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Symbolism   Listen
noun
Symbolism  n.  
1.
The act of symbolizing, or the state of being symbolized; as, symbolism in Christian art is the representation of truth, virtues, vices, etc., by emblematic colors, signs, and forms.
2.
A system of symbols or representations.
3.
(Chem.)
(a)
The practice of using symbols, or the system of notation developed thereby.
(b)
A combining together of parts or ingredients. (Obs.)
4.
(Theol.) The science of creeds; symbolics.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Symbolism" Quotes from Famous Books



... the centuries, bearing upon its structure the marks of that Grand Master Builder, who gave to the visible universe "the sun to rule the day, the moon and stars to govern the night;" an Order which, like these wondrous orbs, is grand in its mysterious symbolism, calm in its unvarying circles, ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins

... from many a teeming brain now turned to dust,—reproducing, with patient hand, graceful outline and deepening shadow,—his daring, yet reverent heart held high communion with the ages that were gone. The Spirit of the Past overshadowed him. The grandeur of Gothic symbolism rose before him. Voices of dead centuries murmured low music down the fretted vault. Fair ladies and brave gentlemen came up from the solemn chambers where they had lain so long in silent state, and smiled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... of the Bible in a similar way,[3] but represents that the oracle ceased with the destruction of the first Temple, and was not known in the second Temple. Josephus enlarges, in a way common to the Hellenistic-Jewish apologists,[4] on the symbolism of ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich

... flowers in white masses, pure as a baby's soul. Sometimes it glows in purple, pink, and crimson, intense, but unconsuming, like Horeb's burning bush. The old Greeks knew it well, and they baptized its prismatic loveliness with their sunny symbolism, and called it the Flame-Flower. These very seeds may have sprung centuries ago from the hearts of heroes who sleep at Marathon; and when their tender petals quiver in the sunlight of my garden, I shall see the gleam of Attic armor and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... of "Premier Painter of Polynesia." A whole school of painters have attempted to reproduce the exotic color and charm of these entrancing isles. It remained for Herman Swank, by his now famous method of diagrammatic symbolism, to bring the truth fully home. This he accomplished by living, to the limit, the native life of the Filbertese. Clad only in the light lamitu, or afternoon wrap of the islands, it was the artist's custom to spend entire days inhaling the perfume of the fragment alova flower, a practice which undoubtedly ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock

... and with murder in his heart. We are tired of the pretense that we have special privileges and the reality that we have none; of the fiction that we are queens, and the fact that we are subjects; of the symbolism which exalts our sex but is only a meaningless mockery. We demand that these shadows shall take substance. The coat of arms of the State of New York represents Liberty and Justice supporting a shield on which is seen the sun rising over the hills that guard the Hudson. How are justice ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... conceived as the image or | living manifestation of God. | Understanding nature can reveal the | presence in the world of divine ideas | and archetypes. Bacon's rejection of | any natural philosophy founded on | allegorical interpretations of | Scriptures meant a withdrawal from | exemplarism and symbolism, both | common features of mediaeval | philosophy and still flourishing in | the seventeenth century. As all works | —says Bacon—show the power and | ability of their maker, but not his | image, so ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon

... THOMPSON had some design of symbolism in the choice of a name for her heroine, Mary England (METHUEN). The publishers indeed consider that she might be called "Every Woman," so typical is she of her sex, and "so like to the emotional careers of so many ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various

... sunlight of the streets and fields. A village vicar was slain with inconceivable stripes, and his corpse set on fire with frightful jests about a roasted priest. Rape became a mode of government. The violation of virgins became a standing order of police. Stamped still with the same terrible symbolism, the work of the English Government and the English settlers seemed to resolve itself into animal atrocities against the wives and daughters of a race distinguished for a rare and detached purity, and of a religion which makes of innocence the Mother of God. In its bodily aspects ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton

... symbolism became a sort of fixed language with him; "the Snake" was a name by which it amused him to be known among his friends. The clash of the two opposites is crudely and narrowly conceived, with no suggestion ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow

... The symbolism of this fire burnt out, that had warmed and cheered none, oppressed his fancy, and he left the small maid-of-all-work to triumph ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... dirty; there was no relaxation of our involuntary asceticism, but we slept well. There was music in our ears. We had attained to Jerusalem, and our dreams were with the angels. Jerusalem the earthly had not forced itself upon our minds; we held the symbolism of the journey lightly, and the mind read a mystery in delicate emotions. The time was to come when some of us would be discontented with Jerusalem, as some of the disciples who fell away were discontented with the poor and humble Jesus; but as yet even to these ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... examine it Mr. Leigh continued: "I do not quite comprehend the symbolism of the ram's head and the star; the crescent ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... 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 ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

... and sacred symbolism represented by this staff," he continued, "I invest you both with the supreme authority. And further, I call all men to witness that, the hand of Soaring Eagle rests above that of the Giver of Life, which signifies that his word shall outweigh all others ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... understand His death you must understand who it was that died. His death is a thought pathetic in all aspects, and very precious in many. But when we hear 'Christ died according to the Scriptures,' the whole symbolism of the ancient ritual and all the glowing anticipations of the prophets rise up before us, and that death assumes an altogether different aspect. If we stop with 'Jesus died,' then that death may be a beautiful example of heroism, a sweet, pathetic instance of innocent suffering, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... be thought by some that the processes of development indicated above are insufficient and unsatisfactory. There are those who, seeing these forms already endowed with symbolism, begin at what I conceive to be the wrong end of the process. They derive the form of symbol directly from the thing symbolized. Thus the current scroll is, with many races, found to be a symbol of water, and its origin is attributed to a ...
— Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. • William Henry Holmes

... takes place in heaven. We must allow the unsuitable fiction attributing distraction to the divine Unity, for the sake of the words in which Mercy overthrows the arguments of Justice. For the poet unintentionally nullifies the symbolism of the theologian, representing Justice as defeated. He forgets that the grandest exercise of justice is mercy. The confusion comes from the fancy that justice means vengeance upon sin, and not the doing of what is right. Justice can be at no strife with mercy, for not to do what ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... astounded at the incredible amount of Judaism and formalism which still exists nineteen centuries after the Redeemer's proclamation, "It is the letter which killeth"—after his protest against a dead symbolism. The new religion is so profound that it is not understood even now, and would seem a blasphemy to the greater number of Christians. The person of Christ is the centre of it. Redemption, eternal life, divinity, humanity, propitiation, incarnation, judgment, Satan, heaven ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... which derived its name and its symbolism from the trade of the charcoal-burner, as Freemasonry from that of the builder, is uncertain. Whether its first aim was resistance to Bourbon tyranny after 1799, or the expulsion of the French and Austrians ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... Professor Carver bears the impression of incompleteness, or rather of suggestiveness. If "making a virtue of necessity" is idealization, is not symbolism also a form of "make believe." If the "ability to persuade oneself that what is necessary is noble or dignified or honorable or pleasant," is exhibited on Quaker Hill as a "most important psychic factor," so is also the ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson

... and huge specification of oil production and consumption. The dotted cities would suggest no more than agencies in its distribution, and they would be pegged in many colors—as is the custom of our business efficiency—by way of base symbolism of their rank and pretense; the wide oceans themselves would be merely courses for his tank ships to bustle on and leave a greasy trail. Really, contrary to my own experience and sudden cure, one might think that such ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... "Religion" calmly and deliberately for his aesthetic culture and his mystic symbolism. Neither of them are, for one moment, touched ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... birthplace, his functions, Cipactonalli, a fabled personage, Clavigero, quoted, Coatepec, the sacred serpent mountain, Codex Ramirez, the, Codex Telleriano-Remensis, the, Codex Vaticanus, the, Colhuacan: first King of, derivation of, reference to, Colors, symbolism of, Cuauhtitlan, the Annals of, Cuezaltzin, a name ...
— Rig Veda Americanus - Sacred Songs Of The Ancient Mexicans, With A Gloss In Nahuatl • Various

... eloquent and mystical. I think his Swedenborgian studies had crossed his notions of religion with strange lights. I never could follow him quite in these excursions into the region of symbolism. I only recollect that he talked of the deluge and the waters of Mara, and said, 'I am washed—I am sprinkled,' and then, pausing, bathed his thin temples and forehead with eau de Cologne; a process which was, perhaps, suggested by his imagery ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... old custom of Niebeldingk's—a remnant of his half out-lived Don Juan years—to send a bunch of Indian lilies to those women who had granted him their supreme favours. He always sent the flowers next morning. Their symbolism was plain and delicate: In spite of what has taken place you are as lofty and as sacred in my eyes as these pallid, alien flowers whose home is beside the Ganges. Therefore have the kindness—not to ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann

... was brief and straightforward; he talked no secondhand formalities from the textbooks; he met his hearers as men, and they took every word in with complete understanding. When I hear a man talking to the fishers about the symbolism of an ephod, I always want to run away. What is needed is the human voice, coming right from the human heart: cut and dried theological terms only daze the fisherman; he is too polite to look bored, but he suffers all the ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... evidence to show that the engraving in Cogolludo is a relic of the purest ancient Maya symbolism,—one of the most interesting which have been preserved to us; but to enter upon its explanation in this connection would be too far from my ...
— The Books of Chilan Balam, the Prophetic and Historic Records of the Mayas of Yucatan • Daniel G. Brinton

... a strange thing," went on the little man, musingly. "It has its censors, that go off duty during sleep. Our sternest and often unconscious repressions pass them then, and emerge in the form of dreams. But of course you know all that. Dream symbolism. Does the person in this case dream? That would be ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... era an outward and mortal expression of the inward immortal life; and at once the old struggle begins to repeat itself between the flesh and the spirit, the form and the reality. For a while the lower tendencies are held in check; the meaning of the symbolism is remembered and fresh; it is a living language, pregnant and suggestive. By and bye, as the mind passes into other phases, the meaning is forgotten; the language becomes a dead language; and the living robe of life becomes a winding-sheet of corruption. ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... prayers. The opal is from Australia, the platinum from Siberia, the diamonds from Africa, the setting was designed in Paris. And here it is, the circle of the world has been made to secure this little thing of beauty for you. What symbolism! ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... At these sacrifices there is no elaborate ritual or suggestion of symbolism. The animal is beheaded and the inference is that Kali likes it. Similarly simple is the offering of coco-nuts to Kali. The worshipper gives a nut to the pujari who splits it in two with an axe, spills the milk and hands back half the nut to the worshipper. This ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... upon bulls, for the bull was the symbol of generative power; and he was also represented with bunches of grapes and pomegranates in his hand,"[1119] emblems of productivity. The sacred conical stones and pillars dedicated in his temples[1120] may have had their origin in a similar symbolism. As polytheistic systems had always a tendency to enlarge themselves, Baal had no sooner become a separate god, distinct from El, and Rimmon, and Molech, and Adonai, than he proceeded to multiply himself, and from ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... have been, it was a burning fragment from the living torch of the Christian religion that he carried across the world with him, and by which he sought to kindle the fire of faith in the lands of his discovery. So that there is a profound symbolism in those raying beams that now, night after night, month by month, and year after year, shine out across the sea from Watling's Island in the direction of ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... lost in a realm of symbolism, became unintelligible; and temporarily sentimentalism suffered a reaction. The French Revolution, with its Reign of Terror, and the rise of a military autocrat, though supported, even after Great Britain had taken up arms against Napoleon, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... great schools dwell on this symbolism. The long flowing hair is the symbol of life, and the [Greek: diadema] of the law restraining it. Royalty, or kingliness, over life, restraining and glorifying. In the extremity of restraint—in death, whether noble, as of death ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin

... adopted it because they were impervious to artistic influence or impatient of spiritual discipline. It will hardly do to divide the nation into intelligent Protestants and illiterate Catholics: the point is that the somewhat crude symbolism which had satisfied the cravings of the average man had ceased to be sufficient for his newer intelligent needs; he demanded either a higher symbolism or else as little as possible. Some felt the symbol a help, others felt it a hindrance to the realization of the ideal; so some men can see better ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... silence is deeper and more real than speech. As I stood meditating on these deep things that lie at the bottom of this sea of bloom, I understood why men in all ages have connected the flowering of the apple with their dreams of paradise; I saw at a glance the immortal symbolism of these blossoming fields and hillsides. I did not need to lift my eyes to look upon that garden of Hesperides, lying like a dream of heaven under the golden western skies, whence Heracles brought back the fruit of Juno; I asked no aid of Milton's ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... mere, simple thing itself. It's the symbolism back of it. Maybe even now I'm premature in telling ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... refuses, 80 process, motive power for, escapes in fore-pleasure, 72 rejection leaves in unconscious of neurotic the psychosexual activity for object finding, 86 satisfaction from muscular activity, 63 substance, role of, 74 symbolism of forms of motion, 63 tension loosened by copulation, 14 implies feeling of displeasure, 70 carries impulse to alter psychic situation, 70 appears even in infancy, 73 does not originate in pleasure, 74 and pleasure only indirectly connected, 74 a certain amount of, necessary ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud

... forms was deliberately chosen as typifying the fundamental source of our institutions; but in the general treatment, particularly in the simple, modern, truly American masses and details, which are everywhere full of a refined and delicate symbolism, the building is an interpretation of the underlying spirit of American Democracy. That the architects have been successful no one can deny who has seen the Union and has felt the rugged beauty of its central tower, which became at once the striking ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... 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 colic of children. ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera

... essential that he should leave a memorial on the wall of the cell in which he was about to perish, and so he got out the broken knife from under the mattress, and carved a big cross in the papered plaster of the wall. It was less artistic in its outline than he could have hoped; but its symbolism, at least, was clear, and he wept and exulted ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... to attain character of outline, but rather to see where things are light and where they are dark, and to draw them as he sees them, never caring whether his lines be dexterous or slovenly. The result of such study is the immediate substitution of downright drawing for symbolism, and afterwards a judicious moderation in the use of extreme lights and darks; for where local colors are really drawn, so much of what seems violently dark is found to come light against something else, and so much of what seems high light to come ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... guess it's so; we get along without the symbolism now." He stopped, but she knew that he had ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... to the world of realities, whereas in Calendau the poet has given free play to a brilliant and vivid imagination, launching forth into the heroic and incredible, yet without abandoning the world of real time and real places. Allegory and symbolism are the web and woof of Calendau. The poem, again, is overburdened with minute historic details and descriptions, which are greatly magnified in the eye of his imagination. A poet, of course, must be pardoned for this want of a sense of proportion, ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer

... caused the officiating priest in the temple to present to a bridal pair, on entering, a twig of Ivy, 'as a symbolical wish that their love, like it, might ever continue fresh.' It was a beautiful thought, and one which was not lost sight of in the ecclesiastical and architectural symbolism of the middle ages. 'It is,' says FRIEDREICH (Symbolik und Mythologie der Natur, Sec. 103), 'as an ever-greening plant, a type of life, of love, and of marriage.' It is, therefore, with both truth and propriety that the modern floral lexicons give the vitis hedera, or Ivy, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... dear sir, may have nothing in his head, but his tawniness tells us he imbibes good sound stuff, worthy of the reputation of a noble brewery. Whereas your, Unicorn, true to the character of the numberless hosts he stands for, is manifestly a consumer of doctor's drugs. And there you have the symbolism of your country. Right or left of the shield, I forget which, and it is of no importance to the point—you have Grandgosier or Great Turk in all his majesty, mane and tail; and on the other hand, you behold, as ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... religious and 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 beard is a disgrace. A pair of ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon

... of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie was so complete a hieroglyph. Thus, the Roman abbey, the philosophers' church, the Gothic art, Saxon art, the heavy, round pillar, which recalls Gregory VII., the hermetic symbolism, with which Nicolas Flamel played the prelude to Luther, papal unity, schism, Saint-Germain des Pres, Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie,—all are mingled, combined, amalgamated in Notre-Dame. This central mother church is, among the ancient churches of Paris, a sort ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... Triumphal Bridge. Electric Tower. Temple of Music. Architecture. Coloring of the "Rainbow City." Symbolism of Coloring. Sculpture. Electrical Illumination. The Chaining of Niagara. The Midway. The Athletic Congress. Conservatory. The Spanish-American Countries Represented. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... (in the philosophic sense of "accident") a cause of pleasure, pain, or desire seems to explain the essence of all the particular variations of the psychological phenomena known now by all who have been aroused to the significance of their vagrant cryptic slumbers, as the phenomena of symbolism, sublimation, and fetich worship. Spinoza's proposition explains all the phenomena adequately because among the fundamental human emotions, Spinoza like Freud—if we discount the recent attempt to go beyond the pleasure-principle—reckons ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... forms of 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 ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks

... is to be made at all, I should apply the solemn word to the solemnest rite and the holiest ordinance of God's, even if I left out the sacred washing in the name of the Trinity and the broken emblematic bread and the wine. These are sacramental in their solemn symbolism, that in the solemnest ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston

... is troubled with a gift for symbolism, it is hard to treat any man one meets as though he were really a whole man: to treat a lawyer as though he were anything but a deed of assignment, or a surgeon as if he were anything more than an operation. As ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... towards which every line, every attitude in the picture converges. Towards the holy spot walk, on the right, the pilgrims and the hermits, on the left, the good judges and the soldiers of Christ. The symbolism of the picture which enfolds the majestic plan of the redemption of man through Christ's sacrifice, of the second creation through the Spirit, as contrasted with the first creation through the flesh, is directly inspired by the mystic writings of the time, while the harmony and depth of colours, ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

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

... 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

... dictatorship of man, permitting herself to be torn, and wounded, and furrowed, and harrowed at his pleasure, yielding her substance and her life to sustain the produce of his choosing, her body and her soul abandoned supine to his caprice. The sight had an exasperating effect upon Hadria. Its symbolism haunted her. The calm, sweet English landscape affected her at times with a sort of disgust. It was, perhaps, the same in kind as the far stronger sensation of disgust that she felt when she first saw ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... paradise to which an ascending Deity might be caught up through clouds, and hidden for a 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

... 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 a more varied modulation, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley

... that touch of oriental symbolism which characterized him, used to illustrate to his disciples the steps to knowledge by means of gestures. Displaying his right hand with the fingers outstretched he would say, "That is a phantasy," then contracting ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock

... scientific literature because the original scientific expression is itself a translation. Literary expression is personal and concrete, but this does not mean that its significance is altogether bound up with the accidental qualities of the medium. A truly deep symbolism, for instance, does not depend on the verbal associations of a particular language but rests securely on an intuitive basis that underlies all linguistic expression. The artist's "intuition," to use Croce's term, is immediately fashioned out of a generalized human experience—thought ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir

... writer of romances who lavishes the whole force of his enthusiasm upon the possibilities of human love, its depth, its loyalty, its faithfulness, is apt to lose the sense of proportion. One ought to employ one's sense of admiration for the august achievements of humanity as a species of symbolism. Our admiration for athletic prowess, for art, for literature, ought not to limit itself to these, but ought to regard them as symbols of vaster, larger, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... with an extra little sob at the roughness of life. The withered pink rose fell on the floor. Rebecca looked at it and thought to herself, "Just like my happy day!" Nothing could show more clearly the kind of child she was than the fact that she instantly perceived the symbolism of the rose, and laid it in the drawer with the dress as if she were burying the whole episode with all its sad memories. It was a child's poetic instinct with a dawning hint of ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... more than the simplest child's personification. On the walls you may have noticed the Ane qui vielle,—the ass playing the lyre; and on all the old churches you can see "bestiaries," as they were called, of fabulous animals, symbolic or not; but the symbolism is as simple as the realism of the oxen at Laon. It gave play to the artist in his effort for variety of decoration, and it amused the people,—probably the Virgin also was not above being amused;—now and then it seems about ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... symbolism in their intent.... The man they called a usurper must die on the very tree that gave their home its significance, and no other instrument of vengeance would satisfy them. The old bitterness had begun generations ago when the renegade who "painted his face and went to the Indians" ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... throughout to the original form. As the hero, the count, is styled 'The Man' throughout the original, the name has been preserved, in spite of its awkward appearance in English: the spirit of a poetic work, full of mystic symbolism, evaporates so readily in the process of translation, that no sacrifice of the literal meaning has been made to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... at a restaurant of the discreet sort, divided into many compartments, and situated, with a charming symbolism, at the back of St. George's, Hanover Square. Geraldine had chosen it. They did not need food, but they ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett

... indeterminate equations, where certain technical terms are, in all probability, of Greek origin. However this may be, it is certain that the Hindu algebraists were far in advance of Diophantus. The deficiencies of the Greek symbolism were partially remedied; subtraction was denoted by placing a dot over the subtrahend; multiplication, by placing bha (an abbreviation of bhavita, the "product'') after the factom; division, by placing the divisor ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the well-poised angular snout, and, having visualised their treatment of the theme, compare it with the painted effigies of such animals by George Morland, which were merely pigs, Sir, and nothing more. No symbolism, no ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various

... Romanticism, as in other countries, gave way in turn to realism and various other movements current in those turbulent decades. Sometimes the changes came not as a natural phase of literary evolution, but rather as the consequence of pure imitation. Thus, Verissimo tells us, Symbolism, in Brazil, was a matter of intentional parroting, in many cases unintelligent. It did not correspond to a movement of reaction,—mystical, sensualist, individualist, socialistic ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

... bent and glowering over his chest. There was in Dempsey's inscrutable, darkling mien a cold, simmering anger, as of a man unfairly hounded, he hardly knew why. And probably, we think, unjustly. You will say that we import a symbolism into a field where it scarcely thrives. But Carpentier's engaging merriment in the eye of oncoming downfall seemed to us almost a parable of those who have smiled too confidingly upon the dark ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... the use of the symbolism which is so marked here. The picture language of John's Revelation has seemed very puzzling. It has seemed like a new language, to which we had neither grammar nor dictionary, and the intended meaning of which we could only guess at. But this is because we are Westerners and ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon

... hurts, but with the last flicker of intelligence I shall remember that scene. Even then, in a flash, I saw the symbolism ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown

... and feet of their dead enemies are devoured. These are carefully cooked and eaten as delicacies along with monkey meat, birds, fish, and other things prepared for a feast in honor of a victory. The eating of human flesh seems to be symbolism rather than savagery. Furthermore, they do not range the jungle hunting for victims. They eat only those who come against them ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel

... by the amount contributed. It was during the session of the school that afternoon that she made the announcement of her plan, and delivered the subscription papers to the two captains. She aroused much enthusiasm by the little speech she made, dwelling on the beauty and symbolism of the flag, and the patriotic impulse that would be aroused and strengthened by having ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene

... preparatory work for the statement and solution of new problems consisted in the perfection of symbolism. As reasoning in general is dependent on words, as music is dependent on the mechanical invention of instruments, so mathematics cannot progress far save with a simple and adequate symbolism. The introduction of the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... scripture, and particularly as regards the life of Christ, has led to many fanciful suggestions concerning the gold and frankincense and myrrh specified in this incident. Some have supposed a half-hidden symbolism therein—gold a tribute to His royal estate, frankincense an offering in recognition of His priesthood, and myrrh for His burial. The sacred record offers no basis for such conjecture. Myrrh and frankincense are aromatic resins derived from plants indigenous to eastern lands, and they have been ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... 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 ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... 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 out of the ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith

... perfect expression in the mythology of Greece was not originally or essentially pagan. It was humanistic, and represented the response of man's spirit to that free and beautiful spirit which he found in nature around him. All such symbolism of Greek religion as that of the worship of Dionysus and Ceres, shows this. In these cults the commonest things of life, the wine and corn wherewith man sustained himself, assumed a higher and richer meaning. Food and drink were ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... me the thought that I am looking at something immemorially old, something belonging to the unrecorded beginning of this Oriental life, perhaps to the crepuscular Kamiyo itself, to the magical Age of the Gods; a symbolism of motion whereof the meaning has been forgotten for innumerable years. Yet more and more unreal the spectacle appears, with silent smilings, with its silent bowings, as if obeisance to watchers invisible; and I find myself wondering whether, were I to utter but a whisper, all would not ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... understand a forward movement in a moral or religious sense. The most intensive exemplar of the anabasis (whatever this may be) is mysticism. I can but grope about in the psychology of mysticism; I trust I may have more confidence at that point where I look at its symbolism from the ethical ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... 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 ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... ravings of delirium are also of this nature, though no one, so far as I know, has yet 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

... it is thus nearly always difficult to say what is symbolic and what realistic, in the range of Christian art the distinction is clear. In that, a vast division of imaginative work is occupied in the symbolism of virtues, vices, or natural powers or passions; and in the representation of personages who, though nominally real, become in conception symbolic. In the greater part of this work there is no intention of implying the existence ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin

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

... right to warn them that in all probability they will find the treasure formula in ogham characters or serpentine markings, and that as the first has long ago been deciphered and the second is pure symbolism they will waste their time and ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... Go up to the Parliament House and you will hear the advocates and judges talking to one another in a professional speech that the learned layman no more than the ignorant can understand. Our doctors, again, have a shorthand symbolism that only themselves and the chemists understand. And so it is with every business and profession; each several trade strikes out a language for itself. And so does divinity, and, especially, experimental divinity, of which Rutherford's letters are full. We not only need a glossary for the ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte

... 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 ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... of the author of this little volume has been to indicate the symbolism and meaning attaching to the various portions of our churches and cathedrals, and to endeavour briefly to describe, in language as simple as the subject will allow, the various styles of ecclesiastical architecture with their distinctive characteristics in such a way as will ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath

... wrinkle coming into his forehead, "so you think that in a rationalistic scheme of symbolism the ball should be on top ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... lotus, not a rose flower. The latter is never used in Hindoo symbolism. The lotus is a solar emblem, and intimately associated with the worship ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... Scribner's Sons). While this is primarily a volume of critical essays on painting, music, literature and life, it concludes with a series of seven short stories which serve as a postlude to Mr. Huneker's earlier volume, "Visionaries." They are chiefly interesting as the last dying glow of symbolism, derivative as they are from Huysmans and Mallarme. I cannot regard them as successful stories, but they have a certain experimental value which comes nearest to success in "The ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... move. Adelaide Neilson was one of those strange, exceptional natures that, often building better than they know, not only interpret "the poet's dream" but give to it an added emphasis and a higher symbolism. Each element of her personality was rich and rare. The eyes—now glittering with a mischievous glee that seemed never to have seen a cloud or felt a sorrow, now steady, frank, and sweet, with innocence and trust,—could, in one moment, flash with the wild fire ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... with the Fordicidia on the 15th, when pregnant cows were sacrificed: their unborn calves were torn from them and burnt, the ashes being kept by the Vestal Virgin in Vesta's storehouse (penus Vestae) for use at the Parilia. The general symbolism of fertility is very clear; the goddess associated with the festival is Tellus, the earth herself, and the local origin of these festivals is shown in the fact that not only was the sacrifice made for the whole people on the ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey

... unaccountable character! I am sometimes quite at a loss, I assure you.... She must be forty; she says she is thirty-six, and of course she has every right to say so. But I swear I judge her intellectually, simply from the metaphysical point of view; there is a sort of symbolism sprung up between us, a sort of algebra or what not! I don't understand it! Well, that's all nonsense. Only, seeing that you are not a student now and have lost your lessons and your clothes, and that through the young lady's death she has no need to ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... forgiveness of sins, or the fulfilment of prophecies, are ideas which, any one can see, need but a touch to turn them into something blasphemous or ferocious. . . . A sentence phrased wrong about the nature of symbolism would have broken all the best statues in Europe. A slip in the definitions might stop all the dances; might wither all the Christmas trees or break all the Easter eggs. Doctrines had to be defined within strict limits, even in order that man might enjoy general human liberties. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... leading to the bureau of marriage licenses in the City Hall. There must have been something more than accident in its discovery just in this spot. Men of thoughtful temper will do well to heed the symbolism of this incident. Plainly not only the constitution of the United States is to be made a quaffing-stock, but the very sanctity of the marriage bond is assailed. To this form of terrorism there is but ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... 117). The cult of S. Nicholas of Myra grew rapidly in the twelfth century, being popularised by the crusaders. In this century it is known that the carved work at Tournai, whence it is probable that the black marble came, was remarkable for its symbolism. The font has been thought to be older, on account of its archaic figures, but, as the Dean of Winchester pointed out in a paper read before the Archaeological Association in 1893 (to which we are indebted for much of this account), ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant

... 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

... 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

... days of the Omer till 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 in grave-clothes and saw from their seats ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... excellent Brussels carpet of quiet pattern, were mainly responsible for a general effect of middle-class comfort, in which, indeed, if beauty had not been included, it had not been wilfully violated, but merely unthought of. The young people for whom these familiar objects meant a symbolism deep-rooted in their earliest memories could hardly in fairness have declared anything positively painful in that room—except perhaps those Atlantic liners; their charges against furniture, which ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... mystical idea, and used it at once to spiritualise the Sabbath and attach to it an ecstatic joyousness. The ritual of the 'over-Soul' was an elaborate means by which a relation was established between heaven and earth. But all this symbolism had but the slightest connection with dogma. It was practical through and through. It emerged in a number of new rites, it based itself on and became the cause of a deepening devotion to morality. Luria would have looked with dismay on the ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams

... indication; symbolism, symbolization; semiology, semiotics, semeiology[obs3], semeiotics[obs3]; Zeitgeist. [means of recognition: property] characteristic, diagnostic; lineament, feature, trait; fingerprint, voiceprint, footprint, noseprint ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... balefulest sights. Souls are no longer filled with their Fetish; but only pretend to be filled, and would fain make themselves feel that they are filled. "You do not believe," said Coleridge; "you only believe that you believe." It is the final scene in all kinds of Worship and Symbolism; the sure symptom that death is now nigh. It is equivalent to what we call Formulism, and Worship of Formulas, in these days of ours. No more immoral act can be done by a human creature; for it is the beginning of all immorality, or rather ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... head the red cap demanded by revolutionary etiquette. Robespierre threw the sacred symbol on the ground with a severe air, and then proceeded with a discourse of much austerity. Not that he was averse to a certain seemly decoration, or to the embodiment of revolutionary sentiment by means of a symbolism that strikes our cooler imagination as rather puerile. He was as ready as others to use the arts of the theatre for the liturgy of patriots. One of the most touching of all the minor dramatic incidents of the Revolution was the death of Barra. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley

... book are, to my sense, a want of reality and an abuse of the fanciful element—of a certain superficial symbolism. The people strike me not as characters, but as representatives, very picturesquely arranged, of a single state of mind; and the interest of the story lies, not in them, but in the situation, which is insistently kept before us, with little progression, though with a great deal, as I have ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... his mind dwelt on the symbolism of that sacred scene, the Knight remembered that the two who walked in sadness did not long walk alone. One, stepping silently, came up with them; knowing all, yet asking tenderest question; the Master, Whom they mourned, Himself drew ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... known this before; but never did I so realize the significant symbolism of the act as when I looked at this lifeless yet lifelike thing, to be made into the beauty of a woman, called by her name, and cherished after her death,—and saw that only through this chrysalis of the clay, so cared ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... coloured candles and those variegated parcels are the blossoms of the absurd tree! How excessively grotesque to tie all those parcels to the branches, in order to take them off again! Surely, something less medieval, more ingenious, more modern than this could be devised—if symbolism is to be indulged in at all! Can you devise it, O sceptical one, revelling in disillusion? Can you invent a symbol more natural and graceful than the symbol of the Tree? Perhaps you would have a shop-counter, and shelves behind it, so as to instill early into the youthful mind that this ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett

... have our own emotions, and our own work—that's all. We do not care for jewels, or for decoration for its own sake. The things we use and see daily are beautiful in themselves, through their perfect utility and their outward symbolism of utility and creation. Our tools and our furniture are beautiful according to our own conceptions of beauty—as you can see." He made a gesture ...
— The Chamber of Life • Green Peyton Wertenbaker

... thunderbolt, and on some altars, dedicated to Juppiter, both a wheel and a thunderbolt are figured. Many races have symbolised the sun as a circle or wheel, and an old Roman god, Summanus, probably a sun-god, later assimilated to Juppiter, had as his emblem a wheel. The Celts had the same symbolism, and used the wheel symbol as an amulet,[78] while at the midsummer festivals blazing wheels, symbolising the sun, were rolled down a slope. Possibly the god carries a thunderbolt because the Celts, like other races, believed that lightning was ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... "The American Note Books," in which he tells of going out at night, with his neighbors, to drag for the body of a girl who had drowned herself in the Concord. Yet he did not refrain the touch of symbolism even here. There is a wound on Zenobia's breast, inflicted by the pole with which Hollingsworth is ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers

... JULY:—Engraving of the Royal Freemasons' Girls' School; The Increase of Freemasonry; On Benefit Societies, by the Rev. T. A. Buckley; Episodes in the Life of a Freemason; The Countess and the Serf, by Miss Pardoe; The Knights of St. Helen's; On Symbols and Symbolism; A Relic of the Pretender; Eleanora Ulfeld; The Prison Flower, by Miss Pardoe; Olden Holiday Customs; Si j'etais Roi; Correspondence. Masonic Intelligence:—Supreme Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Masons of England; United Grand Lodge; Grand Conclave of Masonic Knights Templar; The ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various

... quite like Brown to try and outdo the ordinarily accepted symbolism of bearing a palm branch by attempting to wave a whole palm tree, for this he seemed most undoubtedly to be doing, embracing its trunk and swaying from ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell

... the senses and the stirring of the blood. I wish with all my heart that I could set the whole of it down here, for it was most ingeniously fancied and handled, and it was not over difficult for the admirers of any particular beauty to pierce the dainty veil of symbolism with which the poet had pretended to envelop her identity. Alas! my memory will not serve me to recall the greater part of it, or, indeed, any but a little, though that little is in truth the very kernel of the whole, and I have no copy of the ballad ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... she stood at the gate, looking down at the glittering lights. Would they shine as brightly for her, she wondered, in twenty-four hours' time? It was so much to strive for, so much to lose, so wonderfully much to gain. Slowly her eyes travelled upwards. The symbolism of those higher lights calmed her fear. She drew ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... It was a living system of thought, and one which carried the mind upwards towards the Eternal will, rather than downwards towards my personal security. Keble has said of the old Catholic views, founded on sacramental symbolism, that they are more poetical than any other religious conception. But it must be acknowledged that a predestinarian scheme, leading the cogitation upward to dwell upon "the heavenly things before the foundation ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... returned to his customary avocations. And when members of his family visit the shrine and see the pole, they will be reminded of the particular benefit which they are entitled to expect from the souls of the departed. A certain rude symbolism may be traced in the materials and other particulars of these prayer-posts. A hard wood signifies strength; a tall pole overtopping all the rest imports a wish that he for whose sake it was erected may out-top all his ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... sunshine pursuing it back into distance; and the rainbow, with its base set on a ship of battle, to be together types of war and peace, and of the one as the foundation of the other, I leave it to the reader to decide. My own impression is, that although Turner might have some askance symbolism in his mind, the present design is, like the former one, in many points a simple reminiscence of a ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin

... talking of. And 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 ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... other arts, as indeed all the manifestations of life then harmonized so marvelously with one another. The tendency to parable shows itself here, as in poetry. When we now enter a Gothic cathedral, we hardly suspect the esoteric sense of its stone symbolism; only a general impression pierces our soul; we realize an elevation of feeling and mortification of the flesh. The interior is a hollow cross, and we wander among the instruments of martyrdom itself; the variegated windows cast on us red and green light, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... 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

... detail of wedding custom there is a symbolism. With the constant elevation of the standards of marriage, this symbolism and these customs grow purer and more in accord with the ideals. Just as it is always taken for granted that a marriage ceremony is uniting loving hearts, so little by little all that is at variance with that thought ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway

... the truest sense, Leonardo's masterpiece, the revealing instance of his mode of thought and work. In suggestiveness, only the Melancholia of Duerer is comparable to it; and no crude symbolism disturbs the effect of its subdued and graceful mystery. We all know the face and hands of the figure, set in the marble chair, in that cirque of fantastic rocks, as in some faint light under sea. Perhaps of all ancient pictures time has chilled it least.[10] As often happens with ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... of January 29 I had a vision of a beautiful woman with a child kneeling at her feet. She was seated on a chair and held a book on her lap. The symbolism of the vision was later explained to me by the controls, who said: "Verily I say unto you whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein." God's truths are perceived ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon

... 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

... more splendid than that of Giuliano; while the old man, whose head anticipates everything that is considered most original in Rodin's work, is among the best of Michelangelo's statuary. Much speculation has been indulged in as to the meaning of the symbolism of these tombs, and having no theory of my own to offer, I am glad to borrow Mr. Gerald S. Davies' summary from his monograph on Michelangelo. The figure of Giuliano typifies energy and leadership in repose; while the man on his tomb typifies Day and the woman Night, or the man Action ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... In literature the parable of the mustard seed to which the kingdom of heaven was likened, exemplifies symbolical or metaphorical method; but the tale of the court of Arthur's knights, ideal method; between them, and sharing something of both, lies allegorical method. Idolatry is the religion of symbolism, for the image is not the god; Christianity is the religion of idealism, for Christ is God incarnate. Idealism presents the reality itself, the universal truth made manifest in the concrete type, and there present and embodied in ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... 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 things in the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey

... plumage, and the world was evidently a very gay and sportive place when these fair ladies spent their leisure over this embroidery! These early pictures seldom show the religious feeling that afterwards slowly worked its way through the Stuart days (though, perhaps, disguised under royalistic symbolism), until in the reign of Queen Anne it became more or less a fashion, in pictorial needle-craft. It burst out afresh in the early nineteenth century and became an absolute obsession of the early Victorian Berlin-wool workers ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes

... the symbols of the great natural forces free from any stain of human interference. Greed and cruelty had not stained the pure waters of his lovely lake, or dimmed the light to which his vicar points as in the early morning it grazes the edges of the mighty mountain buttresses. Whatever symbolism may be found in the Alps, suggesting emotions of awe, wonder, and softened melancholy, came unstained by the association with the vices of a complex civilisation. If poets and critics have not quite analysed the precise nature of our modern love of ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... What this strange symbolism meant, or whence it derived its origin, Aunt Jane did not know. The cross was there, and the Trinity, though Jane was scarcely conscious of these, at this moment, as religious emblems. But she hoped, on general principles, that this performance ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... 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, which requires investigation. We have ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... play, et seq.—First production of Hummerdinck's opera and cast, Earlier performance of the work as a melodrama, Author and composer, Opera and melodrama in Germany, Wagnerian symbolism and music, "Die Meistersinger" recalled, Hero and ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... England began to throw off 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 ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton

... its faults, since the poet attained with marvelous art the very effects he desired. The themes of nearly all the poems are death, ruin, regret, or failure; the verse is original in form, and among the most musical in the language, full of a haunting, almost magical melody. Mystery, symbolism, shadowy suggestion, fugitive thought, elusive beauty, beings that are mere insubstantial abstractions—these are the characteristics, but designedly so, of Poe's poetry. A poem to him was simply a crystallized mood, and it is futile for his readers to apply any other test. Yet ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... the Philistine or the blockhead who can seriously ask, is it true? Some such position seems to be really conceivable as an ultimate compromise. Put aside the prosaic insistence upon literal matter-of-fact truth, and we may all agree to use the same symbolism, and interpret it as we please. This seems to me to be actually the view of many thoughtful people, though for obvious reasons it is not often explicitly stated. One reason is, of course, the consciousness that the great mass of mankind requires plain, tangible ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... expressed this idea in his mystic doctrine: "Numbers are the cause of the material existence of things." The movement which he spread by means of a vast, secret confraternity ended, however, in a barren symbolism, and it is impossible to trace what relation his strange theories of the transmigration of souls and the music of the spheres have to his general system ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... whole story as having an allegoric meaning. Joacim represents Christ, Susanna the Christian Church; the bath represents Holy Baptism; and the two Elders the Jews and Gentiles persecuting the faithful (D.C.B. art. Hippolytus, p. 104a. For Christian sarcophagi with like symbolism, see 'Art'). M. de Castillo (Madrid, 1658) reflects in symbolism the increments of a later age when he sees in Susanna a type of the Virgin Mary—"Maria Virgo ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney



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



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