"Symbolical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... architecturally from an origin which belongs to the region of magic.[460] To the same class of ideas, if I am not much mistaken, belongs the familiar Italian practice of compelling a surrendered army to pass under the yoke. As Livy explains this when he first mentions it, it was symbolical of subjection: "ut exprimatur confessio subactam domitamque esse gentem";[461] and this was no doubt the idea in the minds of the historical Romans. But it may well have been that it had its root in a process which ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... the Marquis of Montserrat, whose love of sarcasm often outran his policy and discretion; "swearest thou by that on the hill of Zion, which was built by King Solomon, or by that symbolical, emblematical edifice, which is said to be spoken of in the councils held in the vaults of your Preceptories, as something which infers the aggrandizement of thy valiant ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... originated this iniquity or not is uncertain; but when, in 1892, I first saw the new Russian cathedral rising on the heights above Helsingfors,—a structure vastly more imposing than any warranted by the small number of the "orthodox" in Finland,—with its architecture of the old Muscovite type, symbolical of fetishism, I could not but recognize his hand in it. It seemed clear to me that here was the beginning of religious aggression on the Lutheran Finlanders, which must logically be followed by political ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... 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 ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... strange and very expressive grimace; he twisted about in his chair, and did something, apparently symbolical, with his hands. ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... antiquary now cares to inquire. It is a mistake to suppose that all the dying bequests of pious folk in the Middle Ages were devoted to the "Church" proper: the larger part certainly were, although the spirit that prompted even the making of such bequests was symbolical of the belief in the dispensing (rather than the appropriating) powers of churchmen: but many were also the sums left to be yearly spent in the relief of the poor and starving. Thus originated the alms-(or bede-) houses so frequently met with in the retired ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... acquiescence upon the future. As the typical instance of a convenient convention that I am inclined to think is now reacting very badly upon our future, the Crown of the British Empire, considered as the symbolical figurehead of a system of hereditary privilege and rule, serves extremely well. One may deal with this typical instance with no special application to the easy, kindly, amiable personality this crown ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... it replaces, for conceptions, perceptions themselves, which are to remind it of the previous conception. These perceptions may resemble in some way the perception which lies at the basis of the conception, and be thus more or less symbolical; or they may be merely arbitrary creations of the creative imagination, and are in this case pure signs. In common speech and writing, we call the free retaining of these perceptions created by imagination, and the recalling of the conceptions denoted by them, Memory. It is by no means ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... men whenever He feels it to be necessary, and those who are chosen for this divine honour become Christs. The Christ of the Gospels died like all the rest. His body is interred at Jerusalem, and his resurrection only meant the deliverance of his spirit. His miracles were merely symbolical. Lazarus was a sinner; Christ cured him and made him a good man; hence the legend of the raising from the dead. The Gospels contain the teachings of the Christ of that epoch, but the Christs of our time receive other teachings ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... the Pioneer, the Judge, the Schoolmistress, the children; youth bidding farewell to parents; in background, New England home and meeting place. South wall: four groups in panel, from left to right; two Spanish-American soldiers and captain with a Spanish priest, suggesting Mission period; symbolical figure "Spirit of Enlightenment"; types of immigrants, the Scientist, the Architect, the Writer Bret Harte, the Sculptor, the Painter William Keith, the Agriculturist, the Laborer, women and children; California welcoming ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... 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 path zigzagging among them, and half-way up the path, the figures of ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... book you may on any branch of Natural History, and instead of the endless, dry details of imaginary systems and classifications, in which the ludicrous littlenesses of man's vain ingenuity used to be set up as a sort of symbolical scheme of revelation of the sublime varieties of the inferior—as we choose to call it—creation of God, you find high attempts in an humble spirit rather to illustrate tendencies, and uses, and harmonies, and order, and design. ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... period, is not semicircular, but has three facets, being semi-hexagonal, the frieze inscriptions are the University motto in its two clauses, with Sursum Corda in the centre. These occupy severally the three divisions into which the apse frieze falls, while in the compartments above are the symbolical figures in gold usually associated with the four Evangelists, viz. the Angel of S. Matthew, the Lion of S. Mark, the Ox of S. Luke, and the Eagle of S. John. The flying scroll attached to these figures is the text in Revelation (iv. 8). The band at the springing of the arched roof is variegated ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... in 1845, who received from Dubourdieu, a symbolical painter, author of a figure of Harmony, an order to compose a symphony suitable of being played before ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... liturgical devotion, I think that religion did impress itself rather too much as a matter of solemn and dignified occupation than as a matter of feeling and conduct. It was not that my father ever forgot the latter; indeed, behind his love for symbolical worship lay a passionate and almost Puritan evangelicalism. But he did not speak easily and openly of spiritual experience. I was myself profoundly attracted as a boy by the aesthetic side of religion, and loved its solemnities with all my heart; but it was not till I made friends with Bishop ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... the absence of a piece within the rectangle is symbolical of the flight of the inmates of the house so that the intended attack is put off for a few days and a few ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... with figures that have been found among the most ancient ruins in Chaldea. I regard that ring as symbolical of a nebula enveloping the earth, and I think that the second deluge, which we have lived to see, was foretold here ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... of the East the communion is received fasting. A little to one side of the priest stands a cleric holding a platter of blessed bread, cut in small bits, and a porringer of warm water and wine, which (besides their symbolical significance) are taken by each communicant after the Holy Elements, in order that there may be something interposed between the sacrament ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... life so pleasant a thing that you involuntarily prance, rather than walk, down the street, I dare say your prancing will intensify your joy. Though I happen never to have met him out-of-doors, I am sure my friend Mr. Gilbert Chesterton always prances thus—prances in some wild way symbolical of joy in modern life. His steps, and the movements of his arms and body, may seem to you crude, casual, and disconnected at first sight; but that is merely because they are spontaneous. If you studied them carefully, you would begin to discern a certain rhythm, a certain harmony. ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... now thoroughly substantiated. On all sides of me I stumbled across further evidences of these early settlers. Here, standing in bold outline on a slight eminence, was a stone edifice adorned with symbolical carvings of eggs, harps, mastodons, triangles, and numerous other objects, all of which were capable of interpretation, and indicated that the building was ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... present writer happens to remember. The figure of Aunt Jane, the queenly serious woman of affairs, is one to admire and love. Her effectiveness without excess or strain is in itself an argument for giving woman the vote. The newspaper notice does not state the facts in saying the symbolical figure "fades out" at critical periods in the plot. On the contrary, she appears at critical periods, clothed in white, solemn and royal. She comes into the groups with an adequate allurement, pointing the moral of each situation while she shines brightest. The two children for whom ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... matter: it cannot be omitted, but on account of its mysterious character it calls for a more symbolical exposition;—the legend of Epaphus, for instance, and that of Osiris, and the conversion of the Gods into animals; and, in particular, their love adventures, including those of Zeus himself, ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... of this college, and of his exploits in astrology, chemistry, and metallurgy, inter alia his brazen head, of which alone the nose remains, a precious relic, and (to use the words of the excellent author of the Oxford Guide) still conspicuous over the portal, where it erects itself as a symbolical illustration of the Salernian adage "Noscitur ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... slayer of Prince Ferdinand's chief conspirator in Macedonia, Boris Sarafoff, the brigand chief who represented the people of Macedonia, but had been outlawed in every Balkan State. What could be more symbolical of the partnership between the Macedonia Committee and Young Turkey than that Yani Sandanski should be one of those who were to drag Abdul Hamid off his throne and send him a prisoner ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... series of contour lines, the height of a great number of places can be indicated on a map by means of a small number of written symbols. Still this method is not a purely graphical method, but a partly symbolical method of expressing the third dimension of objects on a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... me, reverend Mere; you shall kill no fatted calf, real or symbolical, for me!" exclaimed Amelie. "I come only to hide myself in your cloister, to submit myself to your most austere discipline. I have given up all. Oh, my Mere, I have given up all! None but God can know what I ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... of the Kirkelam," said Hardy, "is distinctive, insomuch as it appears symbolical, and not based, as most legends are, on the fancies and ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... great love for Nature, and sees the symbolical value of material beauty and its effect ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... Lord's promise, that unto Peter He would give "the keys of the kingdom of heaven," embodies the principle of divine authority in the Holy Priesthood, and of the commission of presidency. Allusion to keys as symbolical of power and authority is not uncommon in Jewish literature, as was well understood in that period and is generally current today.[769] So also the analogies of binding and loosing as indicative of official acts were then usual, as they are now, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... leaves in the decorations of this piece are probably designed to represent corn blades. There is something about the figures here used which leads one to believe they are, in part, at least, symbolical. ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson
... subterranean place of vast dimensions, through the grim galleries of which men and women with evil faces crept like animals. And towering above them, unreal in size, his scornful face an epitome of sin, the knout which he wielded symbolical and ghastly, driving his motley flock with the leer of the evil shepherd, was the man from whom he had already learnt to recoil with horror. The picture came and went in a flash. Francis found himself accepting a courteously offered cigar from ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... accepted as a message of encouragement designed to restore his faith in himself and his mission. That he had accomplished her redemption he did not dare to believe, but at least he had rendered it possible. He readily recognised the symbolical significance of their meeting, and it tinged his reflections and quickened his genius, so that a new light was shed thereby upon some of the darker ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... between the brethren of the symbolic degrees and the companions of the sublime degrees, which should ever distinguish the members of a society founded upon the principles of everlasting truth and universal philanthropy. Of the first, blue, the peculiar color of the three ancient or symbolical degrees. It is an emblem of universal friendship and benevolence, and instructs us that in the mind of a Mason those virtues should be as expansive as the blue ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... of the symbolical language of flowers, once carried to such perfection among the Moriscoes of Spain; but if I had been ignorant of it, the captive would soon have caught at any hint which seemed to promise liberty. With all the haste consistent with the utmost ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... back to this wondrous book of Iris. Two pages faced each other which I took for symbolical expressions of two states of mind. On the left hand, a bright blue sky washed over the page, specked with a single bird. No trace of earth, but still the winged creature seemed to be soaring upward and upward. Facing it, one of those black dungeons such as Piranesi ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... along the road to school, and what tales the river might 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
... founded by his Puritan ancestors, enlarged by his own thought, above whose pulpit was a harp made of golden flowers, and on it an open book made of pinks, pansies, roses, with the word "Finis." Flowers were never more truly symbolical. His effective weapons against error and wrong were like those roses with which the angels, in Goethe's "Faust," drove away the demons, and his sceptre was made known by ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... Princess's two dreams; the simple anecdotes are dramatised, poetised—one might almost say sanctified—in proceeding from his lips. But, in short, whether Anne de Gonzagua saw or thought that she saw that mystical mendicant, and those symbolical animals, in her slumbers, the truth is that in soul she was touched, agitated, shaken, overcome. An ardent faith, an invincible longing for prayer and penitence, had obtained the mastery over that rebellious soul. She felt once more the ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... they increased in proportion with trade and industry. They were allowed this privilege by the emperor, who needed their aid, when it was in his power to grant it, but commonly only for one year; so that it had to be annually renewed. This was effected by means of symbolical gifts, which were presented before the opening of St. Bartholomew's Fair to the imperial magistrate (/Schultheiss/), who might have sometimes been the chief toll-gatherer; and, for the sake of a more imposing show, the gifts were offered when ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... on the minds of others—that the 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
... and sincerely, to reconsider your position. You are drifting into a kind of vague and epicurean optimism. You spoke of the message of God through nature; there is no direct message through that channel, it is only symbolical of ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... compliment to his brave followers. When this was performed, his Royal Highness declared the ceremony completed; and embracing the gallant veteran, protested that nothing but compliance with an ordinance of Robert Bruce could have induced him to receive even the symbolical performance of a menial office from hands which had fought so bravely to put the crown upon the head of his father. The Baron of Bradwardine then took instruments in the hands of Mr. Commissary Macwheeble, bearing, that all points ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... paper. It bore no writing of any kind. It was precisely similar in color and texture to the two typed slips which Forbes had received, but the sender had evidently thought that the skull was symbolical enough of deadly intent without troubling ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... too, shares in the transformation. The piping, slender articulation of the child gives way to the rich, melodious, soft voice of woman—the sweetest music man ever hears. To the student of humanity, to the observant physician, nothing is more symbolical of the whole nature than the voice. Would you witness a proof of its power? Watch how a person born blind unerringly discriminates the character of those ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... its climates and seas and continents, and concerning ourselves, our races and mechanisms and weapons. Much information we flashed out to them, the language of our communication being English, the elements, of which they had learned, with a mixture of numbers and symbolical ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... particular attention to the fact that a countryman was this day observed to buy a threepenny loaf, and on leaving the baker's to tear it asunder and distribute the fragments with three confederates!!! an act which I need not say was evidently symbolical of their desire to rend asunder the Corn Laws, and to divide the landed property amongst themselves. The action also appears analogous to the custom of breaking bread and swearing alliance on it, a practice still observed by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... pageant moved on, and still on, under one triumphal arch after another, and past a bewildering succession of spectacular and symbolical tableaux, each of which typified and exalted some virtue, or talent, or merit, of the little King's. 'Throughout the whole of Cheapside, from every penthouse and window, hung banners and streamers; and the richest carpets, stuffs, and cloth-of-gold tapestried the streets—specimens of the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... which he wishes to introduce many flowers, should read and attentively study, first Shelley, and next Shakspeare. The latter indeed induces the most beautiful connections between thought and flower that can be found in the whole range of European literature; but he very often uses the symbolical effect of the flower, which it can only have on the educated mind, instead of the natural and true effect of the flower, which it must have, more or less, upon every mind. Thus, when Ophelia, presenting her wild flowers, says, "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... infliction supposed to be due to the direct presence in the body, or to the hidden influence, of some pernicious spirit. The cure was effected by the exorcising of the troublesome spirit through prescribed formulas of supposed power, accompanied by symbolical acts. There is indeed no branch of human knowledge which so persistently retains its connection with religious beliefs among all peoples of antiquity as the one which to-day is regarded as resting solely upon a ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... supposition. But in order to avoid so strange a medley of Christianity and heathenism it has been suggested that the figure may be meant for Moses, and in confirmation of this theory some keen-eyed beholders have thought they perceived the symbolical horned rays proceeding from each side of ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... examined etymologically and entomologically, is nothing more nor less than Baalzebub, "the Jupiter-fly," an emblem of the Destroying Attribute, which attribute, indeed, is found in all the insect tribes more or less. Wherefore, as—Mr. Payne Knight, in his "Inquiry into Symbolical Languages," hath observed, the Egyptian priests shaved their whole bodies, even to their eyebrows, lest unaware they should harbor any of the minor Zebubs of the great Baal. If I were the least bit more persuaded that that black cr-cr were about me still, and that the sacrifice of ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... more. That the Christmas rose you're wearing is a mandragora. Its symbolical meaning is malice and calumny; but it was once used in medicine for the healing of madness. Will ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... memento, which you must value at all times above everything else." Therewith he took me by the shoulders and gently pushed me towards the door, embracing me on the threshold. That is to say, I was in a symbolical manner virtually kicked out of doors. Unfolding the paper, I found a piece of a first string of a violin about an eighth of an inch in length, with the words, "A piece of the treble string with which the deceased Staraitz[4] ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... foreigner reveal themselves in their political dealings with other nations. German statesmen continue the methods of Bismarck without having his genius. German politicians delight in shaking the mailed fist, in waving the national banner with the Imperial black eagle, the ominous and symbolical bird of prey. Wherever they meet with opposition they at once resort to comminatory messages. Compare the methods of the Emperor William with those of Edward VII. Nothing illustrates better the differences between the characteristics of English and German diplomacy than the dramatic contrast ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... hand—"what one must do is to think the thing out and settle what's right, I'm still all trembling and stupid. I see it mixed up with other things. I want you to help me. It seems to me that here and there in life we meet with a person or incident that is symbolical. It's nothing in itself, yet for the moment it stands for some eternal principle. We accept it, at whatever costs, and we have accepted life. But if we are frightened and reject it, the moment, so to speak, passes; the symbol is never offered again. Is ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... shrinking defiantly from too close company, as though it could not entirely give itself to anything. Cecilia, who often worried over the relations between her sister and her brother-in-law, suddenly felt how fitting and symbolical this was. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and evil would seem at first thought to be totally unrelated to the subject of space hyperdimensionality, but there is at least a symbolical relation. This was suggested to the author by the endeavor of two friends whose interests were pre-eminently mathematical to discover what certain four-dimensional figures would look like in three-dimensional space. They found that in a great number of ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... 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 vision. ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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
... gentleman has been in the Kaiser's courts, or even on the edge of fight, oftener than most other men; and it is as if that first adventure, of the Sobieski wedding turned topsy-turvy, had been symbolical of much ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... themselves a little longer in bed. No amount of lessons, however, could detract from the happiness of a home wherein love was the dominant note, and in which each strove for the good of all; whilst as for Felix himself, no name could have been more symbolical of his true nature than that by which he was called. Nothing served to check the flow of his spirits. Both in work and play he was thoroughly in earnest—indeed, he regarded both in the same enjoyable light. He and Fanny ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... is identical with Lorenzo's other work. One of the finest and most elaborate of all the anconae is in San Giovanni in Bragora, and is also the work of Lorenzo. In this, as well as in that of San Tarasio, the Mother offers the Child the apple, signifying the fruit of the Tree of Jesse and symbolical of the Incarnation. This incident, which is found thus early in art, was evidently felt to raise the group of the Mother and Child from a representation of a merely earthly relationship to a spiritual scene of the deepest ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... 46:1)—it is silent concerning the divine origin of sacrifice as a propitiatory requirement prefiguring the atoning death of Jesus Christ. The difficulty of determining time and circumstance, under which the offering of symbolical sacrifices originated amongst mankind, is recognized by all investigators save those who admit the validity of modern revelation. The necessity of assuming early instruction from God to man on the subject has ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... withered, but God alone can judge your soul. 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 ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... sculptured. Another, a very well proportioned human figure, is seated on a square throne raised five feet from the ground. It is remarkable for having on its head another monstrous head, representing some fierce animal. The heads of several of the idols are thus surmounted. These symbolical heads were probably introduced with the same object as those which were so general among the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... of that opinion; he has been profoundly influenced by certain "mysteries" into which he has been "initiated:" That is, symbolical plays showing the fate of the soul and performed in high seclusion before members of a society sworn to secrecy. He has come to feel a spiritual life as the natural life round him. He has curiously followed, and often paid at high expense, the services of necromancers; ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... 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 ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... of Euphuism, or a symbolical jargon of the same class, predominates in the romances of Calprenade and Scuderi, which were read for the amusement of the fair sex of France during the long reign of Louis XIV., and were supposed to contain the only legitimate language of ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... theory supposes that all the myths of the ancients were allegorical and symbolical, and contained some moral, religious, or philosophical truth or historical fact, under the form of an allegory, but came in process of time to be understood literally. Thus Saturn, who devours his own children, is the same power whom the Greeks called ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... somewhat different train of thought. A national memorial of Shakespeare in London must be reckoned of small account if it merely aim at keeping alive in public memory episodes of Shakespeare's London career. The true aim of a national London memorial must be symbolical of a larger fact. It must typify Shakespeare's place, not in the past, but in the present life of the nation and of the world. It ought to constitute a perpetual reminder of the position that he fills in the present economy, and is likely to fill ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... their trading vessels, and took all the Dalmatian coast. The Doge of Venice became Duke of Dalmatia. 'True it is,' says their chronicles, 'that the Adriatic Sea is in the duchy of Venice,'[3] and they called it the 'Gulf of Venice'. Now it was that there was first instituted the magnificent symbolical ceremony of wedding the sea, with the proud words 'Desponsamus te mare ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... worked out; but of course the really important event in Crusoe's life is his great shipwreck and his long solitude on the island. Now of what events in Defoe's life are these symbolical? ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and on the Lord's Days they could catch none at all"? Haply they might have been permitted, by way of mortification, to take some few sculpins (those banes of the salt-water angler), which unseemly fish would, moreover, have conveyed to them a symbolical reproof for their breach of the day, being known in the rude dialect of our mariners as ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... 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
... bowing to the East between each dip, and worshipping; then returned and repeated it all. But before repeating it, they carefully painted the marks on their foreheads, using white and red pigment, and consulting a small English hand mirror—the one incongruous bit of West in this East, but symbolical of the times. The child followed it all, as a child will, in its pretty way. She was a dainty little thing in a crimson seeley and many gold jewels. The elder woman was dressed in dark green; the colouring was a joy to the eye, crimson and green, and the brown of the ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... with gilded and purple mosaics. The tesselated floor was covered in the centre with cloth of gold, the walls were clothed, at intervals, with the same gorgeous hangings, relieved by panels freshly painted in the most glowing colours, with mystic and symbolical designs. At the upper end of this royal chamber, two steps ascended to the place of the Tribune's throne, above which was the canopy wrought with the eternal armorial bearings of ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... heat of the explosions have sadly cracked and peeled the paint, but it seems vaguely symbolical. Near here I picked up some minute bits of ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... 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 prolixity, through ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... 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. My error was in ever permitting the experiment ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... which Peter addresses his first Epistle, is understood by learned annotators, Protestant and Catholic, to refer to Rome—the word Babylon being symbolical of the corruption then prevailing in the city ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... to depict the sturdy Dutch soul he draws a sturdy Dutch Body—ready to defend her home. No flags, no highfalutin, no symbolical figure posed for show; just cleanliness, determination, and good sense ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... insignificance, and the child's father made the Habdalah, or ceremony of division between week-day and Sabbath, thanking God who divideth holiday from working-day, and light from darkness. Over a brimming wine-cup he made the blessing, holding his bent fingers to a wax taper to make a symbolical appearance of shine and shadow, and passing round a box of sweet-smelling spices. And, when the chanting was over, the child was given to sip of the wine. Many delicious mouthfuls of wine were associated ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... on his Fingers and his Toes; there are many who may very justly consider this line as undignified and unrefined; but such readers should always remember that these quatrains may be taken as purely symbolical. Thus the Fingers and Toes may be regarded as mental aspects and the whistle as whatever best suits ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... a 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 Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... clean-shaven features do not wear the traditional smile; they are thoughtful, almost grim. On his left is portrayed a huge CANNON astride of which can be seen a chubby angel; the Duke's hand reposes, in a paternal caress on the cherub's head—symbolical doubtless of his love of children. His right elbow rests upon a table, and the slender bejewelled fingers are listlessly pressing open a lettered scroll of parchment on which can be deciphered the words "A CHI T'HA FIGLIATO" (to her who bare thee)—a legend ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... should ever desire to walk up hill I have never been able to discover. For me, the comfortable places. But with Lady Auriol the craving was symbolical of ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... injury on their own class, for exciting terror, producing injury, or creating annoyance to man. Their dispositions are often sanguinary, since the forms most conspicuous among them live by rapine, and subsist on the blood of other animals. They are, in short, symbolically types of EVIL." This symbolical character is most conspicuous about the centre of ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... the world. Unless it were Biffen, what mortal would give him kindly welcome under any roof? These stripped rooms were symbolical of his life; losing money, he had lost everything. 'Be thankful that you exist, that these morsels of food are still granted you. Man has a right to nothing in this world that he cannot pay for. Did you imagine that love ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... superstitions, as well, have a symbolical origin. But the nineteenth century does not deal with such picturesque methods of expression. We pride ourselves upon saying in so many words just what we mean; therefore much of the poetic imagery of other days has no significance in ours. ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... pilasters, and on the wall between them, hang shields or targets, that accord well with the lances flanking the entrance. From two of the pilasters on the left of the doorway lions' heads and shoulders seem to issue; these, too, may be taken as symbolical of the bellicose disposition of the god to whom the building was dedicated. The pediment with which the facade is crowned is rather low in its proportions. Its tympanum is filled with a kind of reticulated ornament made up of small lozenges or meshes. There is nothing to throw light upon ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... mission; again the duty is assigned by the queen; and the journeys and adventures of these knights are the subjects of the several books. The first recounts the adventures of the Redcross Knight, representing Holiness, and the lady Una, representing Religion. Their contests are symbolical of the world-wide struggle between virtue and faith on the one hand, and sin and heresy on the other. The second book tells the story of Sir Guyon, or Temperance; the third, of Britomartis, representing Chastity; the fourth, fifth, and sixth, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... attendant angels, and Leonardo's angel in that of Andrea del Verrocchio is very beautiful, but the event is one whose character and importance are ineffable upon the features: the descending dove hardly affects us, because its constant symbolical occurrence hardens us, and makes us look on it as a mere type or letter, instead of the actual presence of the Spirit; and by all the sacred painters the power that might be put into the landscape is lost, for though their use of foliage and distant sky or mountain is usually ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... hills; and more frequently he tries to work out one of those strange psychological problems which he afterwards treated with more fulness of power. The minister who, for an unexplained reason, puts on a black veil one morning in his youth, and wears it until he is laid with it in his grave—a kind of symbolical prophecy of Dimmesdale; the eccentric Wakefield (whose original, if I remember rightly, is to be found in 'King's Anecdotes'), who leaves his house one morning for no particular reason, and though living in the ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... vicarious sacrifice. Substitution cannot take place in the moral world. Ethical salvation could not be conferred through such a substitution, even if this could take place. Still, the conception of the vicarious suffering of Christ may be taken as a symbolical expression of the idea that in the pain of self-discipline, of obedience and patience, the new man in us suffers, as it were vicariously, for the old. The atonement is a continual ethical process in the heart of the religious man. It is a grave defect of Kant's religious philosophy, that it was ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... we may use such a word, 'to tabernacle,' 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 ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... Fo is one of those fabulous monsters in the sculptural representation of which Chinese art has found its most grotesque expression. It is really an exaggerated lion; and the symbolical relation of the lion to Buddhism is well known. Statues of these mythical animals—sometimes of a grandiose and colossal execution—are placed in pairs before the entrances of temples, palaces, and tombs, as tokens of honor, and as ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... is almost uncanny. Not a shot—not even a single shell. Very faintly we can hear the mellow tones of the church bell in the little French town on the hill far to our rear. All day long it has been singing its song of joy and thanksgiving. It seems symbolical of the heart of France, which, today, ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... found a congenial soil in Romagna, which became the focus whence it spread over the rest of Italy. It was natural that it should take the colour, more or less, of the places where it grew. In Romagna, where political assassination is in the blood of the people, a dagger was substituted for the symbolical woodman's axe in the initiatory rites. It was probably only in Romagna that the conventional threat against informers was often carried out. The Romagnols invested Carbonarism with the wild intensity of their own temperament, resolute even to crime, ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... a bird seeing in the dark, was sacred to Minerva; this is symbolical of a wise man, who, scattering and dispelling the clouds of error, is clear-sighted where others ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... first entered the insurance office as a junior clerk ten years before, and through a glass door had caught sight of this man seated in an inner room, one of his sudden overwhelming flashes of intuitive memory had burst up into him from the depths, and he had seen, as in a flame of blinding light, a symbolical picture of the future rising out of a dreadful past, and he had, without any act of definite volition, marked down this man for a real account to ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... of mercy when the due time should come. Meanwhile the angel gave Seth three seeds from the fruit of the tree of which Adam had eaten. These were to be placed in the mouth of Adam before his burial, and three trees would spring from them—a cedar, a cypress, and a pine. The trees were symbolical of ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... a prize. But the passage may be taken differently as referring to the symbolical identification of Dionysos with the bull. Dithyrambic poetry was said to have been invented or improved by ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... 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 will never promenade an ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... features of the Auvergnat style. The carving of the capitals exhibits in a delightful manner the hardihood and florid fancy of this singularly interesting development of Byzantine-Romanesque taste. Upon one of the piers of the sanctuary are a pair of symbolical doves dipping their beaks into the chalice that separates them, and upon another are two grotesque and fantastic beasts facing one another with ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... tribe consist partly of symbolical enactments of events which they desired to be successfully accomplished. Some variations of the dance, Colonel Dalton states, represent the different seasons and the necessary acts of cultivation that each ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... The symbolical game of chess is a well-worn dramatic device. Becket, moreover, seems to feel some vague disquietude as to what may happen if he accepts the archbishopric; but there is nothing to show that he is conscious of any bias towards the intransigent clericalism of the later act. The character-problem, ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... 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 ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... was pictured in the myth as the sun-god's rejection of Ishtar; Gilgamesh's fear of death marks the approach of the winter season, when the sun appears to have lost its vigor completely and is near to death. The entire episode is, therefore, a nature myth, symbolical of the passing of spring to midsummer and then to the bare season. The myth has been attached to Gilgamesh as a favorite figure, and then woven into a pattern with the episode of Enkidu and the bull. The bull episode can be detached ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous
... of white marble—spotless and relentless—that barred her into the grave, seemed to my still half-unstable brain symbolical of that last year of virgin purity of life that had broken her strength to bear. That spiked iron linked round the helpless dust seemed like the chains of repression that had tortured and crushed the soft ardent nature. That arrogant cross, stretching its arms threateningly above the lonely ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... encampment under the operations of the other. I saw in the pillars and archways of the farm-steading some of the hewn stones bearing my own mark,—an anchor, to which I used to attach a certain symbolical meaning; and I pointed them out to the ploughman. I had hewn these stones, I said, in the days of the old laird, the grandfather of the present proprietor. The ploughman wondered how a man still in ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Anglo-Saxon 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 probably have ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... cotemporaries of Hampden and Falkland—of Milton and Clarendon—in an age which roused into action so many and such mighty energies—gravely engaged in ascertaining the causes of a great national calamity, from the prescience of a knavish fortuneteller, and puzzling their wisdoms to interpret the symbolical flames, which blazed in the mis-shapen wood-cuts of ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... her symbolical—the two men standing face to face like hostile forces, with the young, girlish figure lying ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... of the subject is explained thus: The labyrinth, so easy of access, but from which no one can escape, is symbolical of human life. At the time of the Crusades, church labyrinths began to be used for a practical purpose. The faithful were wont to go over the meandering paths on their knees, murmuring prayers in memory of the passion of the Lord. Under the influence of this practice the classic and Carolingian name—labyrinth—was ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... of the word," the bishop hastened to explain, "the creeds are symbolical. It is clear they seek to express ineffable things by at least an extended use of familiar words. I suppose we are all agreed nowadays that when we speak of the Father and of the Son we mean something only in a ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... good mother and sister, are continually urging them to reformation, but for this there is no opportunity. The decision of their fate by the turn of a coin when the first great temptation comes is symbolical of the trifling causes to which the ruin of so many young Bushmen in the early days of ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... lofty perch she would take her spirited part in the conversation of the 'faithful,' and would revel in all their fun; but, since the accident to her jaw, she had abandoned the effort involved in real hilarity, and had substituted a kind of symbolical dumb-show which signified, without endangering or even fatiguing her in any way, that she was 'laughing until she cried.' At the least witticism aimed by any of the circle against a 'bore,' or against a former member of the circle who was now relegated to the limbo of 'bores'—and to the utter despair ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... 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
... a sacrament, and the vessels used should be beautiful and symbolical," observed Brother Lamb, mildly, righting the tin pan slipping about on his knees. "I priced a silver service when in town, but it was too costly; so I got some graceful cups ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... all lands, north and south, while telling the stories of Adam, and of Abraham, of Bethlehem, and of the cross, of the Holy Grail, and of Arthur and his Knights. All the precious lore of the Celtic race became transfigured, to illustrate and enforce Christian truth. The symbolical bowl, the Celtic caldron of abundance, became the cup of the Eucharist and the Grail the ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... fall of trees in a storm. The earth is covered with darkness, and the veil of the temple is rent. But just at this moment of extreme woe, when all human voices are silent, and when it is forbidden even to breathe "Amen"—when every thing is symbolical of the confusion and despair of the Church at the loss of her expiring Lord—a priest brings forth a concealed light of silvery flame from a corner of the altar. This is the light of the world, ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... unashamed, in the mirror of these bodies. It is we, who shudder before them, and maybe laugh at the extravagance of their gestures, it is ourselves whom they are showing to us, caught unawares and set in symbolical action. Let not the base word realism be used for this spontaneous energy by which we are shown the devastating inner forces, by which nature creates and destroys us. Here is one part of life, the source of its existence: and here it is shown us crude as nature, absolute as art. This new, living ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... prodigious expence, yet the most perfect regularity was preserved amid that vast profusion. The steward of his household, or major-domo, was at this time a prince named Tapiea, who kept an account of all the royal rents in a set of books or symbolical representations which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... hymns which there is reason to look upon as the oldest portion of Vedic poetry, the character of Indra is that of a mighty ruler of the firmament, and his principal feat is that of conquering the demon Vritra, a symbolical personification of the cloud which obstructs the clearness of the sky, and withholds the fructifying rain from the earth. In his battles with Vritra he is therefore described as 'opening the receptacles of the waters,' as 'cleaving the cloud' ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... Paul's Churchyard had failed to totally burn up Luther and all his works; and on Shrove Tuesday, 1527, Wolsey made another attempt to reduce the new-formed Bible to ashes. In the great procession that came on this day to St. Paul's there were six Lutherans in penitential dresses, carrying terribly symbolical fagots and huge lighted tapers. On a platform in the nave sat the portly and proud cardinal, supported by thirty-six zealous bishops, abbots, and priests. At the foot of the great rood over the northern door the heretical tracts and Testaments were thrown into ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... paleontologists. He seems to incarnate all the attributes and forces of animal life—vigor, rapidity of motion, endurance, power of offence in horn, hoof, claw, tooth, nail, scale and fiery breath. Being the embodiment of all force the dragon is especially symbolical of the emperor. Usually associated with malevolence, one sees, besides the conventional art and literature of civilization, the primitive animistic idea of men to whose mind this mysterious universe ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... 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 ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... the use of fire. The fierce bull which led the herd, and the horses that stampeded through the village, filled me with terror, and all the large creatures, strong and hostile, a ram with horns, a gander, or a watch-dog seemed to me to be symbolical of some rough, wild force. These prejudices used to be particularly strong in me in bad weather, when heavy clouds hung over the black plough-lands. But worst of all was that when I was ploughing or sowing, ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... 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 ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... 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
... which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain take that walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which is perfectly symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the interior and ideal world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult to choose our direction, because it does not yet exist ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... to pieces of the miserable captive, sole survivor of his nation, Agag, "before Jahveh," can hardly be viewed in any other light. The life of Moses is redeemed from Jahveh, who "sought to slay him," by Zipporah's symbolical sacrifice of her child, by the bloody operation of circumcision. Jahveh expressly affirms that the first-born males of men and beasts are devoted to him; in accordance with that claim, the first-born males of the beasts ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Edfu, the ibis of Thot of Eshmunen, and the jackals of Anubis of Abydos, which drag a rope; had we the rest of the monument, we should see, bound at the end of the rope, some prisoner, king, or animal symbolic of the North. On another slate shield, which we also reproduce, we see a symbolical representation of the capture of seven Northern cities, whose names seem to mean the "Two Men," the "Heron," the "Owl," the "Palm," ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... 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 ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... guess, through the sharp arguments of her liege lord), had acquired such a lively conviction of the hazard of saying anything under any circumstances, that she had remained all this time in a corner guarding herself from approach with that symbolical instrument of hers; so that, when a word or two had been addressed to her by Flora, or even by the bottle-green patriarch himself, she had warded off conversation with the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... kinds of town life—court-yards of inns, starting of mail coaches, interiors of shops, house-buildings, fairs, elections, &c.; then all kinds of inner domestic life—interiors of rooms, studies of costumes, of still life, and heraldry, including multitudes of symbolical vignettes; then marine scenery of every kind, full of local incident; every kind of boat and method of fishing for particular fish, being specifically drawn, round the whole coast of England;—pilchard ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... has yet been found. Beneath the compartment is a row of very fantastic bracket-heads, supposed to represent the Vices. Above it is a canopy with sculptured medallions on the under-surface, where the symbolical Lamb may be recognised amongst winged dragons and other monsters. Close to these is a monkey playing on the violin. Above this canopy is another, shaped like a low gable, and forming the upper ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... each of them are coffin-like receptacles for the bodies. There are three hundred and sixty-five such places. The first and smallest row is destined for children, the second for women, and the third for men. This threefold circle is symbolical of three cardinal Zoroastrian virtues—pure thoughts, kind words, and good actions. Thanks to the vultures, the bones are laid bare in less than an hour, and, in two or three weeks, the tropical sun scorches them into ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... seldom felt at home anywhere, and that rats were found everywhere, either real or symbolical, legions of pests that torment us. Yet she liked the Botanical Gardens; she had always wished to go there, yet never had gone. There was also the museum, which ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France |
