"Symbolical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... perhaps, make this matter still plainer by reverting to our old illustration. Our first exposition of the question was designed to exhibit a general view of the case, through the medium of a dead symbolical figure. This proved nothing, though we imagine that it illustrated much. Our second exposition exhibited the illustration in its application to the living sphere of sensation in general; and this proved little. But we conceive that therein was foreshadowed a certain procedure, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain take that walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which is perfectly symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the interior and ideal world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult to choose our direction, because it does not yet ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... and earth, himself not produced of any," "the only true living God, self-originated," "who exists from the beginning," "who has made all things, but has not himself been made." This Being seems never to have been represented by any material, even symbolical, form. It is thought that he had no name, or, if he had, that it must have been unlawful to pronounce or write it. He was a pure spirit, perfect in every respect—all-wise, almighty, supremely good. It is of him that the Egyptian poets use such expressions ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... might have grown up out of sight, so as to be unconsciously prepared for the new church, where the very width of the open benches and the shape of their ends are suggestive of kneeling in prayer. The period of the building was a time of enjoyment to Mr. Keble, for it was symbolical to him of the "edifying," building up, of the living stones of the True Church, and the restoring her waste places. When the workmen were gone home he used to walk about the open space in the twilight silence ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... superstition remaining with any. Such a thing as the swathing stone of South Inchkea is not known to have existed. The stones in the two circles, and the single standing stones, are all plain; but there was found lately a stone of the sculptured symbolical class, inserted to form the base of a window in St. Peter's Kirk, South Ronaldshay, and another of the same class in the island of Bressay, in Zetland. The first is now in the Museum of Scottish Antiquaries in Edinburgh; and the Zetland stone, understood to be very curious, is either there or in ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... examined etymologically and entomologically, is nothing more nor less than Baalzebub, "the Jupiter-fly," an emblem of the Destroying Attribute, which attribute, indeed, is found in all the insect tribes more or less. Wherefore, as—Mr. Payne Knight, in his "Inquiry into Symbolical Languages," hath observed, the Egyptian priests shaved their whole bodies, even to their eyebrows, lest unaware they should harbor any of the minor Zebubs of the great Baal. If I were the least ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the house in which Christophe and Olivier lived, tucked away between the four walls, was symbolical of that part of the life of France. It was a little patch of green earth shut off from the outer world. Only now and then did the mighty wind of the outer air, whirling down, bring to the girl dreaming there the breath of the distant fields and ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... wild sights appealed to Synge, he did not care whether they were typical of anything else or had any symbolical meaning at all. If he had lived in the days of piracy he would have been the fiddler in a pirate- schooner, him they called 'the music—' 'The music' looked on at every thing with dancing eyes but drew ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... can bring comfort to a man in danger is not a thing to be ridiculed. It may be a proof of ignorance, but to the man it is symbolical of his God, and is therefore worthy of all respect ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... of the Bestiaries was not so much to impart scientific knowledge, as by means of symbols and allegories to teach the doctrines and mysteries of the Church: At first this symbolical application was short and concise, but later became more and more expanded, until it often occupied more space than the description of the animal which served as ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... scribbler that produces a shilling sensational thinks his or her own work a marvel of genius, and nothing can shake them from their obstinate conviction. If every man or woman, before putting pen to paper, would be sure they had something new, suggestive, symbolical, or beautiful to say, how greatly Art might gain by their labors! Authors who take up arms against publishers en masse, and in every transaction expect to be cheated, are doing themselves irreparable injury—they betray the cloven hoof,— namely a greed for money—and when once ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... spirit was a small panel in oils: a subject picture, more or less symbolical, such as she did not often attempt:—a broken hillside, of Himalayan character: bare blocks of granite, dripping with recent rain, their dark corners and interstices alight with shy wild flowers and ferns: a stone-set path zigzagging among them, and half-way up the path, the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... first voyage of discovery in 1493, he brought home some gold trinkets which the Indians had readily exchanged for glass beads. The transaction is symbolical of two centuries of South American history. The achievements of the Conquistadores have scarcely a parallel in the annals of conquest; but it was the desire for treasure that led them on; and the treasure they discovered ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... said doubtfully—and at the same time bounced out like a little rabbit. "Take off your shirt, Goosie," she said, returning with the gleaming instruments, now symbolical of ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... a kind of 'black magic'? Not so!—unless all our modern science is 'black magic' as well, born of the influence of those evil spirits who, as we are told in tradition, descended in rebellion from heaven and lived with the daughters of men! From these strange lovers sprang a race of giants,—symbolical I think of the birth of the sciences, which mingle in their composition the active elements of good and evil. You have built this airship of mine on lines which have never before been attempted;—you have given ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... to live opposite his friend the Hermit on the other antipode of life, and furthermore, as a relief from the exhausting tortuosities of thought in the last Chapter, we give here a piece of description notably symbolical. ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... The Christians knew that a corpse had no bodily wants and so they did not adorn the tombs. The most important halls are decorated with very simple ornaments and paintings which almost always represent the same scenes. The most common subjects are the faithful in prayer, and the Good Shepherd, symbolical of Christ. Some of these halls were like chapels. In them were interred the bodies of the holy martyrs and the faithful who wished to lie near them; every year Christians came here to celebrate the mysteries. During the persecutions ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... at this moment falls perpendicularly on their heads and strange headgear, details their everlasting smile, and then sheds itself on their shoulders and their naked torso, exaggerating their athletic muscles. Each holding in his hand the symbolical cross, the three giants rush forward with a formidable stride, heads raised, smiling, in a radiant ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... been deified solely for the advantages which it possessed over the old method of baking on the hearth. Below, two guardian serpents roll towards an altar crowned with a fruit very much like a pine-apple; while above, two little birds are in chase of large flies. These birds, thus placed in a symbolical picture, may be considered, in perfect accordance with the spirit of ancient mythology, as emblems of the genii of the place, employed in driving those ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... days ago, to another deputation of your fellow-citizens. We said as much to all the children of that glorious Isle of Erin, which the natural genius of its inhabitants, and the striking events of its history, render equally symbolical of the poetry and the heroism of the nations of the north. Rest assured, therefore, that you will find in France, under the republic, a response to all the sentiments ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... saints, and patriarchs, which, no doubt, owe their present existence only to their great number, still present to the eye of the observer that burlesque mixture of the profane and religious, so common in the symbolical representations of the twelfth century. These figures adorn the triple row of indented borders of the arches of the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... beautiful and touching picture by the well-known writer of magazine stories and photoplays, James Oppenheim, produced by the Edison Company. Again, there are more general titles exploiting the theme of the story, as "The Ways of Destiny," "The God Within," and "Intolerance." There are also symbolical titles, which have, naturally, a double meaning, playing upon an incident in the plot, as "A Pearl of Greater Price," and "Written in ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... old image. If, as is probable, the Artemis of Gabii is a copy of the statue substituted by Praxiteles for this old image, we see there the goddess, as a graceful girlish figure, fastening a cloak upon her shoulder. This may be taken as symbolical of the earlier custom of placing the garments on the statue; but we have evidence that the worshippers were not content with such a symbolic contact, but had the actual garments placed on the new statue as they had been ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... of a picture clearly foreshowing some coming event; more frequently, perhaps, the glimpse of the future is given in some symbolical appearance. It is noteworthy that the events foreseen are invariably unpleasant ones—death being the commonest of all; I do not recollect a single instance in which the second-sight has shown anything which was not of the most gloomy nature. ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... burn up Luther and all his works; and on Shrove Tuesday, 1527, Wolsey made another attempt to reduce the new-formed Bible to ashes. In the great procession that came on this day to St. Paul's there were six Lutherans in penitential dresses, carrying terribly symbolical fagots and huge lighted tapers. On a platform in the nave sat the portly and proud cardinal, supported by thirty-six zealous bishops, abbots, and priests. At the foot of the great rood over the northern door the heretical tracts and Testaments were thrown ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Sir Frederick Wigan, Bart., in memory of his brother-in-law, Arthur Cecil Blunt. It is a triplet, and displays in its central light an allegorical figure of "Poetry," supported by Shakespeare and Spenser in the lights on either hand. Above the Muse the sacred Dove is hovering, symbolical of the divine inspiration which we may presume guided the poets in their work, and at the base is a quotation from Wisdom, viii, 4 (Vulgate): "Doctrix disciplinae Dei, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... in the market place; the sculptures that adorn the porches of St. Mark's had once their match on the walls, of every palace on the Grand Canal; and the only difference between the church and the dwelling-house was, that there existed a symbolical meaning in the distribution of the parts of all buildings meant for worship, and that the painting or sculpture was, in the one case, less frequently of profane subject than in the other. A more severe distinction cannot be drawn: for secular history was constantly introduced ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... himself did not disdain the usc of allegory, which is truth conveyed to the hearer under a symbolical form. His admirable parables, each of which told a little history, were the most popular methods that could be adopted to instruct the lower classes, who, chiefly uneducated, require the illustration of a subject in ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... e.g. the bridal party, the bridal ceremony. The bride-cake had its origin in the Roman confarreatio, a form of marriage, the essential features of which were the eating by the couple of a cake made of salt, water and flour, and the holding by the bride of three wheat-ears, symbolical of plenty. Under Tiberius the cake-eating fell into disuse, but the wheat ears survived. In the middle ages they were either worn or carried by the bride. Eventually it became the custom for the young girls to assemble outside the church porch and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... are numerous allegories and symbolical stories. To understand Hawthorne's method of allegory [Footnote: An allegory is a figure of speech (in rhetoric) or a story (in literature) in which an external object is described in such a way that we apply the description to our own inner experience. Many proverbs, ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... that the spirit of protest will often pass by serious offenses and fasten upon some apparently slight occasion which has rather a symbolical than an actual importance. William Penn, so far as we know, endured the disorders of anti-Puritan Oxford without protest. He entered so far into the life of the place as to contribute, with other students, ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... pretty. It was of satin, bright yellow with blue spots. And an idea struck me; yes, an idea! Sir John's election colours are yellow, his opponent's blue. So I thought the tie would make a tactful present, symbolical (do you see?) of the state of the ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... to pass at the time predicted. It is advisable to note that in the first instance the symbolical vision is seen; in the second, a literal vision supervenes; and in the third and fourth cases the vision reverts to the symbolical. Here we have an instance of the overlapping of the two conditions of the temperament, the active ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... was never more clear, wherever it appeared in the intervals of sunshine, nor the air more fresh and pure, even in that land famed for its bright skies and its mild climate, than it was this April day; which, with its sunshine and showers in unregulated alternation, seemed symbolical of life,—that life of which every tender blade of grass, every venturesome flower thrusting its head above the sod, seemed to speak. There was health and strength in the gentle breeze which wantonly played with the budding leaves of the great trees, already putting forth little evangels ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... of these conquests is of course recorded from mere tradition at a much later date, it still has a ring of truth, or at least of probability, about it, which is wholly wanting to the earlier legends. If we are not certain as to the facts, we can at least accept them as symbolical of the manner in which the West Saxon power wormed its way over the upper basin of the Thames, and crept gradually along the southern ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... only of this modern desire for fame, but of all highly developed individuality, is found in ridicule, especially when expressed in the victorious form of wit. We read in the Middle Ages how hostile armies, princes, and nobles, provoked one another with symbolical insult, and how the defeated party was loaded with symbolical outrage. Here and there, too, under the influence of classical literature, wit began to be used as a weapon in theological disputes, and the poetry of Provence produced a whole class of satirical compositions. ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... Suggestive of the quiet, heavy flight of the crow in a warm day. The beginning and the end of the stanza suggest drowsy quiet. The vision begins in this stanza. The nature pictures are continued, but with new symbolical meaning. ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... by the sepulchral tumulus and the ancient encampment under the operations of the other. I saw in the pillars and archways of the farm-steading some of the hewn stones bearing my own mark,—an anchor, to which I used to attach a certain symbolical meaning; and I pointed them out to the ploughman. I had hewn these stones, I said, in the days of the old laird, the grandfather of the present proprietor. The ploughman wondered how a man still in middle life could have such a story to tell. I must surely have begun work ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... or Armory of England, an honourable and honoured member of the illustrious family of medival European Heraldry, may be defined as a symbolical and pictorial language, in which figures, devices, and colours are employed instead of letters. Each heraldic composition has its own definite and complete significance, conveyed through its direct connection with some particular individual, family, dignity, or office. Every ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... highly religious temperament, most devout in their beliefs and observances, and easily wrought upon by the priests or medicine men of their tribes. Elaborate ceremonies were carried out, in which all of the details were highly symbolical, and some of their curious and picturesque superstitions were responsible for acts of cruelty and vengeance, which in many cases were foreign to ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... world of the eleventh century, when we find this heretical man, this rebellious woman, arguing incessantly about unrealities, crushing out all human feeling, judging all questions of cause and effect, settling all relations of life, with reference to a system of intricate symbolical riddles? These things are exceedingly difficult for a modern to realise; we feel as though we had penetrated into some Gulliver's world or kingdom of the Moon; for theology and its methods have been relegated, these ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... enemies. He makes the weak strong, and prevents the strong from crushing the weak. From being the judge, and, moreover, the supreme judge of the world, it was but natural that the conception of justice was bound up with him. His light became symbolical of righteousness, and the absence of it, or darkness, was viewed as wickedness. Men and gods look expectantly for his light. He is the guide of the gods, as well as the ruler ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... seeks out the king at a place to which he had been driven by his despairing disquietude which was clinging convulsively to human resources. He endeavours, first, to exert [Pg 29] an influence upon him by taking with him his son, whose symbolical name, containing a prophecy of the future destinies of the people, indicated that the king's fear of a total destruction of the State was without foundation. After the king has thus been prepared, he endeavours to make a deeper impression upon him by the announcement, distinct ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... the Greek and Latin Fathers. We shall content ourselves with one taken from a work on prayer by S. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage in the third century. Having mentioned Daniel's practice of praying three times a day, he observes, that it is manifest that there was something mysterious or symbolical in the ancient practice. "For the holy Ghost descended on the disciples at the third hour; at the sixth hour Peter going to the house-top was instructed by God to admit all to the grace of salvation; and the Lord, who was crucified at the sixth hour, washed away our ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... profound consternation. It was regarded as endangering religious liberty and the freedom of conscience. The Lutheran preachers felt themselves hampered by it in the discharge of their duties. Regarding, as they did, their symbolical books and ecclesiastical customs as sacred things, using their authorized formularies in the instruction of the people, and introducing the element of controversy largely into their ministrations, they felt themselves quite crippled in the discharge of their functions. ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... deliverance that always came to him. Into his mouth he placed predictions of what had already come to pass in history, that thus his reputation as a prophet might be established. Then he caused him to present a striking series of symbolical visions, the clue to which was furnished for the writer's contemporaries by certain clear allusions. These visions foretold deliverance as about to come at the approaching end of the four hundred and ninety ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... echoed, "Gad! little girl, it's wonderful. It's more than a fir tree—it's power, tenacity, independence. I know that all your work is symbolical to you. What does ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... class, for exciting terror, producing injury, or creating annoyance to man. Their dispositions are often sanguinary, since the forms most conspicuous among them live by rapine, and subsist on the blood of other animals. They are, in short, symbolically types of EVIL." This symbolical character is most conspicuous about the centre of the series ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... position which it occupies in our commonwealth of nations. To those who have been intrusted with the work we owe thanks for the conception of their duty and for this magnificent edifice which, in its strength and beauty of architecture, is symbolical of the Empire State. In every phase of our nation's history, in all that has made it great and powerful and respected, New York has been both conservative and wise in the aid which it offered, powerful in the resources which it furnished in the building ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... was only strange, and its interest increased, as the ear became accustomed to it. Suddenly, as though they could resist no longer, the dancers, who had not moved, leapt from the platform and began their dance. It was symbolical; Krishna was its centre, and the rest were wooing him. Desire and its frustration and fulfilment were the theme. Yet it was not sensual, or not merely so. The Hindus interpret in a religious spirit this legendary sport of Krishna ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... requisite for the full attainment of this delight. This second Iago, evidently, is no conventional villain, and he is much nearer to Shakespeare's Iago than the first. Only he is, if not a psychological impossibility, at any rate not a human being. He might be in place, therefore, in a symbolical poem like Faust, but in a purely human drama like Othello he would be a ruinous blunder. Moreover, he is not in Othello: he is a product of ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... The symbolical game of chess is a well-worn dramatic device. Becket, moreover, seems to feel some vague disquietude as to what may happen if he accepts the archbishopric; but there is nothing to show that he is conscious of any bias ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... moon makes a halo behind his head and shines through the low boughs of an orchard, whose apples strew the dark grass in the foreground, sown with spots of light from the star-shaped perforations in the lantern-cover. They are the apples of Eden, emblems of the Fall. Everything, in fact, is symbolical. Christ's seamless white robe, with its single heavy fold, typifies the Church catholic; the jewelled clasps of the priestly mantle, one square and one oval, are the Old and New Testaments. The golden crown is enwoven with one of thorns, from which new leaves are sprouting. The richly ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... produced by the operation of the divine Spirit there recorded, we do not know. What extent of meaning should be assigned to the six days of creation—whether they should be understood literally or in a symbolical way, like the prophetical days of Daniel and Revelation—Dan. 7:25; 9:24-27; Rev. 9:15; 11:3, etc.—is a question on which devout believers have differed ever since the days of Augustine. See Prof. Tayler Lewis' Six Days of Creation, ch. 14. But all who receive the Bible as containing a ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... Dane, proceeding to attach it properly to Wych Hazel's belt. 'My mother used to wear it. This,'taking up a little gold key,'you will observe, is the key of your money-box. These seals you will study at your leisure. Here is a wee gold compass, Hazel; this is symbolical. It means, "Know where you are, and take care which way you go." Your vinaigrette you will never get again. I shall have to find ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... duty is assigned by the queen; and the journeys and adventures of these knights are the subjects of the several books. The first recounts the adventures of the Redcross Knight, representing Holiness, and the lady Una, representing Religion. Their contests are symbolical of the world-wide struggle between virtue and faith on the one hand, and sin and heresy on the other. The second book tells the story of Sir Guyon, or Temperance; the third, of Britomartis, representing Chastity; the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... you ask, why among our symbolical terms ([Greek: saemantika]) we prefer barbarous (words) to our respective native (tongues)? There is also for this a mystic reason. For it was the gods who taught the sacred nations, such as the Egyptians and Assyrians, the whole of their sacred dialect, wherefore we think that we ought to ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead
... give Liberty jest as imperious and showy a look as spurs would, and be fur more historick and symbolical." ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... by my fancied cruelty, and in the morning sent its victim, after Uganda fashion, some symbolical presents, including a goat, in token of esteem; a black blanket, as a sign of mourning; a bundle of gundu anklets; and a packet of tobacco, in proof of ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... pair passed. A delicate girl mounted upon a little mule and a sturdy youth walking in the dust, his hand upon the beast's shoulder. With their serene and joy-illumined faces they somehow suggested the holy family, symbolical of all that was ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... others—that the Law and the Prophets speak throughout of Christ? That all the intermediate applications and realisations of the words are but types and repetitions—translations, as it were, from the language of letters and articulate sounds into the language of events and symbolical persons? ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the myth as the sun-god's rejection of Ishtar; Gilgamesh's fear of death marks the approach of the winter season, when the sun appears to have lost its vigor completely and is near to death. The entire episode is, therefore, a nature myth, symbolical of the passing of spring to midsummer and then to the bare season. The myth has been attached to Gilgamesh as a favorite figure, and then woven into a pattern with the episode of Enkidu and the bull. The bull episode ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous
... carriages advanced. The horses pawed the ground; the harnesses shone; the footmen and coachmen were dressed in perfect liveries; the porter of the Palais Castagna, with his long redingote, on the buttons of which were the symbolical chestnuts of the family, had beneath his laced hat such a dignified bearing that Julien suddenly found it absurd to have imagined an impassioned drama in connection with such people. The last one left, while watching ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... not many of them and they could be easily numbered; Addison, perhaps, certainly Dr. Johnson, certainly Byron, and in the later age probably Tennyson. But the greatest of them all is Sir Philip Sidney: his symbolical relation to the time in which he lived was realized by his contemporaries, and it has been a commonplace of history and criticism ever since. Elizabeth called him one of the jewels of her crown, and at the age of twenty-three, so fast did genius ripen ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... dinner as to a ceremony. It was indeed a ceremony filled for her with some occult, sacred, meaning that she could not put into words. A feast symbolical. Starling was sent to the wine-cellar to bring back a cobwebbed Madeira near a century old, brought out on rare occasions in the family. And Hugh, when his glass was filled, looked at his wife and raised it ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... symbolical of life, that toy was a kaleidoscope: the showy bits of tinsel, coloured glass, silk, beads, and feathers, with here and there perchance a stray piece of iridescent ore or a pin, each, in its turn of ideal multiplication, filling successively the field ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... resembled the shape of the earth, and so forth. We find similar reflections in Philo, but in his work they are part of a continuous allegorical exegesis, and in the other they are a sudden incursion of the symbolical into the long ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... sat, he had an excellent view of the rope of pearls which was tugging him back to his old ways. And when he looked at them he could not see Molly. The thing was symbolical. It must be one or the other. He was at the crossroads. The affair was becoming a civil war. He felt like a rudderless boat between two currents. Eight years of gem collecting do not leave a man without a deep-rooted passion for the sport. ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... it a series of prophecies foretelling the coming of Jesus was radically wrong. It could not be supported by any straightforward interpretation, which gave to the Old Testament its original historical meaning. The result was the inevitable growth of an unnatural symbolical interpretation which had little difficulty in extracting anything from anything. It is difficult to estimate whether the result has been more good or evil. It produced good, in that it very soon necessitated the growth of a Christian canon—the New Testament ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake
... apparent, long before 1867, that while the loyalty of the province to the Sovereign, and the personal influence of her representative were bonds of union, real, if hard to describe in set terms, the headship over the Canadian people was assumed to be official, ornamental, and symbolical, rather than utilitarian. ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... Sunday, when to this beauty of the godly habitation is added all the beauty of worship, the music of the oldest organs in France, slow-moving priests in gorgeous vestments, sweet smelling incense, chants, and prayers of a most majestic ritual, one is tempted to read into these stones symbolical meanings,—as if the heavy nave, where the dim praying figures kneel, were typical of their life of struggle—and their glances altarward, where all is light and beauty, presaged their final coming into the presence and glory ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... Severne, and he was the most serious-minded youth who had ever stepped from college into writing. He spoke of ideals. Brown concluded that the youth's story probably dealt with the time of the Chaldaean astronomers, and contained a deep symbolical truth, couched in language of the school of Bulwer Lytton or Marie Corelli. So, after the youth had gone, he seized the roll of manuscript, for the purpose of glancing through it. If he had imagined the story of any merit, he would not have been in such haste; but as his best ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... shoulder of the river god Orontes, who seems to swim from beneath the rock upon which she is seated. Stanton had a sketch of the statuette which he had made in Rome, and from this he had modelled his America, replacing the god Orontes by a ballot-box, changing the accessories and adding as many symbolical articles as he could crowd around the feet. He was not wholly untroubled by an inward dread lest the source of his inspiration should be discovered; but when he had been complimented by Peter Calvin upon the marked originality of the design, he ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... creatures, speak clearly, stammerers, are religious transfigurers filthy pedants, of everyday occurrences, are listeners and observers, quibblers and scarecrows, have an aptitude for the unfitted for the symbolical, symbolical, are in full possession of ardent slaves of the State, their freedom as men, can look innocently out Christians in disguise, into the world, are the ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... likewise obtainable whenever a symbol or an emblem is expanded on its concrete side, and a pretence is made of retaining the same symbolical value for this expansion as for the emblem itself. In a very lively comedy we are introduced to a Monte Carlo official, whose uniform is covered with medals, although he has only received a single decoration. "You see, I staked my medal on a number at roulette," he said, "and as the ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... prove. These "animals" are worshippers; (v. 8,) therefore they are not the Object of worship. They are culpably blind who mistake the creature for the Creator. (Rom. i. 25.) Other expositors have attempted, with greater plausibility, but no better success, to prove these animals to be symbolical of angels. For this purpose, reference has been made to Isaiah's vision of the seraphims, (ch. vi. 2,) and also to the "four living creatures" which appeared in vision to Ezekiel, (i. 5-10.) The identity of John's "animals" and Ezekiel's "living creatures" ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... an umbrella, the sign of rain. May, the month for moving, is represented by a sign upon which are the words, "House to Let." June, of course, is the month of roses, while a fire-cracker is always symbolical of July. A fan for the hot month of August, and a pile of school books for the first days of September. Hallow-e'en, the gala day of October, has a Jack-o'lantern, while the year closes with a turkey for Thanksgiving and a stocking ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... practical conduct of life. The new-comers kept encroaching more and more: invited in as auxiliaries, they remained as principals; and at last quite superseded and replaced the original tenants. Hence there grew into use a different style or order of workmanship, a distinct class of symbolical or allegorical dramas; that is, dramas made up entirely of abstract ideas personified. These, from their structure and purpose, are properly termed MORAL-PLAYS. We shall see hereafter that much the same process of transition was repeated in the gradual ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... letter that you cling to the idea of internal vital processes of the earth, that you regard the successive formations as different phases of life, the rocks as products of metamorphosis. I think this symbolical language should be employed with great reserve, I know that point of view of the old "Naturphilosophie;" I have examined it without prejudice, but nothing seems to me more dissimilar than the vital action of the metamorphosis of a plant in order to form the calyx or the flower, ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... particular attention to the fact that a countryman was this day observed to buy a threepenny loaf, and on leaving the baker's to tear it asunder and distribute the fragments with three confederates!!! an act which I need not say was evidently symbolical of their desire to rend asunder the Corn Laws, and to divide the landed property amongst themselves. The action also appears analogous to the custom of breaking bread and swearing alliance on it, a practice still observed by the inhabitants ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... worked out; but of course the really important event in Crusoe's life is his great shipwreck and his long solitude on the island. Now of what events in Defoe's life are these symbolical? ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and make it easier for Him to disperse them, while many of them, as really happened, would be likely to set off by land for Capernaum, when they saw the boat had gone. The main teaching of this miracle, over and above its demonstration of the Messianic power of our Lord, is symbolical. All the miracles are parables, and this eminently so. Thus regarding it, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Youth (east end) - Edith Woodman Burroughs Snugly placed inside the abutting walls, east of the Tower of Jewels. Naive in character and simple in treatment, without any further symbolical meaning than that suggested by the name. Motif in side panels, ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... The symbolical legend on which this tale is founded will be found in Lady Charlotte Guest's translation of the "Mabinogion" (London, 1877), II. p. 344. It is an almost unique instance, in the imaginative literature of that period, of a direct and ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... in defence of Hinduism that it is a symbolical representative religion, and that as God is vastly beyond our comprehension, we cannot, except by symbols, attain any conception of Him. We have often to say in reply, that as we cannot see our own spirit, and yet know how real, ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... Sienese for allegorical representations of the life and duties of citizenship. Differing from Michael Angelo, Donatello made no Brutus; he did not concentrate the political tragedies of his day into a Penseroso and a group of statues full of grave symbolical protests against the statecraft of his time; and, except for the accidental loss of Judith's pedestal, Donatello's art never suffered from the curse of politics. Michael Angelo was always surrounded by the pitfalls of intrigue ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... real examples for symbolical ones, the following are three uniformities, or call them laws of nature: the law that air has weight, the law that pressure on a fluid is propagated equally in all directions, and the law that pressure in one direction, not opposed by equal pressure ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... is really a very sentimental being. He loves symbols. A good deal of his fondness for ritual is due to this fact. The outward marks of an inner state have always appealed to him. Ancient taboos became not only consecrated but symbolical. Whether it be the rite of circumcision, or the use of phylacteries and fringed praying garments, or the adfixture of little scrolls in metal cases on the door-posts, or the glad submission to the dietary laws, in all these matters sentiment played a ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... down by taking in the first and last syllables of the name of Macklaughlin, as Malloch was polished to Mallet; and even our sublime Milton, in a moment of humour and hatred to the Scots, condescends to insinuate that their barbarous names are symbolical of their natures,—and from a man of the name of Mac Collkittok, he expects no mercy. Virgil, when young, formed a design of a national poem, but was soon discouraged from proceeding, merely by the roughness and asperity of the old Roman names, such as Decius Mus; ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... His symbolical pictures please us least. They doubtless signify no end of profound things, yet to us they seem both exotic and puerile. We go back to the tiny dancers, tired to sleepiness, who sit on a sofa waiting ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... emphasis? There are, of course, many conspiring causes, but the conception of the Absolute is still the strongest. Given an Unconditioned which is beyond the reach of sense and reason, the phenomenal is necessarily degraded to the rank of the merely symbolical. Nature, being at an infinite distance from the Real, can only "stand for" the Real; and any knowledge which it can mediate is so indirect as to be ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... felt at home anywhere, and that rats were found everywhere, either real or symbolical, legions of pests that torment us. Yet she liked the Botanical Gardens; she had always wished to go there, yet never had gone. There was also the museum, which she was ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... (Gen. 22:2, 13); by Jacob (Gen. 31:54; 46:1)—it is silent concerning the divine origin of sacrifice as a propitiatory requirement prefiguring the atoning death of Jesus Christ. The difficulty of determining time and circumstance, under which the offering of symbolical sacrifices originated amongst mankind, is recognized by all investigators save those who admit the validity of modern revelation. The necessity of assuming early instruction from God to man on the subject has ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... "properties of matter" that we now regard as merely modes of energy. But this latter notion, an expression of permanence underneath the various manifestations of nature, is for science only an abstract, symbolical formula: if we attempt to embody it, to make it concrete and representable, then, whether we will or no, it resolves itself into the feeling of muscular effort, that is, takes on a human character. To produce no other examples, we see that so far as concerns the last term of ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... course that with the compass and the motto "Labor et Constantia," which he first used in 1557. Plantin explains in the preface to his Polyglot Bible the signification of this Mark, and states that the compass is a symbolical representation of his device: the point of the compass turning round signifies work, and the stationary point constancy. One of the most curious combinations of Printers' Marks may be here alluded to: in 1573, Plantin, Steels and Nutius projected an edition of the "Decretals," and ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... only too ready to be hoodwinked and gulled. He finds that to "succeed" is to achieve certain outward and visible results,—results which are out of relation to the vraie verite of things, which are in no way symbolical of merit, and for the winning of which any means may be resorted to provided that scandals are avoided and the letter of the law is obeyed. He finds that the system of advertising which plays so large a part in modern life, and without which it is so hard to "succeed," is in the main ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... to be presumed, must be taken in some symbolical sense, for coins cannot be traced back to a date so early as this; and when Abraham purchased the cave to bury Sarah in from the sons of Heth, we read that he weighed ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... is still tremulously strung, the priestesses of Dionysus were wont to assemble with many lights at his shrine, and there, with songs and dances, awoke the new-born child after his wintry sleep, waving in a sacred cradle, like the great basket used for winnowing corn, a symbolical image, or perhaps a real infant. He is twofold then—a Doppelganger; like Persephone, he belongs to two worlds, and has much in common with her, and a full share of those dark possibilities which, even apart from the story of the rape, belong to ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... natives as I brought the bread into eclipse behind the lump of tallow. My first lecture would have been a grand success if my native audience had only been able to understand the representative and symbolical character of the bread and tallow. The great trouble was that their imaginative faculties were weak. They could not be made to see that bread stood for the moon and tallow-for the earth, but persisted in regarding them as so ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... the main modes of Indian music is here represented by Radha and Krishna seated on a swing. The mode itself is called 'the swinging music' but since swinging was symbolical of love-making and also took place during the rains, the season of longing, its spirit was sometimes impersonated not by an ordinary prince but by Krishna himself. In the picture, peacocks, which were common symbols for the lover, are shown against a storm-tossed sky—the battered clouds and ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... means a Brahmana's rod—bamboo-stick. In consequence of the Brahmana's ascetic power, this thin rod (symbolical of the Brahmana's power of chastisement) is infinitely more powerful than even Indra's bolt. The latter can strike only one, but the former can smite whole countries, and entire races from generation to generation. With only his Brahma-danda Vasishtha baffled ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... riddle, that is a real test of ingenuity for all, and which but one answer satisfies, shows an advanced stage of the art. The ancient riddles were almost invariably symbolical, and either too vague or too learned. They seem to us not to have sufficient point to be humorous, but no doubt they were thought ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... Eleanora of Toledo there were two spectacular performances. In the first Apollo appeared in company with the muses. He sang stanzas glorifying the bride and her husband, and the muses responded with a canzona in nine parts. Now the cities of Tuscany entered, each accompanied by a symbolical procession, and sang their praises to the bride. The second entertainment was a prose comedy of Landi, preceded by a prologue and provided with five intermezzi. In the first intermezzo Aurora, in a blazing chariot, awakened all nature by ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... seemed to her symbolical—the two men standing face to face like hostile forces, with the young, girlish figure lying ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... Strabo, kings themselves boasted of having been mighty hunters in the inscriptions on their tombs. A relief has been found in the ruins of Persepolis, on which the king is strangling a lion with his right arm, but this is supposed to have a historical, not a symbolical meaning. Similar representations occur on Assyrian monuments. Izdubar strangling a lion and fighting with a lion (relief at Khorsabad) is admirably copied in Delitzsch's edition of G. Smith's Chaldean Genesis. Layard discovered some representations of hunting-scenes during his excavations; ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... simple Christians to-day, was clearly, in spite of the theologians, of a very exalted anthropomorphic personality away somewhere in Heaven. The personal appearance of the Christian God is described in The Revelation, and however much that description may be explained away by commentators as symbolical, it is certainly taken by most straightforward believers as a statement of concrete reality. Now if we are going to insist upon this primary meaning of person and individual, then certainly God as he is now conceived is not a person ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... said that the portent foretold the fall of Tarquin. The sons then asked who should take his throne, and the reply was: "He who shall first kiss his mother." Brutus had propitiated the oracle by the present of a hollow stick filled with gold, and learned the symbolical meaning of this reply. The sons decided to allow their remaining brother Sextus to know the answer, and to determine by lot which of them should rule; but Brutus kept his own counsel, and on reaching home, fell upon mother earth, as by accident, and kissed ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... Catholic Church of the East the communion is received fasting. A little to one side of the priest stands a cleric holding a platter of blessed bread, cut in small bits, and a porringer of warm water and wine, which (besides their symbolical significance) are taken by each communicant after the Holy Elements, in order that there may be something interposed between the ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... in regard to which much might still be written. There is no doubt whatever that Buddhism as it exists to-day, whether in Ceylon, India, China, or Japan, is widely different from the religion of its founder. Many of its original doctrines were purely symbolical and poetical. These have been evolved into something they were certainly never intended to mean. That the principles of the Buddhist religion are essentially pure and moral no one who has any knowledge of it can deny. It preaches above all things the suppression of self, and it ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... to the second application of these great words, that speak to us not only of the God that dwelt in Zion in outward and symbolical form, by means of a material Presence which was an emblem of the true nearness of Israel's God, but yet more distinctly, as I take it, of the Christ that dwells ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... sharp arguments of her liege lord), had acquired such a lively conviction of the hazard of saying anything under any circumstances, that she had remained all this time in a corner guarding herself from approach with that symbolical instrument of hers; so that, when a word or two had been addressed to her by Flora, or even by the bottle-green patriarch himself, she had warded off conversation with the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... Euphuism, or a symbolical jargon of the same class, predominates in the romances of Calprenade and Scuderi, which were read for the amusement of the fair sex of France during the long reign of Louis XIV., and were supposed to contain the only legitimate language ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... Jumbo, Samson symbolical! Come and see Slivers, Clown really comical! Come and see Zip, the foremost of freaks! Come and see Palestine's Sinister Sheiks! Eager Equestriennes, each unexcelled, Most mammoth menagerie ever beheld, The Giant, the Fat Girl, the Lion-faced Man, Aerial Artists from far-off Japan, Audacious Acrobats ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... possessions with me, which I did in one small telescope. I was not to enter his house again while he lived. I was glad to go, he was glad to have me, while I don't think either of us has changed our mind since. Teaching school isn't exactly gay, but I'll fill my tummy with quite a lot of symbolical husks before he'll kill the fatted calf for me. They'll be glad to see you at my brother Adam's, and my sister, Nancy Ellen, would greatly enjoy meeting you. Surely you may go home with me, ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the virtues; yet the excess of its religious ceremonial, robbed it of vital fructifying energies. The frequency and publicity of sacerdotal service, usurped the place of daily individual piety. The tendency of all outward symbolical observances, unduly multiplied, is to substitute mere formalism ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... called Waning Day, or something. Two people in a boat sailing on dry land! Then that picture of a purple man with a green beard! Oh, my dear! The people who took me there told me it was full of—something French—essayage, or mouvement, I think. The man who tried to make me buy it said it was symbolical. But of course I refused. You know I never have anything to do with nonsense. Well now, my dear——" Taking pity on Mrs. Wyburn's extreme impatience, Miss Westbury came a little nearer. "What I heard was simply this. My cousin, Jane Totness, took her little boy, who is in London for the ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... more. That the Christmas rose you're wearing is a mandragora. Its symbolical meaning is malice and calumny; but it was once used in medicine for the healing of madness. Will you ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... that between justice and arbitrary wills on one side and the hulks and cunning on the other! The hulks—symbolical of that daring which throws off calculation and reflection, which avails itself of any means, which has none of the hyprocrisy of high-handed justice, but is the hideous outcome of the starving stomach—the swift and bloodthirsty ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... remained quite calm; it was only the two scholars and Madame Tronchin who still seemed disturbed. Another lady then asked her if it was allowable to believe the history of the apple to be symbolical. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the companions of the sublime degrees, which should ever distinguish the members of a society founded upon the principles of everlasting truth and universal philanthropy. Of the first, blue, the peculiar color of the three ancient or symbolical degrees. It is an emblem of universal friendship and benevolence, and instructs us that in the mind of a Mason those virtues should be as expansive as the blue arch of ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... that have conjured up! The lost, the apparently wasted of the leaves from the tree of human life, and the possibilities of use and redemption! De Quincey would there doubtless have given us under a form more or less fanciful or symbolical his ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... was just then picturing to himself the interior of a rebel dungeon; which view suddenly dissolved into an indistinct representation of a tree, from a stout limb of which was suspended a rope, hanging down over a cart—these latter appurtenances being symbolical of the usual rebel method ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... more basin-like depressions in the upper surface for receiving fluid libations. These had channels whereby fluids poured into the receptacles could be drained off. The surface was plain, inscribed with dedicatory or other legends, or adorned with symbolical ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the Saviour in the act of blessing—is flanked by twelve arcades, containing the figures of the Apostles in relief, holding the instrument of their martyrdom. It is crowned by a cross with double rows, or branches, at the foot of which are the evangelists with their symbolical animals. The lower arms of the cross bear the figures of the Virgin and St. John weeping at the feet of the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... Pythagoras of Oinuphis the Heliopolite. But none of these philosophers seems either to have been more admired and in greater favour with the priests, or to have paid a more especial regard to their method of philosophising, than this last named, who has particularly imitated their mysterious and symbolical manner in his own writings, and like them conveyed his doctrines to the world in a kind of riddle. For many of the precepts of Pythagoras come nothing short of the hieroglyphical representations themselves, such ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... Concordia: The Symbolical Books of the Ev. Lutheran Church. (St. Louis: Concordia ...
— The Smalcald Articles • Martin Luther
... the tail, which is upright and very thick, and is connected with the back by a handle. In these strata we also meet with an immense number of those round terra-cottas—the whorls—embellished with beautiful and ingenious symbolical signs, amongst which the sun-god always occupies the most prominent position. But the fire-machine of our primeval ancestors, the holy sacrificial altar with blazing flames, the holy soma-tree, or tree of life, and the rosa mystica, are also ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... was in general use, this symbolical way of performing all important legal acts appears to have entered into the jurisprudence of all savage nations; and according to Gibbon, chap. 44, "the jurisprudence of the first Romans exhibited the scenes of a pantomime; the words were adapted to the gestures, ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... sort is very common, and there is to be found at West Ham, Essex, the same symbolical flight of the angel and child repeated as many as ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... placed her on the couch close to himself. This example was followed by all, till every lady was seated by her betrothed. This formed the whole of the Persian ceremony—the salute being regarded as the seal of appropriation. The Macedonian form was still more simple and symbolical. The bridegroom, dividing a small loaf with his sword, presented one-half to the bride; wine was then poured as a libation on both portions, and the contracting parties tasted of the bread. Cake ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... to this wondrous book of Iris. Two pages faced each other which I took for symbolical expressions of two states of mind. On the left hand, a bright blue sky washed over the page, specked with a single bird. No trace of earth, but still the winged creature seemed to be soaring upward and upward. Facing it, one of those black dungeons ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... would be accomplished. The last Pope had died. Their basilica with its mighty dome was a desert where scorpions and snakes abounded. The fifth Buddha would appear, not the second Christos. Suddenly I saw before me in a puny boat a beautiful beardless youth. He was attired in some symbolical garments and upon his head a triple tiara. I could not believe my aged eyes. He sat upright. His attitude was hieratic. His eyes were lifted heavenwards. He ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... A peculiar one in court circles is the wearing of a different-colored panung each day of the week,—on Sunday, red; Monday, cream; Tuesday, purple; and so on,—for good luck. Another is the use of buttons adorned with representations of animals, symbolical of the year in which certain persons are born,—this also for good luck. The tendency naturally leads to great respect being shown to fortune-tellers. The youth of Siam are, however, it is said, outgrowing this ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... pictures.—Representative of the first, or symbolical, pictorial type are found the more or less crude pen drawings of such things as the heart with a key, an open Bible with a torch beside it, tombstone-like drawings representing the Tables of the Law or three interlocking circles ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... another. Matter, then, is the vehicle by which thought is communicated, and, so far as we are concerned, the necessary condition of such communication, so that the conception of thought apart from the thinker involves the intervention of material forms, and it is by the interpretation of these symbolical forms that we discover ...
— The Philosophy of Evolution - and The Metaphysical Basis of Science • Stephen H. Carpenter |
