#symbols

In fact, words are well adapted for description and the arousing of emotion, but for many kinds of precise thought other symbols are much better. ↗

— John B. S. Haldane

#arousing #better #description #emotion #fact

Each generation wants new symbols, new people, new names. They want to divorce themselves from their predecessors. ↗

— Jim Morrison

#each #generation #names #new #new people

Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#absolute truth #another #nowhere #relations #symbols

Some of the words and symbols and images from childhood will continually be part and parcel of my personality. ↗

— Dennis Potter

#continually #images #parcel #part #personality

A common allegiance to form of expression that is identified with no single national unit is likely to prove one of the most potent symbols of the freedom of the human spirit that the world has yet known. ↗

— Edward Sapir

#common #expression #form #freedom #human

This year, as we celebrate the 230th anniversary of America's independence, please remember the symbols that are sacred to this country. Fly Old Glory high and show your respect and admiration for this great nation and the values we hold dear. ↗

— Kenny Marchant

#america #anniversary #celebrate #country #dear

We can express our feelings regarding the world around us either by poetic or by descriptive means. I prefer to express myself metaphorically. Let me stress: metaphorically, not symbolically. A symbol contains within itself a definite meaning, certain intellectual formula, while metaphor is an image. An image possessing the same distinguishing features as the world it represents. An image — as opposed to a symbol — is indefinite in meaning. One cannot speak of the infinite world by applying tools that are definite and finite. We can analyse the formula that constitutes a symbol, while metaphor is a being-within-itself, it's a monomial. It falls apart at any attempt of touching it. ↗

— Andrei Tarkovsky

#symbols #description

But even in the Christian religion, much of its real meaning is hidden by words that are misleading and symbols that but few understand. ↗

— Ernest Holmes

#christian religion #even #few #hidden #meaning

If all things were made through Him, clearly so must the splendid revelations have been which were made to the fathers and prophets, and became to them the symbols of the sacred mysteries of religion. ↗

— Origen

#became #been #clearly #fathers #him

If Thecla had symbolized love of which I felt myself undeserving, as I know now that she did, then did her symbolic force disappear when I locked the door of her cell behind me? That would be like saying that the writing of this book, over which I have labored for so many watches, will vanish in a blur of vermillion when I close it for the last time and dispatch it to the eternal library maintained by the old Ultan. The great question then, that I pondered as I watched the floating island with longing eyes and chafed at my bonds and cursed the hetman in my heart, is that of determining what these symbols mean in and of themselves. We are like children who look at print and see a serpent in the last letter but one, and a sword in the last. ↗

— Gene Wolfe

#symbols #text #love