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Symbolism   /sˈɪmbəlˌɪzəm/   Listen
Symbolism

noun
1.
A system of symbols and symbolic representations.
2.
The practice of investing things with symbolic meaning.  Synonyms: symbolisation, symbolization.
3.
An artistic movement in the late 19th century that tried to express abstract or mystical ideas through the symbolic use of images.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Symbolism" Quotes from Famous Books



... Chick felt the full significance of symbolism. Whereas before it had been but an incident of adventure, now it was the symbol of mystic revelation. It was not only the motif for all other decoration upon the walls and minor elements of the temple; it was the emblem ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... notably in the cases of the large stones illustrated in the book, p. 75, as derived from combinations of ornaments commonly found on AEgean pottery, these motives being themselves connected with the symbolism of sun-worship. In the case of other markings, it was considered these were possibly derived from the decoration of certain objects of Scandinavian origin. In an article in L'Anthropologie, vol. xxiii, p. 29, dealing with the subject, M. J. Dechelette has put forward other views with regard ...
— The Bronze Age in Ireland • George Coffey

... Christmas observance at different times and in different lands are entertainingly shown by one trained in choosing and presenting the best to younger readers. The symbolism, good cheer, and sentiment of the grandest of holidays are shown as they appeal in similar fashion to those whose lives seem so widely diverse. The first chapter tells of the Yule-Tide of the Ancients, and the eight succeeding chapters deal respectively with the observance of Christmas and New Year's, ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks

... through that dust and the grammatical difficulties, the spectacle of the chorus chanting grotesquely, helping out protagonist and antagonist, masked and buskined, with the telling of incomprehensible parricides, of inexplicable incest, of gods faded beyond symbolism, of that Relentless Law we did not believe in for a moment, that no modern western European can believe in. We thought of the characters in the unconvincing wigs and costumes of our school performance. No Gilbert Murray had come as yet to touch ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... were charmed away from the labour of epic invention, by the spell of the preacher. The task of representing characters—Waldere or Theodoric or Attila—was forgotten in the lyrical rapture of devotion, in effusion of pathos. The fascination of religious symbolism crept over minds that had hardly yet begun to see and understand things as they are; and in all their reading the "moral," "anagogical," and "tropological" significations ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... very different state of social feeling from the "peasants" of the Dutch painters. In the Salon of 1850 there appeared a picture called "The Sower" and representing a young peasant sowing grain. There was nothing in the subject to connect it particularly with any religious symbolism—not even with the Parable of the Sower who went forth to sow; nor with any series of personifications of the months. This was a simple peasant of the Norman coast, in his red blouse and blue trousers, his legs ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... firstling bled upon the altar it typified the faith of them all in a better sacrifice to come. Then came the Jewish dispensation with its array of services and external splendour, with its expressive symbolism and its magnificent temple; and then, rising into a higher altitude, the fulness of time came, and Christianity—the religion not of the sensuous but of the spiritual, not of the imagination awed by scenes of grandeur nor bewildered by ceremonies of terror, but of ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King

... the perusal of it had exasperated him. Forsaking the customary bachelor's flat where in previous works he had been so fond of laying scenes of debauchery, Santerre had this time tried to rise to the level of pure art and lyrical symbolism. The story he told was one of a certain Countess Anne-Marie, who, to escape a rough-mannered husband of extreme masculinity, had sought a refuge in Brittany in the company of a young painter endowed with divine inspiration, one Norbert, ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... in Paris a famous clairvoyant who always uses tea-leaves as the medium for her powers of divination. Some are inclined to jeer at the fortune in the teacup, but if the language of symbolism is rightly understood, the medium through which it is seen ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent

... at one period, clear out of his orbit, and wrote as he inspired. The dazzling sunbursts of Richter's imagination, however,—its gigantic procession of imagery, moving along in sublime and magnificent marches from earth to heaven, from heaven to earth,—the array, symbolism, and embodiment of his manifold ideas, ceased in the end to enslave, though they still captivated Carlyle's mind; and he turns from him to the thinkers who deal with God's geometry, and penetrate into the abysses ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... reviewer who exasperates beyond patience the lover of good books. He is the man who gets a book wrong from the start, and then plods on after his own conception, which has no reference whatsoever to the author's. He is the man who takes irony seriously, misses the symbolism when there is any, and invariably guesses wrong as to the sources of the characters ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... appeal to fraternity among nations. In that flag are blended the past and the present with the glorious colors of the three nations representative of St. Louis's early and contemporary history. Let us welcome its appealing and eloquent symbolism like the ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... then to the bare season. The myth has been attached to Gilgamesh as a favorite figure, and then woven into a pattern with the episode of Enkidu and the bull. The bull episode can be detached from the nature myth without any loss to the symbolism of the tale ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous

... 208.] This is, of course, not intended as a complete description, but shows that the spirit of the earlier Ṣufism was profoundly ethical. Count Gobineau, however, assures us that the Ṣufism which he knew was both enervating and immoral. Certainly the later Ṣufi poets were inclined to overpress symbolism, and the luscious sweetness of the poetry may have been unwholesome for some—both for poets and for readers. Still I question whether, for properly trained readers, this evil result should follow. The doctrine of the impermanence of all that is not God and that love between two human hearts is but ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne

... commemoration of our Saviour's nativity. There are various other cakes peculiar to this season. At Llantwit Major, Co. Glamorgan, they make "finger cakes"—or cakes in the form of a hand, on the back of which is a little bird; but what its symbolism is I know not. In some parts of Cornwall it is customary for each household to make a batch of currant cakes on Christmas eve. These cakes are made in the ordinary manner, and coloured with a decoction of saffron, as is the custom in those parts. ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... the Kingsway Theatre, the critic of a halfpenny morning paper refers to it as a "medley of weird psychopathy and symbolism." Just as if he were ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various

... Station (1895). In this book she is a disciple of naturalism, not merely in respect to the fidelity with which life in the art centre and the restless haste and nervous disorderliness in an artist's family are depicted, but also in the use of symbolism after the manner of Zola: for the switching station, with its purposeless turmoil, its disquietude, its pulling and hauling, is a symbol for the noisy life in general, and in particular for the comfortless, hapless marriage in which a delicately organized artistic soul is worried ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... was a day of silences. I traced this figure idly on the sand today, and suddenly understood the symbolism of the scarab. But did the Egyptians anticipate the Redemption? As men are impressed by the face of the world, so is the world impressed by their faces. The face, as mirror of the soul, shines forth with electricity ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton

... is understood to be justice personified. All Brahmanical ceremonies exhibit, we may say, ritualism and symbolism ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir

... boldly, though not irreverently, mysticism and symbolism on the one side; cast away with utter scorn geometry and legalism on the other; seize hold of God's hand and look full in the face of His creation, and there is nothing He will not enable you ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... yellow fever were wrapped in great yellow sheets before they were buried,—a curious touch of symbolism in keeping with the fantastic habit of mind which we find everywhere in the early annals of America. Mr. E.N. Tailer, among others, can recall, many years later, seeing the crumbling yellow folds of shrouds uncovered by breaking coffin walls, when the heavy guns placed in the Square sank too ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin

... la lengua;" "y le cortarian la lengua." Irving understands it to mean cutting off the tongue. But in those days of symbolism slitting the tip of that unruly member was a recognized ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... fragment will give some idea of the mysterious symbolism by which she was interiorly directed. During a portion of the year 1820 she performed many labours in spirit, for several different parishes; her prayers being represented under the figure of most severe labour in a vineyard. What ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich

... letter to Mr. Poodle. After mailing it at a street-box, he had a sudden pang. To the dreamer, decisions are fearful. Then he shook himself and ran lightly to a little lunchroom on Amsterdam Avenue, where he enjoyed doughnuts and iced tea. His mind was resolved. The doughnuts, by a simple symbolism, made him think of Rotary Clubs, also of millstones. No, he must be fugitive from honour, from wealth, from Chambers of Commerce. Fugitive from all save his own instinct. Those who have bound themselves are only too eager to see the ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley

... combined in the service of religion, and Odo's sense of the dramatic quality of the Catholic rites found gratification in the moving scenes where, amid the imperishable splendours of his own creation, man owned himself but dust. Never before had he been so alive to the symbolism of the penitential season, so awed by the beauty and symmetry of that great structure of the Liturgical Year that leads the soul up, step by step, to the awful heights of Calvary. The very carelessness of those about him seemed to deepen the solemnity of the scenes enacted—as though the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... it is with all my Lord's doings in nature. They are a glorious symbolism of what He will do in the spirit. "That ye may know how beautiful the Son of Man can make the heart of man, then saith He to the seeds of the spring-time, Come forth!" And so nature becomes a literature, in which we see our possible inheritance in ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... human form, but in about the first century of our era there is seen a tendency to depict them with many heads and limbs and this tendency grows stronger until in mediaeval times it is predominant. It has its origin in symbolism. The deity is thought of as carrying many insignia, as performing more actions than two hands can indicate; the worshipper is taught to think of him as appearing in this shape and the artist does not hesitate to represent it in ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... yet to be, twines through the woof of this our mortal life, and by tracing its wavy lines of glittering brilliancy, shining even through the dim symbolism of matter, many secrets of the life to come may be divined. The arts may be regarded as significant hieroglyphics of delights yet to be fulfilled in other spheres of being. The living pulse of omnipotence, the heart ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... more than revolutions. Fashion cut into the living flesh, attacked the very skeleton and framework of art; it chopped and hewed, dismembered, slew the edifice, in its form as well as in its symbolism, in its logic no less than in its beauty. But fashion restored, a thing which neither time nor revolution ever pretended to do. Fashion, on the plea of "good taste," impudently adapted to the wounds of Gothic architecture the paltry gewgaws of a day,—marble ribbons, metallic plumes, a veritable ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... symbolically. Blue, the colour of the sky, became a symbol of celestial holiness; green passed into the language as indicating a freshness verging upon unintelligence. If we had the good fortune to live in a world in which the sky was green and the grass blue, the symbolism would have been different. But for some mysterious reason this habit of realizing poetically the facts of science has ceased abruptly with scientific progress, and all the confounding portents preached by Galileo and Newton have fallen on deaf ears. They painted ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton

... allegory lies in the epilogue, and The Passing of Arthur still further enforces the allegorical purpose. But here, as Mr. Brooke again writes (p. 371), "we are close throughout to the ancient tale. No allegory, no ethics, no rational soul, no preaching symbolism, enter here, to dim, confuse, or spoil the story. Nothing is added which does not justly exalt the tale, and what is added is chiefly a greater fulness and breadth of humanity, a more lovely and supreme ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson

... all nations,—by no mere superstition, but by a glorious symbolism of Faith,—do the children of the earth lay them down in their last sleep with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... had Orion's heart throbbed when, as a youth, he had been admitted for the first time to this most sacred of all Christian privileges! He was instructed in its deep and glorious symbolism, and had often felt the purifying, saving, and refreshing effect of the sacrament, strengthening him in all goodness, when he had partaken of it with his parents and brothers. Hand-in-hand, they had gone home feeling as if newly robed in body and soul and more ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... heaven; and these three, taken in conjunction with the lengthened nave, express, reconcile, and give their due and balanced prominence to the leading ideas of the Militant and Triumphant Church, respectively embodied in the architecture of Rome and Byzantium. Add to this, the symbolism of the Baptistery, and the Christian pilgrimage, from the Font to the Door of Heaven, is complete,"—Vol. ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... immediately afterwards to stop the vibration, just as the dampers in the pianoforte fall on the string the moment the key is released. There existed among the Chaldeans a science of music, which, of course, is a very different thing from practical music, but it was so imbued with astronomical symbolism that it seems hardly worth while to consider it here. The art of Babylonia and Assyria culminated in architecture and bas-relief sculpture, and it is chiefly valuable as being the germ from which ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... Catholic young lady whom I met spoke to me about burning our prayers, our joss-houses, and our dragon, which she had seen carried about the streets of San Francisco. "Pure symbolism," I answered, and then told her of the Christian dragon in the Divine Key of the Revelation of Jesus Christ as Given to John, by a Christian writer, William Eugene Brown. This dragon had nine heads, while ours has only one. I believe I had the ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous

... devoted any serious attention to their study. Certainly it is true in mediumistic phenomena; for, in trance conditions, a larger number of messages, tests, and visions seen are of this nature and character—the symbolism often being so elaborate that the original thought is not perceived. As Mr. Coates remarked: "When a 'psychometer' places a geological specimen to his forehead, and describes an 'antediluvian monster,' roaring and walking about, no one but a very shallow ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington

... being Kadeshah, and doubtless gave themselves up to great excesses. Eusebius (De bit. Const. iii. c. 55) describes a school of impurity at Aphac, where women and "men who were not men" practiced all manner of abominations in honour of the Demon (Venus). Here the Phrygian symbolism of Kybele and Attis (Atys) had become the Syrian Ba'al Tammuz and Astarte, and the Grecian Dionaea and Adonis, the anthropomorphic forms of the two greater lights. The site, Apheca, now Wady al-Afik on the route from Bayrut to the Cedars, is a glen ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... autopsy. Huneker displays Ibsen, not as a petty mystifier of the women's clubs, but as a literary artist of large skill and exalted passion, and withal a quite human and understandable man. These essays were written at the height of the symbolism madness; in their own way, they even show some reflection of it; but taking them in their entirety, how clearly they stand above the ignorant obscurantism of the prevailing criticism of the time—how immeasurably superior they are, for example, to that favourite hymn-book of the Ibsenites, ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... addressed to a body of readers, it still remains to be shown that indirect address to the inner ear should follow the same method and rhythm as address directly through impressions on the outer organ. The attitude of the recipient mind is different, and there is the symbolism of a new medium between it and the speaker. The writer, being cut off from all those effects which are producible by the physical intonations of the voice, has to find substitutes for them by other means, by subtler cadences, by ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley

... Vibert, I am overwhelmed," I managed to stammer. "Only the most delicate symbolism may dare to express such a theme." I felt that this was very vague—but what could ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... him. His brain was working clearly now, and under forced draught. The magic of moonlight had lost its power. Habits of years reasserted themselves. His usual iron common sense regained its ascendency; though, strangely enough, there persisted in his mind a mystic feeling for the symbolism of this ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... house, spied, lurked, and, a few days later, brought to Magnon, who delivers in the Rue Clocheperce, a biscuit, which Magnon transmitted to Babet's mistress in the Salpetriere. A biscuit, in the shady symbolism of prisons, signifies: Nothing to ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... art into the spirit of the design for which their bricks and marble are to stand. They have brought into happy companionship architectural suggestions of the North and of the South; and have wrought into construction and ornament in a hundred ways the art, the symbolism, the traditions, and the history of all the American republics; and they have made the building a true expression of Pan Americanism, of open mind and open heart for all that is true and noble and worthy of respect from whatever race or religion or language or custom ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

... object by means of a fetich. The paths of these connections can not always be definitely demonstrated. The foot is a very primitive sexual symbol already found in myths.[18] Fur is used as a fetich probably on account of its association with the hairiness of the mons veneris. Such symbolism seems often to depend on sexual experiences ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud

... They introduced emotional preaching, the mourners' bench, protracted meetings, and, vying with the fanatical sects, denounced as spiritually dead formalists all who adhered to the old ways of Lutheranism. In its issue of March 21, 1862, the Lutheran Observer declared that the "Symbolism" of the Old Lutherans in St. Louis meant the death of the Lutheran Church, which nothing but revivals were able to save. (L. u. W. 1862, 152; 1917, 374.) Muhlenberg's Pietism had helped to prepare the ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente

... must have been attracting considerable attention at that time. Indeed, the struggle to have the Hindu numerals replace the Arabic did not cease for a long time thereafter. 'Al[i] ibn A[h.]med al-Nasaw[i], in his arithmetic of c. 1025, tells us that the symbolism of number was still unsettled in his day, although most people preferred the ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith

... stood on the hearthrug. Raising her eyes for a moment, they rested on a large and beautiful platinotype of G. F. Watts' picture of "Hope." The last time she had visited Miss Heath in that room Prissie had been taken by the kind vice-principal to look at the picture, and some of its symbolism was explained to her. "That globe on which the figure of Hope sits," Miss Heath had said, "is meant to represent the world. Hope is blindfolded in order more effectually to shut out the sights which might distract her. See the harp in her hand, observe her rapt attitude— she is listening ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... right to resist the ecclesiastical onslaught as based upon the usurpation of power assumed without right. And in later treatises Hoadly did for ceremonial exactly what he had done for church government. The eucharist became a piece of symbolism and excommunication nothing more than an announcement—"a mere external thing"—that the rules of the fellowship have been broken. It at no point is related to the sinner's ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... mutability, our apprehensions of it can only be partial and relative. Absolutes are known only to absolute mind; our measurements, however careful and intricate, can never tally with the measurements of God. As Einstein conceives of space curved round the sun we, borrowing his symbolism for a moment, may perhaps think of the world of Spirit as curved round the human soul; shaped to our finite understanding, and therefore presenting to us innumerable angles of approach. This means that God can and must be sought only within and through our human ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill

... AEschylus. Rickman had done what seemed good in his own eyes. He had made his own metres, his own myth and his own drama. A drama of flesh and blood, a drama of spirit, a drama of dreams. Only a very young poet could have had the courage to charge it with such a weight of symbolism; but he had contrived to breathe into his symbols the breath of life; the phantoms of his brain, a shadowy Helen and Achilles, turned into flesh and blood under his hands. It was as if their bodies, warm, throbbing, full-formed, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... north side door is a master-work of early Renaissance chiselling, combining mixed Christian and classical motives with a wealth of floral ornament. Inside, over the same door, is a procession of children seeming to represent the Triumph of Bacchus, with perhaps some Christian symbolism. Opposite, above the south door, is a frieze of fighting Tritons—horsed sea deities pounding one another with bunches of fish and splashing the water, in Mantegna's spirit. The doorways of the facade are decorated with the same rare ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... German philologist, born at Marburg; became professor of Ancient History and Philology at Heidelberg; his chief work, and one by which he is most widely known, "Symbolik und Mythologie der Alten Voelker, besonders der Griechen," "Symbolism and Mythology of Ancient Peoples, especially the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... scripture, and the inconsistencies such a view would involve, it is sufficient to ask if these were like the communicating spirits of the present day. How many communications have ever been received by modern Spiritualists from souls confined under an altar? In glowing symbolism, John saw the dead martyrs, as if slain at the foot of the altar; and by the figure of personification a voice was given to them, just as Abel's blood cried to God for vengeance upon his guilty brother (Gen. 4:10), and just as the stone is said to cry out of the wall, and the beam ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith

... naturally conceived as a god of creative energy in general, since men at a certain stage of evolution fail to distinguish between the reproductive powers of animals and of plants. Hence a striking feature in his worship was the coarse but expressive symbolism by which this aspect of his nature was presented to the eye not merely of the initiated but of the multitude. At his festival women used to go about the villages singing songs in his praise and carrying obscene images of him which they set in motion by means of strings. The custom was probably ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... all will come that which in a sense is first of all—the title, the name by which the speech is known. Sometimes it will be the simple theme of the address, as "The New Americanism," by Henry Watterson; or it may be a bit of symbolism typifying the spirit of the address, as "Acres of Diamonds," by Russell H. Conwell; or it may be a fine phrase taken from the body of the address, as "Pass Prosperity Around," by Albert J. Beveridge. All in all, from whatever motive it be chosen, let the title be fresh, short, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... the right thing for him in that effervescent period which is so necessary a concomitant of growth. The young business man indulges in a hundred wild schemes, to be corrected by older heads. The young artist paints strange impressionism, stranger symbolism, and perhaps a strangest other-ism, before at last he reaches the medium of his individual genius. The young writer thinks deep and philosophical thoughts which he expresses in measured polysyllabic ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White

... moment from the eyes of his disciples? The demonstration of the simplest truths of astronomy destroyed at a blow the legends that were most significant to the early Christians by annihilating their symbolism. Well might the Church persecute Galileo for his proof of the world's mobility. Instinctively she perceived that in this one proposition was involved the principle of hostility to her most cherished conceptions, to the very core ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... little study and slipped a solitaire diamond on her engagement finger. To Lily the moment was almost a holy one, but he seemed more interested in the quality of the stone and its appearance on her hand than in its symbolism. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... flying Mercury had its legend. She chose the Sistrum for her emblem, and had it carefully drawn with a view to its being engraved on a gem. And I know not how many verses and legends came recommended to her by this symbolism. Her dreams, of course, partook of this symmetry. The same dream returns to her periodically, annually, and punctual to its night. One dream she marks in her journal as repeated ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... may seem somewhat unjustifiable, but if we are to study any building aright, and if we are to interpret in any measure its meaning and symbolism, it cannot wholly be done on any line of abstract aestheticism or archaeological instinct, however intuitive it may be: we must in some measure think of the builders of old times and of the influences which with them produced its inception and have left it ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell

... beauty carried me back to the castle moats of Yedo, and to many a gilded shrine in Japan, on which the lotus blooms as an emblem of purity, righteousness, and immortality. Even here, where no such symbolism attaches to it, it looks a sacred thing. It was delightful to see such a sociable ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... a new art, and one for the peoples of the earth. Never had the hues of the universe been so assembled, grouped, and modulated. And the human eye, adapting itself to the new synthesis of arabesque and rhythm, evoked order and symbolism from these novel chords of colour. There were solemn mountains of opalescent fire which burst and faded into flaming colonnades, and in an enchanting turquoise effervescence became starry spears and scimiters and sparkling shields, and finally the whole mass would reunite and evaporate ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... idea of a personality of God is not an intellectual idea presented in any doctrinal form; it is an idea [p.160] born within the Life-process on its highest levels. On such levels it becomes obvious and indispensable. Man may be clearly conscious of the symbolism of the idea, and yet, at the same time, grasp in it an incontestable intrinsic truth which he knows to be far above all mere anthropomorphism. Eucken shows that it is not merely a human greatness that has been transferred to the Divine, but ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones

... case of the rebellion of men against their position is recorded in Guinea, where religious symbolism was used by the husband as a way of obtaining control and possession of his wife. The maternal system held with respect only to the ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... be remembered that the psalm is running in the track of a certain constant symbolism that pervades all Scripture. From the first book of Genesis down to the last chapter of Revelation, you can hear the dashing of the waters of the river. 'It went out from the garden and parted into four heads.' 'Thou makest ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... encountered by the Catholic Church, and conquered by her in open and fair fight. Also these writings lay much stress upon Knowing and the Truth: 'this is life eternal, to know Thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent' (xvii. 3); symbolism and mysticism prevail very largely; and, in so far as they are not absorbed in an Eternal Present, the reception of truth and experience is not limited to Christ's earthly sojourn—'the Father will give you another Helper, the spirit of truth who will abide with you forever' (xiv. 16). ...
— Progress and History • Various

... such thing as correspondence or symbolism appears more and more urgent as we consider the duties that religion and philosophy ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... he had had time to make definite plans and decide upon the best methods of prosecuting his search for the owners of the mine, he heard, by the merest chance, of a fortune-teller who called herself Mariposa and who always appeared veiled. This fanciful symbolism might of course be the merest coincidence; but Hayden could not so view it. It was too significant not ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... regarded as particularly grim in our conservatism; but we are none the less sensible of Mr. James's surpassing merits as a writer upon the philosophy of society. We dedicate this paragraph to him on account of the series of lectures he has just delivered in New-York, upon "The Symbolism of Property," "Democracy and its Issues," "The Harmony of Nature and Revelation," "The Past and Future Churches," &c. We understand that these splendid dissertations will be given to the public in the more acceptable form of a volume. The popular lecture is not a suitable ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... light two hanging lamps of religious symbolism, which burn till daylight, before ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... so anxious about her father that she maintained her position of observation. The coming storm lowering in the west oppressed her with its terrible symbolism. Already the street was darkening, while from other parts of the city ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... take pains to interpret them. All have the mark of the beast. For example, there was that unknown woman who had fallen down and was surrounded by a crowd. If a woman dreams that, it is sexual. It can mean only a fallen woman. That is the symbolism. The ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... more form of the pastoral Madonna, that which represents the Virgin and child in "a garden inclosed," in allusion to the symbolism of Solomon's Song (4:12). The subject is found among the woodcuts of Albert Duerer, but I have never seen it in any ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll

... be Lizzie Twigg with him. A. E.: what does that mean? Initials perhaps. Albert Edward, Arthur Edmund, Alphonsus Eb Ed El Esquire. What was he saying? The ends of the world with a Scotch accent. Tentacles: octopus. Something occult: symbolism. Holding forth. She's taking it all in. Not saying a word. To aid ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... collection—how shall I say?—collectively. He who goes in for beautiful things begins, at last, to value his every acquisition not for its beauty, but because it enhances the worth of the rest. Likewise, he who goes in for autobiographic symbols begins, at last, to care not for the symbolism of another event in his life, but for the addition to the objects already there. He begins to value every event less for its own sake than because it swells his collection. Thus there came for me a time when I looked forward to a ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... time and within a hundred years of Tertullian this symbolism in its original significance had become heretical, and the orthodox were thrown back on another explanation of it. This was that the word [Greek: ICHTHUS] is made up of the letters which begin the Greek ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... hands and pointed. "Behold the glory of Ippling that can be yours!" He held onto the halo, trying to get them to follow the symbolism. "Look upwards!" He screamed at them, but they watched the brush fire that swept the hill top. It was a goodie. It would wipe out a number ...
— The Glory of Ippling • Helen M. Urban

... persecution; the fortified nave, a symbol of the body which prays, but is not afraid to fight; and the chapelle superieure, the holy place of the saints of heaven, the Christian counsellors in whose care man has been confided. This, at any rate, is the professional description of the symbolism, and whether one be churchman or not he is bound to see the logic ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... beetle forms a hieroglyph, and represents a word signifying 'To be and to transform.' If actual worship was not paid to Scaraboeus Sacer,[1] it was, at any rate, regarded with the greatest reverence and a vast amount of symbolism ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... Tale of the Rhine and the Miller Radlauf (1816) to the simple and homely Kasper and Annie (1817), with its elemental clash of soldiers and citizens. Through many of the tales there runs a note of satire and of symbolism, but the fancy is exuberant and the interest well maintained. Brentano's discovery of the Rhine as an object of poetry and veneration is completely summarized in Radlauf, where the Rhine lyrics are often of wonderful beauty and definiteness and the river becomes a benevolent deus ex machina, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... yesterday in the street; to eyes so shortsighted life itself must seem merely realistic. As none but an idealist could have conceived Parson Adams, so the creator of Sophia again announced himself an idealist in the Dedication of Tom Jones. Here, in language of pure symbolism, he contends that the ideal virtues such as goodness and innocence, may most effectively be presented to men in a figure, for "an Example is a Kind of Picture, in which Virtue becomes as it were an Object ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... marvel with that rare poetic discrimination which neither exhausts it of its simple wonders by pushing symbolism too far, nor keeps those wonders in the merely fabulous and capricious stage. In fact she has produced a true children's poem, which is far more delightful to the mature than to children, though it would ...
— MacMillan & Co.'s General Catalogue of Works in the Departments of History, Biography, Travels, and Belles Lettres, December, 1869 • Unknown

... Pentecost saw the synagogue dressed with flowers in celebration of an Asiatic fruit harvest by a European people divorced from agriculture; they passed to the terrors and triumphs of the New Year (with its domestic symbolism of apple and honey and its procession to the river) and the revelry of repentance on the Great White Fast, when they burned long candles and whirled fowls round their heads and attired themselves ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... the slender white shaft, rising above its base of iron, was crowned with yellow flame, I can think of nothing more beautiful in color, shape and symbolism. It was the torch of liberty and learning in the new world—a light-house on the shore ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller

... of their paddles with their symbols. Gladys, having neither paddle nor symbol, was at a loss what to do. "Here, take the symbol book," said Migwan, "and begin working on your symbol." Gladys took the book and began idly turning the pages. Symbolism was an entirely new thing to her, and she was unable to decide on any of the queerly shaped ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey

... By combining the symbolism of light, color, and darkness with the instincts which have been inherited by mankind from its superstitious ancestry of the age of mythology, another field of application of artificial light is opened. Light has gradually assumed such attributes as truth, knowledge, ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... and experience of centuries. Her sacrifice is the first great act of worship. Then there are her ceremonies, rites, and observances; the use of holy water, blessed candles, ashes, incense, vestments; her chants, and fasts and feasts, the symbolism of her sacraments. This is the language in which, as a Church, and in union with her children, she speaks to God her adoration, praise and thanksgiving. This is her religion, and we practice it by availing ourselves of these things and by respecting ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... persistently fiendish treatment of man by man; the perpetual effort of society to establish law, and the perpetual revolt of society against the law it had established; the perpetual building up of authority by force, and the perpetual appeal to force to overthrow it; the perpetual symbolism of a higher law, and the perpetual relapse to a lower one; the perpetual victory of the principles of freedom, and their perpetual conversion into principles of power; but the staggering problem was the outlook ahead into the despotism of artificial order which nature abhorred. The ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... and maidens, especially as they approach manhood and womanhood, the cultivation of the imagination must allow the earnestness of actuality to manifest itself in its undisguised energy. This earnestness, no longer through the symbolism of play but in its objective reality, must now thoroughly penetrate the conceptions of the youth so that it shall prepare him to seize hold of the machinery of active life. Instead of the all-embracing Epos they should now read Tragedy, ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz

... here, in the church which is at once the home and daily spectacle of her people. Why stay away among the dull streets and small houses of the hill-side, when there were these pleasures of eye and ear, this sensuous medley of light and color, this fellowship and society, this dramatic symbolism and movement, waiting for them below, in ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... demonstrated how the symbolism of the modern fraternal organization has grown out of alchemy, mysticism and rosicrucianism. Some centuries ago these symbols were charged with a literal meaning. If a man, however, in the 20th century attaches a similar significance to these symbols he is rightly adjudged ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... life is certainly valuable in giving harmony to the book, presenting as it does a sort of background. It brings with it a very impressive kind of symbolism into its record of actual facts, to all of which it gives a value, not in themselves, if you please to put it so, or, perhaps more properly, their essential value. When nothing which happens, happens except under ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... example, Maliuag, which means "difficult," because the child's birth was such; Malacas, which signifies "a man of strength," because the mother thinks that the child will be strong, or desires that it be so. At other times they name it, without any symbolism or special reason, by the first word which occurs to them—as, for example, Daan, which signifies "road;" Babui, which means "pig;" or Manug, which signifies "fowl." All persons are called by these names from birth, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson

... upon the floor certain mystic circles, one at each corner of the oblong, one in the center, the heart of the Maze, and facing it two smaller circles, one at each side on a visionary line. Seven mystic, seven sacred circles in all did he draw, and vanished, unconscious of the sanctity and symbolism of ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... matter, in its effect upon the judgment of these gentlemen, is the accepted vocabulary of poetic symbolism, that helps them, by habit, in dealing with Nature: a mountain, to them, is synonymous with height—a lake, with depth—the ocean, with vastness—the sun, ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler

... for the rendition of a musical selection by the choir. Worship in this great Church is at the present time characterized by the absence of a desirable uniformity, which it was one evident purpose of the Directory to secure, and in some of its congregations by the use of symbolism that occasionally becomes extravagant, and which is calculated to appeal entirely to the imagination, the result frequently being a service not attaining to that dignity which an authorized liturgy fosters, while it sacrifices that simplicity in which Presbyterians ...
— Presbyterian Worship - Its Spirit, Method and History • Robert Johnston

... Perfection in every detail! I believed then that not even the Passion Play could hold my spirit, so in leash with its symbolism, its deep devotion, and its ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell

... they do not employ it at all in medicine, which is usually the case with those plants to which they have given no name. In India the peculiar spiral form of the fruit has suggested its application, according to the theories of the doctrine of symbolism. Ainslie says that the Hindoos use it to treat diseases of the external auditory canal. On account of its emollient properties and probably on account of its twisted form, it is used internally as a decoction, in flatulence and the intestinal ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera

... such as that which in London transformed La Belle Sauvage into the Bell Savage, pictorialised by an Indian ringing a hand-bell; or is the choice of such improper colour as blue for a bell and an anchor a species of symbolism the meaning of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various

... of this earthly life.[12] In the teaching of both Christ and {225} the apostles marriage is presented as a high vocation, ordained by God for the enrichment of character, and invested with a holy symbolism. According to St. Paul it is the emblem of the mystic union of Christ and His Church, and is overshadowed by the presence of God, who is the archetype of those sacred ideas which we associate with the name ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... a rule so closely annexed to religion—though all spectacular delights and ceremonies have the same quality—that it has never been reckoned among artistic predilections. The aim of ritual is, I believe, a high poetry of which the essence is symbolism and mystery. The movement of forms solemnly vested, and with a background of architecture and music, produces an emotion quite distinct from other artistic emotions. It is a method, like all other arts, through which a human being arrives at a sense of mysterious beauty, ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson

... to the light of day. It is now in the Antiquarian Museum in Edinburgh, where the writer recently made an inspection of it. An excellent engraving of it is contained in J. Romilly Allen's Christian Symbolism in Great Britain and Ireland, and with the kind permission of that ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... but it is too great a strain on the imagination to be a general favorite. We have said that feeling is the element in which Heine's poetic genius habitually floats; but he can occasionally soar to a higher region, and impart deep significance to picturesque symbolism; he can flash a sublime thought over the past and into the future; he can pour forth a lofty strain of hope or indignation. Few could forget, after once hearing them, the stanzas at the close of "Deutschland," ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... degenerate, gossipingly known for his celebrated affair with a famous actress, whose novels and plays, when not denounced for their eroticism, are very much caviar to the "wholesome" man, so full are they of a remote symbolism, so purely "literary." "Exotic" is the chosen word for the more tolerant American minds with which to describe the author of "Il Fuoco" ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... and that affrighting child, with a lunatic's luck, whizzed safely through the portals into God's acre. The cousins Povey discovered him lying on a green grave, clothed in pride. His first words were: "Dad, did you pick my cap up?" The symbolism of the amazing ride did not escape the Square; indeed, it was ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... any more than a man sliding down a steeply sloping sheet of smooth ice can pull himself up before he plunges over the edge into the abyss below. That is true as to all departures from God and His law, but it is eminently true as to every tampering with the spirituality of worship. Jeroboam's symbolism led straight to Ahab's unblushing pagan worship of the hideous Sidonian Baal. The craving for symbolical and sensuous accessories of worship, which is strong in most Churches in this aesthetic generation, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... idolatry, is true also of the service of sin, and of the world in general, which, in Job xx. 12, appears under the image of meat which is, in the mouth, as sweet as honey from the comb, but which is, in the belly, changed into the gall of asps. In the symbolism of the law, honey signified the lust of the world; compare my work Die Opfer der Heil. Schrift, S. 44. It is only the derivation of [Hebrew: awiwiT], the signification of which is sufficiently established by parallel passages, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... stand for in such matters was, indeed, the best definition of him. When he read his play "The Street Walker" in drawing rooms and one lady told him it had the poetic symbolism of Tchekhov, and another said that it suggested the biting realism of Brieux, he never, in his most secret thoughts, questioned the acumen of either lady. Harold's speech, even if you heard it in the next room and could not see him, ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... as a beautiful woman, reading with a child out of a great book, and behind them are stars, and an hour-glass, halfway run. Very human these Utopians, after all, and not by any means above the obvious in their symbolism! ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... divided into two kinds, symbolism of colour and symbolism of form. Of colours, BLACK typifies grief and death; BLUE, hope, love of divine works, divine contemplation, piety, sincerity; PALE BLUE, power, Christian prudence, love of good works, serene conscience; GOLD, glory and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... among Acquired element in erotic symbolism Acromegaly and sexual development Alcohol, aphrodisiac effects of Algolagnia, in relation to scatologic symbolism as a form of erotic symbolism Anaesthesia, sexual Anaesthetics in relation to sexual excitement Anaphrodisiacs Animal copulation, attraction ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... the shackles of Puritanism, and to lose all interest in Whiggery. The new democracy was neither coldly Deist, nor austerely Republican. It has shown no inclination to inaugurate a reign of "pure reason" in religion or politics, but has boldly and cheerfully adopted symbolism and pageantry. Friendly societies and trade unions have their badges, banners, and buttons. The Roman Catholic Church grows in popularity with the working class, and in many towns and cities the Church of England and the Salvation Army are distinctly popular. On the other hand, ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton

... something between the hen that laid it and the chicken that will burst from its shell, as a secret place of repose where the one is transmuted into the other, as a sacred temple wherein is prepared a mystery of resurrection. Mothers know some things that cannot be told except in symbolism, and not very clearly then, symbols being as perplexing as unresolved diminished sevenths which may be understood in many different senses. I read the riddle of the eggs in the sense suggested by the context of the Gloria, and I think I read it aright, for in ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones

... formed, as in the lower series, of eight leaves, thrown into volutes at the angles, and sustaining figures at the flanks; but these figures have no inscriptions, and though evidently not without meaning, cannot be interpreted without more knowledge than I possess of ancient symbolism. Many of the capitals toward the Sea appear to have been restored, and to be rude copies of the ancient ones; others, though apparently original, have been somewhat carelessly wrought; but those of them, which are both genuine and carefully treated, are even finer in composition than ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... to find in the symbolism and the persuasion to choice each suitor employs that Portia's father has used the wisdom of a seer in prescribing the ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke

... for nothing, either, that the umbrella has become the very foremost badge of modern civilisation—the Urim and Thummim of respectability. Its pregnant symbolism has taken its rise in the most natural manner. Consider, for a moment, when umbrellas were first introduced into this country, what manner of men would use them, and what class would adhere to the useless but ornamental cane. The first, without doubt, would be the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Bovary, the archaeological novel in Salammbo, or cold, grey realism as in L'Education Sentimentale, while his very style, with its sumptuous verbal echoes, its resonant, rhythmic periods—is not all this the beginning of that symbolism carried to such lengths by Verlaine and his followers? Shakespeare himself ranged from gross naturalism to the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... all this pomp and splendour were truly for the glory of God, or whether it were a delusion for the temptation of men's souls. It was a debate on which his old and his new guides seemed to him at issue, and he was drawn in both directions—now by the beauty, order, and deep symbolism of the Catholic ritual, now by the spirituality and earnestness of the men among whom he lived. At one moment the worldly pomp, the mechanical and irreverent worship, and the gross and vicious habits of many of the clergy repelled him; at another the reverence and conservatism ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... magazine lying spread half on the Eastern symbolism of a rug and half on the bare polished flooring. "Your story is far more interesting than any in that," he commented, with a gesture. "It's a pity you haven't turned your imagination to a better use." This, he recognized, could not ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... which he subjected himself for many years shock our moral sense almost as much as our sensibilities; we do not now believe that God takes pleasure in sufferings inflicted in His honour. Moreover, the erotic symbolism of the visions is occasionally unpleasant: we are no longer in the company of such sane and healthy people as Eckhart and Tauler. The half-sensuous pleasure of ecstasy was evidently a temptation to Suso, and the violent alternations of rapture and misery which he experienced suggest ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge

... a man so dead as not to feel a thrill at this achievement? And let no one who declares that literary talent and imagination are nonexistent in America pronounce final judgment until he reads that prospectus, in which was combined the best of realism and symbolism, for the labours of Alonzo Cheyne were not to be wasted, after all. Mr. Dickinson, who was a director in the Maplewood line, got a handsome underwriting percentage, and Mr. Berringer, also a director, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... can be when the work is completed, and wait for public admiration and fortune to break in on them by escalade and burglary. They live, so to say, on the outskirts of life, in isolation and inertia. Petrified in art, they accept to the very letter the symbolism of the academical dithyrambic, which places an aureola about the heads of poets, and, persuaded that they are gleaming in their obscurity, wait for others to come and seek them out. We used to know a small school composed of men of this type, so strange, ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... however, in harmony with Old Testament symbolism. The High Priest often entered the Presence of God with the names of the people on his breast, the seat of love, and on his shoulder, the seat of power; and once a year, with a bowl of blood and sprig of thyme in his hands, pleaded ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... communion, June 10, of that year. The original building was in the form of a cross, so Mrs. Eddy had the new addition built with a dome to represent a crown—a combination which is happier in its symbolism than in its architectural results. The auditorium is capable of holding five thousand people; the walls are decorated with texts signed "Jesus, the Christ" and "Mary Baker G. Eddy"—these names standing side ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various

... words that belong together as a thought; and one could certainly not convey the correct idea of the group to a listener if the most important words in it were not stressed so as to stand out more vividly than the others. Although not so readily understood because of the absence of symbolism, phrasing is quite as important an element in the expressive rendition of music as it is in the case of language. In order to interpret properly the conductor must first of all determine what tones belong together in a ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens

... when (Microprosopus) is considered as having (in Himself the symbolism of) right side and left side. As it is written, Hosea xiv. 7, "And his ...
— Hebrew Literature

... religious mind. To an extent this is the same with the Old Testament, but to a far less degree, for the language of the Old Testament is only liable to misapprehension when interpreted by the New. In a previous chapter I have endeavoured to show the imperishable truths which underlie Old Testament symbolism in regard to the Atonement, and I trust I have shown that these truths are as fresh and indispensable to-day, and play as great a part in human affairs as they ever did. But before I proceed to say anything about the New Testament symbolism, which has been largely derived from the ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell

... their analysis and vivisection, which he recommended so naively; or the lowering of the emotions to an innocent mean at which they may be satisfied, the Aristotelianism of morals; or even morality as the enjoyment of the emotions in a voluntary attenuation and spiritualization by the symbolism of art, perhaps as music, or as love of God, and of mankind for God's sake—for in religion the passions are once more enfranchised, provided that...; or, finally, even the complaisant and wanton surrender to the emotions, as has been taught by Hafis and Goethe, the bold letting-go ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... them. "They reflect," says Professor Macdonell, "the spirit of an age in which all intellectual activity is concentrated on the sacrifice, describing its ceremonies, discussing its value, speculating on its origin and significance." These works are full of dogmatic assertions, fanciful symbolism and speculations of an unbounded imagination in the field of sacrificial details. The sacrificial ceremonials were probably never so elaborate at the time when the early hymns were composed. But when the collections of hymns were being ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... their children were being literally reborn—what does this accomplish? Doesn't Aesop tell us something of a crow that would be a dove and found himself an outcast everywhere? We are replacing the beautiful symbolism of the Indian by our materialism and leaving him bewildered and discouraged. Why should he be taught to despise his hogan, shaped after the beautiful rounded curve of the rainbow and the arched course of the sun in his daily journey across the sky—a ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... distance, there has, of late years, appeared the outline of a gigantic face, which looks out from its emplacement like some Teutonic god in vast effigy, its huge luxuriant mustaches pointing East and West as though in symbolism of the conquest of a continent. A blue and yellow background, tempered somewhat by the elements, serves to attract attention to the face and to the legend which accompanies it, but the thing one sees above all else, the thing one recognizes, is the face itself, with its look half tragic, half ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... that lent out money gratis; look to him, jailer," (as to lunatic no less than criminal) the enmity, observe, having its symbolism literally carried out by being aimed straight at the heart, and finally foiled by a literal appeal to the great moral law that flesh and blood cannot be weighed, enforced by "Portia"[50] ("Portion"), the type of divine Fortune, found, not in gold, nor in silver, but in lead, that is ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... field of loveliness and delight. Naturally this should have filled the whole world with a new pleasure. Our garments, first under right natural selection developing perfect use, under right sex selection developing beauty; and further, as our human aesthetic sense progresses, showing a noble symbolism, would have been an added strength and ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... the dancer struck the table in ritualistic challenge, exchanged gestures, bent his neck and passed on. He circled the broad floor, sabre twirling, arms darting in an intricate symbolism. The orchestra blared shrilly, unmuffled now by the surf-roar of conversation. The Yill, Retief noticed suddenly, were sitting silent, watching. The dancer was closer now, and then he was before Retief, poised, ...
— The Yillian Way • John Keith Laumer

... God could specially prepare a great fish which should rescue His servant, to whom He meant to give another chance, from the depths of the sea, and land him in due course upon the shore. (Applause).' These crude views, which ignored the symbolism of Nineveh as a fish, now universally accepted by educated people, were not, however, endorsed by Dr. Beeching, the learned Dean of Norwich, who in the same gathering expressed the point of view of more scholarly Christians:—'He ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... respect and reverence, both from the University public and the general public; which would be voluntarily adopted by similar societies in other Universities in preference to any other that might be suggested; and finally, a name with enough charm and euphony and significant symbolism to stand constant repetition, to bear living with day by day, and all the while grow in our imaginations and yield new beauteous meaning through ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... language—not even "Socialism"—has been employed more loosely than "Mysticism." Sometimes it is used as an equivalent for symbolism or allegorism, sometimes for theosophy or occult science; and sometimes it merely suggests the mental state of a dreamer, or vague and fantastic opinions about God and the world. In Roman Catholic writers, "mystical phenomena" ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... child, and I have always felt that it was a vain symbolism, in both senses of that word. You look them up in your new dictionary to-morrow. In trying hard to picture God, men have made Him in the likeness of the most wonderful things their eyes had ever seen—themselves—and just increased His ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... of the War, but there is little difficulty in probing the allegory; and those who follow the hero's vicissitudes as a private in the Gasoliers, right through to his victorious advancement to the rank of Acting Lance-Corporal, unpaid (and there is a symbolism even in the "unpaid"), will readily supply the application to the affairs ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various

... the School of St. Roch, the group of fainting women forms a kind of pedestal for the Cross. The flying angels in the composition before us are thus also treated with a restraint hardly passing the limits of decorative symbolism. The fading away of their figures into flame-like cloud may perhaps be founded on the verse, "He maketh His angels spirits; His ministers a flame of fire" (though erroneously, the right reading of that verse being, "He maketh the winds His messengers, and the flaming fire His servant"); but ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin

... Guinea religious symbolism was also introduced by the husband to reinforce and lend dignity to this action. The maternal system held with respect to ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas

... realistic writer turns philosopher and begins to generalize that we must be on our guard against him. He is likely to use his characters as symbols, and the symbolism becomes oppressive. There are some businesses which ought not to be united. They hinder healthful competition and produce a hateful monopoly. Thus in some states the railroads that carried coal also went into the business of coal-mining. This has been prohibited by law. It ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers

... take space to dwell upon them. The sphere in which the facts regarding the pupil of this type are important to the teacher is that of language, taken with the group of problems which arise about instruction in language. The question of his symbolism, and its relations to mathematics, logic, etc., is important. And finally, the sphere of the pupil's expression in all its forms. Then, from all his discoveries in these things, the teacher is called upon to make his method ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin

... of the Old Testament, but despise chosen peoples at every appearance; we delight in the lineage of the Messiah; we are stimulated by the Hebrew literature, by its symbolism, its songs and precepts, the Oriental colour of it, the hierarchy of its saints, the strange splendour of its women, but as a book of devotion its chief significance is that of a huge vessel prepared for the coming of ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... general definitions and explanations at the beginning of the book. Still, I can take but little of the blame, when I consider how I fared through my geography, right to the end of the grammar-school course. I did in time disentangle the symbolism of the orange revolving on a knitting-needle from the astronomical facts in the case, but it took years of training under a master of the subject to rid me of my distrust of the map as a representation of the earth. ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... secular, and is an accompaniment of gala dress for the purpose of honouring a guest or to celebrate an occasion. The face of the dead was frequently painted in accordance with tribal or religious symbolism. Paint is also used on the faces of children and adults as a protection from wind and sun. Plucking the hair from the face and body is a part of the daily program. The male Indian never shaves and the ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon

... The mythological symbolism of antique thought was full of this pictorial tendency and even now the shrewdest of modern thinkers are compelled to use images drawn from antique mythology. Poetic thought may go astray. But it can never ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... church, covering much of the surface of the outer walls. All the straight lines, curves, and figures, and the inscriptions in Latin, must have the effect of convincing the majority of the inhabitants that their ignorance is hopeless. Such a display of science must be like wizard symbolism to the common people. The dials are exceedingly curious, and there are some really astonishing calculations, as, for instance, a table showing the 'number of souls that have appeared before the Tribunal of God.' Near a great sundial are these solemn ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... incline at a scholarly angle. This Cycle may be taken, perhaps, not so much as a living record of human experience as a lofty parable sounding the key-note of all human life. Gill the Grip is the Iago, the Mefistofele, the symbolism of a malevolent destiny. Maxy the Firebug may be the Poet's interpretation of the Social Unrest, of Doubt, of progressive irresponsibility. Would it be going too far, then, to say that Pansy stands to us as the symbol ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor • Wallace Irwin

... wherein the most sacred memories of English talent and English toil are clustered together,—it is impossible, I say, to look at this, and not admire both the artistic instinct that devised so happy a symbolism, and the rare good-fortune of our Teutonic ancestors in securing a territorial position so readily defensible against the assaults of despotic powers. But it was not merely in the simple facility of warding off external attack that the insular position ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske

... Color symbolism plays an important part in the shamanistic system of the Cherokees, no less than in that of other tribes. Each one of the cardinal points has its corresponding color and each color its symbolic meaning, so that each spirit ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney



Words linked to "Symbolism" :   symbolist, practice, symbol, symbolization, symbolisation, artistic movement, pattern, art movement



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