143 Quotes About Symbols

Your smile is the twinkle of happiness.Your heart is the source of kindness.Your presence is the source of joyfulness.Your thoughts are symbols of greatness.

Authority was a little plastic ball that Graff carried.

It is indeed curious that engagement in paid work should represent such a powerful symbol of maturity and independence, given the realities of employment as a situation of profound dependency. I speak not only of the dependency inherent in the wage relation, but also of the dependency on commercial products and services, which become the only way to meet certain needs after work has drained our time and energy. [ch.six]

Though we may choose to view them symbolically, dreams are actually no more or less symbolic than everyday waking reality. When the images and events don't conform to our view of reality, we call them symbols. When they do, we call them facts.

A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing those conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.

Probably our lives are full of symbols which only an unacknowledged sense perceives. Spiritual events assume a material guise, in accordance with some creative principle, but do not insist on recognition. ("Absolute Evil")

All our omens hold the mystery of some grave human consequence, now forgotten, leaving only the gleaming symbol in its aftermath. In attempting to comprehend a turn of ill-fortune, we may search for an omen as prelude, for to find such a sign imposes meaning on the chaotic. In seeking an omen, we frequently seek a bird.

Listen, doctor. You hear something in there? You hear the sea; and yet the sea is very far from here. You have judgment, and you know that. But he is fooled. To him, it is the sea itself. A little thing is big to him.

It was held that the six great arts – visual art (including architecture and photography), drama, dance, music, film and literature – form a family of related, if largely autonomous, practices: they all work through the aesthetic, all address the imagination, and all are concerned with the symbolic embodiment of human meaning.