#symbol

A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection — not an invitation for hypnosis. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#images #mass-media #reflection #symbols #television

The number and richness of man’s signifiers always surpasses the set of defined objects that could be termed signifieds. The symbolic function must always precede its object and does not encounter reality except when it precedes it into the imaginary… ↗

— Maurice Merleau-Ponty

#symbols #imagination

Instead of the word 'love' there was an enormous heart, a symbol sometimes used by people who have trouble figuring out the difference between words and shapes. ↗

— Lemony Snicket

#symbols #love

White for Shadowhunters is the color of funerals," Luke explained. “ But for mundanes, Jace, it’ s the color of weddings. Brides wear white to symbolize their purity.” “I thought Jocelyn said her dress wasn’t white,” Simon said. “Well,” said Jace, “I suppose that ship has sailed.” Luke choked on his coffee. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#jace-lightwood #luke-garroway #symbolism #city

Being a sex symbol is a heavy load to carry, especially when one is very tired, hurt and bewildered. ↗

— Clara Bow

#sex-symbol #hurt

as soon as we renounce fiction and illusion, we lose reality itself; the moment we subtract fictions from reality, reality itself loses its discursive-logical consistency. ↗

— Slavoj Žižek

#fiction #ideology #imaginary #philosophy #real

The absence of symbols in our life debases it as much as any government can... ↗

— Joséphin Péladan

#symbols #life

I wake up every morning, look in the mirror and ask, 'Am I a sex symbol?' Then I go back to bed again. It's stupid to think that way. ↗

— Antonio Banderas

#am #ask #back #bed #every

He said that people who loved [animals] to excess were capable of the worst cruelties toward human beings. He said that dogs were not loyal but servile, that cats were opportunists and traitors, that peacocks were heralds of death, that macaws were simply decorative annoyances, that rabbits fomented greed, that monkeys carried the fever of lust, and that roosters were damned because they had been complicit in the three denials of Christ. ↗

— Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

#myth #omens #symbols #death

I don't know whether you can look at your past and find, woven like the hidden symbols on a treasure map, the path that will point to your final destination. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#life #looking-back #past #path #symbols