Quotes About Symbolism

What was the secret that the serpent told Eve? That she could eat a certain fruit? Pah. That was a euphemism. The fruit was carnal knowledge and everybody from Thomas Aquinas to Milton knew it.

I pick up a Prince bobblehead doll. It's wearing a little purple suit. On

Pumpkins were the watermelons of fall.

Most people build as they live—as a matter of routine and senseless accident. But a few understand that building is a great symbol. We live in our minds, and existence is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality, to state it in gesture and form. For the man who understands this, a house he owns is a statement of his life. If

Until men learn that of all human symbols, Robin Hood is the most immoral and the most contemptible, there will be no justice on earth and no way for mankind to survive.

fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.

As we grown-ups talked and speculated, my five-year-old daughter looked intently out of the window. Suddenly she turned around and shouted, Mommy, Mommy, he is not dead! Women are still wearing their scarves. I always associate Khomeini's death with Negar's simple pronouncement—for she was right: the day women did not wear the scarf in public would be the real day of his death and the end of his revolution. Until then, we would continue to live with him.

The Latin Cross is not inappropriate for a church that composed itself entirely of men, for in several early societies the Latin Cross was a primary phallic symbol.

Two dead wasps lay on the sill with their heads close together like a tiny murder-suicide.

The sting of a fly, the Congolese say, can launch the end of the world. How simply things begin.

A godo story doesn't just copy life, it pushes back on it. ... It's why guys like Chartrain wear their clothes too big and their teeth edged with gold, why Mr. Dick puts words on kites and sends them to the sun...

Art's underlying strength is that it does not intend to be literal. It presents a metaphor and leaves the viewer or listener to interpret. It is giving in to art, not trying to divine its meaning, that brings the viewer or listener the deepest measures of satisfaction.

Donald Trump was elected in 2016, which, as it turns out, is the sum of 666 + 666 + 666 + 6 + 6 + 6.

Wisdom is referred to as "she"—or even as "Lady Wisdom"—because the Greek word for wisdom is feminine);

a one-sentence definition of an entire literary genre, but if I were to take a stab for "apocalypses," it would be something like this: apocalypses are first-person narratives of highly symbolic visionary experiences that reveal heavenly secrets to explain earthly realities.

One of the interesting features of the book of Revelation is that unlike nearly all the other apocalypses it does not appear to be pseudonymous.

The body was far smaller than the heart it had held

The idea that his wedding band was some kind of talisman nauseated him like the smell of attar.

We got through all of Genesis and part of Exodus before I left. One of the main things I was taught from this was not to begin a sentence with And. I pointed out that most sentences in the Bible began with And, but I was told that English had changed since the time of King James. In that case, I argued, why make us read the Bible? But it was in vain. Robert Graves was very keen on the symbolism and mysticism in the Bible at that time.

The True Cross, the Crown of Thorns, the Pillar of the Flogging, the Holy Sponge, the Holy Lance, the Nails, and the Holy Blood. The Arma Christi. Weapons of Christ. Instruments of passion.

It's a palindrome. Sator. Arepo. Tenet. Opera. Rotas.

A crossed Maltese stays cross. – Kastor Cardinal Gallo

One of those random acts of vandalism that metaphors commit now and then.

Cuando usted es un elefante, sus atributos son el poder, la sabiduría y el respeto.