171 Quotes About Symbolism

There is absolutely nothing feminine about the colour pink, or, anything bad-luck'ish about the colour black — in itself.

Beauty to her, as to all who have felt, lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized.

Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolysm [sic]. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.

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.

Mortal minds are always unsettled by eternal things; they want to catch the infinite and nail it down to something finite. Impossible!

Sorry,” Wakefield insists, “but what exactly is cultural imperialism?” The boy turns his good eye to Wakefield. “That when Indian kids play with Mickey Mouse instead of kachinas. Kachinas mean something to their people. The Mouse means nothing.” “He must mean something,” Wakefield says. “Yeah, he means money. A Kachina tells the story of the earth, of the people, of dances, rituals, how to make rain… Talk to the fucking mouse and see what he tells you.

Symbols tell others who the symbol-bearers are in subtle or overt ways. I once sat in an aisle seat on an airplane next to a cello strapped into the middle seat. Its owner sat by the window, and I didn’t need to ask him what he did for a living. Some symbols literally shout identity.

He was attaching meanings to words of a symbolical kind. A serious symptom, to be noted on the card.

What is frequently appreciated in many so-called symbols is exactly their vagueness, their openness, their fruitful ineffectiveness to express a 'final' meaning, so that with symbols and by symbols one indicates what is always beyond one's reach.