symbolism Quotes

“Estevan and I talked about everything you could think of. He asked me if the alligator was a national symbol of the United States, because you saw them everywhere on people’s shirts, just above the heart.”

“This little man, five-foot-nine at most and not even American, was going to teach them about cowboys?”

“I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one? The Lion growled so that the earth shook ... and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him, for I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name of Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child? I said, Lord, Thou knowest how much I understand. But I said also (for the truth constrained me), Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days. Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.”

“In spite of feeling so very moved by the thing, I didn’t have any immediate theories about what it meant. Sometimes great art is like that. It affects you and you can’t say why. Was it deep symbolism? A cryptic message? A wrenching plea for help and understanding? Impossible to say, and to me, not the most important thing at first. I just wanted to breathe it in.”

“Formerly, his heart had been as a locked casket with its treasure inside; but now the casket was empty, and the lock was broken.”

“In old days ... angels ... took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction ... the hand may be a little child’s.”

“Eileen had long white hands. One evening when playing tig she had put her hands over his eyes: long and white and thin and cold and soft. That was ivory: a cold white thing. That was the meaning of Tower of Ivory.”

“Tayo’s heart beat fast; he could see Josiah’s vision emerging, he could see the story taking form in bone and muscle.”

“Each man’s life represents a road toward himself, and attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completely himself.”

“Whenever I picked one of them up, I would be struck by how perfectly they symbolized exactly what I resented about that bookstore. I was going to travel the world by actually traveling it.”

“The connections may be invisible, he often preached to his symbology classes at Harvard, but they are always there, buried just beneath the surface.”

“Where was romance now, in the cold house of her great-aunt? Her eyes fell bitterly on the sensible underwear and the sombre skirt. The ball-dress had fallen off the chair out of sight, as if quenched by the stark uniform of everyday. It symbolized exactly Christina’s feelings.”

They averred, that the symbol was not mere scarlet cloth, tinged in an earthly dye-pot, but was red-hot with infernal fire, and could be seen glowing all alight, whenever Hester Prynne walked abroad in the night-time.

“Mother,” said little Pearl, “the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom. Now, see! There it is, playing, a good way off. Stand you here, and let me run and catch it. I am but a child. It will not flee from me; for I wear nothing on my bosom yet!

“And, mother, he has his hand over his heart! Is it because, when the minister wrote his name in the book, the Black Man set his mark in that place?”

“But I swear I judge her intellectually, simply from the metaphysical point of view; there is a sort of symbolism sprung up between us, a sort of algebra or what not! I don’t understand it!”