Symbols Quotes - Page 17

• But then you hear that he can't hear you, you see that he can't see you. You are not here--and you haven't even died yet. You see yourself through his eyes, as The Generic Woman, the skirted symbol on the ladies' room door.

  Melissa Bank

  Eye, Doors, Rooms

  Melissa Bank (2000). “The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing”, p.151, Penguin

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• The first thing you notice about New Orleans are the burying grounds - the cemeteries - and they're a cold proposition, one of the best things there are here. Going by, you try to be as quiet as possible, better to let them sleep. Greek, Roman, sepulchres- palatial mausoleums made to order, phantomesque, signs and symbols of hidden decay - ghosts of women and men who have sinned and who've died and are now living in tombs. The past doesn't pass away so quickly here. You could be dead for a long time

  Bob Dylan

  Sleep, Past, Men

  Bob Dylan (2011). “Chronicles”, p.157, Simon and Schuster

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• Given the nature of spiders, webs are inevitable. And given the nature of human beings, so are religions. Spiders can't help making fly-traps, and men can't help making symbols. That's what the human brain is there for - the turn the chaos of given experience into a set of manageable symbols.

  Aldous Huxley

  Men, Brain, Spiders

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• In our time, the symbol of state intrusion into the private life is the mandatory urine test.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Tests, Life Is, Intrusion

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Love, Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays”, p.64, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• For our people, butterflies are a symbol of hope. It's said that if you capture one in your hands and whisper your dreams to it, it will carry them up to the heavens so that the wish can be granted.

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Dream, Butterfly, Hands

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• It's disquieting to reflect that one's dreams never symbolize one's real wishes, but always something Much Worse... If I really wanted to be passionately embraced by Peter, I should dream of dentists or gardening. I wonder what unspeakable depths of awfulness can only be expressed by the polite symbol of Peter's embraces?

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Dream, Real, Wish

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• We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.

  Gene Wolfe

  Believe, Defining, Truth Is

  Gene Wolfe (1994). “Shadow & Claw: The First Half of 'The Book of the New Sun'”, p.14, Macmillan

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• When I am dead--I say it that way because from the things I know, I do not expect to live long enough to read this book in its finished form--I want you to just watch and see if I'm not right in what I say: that the white man, in his press, is going to identify me with "hate". He will make use of me dead, as he has made use of me alive, as a convenient symbol, of "hatred"--and that will help him escape facing the truth that all I have been doing is holding up a mirror to reflect, to show, the history of unspeakable crimes that his race has committed against my race.

  Malcolm X

  Hate, Book, Men

  Malcolm X (2015). “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, p.388, Ballantine Books

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• Never mind. Point being that you don't have to get too worked up about us, dear educated minds. You don't have to think of us aas real girls, real flesh and blood, real pain, real injustice. That might be too upsetting. Just discard the sordid part. Consider us pure symbol. We're no more real than money.

  Margaret Atwood

  Girl, Pain, Real

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• There is something inspiring and sublime about the little forget-me-not flower. I hope it will be a symbol of the little things that make your lives joyful and sweet.

  Dieter F. Uchtdorf

  Sweet, Flower, Sublime

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• You send me all these roses. Every time I think the last bouquet has arrived, finally, another turns up. I’m running out of vases. I didn’t know roses came in so many colors. You say they’re the perfect symbols of love because they have thorns and love is pain. I say life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something. And you don’t get it. You say you love me, but you don’t speak my language. You don’t even realize I’m an orchid girl.

  Erin Morgenstern

  Girl, Running, Pain

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• Reading with an eye towards metaphor allows us to become the person we’re reading about, while reading about them. That’s why there is symbols in books and why your English teacher deserves your attention. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if the author intended the symbol to be there because the job of reading is not to understand the author’s intent. The job of reading is to use stories as a way into seeing other people as a we ourselves.

  John Green

  Teacher, Jobs, Book

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• 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

  Past, Woven, Finals

  Jodi Picoult (2009). “Handle with Care: A Novel”, p.80, Simon and Schuster

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• Batman: a force of chaos in my world of perfect order. The dark side of the Soviet dream. Rumored to be a thousand murdered dissidents, they said he was a ghost. A walking dead man. A symbol of rebellion that would never fade as long as the system survived. Anarchy in black.

  Mark Millar

  Dream, Dark, Men

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• WARNING: The following is a transcript of a digital recording. In certain places, the audio quality was poor, so some words and phrases represent the author's best guesses. Where possible, illustrations of important symbols mentioned in the recording have been added. Background noises such as scuffling, hitting, and cursing by the two speakers have not been transcribed The author makes no claims for the authenticity of the recording. It seems impossible that the two young narrators are telling the truth, but you, the reader, must decide for yourself.

  Rick Riordan

  Illustration, Background Noise, Two

  Rick Riordan (2010). “The Kane Chronicles, The, Book One: Red Pyramid”, Hyperion

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• When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance.

  John Keats

  Night, Thinking, Hands

  1818 'When I Have FearsThat I May Cease to Be'.

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• The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all of these things into symbols, into music, into something which can last in man’s memory. That is our duty. If we don’t fulfill it, we feel unhappy.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Art, Memories, Men

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• The boy spends most of his time reading. And writing, of course. He copies out sections of books, writes out words and symbols he does not understand at first but that become intimately familiar beneath his ink-stained fingers, formed again and again in increasingly steady lines.

  Erin Morgenstern

  Book, Reading, Writing

  Erin Morgenstern (2016). “The Night Circus”, p.27, Random House

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• The grave and the image are equally links with the irrecoverable and symbols for the unimaginable.

  C. S. Lewis

  Links, Graves, Unimaginable

  C.S. Lewis (2012). “A Grief Observed”, p.12, Faber & Faber

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• Water can be a symbol of purification, to stand naked before someone a sign of truth, of nothing to hide. - Nick Flynn

  Nick Flynn

  Water, Naked, Purification

  Nick Flynn (2016). “Another Bullshit Night in Suck City”, p.129, Faber & Faber

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• And yes,Percy,of course they are now in our United States. Look at your symbol,the eagle of Zeus. Look at the statue of Prometheus in Rockefeller Center,the Greek facades of our government builidings in Washington. I defy you to find any American city where the Olympians are not proeminently displayed, in multiple places. Like it or not-and believe me,plenty of people weren't very found of Rome,either-America is now the heart of the flame. It is the great power of the West.And so Olympus is here.And we are here.

  Rick Riordan

  Believe, Heart, Cities

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• That’s what the human brain is there for—to turn the chaos of given experience into a set of manageable symbols. Sometimes the symbols correspond fairly closely to some of the aspects of the external reality behind our experience; then you have science and common sense. Sometimes, on the contrary, the symbols have almost no connection with external reality; then you have paranoia and delirium. More often there’s a mixture, part realistic and part fantastic; that’s religion.

  Aldous Huxley

  Reality, Common Sense, Brain

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• Central Park is the grandiose symbol of the front yard each child in New York hasn't got.

  Robert Benchley

  New York, Children, Central Park

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• Today's Gypsies, who have lived in Prague for only two generations, light a ritual fire wherever they work, a nomads' fire crackling only for the joy of it, a blaze of roughhewn wood like a child's laugh, a symbol of the eternity that preceded human thought, a free fire, a gift from heaven, a living sign of the elements unnoticed by the world-weary pedestrian, a fire in the ditches of Prague warming the wanderer's eye and soul.

  Bohumil Hrabal

  Children, Eye, Fire

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• Philosophy is written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes — I mean the universe — but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols, in which it is written.

  Galileo Galilei

  Philosophy, Lying, Book

  "The Assayer". Book by Galileo Galilei, 1623.

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