no need of symbolism; we know Him as Immensity, Eternity, and other abstract qualities, and to fancy Him under human attributes is superfluous; and Mr. Browning dismisses this theology, with the intellectual curiosities and intellectual discontents which he knows in the present case to have accompanied ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... more than revolutions. Fashion cut into the living flesh, attacked the very skeleton and framework of art; it chopped and hewed, dismembered, slew the edifice, in its form as well as in its symbolism, in its logic no less than in its beauty. But fashion restored, a thing which neither time nor revolution ever pretended to do. Fashion, on the plea of "good taste," impudently adapted to the wounds of Gothic architecture the paltry gewgaws of a day,—marble ribbons, metallic ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... among the Greeks it is thus nearly always difficult to say what is symbolic and what realistic, in the range of Christian art the distinction is clear. In that, a vast division of imaginative work is occupied in the symbolism of virtues, vices, or natural powers or passions; and in the representation of personages who, though nominally real, become in conception symbolic. In the greater part of this work there is no intention of implying the existence ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... interest in Whiggery. The new democracy was neither coldly Deist, nor austerely Republican. It has shown no inclination to inaugurate a reign of "pure reason" in religion or politics, but has boldly and cheerfully adopted symbolism and pageantry. Friendly societies and trade unions have their badges, banners, and buttons. The Roman Catholic Church grows in popularity with the working class, and in many towns and cities the Church of England and the Salvation Army are distinctly popular. On the ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... essentially an unaccountable character! I am sometimes quite at a loss, I assure you.... She must be forty; she says she is thirty-six, and of course she has every right to say so. But I swear I judge her intellectually, simply from the metaphysical point of view; there is a sort of symbolism sprung up between us, a sort of algebra or what not! I don't understand it! Well, that's all nonsense. Only, seeing that you are not a student now and have lost your lessons and your clothes, and that through the young lady's ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... old custom; the actual first-fruits belonging to the owners of the soil are collected by the priests, the shadow of them is retained at the festival in the form of the sheaf offered by the whole community—a piece of symbolism which has now become quite separated from its connection and is no longer understood. And since the giving of thanks for the fruits of the field has ceased to have any substantial place in the feasts, the very shadow of connection between the two also ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... great numbers. They introduced emotional preaching, the mourners' bench, protracted meetings, and, vying with the fanatical sects, denounced as spiritually dead formalists all who adhered to the old ways of Lutheranism. In its issue of March 21, 1862, the Lutheran Observer declared that the "Symbolism" of the Old Lutherans in St. Louis meant the death of the Lutheran Church, which nothing but revivals were able to save. (L. u. W. 1862, 152; 1917, 374.) Muhlenberg's Pietism had helped to prepare the ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... walk through the Capitol we are struck with the significance of the symbolism on every side; we view the adornments in the beautiful room, and we find here everywhere emblematically woman's figure. Here is woman representing even war, and there are women representing grace and loveliness and the fullness of the harvest; and, above all, they are extending ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... would stand for in such matters was, indeed, the best definition of him. When he read his play "The Street Walker" in drawing rooms and one lady told him it had the poetic symbolism of Tchekhov, and another said that it suggested the biting realism of Brieux, he never, in his most secret thoughts, questioned the acumen of either lady. Harold's speech, even if you heard it in the next room and could not see him, told you that he had no sense of the absurd,—a ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... particular, but is valid wherever the conditions to which it refers are fulfilled. Mathematical reckoning, if it is to be particular, must be regarded as a particular act or state of some thinker. Its truth must then be construed as relative to the interests of the thinker, as a symbolism which has an instrumental rather than a purely cognitive value. This conclusion cannot be disputed short of a radical stand against the general epistemological principle to which Berkeley is so far true, the principle that the reality which is known in ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... melodious Daphnis-song that has always been a favorite with poets. It has been and may be read with entire pleasure as an elegy to Daphnis, the patron god of singing shepherds. Those, however, who in Roman times knew Vergil's love of symbolism, suspected that a more personal interest led him to compose this elegy. The death and apotheosis of Julius Caesar is still thought by some to be the real subject of the poem, while a few have accepted ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... nature and its religious note, both apparent in the previous poems, notice especially the touch of symbolism; the poet stands in Waldesschatten wie an ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various |
