#symbols

For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier stock. ↗

— William H. Gass

#short-stories #short-story #symbols #writing #life

We emphasize that such a form of communication is not absent in man, however evanescent a naturally given object may be for him, split as it is in its submission to symbols. ↗

— Jacques Lacan

#communication #emphasize #evanescent #form #given

The chief function of the city is to convert power into form, energy into culture, dead matter into the living symbols of art, biological reproduction into social creativity. ↗

— Lewis Mumford

#biological #chief #city #convert #creativity

Symbols are the imaginative signposts of life. ↗

— Margot Asquith

#life #signposts #symbols

My yachts were, I suppose, outstanding status symbols. ↗

— Paul Getty

#outstanding #status #suppose #symbols #were

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 girl dreams she is dangerously ill. Suddenly birds come out of her skin and cover her completely ... Swarms of gnats obscure the sun, the moon, and all the stars except one. That one start falls upon the dreamer. ↗

— C.G. Jung

#archetype #children #dreams #psychology #symbolism

They were in love! Carla wore her hair up and Andrew saw everything as a sign. They spent an entire afternoon sitting side by side in a coffee shop, taking more meaning than necessary from the world around them. A man wearing boxing gloves walked down the sidewalk in front of them and they took that to mean they would be together forever. ↗

— Amelia Gray

#signs #symbols #love

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. ↗

— Clifford Geertz

#religion #society #symbolism #symbols #men

Jewelry and pins have been worn throughout history as symbols of power, sending messages. Interestingly enough, it was mostly men who wore the jewelry in various times, and obviously crowns were part of signals that were being sent throughout history by people of rank. ↗

— Madeleine Albright

#being #crowns #enough #history #interestingly