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Symbol  v. t.  To symbolize. (R.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Symbol" Quotes from Famous Books



... appreciably the demand. The explanation of this paradox is not difficult to find. There was an immense increase in the volume of nominal purchasing power, due to a complex set of causes, of which "currency inflation" may be taken as the symbol. Now perhaps we are entitled to assume the absence of such currency changes as part of the "other things being equal" which is always understood as implied. But it is rash to take this particular assumption for granted, more especially in these days. Already people are too ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson

... his net into the sea. It does not matter what he is, as long as he realises the perfection of the soul that is within him. All imitation in morals and in life is wrong. Through the streets of Jerusalem at the present day crawls one who is mad and carries a wooden cross on his shoulders. He is a symbol of the lives that are marred by imitation. Father Damien was Christlike when he went out to live with the lepers, because in such service he realised fully what was best in him. But he was not more Christlike than Wagner when he realised ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde

... to come in. When Abishai poured out water to wash himself, he suddenly caught sight of drops of blood in it. Then he was startled by a dove that came to him plucking out her plumes, and moaning and wailing. Abishai exclaimed: "The dove is the symbol of the people of Israel. It cannot be but that David, the king of Israel, is in distress." Not finding the king at home, he was confirmed in his fears, and he determined to go on a search for David ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... were that there were only five courses at dinner, that we drank champagne out of rather old-fashioned long glasses, and that two goats were tethered in a corner of the lawn. The goats I understood were the seal and symbol of the simple life. No use was made of them, and they were decidedly in the way, but without them life would ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... on both sides—that there may be something of fallacy on the part of poet as well as people in this controversy. It is possible to set the standard too high as well as too low—to plant it on an elevation so distant that its symbol can no longer be deciphered, as well as to fix it so low that its folds draggle in mire and dust. If genius systematically appeal only to the initiated few, it must learn to do without the homage of the outer multitude. ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various

... marks, would prove themselves such by their insensibility. They swam their victims in rivers and ponds, it being an undoubted fact, that, if the persons accused were true witches, the water, which was the symbol of admission into the Christian church, would not receive them into its bosom. If the persons examined continued obstinate, they seated them in constrained and uneasy attitudes, occasionally binding them with cords, and compelling them to remain so without food or sleep ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... chief removed a fold of his hunting skirt, and quietly exposed the fatal tuft of hair, which he bore as the symbol of victory. Chingachgook laid his hand on the scalp, and considered it for a moment with deep attention. Then dropping it, with disgust depicted in his strong ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... substituted was right. Where doubt existed, the text was left unchanged, but the alternative word was placed in the margin. In regard of other terms, of which the old rendering was certainly wrong, as in the case of the Hebrew term Asherah (probably the wooden symbol of a goddess), the Revisers have used the word, whether in the singular or plural, as a proper name. In the case of the Hebrew term "Sheol" (corresponding to the Greek term "Hades"), variously rendered in the ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott

... suddenly face to face with Bridget—I, red, heated, agitated with my so long-baffled efforts—she, stiff as any stone, standing right facing me, her eyes dilated with terror, her ashen lips trembling, but her body motionless. In her hands she held her crucifix, as if by that holy symbol she sought to oppose my entrance. At sight of me, her whole frame relaxed, and she sank back upon a chair. Some mighty tension had given way. Still her eyes looked fearfully into the gloom of the outer air, made more opaque by the glimmer of the lamp inside, ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... seen to "rise from its ashes" and resume its original form—a well-known phenomenon of reducing metals from oxides by the use of carbon, in the form of wheat, or, for that matter, any other carbonaceous substance. Wheat was, therefore, made the symbol of the resurrection of the life eternal. Oats, corn, or a piece of charcoal would have "revived" the metals from the ashes equally well, but the mediaeval alchemist seems not to have known this. However, in this experiment the metal seemed actually to be destroyed and revivified, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... heart of the sad lover; in every HONEST heart more or less, whether young or old, feeble or strong, the new summer day stirs, and will stir while the sun has heat enough for men to live on the earth. Surely the live God is not absent from the symbol of his glory! The light and the hope are not there without him! When strength wakes in my heart, shall I be the slave to imagine it comes only as the sap rises in the stem of the reviving plant, or the mercury in the tube of the thermometer? that there is no essential life within my conscious life, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... speak my simple conceit and belief, I think my Landlord was chiefly moved to waive in my behalf the usual requisition of a symbol, or reckoning, from the pleasure he was wont to take in my conversation, which, though solid and edifying in the main, was, like a well-built palace, decorated with facetious narratives and devices, tending much to the enhancement and ornament thereof. And so pleased ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... have so long from sight been laid Beneath the holy cross, that symbol meek, Now lift their glorious glad face, and seek With Peter's ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... mark, presage, symbol, token, indication, note, prognostic, symptom, type. manifestation, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... inexplicable failure of the cause for which his old blood ran like water that dull morning at Ball's Bluff. He doubts everything in the bitterness of wasted effort; doubts sometimes, even, if the very flag he fights for, be not the symbol of a gigantic selfishness: if the Wrong he calls his enemy, have not caught a certain truth to give it strength. A dark day, he tells you: that the air is filled with the cry of the slave, and of nations ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis

... Great Britain in North America. At Louisbourg some two hundred miles farther east on the coast, France could reestablish her military strength, but now Louisbourg had a rival and each was resolved to yield nothing to the other. The founding of Halifax was in truth the symbol of the renewal of the ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong

... began to demand suffrage. Woman's sphere of operations and enterprise had become so widened, that they felt they had not only the right, but also an increasing fitness for civil life and government, of which the ballot is but the sign and the symbol. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... now, in the eyes of all the world, was equivalent to Kingship. When inducted into his First Protectorship, stately though the ceremonial had been, he had worn but a black velvet suit, with a gold band round his hat, and the chief symbol of his investiture had been the removal of his own military sword and substitution of the civil sword presented to him by Lambert. He had come into this Second Protectorship robed in purple, and holding a sceptre of massy gold. In heraldry, as well as in reality, he had ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... hovers o'er the globe, is Fame, who condescended to entertain us a moment about you; she brought me thy works, and paved the way for our connection by esteem. Behold that phoenix immortal amidst the flames: it is the symbol of Genius, which never dies. Let these emblems perpetually incite thee to shew thyself the defender of humanity, of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various

... advanced already in God's kingdom. During the mass which we have seen him attend, he had read the prayers and applied his own intelligence to them; from the first, he had risen to the divine idea of the communion of the faithful. The old neophyte understood the eternal symbol attached to that sacred nourishment, which faith renders needful to the soul after conveying to it her own profound and radiant essence. When on leaving the church he had seemed in a hurry to get home, it was merely that he might once more thank his dear ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac

... God's teaching in symbol and in type. It is His great picture-book, where in living form He has portrayed Himself, and all that belongs to Him—His nature, character, wisdom; His greatness, glory, and His power. The Universe is a temple, where He sits enshrined in the things ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper

... perches now; The foe is routed by Clotilda's God; And Clovis wished to have upon his brow The symbol of her faith; for 'neath the rod Of the eternal King he bows his regal will, And waits, with heart ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... forefathers as a guest. The owner met him, not quite on the frank and friendly footing expressed in his note, but still with a perfect and polished courtesy, which however could not hide from the sensitive Middleton a certain coldness, a something that seemed to him Italian rather than English; a symbol of a condition of things between them, undecided, suspicious, doubtful very likely. Middleton's own manner corresponded to that of his host, and they made few advances towards more intimate acquaintance. ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... his dhudeen, on the back porch, on an empty box, where every night you'll find him. It's the unconscious dropping back into the old ways of his father, and his father's father, and his father's father's father. In brief, he sits there the poor lorn symbol of the long oppression ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley

... to be 'consequent' from the Premisses; for which reason it is usual to prefix to it the word "Therefore" (or the symbol ".'."). ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll

... shape, form, outline, tournure, conformation, image, effigy, statue, bust, figurehead, likeness; numeral, digit, number; type, emblem, symbol; caryatid; atlantes, telamones; figurine; diagram, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... else but talk about liquor. The fairy tales that most children are allowed to enjoy merely as stories were explained to me by my father as allegories bearing upon the sinister seductions of drink. Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, for instance, became a symbol of young womanhood pursued by the devouring Bronx cocktail. The princess from whose mouth came toads and snakes was (of course) a princess under the influence of creme de menthe. Cinderella was a young girl who had been brought low by taking a dash of brandy in her soup. Every dragon, ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... day of the accident which had befallen her in the fog. It almost seemed as though that grey curtain of fog had been a symbol of the shadow which was beginning to dog her footsteps—the shadow which stern ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... guardian of all created things, that being who is always cheerful, that protector of all beings, that God of unfading glory; that one with matted locks; that mover of all superior beings, that one whose navel is like that of a bull and who hath the bull for his symbol; that one who is proud like the bull, who is the lord of bulls; who is represented by the horns of the bull; and who is the bull of bulls; that one who hath the image of the bull on his banner; who is liberal to all righteous persons; ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... rule—never substitute the symbol for the thing signified, unless it is impossible to show the thing itself; for the child's attention is so taken up with the symbol that he will ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... "The formation of this National College League," she said, "indicates that college women will be ready to bear their part in the stupendous social change of which the demand for woman suffrage is only the outward symbol," and ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... folio, and a letter of three sides, to press me seriously to revise it. You shall judge of my scholar's competence. He translates L'Estrange, Dryden, and others, l''etrange Dryden, etc.(593) Then in the description of the tailor as an idol, and his goose as the symbol; he says in a note, that the goose means the dove, and is a concealed satire on the Holy Ghost. It put me in mind of the Dane, who, talking of orders to a Frenchman, said, "Notre St. Esprit, est ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... and capitalized, AFTER the number of pounds, rather than before it. Hence "L20" becomes 20 Pounds. (where L represents the Pound symbol.) ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... insoluble mystery of the superiority of one tribe or one individual over others apparently of the same class. Political history is wont to tell this chapter of Rome's story under the title of the "Rise of the Plebeians," but the presence of the Plebeians was only the outward symbol of an inward change. This change was the breaking up of the monotonous one-class society of the primitive community with its one—agricultural—interest, and the formation of a variegated many-class society with manifold interests, such as trade, handicraft, ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter

... glimpse. The young man without a name had lived in her mind, brightly glowing, as the very symbol and incarnation of ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... But isn't it more than that? You spent years on Earth lecturing about Rustum and its colonization. I think it must be a deep symbol to you. Don't worry, I won't go analytic. I happen to think, myself, that this colony is enormously important, objectively speaking, I mean. If our race muffs this chance, we may never get another. But you and I wouldn't care about that, not really, unless it was personally important ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson

... used in Advent and Lent. Black signifies sorrow, and is used on Good Friday and in Masses for the dead. As regards the vestments themselves: the amice signifies preparation to resist the attacks of the devil; the alb is the symbol of innocence; the cincture of charity; the maniple of penance; the stole of immortality; and the chasuble of love, by which we are enabled to bear the light burden Our Lord is pleased to lay ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead

... system, its visible and emphatic symbol, fastened on Paris like a great bloated tumour eating into the heart of France, was Versailles. But compared with class privilege, the Church, and the seigneur, Versailles was a recent phenomenon, invented by Louis XIV little more than one hundred years before the outbreak ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... twelve equal parts of thirty degrees each, and to these twelve divisions are given the names of the constellations of the Zodiac in the following order: Aries ([Symbol: Aries]), Taurus ([Symbol: Taurus]), Gemini ([Symbol: Gemini]), Cancer ([Symbol: Cancer]), Leo ([Symbol: Leo]), Virgo ([Symbol: Virgo]), Libra ([Symbol: Libra]), Scorpio ([Symbol: Scorpio]), Sagittarius ([Symbol: ...
— A Field Book of the Stars • William Tyler Olcott

... X, granules, of indeterminate shape and size, Y, for inorganic matters, such as the salts of bone and teeth, and Z, to stand as a symbol of the fluids, and you have the letters of what I have ventured to call the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... neighborhood of the cannery offend the eyes and, to be frank, the ears and nose as well. It was a forlorn-looking lot of hovels, occupied by listless, frowsy adults and noisy children. Here existence seemed to be a grim caricature of life; the children, the only symbol of abundance to be seen, continued to be grotesque in their very dirt. What clothes they had were second or third-hand garments too large for them, which they seemed to be perpetually in danger of ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt

... had been found in the ruins of the Temple Deir-el-Bahari. An ornament of gold set with precious stones. Its shape was that of the Hawk, which had stood as the symbol of the North in the glorious days of Ancient Egypt. The wings were of emeralds tipped with rubies; gold were the claws and gold the Symbol of Life they held; the body and tail were a mass of precious stones; and the eye of some jet-black stone, unknown to the ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... expression by Chu Hsi, who also wrote one of the chief historical works. Chu Hsi's commentaries became standard works for centuries, until the beginning of the twentieth century. Yet, although Chu became the symbol of conservativism, he was quite interested in science, and in this field he had an open eye ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... verse. The cave and the exhalations were mere accessories, stage properties as it were, the more readily to impose upon those who came to consult the oracle. So of the "sacred tripod," which was the symbol merely of the real instrument which had given birth ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... religious symbol erroneously supposed to owe its significance to the most solemn event in the history of Christianity, but really antedating it by thousands of years. By many it has been believed to be identical with the crux ansata of the ancient phallic ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... keeping her in sight until she entered the house. Then he turned and walked like a madman through the hissing rain—walked he knew not whither—his being a mere erratic chaos, a symbol of Nature's prime ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing

... to spot the patriot when parties mingled freely, And Labouchere at times would share the politics of Healy; A symbol new and plain to view from such mistakes will free him— By Mac and O you'll always know a patriot ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley

... dynamic dreams. First, the dream-image generally. Any significant dream-image is usually an image or a symbol of some arrest or scotch in the living spontaneous psyche. There is another principle. But if the image is a symbol, then the only safe way to explain the symbol is to proceed from the quality of emotion connected ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... plates, which, riveted to their umbrellas, will, they think, suffice to insure the safety of these useful articles. As well might the border farmer have engraved his name and address on the collars of his grazing herds, in the hope that the riever would respect this symbol of authority. The history of book-plates is largely the history of borrower versus lender. The orderly mind is wont to believe that a distinctive mark, irrevocably attached to every volume, will insure ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier

... in the words is distinctly before the Psalmist's mind, and he is thinking not only of the act of mind and heart by which he casts himself in confidence upon God, but upon that which represents it in symbol, the act by which a man flees into some hiding-place. The psalm is said in the superscription to have been written when David hid in a cave from his persecutor. Though no weight be given to that statement, it suggests the impression made by the psalm. In imagination ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... seemed to remember. I have never been in a place which made one's heart move like that room. Well. The priest's fears were dead as the priest by this time. Nothing but the wreck of his dinner, perhaps the last he ever ate, remained to tell of him, beside the broken symbol of his belief. I shut-to the little panel-door by which I had entered, so that I might not have the horrible fancy that the old priest's shaven head was peering up the chimney at me, to see what I was doing in his old room, long since given ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield

... outlined. She remained not less pale than ever; but the birthmark, with every breath that came and went, lost somewhat of its former distinctness. Its presence had been awful; its departure was more awful still. Watch the stain of the rainbow fading out of the sky, and you will know how that mysterious symbol passed away. ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various

... an element is usually the initial letter or letters of its Latin name, and stands for one atom of the element. C is the symbol for carbon, and represents one atom of it. O means one atom of oxygen.[The symbols of elements will also be used in this book to stand for an indefinite quantity of them; e.g. O will be used for oxygen in general as well as for one atom. The text will readily decide when symbols ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams

... no big-bellied capitalist could patronize or ignore or make step aside. Why, it's great—it makes me happy, it gives me hope. And I can see for ages and ages the face of Lincoln on books, on coins, on monuments; until some day his face will be the symbol of the United States of America, when the United States of America has rotted into the manure piles of history with Tyre and Babylon, as it will if it doesn't turn back and be what Lincoln was: a man who worked and thought, and whose idea was ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters

... at the Cottage had once been nicknamed the Misses Canute—which showed how plainly all this could be seen, as a sort of symbol, by anyone in the least imaginative; though it was a rather unsatisfactory curate from Manchester who actually gave them the name. No one felt surprised when he afterwards offended his bishop and went into the motor business, for he suffered from ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose

... me, O lord of creatures, the defeat of Bhishma. O lord, having the bull for thy mount, act in such a way that promise of thine may become true, that encountering Bhishma, the son of Santanu, in battle I may be able to slay him.' The god of gods, having the bull for his symbol, then said unto that maiden, 'The words I have uttered cannot be false. O blessed lady, true they will be. Thou shalt slay Bhishma, and even obtain manhood. Thou shalt also remember all the incidents (of this life) even when thou shalt obtain a new body. Born in the race ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... the heat did not come out a great way from the hearth, and the whole family gathered close about the fire to keep warm. It was regarded as a great breach of good manners to go between any person and the fire. The fireplace was the centre of the household, and was regarded as the type and symbol of the home. The boys all understood the force of ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... I'm not chaffing. There's no room on earth for saints in authority. There's use for a saintly symbol, even if one doesn't hold with it, but there's no mortal use for those who try to have things both ways—to be saints and seers of visions, and yet to come the practical and worldly and rule ordinary men's lives. Saintly example yes; but not saintly ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... simplest form of sound writing each separate picture or symbol stands for the sound of an entire word. This method was employed by the Chinese, who have never given it up. A more developed form of sound writing occurs when signs are used for the sounds, not of entire words, but of separate syllables. Since the number ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... himself just for a moment, the enemy got the Spear and wounded him with it. No one could cure him till poor Parsifal came along—a poor simpleton who had been brought up in the desert. And the only reason he could win back the Spear, and cure the king, and bring back the symbol of God's Presence on earth again, was that he was so sorry for the king. He wanted so much to heal him that, whenever he got tired and sick, and whenever he got into temptations he was able to conquer them. It was his pity made him conquer where wiser people, more selfish ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... roving seaman Who hires himself to merchantman or pirate For single voyages, stays where he may please, Lives his purse empty in a dozen ports, And ne'er obeys the ghost of what once was! His laugh chimes readily; his kiss, no symbol Of aught to come, but cordial, eager, hot, Leaves his tomorrow free. With him for comrade Each day shall be enough, and what is good Enjoyed, and what is evil borne or cursed. I go, because I will not have a home, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... a symbol of their own development. A writer in the Western Monthly Review, [Footnote: Timothy Flint's Western Monthly Review (May, 1827), I., 25; William Bullock, Sketch of a Journey, 132.] unconsciously expressed the very ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... by accident or by intent? Was it merely kindness or a girl's subtlety? Was it a message couched elusively, a symbol, a hope in a half-blown ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... became one of song, of association, and of imagination, which aroused thoughts that were intensely animating and absorbing. The taunt of a Virginia newspaper that Harrison should remain in his log cabin on the banks of the Ohio made the log cabin "a symbol," as Weed happily expressed it, "of virtue that dwells in obscurity, of the hopes of the humble, of the privations of the poor, of toil and danger, of hospitality and charity and frugality." Log cabins sprang up like gourds in a night. At the door, stood the cider ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... sorrowful Jewish heart. His Zionist poems are perfect expressions of the national spirit. One of them, the very best his muse has produced, has been almost universally accepted as the national hymn. It Is called Yonah Homiah ("The Plaintive Dove"). The dove is the symbol for Israel used by the prophetical writers of the Bible. Her mournful cooing voices the grief of the Jewish people driven forth from its native land ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... Thou shinest; fair is he, brilliant with glittering fire; and he through heaven bears, Most High, symbol and sense ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton

... vertical bands of red (hoist side), blue, and red; centered on the hoist-side red band in yellow is the national emblem ("soyombo"-a columnar arrangement of abstract and geometric representation for fire, sun, moon, earth, water, and the yin-yang symbol) ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... the symbol of success; it is what we are all striving to get, and we naturally select the ways and means best adapted for the purpose. One of the simplest is to get as near it as possible and stay there. If I make a friend ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train

... unlike the end of the world, as prognosticated by the Book of Revelation and by most astronomers, and he will have some idea of my mental perturbations. Add to the mixture a most mystic yet very real love affair and an assignation before that symbol of the cold fate which seems to sway the universes down to the tiniest detail of individual lives, and he may begin to understand what I, Humphrey Arbuthnot, experienced during my vigil in this sanctuary ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... an ass, Onager; a dragon, Dracontius. Of the first kind the most usually met with is the monogram of Christ. The other symbols generally in use are the ship, the emblem of the church; the fish, the emblem of Christ, the palm, the symbol of martyrdom. The anchor represented hope in immortality; the dove, peace; the stag reminded the faithful of the pious aspiration of the Psalmist; the horse was the emblem of strength in the faith; the hunted hare, of persecution; the peacock and the phoenix stood ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... of these things I lay my symbol on thy breast, and on her breast also shall that symbol be. When I lift it from thee and thou dost open thy eyes, then awaken Pharaoh at thy side and let these my words be written in a roll, so that ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard

... had registered on his return. There was thus an artificial element in his punctilio that at times might almost raise a smile. But it stood on noble grounds; for this was how he sought to shelter from his own petulance the woman who was to him the symbol of the household and to the end the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... first place, a state so vast and complex as this world Utopia, and with so migratory a people, will need some handy symbol to check the distribution of services and commodities. Almost certainly they will need to have money. They will have money, and it is not inconceivable that, for all his sorrowful thoughts, our botanist, with his trained observation, his habit of looking at little things ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... pensive face and gorgeous robes. San Donato, deposed from his lofty estate in the palace of a Russian prince, should preside as guardian spirit of her home. The image was invested with the gifts of the good fairy as much as he embodied any religious symbol. His mission was to avert evil. The saint passed to a new shrine without attendant priests, acolytes, and banners, the swinging of censers, the tinkling of bells, as in the fine old days before Rome was a modern European capital. It was not ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various

... disguised by the comprehensive nature of the induction, and the consequent generality of the language. For numbers, though they must be numbers of something, may be numbers of anything; and therefore, as we need not, when using an algebraical symbol (which represents all numbers without distinction), or an arithmetical number, picture to ourselves all that it stands for, we may picture to ourselves (and this not as a sign of things, but as being itself a thing) the number or symbol itself as conveniently as any ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing

... we call her Mother—she Who from her liberal breath breathes sustenance To nations; a majestic charity! No marble symbol cold, in suppliant glance Deceitful smiling; strenuous her advance, Yet calm; while holy ardors, fancy-free, Direct her measured steps: in every chance Sedate—as Una 'neath the forest tree Encompassed by the lions. Why, alas! Must her perverse and thoughtless ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... Britain fell at the fort over which it had floated for a hundred and twenty years, and in its place the Stars and Stripes of American Independence flashed in the sun. Fleet and army, royal flag and scarlet uniform, coronet and ribbon, every sign and symbol of foreign authority, which from Concord to Saratoga and from Saratoga to Yorktown had sought to subdue the colonies, vanished from these shores. Colonial and provincial America had ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... had perceived a mystery which she could not understand: something moved behind the surface of which not even Mr. Babington's sister knew anything, except that, indeed, it was there. Again, there was the death of Father Campion—the very man whom she had taken as a symbol of the Faith for which she fought with her woman's wits; there was the news that came so suddenly and terribly now and again, of one more priest gone to his death.... It was like the slow rising of a storm: the air darkens; a stillness falls on the countryside; ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson

... saints guide and preserve us," said the aged menial, crossing herself very devoutly, more by way of conjuration or counter-charm, than from any proper feeling of reverence or faith in the mystic symbol of our redemption. "There's death at the door, then, sure enough," she continued; "aw this gramarye and foretokening isn't for nought; so who's to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... all these possibilities for fiction is the anting-anting, at once a mysterious power to protect its possessor and the outward symbol of the protection. No more curious fetich can be found in the history of folk-lore. A button, a coin, a bit of paper with unintelligible words scribbled upon it, a bone, a stone, a garment, anything, almost—often a thing of no intrinsic value—its owner has been known to walk up to the muzzle of ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme

... "I leave it all to you. Put it on her finger and say, 'This is the pledge of love—of love renewed—of Andrea's undying love for you.'" He thrust the symbol of bliss into Captain Dieppe's most reluctant hand. The Captain sat and looked at it in ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope

... crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God." Christ accounteth His people, His crown and diadem; so should a king esteem the people of the Lord, over whom he ruleth, to be his crown and diadem. Take away the people, and a crown is but an empty symbol. ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... tried to bury, erupted into overwrought bitterness against this too-ingratiating youngster who was a demigod on this world and who had humiliated him, repudiated him for the hated Jason ... for Jay, Regis had suddenly become the symbol of a world that hated him, forced him into a ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... as "peace has its victories no less renowned than those of war," it has been the pride of others to serve their country by guarding its liberties, increasing its happiness, diminishing its evils, reforming its laws. The flag of a country is the symbol, to those who belong to it, of their common inheritance. Brave men will follow it through the shot and shell of battle. Men have wrapt it round their breasts, and have dyed its folds with their heart's blood to save it from the hands of the enemy; and wherever it waves it calls forth feelings ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees

... to mention the first of them. The line goes back to Adam, cross-legged under the Tree—the first tailor and the first customer together—companioned, pleasantly enough, by the first 'little dressmaker.' They made their clothes together, and made them alike—an impressive, beautiful symbol of the perfect harmony between the sexes that the world lost and ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren

... considerable success. Thus, in a translation of the Bible in the Massachusetts language by Eliot, the verses from 25 to 32 in the thirtieth chapter of Proverbs, are expressed by 'an ant, a coney, a locust, a spider, a river (symbol of motion), a lion, a greyhound, a he-goat and king, a man foolishly lifting himself to take hold of the heavens.' No doubt these symbols would help the reader to remember the proper order of the verses, but they would be perfectly useless without a commentary ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller

... circle enclosing a dot for hydrogen, and the like—and had represented compounds by placing these symbols of the elements in juxtaposition. Berzelius proposed to improve upon this method by substituting for the geometrical symbol the initial of the Latin name of the element represented—O for oxygen, H for hydrogen, and so on—a numerical coefficient to follow the letter as an indication of the number of atoms present in any given compound. This simple system soon gained general ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... were of ivory, adorned with gold; and it is recorded, that Archelaus addressed the multitude from a throne of solid gold—a magnificent fortune in itself. Thus gradually the throne became the highest symbol of power, and is often applied to Jehovah's sovereignty. He is represented as sitting upon a throne of light, and around him continually, attending angels, veiling their faces with their wings, and waiting to hear and obey his ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley

... the single, short variety. The singers execute them with the usual quickness heard in modern music, but with the accent about equally divided between the appoggiatura and the principal tone. In the transcription they are indicated by the usual musical symbol,—a small eighth note with a slanting stroke through ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole

... entry into the monastery was more a symbol for the struggling author's dream of peace and atonement than a real thing in his life. It is true he visited the Benedictine monastery, Maredsous, in Belgium in 1898, and its well stocked library came to play a certain ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg

... to get obdurate things round impossible corners—in that symbol Mr. Polly could recognise himself and all ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... and affinities, impatient of a strict and rigid logical groove, but spreading as it were tentacles on all sides in quest of chance prey, and quickened into a whole system of imagination by the electric quiver imparted by a single word, at once the key and symbol of the thinking it had led to. And so he puts down word or phrase, so enigmatical to us who see it by itself, which to him would wake up a whole train of ideas, as he remembered the occasion of it—how at a certain time and place this word set the whole moving, seemed to breathe ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... domestic virtues, such as hers, seldom gain wide distinction. Her children's sorrow was deep and lasting, and the badge of mourning which her husband wore for many months after her death was a truthful symbol of unaffected grief. From the beginning, he was warmly attached to his wife, whose affection for him was very great indeed. It would have been strange if he had been unhappy, when she, who made his tastes her study, also made it the business of her life ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... from the swift and partial glimpses which are all that the writer yields us on the subject, and, secondly, from the impossibility of deciding with precision how much of his language is to be regarded as figurative and how much as literal, where the poetic presentation of symbol ends and where the direct statement of fact begins. A large part of the book is certainly written in prophetic figures and images, spiritual visions, never meant to be accepted in a prosaic sense with severe detail. And yet, at the same time, all these ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... people ("By that," Herder has said, "it is distinguished from all other nations.")—the faithful people (treues Volk ... Treu meaning everything: sincere, faithful, loyal and upright)—the People par excellence, as Fichte says—German Force, the symbol of justice and truth—German thought—the German Gemuet—the German language, the only original language, the only language that, like the race itself, has preserved its purity—German women, German wine, German song ... "Germany, Germany ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... amazing how all its contours and edges change shape! Immediately my dishpan began to glow with a kind of philosophic halo! The warm, soapy water became a sovereign medicine to retract hot blood from the head; the homely act of washing and drying cups and saucers became a symbol of the order and cleanliness that man imposes on the unruly world about him. I tore down my book rack and reading ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... emphasis of the name carried home the change into the mind of the country. It was the epitome of all the measures which had been passed against the encroachments of the spiritual powers within and without the realm; it was at once the symbol of the independence of England, and the declaration that thenceforth the civil magistrate was supreme within the English dominions over church as well ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... Ostrog walked a pace or two into the room and turned. "You are absolute owner," he said, "of the world. You are King of the Earth. Your powers are limited in many intricate ways, but you are the figure-head, the popular symbol of government. This White Council, the Council of Trustees as it ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... were unable to make any open avowal of the Christian religion, and the Japanese officers who came in contact with them were compelled to make frequent disavowals of Christianity, and publicly to trample the cross, its symbol, under foot. The island of Desima was infested with Japanese spies, whom the Dutch were required to employ and pay as secretaries and servants, while knowing their real office, If a Dutch resident aspired to occasional egress from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... moving in different directions, while a large fleet of English, Russians, Neapolitans, and Turks, composed of two-deckers, frigates, and sloops, lay at their anchors in front of the town. On board of one of the largest of the former was flying the flag of a rear-admiral at the mizzen, the symbol of the commander's rank. A corvette alone was under-way. She had left the anchorage an hour before, and, with studding-sails on her starboard side, was stretching diagonally across the glorious bay, apparently heading toward the passage ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... of the severer orders there was an approximation to a punctual observance of the hours as they successively arrived. Possibly the modern mind fails to do full justice to the conception of worship on which this system was based. Those principles of devotion of which the rosary is the visible symbol do not easily commend themselves to us. They have about them a suggestion of mechanism. They remind us of the Buddhist praying wheel, and seem to put the Church in the attitude of expecting to be heard ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... heart Elizabeth brought to it was no longer the heart of a stranger. The teeming Canadian life had become interwoven with her life; and when Anderson came to bid her a hurried farewell on the platform at Regina, she carried the passionate memory of his face with her, as the embodiment and symbol of all that she had seen ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... wild a surmise—that the religious fanatic had offered up his wealth—or, rather, Madame Tibault's—in the shape of a material symbol of his consuming devotion? Stranger things have been done in the name of worship. Was it not possible that the lost thousands were molded into that lustrous image? That the goldsmith had formed it of the pure and precious metal, and set ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... surviving relations, and offerings made at the morai. Some of the things, which from time to time are deposited there, are emblematical: A young plantain represents the deceased, and the bunch of feathers the deity who is invoked. The priest places himself over against the symbol of the god, accompanied by some of the relations, who are furnished with a small offering, and repeats his oraison in a set form, consisting of separate sentences; at the same time weaving the leaves of the cocoa-nut into ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... of Physiology are both good things. But water is one thing to drink, and another to be drowned in. In like manner, though Physiology is a large and noble science and a yet larger symbol, furnishing analogies to the thinker quite as often as uses to the medical doctor, nevertheless, Physiology in the form of a deluge, overflowing, swamping, drowning almost everything else, and leaving ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... the course of the river. The girls felt as if they should never come to the market-place, which was situated at the crossing of Bridge Street and High Street. There the old stone cross was raised by the monks long ago; now worn and mutilated, no one esteemed it as a holy symbol, but only as the Butter Cross, where market-women clustered on Wednesday, and whence the town crier made all his proclamations of household sales, things lost or found, beginning with 'Oh! yes, oh! yes, oh! yes!' and ending with 'God bless the king and the ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... his hand a crucifix which hung in a little oratory near the hall, he opened the front door of the house and stepped out among the crowd. He held the sacred symbol of his faith aloft in his hand. It served as his safeguard. No one attempted to injure him; but before he could utter a word, he was surrounded and hurried away from the house. No one would listen ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston

... Single Greek letters are identified by name: eta, alpha. o: and e: represent omega and eta. "i" represents upside-down i (used in I.3.6). {gh} represents yogh (used in I.4.10). {L} represents the "pounds" symbol. Letters with diacritics are "unpacked" and shown within braces: {a'} {e'} a with acute accent, e with grave accent Irregularities in chapter numbering are explained at the end of ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume

... The manumission of a son, or a slave, was performed by turning him round with a gentle blow on the cheek; a work was prohibited by the casting of a stone; prescription was interrupted by the breaking of a branch; the clinched fist was the symbol of a pledge or deposit; the right hand was the gift of faith and confidence. The indenture of covenants was a broken straw; weights and scales were introduced into every payment, and the heir who accepted a testament was sometimes ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... machine. What we want, in short, is a sort of endless band—throwing up the finest spirit of the day till he forms a head or apex whence virtue runs swiftly down again into the people who elected him. This is the principle, as it seems to me, of the universe itself, whose symbol is neither circle nor spire, but circle ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... Guard. When, lo! descending to the city's gate, He sees a golden cross thereon upreared; And passing through the portals in a daze, He wanders on in wonder through the ways. Where are the images of all the gods— The silver semblance of Diana fair? He sees them not, but everywhere he views The sacred symbol of the Savior's death, And hears the name of Christ on every tongue. At last he enters in where bread is sold, And gives in payment there a silver coin. "It is an ancient coin," the baker said, "And bears the image of old Decius." ...
— Across the Sea and Other Poems. • Thomas S. Chard

... of water lay beneath them. The boy gave one glance at the blue heavens and the blinking stars; then, stooping, he picked up the dog and held him in his arms. He stood there like a statue, a magnificent symbol of calm in the midst of ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell

... resumed his glasses, and looked silently at the thronged street. How comfortable to believe with our venerable friend, and to perceive that the great increase in the beauty of the Easter commemoration is the fitting symbol of the corresponding increase in our ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis

... of Geese. And you may add to this practical Observation, how in all Ages and Times the World has been carry'd away by odd unaccountable things, which one would think would pass upon no Creature which had Reason; and, under the Symbol of this Goose, you may enter into the Manner and Method of leading Creatures, with their Eyes open, thro' thick and thin, for they know not ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... little Angel that went o'er the sea, With the emblem of God in her hand; A wonderful Angel who brought there to me The sweet of a war-furrowed land. The crown on her head was a ribbon of red, A symbol of all that's divine; Though she called each a brother she's more like a ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill

... King's wardrobe provided the King and the Princesse Elizabeth with the same impenetrable shield. Though the cannibals came for murder, I could not but admire the enthusiastic deference that was shown to this symbol of authority, which instantly paralyzed, the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 7 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... dreadful explosion. But we will go up after dinner and look at the work," he said, "for they are to labor night and day until it is finished. The members of the Brotherhood have entered with great spirit into the idea of such a monument, as a symbol and memorial of their own ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... predominate, naturally makes those who value loyalty the more punctilious in its use. If there is a profuse display of the Union Jack, it is because it is in Ulster not merely "bunting" for decorative purposes as in England, but the symbol of a ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... code, might mean 'struck vein at two hundred feet level.' In the other sort of code, the letters are changed. That is done in all sorts of ways, and there are various tricks. The way to get at nearly all of them is to find out which letter or number or symbol is used most often, and to remember that in an ordinary letter E will appear almost twice as often as any other letter - in English, ...
— The Boy Scout Aviators • George Durston



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