Quotes About Symbolism

I think of the bog as a feminine goddess-ridden ground, rather like the territory of Ireland itself.

And if some savage told us of a mag-ical worm that built a little windowless house, slept there a season, thenone day emerged and flew away as a jeweled bird, we'd laugh at suchsuperstition if we'd never seen a butterfly.

the minarets now seemed to me as profuse in Istanbul as smokestacks in Pittsburgh.

The fifty-six minor arcana of the Tarot are, therefore, simply a development from the last Major Arcanum of the Tarot, "The World", developed Cabbalistically-rigorously and mathematically- where sytematisation is pushed so far that one asks oneself involuntarily if it is not a matter of rationalistic performance, pure and simple.

And the use that was made of the Major Arcana was that of a framework for an encyclopedic teaching concerning the Cabbala, magic, astrology and alchemy.

A kitten is in the animal world what a rosebud is in the garden.

But Moby-Dick is the explanation of America. It's not just a novel. It is a book of prophecy. It is the book. It is the book of America.

Dinosaurs have a bad public image as symbols of obsolescence and hulking inefficiency; in political cartoons they are know-nothing conservatives that plod through miasmic swamps to inevitable extinction.

When peace returned, the Janus was closed; this happened only ten times in more than a thousand years.

The Genius populi Romani holds the patera for libations (sometimes in front of a lit altar) and the horn of plenty; these were attributes of the piety and felicity that symbolised Rome's vocation embodied by the emperor Pius Felix, two titles that had been added to his description since the time of Commodus.

While Mark Antony paraded as Dionysus, and Sextus Pompey claimed Neptune as his father, Octavian officially called himself Divi filius, at the same time invoking the patronage of Apollo.

elegiremos un término medio entre Krisnamurti y Rodolfo Valentino... pero más místico, una criatura que tenga un rostro extraño simbolizando el sufrimiento del mundo.

Dust and literature have always gone hand in hand.

Jesus is the masterpiece. The thieves are minor works. Why are they there? Not to frame the crucifixion, as some innocent souls believe, but to hide it.

Soñé que Baudelaire hacía el amor con una sombra en una habitación donde se había cometido un crimen. Pero a Baudelaire no le importaba. Siempre es lo mismo, decía

Canetti e creio que também Borges, dois homens tão diferentes, disseram que assim como o mar era o símbolo ou o espelho dos ingleses, o bosque era a metáfora onde viviam os alemães.

Los floreros disimulan La puerta del Infierno

Jesus is the masterpiece. The thieves are the minor works. Why are they there? Not to frame the crucifixion, as some innocent souls believe, but to hide it.

Mrs Dorothea's typewriter was like a heart, a giant heart beating in the middle of the fog and chaos.

Yahweh was, among many other things, an allegorist.

Y?jñavalkya immediately separated out the two essential points in every sacrificial act: substitution and the transposition from the visible to the realm of the mind.

Some would sing as they killed the bear, so that the bear, while dying, could say: "I like that song.

Is Ronchamp reminiscent of the Ark left stranded on Ararat, or like 'bits of broken china thrown on top of the hill'? Is the roof like a bird's wing, or does the whole edifice look like a decoy? Is it an alighting dove or a sitting duck? Good taste bids us to suppress the latter in favour of the former, although the latter is as easy to see.

They spoke of a dream of a child who bore the heart of a wolf.