#symbols

I paint to evoke a changing language of symbols, a language with which to remark upon the qualities of our mysterious capacities which direct us toward ultimate reality. ↗

— Morris Graves

#changing #direct #evoke #i #language

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

I came hoping to see those eyes, but instead I return with my heart, leaving behind only flowers. ↗

— Kim Dong Hwa

#flowers #love #symbols #unrequited-love #unrequited-love

But I enjoy the opportunity to use swear symbols. ↗

— Daniel Clowes

#i #opportunity #swear #symbols #use

Of course, it gave the studio an enormous power, because I don't know any other place who had that skill with images to communicate with. And the need of these kinds of images are even greater now than they ever were because we are losing our life symbols. ↗

— John Hench

#because #communicate #course #enormous #even

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

Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions. ↗

— Joyce Carol Oates

#forgets #homo #homo sapiens #inventions #invents

The art of meditation is a way of getting into touch with reality, and the reason for it is that most civilized people are out of touch with reality because they confuse the world as it with the world as they think about it and talk about it and describe it. For on the one hand there is the real world and on the other there is a whole system of symbols about that world which we have in our minds. These are very very useful symbols, all civilization depends on them, but like all good things they have their disadvantages, and the principle disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with reality, just as we confuse money with actual wealth. ↗

— Alan Wilson Watts

#nominalism #reality #symbols #art

The mathematician, carried along on his flood of symbols, dealing apparently with purely formal truths, may still reach results of endless importance for our description of the physical universe. ↗

— Karl Pearson

#apparently #carried #dealing #description #endless

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

— Joséphin Péladan

#symbols #life