Quotes About Symbolism

Other countries love their flags,' a Danish dinner guest protested to me recently. 'Look at the Olympics!' 'Yes,' I said. 'That's true. But the French don't hoist the Tricolor on the cat's birthday.

I have always been beguiled by birds. As if there was much they would tell me if they could, but they are only permitted to bear witness with their lives, their song.

The symbolism—if symbolism it was—indicated that the witnesses were types of the Church herself. Would all those who truly followed the Lord enact with their lives what was described by these passages? Would the prayers of believers be the very instruments for bringing chastisements upon unbelieving mankind? Would the Church be apparently destroyed for three and a half years? Would she rise again as the breath of God entered her? And would she then be taken up into heaven?

His eyes had changed color. They were no longer brown. Instead, they looked huge and golden. The eyes reminded him of a nightmare he'd had many times. In the dream, he turned into a giant black dragon. The nightmare dragon had burning yellow eyes.

A lower-ranking official was served tea on a plain tray. Once he reached the rank of chief of sector, the tray suddenly sprouted a napkin. In apparatchik-speak, the promotion was referred to as 'receiving the napkin.

1. Recognize that the central and centering image of Revelation is the Lamb that was slaughtered.

2. Remember that Revelation was first of all written by a first-century Christian for first-century Christians using first-century literary devices and images.

That Revelation 2–3 contains an outline of church history seems rather forced and quite far-fetched. But the idea that these seven churches somehow symbolize the range of possible Christian churches—particularly the range of common dangers the churches face—is much more plausible.

Once people no longer fear starvation, they choose to eat for a whole variety of reasons, and these were not so different at the court of the Medici than they are at the food courts of Beverly Hills. Food is much more than a fuel; it is packed with meaning and symbolism. That

The point has never been to 'believe' in myths or to simply accept what others have said they mean. The key issue with mythic images is to let them speak to us, wherever and whenever we find ourselves seeking guidance, permission, or understanding.

To presume that we have received in advance a precise decryption of the symbolic prophecies in the book of Revelation—a route map or survivalist manual, as it were—is to weaken our faculty of discernment and our openness to the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the angels. This weakness can lead us to the tyranny of unholy fears on one hand or to self-reliance on the other, and both reactions will bring about increased vulnerability to the adversary's deceptions.

Suddenly, out of the mist came a parachute with a fresh Hershey chocolate bar from America. It took me a week to eat that candy bar. I hid it day and night. The chocolate was wonderful, but it wasn't the chocolate that was most important. What it meant was that someone in America cared. That parachute was something more important than candy. It represented hope. Hope that someday we would be free. Without hope the soul dies.

Nature itself rests on an internal foundation of archetypal principles symbolized by numbers, shapes, and their arithmetic and geometric relationships.

seven was known as the number of the "virgin" because no number below seven enters into (divides) it, nor does it "reproduce" another number within the first ten.

With our habit of sensible literalism we have a difficult time believing that the ancient mythopoeic imagination could have been a valid tool for serious knowledge.

But do I need to say anything?" Sophie asked. "Do I need to learn any words?" "Like what?" Saint-Germain said. "Well, when you lit up the Eiffel tower, you said something that sounded like eggness." "Ignis," the count said. "Latin for fire. No, you don't need to say anything." "Then why did you do it, then?" Sophie asked. Saint-Germain grinned. "I just thought it sounded cool.

He lifted his shirt, and on his back was the White Rabbit, wearing his waistcoat and looking at his watch. It was just like the illustration from the book. Only standing next to him, back-to-back, was another White Rabbit wearing a leather motercycle jacket and boots and smoking a cigar.

Given a choice between discussing the symbolism of a pig head on a stick and discussing my feelings, I'll take the pig head every time.

Las flores son sólo órganos sexuales, vaginas abigarradas que adornan la superficie del mundo, entregadas a la lubricidad de los insectos.

El vino es una metáfora de la vida… o viceversa.

The given - forgive me - what is marketable, is only given - forgive me - is only sold in and through language. [...] Triumphant, the word redeems anything that could lend taste or aroma and transubstantiates it into something seen and read and heard, the channels that are peculiar to it. This - what you eat and drink - is the body and blood of the word. Here - where you buy it - lies the grave of bread and wine, body and blood, dead and resuscitated as messages.

When we say a character in my films doesn't function, we mean he doesn't function as a person, but he does function as a character that is, until you take him as a symbol. At that point it is you who are not functioning. Why not simply accept him as a character, without judging him? Accept him for what he is. Accept him as a character in a story, without claiming that he derives or acquires meaning from that story. There may be meanings, but they are different for all of us.

When the designs are chosen with care, tattoos have a power and magic all their own. They decorate the body but they also enhance the soul.

In Egypt, there is a saying: When good fortune looks down upon us, it does so in threes, one for each part of the Eye of Horus. His upper lid, his lower lid and the eye itself.