#symbolism

There is only one thing which can master the perplexed stuff of epic material into unity; and that is, an ability to see in particular human experience some significant symbolism of man's general destiny. ↗

— Lascelles Abercrombie

#destiny #epic #experience #general #human

Every Valentine's Day, the student council sponsered a holiday fundraiser by selling roses that would be delievered in class. The roses came in four colors:white, yellow, red, pink, and the subtleties of thier meaning were parsed and analyzed by the female population to no end. Mimi had always understood it thus:white for love, yellow for friendship, red for passion, and pink for a secret crush. ↗

— Melissa de la Cruz

#symbolism #friendship

People think blood red, but blood don't got no colour. Not when blood wash the floor she lying on as she scream for that son of a bitch to come, the lone baby of 1785. Not when the baby wash in crimson and squealing like it just depart heaven to come to hell, another place of red. Not when the midwife know that the mother shed too much blood, and she who don't reach fourteen birthday yet speak curse 'pon the chile and the papa, and then she drop down dead like old horse. Not when blood spurt from the skin, on spring from the axe, the cat-o'-nine, the whip, the cane and the blackjack and every day in slave life is a day that colour red. It soon come to pass when red no different from white or blue or black or nothing. Two black legs spread wide and mother mouth screaming. A black baby wiggling in blood on the floor with skin darker than midnight but the greenest eyes anybody ever done seen. I goin' call her Lilith. You an call her what they call her. ↗

— Marlon James

#blood #color #historical-fiction #metaphor #red

Symbolism perhaps is a bit in your face, and I've tried my best to control that as best I can as I've grown older and thought that one could approach something with a little more subtlety. ↗

— John Schlesinger

#best #bit #control #could #face

The assignment of meanings [in music] is a shifting, kaleidoscopic play, probably below the threshold of consciousness, certainly outside the pale of discursive thinking. The imagination that responds to music is personal and associative and logical, tinged with affect, tinged with bodily rhythm, tinged with dream, but concerned with a wealth of formulations for its wealth of wordless knowledge, its whole knowledge of emotional and organic experience, of vital impulse, balance, conflict, the ways of living and dying and feeling. ↗

— Susanne K. Langer

#music #philosophy #symbolism #art

Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#beauty #breakfast-of-champions #kurt-vonnegut #sometimes #symbol

I once saw many flowers blooming Upon my way, in indolence I scorned to pick them in my going And passed in proud indifference. Now, when my grave is dug, they taunt me; Now, when I'm sick to death in pain, In mocking torment still they haunt me, Those fragrant blooms of my disdain. ↗

— Heinrich Heine

#flowers #illness #poetry #symbolism #death

And who understands? Not me, because if I did I would forgive it all. ↗

— Ernest Hemingway

#shark #symbolism #forgiveness

A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing those conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic. ↗

— Clifford Geertz

#religion #society #symbolism #symbols #men

White for Shadowhunters is the color of funerals," Luke explained. “ But for mundanes, Jace, it’ s the color of weddings. Brides wear white to symbolize their purity.” “I thought Jocelyn said her dress wasn’t white,” Simon said. “Well,” said Jace, “I suppose that ship has sailed.” Luke choked on his coffee. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#jace-lightwood #luke-garroway #symbolism #city