Quotes About Symbolism

But it was a remarkable attribute of this garb, and indeed, of the child's whole appearance, that it irresistibly and inevitably reminded the beholder of the token which Hester Prynne was doomed to wear upon her bosom. It was the scarlet letter in another form: the scarlet letter endowed with life!

And Pearl, stepping in, mid-leg deep, beheld her own white feet at the bottom, while out of a still lower depth came the gleam of a kind of fragmentary smile, floating to and fro in the agitated water.

Yet perhaps the pale-faced congregation was almost as fearful a sight to the minister as his black veil to them.

And as for Owen Warland, he looked placidly at what seemed the ruin of his life's labor, and which was yet no ruin. He had caught a far other butterfly than this. When the artist rose high enough to achieve the beautiful, the symbol by which he made it perceptible to mortal senses became of little value in his eyes while his spirit possessed itself in the enjoyment of the reality.

Throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast-- at her, the child of honorable parents--at her, who had once been innocent---as the figure, the body, the reality of sin.

the child finally announced that she had not been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of wild roses, that grew by the prison-door.

Not a stitch in that embroidered letter, but she has felt it in her heart.

the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world's scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too.

The daguerreotypist once whispered her that these marks betokened the oddities of the Pyncheon family, and that the chicken itself was a symbol of the life of the old house, embodying its interpretation, likewise, although an unintelligible one, as such clews generally are. It was a feathered riddle; a mystery hatched out of an egg, and just as mysterious as if the egg had been addle!

Young Goodman Brown came forth, at sunset, into the street of Salem village, but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave, a hoary corpse, followed by Faith, an aged woman, and children and grand-children, a goodly procession, besides neighbors, not a few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his tomb-stone; for his dying hour was gloom.

If it be a sign of mourning, replied Mr. Hooper, I, perhaps, like most other mortals, have sorrows dark enough to be typified by a black veil.

All that they lacked was the gift that descended upon the chosen disciples at Pentecost, in tongues of flame; symbolizing, it would seem, not the power of speech in foreign and unknown languages, but that of addressing the whole human brotherhood in the heart's native language.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne

When the artist rose high enough to achieve the beautiful, the symbol by which he made it perceptible to mortal senses became of little value in his eyes while his spirit possessed itself in the enjoyment of the reality.

Because rain is the closest thing I have to tears.

I seed the clouds somewhere in the world, and bring a lamentation of rain. Because rain is the closest thing I have to tears.

Supongo que el que lleva la antorcha es también el que proyecta la sombra más oscura

partake of this body

it occurs to me that all scarecrows look as if they've been crucified.

Ezra the artist, who Possuelo saw fit to set free, took to painting a mural to fill one of the larger caverns. It tickled him that this could become a pilgrimage destination for future Tonists, if indeed there would be any future Tonists, and that his cave paintings might be endlessly analyzed by scholars of tomorrow. He introduced some odd elements just to confuse them. A dancing bear, a five-eyed boy, and an eleven-hour clock missing the number 4.

She leaves him alone with the arm. His arm. An arm that bears the unmistakable tattoo of a tiger shark.

The lettuce elevated to a place of honor.

This is all a little theatrical, don't you think?" Greyson commented. "Ah, but theater is the hallmark of ritual, and ritual is the touchstone of religion," Mendoza responded.