"Symbolism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we have here is the effect, the thrill, the overtones of a ghost story rather than the narrative itself—the less than half-told adventure of some new Childe Roland heroically challenging a heedless universe. Never have silence and black night been reproduced more creepily, nor has the symbolism of man's courage facing the cryptic riddle of life ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... 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
... 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 an oleaginous stream of talk, if directed in atomizer ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... psychologist in Madame 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 quiring ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... 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, towering, sabre above ...
— The Yillian Way • John Keith Laumer
... to 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 vanish ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... a fiendish 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 ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... 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 King of Prussia not to incur the irredeemable ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Fairfax County, the pace and extent of these changes have been extensive. Architectural historians who note uniqueness in the fact that Virginia courthouses developed as a complex of related buildings may see ominous symbolism in the fact that today one of the structures in the cluster around Fairfax County's courthouse is a modern fifteen-story county office building. Yet, at the same time this office building was being planned, workmen were rehabilitating the original section of the courthouse to represent its ...
— The Fairfax County Courthouse • Ross D. Netherton
... of the main architectural ensemble, the two minor courts, the Court of Palms and the Court of Flowers, while lacking the more imposing size, dignity and symbolism of the three interior courts, largely compensate by their sense of intimacy, warmth and quiet charm. With their sheltered location and sunny atmosphere, due to southern exposure, and with the enchantment ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... The phenomenal unnaturalness of acting is a thing discounted in the minds of most people by early visits to the theatre. They get used to the fantastic gestures, the flamboyant emotions, the weird mouthings, melodious snortings, agonising yelps, lip-gnawings, glaring horrors, and other emotional symbolism of the stage. It becomes at last a mere deaf-and-dumb language to them, which they read intelligently pari passu with the hearing of the dialogue. But all this was new to me. The thing was called a modern comedy, the people were supposed to be English ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... 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 ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... 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
... the name KEYSERLING (diminutive of KAISER) into "Caesarion;"—and I should have said, he plays much upon names and also upon things, at Reinsberg, in that style; and has a good deal of airy symbolism, and cloud-work ingeniously painted round the solidities of his life there. Especially a "Bayard Order," as he calls it: Twelve of his selectest Friends made into a Chivalry Brotherhood, the names of whom are all ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... understood; since it was soon seen that the only photographer who could lay any claim to artistic work was the man who selected and altered and posed—arranged his subject, that is to say, in more or less symbolic form. Then people began to see again that Symbolism was the underlying spirit of Art—as they had known perfectly well, of course, in medieval days: that Art consisted in going beneath the material surfaces that reflected light, or the material events ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... moment of his finest achievement, that fantastic element which was Ibsen's resource against the prose of fact is so sternly repressed that it seems to have left no trace behind. With The Wild Duck fantasy comes back, but with a more precise and explicit symbolism, not yet disturbing the reality of things. Here the irony is more disinterested than even in Ghosts, for it turns back on the reformer and shows us how tragic a muddle we may bring about in the pursuit of truth and in the ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... 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
... superstition cling to the past, and policy vindicates it, and statecraft upholds it forcibly as serviceable to order, till, from the combined action of folly, and worldliness, and ignorance, the once beautiful symbolism becomes at last no better than "a whited sepulchre full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness." So it is now. So it was in the era of the Caesars, out of which Christianity arose; and Christianity, in the form which it assumed at the close of the Arian controversy, was the deliberate solution ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... purification of the men and animals on the farm. The series opens 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 ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... 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 handed down from generation to generation the ceremonials ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... got a plan in my head this morning for the new extracts. Shall we call them "Lapides (or "Marmora") Portici"; and put a little preface to them about the pavement of St. Mark's porch and its symbolism of what the education of a good man's early days must be to him? I think I can write something a little ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... just citified," Mrs. Thomas hastened to affirm; "but the veil and the bow together's got a meaning that I think is real sweet." She waited a moment, almost pathetically anxious for Pearl to see the symbolism of her two incongruous adornments, but her listener was too genuinely bored and also too self-absorbed to make the attempt. "It's this," said Mrs. Thomas, determined to explain. "The pink bow kind o' shows that I'm in the world again ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... 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
... allegory or no. Allegory has always been a favourite form with Christian writers, and more than one cause may be assigned for it. Already there was, in the taste of the age when the Christian literature arose, a tendency to symbolism, which is seen outside the pale of Christianity. Moreover, the long time in which the profession of Christianity was dangerous, favoured the growth of symbolism as a covert means of mutual intelligence. ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... of readers cared nothing for the symbolism of Sartor Resartus; but they responded to its effective presentation of the gospel of work and faced the duties of life with increased energy. Carlyle seemed ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... were hard and 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 all ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... ranked a class of songs belonging emphatically to the Church Militant, and available for camp purposes with very little strain upon their symbolism. This, for instance, had a true companion-in-arms heartiness about it, not impaired by the ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... 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 ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... the individual life—as eloquent to inform as it was potent to 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 ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... themselves, things lay quietly on their shelves; the troubles of the day arranged themselves in trim formation and at his curt wish of dismissal, marched off and disappeared. And with the departure of worry came brilliant, permeating symbolism. Edith became a flighty, negligible girl, not to be worried over; rather to be laughed at. She fitted like a figure of his own dream into the surface world forming about him. He himself became in a measure symbolic, a type of the continent bacchanal, ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... performed in earls' mansions; and when a sovereign enters a city, a fair lady, with wings, representing Loyalty, does not burst out of a pasteboard cloud and recite a poetical address to Majesty. In our theatres the pantomime, which was originally an adumbration of human life, has become degraded. Symbolism has departed from the boards, and burlesque reigns in its stead. The Lord Mavor's Show, the last remnant of the antique spectacular taste, does not move us now; it is held a public nuisance; it provokes the rude ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... in the symbolism, observe, are only because the artists are thinking of separate powers: they do not necessarily involve any national distinction in feeling. But the differences I have next to indicate are essential, and characterize the two opposed national ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... always been a favorite with poets. It has been and may be read with entire pleasure as an elegy to Daphnis, the patron god of singing shepherds. Those, however, who in Roman times knew Vergil's love of symbolism, suspected that a more personal interest led him to compose this elegy. The death and apotheosis of Julius Caesar is still thought by some to be the real subject of the poem, while a few have accepted another ancient conjecture that Vergil here wrote of his brother. The person mourned must, ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... 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 ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... peaceful grotto from an approaching storm. In the distance rushes the wind and the rain, while the shepherd gently plays a melody on his flute." This is quoted by Kleczynski. There are word-whisperings in the next study in F minor, whilst the symbolism of the dance—the Valse, Mazurka, Polonaise, Menuetto, Bolero, Schottische, Krakowiak and Tarantella—is admirably indicated in all of them. The bells of the Funeral March, the will o' wisp character of the last movement of the B flat minor Sonata, the dainty Butterfly Study in G flat, opus 25, ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... spectator whom he {xv} placed in the presence of visible emotion. He maintained that art was of slight use unless able to show what its subject had in mind. Painting should aim, therefore, to reproduce the inner mental state by the attitude assumed. This was, in other words, a natural symbolism, in which the symbol was no mere convention, but the actual outward projection of the inner condition of the mind. Art here offered an equation of inward purpose and outward expression, neither complete without ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... much faith to believe that Almighty 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 ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... organizations have gone a full step beyond those of the religious type. Societies like the Knights of King Arthur, Knights of the Holy Grail, Modern Knights of St. Paul, and others of such ilk have in symbolism sought to teach and find expression for the religious impulse. The method has been more or less the religious type in disguise—ancient titles, elaborate ritual, initiations, and degrees, red fire, fuss ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... Rumphius, smiling, "were wonderful architects, amazing artists, and great scholars. A priest of Memphis and of Thebes could have taught even our German scholars; and as regards symbolism, they were greater than any symbolists of our day. But we shall succeed eventually in deciphering their hieroglyphs and penetrating their mysteries. The great Champollion has made out their alphabet; ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... men were compounded of pure reason; being what they were, many 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 ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... an interesting survival of feudal times, and with its old-time carved and forged companions, such as vanes and weathercocks, doorknockers and figureheads, formed a picturesque element of decoration and symbolism. Many chapters might be written on historic, commemorative, emblematic, heraldic, biblical, humorous, or significant signs, nearly all of which have vanished from public gaze, as has disappeared also the general incapacity to read, which made pictorial devices a necessity. ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... rich merriment. He dived deeper and deeper into his books; he had taken all obsolescence to be his province; in his disgust at the stupid usual questions, "Will it pay?" "What good is it?" and so forth, he would only read what was uncouth and useless. The strange pomp and symbolism of the Cabala, with its hint of more terrible things; the Rosicrucian mysteries of Fludd, the enigmas of Vaughan, dreams of alchemists—all these were his delight. Such were his companions, with the hills and hanging woods, the brooks and lonely waterpools; books, the ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... 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
... method of his writing, but only its purpose and occasionally its subject matter. It is significant to watch the dismal failure Gorky makes of it whenever, in concession to the modern literary fashion, he attempts the mystical. Symbolism is foreign to him except in its broadest aspects. His characters, though hailing from a world but little known, and often extreme and extremely peculiar, are on ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... symbolism employed here. The poet speaks of himself as going through life like a traveller on a long journey, wherein he is constantly met by trials and temptations and cannot always know what is the right course to take. He acknowledges that he needs some stronger power than his own to direct his life ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... long time upon the roof, wondering at the grotesque changes of the day. I recalled my mental states from the midnight prayer to the foolish card-playing. I had a violent revulsion of feeling. I remember I flung away the cigar with a certain wasteful symbolism. My folly came to me with glaring exaggeration. I seemed a traitor to my wife and to my kind; I was filled with remorse. I resolved to leave this strange undisciplined dreamer of great things to his drink and ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... a curious piece of ancient Egyptian symbolism. It represents the sun sending down to the earth innumerable rays, with the peculiarity that each ray terminates in a hand. This method of representing the sun is so unusual that it suggests the presence in the ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... glimpse before saying your 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
... 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. ii., ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... 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
... and the moon receives her name in all languages from the fact that men measure time by her (-mensis-). The idea of Deity itself (Sanscrit -devas-, Latin -deus-, Greek —theos—), and many of the oldest conceptions of religion and of natural symbolism, belong to the common inheritance of the nations. The conception, for example, of heaven as the father and of earth as the mother of being, the festal expeditions of the gods who proceed from place ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... 'Here, take care of it, I am now going to cook food'; while after a time the boy returns the doll to the girl, saying, 'I must now weave the blanket and go to tend the flock.' The proceeding seems a symbolic enactment of the cares of married life and the joint tending of the baby, this sort of symbolism being particularly noticeable in the marriage ceremonies of the people of Madras. Divorce is not permitted even though the wife be guilty of adultery, and if she runs away to her father's house her husband cannot use force to bring her back if she refuses to return to ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... 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 with their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... of capture. This would eliminate Proserpine. No more beautiful myth exists than this one of the springtime, but its beauty and its symbolism do not make it suitable for the kindergarten. It is more suited to the elementary child of the fourth grade. In fact, very few myths of any sort find a legitimate place in the kindergarten, perhaps only a few of the simpler pourquois tales. ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... 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 ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... 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 Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... religious art, and compare it with that of Western Europe. In the West, from the time of the Renaissance downwards, religious art has kept pace with artistic progress. Gradually it emancipated itself from archaic forms and childish symbolism, converted the lifeless typical figures into living individuals, lit up their dull eyes and expressionless faces with human intelligence and human feeling, and finally aimed at archaeological accuracy in costume and ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Virgin from her birth to her death. It is also enriched with mosaics, intaglios, enamels, gilded glass, pietra dura, and all of these arranged in a whole which is quite unique in art. It may be regarded as a piece of architecture or as a sculptural work, and it is full of symbolism; and whatever view is taken of it, it commands admiration for the artist who conceived and ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... should have plunged us deeper in woe, and left us to stew in our juices; he Should have shunned this detestable effeminacy, worthy only of the Dantes and Shakespeares. But unfortunately he was an Esotericist, with the business of helping, not plaguing, mankind: he must follow the grand symbolism of the story of the Soul, recording and emphasizing and showing the way to its victories, not its defeats. He had the eye to see deep into realities, and was not to be led from the path of truth eternal by the cheap effective expedients of realism. He must tell the whole truth: building ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... much is dim with dream. First one and then another of these qualities has most interested him. He has written in explanation of patriotic verse, of folk-verse, of verse based on the old court romances, of symbolism, of Rosicrucianism, of essences, of speaking to the psaltery, of dramatic art; and all the time he has practiced poetry, the interest of the time resulting in now the greater emphasis on one quality in the poetry, ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... old feudal spirit is to be seen in the motto of the Beauseants, Pulchre sedens, melius agens; in that of the Espards, Des partem leonis; in that of the Vandenesses, Ne se vend. And what elegance in the thousand details of the learned symbolism which will always show how far accuracy has been carried in my work, to which ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... horrible macerations to 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 ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... is 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 ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... sense, as in Ezekiel XVI, 36, where it is rendered 'filthiness' in the sense of exposure, like the 'having thy Boseth naked' of Micah." (J. B. Hannay, "Christianity, the Sources of its Teaching and Symbolism.") The ark itself was a feminine symbol, and phallicism would explain why Moses made an ark and put in it a rod and two stones. "The Eduth, the Shechina, the Tsur, and the Yahveh were identical; simply different names ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... the doctor interposed. "What does life mean? As one may define it in a hundred different ways, so one may find a hundred different meanings in this picture. Its symbolism is as many-faceted as a well-cut diamond. Who, for instance, is that divine lady? Is it she who is the true Lux Mundi—the light reflected from jewels and young eyes, from polished marble and clear waters and statues of bronze? Or is that the Light ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... analogy of the mantelletum certain Anglican prelates, American and colonial, have from time to time appeared in purple chimeres; which, as the Rev. N.F. Robinson justly points out, is a most unhappy innovation, since it has no historical justification, and its symbolism ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... 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 ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... represent given ideas as strong, weak, increasing, diminishing, etc.—or as anything which is a function of time, movement, and proportion. It can also by analogy suggest in the hearer the ideas of pleasing, soft, violent, elegant, and the like. Whatever is beyond this is symbolical. Movement and symbolism are the only means by which music can express anything. The notion that music can express a definite feeling was, the author declares, universally held by aestheticians at that time, and amongst those who held it he seems to include Wagner. ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... 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 ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... 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 best of the argument so far as heads went. This young ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... of interest in natural phenomena and in the growth and ways of animals and plants. If this movement is not to be merely a passing fad, the element of truthfulness must be constantly insisted upon. If a clever imagination, or worse, sentimental symbolism, be substituted for the truth of nature, the value of such studies ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... when their deathless founder died on the 8th of March 1899, four years after he had opened a branch church at Clapton, London, which is said to have cost L. 20.000. This church, decorated with elaborate symbolism,'was styled the "Ark of the Covenant,'' and in it the elect were to await the coming of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... conceived the idea of making a man perceive the whole spiritual tragedy of life through a cranny in the wall, and there is a fine symbolism in this, as if he were vouchsafing us the opportunity to perceive eternal things through the tiny crack which is all that is revealed to us of infinity, so that the gates of Horn, darkened by our human blindness, scarcely swing ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... Having no symbolism save that of Holy Writ, Thomas Jefferson's mind seized instantly on the figure, building far better than it knew. It was a new Exodus, with its pillar of cloud by day and its pillar of fire by night. And its Moses—though this, we may suppose, ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... which man lives, in reaction against which he develops his powers, and to which, on one whole side of his nature, he belongs. Even in respect of that which men reverently took to be thought concerning God, they seem to have been unaware how much of their material was imaginative and poetic symbolism drawn from the experience of man. The traditional idea of revelation proved a disturbing factor. Assuming that revelation gave information concerning God, and not rather the religious experience of communion with God himself, men accepted statements of ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... 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 moral laxity which did later on intrude, in consequence ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... 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 ...
— Presbyterian Worship - Its Spirit, Method and History • Robert Johnston
... Tang dynasty to emancipate Tea from its crude state and lead to its final idealization. With Luwuh in the middle of the eighth century we have our first apostle of tea. He was born in an age when Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism were seeking mutual synthesis. The pantheistic symbolism of the time was urging one to mirror the Universal in the Particular. Luwuh, a poet, saw in the Tea-service the same harmony and order which reigned through all things. In his celebrated work, the "Chaking" (The Holy Scripture of Tea) he formulated the ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... hypothesis about the mouse of Night. In these, and all the other current theories of the Sminthian Apollo, the widely diffused worship of ordinary mice, and such small deer, has been either wholly neglected, or explained by the first theory of symbolism that occurred to the conjecture of a civilised observer. The facts of savage animal-worship, and their relations to totemism, seem still unknown to or unappreciated by scholars, with the exception of Mr. Sayce, who recognises totemism as the origin of the zoomorphic element ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... 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 ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... 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 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... in its power and pride stands aloof from democracy with its humility and aspiration for human brotherhood. This stanza is especially figurative. The poet is unfolding the main theme, the underlying moral purpose, of the whole poem, but it is still kept in vague, dreamy symbolism. ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... compelled at times to imagine a condition of unendurable intellectual intensity, from which we are saved by the merciful stupidity of the body; & I think that the mind of Edwin Ellis was constantly upon the edge of trance. Once we were discussing the symbolism of sex, in the philosophy of Blake, and had been in disagreement all the afternoon. I began talking with a new sense of conviction, and after a moment Ellis, who was at his easel, threw down his brush and said ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... 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 ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... Harkless, as he took the manuscript. "Have you finished your paper on the earlier Christian symbolism? I hope the 'Herald' may have the honor of printing it." This ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... 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
... 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 flash of royal souls. Like heroes, too, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... 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. ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... main characters, you know, is to be [Greek: aprosopos], faceless. If you look first at the faces in this picture you will find them ugly—often without expression, always ill or carelessly drawn. The entire purpose of the picture is a mystic symbolism by motion and chiaroscuro. By motion, first. There is a dome of burning clouds in the upper heaven. Twelve angels half float, half dance, in a circle, round the lower vault of it. All their drapery is drifted so as to make you feel the whirlwind of their motion. They are seen by gleams ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... language, has significance only as sign, as allegory.—Here it is of paramount importance to be led into no error by the temptations lying in Christian, or rather ecclesiastical prejudices: such a symbolism par excellence stands outside all religion, all notions of worship, all history, all natural science, all worldly experience, all knowledge, all politics, all psychology, all books, all art—his "wisdom" is precisely a pure ignorance[11] of all such things. He ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... easy for the lay mind to realise the importance of symbolism in discussing the foundations of mathematics, and the explanation may perhaps seem strangely paradoxical. The fact is that symbolism is useful because it makes things difficult. (This is not true of the ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... the "Essence of Parliament" of Shirley Brooks—those intricate drawings which, covering nearly a whole page, were such miracles of invention, of fancy, and of allusion, swarming with figures, overflowing with suggestion, teeming with subtle symbolism. But these things did not come at once. It was not until the "comic cut" idea was put entirely on one side and his imagination allowed full play, that Mr. Sambourne fully developed his powers—his strength of conception, design, and execution. And then it was that he revealed ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... 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 ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... the prose chivalry-stories of the middle ages, full of marvels, seeking the remote among strange hazards by land and sea. The tone of Tieck's narrative is childlike and naive, with rainbow-glows of the bliss of romantic love, glimpses of the poetry and symbolism of Catholic tradition, and a somewhat sugary admixture of the spirit of the Minnelied, with plenty of refined and delicate sensuousness. With the postulate that song is the true language of life, the story is sprinkled with lyrics at every turn. The whole adventure ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... merely human atmosphere of literature and history. Every extravagance of hagiology can be found in hero-worship. Every folly alleged in the worship of saints can be found in the worship of poets. There are those who are honourably and intensely opposed to the atmosphere of religious symbolism or religious archaeology. There are people who have a vague idea that the worship of saints is worse than the imitation of sinners. There are some, like a lady I once knew, who think that hagiology is the scientific study ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... analytic geometry, differential calculus, physics, descriptive geometry, botany, and physical geography. In the third year the course is extended to the theory of decoration, color, form, and proportion; conventionalism, symbolism, the decorative arts, stained glass, fresco painting, tiles, terra-cotta, original designs, specifications, integral calculus, strength of materials, dynamics, bridges and roofs, stereotomy. In the fourth year the student is turned out a finished architect, after a course ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... was but a crazy dreamer lying captive, wounded and weak in a pirate cave. Oh, yes, I know very well what my fine gentlemen dabblers in the new sciences will say—the fellow was daft and delirious—he had lost grip on reality and his fevered wits mixed a mumble-jumble of ancient symbolism with his own adventures. But before you reduce all this great universe to the dimensions of a chemist's crucible, I pray you to think twice whether the mind that fashioned the crucible be not greater than the crucible; whether the Master-mind ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... be found here and there superficial accounts of strange customs and ceremonies, of which the symbolism or inner meaning was largely hidden from the observer; and there has been a great deal of material collected in recent years which is without value because it is modern and hybrid, inextricably mixed with Biblical legend and Caucasian philosophy. ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... 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 ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... 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
... 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 ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... which he journeyed; and, whatever its subsequent worth may 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
... time 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 of the trinity, deep, holy, significant of the mystery of the ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... wandering in the desert; and this sympathetic interest embraced the civil as well as the religious side of human nature. He claimed everything really American for the Catholic faith, and this was joy and gladness to many a weary heart drawn to the Church by her charities, or her beautiful symbolism, yet hindered by the phantom of absolute authority and the dread of losing the integrity of free citizenship. Incivism—will Catholic apologists never learn it?—is the heaviest stone flung at the Church in all free lands to-day. Father Hecker's blood fairly boiled that the Church of Christ, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... trifling details mentioned in 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 ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... thread of glories 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 of God, beats sensibly ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to the perceptive harmonies of form. In music we observe the same gradation; first, we appreciate its sensuous and sentimental value; only with education can we enjoy its form. The plastic arts begin, therefore, with adventitious ornament and with symbolism. The aesthetic pleasure is in the richness of the material, the profusion of the ornament, the significance of the shape — in everything, rather than in ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... practiced those forms prescribed for the individual even when debarred from church privileges. The lad doubtless got his idea of distinguishing between the sign and the substance from a well-worn book of explanations of the church ritual and symbolism "intended for the use of parish priests." It was found in his library, with Mrs. Rizal's name on the flyleaf. Much did he owe his mother, and his grateful recognition appears in his appreciative portrayal of maternal affection in ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... by a triangular opening. This is filled with a sculptured group, now much defaced, representing two rampant lions flanking a singular column which tapers downward. This symbolic group has relations with Hittite and Phrygian sculptures, and with the symbolism of the worship of Rhea Cybele. The masonry of the wall is carefully dressed but not regularly coursed. Other primitive walls and gates showing openings and embryonic arches of various forms, are found widely scattered, at Samos and Delos, at Phigaleia, Thoricus, Argos and many ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... longer, surely, the gravely humorous moralizer? The laws of harmony forbid! He is a monster likewise; say—since grotesqueness is in vogue—the heart of Lucifer burning beneath the cool brain of a Grecian sage. The symbolism is not inapt, since Helwyse, while afflicted with pride and ambition as abstract as boundless, had, at the same time, a logical, fearless brain, and keen delight ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... in his garden; then the stone-cutter, who puts your name on the slab which has been waiting for you ever since the birds or beasts made their tracks on the new red sandstone; then the grass and the dandelions and the buttercups,——Earth saying to the mortal body, with her sweet symbolism, "You have scarred my bosom, but you are forgiven"; then a glimpse of the soul as a floating consciousness without very definite form or place, but dimly conceived of as an upright column of vapor or mist several times larger ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Hazel. 'To open on your wedding-day,' he said. But the symbolism, so apparent to him, ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... brooding and planning is 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 ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... qualities, etc. It is remarked of Emerson that the idea of the symbolism of nature which he received from Plato, was the source of much of his pleasure in Swedenborg, the Swedish mystic philosopher. Emerson says in his volume on Nature: "The noblest ministry of nature is to stand as an apparition ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 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 |
