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Symbol   /sˈɪmbəl/   Listen
Symbol

noun
1.
An arbitrary sign (written or printed) that has acquired a conventional significance.
2.
Something visible that by association or convention represents something else that is invisible.  Synonyms: symbolic representation, symbolisation, symbolization.



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"Symbol" Quotes from Famous Books



... the Italian coast. His body was washed ashore several days later, and was cremated, near Viareggio, by his friends, Byron, Hunt, and Trelawney. His ashes might, with all reverence, have been given to the winds that he loved and that were a symbol of his restless spirit; instead, they found a resting place near the grave of Keats, in the English cemetery at Rome. One rarely visits the spot now without finding English and American visitors standing in silence before the significant ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... universal experience of man. The poem was to be an allegory, and in making himself its protagonist Dante assumed a double part. He represents both the individual Dante, the actual man, and that man as the symbol of man in general. His description of his journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise has a literal veracity; and under the letter is the allegory of the conduct and consequences of all human life. The literal meaning and the allegorical are the web and woof of the fabric, in which the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... to understand what the scope of the religion of Dionysus was to the Greeks who lived in it, all it represented to them by way of one clearly conceived yet complex symbol, let him reflect what the loss would be if all the effect and expression drawn from the imagery of the vine and the cup fell out of the whole body of existing poetry; how many fascinating trains of reflexion, what colour and substance would therewith have been deducted from ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... diverted himself a while with my surprise and disappointment, then informed me, that the rose had ever been regarded in Morosofia, as the symbol of female purity, delicacy, and sweetness; which notion had grown into a popular superstition, that whenever a marriage is consummated on the earth, one of these flowers springs up in the moon; and that in colour, shape, size, or other property, it is a fit type of the individual ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... mighty and strange, ye ancient divine ones of Hellas! Are ye Christian too? To convert and redeem and renew you, Will the brief form have sufficed, that a Pope has sat up on the apex Of the Egyptian stone that o'ertops you, the Christian symbol? And ye, silent, supreme in serene and victorious marble, Ye that encircle the walls of the stately Vatican chambers, Are ye also baptized; are ye of the Kingdom of Heaven? Utter, O some one, the word that shall ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... call on the astrologer to give up the doctrine of indices of fate, and prefer that of secondary causes. Here then a still greater difficulty presents itself; the causes are general, and they must operate on the whole earth and all its inhabitants alike. A [Symbol: square] of [Symbol: Mars] and [Symbol: Mercury], or a [Symbol: Triangle] of [Symbol: Saturn] and [Symbol: Jupiter], (that is, a square aspect of Mars and Mercury, or a trine of Saturn and Jupiter,) whenever they happen, are alike applicable to all the inhabitants and regions of ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... moment, he betrays what was always to remain narrow, as well as bitter, in the centre of his being! He has recorded it against himself (for he spared himself, as he proudly and truthfully said, no more than others) in an anecdote which is a profound symbol. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... which occurs on an Assyrian cylinder, not only in its forms, but in its irregularities. A piece of antique fluted pilaster now does duty as a base. The ornament on the steps of the throne is also of this period, probably executed under either Paulinus ([Symbol: cross]802) or Maxentius ([Symbol: cross]833) by Comacines, who probably went on to Rome to work in S. Maria in Cosmedin. The Liber Pontificalis under Hadrian I. mentions the "tres apsides in ea constituens" of that church as ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... you hear these cries of protest that arise from all present? Do you hear the condemnation of your lie? Are you not at last ashamed of all your slanders? Is this a skeleton, this a goblin, is this the familiar spirit you asserted it to be? Is this a magic symbol or one that is common and ordinary? Take it, I beg you, Maximus, and examine it. It is good that a holy thing should be entrusted to hands as pure and pious as yours. See there, how fair it is to view, how full of all a wrestler's grace and vigour! How cheerful is ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... wished to represent these three stages of language algebraically, we might represent the first by RR, using R as the symbol of a root which has suffered no phonetic decay; the second, by R r or r R, or r R r representing by r an empty word that has suffered phonetic change; the third, by rr, or rr, or rrr, when both full and empty words have been changed, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... original ground plan furnished an opportunity for the introduction of a more symbolical and appropriate design. The plan of the old basilica was abandoned for one in the form of the cross, the accepted symbol of the Christian religion, which departure, however, did not involve any very great alteration ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath

... ourselves. We are taught in it to love all living and lifeless things, with which in the material and moral universe we are surrounded—we are taught to love the wisdom and goodness and majesty of the Almighty, for we are taught to love the universe, his symbol and visible exponent. God has given two books for the study and instruction of mankind; the book of revelation and the book of nature. In one at least of these was Shelley deeply versed, and in this one he has ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran

... the Cross and the Emperor Constantine. This so wrought upon them that they all daubed the figure of a cross on their shields of bull-hide, set out for the war, and came back victorious, extolling the sacred symbol ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... interpreted by the highest State court, made punishable the joining of an organization teaching the inevitability of "the class struggle";[80] three years later it upset a California statute which forbade in all circumstances the carrying of a red flag as a symbol of opposition to government;[81] and 6 years after that it upset a conviction under an Oregon statute for participating in a meeting held under the auspices of an organization which was charged with advocating violence as a political method, although the meeting itself was orderly and ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... conclusion of them. When so darkly esoteric a body begins to issue an extremely catchpenny 'organ,' with advertisements of theosophic 'developers,' magic mirrors, and mesmeric discs, and also advertises large copies of the dread symbol of the Order, 'suitable for framing,' at five shillings plain and seven and sixpence coloured, it is, of course, impossible to take it seriously, except in view of a police-court process, and one is evidently in the hands of very poor bunglers indeed. Such was the new departure in propaganda ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard

... Charles Cardinal, Rector of St. Dreots in South Glebeshire, at the moment that he bent down towards the second long drawer of his washhand-stand; he bent down to find a clean collar. It is in its way a symbol of his whole life, that death claimed him before ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... prince, if you adopt Acting rightly as your symbol, You will pardon me for asking, So to act, that you permit me. No advice and no assistance Can I give against my king. Better that my lord should kill ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... out her small gloved hand, and with it touched his own. Looking back once more for a fleeting glimpse at the ascending symbol of his defeat, he gripped her hand so hard that she almost cried out with the pain of it; but she did not wince. When he suddenly remembered, with a frightened apology, and laid her hand upon her lap and patted it, her fingers seemed ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... sought to build it as the old Egyptians sought to build their temples—to last forever, to defy time and decay. It was not only meant to be a place for Hyndses to be born and live and die in: it was a monument to Family Pride, a brick-and-granite symbol of place ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... curious that so few precise data are available. The reason for this lies in the zeal which the conquistadores displayed in the stamping out of the various pagan religions. No sooner had the Spaniards obtained possession of the chief cities of the Incas than every symbol, image, or, indeed, any object suggestive of sun-worship or anything of the kind, was smashed into fragments, and every trace of its significance so far as ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel

... recovered himself. The dim light, the awesome silence, the unexpected surroundings recalling a romantic age, the motionless figure of him who so lately had been the master of the house, lying outstretched as for the tomb, with the sacred symbol on his breast offering such violent contradiction to the earthly passion which had driven the dagger home, were enough to move even the tried spirit of this old officer of the law and confuse a mind which, in the years of his long connection ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green

... designed by Miss Isabelle A. Sinclair, in the various colors appropriate to the Virgin Mary. The lily is the Virgin's flower, la fleur de Marie, the highest symbol of her purity. The gold border surrounding the panel is copied from the ornamentation of the mantle worn by Botticelli's ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll

... a self-possessed and sagacious orator handling a tumultuous meeting as Phoebus-Appollo handles his madly plunging steeds, has seen the symbol of popular government, and understands why the sole fact of numerical force and brute power does not explain it. He who watches the ocean rising into every bay and creek in obedience to celestial attraction, sees in outward nature the law that governs ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... Magadar, sprang to his feet. He was unusually excitable for an Indian. Indeed, he differed a good deal from his companions in other respects, being passionate, impulsive, hasty, and matter-of-fact; in his speech-making too he scorned the use of symbol and metaphor, but went straight to the point at once in the simplest and most forcible language at ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... fathers at this hour. His children were counting themselves orphans, and it was not in his power to comfort them. He knelt down at the open window, and rested his bowed head on the window-sill. The empty room behind him was but a symbol of his own empty lot, swept clean of all its affections and aspirations. Two thirds of his term of years were already spent; and he found himself bereft and dispossessed of all that makes life worth having—all except the power of service. Even at this ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... Socrates exercised over all Athenians. The affection he inspired survived him, and widens with the generations. In the hundred years and more that have passed since Johnson's death, his memory has grown greener. The symbol of his life and of its lesson is to be found in what Hawthorne beautifully calls the sad and lovely legend of the man Johnson's public penance in the rain, amid the jeering crowd, to expiate the offence of the child ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... specimen of the language of the ninth century, with the chronicles of Saint Gall, Freculfe and Reginon; with the poem of the siege of Paris written by Abbo le Courbe; with the didactic Hortulus, of the Benedictine Walafrid Strabo, whose chapter consecrated to the glory of the gourd as a symbol of fruitfulness, enlivened him; with the poem in which Ermold the Dark, celebrating the exploits of Louis the Debonair, a poem written in regular hexameters, in an austere, almost forbidding style and in a Latin of iron dipped in monastic waters with ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... "&,", and Meaning of "Parse" (Vol. ii., pp. 230. 284.).—This character, being different from any of the twenty-four letters, was placed at the end of the alphabet, and children, after repeating their letters, were taught to indicate this symbol as and-per-se-and. Instead of spelling the word and, as composed of three letters, it was denoted by a special symbol, which was "and by itself, and." Hence ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850 • Various

... ago was disturbed only by the passing tread of bear and wild-cat," had lost some of its freshness as a picturesque apology, and already successive improvements on the original building seemingly cast the older part of the structure back to a hoary antiquity. To many it stood as a symbol of everything Robert Rushbrook did or had done—an improvement of all previous performances; it was like his own life—an exciting though irritating state of transition to something better. Yet the visible ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte

... confusion in reading a book, where each thing or idea, although of the same sound and tone, is represented by a different symbol. ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles

... Joseph; to drink from the holy well which sprang from the foot of Chalice Hill where the Holy Cup lay buried; and to watch the budding of the mystic thorn, which, year after year, when the snows of Christmas covered the hills, put forth its holy blossoms, "a symbol of God's promise, care ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith

... lean'd And bow'd above me; whether that which held it Had weaken'd, and the Rood itself were bound To that necessity which binds us down; Whether it bow'd at all but in their fancy; Or if it bow'd, whether it symbol'd ruin Or glory, who shall tell? but they were sad, ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... Betty, that he was permitted to come. You see he vanished through the door in your form, which is a symbol of your fate, unless you mend your life. Oh! I noticed how he trembled when I gave him the good book. Would any Christian, think you, my dear Betty, write in a Bible in this way; unless it might be the matter of births and deaths, ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... and are in readiness with their lances to complete the business, during which, the person who first struck the fish, falls down on his face in the fore part of the boat, and prays that Torngak would strengthen the thongs that they may not break; another of the crew allows his feet to be bound, as a symbol of what he desires, then attempting to walk, falls down and exclaims, "Let him be lame!" and a third, if he observes that the whale is dying, calls out, "Now Torngak is there, and will help us to kill the fish, and we shall eat his flesh, and fare ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous

... strangeness to the events of that fatal night, and in my mind, he becomes a part of it no less than the child on the stairs, the burning inferno that lit the background, and the great statue of that unknown hero who held out his scroll for a moment in that lurid light, like a symbol from the sunken City ...
— The Undersea Tube • L. Taylor Hansen

... they are fire worshippers. The sacred flame perpetually burning in their houses of worship, brought by their ancestors from Persia, is but a symbol, they insist. God, according to their faith, is the emblem of glory, refulgence, and spiritual life; therefore they face the holy flame when praying as the most fitting symbol of the Deity. In the open ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... walked a pace or two into the room and turned. "You are absolute owner," he said, "of the world. You are King of the Earth. Your powers are limited in many intricate ways, but you are the figure-head, the popular symbol of government. This White Council, the Council of Trustees ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... could, and at last we decided on Persia. Why Persia? I cannot recall the steps now that brought us to that conclusion. But I know that first Christmas I sent Carl my picture in a frilled high-school graduation frock and a silk Persian flag tucked behind it, and that flag remained always the symbol for us that we would never let our lives get stale, never lose the love of adventure, never "settle down," intellectually ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... weak of heart, accepted them, in spite of the grumblings of the Flemish populations, always eager to recommence war after a short respite from its trials. The burghers of Bruges had made themselves a new seal, whereon the old symbol of the bridge of their city on the Reye was replaced by the lion of Flanders wearing the crown and armed with the cross, with this inscription: "The lion hath roared and burst his fetters "(Rugiit ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... way under it. We were so close that already the foremost rafts, ten yards ahead, were tipping and their occupants one by one waving their arms about and tumbling from their funeral chairs as they shot into the spray veil and went out of sight under a faint rainbow that was arched over there, the symbol of peace and the only lovely thing in that gruesome region. Another minute and I must have gone with them. It was too late to think of getting out of the tangle then; the water behind was heavy with trailing silks and flowers. We were jammed together almost like one ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... the little book came the alphabet and the lists of syllables, as in the hornbook. There was this difference, however. At the beginning of the first line of letters in the hornbooks was placed a cross, as the symbol of Christianity, and from this fact the first line was called the Christ-cross, or criss-cross row. But the Puritans strictly kept the cross out of the Primer, for to them it stood in a disagreeable way for the older churches from ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... of fruit erect towards the heavens. As the reason of this, we are told that of old all the bananas held their heads erect, but they quarrelled with the plantain, fought, were beaten, and, ever since, have hung their heads in token of their defeat, whereas the plantain is erect still, and the symbol of its own victory. ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner

... for which we are fighting in Korea are right and just. They are the foundations of collective security and of the future of free nations. Korea is not only a country undergoing the torment of aggression; it is also a symbol. It stands for right and justice in the world against oppression and slavery. The free world must always stand for these principles—and we will stand with the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman

... Marshal Tukey,—men congenitally mingled in such appropriate work,—bade me "Get under the chain." I pressed it down and went over. The Judges of our own Supreme Court, they went under,—had gone out and in, beneath the chain! How poetry mingles with fact! The chain was a symbol, and until this day remaineth the same chain, untaken away in the reading of the fugitive slave bill; and when the law of Massachusetts is read, the chain is also upon the neck of that court! Within the court house was full of ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... proclaimed by a runner bearing a cross of wood charred in the fire. Two burnt matches fastened together with thread served the Camellia Buds for their token, and it was the strictest rite of their order that any one receiving this cryptic symbol must immediately leave whatever she happened to be doing and proceed post-haste to ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... of rooting up every affected plant, and burning it." Mr. Downing recommends the same course. It is one of those evils that should be stamped out at once. If a plantation were generally affected with this yellow symbol of contagion, it would be well to destroy all the plants, and, obtaining new, healthful stock from a distance, start again on different grounds. Should the snowy tree-cricket become very abundant, it might cause ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... page from her hand in shame and despair when he saw her actually contemplating the idiotic symbol of his most confused and ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... think so, because it could only be a symbol of sexual union, and it is clear that such did not take place between Adam and Eve in the Garden ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... cut from David's head when an infant, and long before the parents discovered how unlike their child was to themselves. This breastpin, with the hair of the three heads of the house intertwined, was the only symbol in all the world ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... before your eyes as a bright gleam of color, a symbol of yourself, the pictured suggestion of that big thing which makes this Nation. My stars and my stripes are your dream and your labors. They are bright with cheer, brilliant with courage, firm with faith, because you have made them so out of your hearts. For you are the makers of the flag and ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... for ever as the type and symbol of a man, much-suffering, continually labouring, gifted with keen but rarely indulged passions, whose energies from boyhood to extreme old age were dedicated with unswerving purpose to the service of one master, plastic art. On his death-bed he may have felt, like Browning, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... took from his waistcoat pocket a small glittering object and laid it before him on the table, still shaking his head and smiling with a patient, yet reproachful air of superior wisdom. It was a crucifix of mother-o'-pearl and silver, the symbol of the Christian faith. But it seemed to carry no sacred suggestions to the soul of Mr. Dyceworthy. On the contrary, he looked at it with an expression of meek ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... two disc-shaped stones, each with a hole in the centre, which together make up what they call "the stone of the sun." No doubt it is regarded as a symbol of the sun, and as such it is employed to cause drought in a ceremony which, like the preceding, combines the elements of magic and religion. The sun-stone is kept in one of the sacred places, and when a sorcerer wishes to make drought with ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... (the good goddess), a Roman goddess of fertility, worshipped by women; her priests vestals and her worship by rites from which men were excluded. Her symbol was a serpent, but the name under which she was ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... ninety engravings, under the title of Aboriginal Monuments of New-York, comprising the results of Original Surveys and Explorations, with an Appendix. This is now, we believe, on the eve of publication. A second volume is entitled, The Serpent Symbol, and the Worship of the Reciprocal Principle, in America. It contains, also, extended incidental illustrations of the religious systems of the American aborigines, and of the symbolical character of the ancient monuments in ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... you are tired. But that's nothing. Lean upon me. We are going upwards all the time! Always higher and higher! Is this not a symbol of all human aspirations? My comrade, my sister, lean ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... her head the close, black nun-like wrap that those narrow primitive country-women far away on the other side of the globe had chosen to express their being united to another human being. And a proper lugubrious symbol it made for their lugubrious, prison-like, ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... Claus. He hurried along through the snow-burdened street As if the good angels were guiding his feet; And as the sun rose in the heavens apace, A radiance fell on his uplifted face That came from the cross gleaming far overhead— A symbol of hope for the living and dead. A moment he looked at the great house of prayer, Then slyly peeked in to see what was there; And entering softly he wandered at will Through pathways of velvet, deserted and still, And saw the light grow on a wonderful scene Of ivy-twined columns and arches of green, ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... seen their white bishops, but none so regal, so august as he. His garb of fringed buckskin and ermine was no more grotesque than the vestments worn by the white preachers in high places; he did not carry a book or a shining golden symbol, but from his splendid shoulders was suspended ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson

... applied the thumb of his right hand to the end of his nose, and the thumb of his left hand to the little finger of the right, and repeated this kind of nasal weathercock. Anthony Van Corlear now persuaded himself that this was some short-hand sign or symbol, current in diplomacy, which, though unintelligible to a new diplomat like himself, would speak volumes to the experienced intellect of William the Testy. Considering his embassy therefore at an end, he sounded his ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... into the fastness, he came to the encampment of the enemy, and was instantly surrounded by warriors, who seized him, but after parleying for a considerable time, let him go, presenting him with a bow and arrows, as a symbol of their unflinching resolve ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... head, a small stone cross, roughly hewn, was let into the masonry itself. The grave of Hubert Cochrane was not obtrusive: in a few months it would have merged again into the greensward, and its humble memorial symbol would be covered with moss and lichen like the matrix ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... cultivated lad in Athens, undraped like a faun, with lyre in hand, was leading the Chorus of Athenian youths, and singing to Athene, the tutelary goddess, a hymn of triumph for a glorious victory—the very symbol of Greece and Athens, springing up into a joyous second youth after invasion and desolation, as the grass springs up after the prairie fire has passed. But the fire had been terrible. It had burnt Athens at least, down to the very roots. True, while Sophocles ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... nothing else than the law of motion of the point with reference to the system K (of the man with reference to the embankment). We denote this velocity by the symbol W, and we then obtain, ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein

... remained unharmed and untouched in the midst of this scene of awful desolation. The three crucifixes, with the figures of Christ still upon them, gazed down upon this scene of horror. And high upon the topmost joint of the south wall stood the cross, the symbol of Christianity—unharmed. The united endeavours of the Powers of Evil could not dislodge that sacred emblem from ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins

... orange, the lime, the West Indian guava (Psidium pyriferum), and the guava of Florida, with its boxwood leaves; the tamarisk, with its spreading minute foliage, and splendid panicles of pale rose-coloured flowers; the pomegranate, symbol of democracy—"the queen who carries her crown upon her bosom"—and the legendary but flowerless fig-tree, here not supported against the wall, but rising as a standard to the height of ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... as it approached, and the first bright banner appeared beneath the lofty pointed archway; and the double white file came flowing on like a snowy glacier, the chant becoming clear and high as the singers of each parish marched along to their places, each ranked under a bright banner with the symbol of their church's dedication. St. Oswald's rood helped Geraldine to make out that of Bexley better than their faces, though she did make out her eldest brother's fair face, and trace him to his seat. The cathedral singers came at last, and that kenspeckle red ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... spot where there had been a fierce hand-to-hand fight there were indications that the combatants when wounded had shared their water-bottles. Near them were a Briton and a Frenchman whose cold hands were clasped in death, a touching symbol of the unity of the two nations in this terrible conflict."—From "The ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter

... you to cherish this memorial as a symbol by which, as generation after generation of students enter yonder door, they shall be reminded of the ideal according to which they must shape their lives, if they would turn to the best account of the opportunities offered by the great institution ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... eleventh century; being then conceived by the image-maker as decently covered by his raiment of camel's hair; bearing a gentle aspect, because the herald of a gentle Lord; and pointing to his quite legibly written message concerning the Lamb which is that gentle Lord's heraldic symbol. ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... (top) and blue yin-yang symbol in the center; there is a different black trigram from the ancient I Ching (Book of Changes) in each corner ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... who shall view This symbol of sepulchral yew, Forgetful that its branches grew Where weep the heavens their holiest dew On Alpine's dwelling low! Deserter of his Chieftain's trust, He ne'er shall mingle with their dust, But, from his sires and kindred thrust, Each clansman's execration just Shall doom him wrath and ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... of a large number of consignments and a variety of grades, necessitating a careful sorting as unloading progresses. Accordingly, even before the unloading begins, the dock is chalked off into squares, each square having a number, or symbol, representing a particular consignment. As the bags come up out of the hold, the foreman of the laborers, who has a key to the brand marks on the bags, indicates where each bag is to be placed. Coffee to be reshipped, either by lighter or rail, is heaped in piles by ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... light and life! O beatific symbol of Power, Love, Joy, Beauty! Let us look at thee with humble wonder, and thankfully acknowledge and adore. What gracious forethought is it—what generous and loving provision, that deigns to prepare for our eyes and to soothe ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... society of which I was once an unworthy member, that the annual custom of salting alludes to that saying of our Saviour to His disciples, 'Ye are the salt of the earth;' for as salt draws up all that matter that tends to putrefaction, so it is a symbol of our doing the like in a spiritual state, by taking away all natural corruption.... If this will not please, why may it not denote that wit and knowledge by which boys dedicated to learning ought ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 40, Saturday, August 3, 1850 - A Medium Of Inter-Communication For Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, • Various

... there lived a man at Barbizon who maintained that a spade was not a spade at all, but merely a mass of shadow against a low twilight sky, in the hands of a figure who with uncovered head listens reverently; that the spade is merely a symbol of labor; that he used it as he would use a word necessary to express a sentence, which would be unintelligible without it, and that it was perfectly immaterial to him, and should be to the world, whether it was a spade or a shovel so long ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith

... a few yards' distance, overtopping then: eaves, and leaving each the untouched citadel of this natural redoubt. There was also a dismantled lighthouse, an object which always seems the most dreary symbol of the barbarism of war, when one considers the national beneficence which reared and kindled it. Despite the service rendered by this once brilliant light, there were many wrecks which had been strown upon the beach, victims of the most formidable ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... MA, symbol of Truth Macaulay, Lord, on Lord Clive's treachery Macpherson, Lieutenant: cited Mahabharata on lying Mahaffy, Prof. J.P.: cited Mandingoes: their estimate of truth Marcus Aurelius, quotation from Marheineke: cited Marriage, duty ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull

... characters, and is woven into the score whenever the character appears. Similarly, in the later plays of Henrik Ibsen, certain phrases are repeated frequently, to indicate the recurrence of certain dramatic moods. Thus, in "Rosmersholm," reference is made to the weird symbol of "white horses," whenever the mood of the momentary scene foreshadows the double suicide which is to terminate the play. Students of "Hedda Gabler" need not be reminded of the emphasis flung by iteration on the phrases, ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton

... popularity especially for his poetry and ballads. His best known poems are The Man from Snowy River (1892) on which a motion picture was loosely based, and Waltzing Matilda (1895) which slowly became an Australian symbol and national song. The poems he wrote for a Sydney newspaper led him into reporting, and he went to South Africa to cover the Boer War. Always a fair man, he had his doubts about the war and was a little too vocal about it for the tastes of some of his readers. During the ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... so lustrous and shining that they seem a flame of fire.' Also Hayton, in the thirteenth century, mentions it, telling much the same story as Sir John Maundevile, to the effect that it was the especial symbol of sovereignty, and when held in the hand of the newly-chosen king, enforced the recognition of his majesty. But, whereas Hayton simply calls it the greatest and finest Ruby in existence, Maundevile puts it at afoot in length and five fingers in girth. Also—for I have made much inquiry concerning ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... turmoil and the hurry of her life, out of her triumphs and arrogances and ambitions, out of her careless generosities and her extraordinary successes, she came. And following her, with uncovered head, came the sign and symbol of her failure—her ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... the symbol of the friendly truce between man and the material universe. The world itself and the void spaces of its wanderings, together with the elements of our celestial neighborhood, have been viewed by man with dark suspicion, with rather ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... of Rinda reminds us of Jupiter's wooing of Danae, who is also a symbol of the earth; and while the shower of gold in the Greek tale is intended to represent the fertilising sunbeams, the footbath in the Northern story typifies the spring thaw which sets in when the sun has overcome ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... what their country expects of them.' The watchword was 'Coventry,' which, being probably suggested by the saying, 'Sent to Coventry,' that is, condemned to silence, was as apt a word for this expectant night as 'Gibraltar,' the symbol of strength, was for the one on which ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood

... instance,—which by its wildness, to speak without satire, reminds me of the cries emitted by wild beasts in their native forests. It is so much of their wildness as I can understand. Give me for my friends and neighbors wild men, not tame ones. The wildness of the savage is but a faint symbol of the awful ferity with which good men and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... Supreme Court. Although, step by step, he had been driven, like the rest of the world, to admit that American society had outgrown most of its institutions, he still clung to the Supreme Court, much as a churchman clings to his bishops, because they are his only symbol of unity; his last rag of Right. Between the Executive and the Legislature, citizens could have no Rights; they were at the mercy of Power. They had created the Court to protect them from unlimited Power, and it was little enough protection ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... Now, a crumbling symbol of the past, it stubbornly resisted the attacks of the weather, as it had once resisted the far more powerful blasts of explosives. Obstinately, it pointed its rusty length skyward, to remind the observer ...
— Final Weapon • Everett B. Cole

... authority of the Pope, but solemnly swore to show him reverence and obedience. Furthermore, even when an Archbishop had been appointed and consecrated, he could not exercise jurisdiction until he had received the sacred pallium, which came from Rome, and was received as the symbol and token of the authority conferred on him by the supreme Pastor. The pallium itself, "taken from the body of Blessed Peter," is a band of lamb's wool, and was worn by each Archbishop as the pledge of unity and of orthodoxy, as well ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan

... Charlemagne and his Christianized Franks. "Irmin, in the cloudy Olympus of Teutonic belief, appears as a king and a warrior; and the pillar, the 'Irmin-sul,' bearing the statue, and considered as the symbol of the deity, was the Palladium of the Saxon nation until the temple of Eresburgh was destroyed by Charlemagne, and the column itself transferred to the monastery of Corbey, where perhaps a portion of the rude rock idol yet remains, covered by the ornaments of the Gothic era."[87] ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... rule—never substitute the symbol for the thing signified, unless it is impossible to show the thing itself; for the child's attention is so taken up with the symbol that he will forget ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... and its broken reflection And its shadows shall appear As the symbol of love in heaven, And its wavering image ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... without any interruption, the groom making the responses in clear, unfaltering tones, although those of his companion were scarcely audible. When the symbol of their union was called for, it was also noticed that Edith shrank from having the ring placed upon her finger, but it was only a momentary hesitation, and the service was soon ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... moments with ardent emotion, and presented it to Edgar. "Keep it, said Edgar, it is thine. I bestow it upon thee as I would the original, had not death become the rival of thy love, and my affection.—Suffer not the sacred symbol too tenderly to renew your sorrows. How swiftly, Alonzo, does this restless life fleet away!—How soon shall we pass the barriers of terrestrial existence! Let us live worthy of ourselves, of our holy religion, of Melissa—Melissa, ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.

... Philistines." Alarmed and distressed by this defeat, the Israelites vainly imagining that wherever the ark of God was, there He would be also with his favoring presence, sent up to Shiloh to bring from thence the sacred symbol. With great pomp and solemnity it was borne by the Priests and Levites, and uproarious was the rejoicing as it entered the camp, but no account is given of the feelings of those who remained near ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... to have borne in the field of Hastings; three ermines passant, argent, in a field azure, with its appropriate motto, SANS LACHE. 'May our name rather perish,' exclaimed Sir Everard, 'than that ancient and loyal symbol should be blended with the dishonoured ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... a law protecting the land around it as a park, and there is now reason to hope that the mound will last as long as the rocky bluff on which the serpent lies coiled. This huge idol is more than twelve hundred feet long, and is the most wonderful symbol in the world of the serpent worship, which was everywhere the earliest religion ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... marks, would prove themselves such by their insensibility. They swam their victims in rivers and ponds, it being an undoubted fact, that, if the persons accused were true witches, the water, which was the symbol of admission into the Christian church, would not receive them into its bosom. If the persons examined continued obstinate, they seated them in constrained and uneasy attitudes, occasionally binding them with cords, and compelling ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... understanding. As a human mind increases its ability to understand another human mind, it eventually reaches a critical point, and the mind itself changes. And, at that point, the Greek letter psi ceases to be a symbol for ...
— Fifty Per Cent Prophet • Gordon Randall Garrett

... Beta Kappa society when they get the pink and blue ribbons in their buttonholes, on the day of annual meeting. How much more when the scholar is wrapped in those flowing folds, with their flaming borders, and feels the dignity of the distinction of which they are the symbol! I do not know how Mr. John Bright felt, but I cannot avoid the impression that some in the ranks which moved from Balliol to the Sheldonian felt as if Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like the candidates ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... diminutive coins are called dust by the common people; a name not at all inapplicable, as in size they resemble the following mark [Symbol: circle], and are thin as a gum wafer. A handful of them scarcely equals a shilling ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo



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