Quotes About Symbols

You Westerosi are all the same. You sew some beast upon a scrap of silk, and suddenly you are all lions, or dragons, or eagles.

The Father was bearded, as ever. The Mother smiled, loving and protective. The Warrior had his sword sketched in beneath his face, the Smith his hammer. The Maid was beautiful, the Crone wizened and wise. And the seventh face … the Stranger was neither male nor female, yet both, ever the outcast, the wanderer from far places, less and more than human, unknown and unknowable.

The Old Language really was beautiful, Blay thought. Staring at the symbols, for one brief, ridiculous moment he imagined his own name across Qhuinn's shoulders, carved into that smooth skin in the manner of the mating ritual. Never going to happen. They were destined to be best friends...which, compared to strangers, was something huge. Compared to lovers? It was the cold side of a locked door.

Knowledge is an affair of symbols and is, all too often, a hindrance to wisdom, the uncovering of the self from moment to moment

The Hindus have discovered that the absolute can only be realised, or thought of, or stated, through the relative, and the images, crosses, and crescents are simply so many symbols — so many pegs to hang the spiritual ideas on. It is not that this help is necessary for every one, but those that do not need it have no right to say that it is wrong. Nor is it compulsory in Hinduism.

The appeal of the theory was easy for me to appreciate, though; I too had devoted many an hour to examining flakes of gold through a microscope and can imagine how gratifying it would be to turn the fine-adjustment knob and see legible symbols come into focus.

Icons speak icon language.

Man is an amphibian who lives simultaneously in two worlds-the given and the home-made, the world of matter, life and consciousness and the world of symbols.

What are letters?" "Kinda like mediaglyphics except they're all black, and they're tiny, they don't move, they're old and boring and really hard to read. But you can use 'em to make short words for long words.

It appeared that way, Lawrence, but this raised the question of was mathematics really true or was it just a game played with symbols? In other words—are we discovering Truth, or just wanking?

they were a bit like English taverns, which had effigies instead of names, so that people like Jack, who could not read, could know them.

What about all those hieroglyphic inscriptions?" "Bumper stickers, Lagos called them. Corrupt political speech.

Anyway, my point is that guys like Flec have a weakness, almost a kind of addiction, for the mystical, as opposed to poetic, way of using their minds. And there's an optimistic side of me that says such a person could break that addiction, be retrained to think like a poet, and accept the fluxional nature of symbols and meaning.

Math. Are you able to turn off your mind to the world and fill it with symbols that follow rules?

The tribe that confuses its totems and symbols with reality has succumbed to fetishism and may be in more trouble than it realises.

One day I was telling him that I thought that cars had replaced guns as phallic symbols for American men, and I thought it was interesting that he had one that was so small and fast. The next day he gave me the Datsun and went out and bought a Lincoln.

Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used to tell at all.

he was thinking of the endless array of symbols with which God, through His creatures, speaks to us of the eternal life. But the universe is even more talkative than Alanus thought, and it speaks not only of the ultimate things (which it does always in an obscure fashion) but also of closer things, and then it speaks quite clearly.

One could not stand and watch very long without becoming philosophical, without beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hog squeal of the universe. Was it permitted to believe that there was nowhere upon the earth, or above the earth, a heaven for hogs, where they were requited for all this suffering? Each one of these hogs was a separate creature.

One of the ways unconscious drives sneak into the conscious mind is through dreams, with the unconscious material camouflaged by symbols. But Freud argues that if you interpret and free-associate to these symbols, it's possible to figure out what the unconscious is trying to impart. If the dream is too well camouflaged, the meaning may be lost; if it's not camouflaged enough, it will be a nightmare.

As children construct their understandings of God and religion, they are surrounded by symbols for their imaginations to take hold of and to build into their faith images. When children begin to ask questions about the rituals and symbols of the faith, we know their imaginations are grasped by the symbol and that they are working to create a meaning for it.

The children with whom I worship are also fascinated with symbols of our faith.

David would wear no purple cloth, no symbols of his kingship, when he went to greet the ark. In its presence, we were all of us servants.

Life, the dramatist of speed. Life, that couldn't stop with its foreshadows and ironies and symbols and clues, its wretched jokes and false endings and twists. Life with its hopeless addiction to plot.