Quotes About Symbols

headlines such as 'Symbols of Shame', dwelling on the 'flapper' scandal, one of the most grievous and piteous of the many social scandals of this tragic time. Do these thoughtless chits, little more than children, realise that the regimental badges they display so exultantly, are in many cases nothing less than symbols of shame, obtained in exchange for more or less dangerous familiarities

Just the way a dream is a message from your unconscious, a myth is a cultural dream. Decipher the symbols and the meaning of a dream and we understand ourselves better. It's the same with a myth—understanding it gives us insight into a deeper level of our humanity that we all share.

The symbols mean everything if you accept the feelings that they carry.

A romantic novel is an adult fairy story, repeating the recurring symbols and images which can explain life to a woman and satisfy a powerful need within her. The need to love and be loved is vital to all human beings, but especially to women.

I don't have an extensive background in theory, but the amount of it that I've learned, I've applied, so I have a vocabulary of melodic and rhythmic relationships. And that's all theory is - it's symbols to help you identify those relationships.

Katz could see that Patty, in the seemingly random life-meanderings that Walter had just described to him, had in fact deliberately been trampling symbols in a cornfield, spelling out a message unreadable to Walter at ground level but clear as could be to Katz at great height. IT'S NOT OVER, IT'S NOT OVER.

Non potevo sapere cosa stava provando, perché non potevo capire il linguaggio dei suoi sentimenti. Io non sapevo che è New York. In cinese ny è tu. Credevo che voleva dire 'Io amo tu'. E' stato allora che ho notato i poster 'I<3 NY' sulle porte, e gli strofinacci 'I <3 NY' e il contenitore per alimenti 'I <3 NY' sul tavolo della cucina

A book is a physical object in a world of physical objects. It is a set of dead symbols. And then the right reader comes along, and the words—or rather the poetry behind the words, for the words themselves are mere symbols—spring to life, and we have a resurrection of the word.

I know of a wild region whose librarians repudiate the vain superstitious custom of seeking any sense in books and compare it to looking for meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines of one's hands . . . They admit that the inventors of writing imitated the twenty-five natural symbols, but they maintain that this application is accidental and that books in themselves mean nothing. This opinion - we shall see - is not altogether false.

All language is a set of symbols whose use among its speakers assumes a share past

All language is a set of symbols whose use among its speakers assumes a shared past. How, then, can I translate into words the limitless Aleph, which my floundering mind can scarcely encompass?

Words are symbols that assume a shared memory. The memory I now want to set down is mine alone; all those who share it have died. The mystics invoke a rose, a kiss, a bird that is all birds, a sun that is all the stars and the sun, a jug of wine, a garden, or the sexual act. Of these metaphors, none will serve me for that long, joyous night, which left us, tired out and happy, at the borders of dawn.

Ogni linguaggio è un alfabeto di simboli il cui uso presuppone un passato che gli interlocutori condividono; come trasmettere agli altri l'infinito Aleph, che la mia timorosa memoria a stento abbraccia?

Un idioma es una tradición, un modo de sentir la realidad, no un arbitrario repertorio de símbolos. (A language is a tradition, a way of grasping reality, not an arbitrary assemblage of symbols.)

Todo lenguaje es un alfabeto de símbolos cuyo ejercicio presupone un pasado que los interlocutores comparten.

Todo lenguaje es un alfabeto de símbolos cuyo ejercicio presupone un pasado que los interlocutores comparten; ¿cómo transmitir a los otros el infinito Aleph, que mi temerosa memoria apenas abarca?

Esa vida es nueva para él, y a veces atroz, pero ya está en su sangre, porque lo mismo que los hombres de otras naciones veneran y presienten el mar, así nosotros (también el hombre que entreteje estos símbolos) ansiamos la llanura inagotable que resuena bajo los cascos.

Para percibir la distancia que hay entre lo divino y lo humano, basta comparar estos rudos símbolos trémulos que mi falible mano garabatea en la tapa de un libro, con las letras orgánicas del interior: puntuales, delicadas, negrísimas, inimitablemente simétricas.

Clearly, mythology is no toy for children. Nor is it a matter of archaic, merely scholarly concern, of no moment to modern men of action. For its symbols (whether in the tangible form of images or in the abstract form of ideas) touch and release the deepest centers of motivation, moving literate and illiterate alike, moving mobs, moving civilizations.

It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those that tend to tie it back.

Myths are the mental supports of rites; rites, the physical enactments of myths.

The symbols of mythology are not manufactured; they cannot be ordered, invented, or permanently suppressed. They are spontaneous productions of the psyche.

To the uneducated an A is just three sticks.

yet there walked a host of hunchbacked priests dressed in the flayed skin of their forefathers, swinging incense braziers and chanting prayers to the souls of those men and women who fought beneath the icons across the galaxy. The