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Symbolize   Listen
verb
Symbolize  v. i.  (past & past part. symbolized; pres. part. symbolizing)  
1.
To have a resemblance of qualities or properties; to correspond; to harmonize. "The pleasing of color symbolizeth with the pleasing of any single tone to the ear; but the pleasing of order doth symbolize with harmony." "They both symbolize in this, that they love to look upon themselves through multiplying glasses."
2.
To hold the same faith; to agree. (R.) "The believers in pretended miracles have always previously symbolized with the performers of them."
3.
To use symbols; to represent ideas symbolically.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Symbolize" Quotes from Famous Books



... names to the list of Ireland's martyrs; so closes the sad and thrilling record which tells how Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien died. Over the neglected plot in which their calcined remains are lying no stone stands inscribed with their names—no emblem to symbolize their religion or their nationality. But to that gloomy spot the hearts of the Irish people will ever turn with affectionate remembrance; and the day will never come when, in this the land that bore them, the brave men whose ashes repose within it ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown

... placed on the retable of the Altar and lighted at the celebration of the Holy Eucharist; frequently called Eucharistic Lights. They are used to symbolize our Lord as {12} the Light of the world in His two Natures, Human and Divine. The symbolical use of lighted tapers in Divine Service is of primitive antiquity and their use is being generally restored in ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller

... paper carp, or koi, are hoisted only during the period of the great birth festival of boys, in the fifth month; that their presence above a house signifies the birth of a son; and that they symbolize the hope of the parents that their lad will be able to win his way through the world against all obstacles,—even as the real koi, the great Japanese carp, ascends swift rivers against the stream. In many parts of southern and western Japan you ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... flowery favors—the fragrant bunches of sentiment—that fly between cavalier and dame, and back again, from one end of the Corso to the other. Perhaps they may symbolize, more aptly than was intended, the poor, battered, wilted hearts of those who fling them; hearts which—crumpled and crushed by former possessors, and stained with various mishap—have been passed from hand to hand along the muddy ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... is this figure of the body, which is employed to symbolize the church. In the human system life and death are constantly working together. A certain amount of tissue must die every day and be cast out and buried, and a certain amount of new tissue must also be created and nourished daily in the same body. Arrest the death-process, and ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon

... Bridge, you see, and this stream of people passing over it symbolize the present generation. This side of the bridge represents the past, from which the present comes; this, over the bridge, is the future, towards which the pilgrims are hastening. The idea is to bridge the gulf between past and future, between the old worlds and the new; and with that ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... it is found in Psalm 74:18; Isa. 52:5; Rom. 2:24, etc.... On this charge both our Lord and Stephen were condemned to death by the Jews. When a person heard blasphemy he laid his hand on the head of the offender, to symbolize his sole responsibility for the guilt, and rising on his feet, tore his robe, which might never again be mended." ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... view of the Blessed Sacrament {85} destroys the nature of a Sacrament, making the matter symbolize something which ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes

... the church stands upon the moon (the Word of God), clothed by the sun (the Spirit). This is no disagreement with a former use we have made of the sun and moon as symbols. An object may be used to symbolize different things in ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... future joys, etc. This passage, quoted by Ruskin above, also illustrates what is comparatively rare in figurative language—taking the immaterial to exemplify the material. The latter is constantly used to symbolize or elucidate the former; but one would have to search long in our modern poetry to find a dozen instances where, as here, the relation is reversed. Cf. 639 below. We have another example in the second passage quoted by Ruskin. ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... a copper-colored silhouette of the island (the name Cyprus is derived from the Greek word for copper) above two green crossed olive branches in the center of the flag; the branches symbolize the hope for peace and reconciliation between the Greek and Turkish communities note: bottom between which is a red crescent and red star ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... maintained was the principal thing. But, the fact that so many women were nowadays lifting up their voices in a demand for various degrees of emancipation seemed to show that the long tresses and the flowing garb had really, by process of civilization, come to symbolize certain traditions of inferiority which weighed upon the general female consciousness. "Let us, then, ask what these traditions are, and what is to be said for or against them from the standpoint ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing

... general symbolize the dark and mysterious powers of primaeval nature and mind; the younger gods, whatsoever enters more immediately within the circle of consciousness. The former are more nearly allied to original chaos, the latter belong to a world already reduced to order. The Furies denote the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... the communion, Tom. You have been confirmed in the Church. You know what the consecrated bread and wine symbolize. You can recall to mind ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet

... with which it is studded, illustrating, as some of them do, workings of the Greek and Roman mind very far removed from the Christian idea of what is becoming in morals, make this astonishing statue an archaeological puzzle. The explanation that these gems were placed upon it to symbolize the victory of Christian purity over the impurity of the ancient religions of Greece and Rome is more ingenious than conclusive. This statue of gold (repousse), with regal crown enriched with precious stones and enamels on which may be distinguished Jupiter, Mars, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... in his arrangement and may differ from his interpretation, it must be admitted that the book contains interesting information and is a bold step in the right direction. It is a portraiture of freedom as a motive for artistic expression and an effort to symbolize this desire for liberation to animate the citizenry in making. It brings to light numerous facts as to how the thought of the Negro has been dominant in the minds of certain artists and how in the course of time race prejudice has caused the pendulum to swing the other way ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... funeral pyre, whose fire and light will make his spirit fit to enter his heavenly abode. He keeps a fire burning on the altar, worships Agni, the god of fire, and makes fire sacrifices on various occasions such as betrothals and marriages. To the Mohammedans lighted lamps symbolize holy places, and the Kaaba at Mecca, which contains a black stone supposed to have been brought from heaven, is illuminated by thousands of lamps. Many of the uses to which light was put in ancient times indicate its rarity and sacred nature. Doubtless, the increasing use of artificial light at festivals ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... are right, the American people, in rejecting, as they have, the European terms "colony," "dependence" and "empire," and the theory which these terms symbolize, have been true to the American System. In substituting for these terms the American terms, "free state," "just connection" and "union" and the American theory which these terms symbolize, it is not necessary for us to alter in the least our established views ...
— "Colony,"—or "Free State"? "Dependence,"—or "Just Connection"? • Alpheus H. Snow

... could not separate them, for they were held so firmly by the thick slime of the sea, that no hand could disunite them. 'They must go back, and be washed again and again by the waves,' a voice within seemed to say, 'on eternity's broad shore they will all be mated. They symbolize human life, and what in the external world are called marriages. The real mate is in the sea, but not ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams

... "pervades, expands, and preserves;" I infer this from the union of V, whose force is pervasion, Sh, expansion, and N, continuation. Rudra is "the breath that absorbs the breath." Aum is the most sacred name of all names; it is held to symbolize the action of the Great breath from its dawn to its close: it is the beginning, A, the middle, U, and the close M. It is also an affirmation of the relation of our spiritual nature to the universal Deity whose aspects are Brahma, Vishnu, and Rudra. I shall have more to ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell

... it from the immortal energies we had endowed it with their indifference; open to all consciousness it held within it the pole of utter joy and the pole of utter woe with all the arc that lies between; all the ecstasies of the countless worlds and suns and all their sorrows; all that ye symbolize as gods and all ye symbolize as devils—not negativing each other, for there is no such thing as negation, but holding them together, balancing them, encompassing them, pole ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... symbolize the four golds of California; the poppies, the citrus fruits, the metallic gold, and the golden wheat. The idea of the four golds is particularly novel and will some day yield far more interesting results, and I hope the subject ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

... they studied long the figures of those old Roman heroes chosen by Perugino to symbolize the virtues; figures which possess a unique and irresistible charm because of their athletic proportions and vigorous action, while their faces are sweet, womanish, and tender, full of the pensive, mystic devotion which is so characteristic of this ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt

... Himself in His hand? Did He not speak in metaphors and images continually? Did He not call Himself a Door and a Vine? Using Reason, then, to interpret these words, it is evident that He meant no more than that He was instituting a memorial feast, in which the bread should symbolize His Body and the wine His Blood. So too with many other distinctively Catholic doctrines—with the Petrine claims, with the authority 'to bind and loose,' and the rest. Catholic belief on these points exhibits not faith properly so-called—that is, Faith tested by Reason—but mere credulity. God ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson

... at Kamakura, of which an illustration is given opposite, is one of the largest in Japan. It is fifty feet high, and, as a work of art, is without a rival. The boss protruding from the forehead is supposed to represent a jewel, and to symbolize Illumination. ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.

... the sardonic element in Hunt's unmoral nature that this Maggie, through whom he was trying to symbolize so much, he knew to be a petty larcenist: shoplifting and matters of similar consequence. She had been cynically frank about this to him; casual, almost boastful. Her possessing a bent toward such activities was hardly ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott

... innocent, rich, full of life, exquisitely beautiful in order and grace of growth, I have thought best to symbolize to you, in the series of types of the power of the Greek gods, placed in your educational series, by the blossom of the wild strawberry; which in rising from its trine cluster of trine leaves,—itself as beautiful as a ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... subconsciousness, that wily self has ways and means of expression. In dreams, in humor, in the slip of the tongue, in forgetfulness, in myths of the race, in the symptoms of the hysteric patient, in the creations of writers and artists, the subconsciousness seeks to symbolize in innocent (or acceptable) form its crude wishes. By taking a dream, for example, and analyzing it by what is known as the free association method, one discovers the real meaning of the terms used, ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... prepare for our projected change of life." Lovers of Burns linger over this final parting, and detail the impressive ceremonials with which the pair solemnized their betrothal: they stood on either side of a brook, they laved their hands in the water and scattered it in the air to symbolize the purity of their intentions; clasping hands above an open Bible, they swore to be true to each other forever, then exchanged Bibles, and parted never to ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... large, Homeric. Yet, judged at his work, no higher type of employee ever existed, nor one more dependable. He was the soul of honor in all the ways of his calling. The very blue of the sky, bending evenly over all men alike, seemed to symbolize his instinct for justice. Faithfulness and manliness were his chief traits; his ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough

... rapacious, sanguinary debauch, which shows itself more hostile to social order, and to which we have wished to call the attention of reflecting persons on terminating this recital. May this last horrible scene symbolize the imminent peril which continually menaces society! Yes, let one reflect that the cohesion, the dreaded increase of this race of robbers and murderers is a kind of living protest against the defects of restraining laws, and, above all, against the absence of preventive measures, of provident ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... a dying meteor,' &c. The dying meteor, in this simile, must represent the Splendour; the wreath of moonlight vapour stands for the pale limbs of Adonais; the cold night may in a general way symbolize ...
— Adonais • Shelley

... are not now commonly poured forth to God nor are doles distributed to His poor; the epitsphium is no longer delivered from the steps of the churchyard cross, nor does the solemn lamprophoria symbolize the life ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various

... astonishing in their exhibition of mastery. There is no sign of doubt or timorousness anywhere in the work, though the moments are not infrequent when the utterance is more fluent than significant. The typical phrases which he chose to symbolize the persons and passions of the play are most of them deficient in plasticity, and nearly all of them lack that expressiveness which Wagner knew so well how to impress upon his melodic elements; the greater, therefore, was the surprise ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... usage seemed a deviation from the passive attitude she had adopted, and she rose and shut the door. She knew that she could still hear his step on the stairs—he had his father's quick swinging gait—but as she sat listening, and vainly trying to write, the closed door seemed to symbolize a refusal to share in his trial, a hardening of herself against his need of her. What if he should come down intending to speak, and should be turned from his purpose? Slighter obstacles have deflected the course of events in those indeterminate moments when the ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton

... if I may so express it, vegetal. Trees as well as flowers and fruits symbolize for me beings and emotions. Plants as well as animals and stones filled my childhood with a mysterious charm. When I was four years old I remained rapt in contemplation of the broken stones of the mountain, lying in heaps along ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes

... general signification of "smoke," regarded as a symbol, appears to be, effect or consequence. Thus, in the remarkable symbol of "a smoking furnace" seen in vision by Abraham (Gen. xv. 17), the fire of the furnace may represent the operation of the law, and the smoke may symbolize "the abounding" of the sins of mankind consequent upon that operation (see Rom. v. 20; also compare 2 Esdras iv. 48). But in the passage before us we have "smoke of torment," of which smoke it is said that it "ascends up for ever and ever," signifying, it would seem, the perpetuity of ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis

... said Durtal, suddenly, to himself, "if my theories are correct, the architecture which could, by itself alone, symbolize Catholicism as a whole, and represent the complete Bible in both Testaments, must be either Romanesque with the pointed arch, or a transition style, half Romanesque and ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... all! That first finding of the gold on the big drill had begun it.... He crossed swiftly to the gleaming thing that seemed somehow to symbolize his loss. ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin

... book had been given her to illustrate she had not even started to paint the totem of the Sunrise Camp on its brown leather cover, although Sunrise Hill stood, always before her in its changing beauty. The girls had taken its name for their camp with the thought that the hill might symbolize their own efforts to look upward always to the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook

... plain. And a final ascent brings us to a colossal Buddha, now reclining, as if his work were done and he were entering upon the bliss of Nirvana. At this last stage there is also a series of waxwork figures which symbolize the vanity of life and of human desire. Four forms represent, first, the babe at its mother's breast; secondly, the youth full of vigor; then the older man haggard with care; and finally, the corpse, upon whose vitals the birds of the ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong

... the three great disciplines of War, the Monarchy and the Priesthood, all that the CAMP, the PALACE, and the TEMPLE may symbolize, to train the multitudes forward to intelligent and premeditated combinations for all the great purposes of society. The result will at length be free governments among men, when virtue and intelligence become qualities of the multitudes; but for ignorance such ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... mortal are brought to us. If we follow him, to us there can be no dead. Those who know not this, may still believe in death and weep over the graves of their beloved; [5] but with him is Life eternal, which never changes to death. The eating of bread and drinking of wine at the Lord's supper, merely symbolize the spiritual refresh- ment of God's children having rightly read His Word, whose entrance into their understanding is healthful life. [10] This is the ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... Galds' most meretricious play, is intended to symbolize the union of the worn-out aristocracy and the vigorous plebs to form a new and thriving stock. The duchess of San Quintn, left poor and a widow, weds Vctor, a socialist workman of doubtful parentage. The last act is weak and superfluous, the devices of the action ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos

... indicated scholasticism: worn by females, they would indicate a self-dedication to what for them would be regarded as pedantic studies. But, says an objector, no rational female would wear cerulean socks. Perhaps not, female taste being too good. But as such socks would symbolize such a profession of pedantry, so, inversely, any profession of pedantry, by whatever signs expressed, would be symbolized reproachfully by the imputation of wearing cerulean socks. It classed a woman, in effect, as a scholastic pedant. Now, however, when the vast diffusion ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... the exposition was intended to symbolize the history of the Louisiana territory representing the successive occupants of the soil—the wild animals; the Indians; the discoverers; the explorers; the hunters; the trappers, and the pioneers. The aim was to make it one vast educational object lesson. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... inscription closed with an appeal to various gods to strike with their curses any intruder upon the owner's rights. In addition to this, the stones are embellished with serpents, scorpions, unicorns, and various realistic or fantastic representations of animal forms. These, it would seem, symbolize the spirits, the sight of which, it was hoped, might act as a further and effectual warning against interference with ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... seven days in leafy booths made of branches of trees. It was the last day of the feast. There was a large concourse of people gathered in one of the temple areas; not women, but men; not sitting, but standing. Up yonder stand the priests, pouring water out of large jars, to symbolize the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the nation of Israel. Just then Jesus speaks, and amid the silence of the intently watching throng His voice rings out: "If any man thirst let him come unto Me and drink; he that believeth ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon

... this. Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and sanctity, that I could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any mere tricks of the stage. No, thought I, there must be some sober reason for this thing; furthermore, it must symbolize something unseen. Can it be, then, that by that act of physical isolation, he signifies his spiritual withdrawal for the time, from all outward worldly ties and connexions? Yes, for replenished with the meat and wine of the word, to the faithful man of God, this pulpit, I see, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... tradition, or your next-door neighbor's. Therefore, since that now dim day when the Colonies acquired a self-consciousness of their own, many good Americans have chosen England and the English to symbolize whatever irked them in their own tradition. It is from England and the English that we have felt ourselves growing away, from which we had to grow away in order to be ourselves and not a shadow— imitators, second-bests, Colonials. England and the English have had our vituperation whenever the ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... shelter to him from the heat of the sun, and a protection from the perils of the night. When his worship and adoration came in time to be transferred from the stone itself to the divinity it had begun to symbolize, it became an altar on which the libation of oil or wine might be poured out to the gods, and on the seals of Syria and the sculptured slabs of Assyria we accordingly find it transformed into a portable altar, and merged in the cone-like symbol of the goddess Asherah. ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce

... was restored to life. There is no plausible correspondence between these cases and the sending out from the ark of the patriarchal family to repeople the world. Their real purpose would seem plainly to be to symbolize the thought that, however the body of man crumbles in pieces, there is life for him still, he does not hopelessly die. They likewise say that the egg which was consecrated in the Mysteries, at the beginning of the rites, was intended as an ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... many, and those armed with the best? And look—if a sheepman is killed there is the law, you know, and lawyers—yes, and money!" He shrugged his shoulders and threw out his hands, peeping ruefully through the fingers to symbolize prison bars. ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... soul, presents himself in three states: the sensitive, intellectual and moral; and in his organism in the eccentric, concentric and normal states; a priori, you may conclude that nature has three colors to symbolize the three states, and experience ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... says (De Instit. Cleric. i), "the baptized is signed by the priest with chrism on the top of the head, but by the bishop on the forehead; that the former unction may symbolize the descent of the Holy Ghost on him, in order to consecrate a dwelling to God: and that the second also may teach us that the sevenfold grace of the same Holy Ghost descends on man with all fulness of sanctity, knowledge and virtue." Hence ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... are lucky if you ever get away from it. It is all you can see. Let any one pronounce anything, and your feeling of a contradiction being implied becomes a habit, almost a motor habit in some persons who symbolize by a stereotyped gesture the position, sublation, and final reinstatement involved. If you say 'two' or 'many,' your speech betrayeth you, for the very name collects them into one. If you express doubt, your ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... are but ghosts," said the Scientist, "combinations of symbols. The combinations change as the soul that they symbolize changes. I look at your body and it tells me of your soul. I see a soul full of doubt and darkness, and the doubt and darkness are symbolized in the curved and ugly form of your legs. Brush away the doubt! Dispel the darkness! Aspire toward the Life ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg

... remarks: "Among many nations, the mysterious aspects of woman's fertility lead to rites that, by a perversion of their original import, appear to be obscene. The prostitutes were priestesses attached to the Ishtar cult, and who took part in ceremonies intended to symbolize fertility." Whether there is any significance in the fact that the first two months of the Babylonian year (roughly corresponding to our March and April), when we should expect births to be at a maximum, were dedicated to Ea and Bel, who, according to varying legends, were the creators of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceeding great army." It should first be observed that this account is not given as an actual occurrence, but, after the manner of Ezekiel, as a prophetic vision meant to symbolize something. Now, of what was it intended as the symbol? a doctrine, or a coming event? a general truth to enlighten and guide uncertain men, or an approaching deliverance to console and encourage the desponding Jews? It is fair to let the prophet ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... parts of his works, which with you are lost; namely, that natural history, which he wrote, of all plants, from the cedar of Libanus to the moss that groweth out of the wall, and of all things that have life and motion. This maketh me think that our king, finding himself to symbolize in many things with that king of the Hebrews (which lived many years before him), honored him with the title of this foundation. And I am rather induced to be of this opinion, for that I find in ancient records this Order or ...
— The New Atlantis • Francis Bacon

... women—that's why you don't understand them. Women were for you a treat in store, until the war broke. Then suddenly you discovered that you had missed the most precious thing in life. You hadn't the time to be wise in your choice, so you turned to some one young and accessible. Her youth seemed to symbolize all that you coveted at the moment; it symbolized going on forever. You weren't really in love with her as an individual; you were in love with the thought of love and youth. You won't believe it, but almost any young girl who ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... calm and beauty symbolize The peace which follows long annoy, And lend our earth-bent, mourning eyes, Some hint ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... "made him wallow naked in the pathetic." It always interests me about Dickens to think how much first-class work he did and how almost all of it was mixed up with every kind of cheap, second-rate matter. I am very fond of him. There are innumerable characters that he has created which symbolize vices, virtues, follies, and the like almost as well as the characters in Bunyan; and therefore I think the wise thing to do is simply to skip the bosh and twaddle and vulgarity and untruth, and get the benefit out of the rest. Of course one ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt

... soul, eager for knowledge, may find a hidden meaning, and decipher and discover the beauty of God that, though but dimly, is shadowed forth in them, and of which they are the pictures or rather emblems, because they do not represent, but only symbolize it. On this distinction I dwell at times to strengthen my scruples and mortify the flesh. For, I consider, if I love the beauty of earthly things as they are, it is idolatry; I ought to love this beauty as a sign, as the symbol of a beauty ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera

... potentialities had gone unobserved by the quiet little old man. Through the beauty of his own soul he had been enabled to translate the beauties of another, until gradually Delight Hathaway had come to symbolize for him universal woman, the prototype of all that was purest, most selfless, most tender; most to be revered, watched over, beloved. Yet for all his worship the girl remained for him very human, a creature with bewitching and appealing ways. In the same spirit in which he rejoiced in ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... of pride, which sometimes arose to life, and this thought of something better; at other times she felt as if her marriage with Mr. Carlisle would doom her forever to go without any treasure but what an earthly coronet well lined with ermine might symbolize and ensure. Meanwhile weeks flew by; while Eleanor studied the Bible and sought for light in her solitary hours at night, and joined in all Mr. Carlisle's plans of gayety by day. September and October were both gone. November's short ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner

... presume that the first living beings sought on the one hand to accumulate, without ceasing, energy borrowed from the sun, and on the other hand to expend it, in a discontinuous and explosive way, in movements of locomotion. Even to-day, perhaps, a chlorophyl-bearing Infusorian such as the Euglena may symbolize this primordial tendency of life, though in a mean form, incapable of evolving. Is the divergent development of the two kingdoms related to what one may call the oblivion of each kingdom as regards one of the two halves of ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... this should be considered the north, as in the Aztec superstitions one class of the dead was located in that region; but a more thorough study leads me to the conclusion that these figures are intended to represent the earth and to symbolize the fact that here is to be found the point where the old cycle ends and the new begins. I will refer to this again when I return to the description ...
— Notes on Certain Maya and Mexican Manuscripts • Cyrus Thomas

... principal forms of their inspiration, are grouped, superb and mournful. Who are they? No doubt Madame de Pompadour, the Geisha of Japanese art, and finally, bestial and degraded, La Fille Elisa—types that symbolize the most salient aspects of that genius—historic, aesthetic, and fictional—which will keep green the precious memory of ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt

... secrets like a faithful friend and had stood to him as the changeless symbol of their love. It had stood a mute but sympathetic witness of his hopes, his despairs and the struggles that lay between them. In dark hours it had been a silent comforter, and in the last year it had almost come to symbolize his better self as to that self he came slowly back. And in the darkest hour it was the last friend to whom he had meant to say good-by. Now it was gone. Always he had lifted his eyes to it every morning when he rose, but now, next ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... of calling up some image or diagram or gesture that symbolizes the task. A visual image of the nose on the face may serve as a symbol of the part-whole relationship, a small circle inside a larger one may symbolize the relation of an object to a class of objects, and gesturing first to the right and then to the left may symbolize the relationship of opposites. But as the subject grows accustomed to a given task, these conscious symbols ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... ransom which she, a solitary girl, paid in her own person for the national deliverance. The grander half of the story was thus sacrificed, as being irrelevant to Southey's political object; and yet, after all, the half which he retained did not at all symbolize that object. It is singular, indeed, to find a long poem, on an ancient subject, adapting itself hieroglyphically to a modern purpose; 2dly, to find it failing of this purpose; and 3dly, if it had not failed, so planned that it could have succeeded only by a sacrifice ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... of it in this evening's paper. Mary McKenna lives south of Market Street. She is a poor but honest woman. She is also patriotic. But she has erroneous ideas concerning the American flag and the protection it is supposed to symbolize. And here's what happened to her. Her husband had an accident and was laid up in hospital three months. In spite of taking in washing, she got behind in her rent. Yesterday they evicted her. But first, she hoisted an American flag, and from ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London

... garment and food, and preys on his own case and shelter until he has literally eaten himself stark naked; after which he rolls up a second leaf, and so on progressively. Thus in his larval life does he symbolize some restless nation that makes itself many successive constitutions and forms of government, in none of which it abides long; but afterwards some higher thing, when he rests motionless, in form like a sarcophagus, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... symbolism, and the great object lesson of the Washington monument will doubtless prove a large factor in the moral and political education of present and future generations. Let us hope that it will be a warning as well as a benediction; and that while its sunlit altitude may fitly symbolize the truth that 'righteousness exalteth a nation,' its shadow falling on the dome of the capitol may be a daily remainder that 'sin is a reproach to any people.' Surely it will not have been reared in vain if, on the day of its ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... to conceal the ugliness of an iron frame, as has been done in the Tower Bridge. Like the Acropolis of Athens, the cathedral of a medieval city was intended to glorify the grandeur of the victorious city, to symbolize the union of its crafts, to express the glory of each citizen in a city of his own creation. After having achieved its craft revolution, the city often began a new cathedral in order to express the new, wider, and broader union which had been ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin

... faces which symbolize to the beholder many subtleties of soul-beauty which by no other method could gain expression. Those subtleties may not, probably do not, exist in the possessor of the face. The power of such a countenance lies not so much in what it actually represents, ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... another dance, that of the qojòni-qaçà l (chant of terrestrial beauty); but in the mysteries learned in Ahyèqo¢eçi' the two ceremonies are one. Here he was instructed how to make and to sacrifice four kethà wns. To symbolize this visit of Dsilyi' Neyáni and this union of the two ceremonies, the first sand picture is ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews

... certain seasons in the year to high places and woods, where it is supposed they worshiped their divinities, but the origin of the custom is forgot amongst themselves." If a man dies by violence, they lay him out with his hat and shoes on, as if to give him the appearance of a wayfarer, and "symbolize one surprised in the great journey of life." A woman dying in childbed is dressed for the grave in her bridal ornaments. Mr. Rose is very scornful of the notion that these people are Cimbri, and holds that ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... lately added to his house showed any further trace of damp, and whether the new chauffeur was washing the new motor car with all his heart. The wall showed no further trace of damp, and the new chauffeur's bent back seemed to symbolize an extreme conscientiousness. ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... been given to this tale. In its primitive form it was doubtless a pure myth of the rain-clouds; but in its later forms we may believe it to symbolize the maritime explorations in the eastern seas, of some of the tribes of ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... architects and of artistic tastes. It was a simple ritual which most of them were to house, and the absence of an ornate service demanded the absence of ornamentation, which would be meaningless because it would symbolize nothing. The influence of the Puritans in Massachusetts, the Baptists in Rhode Island, the Dutch Reformed in New York, the Lutherans and Presbyterians in the Middle and Southern colonies, and the Friends in Pennsylvania, whatever their denominational differences, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... could be no such thing as pure beauty,—at the best only adherent beauty,—in a moral action, since a moral action does not please in and of itself. At the same time Kant held that the highest use of beauty is to symbolize moral truth, and in illustrating the possibilities of this symbolism he indulged in ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... o'th' world, just nymph, when man did dwell Under thy shade, whence his provision fell; Sallads the meal, wildings were the dissert: No tree yet learn'd by ill-example, art, With insititious fruit to symbolize, As in an emblem, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... history have for the most part gone down to time identified with the figure of a people's hero: with some personality which may be said in a certain manner to epitomize and symbolize the character of a race. "I and my nation are one": thus Poland's greatest poet, Adam Mickiewicz, sums up the devotion that will not shrink before the highest tests of sacrifice for a native country. "My name is Million, because I love millions and for millions suffer ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner

... silver, yellow, and green from the shifting angles of the gems that move with their wearers, or the confused motions of some of our inferior fellow-creatures that flutter from side to side of the road as intimidating objects fail on the eyes planted on opposite sides of their heads, feebly symbolize these human displays of unstable equilibrium. We must adapt our method to circumstances; but the apostolic rule, of "All things to all men," should not touch, as in Paul it never did, the fundamental consistency of principle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... by his side, Oppression stands and hugs a clanking chain, While deeper in the gloom, with eyes aglow And matted hair still dripping red with gore, Sits War, her trembling hand enclasped within The spectral hand of Death. O Christus, thou To whom it has been given once again To symbolize the passion of the cross, Approach thy task with heart inspired by love, And when the Saviour's words fall from thy lips, Be thine the Saviour's exaltation when He told the dying thief upon the cross That he should be ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove

... the lion, who with his only cry and roaring affrights all beasts, dreads and feareth only a white cock? For, as Proclus saith, Libro de Sacrificio et Magia, it is because the presence of the virtue of the sun, which is the organ and promptuary of all terrestrial and sidereal light, doth more symbolize and agree with a white cock, as well in regard of that colour, as of his property and specifical quality, than with a lion. He saith, furthermore, that devils have been often seen in the shape of lions, which at the sight of a white cock have presently vanished. This is the cause why Galli ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... A better frontispiece for historians of Rome, if we mistake not, would be some symbol of the patroness of the lowlands and their protectress against the wild tribes of the highlands. There should also be something to symbolize the protectress of Italy against the Gauls, whose irruptions Rome, though defeated at Allia, succeeded ultimately in arresting and hurling back, to the general benefit of Italian civilization which, we may be sure, felt ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... term, were any objects, ornamental or otherwise, worn on the bodies of men or animals, and believed to neutralize the ill effects of noxious drugs, incantations, witchcrafts, and all morbific agencies whatever.[4:1] To the Oriental mind amulets symbolize the bond between a protective power and dependent mundane creatures; they are prophylactics against the forces of evil, and may be properly characterized as objects superstitiously worn, whose alleged magical potency is derived from the faith and imagination ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... tents. The Dakotahs, with their high pointed buffalo skin tents, above the town, and their decorations and implements of flags, feathers, skins and personal "braveries," presented the scene of a Bedouin encampment. Some of the chiefs had the skins of skunks tied to their heels, to symbolize that they never ran, as that animal is noted for its ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... unmindful of grammar, even of rhetoric, on occasion. She knew there was no such word as "git", but she was seeking to symbolize her idea in sound. As she closed her teeth, each little pearl meeting a pearly rival, her "git" had something of the force ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis

... mystery whose key is lost. He was humble, and apparently depressed; and he let his head droop pensively, and looked as if he might be trying to call back to his mind what it was that he had used to symbolize ages ago when he began his function. There was another impressive thing close at hand, but I was not privileged to see it. That was the sacred fire—a fire which is supposed to have been burning without interruption for more than two centuries; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... with a scene representing the worship of the Sun-god in the Temple of Sippar. The Sun-god is seated on a throne within a pavilion holding in one hand a disk and bar which may symbolize eternity. Above his head are the three symbols of the Moon, the Sun, and the planet Venus. On a stand in front of the pavilion rests the disk of the Sun, which is held in position by ropes grasped in the hands of two divine beings who are supported ...
— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum

... a series of wanderings in search of the restoration of his vigor, and this motif is evidently a continuation of the nature myth to symbolize the sun's wanderings during the dark winter in the hope of renewed vigor with the coming of the spring. Professor Haupt's view is that the disease from which Gilgamesh is supposed to be suffering is of ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous

... broke the nation apart. But it survived. Since the Civil War we have grown rich and fat, flaccid and spineless. We are like a great, careless boy with a rich father; our crops and material resources symbolize the rich father who is able to pay for all his son's foolishness. And so the youth has never stopped to think. But underneath that careless exterior there are muscle and character. For what is the history of ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp

... ft. 8 in. in diameter, was cut from a single block of granite weighing 50 tons and brought on the deck of a schooner from an island on the Maine coast to the dock at Tarrytown. The heroic figure at the top represents Neptune, and the figures below symbolize the Atlantic, ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous

... nopal petals brightens the graves in Spring and the mesquite showers them with its golden pods in Summer; where the sweet scent of the juajilla loads the air, and the sun ever shines down out of a bright and cloudless sky; where a diminutive forest of crosses of wood and stone symbolize the faith he in life refused to accept—now, perhaps, Pat Garrett has learned how ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... heels of the advance battalion, among its stragglers, taking its white dust into their throats and eyes. The dragoman was waning and he made a number of attempts to stay Coleman, but no one could have had influence upon Coleman's steady rush with his eyes always straight to the front as if thus to symbolize his steadiness of purpose. Rivulets of sweat marked the dust on his face, and two of his toes were now paining as if they were being burned off. He was obliged to concede a privilege of limping, but he ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... distinguished for their solidity rather than for their good looks, the portraits of the guests whom one would expect to find installed in those chairs. A grand piano was there; but the absence of any music in its neighbourhood indicated that its purpose was chiefly to symbolize harmony in the home life, and to provide a spacious crush-room for the knick-knacks overflowing from many tables. These were dominated by a large signed photograph of Queen Victoria. In front of an open fireplace, ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... rights of exemption and of preeminence, their voice potential in the councils of the state, and their claim to be foremost in its defence in the hour of its danger. Some ray of imagination there is, which, falling on the knightly shields and heraldic devices that symbolize their conceded superiority, at least dazzles the eyes and delights the fancy of the crowd, so as to blind them to the inhering vices and essential fallacies of the Order to whose will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... God. Likeman had puzzled and silenced him, only upon reflection to convince him that amidst such intricacies of explanation the spirit cannot live. Creeds may be symbolical, but symbols must not prevaricate. A church that can symbolize everything ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... country well supplied with corn, was indefatigable in settling lawsuits amicably, and did wonders in calming inflamed passions by his goodness. The Pistoiese were never able to discover to which of the two political parties he leaned. As if to symbolize the common rights and interests of all, he spent his leisure hours in writing the history of the city, which was preserved, bound in a purple cover, as a sacred relic in the town hall. When he took his leave the city presented him with a banner bearing the municipal ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... mysterious nocturnal separation from all outward signs of life, she felt herself more strangely confronted with her fate. The sensation made her brain reel, and she tried to shut out consciousness by pressing her hands against her eyes. But the terrible silence and emptiness seemed to symbolize her future—she felt as though the house, the street, the world were all empty, and she alone left ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... and they symbolize to her, Love settling unawares upon men, the level and low, the burnt and bare, in themselves (as are ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... say there is no suggestion in realism; it is unwise to clutter the stage with needless detail. But we cannot idealize a little sordid ice-box where a working girl keeps her miserable supper; we cannot symbolize a broken jug standing in a wash-basin of loud design. Those are the necessary evils of a boarding-house, and I ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco

... tracery and wood-work; while, strange to say, in several chambers grotesque wooden birds were suspended from the ceiling like malformed ducks, conveying at first no idea of the Holy Dove which the old lords had desired to symbolize, yet probably in those unquiet days their best conception of this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... driving from the steamer to the hotel, is the large scale on which the city has been planned; the area of squares and streets seems proportioned to the vast dimensions of the Russian empire: indeed the silent solitudes of the city may be said to symbolize the desert tracks of central Russia and Siberia. Only on the continent of America is so much land at command, so large a sweep of territory brought within the circuit of city life. In the old world, Munich offers the closest analogy to St. Petersburg, and that not only by wide and half-occupied ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... admixture of allegory this story was set out it is hard to say—Tennyson himself could not in later years be induced to define his purpose—but it seems certain that many of the characters are intended to symbolize higher and lower qualities. According to some interpretations King Arthur stands for the power of conscience and Queen Guinevere for the heart. Galahad represents purity, Bors rough honesty, Percivale humility, and Merlin the power ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... created on the second day to divide the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above, so there was a curtain in the Tabernacle to divide between the holy and the most holy. As God created the great sea on the third say, so did He appoint the laver in the sanctuary to symbolize it, and as He had on that day destined the plant kingdom as nourishment for man, so did He now require a table with bread in the Tabernacle. The candlestick in the Tabernacle corresponded to the two luminous bodies, the sun and the ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... what is generally understood as Christian symbolic art had its finest development about the 13th century. Gothic art is essentially symbolic and in many instances, its individual forms have specific significance. Thus the common equilateral triangle was used to symbolize the Holy Trinity, as are the two entwined triangles. Other symbols employed at this period setting forth the mystery of the Unity of the Trinity, without beginning and without end, are three interlaced circles, and a very curious ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath

... hope, think my wariness to be destitute either of Example, or else of Reason. For we see that the Chymists will not allow the Aristotelians that the Salt in Ashes ought to be called Earth, though the Saline and Terrestrial part symbolize in weight, in dryness, in fixness and fusibility, only because the one is sapid and dissoluble in Water, and the other not: Besides, we see that sapidness and volatility are wont to denominate the Chymists Mercury or Spirit; and yet how many Bodies, think you, may agree in those Qualities ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle

... and stirred them well about. Thus nobody had the least idea where they finally landed—so the cutting was bound to be strictly fair. It made much fun—the bride herself cut the first slice—hoping it might hold the picayune, and thus symbolize good fortune. The ring presaged the next bride or groom, the darning needle single blessedness to the end, the thimble, many to sew for, or feed, the button, fickleness or disappointment. After the bridal ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams

... and, one feels, disappointment. The face of the Madonna is already sad and hopeless; but the Child is perhaps the most splendid and determined of any in all Renaissance sculpture. He may, if we like, symbolize the new generation that is always deriving sustenance from the old, without care or thought of what the old has to suffer; he crushes his head against his mother's breast in a very passion ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... a unit, and a function of the house is to symbolize and emphasize family unity, there should, nevertheless, be provision for some individual privacy. The most elementary provision, of course, is that there be at least three bedrooms—on the assumption that the normal family will contain both boys ...
— Better Homes in America • Mrs W.B. Meloney

... crossing limpid streams by quaint bridges. Death had overtaken them beside a monster tawny river of which their imaginations had not conceived, a river which draws tribute from the remote places of an unknown land,—a river, indeed, which, mixing all the waters, seemed to symbolize a coming race which was to conquer the land by its resistless flow, even as the Mississippi bore ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... pool of sunshine, with finely sifted winds purring over it, but under the poplars there were shadows and growing things that loved the shadows, crowding about the old stone benches at each side. Somehow, my daily glimpse of Uncle Dick's garden soon came to symbolize for me a meaning easier to translate into life and soul than into words. It was a power for good within me, making its influence ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery



Words linked to "Symbolize" :   be, embody, symbolization, symbolizing, personify, epitomize, represent, symbol, typify, symbolizer, epitomise, mean, stand for



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