"Symbolical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which we then regard as identical; and this multiplicity of elements no longer being conceivable except by being set out in space— since they have now become identical—we are, necessarily, led to the idea of a homogeneous Time, the symbolical image of la duree." [Footnote: Time and Free Will, p. 125 (Fr. pp. 94-95).] "Whilst I am writing these lines," he continues, "the hour strikes on a neighbouring clock, but my inattentive ear does not perceive ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... font by Thorvaldsen, whose parents were natives of Iceland, though he himself was born in Denmark. Captain Burton describes it as the ancient classical altar, with basso-relievos on all four sides—subjects of course evangelical; on the top an alto- relievo of symbolical flowers, roses, and passiflorae is cut to support the normal "Dobefal," or baptismal basin. In the sacristy are preserved some handsome priestly robes—especially the velvet vestment sent by Pope Julius ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... her, and 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 and wine, as nuptial refreshments, may thus claim a venerable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... Crown of beechen leaves.—Ver. 449. This was the prize which was originally given to the conquerors in the Pythian games. In later times, as Ovid tells us, the prize of the victor was a laurel chaplet, together with the palm branch, symbolical of ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... nobles gathered in council could have lifted itself from the figure of the Doge without falling on the figure of the dead Christ. Strange as the conception is it is hard to believe that in a mind so peculiarly symbolical as that of Tintoret the contrast could have been without a definite meaning. And if this be so, it is a meaning that one can hardly fail to read in the history of the time. The brief interval of peace and glory had passed away ere Tintoret's ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... is essentially a boy's love. Poets who are sick with this passion must either die young, like Keats, or survive merely to echo their younger selves, like Swinburne. They are splendid in youth, like Aucassin, whose swooning passion for Nicolette is symbolical of their almost painful desire of beauty. In Hand and Soul, Rossetti tells us of Chiaro dell Erma that "he would feel faint in sunsets and at the sight of stately persons." Keats's Odes express the same ecstasy of faintness, ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... the Kafrs to clear the river from these dangerous animals. In confirmation of this opinion, we read in an Arabian author named Matude, giving an account of prodigies, that about the year 863 a brazen crocodile was found under the ruins of an Egyptian temple, on which certain characters or symbolical letters were impressed, and when this image was broken in pieces the crocodiles of the Nile began again to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... them perpetually in Californian rags and tatters—it were impossible very well to escape from them then; but it is very hard to remember them when every touch and shape of life is pleasant to us—when everything about us is symbolical and redolent of wealth and ease—when the art of enjoyment is the only one we are called on to study, and the science of pleasure all we ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... his time, and probably of our time also, I fancy, could make very little of Emerson's religion. It was the religion of the spirit and not of the utilitarian and matter-of-fact understanding. It identified man with God and made all nature symbolical of the spirit. He was never tired of repeating that all true prayers answered themselves—the spirit which the act of prayer begets in one's self is the answer. Your prayer for humility, for charity, for courage, begets these emotions ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... numerals LXX. These suggested the seventy Hebrews who wrote the Septuagint, with the date, 277 B.C., which served for Ptolemy Philadelphus. Miss X. later remembered a memoria technica which she had once learned, with the clue, 'Now Jewish elders indite a Greek copy'. It is obvious that these queer symbolical reawakenings of memory explain much of the (apparently) 'unknown' information given by 'ghosts,' and in dreams. A lady, who had long been in very bad health, was one evening seized by a violent recrudescence of memory, ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... call Salvation is its widest, most extensive form. We cast aside our reserves, our secrecies, our defences; we open ourselves; touches that would be intolerable from common people become a mystery of delight, acts of self-abasement and self-sacrifice are charged with symbolical pleasure. We cannot tell which of us is me, which you. Our imprisoned egoism looks out through this window, forgets its walls, and is for those brief moments ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... if they chose, and in this case the murderer was given them as a slave; but they might by no means kill him, since, in so doing, they would incur public censure, and be compelled in their turn to make atonement. Besides the principal gifts, there was a great number of less value, all symbolical, and each delivered with a set form of words: as, "By this we wash out the blood of the slain: By this we cleanse his wound: By this we clothe his corpse with a new shirt: By this we place food on his grave": and so, in endless ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... mysteries which have been above described. Their very name of "Gnostic" implied the possession of a secret, which was to be communicated to their disciples. Ceremonial observances were the preparation, and symbolical rites the instrument, of initiation. Tatian and Montanus, the representatives of very distinct schools, agreed in making asceticism a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... outset. To say little, but vaguely hint at much, was the rule which he adopted; to remain sententious in expression, but give the freest and most daring flight to his imagination, and spurn the conventional limitations set by rule and custom, his ambition. Such fanciful and symbolical titles as "Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces," "Titan," etc., which Jean Paul adopted for his singular mixtures of tale, rhapsody, philosophy, and satire, were bound to find an imitator in so ardent an apostle ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... populous book, and other experiences and other attainments than his. But in the Holy War we have Bunyan himself as fully and as exclusively as we have Dante in the Divine Comedy. In the first edition of the Holy War there is a frontispiece conceived and executed after the anatomical and symbolical manner which was so common in that day, and which is to be seen at its perfection in the English edition of Jacob Behmen. The frontispiece is a full-length likeness of the author of the Holy War, with his whole soul laid open and his hidden heart 'anatomised.' Why, asked ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... sacristy of San Lorenzo are memorials, not of any of the nobler and greater Medici, but of Giuliano, and Lorenzo the younger, noticeable chiefly for their somewhat early death. It is mere human nature therefore which has prompted the sentiment here. The titles assigned traditionally to the four symbolical figures, Night and Day, The Twilight and The Dawn, are far too definite for them; for these figures come much nearer to the mind and spirit of their author, and are a more direct expression of his thoughts, than any merely symbolical conceptions could possibly have been. They concentrate ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... syl.), a glutton, spoken to by Dante, in the third circle of hell, the place in which gluttons are consigned to endless woe. The word means "a pig," and is not a proper name, but only a symbolical one.—Dante, Hell, vi. (1300). ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... too deeply symbolical. But readers of different ages and abilities find results up to their stature. We do not demand that the children shall be able to understand all that is back of Gulliver's Travels, or Pilgrim's Progress, before we give them those books. What is worth while in literature has an ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... is one of the most poetical of trees, being consecrated to the Muse by the part which has been assigned it in many a scene of romance, and by its connection with events recorded in Holy Writ. It is invested with a poetical interest by its symbolical representation of sorrow in the pendulous character of its spray, by its fanciful uses as a garland for disappointed lovers, and by the employment of it in burying-grounds, and in pictures as drooping over graves. We remember it in sacred history ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... safe for country wits to attempt that euphuistic, antithetical, and delicately conceited vein, whose proper fountain was in Whitehall." However, on went Loyalty, very well pleased with himself, and next, amid much cheering, two great tinsel fish, a salmon and a trout, symbolical of the wealth of Torridge, waddled along, by means of two human legs and a staff apiece, which protruded from the fishes' stomachs. They drew (or seemed to draw, for half the 'prentices in the town were shoving it behind, and cheering on the panting monarchs ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... I like it. Everything to admire but the water supply, the sanitation, the Huns and Hunnesses and a few other beastlinesses. One can admire even the statue of Wissmann, the great explorer, that looks with fixed eyes to the Congo in the eye of the setting sun. He is symbolical of everything that a boastful Germany can pretend to. For at his feet is a native Askari looking upward, with adoring eye, to the "Bwona Kuba" who has given him the priceless boon of militarism, while with both hands ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... winged figures of deities or fantastic animals,—in which case it was usually confined above and below by a simple but graceful running pattern; or it would consist wholly of a more or less elaborate continuous pattern like Fig. 22, 23, or 25, these last symbolical compositions with a religious signification. (See also Fig. 21, "Interior view," etc.) Curiously enough the remains—mostly very trifling fragments—which have been discovered in various ruins, ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... that no mortal eye hath seen nor ear heard, nor heart of man conceived the happiness prepared for God's children, we must conclude that the magnificent language describing the heavenly Jerusalem is only symbolical; that the Holy Ghost speaks of the most precious and beautiful things we know, in order to raise our minds to the reality which they faintly represent. It has been the aim of the author of the following pages to discover the meaning concealed under those enticing ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... Perhaps Infinite Mercy will shine upon you at the last moment! We must hope so. There are examples. So sleep in peace to-night. To-morrow you will be included in the auto da fe: that is, you will be exposed to the quema-dero, the symbolical flames of the Everlasting Fire: It burns, as you know, only at a distance, my son; and Death is at least two hours (often three) in coming, on account of the wet, iced bandages, with which we protect the heads and hearts of the condemned. There ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... to me symbolical of mankind. Human Nature has worn its conventions for so long that its habit has grown on to it. In this nineteenth century it is impossible to say where the clothes of custom end and the man begins. Our virtues are taught to us as a branch of 'Deportment'; ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... tenderly over the top of her fan, a graceful accomplice to her pretty coquetry. At last she surrenders to the wooing, the happy pair dancing away together while the music plays faster and faster until at last it stops with a great crash, that, we trust, not being symbolical of infelicity in wedlock. The dance was very well done, and the native audience enjoyed it thoroughly, calling out chaffingly in Visayan to the couple on the floor, and occasionally beating time to the music with ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... stars that gemmed the blue ether above, smiling, said, "Peace, peace, peace." I felt bully, I tell you. I remember what I thought—that the emblem of our cause was the Palmetto and the Texas Star, and the town of Palmetto, were symbolical of our ultimate triumph, and that we had unconsciously, nay, I should say, prophetically, fallen upon Palmetto as the most appropriate place to declare peace between the two sections. I was sure Jeff Davis and Bob Toombs had ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... 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 ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... general reader will require a clue to this symbolical kind of instruction: a companion to his recollections of such an exhibition, which, without destroying the vividness and pleasure of the pageantry, shall connect its objects with the march of history, the advance of civilization, and the ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... waited at the altar, but the bridal couple, turning to the right, circled around it and mounted the steps leading up into the pulpit. The mystery of the wooden frame was explained now. It was not a symbolical doorway through which they were to pass, but a huge flower-draped picture-frame in which they took their places, facing the congregation like two ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the symbol has sometimes been given as essence of art. Now, if the symbol be given as inseparable from the artistic intuition, it is the synonym of the intuition itself, which always has an ideal character. There is no double-bottom to art, but one only; in art all is symbolical, because all is ideal. But if the symbol be looked upon as separable—if on the one side can be expressed the symbol, and on the other the thing symbolized, we fall back again into the intellectualist error: that pretended symbol ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... feathers on her head I regarded as an elfin queen. If I observed that the train of her dress was wet I believed at once that she must be a water-fairy. Now I know better, having learned from natural history that those symbolical feathers are found on the most stupid of birds, and that the train of a lady's dress may become wet in a very natural way. But if I had, with those boyish eyes, seen the aforesaid young lady in the aforesaid position on the Brocken, I would most assuredly have thought—"that is the fairy of the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... heart, his eyes still turned towards the altar, but no longer fixed upon the tabernacle, he could not refrain from thinking of Jeanne Dessalle and of what Benedetto had said. The very indifferent picture above the altar represented the martyr Anatolia offering, from Paradise, the symbolical palms to Audax, the young pagan who had attempted to seduce her, but whom, instead, she had led to Christ. Jeanne Dessalle had seduced Benedetto; of this Don Clemente had no doubts, notwithstanding Benedetto's attempt to exonerate her and accuse himself. What if she should ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... 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 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... first I got, and most curious, represented Octavius and Agrippa on one side, and on the reverse this identical symbol of a crocodile under a palm tree. Often enough did I turn that coin over and wonder what it meant, and highly delighted was I to discover its signification at length. It was symbolical of the subjugation of Egypt, and was struck in compliment to Agrippa. Then most assuredly Agrippa had something to do with Nimes. I turned to a little history of the place that I had, and to my delight found that he it was who is held to have been the great benefactor, ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... 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
... even in the modern drama—where indeed it finds, for reasons which are not far to seek, a wider scope than in the ancient—must always be merged again into the conception of guilt, if the drama is to rise above the anecdotal to the symbolical. For the conception of tragic guilt can be developed only from life itself, from the original incongruity between idea and phenomenon—which incongruity manifests itself in the phenomenon as extravagance, the natural consequence ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... one or more voices." In tracing its evolutionary stages, its root will be found in the moralities, mysteries, and miracle-plays of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, which were instituted for the purpose of impressing Biblical events in symbolical form upon the early converts to the Christian Church. These representations were entirely dramatic in character, and their subjects, though always sacred, were often grotesquely treated, and sometimes verged on buffoonery. Among the actors, God, Christ, Satan, Mary, and the angels nearly ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... the idea up to this girl, Lunar, and she did not seem to care one way or another. Dalis was all wrapped up in his ideas, and gave the girl the name of Lunar, as being symbolical of his plans for her. He coached and trained her against the consummation of his plan. We knew something, theoretically at least, about the conditions on the Moon, and everything possible was done for her, to make it feasible for her to exist on the Moon. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... is seen in a symbolical form where presents are required of the suitor before marriage and their equivalent returned later. By depositing goods accumulated through his activities he demonstrates his ability as a provider, ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... expressed their conceptions in what seems to us a crude, inconsistent, and very undescriptive language. Chemists use a language which is certainly symbolical, but also intelligible, and on the whole ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... their art was complicated and subtle. Clearly, this was not barbarous music, it 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 with the milkmaids. ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... 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 ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... literally 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 ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... his Northern brother. The blessing was upon Shem in his magnificent Asia. The greater blessing was upon Japheth in his man-developing Europe. Both blessings will be combined, in America, north of the Zone, in commingled light and life. I see it all in the first symbolical altar of Noah on that mound at the base of Ararat. The father of all living men bows before the incense of sacrifice, streaming up and mingling with the rays of the rising sun. His noble family, and all flesh saved, are grouped round about him. There is Ham, at the foot ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... connection between "horns" and Heaven, to which Byron twice alludes, is not very obvious. The reference may be to the Biblical "horn of salvation," or to the symbolical horns of Divine glory as depicted in the Moses of Michel Angelo. Compare Mazeppa, lines 177, 178, Poetical Works, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... a word about that. Paul is not meaning to depreciate the sacrificial ritual, from which he drew his emblem. But he is meaning to assert that the devotion of a life, manifested through bodily activity, is higher in its nature than the symbolical worship of any altar and of any sacrifice. And that falls in with prevailing tendencies in this day, which has laid such a firm hold on the principle that daily conduct is better than formal worship, that it has forgotten to ask the question whether ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... advancing to the Combat, the Outcry at his Birth, are Circumstances too noble to be past over in Silence, and extreamly suitable to this King of Terrors. I need not mention the Justness of Thought which is observed in the Generation of these several Symbolical Persons; that Sin was produced upon the first Revolt of Satan, that Death appear'd soon after he was cast into Hell, and that the Terrors of Conscience were conceived at the Gate of this Place of Torments. The Description ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... said to myself at last; but I gave that idea up, for war had been declared long enough ago. No. It could not mean that. And yet it seemed as if it might be a symbolical message, such as these ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... in his 'Essays on Browning's Poetry', has traced somewhat minutely the symbolical meaning which he sees in the scenery and circumstances of 'By the Fireside'. Readers are referred to ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... 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 and not an individual. The true ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... the pensionary made him a long oration. Even after the Prince was fairly housed, he had not escaped the fangs of allegory; for, while he sat at supper refreshing his exhausted frame after so much personification and metaphor, a symbolical personage, attired to represent the town corporation made his appearance, and poured upon him a long and particularly dull heroic poem. Fortunately, this episode closed the labors ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 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 ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... classic and romantic painting. This movement, of which Courbet will always remain the most famous representative, has been anti-intellectual. It has protested against every literary, psychologic or symbolical element in painting. It has reacted at the same time against the historical painting of Delaroche and the mythological painting of the Ecole de Rome, with an extreme violence which appears to us excessive now, but which found its explanation ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... 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 ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... forth at sundown, to try their fate. She was other than they were; out of purdah; out of caste; a being apart. And for most of them it was little more than a 'game of play.' For her—but that she kept to herself—this symbolical act of faith, this childish appeal for a sign, was a matter of life and death. So—to her chosen angle of the tank, she would go alone; and there—unwatched, save by Dewali lights of earth and heaven—she would confide her lamp to the ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... children ran away, and the majority of the congregation thought he had suddenly gone out of his mind. But those who were better informed, and more intellectual, understood that it was meant to be a symbolical ceremony, and that those thrusts in the air signified Don Pedro's resolution, as a noble member of a military Order, to fight all the enemies of the faith from every quarter of the globe. The one little periodical published ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... a story of a cousin Who once her cousin such a question asked. He had not been to college, though—for books, Had passed his time in reading ladies' eyes. Which he could construe marvellously well, Though writ in language all symbolical. Thus stood they once together, on a day— As we stand now—discoursed as we discourse,— But with this difference,—fifty gentle words He spoke to her, for one she spoke to him!— What a dear cousin! Well, ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... seemed obvious because the metals were designated by the names of the planets, which are also the names of the gods. It found acceptance, and in the seventeenth century we have a series of writings in which ancient mythology is explained as the symbolical ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... up, as well as blow, in the course of their long nights, during which the earth's resplendent disc is the most conspicuous object in the heavens; which two facts stand, in the opinion of the multitude, in the relation of cause and effect. Attributing, then, the symbolical character of the rose to its tutelary planet, they regard the earth in the same light as the ancients did the chaste Diana, and believe that she plants this her favourite flower in the moon, whenever she loses a votary. The priesthood encourage this superstition, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... own satisfaction. Serious young men wrote "appreciations" about it; serious young women published instructive discourses concerning it in the daily papers. Somebody in the valuable columns of the Tribune inquired whether Querida's painting was meant to be symbolical; somebody in the Nation said yes; somebody in the Sun said no; somebody in something or other explained its psychological subtleties; somebody in something ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... impelled to a choice of lively colours as being symbolical in their brightness of the new life on which she was about to embark. There was a green cloth rendered still more hideous by being inlet with medallions of pink silk, a cornflower blue with much silver braid already ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... The symbolical character of "Faust" is assumed by all the critics, and in part confessed by the author himself. Besides the general symbolism pervading and motiving the whole,—a symbolism of human destiny,—and here and there a shadowing forth of the poet's private experience, there are special ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... most generally represented with a dragon, and sometimes with a bell, or a cruse of water and a loaf of bread, symbolical ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... 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 valley ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... beautiful Diana of the Ephesians! Pardon, O Phoebe, thou pearl-faced goddess of night beloved of Greece! O Isis, thou sympathetic queen of Nile-washed cities! O Astarte, thou favorite deity of the Syrian hills! O Artemis, thou symbolical daughter of Jupiter and Latona, that is of light and darkness! O brilliant sister of the radiant Apollo! enshrined in the enchanting strains of Virgil and Homer, which I only half learned at college, and therefore unfortunately forget just now! Otherwise ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... all go about almost naked, smear their bodies with cow- dung, not even excepting the face; and then strew ashes over themselves. They paint their breasts and foreheads with the symbolical figures of Vishnu and Shiva, and dye their ragged hair dark reddish brown. It is not easy to imagine anything more disgusting and repulsive than these priests. They wander about all the streets, preaching and doing whatever they fancy; ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... the verbal, we are to derive the sentimental allegory, which is nothing more than a continuation of the metaphorical or symbolical expression of the several agents in an action, or the different objects ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... have told if any one could have learned its musical speech. How certain gates were glorified by daily lingerings thereat, and what tender memories hung about dingy desks, old pens, and books illustrated with all manner of symbolical designs. ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... settled for the night. The screech-owl had come out of his hole, and bats were already blundering about, and the air was cooling. There was as yet but one star in the green and cloudless heaven, and this was very large, like a beacon: it appeared to him symbolical that he trudged away from ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... infinitely compassionate, there seemed something symbolical in the figure of the woman standing there—isolated, outside the friendly circle of the fireside group, standing solitary at the table as a prisoner stands at the bar ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... knowledge; he having very possibly been deceived by them as to the condition of the Indians. I am informed that he had a large heart painted upon canvas, through which be drew a blanket, and represented it to the Indians as symbolical of their condition." ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... through repeated experience I learned to understand them - truths were pointed out to me in a peculiar symbolical way. Thus I once saw in my dream many people building a large house and laying out a path, and they did it with marvellous alacrity. And there was no one to command them, to give directions, or point ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... announced him, you know. And we'll go down and look at the picture. There you are to the life: a deep subtle sort of thinker with his fore-finger on the page, while Saint Bonaventure or somebody else, rather fat and florid, is looking up at the Trinity. Everything is symbolical, you know—the higher style of art: I like that up to a certain point, but not too far—it's rather straining to keep up with, you know. But you are at home in that, Casaubon. And your painter's flesh is good—solidity, transparency, everything ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... 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 considerable ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... the lady did not go to church, yet that, such was her broad-mindedness, she did not at all object to do so. It was all one, it seemed, in the Deeper Unity. Nothing particular was true; but all was very suggestive and significant and symbolical of something else to which Mrs. Stapleton and a few friends had ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... Antonelli. The men wore their hair long, affected, like their leader, soft felt hats and loose black ties that fell over the lapels of their coats. Loose morals and loose ties! The projection of these against a Puritan background ties symbolical of everything the Anglo-Saxon shudders at and abhors; of anarchy and mob rule, of bohemia and vagabondia, of sedition and murder, of Latin revolutions and reigns of terror; of sex irregularity—not of the clandestine sort to be found in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of stature and commanding authority, were ideas almost inseparable, before a religion, entirely intellectual, had placed the power of man in his mind. The human figure, which was also the figure of the gods, appeared symbolical; and the nervous colossus of Hercules, as well as every other ancient statue of this sort, do not convey vulgar ideas of common life; but an omnipotent and divine will, which shews itself under the emblem of ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... superior consistency with which he has adhered to his aim,—that of amusing his readers by fantastic absurdities, as void of vulgarity or cynicism as they are incapable of being made to harbor any symbolical meaning. He "never deviates into sense;" but those who appreciate him never feel the need of such deviation. He has a genius for coining absurd names and words, which, even when they are suggested by the exigencies of his metre, have a ludicrous appropriateness to the matter ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... of the North American aborigines, were of a 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
... was no coward—might have been only the natural expression of one, who suspected what was afoot between them and came to mar it. Whatever it meant, the girl's cry of dismay found an echo on Claude's lips. Involuntarily he dropped her hands; but—and the action was symbolical of the change in her life—he stepped at the same moment between her and the door. Whatever she had done, right or wrong, was ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... and furnished immortal types of all 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 ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... to the type of her own innocence, The Maiden Blush, whose half-opened buds are the perfect emblem of maidenhood, but whose full-blown flowers are, to put it bluntly, symbolical of her who, in middle life, has developed extravagantly. But here again was no perfume. The mistress passed on to the queen of the garden, La Rosiere, fragrant beyond all other roses, its reflexed, claret-coloured petals soft and velvety, its leaves—when did a rose's greenery fail to be its perfect ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... The supposed resemblance of the actions, and the presence of this sensible delivery, deceive the mind, and make it fancy, that it conceives the mysterious transition of the property. And that this explication of the matter is just, appears hence, that men have invented a symbolical delivery, to satisfy the fancy, where the real one is impracticable. Thus the giving the keys of a granary is understood to be the delivery of the corn contained in it: The giving of stone and earth represents the delivery of a mannor. This is a kind of superstitious practice ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... and there is no doubt a reference to the Tabernacle in which the divine Presence abode in the wilderness and in the land of Israel before the erection. In all three passages, then, we may see allusion to that early symbolical dwelling of God with man. 'The Word tabernacled among us'; so is the truth for earth and time. 'He that sitteth upon the throne shall spread His tabernacle upon' the multitude which no man can number, who have made their robes white in the blood of the Lamb; that is the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... at least a score of similar May-day observances in different towns and villages of Cornwall. He quoted the Padstow Hobby-horse, the Towednack Cuckoo-feast, the Madron Dipping Day, the Troy May-dragon, and proved that the custom of ushering in the summer with song and dance and some symbolical rite of purgation was well-nigh universal throughout Cornwall. He followed the custom overseas, to Brittany, Hungary, the Black Forest, Moldavia, Lithuania, Poland, Finland, the Caucasus. . . . He wound up by sardonically congratulating the worthy folk of Helleston: if the events of the ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... spirits of the departed to do with conveyances resembling those of earthly structure? Are there incorporeal carriages and horses? Can grave men admit such fancies as these?[C] Or is all this, even if genuine, only symbolical,—sounds without objective counterpart? Then what becomes of the positive character of this narrative, as a lesson, as a warning to us? The whole degenerates into an acted parable. It fades into the idle pageantry of a dream. Thus we lose ourselves ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... strong, weak, increasing, diminishing, etc.—or as anything which is a function of time, movement, and proportion. It can also by analogy suggest in the hearer the ideas of pleasing, soft, violent, elegant, and the like. Whatever is beyond this is symbolical. Movement and symbolism are the only means by which music can express anything. The notion that music can express a definite feeling was, the author declares, universally held by aestheticians at that time, and amongst those who held it he seems to include ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... bearing his name is written in a mystical and symbolical style, and abounds with visions and difficult allegories which indicate on the part of the author the possession of a vivid and sublime imagination. Ezekiel's authorship of it has been questioned. The Talmud attributes it to the Great ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... that the worship of the sun lies at the foundation of all the ancient mythologies, deeply enveloped as they are, when followed over Asia Minor and Europe, in symbolic and linguistical subtleties and refinements. The symbolical fires erected on temples and altars to Baal, Chemosh, and Moloch, burned brightly in the valley of the Euphrates,[5] long before the pyramids of Egypt were erected, or its priestly-hoarded hieroglyphic wisdom resulted in a phonetic alphabet. In Persia, ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... titles will be! 'Count the Leaves in Vallombrosa'—what phantasies would 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
... or as Thoth, in whom the agency of the moon and nature become a living principle. We find him so represented in the tombs of the Ramesseum, opposite to Phre; a similar representation in Dendyra is probably symbolical. According to Champollion he is often seen in the train of Ammon, and then he is Thoth. He makes him green, with the four sceptres and cup of Ptah, by the side of which, however, is a sort of Horus ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... appearance of things, and is 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 ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... to the drinking habit, overindulgence is not a Jewish failing; they do not drink to excess, but total abstinence is not in their vocabulary. It is inconsistent with their idea of wine as being a gift of God, and something that is symbolical of good faith and thanksgiving. Nor is total abstinence consistent with their idea of generous hospitality. On the eighth day after birth the Jew tastes wine, and from the time he is able to sit at table he becomes familiar with its use. To him wine is not symbolical of either moral depravity, ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... Still more difficult is it to make people of fine emotions and swift perceptions understand that such qualities are only the basis of authorship, and that the vital necessity for self-expression is to have a knowledge, acquired or instinctive, of the extremely symbolical and even traditional methods and processes of representation. Vivid life is not the same thing as vivid art; art is a sort of recondite and narrow symbolism, by which the word, the phrase, the salient touch, represents, suggests, hints the larger ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... out of Leatherhead, above the banks of the Mole. The tower is strangely out of the axis of the nave—as much as three or four feet—and the tradition is that it was so built to avoid encroaching on an established right of way. Probably the explanation is something more symbolical or superstitious. One of the most learned of all Surrey archaeologists, Mr. Philip Mainwaring Johnston, holds to the theory that these deflections of the church axis are connected with legends of the Crucifixion. The deflected chancel, he thinks, suggests the head bowed ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... precision of science, the daring of human wits, the poetry and fire that go into the making of great buildings! We women walk in and out of them day after day, blindly—and this indifference is symbolical, I think, of the way we walk in and out of our men's lives.... I wish I could make you see that job of young Robert's so that you would feel in it what I do—the patience of men, the strain of the responsibility ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... 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 ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... characterising him as a follower of that principle, and qualifying him to enter into the pale of that association. By such means the preservation of the covenant was insured, and a beginning was made in the system of those external, symbolical, and commemorative acts, which were to be thereafter prescribed to all that race, when sufficiently increased to form an entire people distinct from others. This external mark, instituted before the birth of the elect progeny of the patriarch, ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... insisting that it was evidently so derived. What chance similarity in words between Hebrew and the Caribbee tongue he had in mind is past finding out. He comes out strongly in defence of the biblical account of the Tower of Babel, and insists that "by the symbolical expression 'God said, Let us go down,' a further natural phenomenon is intimated, to wit, the cleaving of the earth, whereby the return of the dispersed became impossible—that is to say, through a new or not universal flood, a partial ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... gross records of primitive races, have a deep spiritual meaning, that they are symbolical of the struggles of an individual soul from animalism to the highest, purest development of all ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... be taken in the meaning either of n['e]muri (sleep), or of nemuri-gi or n['e]munoki, the "sleep-plant" (mimosa),—while the syllables mam['e], as written in kana, can signify either "bean," or "activity," or "strength," "vigor," "health," etc. But the ceremony was symbolical, and the intended meaning ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... 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
... 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
... with three feet. The mouth of the vessel is in 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 very ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... 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
... to the waterfront where they sell fish and there I saw a fisherman who had caught a Dogfish, and he cursed, but I said to him, "Do not curse the Dogfish! The Dogfish is Symbolical! The Dogfish is ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... cap,—penning this very letter; and then can step across the Atlantic, and behold its reception by the elderly, but still comely Madam Franklin, who breaks the seal and begins to read, first remembering to put on her spectacles. The seal, by the way, is a pompous one of armorial bearings, rather symbolical of the dignity of the Colonial Agent, and Postmaster General of America, than of the humble origin of the Newburyport printer. The writing is in the free, quick style of a man with great practice of the pen, and is ...
— A Book of Autographs - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... absolutely indistinguishable from that of Venice. Its magnificence of design, indeed, may be said to have exceeded anything before attempted. The introduction of tiny figures was attributable to the overwhelming personality of Louis XIV., and was symbolical of his magnificent sway and far-reaching influence. In the illustration, page 55, an especially fine specimen of the lace, Madame de Montespan is seen seated under the crown, two small Indians are on either ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... law could not conceive of ownership of property as distinct from possession, and to their simple minds, when ownership was once acquired it was impossible to divest the owner of his property by any symbolical delivery. Hence the very early statutes making fraudulent sales or conveyances of property without actual and visible change of possession. The notion of a symbol, a paper or writing, which should represent that property would ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... distinctively belongs to that conception; and thus I seem to be brought back again to the point from which we started: the world-eject appears to have again resolved itself into the unknown quantity x. But here we must distinguish between actual conception and symbolical conception. Although it is unquestionably true that I can form no actual conception of Mind save as an eject of personality and conscious volition, it is a question whether I am not able to form a symbolical ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... 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
... who received from Dubourdieu, a symbolical painter, author of a figure of Harmony, an order to compose a symphony suitable of being played before the ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... most curious opinions of this people is their belief in the mysterious and sacred character of fire. They obtain sacred fire, for all national and ecclesiastical purposes, from the flint. Their national pipes are lighted with this fire. It is symbolical of purity. Their notions of the boundary between life and death, which is also symbolically the limit of the material verge between this and a future state, are revealed in connection with the exhibition ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... obsessed by its sanctions and authorities, a tacit assumption that everything, by whatever length of tradition consecrated, must come before the bar of the new century to be judged by its new mind. 'Youth is knocking at the door,' as it is said of Hilda in the symbolical Master Builder, and doubtless in every generation the philistines or Victorians in possession have had occasion to make that remark. The difference in our time is rather that youth comes in without knocking, and that instead of having to ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... red lyricism against the force of inertia and reactionary resistance of tradition. The angles are the vibratory waves of the former force in motion. The perspective of the houses is destroyed just as a boxer is bent double by receiving a blow in the wind (refined image!). As this picture is purely symbolical, it is not open to objections; ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... 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 it wings which are plumed ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... 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 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... will much depend upon the clearness of your faith in the personality of the spirits which are described in the book of your own religion;—their personality, observe, as distinguished from merely symbolical visions. For instance, when Jeremiah has the vision of the seething pot with its mouth to the north, you know that this which he sees is not a real thing; but merely a significant dream. Also, when Zechariah sees the speckled horses among the myrtle trees ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... symbolical ceremony familiar to this generation of poet-scholars which lasted on into the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, though losing the higher sentiment which inspired it—the coronation of the poets with the laurel wreath. The origin of this system in the Middle Ages is obscure, and the ritual of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... symbolical names given them. "Lark" was so named because of her sweet voice and because she loved to sing; "Sweet Tooth," on account of her love for candy; "Quick Silver," because she was quick, bright and witty; "Great Buffalo," a girl who was very strong; Elizabeth Schmidt, "Laughing Water," ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... day in St. Marys when the first rail was actually rolled, and symbolical to many people of many different things. Infection spread from the words to the town, till all morning there was a trickling stream of humanity that filed in at the big gates and moved on toward the dull roar of the mill. Even though the mass of ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... fresh attempt grow daily more pressing, he turned his brains about, and sending them foraging, at length bethought him of a certain old Highland legend with which at one time he had been a good deal taken, from the discovery in it of certain symbolical possibilities. This legend he proceeded to rewrite and remodel, doing his best endeavor to preserve in it the old Celtic aroma and aerial suggestion, while taking care neither to lose nor reproduce ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... the Gael" that is to-day, if it is "glory," is glory of sunset, of "purples and splendors" that pass; there are those who hold that the race that "went forth to battle," but "always fell," is already passed beyond the sunset, into the twilight, that twilight that is the time of day so surely symbolical of the writing of the many Irish poets that have followed after Mr. Yeats. Mr. Colum, however, whether his race be in twilight or sunset, is of the dawn. He is of the dawn not only because he is the youth, at oldest the young man, in his ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... her 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 ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... it will afford a device for learning to read more easily than hitherto, especially having a symbolical alphabet set before it, to wit, the characters of the several letters, with the image of that creature, whose voice that letter goeth about to imitate, pictur'd by it. For the young Abc scholar will easily remember the force of every character by the very looking upon the creature, till ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius
... from his 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 became the ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... bear her away in the shape of a nut or a swallow that she can effect her escape. She reminds us of Proserpine and Adonis escorted back to earth by Mercury (god of the wind), or of Eurydice lured out of Hades by the sweet sounds of Orpheus's harp, which were also symbolical of the soughing of ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber |
