Signs And Symbols Quotes

Toni Morrison uses the term race talk to capture 'the explicit insertion into everyday life of racial signs and symbols that have no meaning other than positioning African Americans into the lowest level of the racial hierarchy.' Casual race talk is a key component of white racial framing because it accomplishes the interconnected goals of elevating whites while demeaning people of color; race talk always implies a racial 'us' and 'them'. ~ Robin DiAngelo

With the capacity to represent the world in signs and symbols comes the capacity to change it, which, as it happens, is also the capacity to destroy it. A tiny set of genetic variations divides us from the Neanderthals, but that has made all the difference. ~ Elizabeth Kolbert

There is every reason to believe that if humans had not arrived on the scene, the Neanderthals would be there still, along with the wild horses and the woolly rhinos. With the capacity to represent the world in signs and symbols comes the capacity to change it, which, as it happens, is also the capacity to destroy it. ~ Elizabeth Kolbert

She resented the fact that her veil, which to her was a symbol of her sacred relationship to God, had now become an instrument of power, turning the women who wore them into political signs and symbols. Where do your loyalties lie, Mr. Bahri, with Islam or the state? ~ Azar Nafisi

Words and laws in this world made place for signs and symbols. ~ Ben Midland

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.

The ghosts race towards the light, you can almost hear the heavy breathing spirits, all determined to get somewhere. New Orleans, unlike a lot of those places you go back to and that don't have the magic anymore, still has got it. Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you. Around any corner, there's a promise of something daring and ideal and things are just getting going. There's something obscenely joyful behind every door, either that or somebody crying with their head in their hands. A lazy rhythm looms in the dreamy air and the atmosphere pulsates with bygone duels, past-life romance, comrades requesting comrades to aid them in some way. You can't see it, but you know it's here. Somebody is always sinking. Everyone seems to be from some very old Southern families. Either that or a foreigner. I like the way it is.

There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better. There's a thousand different angles at any moment. At any time you ~ Bob Dylan

What is happening in your world right now is your message, your sign, your omen...
Everything you want to "know" is found in the way you love, the way you live, and how you respond to life. ~ Debbie Lynn - 360 Degrees Full Circle

All art speaks in signs and symbols. No one can explain how it happens that the artist can waken to life in us the existence that he has seen and lives through. No artistic speech is the adequate expression of what it represents; its vital force comes from what is unspoken in it. ~ Albert Schweitzer

The shelves of this store are stacked with stock. You will find a steamship, a sailing ship, and even a spaceship. There are several sorts of shoe and scores of signs and symbols. There is a sketch of a squinch, a selection of shells (not all from the sea), a siamang settled on a seat, a sponge to be studied, and sundry stuff suspended from strings. In all I included 1,234 Ss for you to see. ~ Mike Wilks

Grandad taught me that the alien signs and symbols of algebraic equations were not just marks on paper. They were not flat. They were three-dimensional, and you could approach them from different directions, look at them from different ways, stand them on their heads. You could take them apart and put them back together in a variety of shapes, like Legos. I stopped being scared of them. ~ Mal Peet

There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair. ~ Herman Melville

Signs and symbols rule the world, not words nor laws. ~ Confucius

Signs and symbols. They were everything to an occultist. Witness: the sign of the ring. How easily it slipped from her finger as Alexander Kale reached across the sleeping woman in his bed and nimbly removed her wedding ring. ~ Howard F. Clarke

I saw through to the last sign and symbol, but I could not read her face. I could see only the eyes shining through, huge, fleshy-like luminous beasts, as though I were swimming behind them in the electric effluvia of her incandescent vision. ~ Henry Miller

ALGEBRA is a general Method of Computation by certain Signs and Symbols which have been contrived for this Purpose, and found convenient. ~ Colin Maclaurin

Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of [Muslim] rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself, abound. ~ Mark Twain

There is a common language, a mode of consciousness, almost a secret sign which can be read and recognized by all who are similarly engaged. Such realizations help fend off the feeling of isolation which can dog the steps of those who seek the Grail. ~ John Matthews

Of everything that man erects and builds in his urge for living nothing is in my eyes better and more valuable than bridges. They are more important than houses, more sacred than shrines. Belonging to everyone and being equal to everyone, useful, always built with a sense, on the spot where most human needs are crossing, they are more durable than other buildings and they do not serve for anything secret or bad. ~ Ivo Andric

Let us give thanks to God above,
Thanks for expressions of His love,
Seen in the book of nature, grand
Taught by His love on every hand.

Let us be thankful in our hearts,
Thankful for all the truth imparts,
For the religion of our Lord,
All that is taught us in His word.

Let us be thankful for a land,
That will for such religion stand;
One that protects it by the law,
One that before it stands in awe.

Thankful for all things let us be,
Though there be woes and misery;
Lessons they bring us for our good-
Later 'twill all be understood.

Thankful for peace o'er land and sea,
Thankful for signs of liberty,
Thankful for homes, for life and health,
Pleasure and plenty, fame and wealth.

Thankful for friends and loved ones, too,
Thankful for all things, good and true,
Thankful for harvest in the fall,
Thankful to Him who gave it all. ~ Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer

It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing. That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there, - is already in our bloodstream. And we don't know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We can't say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens. And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

We know that children with autism like order, that they are often very visual and that they can be quite literal. They deserve beautiful resources and symbols that make sense. If a picture does not explain visually, it is pointless and the child will stop looking to the pictures for information. ~ Adele Devine

Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country. ~ Ambrose Bierce

Why do I want to take care of Mr. President, particularly when
he's desperate like this? Sure, he has been useful - he has saved me
from many a newzie - but there aren't many newzies left. And it's not
like Mr. President has infected me with a virus that predisposes me to
want to care for him.
I think it's because Mr. President is a symbol, and symbols
matter. Caroline liked to say that I was a sentimentalist. But sentiment
is really just an appreciation for the reality and signicance of
symbols - which is why I'm still here, and she's not. ~ John Green

I don't get all choked up about yellow ribbons and American flags. I consider them to be symbols and I leave symbols to the symbol minded. ~ George Carlin

The start of sin and destruction, discouragement and darkness, always happened with single thought. He couldn't stop that. Wrong thoughts were like the billboard signs on the highway of life. They were bound to come. Victory or defeat depended on how he handled the thought. "Take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ." The scripture from 2 Corinthians 10:5 came back to him now, the way it had countless other times. He grabbed the wayward thought and pushed it from his heart and mind. He wouldn't be afraid. Whatever happened ... God was in control. He had nothing to fear. The Lord had worked a miracle to this point. He wasn't finished yet. ~ Karen Kingsbury

Jesus has chosen, even in a resurrected, otherwise perfected body, to retain for the benefit of His disciples the wounds in His hands and in His feet and in His side-signs, if you will, that painful things happen even to the pure and the perfect; signs, if you will, that pain in this world is not evidence that God doesn't love you; signs, if you will, that problems pass and happiness can be ours. ~ Jeffrey R. Holland

There is no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the Christian hope of 'Heaven' ridiculous by saying they do not want 'to spend eternity playing harps'. The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them. All the scriptural imagery (harps, crowns, gold, etc.) is, of course, a merely symbolical attempt to express the inexpressible. Musical instruments are mentioned because for many people (not all) music is the thing known in the present life which most strongly suggests ecstasy and infinity. Crowns are mentioned to suggest the fact that those who are united with God in eternity share His splendour and power and joy. Gold is mentioned to suggest the timelessness of Heaven (gold does not rust) and the preciousness of it. People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meant that we were to lay eggs. ~ C.S. Lewis

Now Miss Mapp's social dictatorship among the ladies of Tilling had long been paramount, but every now and then signs of rebellious upheavals showed themselves. By virtue of her commanding personality these had never assumed really serious proportions, for Diva, who was generally the leader in these uprisings, had not the same moral massiveness. But now when Elizabeth was so exceedingly superior, the fumes of Bolshevism mounted swiftly to Diva's head. Moreover, the sight of this puzzling male impersonator, old, wrinkled, and moustached, had kindled to a greater heat her desire to know her and learn what it felt like to be Romeo on the music-hall stage and, after years of that delirious existence, to subside into a bath-chair and Suntrap and Tilling. What a wonderful life! . . . And behind all this there was a vague notion that Elizabeth had got her information in some clandestine manner and had muddled it. For all her clear-headedness and force Elizabeth did sometimes make a muddle and it would be sweeter than honey and the honeycomb to catch her out. So in a state of brooding resentment Diva went home to lunch and concentrated on how to get even with Elizabeth. ~ E.F. Benson

In literature, questions of fact or truth are subordinated to the primary literary aims of producing a structure of words for its own sake, and the sign-values of symbols are subordinated to their importance as a structure of interconnected motifs. ~ Northrop Frye

Why, they took nouns that were signs of things which gave evidence of wealth, - housekeepers, under-gardeners, extent of glass, valuable lace, diamonds, and all such things; and each one formed her speech so as to bring them all in, in the prettiest accidental manner possible. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

But the real fun of writing, for me at least, is the experience of making a set of givens yield. There's an incredibly inflexible set of instruments - our vocabulary, our grammar, the abstract symbols on paper, the limitations of your own powers of expression. You write something down and it's awkward, trivial, artificial, approximate. But with effort you can get it to become a little flexible, a little transparent. You can get it to open up, and expose something lurking there beyond the clumsy thing you first put down. When you add a comma or add or subtract a word, and the thing reacts and changes, it's so exciting that you forget how absolutely terrible writing feels a lot of the time. ~ Deborah Eisenberg

There are always signs that a reign is ending, and they are usually spotted not in the king himself but in his court. In the inner circle, latent jealousies between advisers spill into open conflict, as they angrily debate who is to blame for the calamity, chewing over each other's past errors and pointing the finger at old and nascent enemies. ~ Hanna Rosin

No one, in the world's whole history, ever attempted to substantiate a truth by a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of miracle. Nothing but falsehood ever attested itself by signs and wonders. No miracle ever was performed, and no sane man ever thought he had performed one, and until one is performed, there can be no evidence of the existence of any power superior to, and independent of nature. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Either peace or happiness, let it enfold you. When I was a young man I felt these things were dumb, unsophisticated. I had bad blood, a twisted mind, a precarious upbringing. I was hard as granite, I leered at the sun. I trusted no man and especially no woman... I challenged everything, was continually being evicted, jailed, in and out of fights, in and out of my mind... Peace and happiness to me were signs of inferiority, tenants of the weak, an addled mind. But as I went on...it gradually began to occur to me that I wasn't different from the others, I was the same... Everybody was nudging, inching, cheating for some insignificant advantage, the lie was the weapon and the plot was empty... Cautiously, I allowed myself to feel good at times. I found moments of peace in cheap rooms just staring at the knobs of some dresser or listening to the rain in the dark. The less I needed the better I felt... I re-formulated. I don't know when, date, time, all that but the change occured. Something in me relaxed, smoothed out. I no longer had to prove that I was a man, I didn't have to prove anything. I began to see things: coffee cups lined up behind a counter in a cafe. Or a dog walking along a sidewalk. Or the way the mouse on my dresser top stopped there with its body, its ears, its nose, it was fixed, a bit of life caught within itself and its eyes looked at me and they were beautiful. Then...it was gone. I began to feel good, I began to feel good in the worst situations and there w ~ Charles Bukowski

Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know in life. ~ John Ruskin

It's easy to convince people that children need to learn the alphabet and numbers. . . . How do we help people to realize that what matters even more than the superimposition of adult symbols is how a person's inner life finally puts together the alphabet and numbers of his outer life? What really matters is whether he uses the alphabet for the declaration of war or the description of a sunrise - his numbers for the final count at Buchenwald or the specifics of a brand-new bridge. ~ Fred Rogers

A plague of ennui afflicted London's many prophets. Warning signs were discarded, pamphlets pulped, megaphones thrown into cupboards. Those who could count questionable presences insisted that even since the Architeuthis had disappeared, something new had been walking. Something driven and intense and intent on itself. And since shortly after that, it had unfolded again and become something a little more itself, emerged from a pupa of unspecificity
into sentience, a obsessive moment of now that trod heavy in time.
No, they didn't really know what that mean, either, but that was their very strong impression. And it was freaking them out. ~ China Mieville

There are folks who burn the Koran and hold signs saying, "God hates fags" and all sorts of sick things - and they often hijack the headlines with hatred. We know that is not what Christ was like. ~ Shane Claiborne

This is a crucial time in the fight for corporate civil rights. Just look at the hateful signs at Occupy Wallstreet: 'Corporations Are Not People!' Wow, I thought we were past the point in this country where some people aren't people just because they have different color skin or different religion or were born in a lawyer's office, only exist on paper, have no soul and can never die. ~ Stephen Colbert

As far as inspiration goes, I'm constantly inspired by traveling, symbols, magic and different cultural traditions around the world. ~ Pamela Love

We are on the verge of losing the traditional idea of the family, especially in Japan, where the declining birth rate shows no signs of stopping. This is precisely why I think we should consider with a sense of urgency what the new image of "family" should be like, and not fall into the nostalgism that days gone by were just better. ~ Mamoru Hosoda

Jesus Christ didnt commit the gospel to an advertising agency; He commissioned disciples. And He didnt command them to put up signs and pass out tracts; He said that they would be His witnesses. ~ Joseph Bayly

In enabling mechanism to combine together general symbols in successions of unlimited variety and extent, a uniting link is established between the operations of matter and the abstract mental processes of the most abstract branch of mathematical science. ~ Ada Lovelace

To our generation Einstein has been made to become a double symbol - a symbol of the mind travelling in the cold regions of space, and a symbol of the brave and generous outcast, pure in
heart and cheerful of spirit. ~ John Maynard Keynes

A lot people I know - it drives them crazy when they're watching, to see the people with their signs and waving, but there's something that's very inclusive about it. ~ Katie Couric

Ruins and basilicas, palaces and colossi, set in the midst of a sordid present, where all that was living and warm-blooded seemed sunk in the deep degeneracy of a superstition divorced from reverence; the dimmer but yet eager titanic life gazing and struggling on walls and ceilings; the long vistas of white forms whose marble eyes seemed to hold the monotonous light of an alien world - all this vast wreck of ambitious ideals, sensuous and spiritual, mixed confusedly with the signs of breathing forgetfulness and degradation ... the vastness of St. Peter's the huge bronze canopy, the excited intention in the attitudes and garments of the prophets and evangelists in the mosaics above, and the red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading itself everywhere like a disease of the retina. ~ George Eliot

The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you. Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear. ~ James Baldwin

Money can purchase the symbols but not the causes of serenity and buoyancy. In a straightforward way we must agree that money cannot buy happiness. ~ John Armstrong

ABC of LIBRA
AMIABLE – Certainly the friendliest of signs – the most sociable, amenable, and gregarious. Libra loves people. And people cannot help loving Librans in return, simply because they are so loveable. ~ Bernie Morris