"Symbolical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about Biology except in a dilettante "paper-philosopher" way, who contents himself with reading books on botany, zoology, and the like; and the reason of this is simple and easy to understand. It is that all language is merely symbolical of the things of which it treats; the more complicated the things, the more bare is the symbol, and the more its verbal definition requires to be supplemented by the information derived directly from the handling, and the seeing, and the touching ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... is that between justice and arbitrary wills on one side and the hulks and cunning on the other! The hulks—symbolical of that daring which throws off calculation and reflection, which avails itself of any means, which has none of the hyprocrisy of high-handed justice, but is the hideous outcome of the starving stomach—the swift and bloodthirsty pretext of hunger. Is it not attack as against self-protection, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... Hammer-Purgstall ("Mines de ['Orient," No. 1, Vienna, 1809) and Marcel's "Comes du Cheykh El-Mohdy" (Paris, 1833). It is practiced in Africa as well as in Asia. At Abeokuta in Yoruba a man will send a symbolical letter in the shape of cowries, palm-nuts and other kernels strung on rice- straw, and sharp wits readily interpret the meaning. A specimen is given in p. 262 of Miss Tucker's "Abbeokuta; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... III.; the 'sable warrior' (67), Edward the Black Prince. Lines 75-82 commemorate the rise and fall of Richard II.; lines 83-90, the Wars of the Roses, the murders in the Tower, the 'faith' of Margaret of Anjou, the 'fame' of Henry V., the 'holy head' of Henry VI. The 'bristled boar' (93) is symbolical of Richard III.; 'half of thy heart' (99) of Eleanor of Castile, 'who died a few years after the conquest of Wales.' Line 110 celebrates the accession of the House of Tudor in fulfilment of the prophecies ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... Moslem merits, but he certainly feels the militaristic character of the Moslem glories. The crown of the city is the citadel, built by the great Saladin but of the spoils of ancient Egyptian architecture; and that fact is in its turn very symbolical. The man was a great conqueror, but he certainly behaved like an invader; he spoiled the Egyptians. He broke the old temples and tombs and built his own out of fragments. Nor is this the only respect ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... regard it as symbolical: that's what I gather. And I'm afraid she's given him the ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... vanity or his life to the ideal, moves steadily to his inevitable doom. Whether he move in the form of Halvard Solness, the cowardly architect of genius, fearless of ideas but fearful of action, or in the form of the symbolical master-builder, the artist who tries to have the best of both worlds, matters not a straw. The medium of expression changes, but the theme is constant: the conception is whole. That is more than can be said of The Lady from the Sea, where the symbolism comes perilously near padding; or of When ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... of it would have been regarded as no small offence by the civil authorities. Several years later, when the Church was probably much stronger, St. John, in writing the Revelation, disguised his description of Nero in symbolical language. In any case, St. Luke may have wished both to show Theophilus that Christianity was compatible with loyalty to the government, {109} and that the government had for a long ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... aspiration. The window becomes larger and encroaches on the naked wall, and radiates in mystic roses. The arches widen and the piers become more lofty. Stained glass appears and diffuses religious light. Every part of the church becomes decorated and symbolical and harmonious, though infinitely variegated. The altars have pictures over them. Shrines and monuments appear in the niches. The dresses of the priests are more gorgeous. The music of the choir peals ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... will try it some day. At present I am busily engaged with a learned treatise on the Symbolical Nature of ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... of attainment. Kruger, dim-eyed and old, lived face to face continually with clock dials that betokened no progress, but, merely mocked the enquiring gaze. Which thing, the Chelsea Sage would say, was symbolical and ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... temperate lines may be all to the good, and except that, when he denounces tea also, because it is tainted with Western capitalism, he is waging war against a popular substitute for spirits, one need not quarrel with the solemn processions of mill-hands proceeding to a favourite shrine to break a symbolical teapot in the presence of the deity as a pledge of renunciation. But not all Mr. Gandhi's followers can be credited with his earnest sympathies for labour, largely inspired by his detestation of a "machine age," and he himself lapses into language ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... most appropriate treatment possible. The walls and columns were covered with pictures treated in this way, and the ceilings and lintels were embellished with symbolic forms in the same manner. All the ornaments, as distinguished from the paintings, were symbolical, at least in their origin. Over the gateway was the solar disk or globe with wide-spread wings, the symbol of the sun winging its way to the conquest of night; upon the ceiling were sacred vultures, zodiacs, or stars spangled on a blue ground. Externally ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... that the spirit of protest will often pass by serious offenses and fasten upon some apparently slight occasion which has rather a symbolical than an actual importance. William Penn, so far as we know, endured the disorders of anti-Puritan Oxford without protest. He entered so far into the life of the place as to contribute, with other students, to a series ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... dreams of metempsychosis—that pretended transmigration, at successive periods, of immortal souls into divers creatures. This confusion was worse confounded by traditions borrowed from the mythologies of the East and the North, by shadowy remnants of a symbolical worship paid to the material forces of nature, and by barbaric practices, such as human sacrifices, in honor of the gods or of the dead. People who are without the scientific development of language and the art of writing ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... wondrous book of Iris. Two pages faced each other which I took for symbolical expressions of two states of mind. On the left hand, a bright blue sky washed over the page, specked with a single bird. No trace of earth, but still the winged creature seemed to be soaring upward and upward. Facing it, one of those black dungeons such as Piranesi alone of all men has pictured. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... Eshmunen, and the jackals of Anubis of Abydos, which drag a rope; had we the rest of the monument, we should see, bound at the end of the rope, some prisoner, king, or animal symbolic of the North. On another slate shield, which we also reproduce, we see a symbolical representation of the capture of seven Northern cities, whose names seem to mean the "Two Men," the "Heron," the "Owl," the "Palm," ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... fruit, at last withered, but God alone can judge your soul. Perhaps Infinite Mercy will shine upon you at the last moment! We must hope so. There are examples. So sleep in peace to-night. To-morrow you will be included in the auto da fe: that is, you will be exposed to the quema-dero, the symbolical flames of the Everlasting Fire: It burns, as you know, only at a distance, my son; and Death is at least two hours (often three) in coming, on account of the wet, iced bandages, with which we protect ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... almost symbolical of the ignorance and credulity of the Romans is their constant axiom, Chi lo sa? (Who knows?) I said to Maria the other day, after she had said it for the fourth time in a quarter of an hour: "My good Maria! The beginning of wisdom is not to fear God, but to say Perche? ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... in writing, and to distinguish such opinions from the actual impression made upon their senses, otherwise we shall confound opinions and judgments with the actual miracle as it really occurred: nay, further, we shall confound actual events with symbolical and imaginary ones. (99) For many things are narrated in Scripture as real, and were believed to be real, which were in fact only symbolical and imaginary. (100) As, for instance, that God came down from heaven (Exod. xix:28, Deut. v:28), and that Mount Sinai smoked because God descended ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... veil, which almost covered her, with the symbolical orange flowers on her bright, light hair, in her white dress, with her downcast eyes and her graceful figure, Elaine looked to me like a Psyche, whose innocent heart was vowed to love. I felt how vain and artificial ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... of John Knox; removed to Craigenputtock, in Dumfriesshire, "the loneliest nook in Britain," where his original work began with "Sartor Resartus," written in 1831, a radically spiritual book, and a symbolical, though all too exclusively treated as a speculative, and an autobiographical; removed to London in 1834, where he wrote his "French Revolution" (1837), a book instinct with the all-consuming fire of the event which it pictures, and revealing "a ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Revolution. The Oracles of Apollo. Vettius Valens' Twelve Vultures. Spencer's of the Disruption of the American Union. Saint Malachi's Prophecies. Mohammed's Prophecies. Seneca's of the Discovery of America. Dante's of the Reformation. Plato's of Shakespeare. Symbolical Language of Prophecy. Anybody may Predict Downfall of Nations. An Awful Truth if it be True. But Bible Predictions Circumstantial—Egypt; Babylon; Nineveh; Judea. Predict Life and Resurrection. The Arabs; Jews; Seven ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... list, we see that it is perhaps unfair to class all the later plays as social dramas. Some of them, more especially the latest of them all, 'When We Dead Awaken,' seem to be symbolical rather than social, allegorical in intent even if they remain realistic in treatment. Brandes long ago declared that Ibsen had had a Pegasus killed under him; but when we consider the 'Lady from the Sea' and 'When ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... higher spirits, conformable with man's state of consciousness at that time. If we think of this influence as a force of nature we altogether miss its essential reality. If we say that the spirits with the old Moon nature tempted man in order to lead him astray for their own ends, we are using a symbolical expression, which is good as long as we remember that it is but a symbol and are at the same time clear in our minds that a spiritual ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... arched recesses or spandrels over them are depicted scenes setting forth the genealogy of Christ and of His Mother. At each of the four corner-spandrels of the ceiling, Michelangelo painted, in spaces of a very peculiar shape and on a surface of embarrassing inequality, one magnificent subject symbolical of man's redemption. The first is the raising of the Brazen Serpent in the wilderness; the second, the punishment of Haman; the third, the victory of David over Goliath; the fourth, Judith with the head ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... to speak of any more important public building, let us imagine our own India House adorned in this way, by historical or symbolical sculpture: massively built in the first place; then chased with has-reliefs of our Indian battles, and fretted with carvings of Oriental foliage, or inlaid with Oriental stones; and the more important members of its decoration composed of groups of Indian life and landscape, and prominently ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... writings. His unshakable conviction of immortality. His power to function on both planes of consciousness. The lesson to be drawn from Seraphita. Balzac's evident intention, and why veiled. The inevitable conclusion to be drawn from the Symbolical character. ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... many another impalpable marvel, in the warden-ship of the Wandering Jew. So, too, when we read Great-Heart's analysis of Mr. Fearing, this expression, "He had, I think, a Slough of Despond in his mind, a slough that he carried everywhere with him," we can detect the root of symbolical conceptions like that of "The Bosom Serpent." [Footnote: Mosses from an Old Manse, Vol. II.] I cannot refrain from copying here some passages from this same portion which recall in an exceptional way some of the traits of Hawthorne, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... of Euphuism, or a symbolical jargon of the same class, predominates in the romances of Calprenade and Scuderi, which were read for the amusement of the fair sex of France during the long reign of Louis XIV., and were supposed to contain the only legitimate language of love and gallantry. In this reign ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... for an additional chapter on the same subject. There may possibly at first have stood in the chapter still retained some such clause or sentence regarding the limits of obedience as we find in the corresponding chapter of some of the Genevan symbolical books,[107] and this may have been the matter deemed unfit to be "entreated of" at that time, and recommended by the revisers to be omitted; or it may be that, after all, their recommendation and the suggestions of the English ambassador on the subject were not followed in this instance, and ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... such a revolting personage? They are marching to the conquest of the sacred cabbage, the emblem of matrimonial fecundity, and this besotted drunkard is the only man who can put his hand upon the symbolical plant. Therein, doubtless, is a mystery anterior to Christianity, a mystery that reminds one of the festival of the Saturnalia or some ancient Bacchanalian revel. Perhaps this paien, who is at the same time the gardener par ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... myth in order to describe the course of the eternal spirit through its various transformations. In the same way he has recourse, in other writings, to symbolical narrative, in order to portray the inner nature of man, which is not perceptible ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... Prophets speak throughout of Christ? That all the intermediate applications and realisations of the words are but types and repetitions—translations, as it were, from the language of letters and articulate sounds into the language of events and symbolical persons? ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... elaborate of all the anconae is in San Giovanni in Bragora, and is also the work of Lorenzo. In this, as well as in that of San Tarasio, the Mother offers the Child the apple, signifying the fruit of the Tree of Jesse and symbolical of the Incarnation. This incident, which is found thus early in art, was evidently felt to raise the group of the Mother and Child from a representation of a merely earthly relationship to a spiritual scene of the deepest meaning and ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... full significance of the scene which was being enacted before him. This weathercock—the highest point of the constitutional edifice—requiring to be touched up afresh for the public eyes—was truly symbolical of the crown in its relation to the popular will; twisting this way and that responsive to and interpretative of outside forces, it had no will of its own at all, and yet to do its work it must blaze resplendently and be lifted high, and to be put in working trim and kept with ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... compel those subject to them to remain in a state of barbarism, whilst others are adapted to the wants and necessities of savage RACES, as well as to prevent too close intermarriages of a people who preserve no written or symbolical records of any kind; and in all these instances the desired ends are obtained by the simplest means, so that we are necessitated to admit that, when these rules were planned it was foreseen that the race submitted to them would be savages, and under this foresight the necessary ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... exploits in astrology, chemistry, and metallurgy, inter alia his brazen head, of which alone the nose remains, a precious relic, and (to use the words of the excellent author of the Oxford Guide) still conspicuous over the portal, where it erects itself as a symbolical illustration of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... excellent young man. To which the Council had answered, "Hardly, your Majesty! The Julich-and-Berg affair is so ominous hitherto!" These may be secrets, and dubious to people out of doors, thinks a wise editor; but one thing patent to the day was this, surely symbolical enough: On one of his Majesty's first drives to Potsdam or from it, a thousand children,—in round numbers a thousand of them, all with the RED STRING round their necks, and liable to be taken for soldiers, if needed in the regiment of their Canton,—a thousand children ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... not indifferent to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain take that walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which is perfectly symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the interior and ideal world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult to choose our direction, because it does not yet exist distinctly in ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the Investigators, attired after the manner of Dionysus, leading a pet tiger-cub in wreaths of rhubarb-leaves, symbolical of India ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... later on in this chapter, are even more like the triumphal cars and set pageants here represented, which have lasted on in England in the somewhat debased form of our own Lord Mayor's show, and were perhaps themselves the symbolical descendants of the Triumphs of the ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... the entire pavement of the church, a great blazonry of family history from age to age for indefatigable eyes. An abundance of almost life-sized sculpture clung to the pillars, lurked in the angles, seemed, with those symbolical gestures, and mystic faces [6] ready to speak their parts, to be almost in motion through the gloom. Many years after, Gaston de Latour, an enemy of all Gothic darkness or heaviness, returning to his home full of a later taste, changed all that. A thicket ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... symbolical and the parish, the priest too. A short, thick-set man, with a large bald head and a fringe of reddish hair; his hands were fat and short, the nails were bitten, the nose was fleshy and the eyes were small, and when he turned towards the people and said "Pax Vobiscum" there was ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... kept encroaching more and more: invited in as auxiliaries, they remained as principals; and at last quite superseded and replaced the original tenants. Hence there grew into use a different style or order of workmanship, a distinct class of symbolical or allegorical dramas; that is, dramas made up entirely of abstract ideas personified. These, from their structure and purpose, are properly termed MORAL-PLAYS. We shall see hereafter that much the same process of transition ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... returned and repeated it all. But before repeating it, they carefully painted the marks on their foreheads, using white and red pigment, and consulting a small English hand mirror—the one incongruous bit of West in this East, but symbolical of the times. The child followed it all, as a child will, in its pretty way. She was a dainty little thing in a crimson seeley and many gold jewels. The elder woman was dressed in dark green; the colouring was a joy to the eye, crimson and green, and the brown of the rock, against ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... occurs the clothing of the namesakes. This is symbolical of clothing the dead, who ascend into the bodies of their namesakes during the ceremony and take on the spiritual counterpart ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... origin of it. If you wish to experience the sound let each one in the family take a pair of tongs and a shovel, and then, standing all together, let each one try to outdo the other in noise, and this will give you some idea of it. How this custom originated I don't know. I hope it is not symbolical of the harmony which is to ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... syl.), a glutton, spoken to by Dante, in the third circle of hell, the place in which gluttons are consigned to endless woe. The word means "a pig," and is not a proper name, but only a symbolical one.—Dante, Hell, vi. (1300). ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... and which might have, in years to come, happily housed his son Percy's "Caliban," he was at the same time attempting to combine with it an educational aspect which would lift it above the mere spectacular. The symbolical notes which he handed his son—who was then a mere boy—for the writing of a Chorus, show the profound approach he took to all his work. Such seriousness is one of the consuming traits of Percy, whose sense of humour is ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy • Steele Mackaye
... apparently all implicated in the Satanism of their master, began to swell the ranks of the Accepted Masons. At this time also he began his collaborations with Ashmole for the composition of the Apprentice, Companion, and Master grades, that is to say, for the institution of symbolical Masonry. In 1646 he again visited America, and consummated his mystic marriage, as narrated in the eighth chapter. In 1648 he returned to England, and one year later completed the Master grade, that of Companion having been produced ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... as he saw his hopes gone glimmering, "don't remember to have seen a color. But say, old Bible Back is drilling for copper and that's a good deal like gold. Same color, practically, and you know all these prophecies have a kind of symbolical meaning. A golden treasure don't necessarily mean gold, and I've ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... direction, and are centralized about certain subjects, possessing a personal significance and betraying a meaning, which in the beginning would not have been suspected back of the dream, but which stand in a very close symbolical relation, even to details, to the dream facade. This peculiar thought-complex, in which all the threads of the dream are united, is the looked-for conflict in a certain variation which is determined by the circumstances. What is painful and contradictory in the ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... inserted in our service according to the ancient canon of England, and even when the Latin mass was sung by the tonsured priest, the promises which accompany the delivery of the symbolical pledge of union were repeated by the blushing bride in a more intelligible tongue.[133] This is a curious and significant fact, and as we trace out these rhythmical lines farther back in their original vernacular, the more clearly distinct ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... begun. It is this process that goes on before our eyes. It does not become a completed process, but the prospect is bright for the future, and the flags that fly over town and harbor in the closing chapter have a symbolical significance, for they announce a victory of spirit over sense, not only in the cases of certain among the individual participants in the action, but also in the case of the whole community to which they belong. So much for the book as a study in heredity. ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... couple, and on the Lord's Days they could catch none at all"? Haply they might have been permitted, by way of mortification, to take some few sculpins (those banes of the salt-water angler), which unseemly fish would, moreover, have conveyed to them a symbolical reproof for their breach of the day, being known in the rude dialect of our mariners ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... of the influence of those evil spirits who, as we are told in tradition, descended in rebellion from heaven and lived with the daughters of men! From these strange lovers sprang a race of giants,—symbolical I think of the birth of the sciences, which mingle in their composition the active elements of good and evil. You have built this airship of mine on lines which have never before been attempted;—you have given it wings which are plumed like the wings ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... better the innate depravity of March winds than their choice of such a hat to play with. They had thousands to choose from—bowlers, caps, wideawakes, all kinds of commonplace head-gear—and here they have selected for their sport this cylinder of silk, symbolical of all most worthy of the city's respect. It leaps and bumps and slides, propelled by the breeze and the law of gravitation, down the decorously paved hill, in company with a little cloud of dust and some scraps of dirty paper. And behind it, now at a canter, now at a panting trot, ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... immortal types of all the virtues; yet the excess of its religious ceremonial, robbed it of vital fructifying energies. The frequency and publicity of sacerdotal service, usurped the place of daily individual piety. The tendency of all outward symbolical observances, unduly multiplied, is to substitute ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... and reactionary resistance of tradition. The angles are the vibratory waves of the former force in motion. The perspective of the houses is destroyed just as a boxer is bent double by receiving a blow in the wind (refined image!). As this picture is purely symbolical, it is not open to objections; ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... to be presumed, must be taken in some symbolical sense, for coins cannot be traced back to a date so early as this; and when Abraham purchased the cave to bury Sarah in from the sons of Heth, we read that he ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... Hatchway perhaps there, in Martin's squadron? In what station Commodore Trunnion did then serve in the British Navy? Vanished ghosts of grim mute sea-kings, there is no record of them but what is itself a kind of ghost! Ghost, or symbolical phantasm, from the brain of that Tobias Smollett; an assistant Surgeon, who served in the body along with them, his singular value altogether unknown."—King Carlos's Neutrality, obtained in this manner, lasted for a year-and-half; a sensible ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... centuries to find out the appearance of natural objects; but it took five centuries to make people care about representing them. An artist of the twelfth century did not desire to represent nature. His work was symbolical and ornamental. So long as it was intelligible and lovely, he had no care to make it like nature. As, for instance, when an old painter represented the glory round a saint's head by a burnished plate of pure gold, he had no intention of imitating an effect of light. He meant to tell the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... at the same time bounced out like a little rabbit. "Take off your shirt, Goosie," she said, returning with the gleaming instruments, now symbolical ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... most curious opinions of this people is their belief in the mysterious and sacred character of fire. They obtain sacred fire, for all national and ecclesiastical purposes, from the flint. Their national pipes are lighted with this fire. It is symbolical of purity. Their notions of the boundary between life and death, which is also symbolically the limit of the material verge between this and a future state, are revealed in connection with the exhibition of flames of fire. They also make sacrifices by fire of some part of the first fruits ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... book you may on any branch of Natural History, and instead of the endless, dry details of imaginary systems and classifications, in which the ludicrous littlenesses of man's vain ingenuity used to be set up as a sort of symbolical scheme of revelation of the sublime varieties of the inferior—as we choose to call it—creation of God, you find high attempts in an humble spirit rather to illustrate tendencies, and uses, and harmonies, and order, and design. With ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... learned that early in June wedding bells would ring and a very bonny bride would step forth from Sunny Bank, with several bonny bridesmaids leading the way, and one maid of honor to scatter the posies which were to be symbolical, as all hoped, of her future ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... the second application of these great words, that speak to us not only of the God that dwelt in Zion in outward and symbolical form, by means of a material Presence which was an emblem of the true nearness of Israel's God, but yet more distinctly, as I take it, of the Christ that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... lover of art; take this present as a priceless memento, which you must value at all times above everything else." Therewith he took me by the shoulders and gently pushed me towards the door, embracing me on the threshold. That is to say, I was in a symbolical manner virtually kicked out of doors. Unfolding the paper, I found a piece of a first string of a violin about an eighth of an inch in length, with the words, "A piece of the treble string with which the deceased Staraitz[4] strung his violin for the last concert at ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... same source with the verbal, we are to derive the sentimental allegory, which is nothing more than a continuation of the metaphorical or symbolical expression of the several agents in an action, or the different objects in ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... not one false note that shocks us, or makes us feel that after all the story itself is affected and artificial. Everything that is symbolical is brought about naturally. They are sincere, truthful pictures that speak to the mind as ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... the utmost violence, in execration of the memory of Judas; and I have seen there a large wooden machine (of which they have many in use), constructed on a principle similar to that of an old-fashioned watchman's rattle, but of far greater power in creating an uproar, intended to be symbolical of the rattling of Judas's bones, that will not rest in his grave. The Maltese, as is well known, are a very superstitious people. The employment of Judas candles would, no doubt, if properly explained, turn out to mean to imply execration against the memory of Judas, wherever ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... figure of Aunt Jane, the queenly serious woman of affairs, is one to admire and love. Her effectiveness without excess or strain is in itself an argument for giving woman the vote. The newspaper notice does not state the facts in saying the symbolical figure "fades out" at critical periods in the plot. On the contrary, she appears at critical periods, clothed in white, solemn and royal. She comes into the groups with an adequate allurement, pointing the moral of each situation while she shines ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... incense in Buddhist ceremonies was chiefly symbolical, there is good reason to suppose that various beliefs older than Buddhism,—some, perhaps, peculiar to the race; others probably of Chinese or Korean derivation,—began at an early period to influence the popular use of incense in Japan. Incense is still ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... been otherwise than happy. The spring, with its freshness and promise, was symbolical of the gladsome currents of her life that joyous April and May. Her lightest wish was the instant consideration of the man she admired above all others, and that man, in refinement of appearance and knowledge of the ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... life, but what of outward significance and worth recollection had I received from the soldier's life? I left the army and the warlike career with a total feeling of discontent. My inner yearning for unity and harmony, for inward peace, was so powerful that it shaped itself unconsciously into symbolical form and figure. In a ceaseless, inexplicable, anxious state of longing and unrest, I had passed through many pretty places and many gardens on my homeward way, without any of them pleasing me. In this mood I reached F——, and entered a fairly large and handsomely-stocked flower garden. ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... Giuliano, and Lorenzo the younger, noticeable chiefly for their somewhat early death. It is mere human nature therefore which has prompted the sentiment here. The titles assigned traditionally to the four symbolical figures, Night and Day, The Twilight and The Dawn, are far too definite for them; for these figures come much nearer to the mind and spirit of their author, and are a more direct expression of his thoughts, than any merely symbolical conceptions ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... will require a clue to this symbolical kind of instruction: a companion to his recollections of such an exhibition, which, without destroying the vividness and pleasure of the pageantry, shall connect its objects with the march of history, the ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... make people of fine emotions and swift perceptions understand that such qualities are only the basis of 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 ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of our globe which have even slipped into your title. I see by your letter that you cling to the idea of internal vital processes of the earth, that you regard the successive formations as different phases of life, the rocks as products of metamorphosis. I think this symbolical language should be employed with great reserve, I know that point of view of the old "Naturphilosophie;" I have examined it without prejudice, but nothing seems to me more dissimilar than the vital action of the metamorphosis of a plant in order to form the calyx ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... hill stand the ivied ruins of the Norman castle, and the white memorial monument to Prince Albert, with its sculptured panels bearing the arms of Llewellyn the Great, the red dragon of Cadwalader, the symbolical leek and the motto, Anorchfygol Ddraig Cymru ("The dragon of Wales is invincible"). The air is very cool and bracing on this hill. But the greatest crowd is on the sands and on the rocks of the cliff immediately backing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... in the first place, unquestionable that a real serpent was engaged in the temptation; so that the opinion of those who maintain that the serpent is only a symbolical signification of the evil spirit, cannot be admitted.[1] There must be unity and uniformity in the interpretation of a connected passage. But the allegorical interpretation of the whole is rendered impossible by the following considerations:—The passage stands in a book of a strictly ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... of Egypt, as a science, was symbolical—it denoted elementary principles of philosophy; its gods were enigmas. It has been asserted (on very insufficient data) that in the earliest ages of the world, one god, of whom the sun was either the emblem or the actual object of worship, was adored ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of these philosophers seems either to have been more admired and in greater favour with the priests, or to have paid a more especial regard to their method of philosophising, than this last named, who has particularly imitated their mysterious and symbolical manner in his own writings, and like them conveyed his doctrines to the world in a kind of riddle. For many of the precepts of Pythagoras come nothing short of the hieroglyphical representations themselves, such as, "eat not in a chariot," "sit not on a measure (choenix)," "plant ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... really a very sentimental being. He loves symbols. A good deal of his fondness for ritual is due to this fact. The outward marks of an inner state have always appealed to him. Ancient taboos became not only consecrated but symbolical. Whether it be the rite of circumcision, or the use of phylacteries and fringed praying garments, or the adfixture of little scrolls in metal cases on the door-posts, or the glad submission to the dietary laws, in all these matters sentiment played a considerable part. ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... said as much, a few days ago, to another deputation of your fellow-citizens. We said as much to all the children of that glorious Isle of Erin, which the natural genius of its inhabitants, and the striking events of its history, render equally symbolical of the poetry and the heroism of the nations of the north. Rest assured, therefore, that you will find in France, under the republic, a response to all the sentiments which you express ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the oath-taking, struck the sacrificial pig with the silex, saying as he did so, 'Do thou, Diespiter, strike the Roman people as I strike this pig here to-day, and strike them the more, as thou art greater and stronger.' Here no doubt the underlying notion is not merely symbolical, but in origin the stone is itself the god, an idea which later religion expressed in the cult-title specially used in this connection, Iuppiter Lapis. So again, in all probability, the termini or boundary-stones between ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... their petticoats and morning wrappers, with bare arms, with coal black hair twisted up onto the nape of their neck, with embroidered Oriental slippers which showed their ankles and silk stockings, they looked like the immoral figures of some symbolical painting, by the side of the dying man. Between the easy-chair and the bed, there was a table covered with a white cloth, on which two plates, two glasses, two forks and two knives, were waiting for the cheese omelette which had been ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... material requisite for the full attainment of this delight. This second Iago, evidently, is no conventional villain, and he is much nearer to Shakespeare's Iago than the first. Only he is, if not a psychological impossibility, at any rate not a human being. He might be in place, therefore, in a symbolical poem like Faust, but in a purely human drama like Othello he would be a ruinous blunder. Moreover, he is not in Othello: he is a product of ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... Lord himself did not disdain the usc of allegory, which is truth conveyed to the hearer under a symbolical form. His admirable parables, each of which told a little history, were the most popular methods that could be adopted to instruct the lower classes, who, chiefly uneducated, require the illustration of a subject in ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... chorus meanwhile occupying the time with their own songs, which generally had the character of a comment upon the action as developed at the moment. The changes of costume were extremely slight, merely a different head dress, a mantle or some slight modification of appearance more or less symbolical in character. All the dialogue was delivered in a musical voice, and, it is thought, all accompanied by the cithara, which every player carried in his hand. The instrument was sometimes played all the time, in the same notes as ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... and still on, under one triumphal arch after another, and past a bewildering succession of spectacular and symbolical tableaux, each of which typified and exalted some virtue, or talent, or merit, of the little King's. 'Throughout the whole of Cheapside, from every penthouse and window, hung banners and streamers; and the richest carpets, stuffs, and cloth-of-gold ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... walked and talked or played instruments, but now and then there was a dragon and a champion boxing it and these certainly earned their money. At intervals came bearers with trays on which were comforts for the next world or symbolical devices, while, to infinity both in front and behind, banners and streamers and lanterns danced and jogged above all. A miracle-show of the middle ages can ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... exalted anthropomorphic personality away somewhere in Heaven. The personal appearance of the Christian God is described in The Revelation, and however much that description may be explained away by commentators as symbolical, it is certainly taken by most straightforward believers as a statement of concrete reality. Now if we are going to insist upon this primary meaning of person and individual, then certainly God as he is now conceived is not a person and not an individual. The true God will never ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... moment falls perpendicularly on their heads and strange headgear, details their everlasting smile, and then sheds itself on their shoulders and their naked torso, exaggerating their athletic muscles. Each holding in his hand the symbolical cross, the three giants rush forward with a formidable stride, heads raised, smiling, in a radiant march ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... class of Rig-veda hymns which there is reason to look upon as the oldest portion of Vedic poetry, the character of Indra is that of a mighty ruler of the firmament, and his principal feat is that of conquering the demon Vritra, a symbolical personification of the cloud which obstructs the clearness of the sky, and withholds the fructifying rain from the earth. In his battles with Vritra he is therefore described as 'opening the receptacles of the waters,' as 'cleaving ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... wasn't pretty. It was of satin, bright yellow with blue spots. And an idea struck me; yes, an idea! Sir John's election colours are yellow, his opponent's blue. So I thought the tie would make a tactful present, symbolical (do you see?) of the state of the parties in ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... the significance of this fact is not in the mere use of the figure of the heathen god to indicate the domain of poetry. Such a symbolical use had been made of the figures of heathen deities in the best times of Christian art. But it is in the fact, that being called to Rome especially to adorn the palace of the so-called head of the Church, and called as the chief representative of the Christian artists of his time, Raphael had ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... clings and winds around it, bringing the most excellent of joys and happiness in excess.' Owing to this natural and most palpable resemblance, the ancient Greeks caused the officiating priest in the temple to present to a bridal pair, on entering, a twig of Ivy, 'as a symbolical wish that their love, like it, might ever continue fresh.' It was a beautiful thought, and one which was not lost sight of in the ecclesiastical and architectural symbolism of the middle ages. 'It is,' says ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various |
