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Symbol   Listen
noun
Symbol  n.  
1.
A visible sign or representation of an idea; anything which suggests an idea or quality, or another thing, as by resemblance or by convention; an emblem; a representation; a type; a figure; as, the lion is the symbol of courage; the lamb is the symbol of meekness or patience. "A symbol is a sign included in the idea which it represents, e. g., an actual part chosen to represent the whole, or a lower form or species used as the representative of a higher in the same kind."
2.
(Math.) Any character used to represent a quantity, an operation, a relation, or an abbreviation. Note: In crystallography, the symbol of a plane is the numerical expression which defines its position relatively to the assumed axes.
3.
(Theol.) An abstract or compendium of faith or doctrine; a creed, or a summary of the articles of religion.
4.
That which is thrown into a common fund; hence, an appointed or accustomed duty. (Obs.) "They do their work in the days of peace... and come to pay their symbol in a war or in a plague."
5.
Share; allotment. (Obs.) "The persons who are to be judged... shall all appear to receive their symbol."
6.
(Chem.) An abbreviation standing for the name of an element and consisting of the initial letter of the Latin or New Latin name, or sometimes of the initial letter with a following one; as, C for carbon, Na for sodium (Natrium), Fe for iron (Ferrum), Sn for tin (Stannum), Sb for antimony (Stibium), etc. See the list of names and symbols under Element. Note: In pure and organic chemistry there are symbols not only for the elements, but also for their grouping in formulas, radicals, or residues, as evidenced by their composition, reactions, synthesis, etc. See the diagram of Benzene nucleus, under Benzene.
Synonyms: Emblem; figure; type. See Emblem.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Symbol" Quotes from Famous Books



... to alter the place of the altar. He cast his ballot for mayor. The ballet dancer and the ballad singer arrived. The wine seller lived in a cellar. He said that the cymbal was a symbol of music. They sent an arrant rogue on the errand. His manner of conducting the manor did not suit the lord. The prophet of Mammon foretold great profit. The relics of the kingdom were saved by the relict of the ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey

... symbol of wild might; The peerless head and face, And bust of female grace, Are types of ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby

... retainers of his house and the inhabitants of the district he governed, after Justinian first, and then the Emperor Heraclius, had confirmed them in their old prerogative. The chivalrous St. George was placed between the snakes so as to replace a heathen symbol by a Christian one. Formerly indeed the knight himself had had the head of a sparrow-hawk: that is to say of the god Horus, who had overthrown the evil-spirit, Seth-Typhon, to avenge his father; but about two centuries since the heathen crocodile-destroyer had been transformed into the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... day we were to get this sweet symbol of good-will. At evening parade appeared General Thomas, as the agent of the ladies, the donors, with a neat speech on a clean sheet of paper. He read it with feeling; and Private W., who has his sentimental moments, avows that he was touched by the General's earnest manner and patriotic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... qua non of rational development. This thought, with its corollaries, was set forth by Kant in an essay of the year 1786, entitled 'Conjectural Beginning of Human History'. The Fall is there explained as a good thing, the story in Genesis being interpreted as a symbol of the emergence of man from the estate of a peaceful but instinct-governed animal to that of a quarrelsome but rational being. Kant's line of reasoning interested Schiller deeply, and in 1790 he published in the Thalia a paper upon the same general subject. ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... themselves gaily, careless of the pitiless night, rejoicing in the sunshine, as before they had rejoiced in the enlivening rain. The pleasant rain-drops still lingered on the daisies. The feathery ball of the dandelion, carried by the breeze, floated past like a symbol of the life of man—a random thing, resistless to the merest breath, with no mission but to spread its seed upon the fertile earth, so that things like unto it should spring up in the succeeding summer, and flower uncared for, and reproduce ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... spectre-like, the ancient castle frown'd Over the deep, whose softly-rippling waves Reflected its array of ruined towers. In times of old, the gallant chiefs for whom Its stately walls arose, the men who made Their names a terror to the Saracen, Adopted as their symbol in the field, The rose—that flower of faction and of blood! I saw it sculptured on the marble shield Which graced the lofty gate, it was enroll'd Among the records of departed days; Over the hearth, upon the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various

... hallowed by so many exalted memories, must have stirred his inmost soul. The pinnacle of all human ambition, the crown of Charles the Great, lay glittering before his longing eyes on the altar of the Prince of the Apostles. The Pope, however, first placed a ring on the finger of the Anointed, as symbol of the faith, the permanence and strength of his Catholic rule; with similar formulae girt him with the sword, and finally placed the crown upon his head. "Take," he said, "the symbol of fame, the diadem of royalty, the crown, the empire, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... devising of still wider forms of human exploitation and enslavement. Its every motive was to serve the greed of Flint and Waldron. Outwardly honest and industrious, it inwardly loomed sinister and terrible, a type and symbol of its masters' swiftly growing power. Such, in its essence, was the great experiment station of these two men who lusted for dominion over ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... Council's work. But it is by no means its chief function. As is shown in the Board of Education memorandum already quoted the Council is intended to promote the unification of the teaching profession. The Register is nothing more than the symbol of this unity and the Council is charged with the important task of expressing the views of teachers as a body on all matters concerning their work. This is shown in the speech made by the Minister of ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... and policy in a most servile manner to the infidel model presented in the civil constitutions of republican America. It would seem, indeed, that this body aimed at conforming their ecclesiastical polity to that standard, from the fact that the very symbol of their profession as a corporate body, is designated the "Constitution of the Associate Reformed Church"—a designation which might be considered as militating against the supremacy of the Holy Scriptures. In this Constitution ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery

... of her entire life, this was the floating spar to which she still clung with a sense of security, and her imagination, by long concentration upon the support that it offered, had exaggerated its importance out of all proportion to the other props among which it had its place. Like its imposing symbol, the Saint Memin portrait of the great Archibald Bolingbroke, which lent distinction, by its very inappropriateness, to the wall on which it hung, this hidden triumph imparted a certain ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... from Edith Cavell to the old soldier who gave Germany the giant airship, but the Zeppelin will also be remembered, because the popular imagination, which is often both just and fanciful, found a symbol of Germany's cause in this engine of terror, so carefully and admirably planned down to the minutest detail, so impressive by its bulk, so indiscriminate in its destructive action, and so frail. Its inventor was Count Ferdinand ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... Roxburgheians used to sport these toasts as a symbol of knowingness and high caste in book-hunting freemasonry. Their representative man happening, in a tour in the Highlands, to open his refreshment wallet on the top of Ben Lomond, pledged his guide in the potent vin du ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... begun to live, to realise that men lived, thought and felt, that they had other desires but those of pleasing the Caesar or winning his good graces. She had seen a man offering his life to save another's, she had seen him clinging to a strange symbol which seemed to ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... the ladies Eleanor and Isabel joining them in the hall, found two figures linked together in a shadowy indication of halves that have fallen apart and hang on the last thread of junction. Willoughby retained her hand on his arm; he held to it as the symbol of their alliance, and oppressed the girl's nerves by contact, with a frame labouring for breath. De Craye looked on them from overhead. The carriages were at the door, and Willoughby said, "Where's Horace? I suppose he's taking a final shot ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... creatures, the defeat of Bhishma. O lord, having the bull for thy mount, act in such a way that promise of thine may become true, that encountering Bhishma, the son of Santanu, in battle I may be able to slay him.' The god of gods, having the bull for his symbol, then said unto that maiden, 'The words I have uttered cannot be false. O blessed lady, true they will be. Thou shalt slay Bhishma, and even obtain manhood. Thou shalt also remember all the incidents (of this life) even when thou shalt obtain a new body. Born in the race of Drupada, thou shalt ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... imagine it rolling on an indefinite straight line and ask what course does the focus of this curve follow. The answer comes: The focus of the parabola describes a 'catenary,' a line very simple in shape, but endowed with an algebraic symbol that has to resort to a kind of cabalistic number at variance with any sort of numeration, so much so that the unit refuses to express it, however much we subdivide the unit. It is called the number e. Its value ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... glimpse of the sacred mountain, Fujiyama. The snow-capped peak stood transfigured as it caught full the rays of the descending sun. Cone-shaped, triangular, perhaps; what was it like, this gleaming silhouette against the deep blue sky? Was it a mighty altar, symbol of earth's need of sacrifice, or emblem of the unity of the ever present triune God? 'Tis little wonder that it is, to the people over whom it stands guard, an object of reverence, of worship; that pilgrimages are made to its sacred heights; that yearly many lives ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger

... Valhall gal gullkammig hane, seq. The cock, as the symbol of fire, announces the coming of Ragnark. A golden-combed cock awakens the halls of Valhall, a red cock crows on ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner

... its various chapters' subsections were denoted with the "section" symbol. In this e-text, that symbol has been replaced with the word "SECTION". Where two of these symbols were together, they have been replaced with the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... mind to say it, as a condemnation for his so unkindly judging her; but the girlish pettishness and recklessness went away, and a better spirit came. She sat, her right hand nervously pushing backward and forward the still unfamiliar wedding-ring, until in accidentally feeling the symbol, ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... at the happy chance of living and dying in a really Catholic city, where, turn in what direction they would, their eyes were gladdened by the sight of magnificent churches, colleges, convents, hospitals, with the cross, the symbol of their faith, surmounting nearly all the public edifices ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... actions. Secondly, if you ask the immense majority of the queen's subjects by what right she rules, they will say she rules by God's grace. They believe they have a mystic obligation to obey her. The crown is a visible symbol of unity ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... Ave Mary Lane they saw a procession of milk men and maids carrying wreaths of flowers on wheelbarrows, the first of which held a large white pyramid which seemed to be a symbol of their calling. They were ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... 1. 1089, Bird of the sea rocks.—A wonderful lyric, as spoken by these exiles waiting on the shore.—In their craving for home the island of Delos becomes the symbol for all that is Greek. Delos, the birth-place of Apollo and of a kinder Artemis than that which they now serve, was the meeting-place of all the Ionians. The palm-tree, the laurel, the olive, and the Orbed Lake of Delos ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides

... is taken, and as that spirit prevails, man forfeits his manhood. His life becomes mechanical. Ideas disappear in the forms that once embodied them; imagination is buried beneath symbol; belief dies of creed, and morality of custom. Nothing remains but a world-wide pantomime. Worship itself becomes only a more extended place-hunting, and man the walking dummy of society. And then, since man no longer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... [e,] is known as umlaut-e ( 58). It stands for Germanic a, while e (without the cedilla) represents Germanic e. The symbol [o,] is employed only before m and n. It, too, represents Germanic a. But Alfred writes manig or monig, many; lamb or lomb, lamb; hand or hond, hand, etc. The cedilla is an etymological sign added by ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith

... well the meaning of the dream—that the small round cake of barley, which was inferior to wheat, and was a symbol of weakness, was his own weak, insignificant self; and that, just as this tiny cake upset a tent thousands of times bigger than itself and firmly fastened to the ground with strong cords and long pegs, ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various

... unbounded wealth. We knew that wars had been waged for the possession of such gems, that blackest crime nor oceans of blood could dim their piercing luster. We felt that every celebrated stone, whether shining on the breast of a lovely woman or blazing in the scepter of a king, was a symbol of power, a nucleus of tragedy, a ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully

... scholarly close; it was in the open square of the city; markets and fairs were held about it; the doors to its calm and rest opened directly on the busiest, every-day bustle. It is not a mere architectural relic, as its building was never a mere architectural feat. It is the symbol of a past stage of life, a majestic part of the picture we conjure before our mind's ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose

... the first place, a state so vast and complex as this world Utopia, and with so migratory a people, will need some handy symbol to check the distribution of services and commodities. Almost certainly they will need to have money. They will have money, and it is not inconceivable that, for all his sorrowful thoughts, our botanist, with his trained observation, his habit of looking at little ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... vertical bands of red (hoist side), blue, and red; centered on the hoist-side red band in yellow is the national emblem ("soyombo" - a columnar arrangement of abstract and geometric representation for fire, sun, moon, earth, water, and the yin-yang symbol) ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... great diversity in the color systems of the various tribes, both as to the location and significance of the colors, but for obvious reasons black was generally taken as the symbol of death; while white and red signified, respectively, peace and war. It is somewhat remarkable that red was the emblem of power and triumph among the ancient Oriental nations no less than ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney

... side they beheld the English flag floating. This they took to be some kind of an Okee, in which opinion Smith's action confirmed them, for taking off his hat, he waved it in delight towards the symbol of all that was now ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson

... were erected within gorgeous temples. With the Chaldean, Phoenician, and Assyrian, Moloch began the dreadful cruelty of human sacrifices, chiefly of children. If, at first, the image of the idol was only a visible symbol of a spiritual conception, or of an invisible power, this higher meaning was lost in progress of time in the minds of most nations, and they came at length to pay worship to the lifeless image itself. The priests alone were acquainted with any deeper meaning, but refused ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield

... nothing in the world so utterly desirable as that tall and fair-haired girl slowly descending the stairs. In the midst of his tumultuous feeling a trivial thought occurred to him: "I am shot through the heart by the blind archer," he said to himself; and he no longer laughed at the old-fashioned symbol of the sudden and fatal power ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... is something to be done at home; for justice, like charity, must begin at home. It is a mockery to say that we emancipate the slaves we can not reach and pass by those we can reach. First, free the slaves that are under the flag of the Union. If that flag is the symbol of freedom, let it wave over free men only. The slaves must be freed in the Border States. Consistency is a great power. What are you afraid of? That the Border States will join with the now crippled rebel States? We ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... irremediable torrent of life about which so much rhetoric has been written has its roots in an ineluctable necessity which lies revealed to our logical reason. This notion of a being which forever stumbles over its own feet, and has to change in order to exist at all, is a very picturesque symbol of the reality, and is probably one of the points that make young readers feel as if a deep core of ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... though in many climes, whiteness typifies the majesty of Justice in the ermine of the Judge, and contributes to the daily state of kings and queens drawn by milk-white steeds; though even in the higher mysteries of the most august religions it has been made the symbol of the divine spotlessness and power; by the Persian fire worshippers, the white forked flame being held the holiest on the altar; and in the Greek mythologies, Great Jove himself being made incarnate in a snow-white bull; and though to the noble Iroquois, the midwinter ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... Lord's Supper should never be left out of view. It is at once a feast of memory and of hope, and is also a symbol for the present, inasmuch as it represents the conditions of spiritual life as being participation in the body and blood of Christ. This is where Paul learned his 'till He come'; and that hope which filled the Saviour's heart should ever fill ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... longing for sympathy and companionship oppressed him as never before. The sight of this place had stirred his affections and his spiritual sense. His soul cried out for some language in which to express itself—even though it were a language of symbol only, such as his mother had found in her lacemaking. How barren and vapid a thing was the exterior life, as all those whom he knew understood and lived it—his co- lodgers, his fellow-clerks, the good Lovegroves, his late employer, Sir Abel Barking, even, as he divined, that ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... crushing, damnable chain of all, the symbol of cowardice, of greed and vanity, the enemy of truth and knowledge, the hot-bed on which we breed the miserable half-men who cumber this earth, a ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... and panted; a deep crimson suffused his whole face, and a soul, a real soul shone in his strangely altered countenance, while he triumphantly repeated, "God like wind! God like wind!" He had no word for "like;" it was signified by holding the two forefingers out, side by side, as a symbol of ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth

... xxviii. De capitulo generali cubi et rerum aequalium numero, Magistri Nicolai Tartagliae, Brixiensis—Hoc capitulum habui a prefato viro ante considerationem demonstrationum secundi libri super Euclidem, et aequatio haec cadit in [Symbol: Rx]. cu v binomii ex genere binomii secundi et qunti [m]. [Symbol: Rx]. cuba universali recisi ejusdem binomii."—Opera, tom. iv. ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... to the prison of Corte Savella, marching to the sound of funeral chants. At its gates the sacred crucifix halted for the women to join: they soon appeared, fell on their knees, and worshipped the holy symbol as the others had done. The march to the scaffold ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... can speak to heart, even by a flower or a picture. The separation was complete; sending this symbol has broken it a little, and so she is singing. This is a lesson for us ruder and less subtle spirits. Now mind, thwarted love seldom kills a busy man; but it often kills an idle woman, and your daughter is an idle woman. He is an iron pot, she is a china vase. Please don't hit them too ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... judgment; and as it is our duty to promote our own happiness, it is our duty to live without desire or fear, preference or abhorrence, love or hatred, in entire apathy,—a life of which Mohammed's fabled coffin is the fittest symbol. ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... hymns are among his best. He loved light and gloried in the birth of each new day. The sun is his favorite symbol. Its rising signifies to him the final triumph of life over death, and the new day is a token thereof. It sounds a joyful call to wake and ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg

... of Manchuria, the talk of its citizens, the foundation of its prosperity, the backbone of its commerce, the symbol of its wealth, is the bean—the common soja, or soy bean as we know it. What corn is to our Corn Belt and what cotton is to our Southern States, that the bean is to Manchuria: supreme among products. There is no class of people not affected by the ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... fortunate enough to see it. I think it would strike the imagination even of a person who had never heard of the Christian religion; but of this it is difficult to judge, seeing how inextricably our own ideas are mingled up with associations linking this sacred symbol with almost every thought, word, and deed of our lives. The three great stars which form the Cross, one at the top, one at the left arm, and one, which is the chief star, called Alpha, at the foot, are so placed as to suggest ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... that America is beginning to do exactly this to-day. The entire history of our enjoyment of poetry might be summed up in that curious symbol which appears over the letter n in the word "canon." A rise, a fall, a rise. Here is the whole story of the American poetry-lover. His enthusiasm first reached a high point about the middle of the nineteenth century. A generation later it ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... the symbol of peace and smoked it as silently and soberly as he had done before me, then laid it leisurely aside and held ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... into night; this is the meaning of the change of forms. The wall of flame vanishes, day and sun descend into the realm of darkness. Under this aspect the Siegfried story is a day myth; but under another it is a myth of the year. The dragon is the symbol of winter, the dwarfs of darkness. Siegfried denotes the bright summer, his sword the sunbeams. The youthful year grows up in the dark days of winder. When its time has come, it goes forth triumphantly and destroys the darkness and the cold of winter. Through the symbolization ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown

... ourselves that the aim of the universe is a personality. As the terrestrial globe through so many patient aeons climbed toward the production of a human body, that by this all-comprehending, perfect symbol it might enter into final union with Spirit, so do the uses of the world still forever ascend toward man, and seek a continual realization of that ancient wish. When, therefore, Time shall come to his great audit with Eternity, persons alone will be passed to his credit. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... prudence, and moral feeling. If possible, this their recantation of the chief parts in the canon of the Rights of Man is more infamous and causes greater horror than their originally promulgating and forcing down the throats of mankind that symbol of all evil. It is raking too much into the dirt and ordure of human nature to say ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... still remains undestroyed. Our brethren of the Presbyterian churches have taken the Latin form of the words in the context for their motto—Nec Tamen Consumebatur. But I venture to think that that is a mistake; and that what is meant by the symbol is just what is expressed by the verbal revelation which accompanied it, and that was this: 'I AM THAT I AM.' The fire that did not burn out is the emblem of the divine nature which does not tend to death because it lives, nor to exhaustion because ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Amlaki will be seen on the cornices of the Institute, and towering above all is the symbol of the thunderbolt. It was the Rishi Dadhichi, the pure and blameless, who offered his life that the divine weapon, the thunderbolt, might be fashioned out of his bones to smite evil and exalt righteousness. It is but half of ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... soldiers. All was done that could be done to welcome them back, but no one could take it in for a time. A sister in black distributed some little Testaments, each with a cross on it, and the soldiers kissed the symbol of suffering passionately. ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan

... intended to impede the passage of cavalry. They consisted of four spikes of pointed iron, about four inches long, radiating from a common centre in such a manner that, however thrown, one spike would be uppermost. Like the three-legged symbol of the Isle of Man, their motto might be "Quoqunque jeceris stabit." There was a perfect reign of terror, and people were afraid to venture out after nightfall. On Friday, the 29th of June, the Mayor, Mr. William Scholefield, met the ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... role in free Russia, but the ideal, the dramatic, the romantic or mystic tendency. Money will never have that meaning in Russia which it has in the West. It will be the individual, the emotional, the great symbol of the mystic beyond, that will speak from future democratic Russia only in a different and more dynamic form, as it has ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... pervaded the country thus, setting forth the special bond of evangelical religion, uniting those different groups by the sacred seal of the bread and wine—who can doubt received with a profound and tremulous awe by lips to which the wafer had been hitherto the only symbol of that act of ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... of garlands of immortelles, wreaths of ivy-jasmin (punning upon the name), laurel, and so forth, utterly astonished me. Jasmin preserved a perfect shrubbery of such tokens; and each symbol had, of course, its pleasant associative remembrance. One was given by the ladies of such a town; another was the gift of the prefect's wife of such a department. A handsome full-length portrait had been presented to the poet by the municipal authorities of Agen; and a letter ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... simple cult and her virgin priestesses, was almost the only deity who was not either forgotten or metamorphosed in one way or another under the influence of Greek literature and mythology; Vesta was too well recognised as a symbol of the State's vitality to be subject to neglect like other and less significant cults. The old sacrificing priesthoods, such as the Fratres Arvales and the lesser Flamines, seem not to have been filled up by the pontifices ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... This was now assailed, and stones came crashing through the windows. The Mayor was sent for, and soon appeared with the sheriff, backed by forty watchmen. Mounting the steps, he held up his staff of office, and commanded the peace. But the half-drunken mob had now got beyond the fear of the mere symbol of authority, and answered him with a shower of stones, and then charged on the force that surrounded him. A fierce and bloody fight followed. Citizens rushed out to the help of the Mayor, while ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley

... which a fire brick is judged, it is sometimes customary to require a chemical analysis of the brick. Such an analysis is only necessary as determining the amount of total basic fluxes (K{2}O, Na{2}O, CaO, MgO and FeO). These fluxes are ordinarily combined into one expression, indicated by the symbol RO. This total becomes important only above 0.2 molecular equivalent as expressed in ceramic empirical formulae, and this limit should not ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.

... visible delineation of it by brush or pencil. If the thing to be remembered be something abstract or unreal, having neither form nor substance, perhaps it may have, or the teacher may make for it, some concrete, visible symbol, as has been done with the formulas of logic and the abstractions of arithmetic and algebra. These visible symbols on the slate and the blackboard give to those sciences all the advantages in this respect which were supposed to be ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... figures of children on their heads, passed them in the course of the morning; they were mothers, who, having lost a child, carry these rude imitations of them about their persons for an indefinite time, as a symbol of mourning. Not one of them could be induced to part with one of these little ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... of hope Its breath and blight of presage; yea, even now The winter of this wind out of the deeps Makes cold our trust in comfort of the Gods And blind our eye toward outlook; yet not here, Here never shall the Thracian plant on high For ours his father's symbol, nor with wreaths A strange folk wreathe it upright set and crowned Here where our natural people born behold 500 The golden Gorgon of the shield's defence That screens their flowering olive, nor strange Gods Be graced, and Pallas here have praise no more. And ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... was in charge of the operations against General Beyers in the Western Transvaal during the latter part of December 1900. On the afternoon of Christmas Eve a flag of truce—that symbol of civilisation and chivalry in war which has been practically unknown during this war with Germany—appeared at our outposts, and a young Dutch officer was brought to my Headquarters carrying a request from Beyers regarding ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres

... conscious of their presence, for he points toward them with his little hand. Light radiates from the clouds and the angels, while deep shadows at the left and the right serve to heighten the effectiveness of the central part of the picture. The lamb, as the symbol of innocence, is the natural playmate of these two healthy, sturdy boys. The little John drinks eagerly, as if he were indeed thirsty and weary, while Jesus, although younger in years, has the kind and thoughtful look of an elder brother ...
— Stories Pictures Tell - Book Four • Flora L. Carpenter

... a deep red one, bearing the design of globe and cross in crude outline of uncompromising black. As he regarded, absently, that primitive religious symbol, there awoke within him a certain phantom conscience, which was wont to play an effective part in his elaborate process of self-mystification. To-day this facile monitor hinted that if Geof did feel so sure of himself, it would hardly be the part of a friend to press his own advantage too ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller

... size and its abundance of five-lobed leaves render it a pleasant shade-tree, and its fruit furnishes a wholesome food very much used in all the lands of the Bible.' Figs were among the fruits mentioned in the 'land that flowed with milk and honey,' and it was a symbol of peace and plenty, as you will find, Malcolm, by reading to us from First Kings, ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church

... said that the great mastery O'Connell exercised over the people mainly sprang from the passionate earnestness of his conviction. The nation's heart seemed merged into his own. He stood forth her living, breathing symbol. When he spoke it was Ireland spoke. Her passions rocked his soul; her humour flashed from his eye; her scorn gleamed in his glances, and her sobs choked his utterance. Ah! if preachers were as filled with the Spirit of Christ as this man was with the ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan

... wrote in 1300, after the height of this emotion had passed; and Petrarch wrote half a century later still; but so slowly did the vision fade, and so often did it revive, that, to this day, it remains the strongest symbol with which ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... fresh pools among the stones, that as one of the pools dried up another formed, redder and more glistening, and that these pools were fed from great gashes which the dancers hacked in their own skulls and breasts with hatchets and sharpened stones. The dance was a blood-rite, a great sacrificial symbol, in which blood flowed so freely that all the rocking feet were ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... such thoughts, let loose, would wreck the world. The kingly function is the soul of state, The crown the emblem of authority, And loyalty the symbol of all faith. Omitting these, man's government decays— His family falls into revolt and ruin. But let us drop this bootless argument, And tell me more of those unrivalled ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair

... prevent one of his converts from being drawn in; and when an old man came up and terrorized his pupils by planting a symbolic tree outside the Mission hut, Patteson argued with him at length and persuaded him to withdraw his threatening symbol. But apart from idolatry, from internecine warfare, and from such horrors as cannibalism, prevalent in many islands, he was studious not to attack old traditions. He wanted a good Melanesian standard of conduct, not a feeble ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... Archbishop had said, as he passed the document round, "that our young friend, er—hem—having exhibited the American nation in wax, a symbol of its pliability, surely is now proceeding to melt it down and to return to England. That is a wise undertaking. Syrus, the philosopher, has told us that Fortune is like glass, when she shines too much she is broken. Let our friend take the tide at the flood and not complain afterwards that ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... their numbers up to nine by the addition of W. Spottiswoode, but the proposal to elect a tenth member was never carried out. On the principle of lucus a non lucendo, this lent an additional appropriateness to the symbol x, the origin of which Huxley thus describes in his reminiscences of Tyndall in the "Nineteenth Century" ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... so long-baffled efforts—she, stiff as any stone, standing right facing me, her eyes dilated with terror, her ashen lips trembling, but her body motionless. In her hands she held her crucifix, as if by that holy symbol she sought to oppose my entrance. At sight of me, her whole frame relaxed, and she sank back upon a chair. Some mighty tension had given way. Still her eyes looked fearfully into the gloom of the outer air, made more opaque by the glimmer of the lamp inside, which she had placed before the ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... Thy symbol be the mountain-bird, Whose glistening quill I hold; Thy home the ample air of hope, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... could do, And woe to him who did not do it For he got certain cause to rue it. No sinner ever dreaded Charon, Nor was the mighty rod of Aaron, By ancient Egypt's magic men, In Pharoah's old despotic reign, More feared as symbol of a God Than was by us James Agnew's rod; With it he batter'd arithmetic, Lore practical and theoretic Latin too, and English grammar Into your head, a perfect "crammar," Was Agnew's most persuasive rod, Nor less his magisterial nod. How would ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett

... bondage fled, Signs from on high the wanderers led; But here—Heaven hung no symbol here, Their steps to guide, their souls to cheer; They saw, thro' sorrow's lengthening night, Nought but the fagot's guilty light; The cloud they gazed at was the smoke, That round their murdered brethren broke. Nor power above, nor power below, Sustained ...
— An Ode Pronounced Before the Inhabitants of Boston, September the Seventeenth, 1830, • Charles Sprague

... round a bonfire as naturally as birds after a shower of rain, and for those who see in such a fire no mere holocaust of dead twigs, but the Red Flower of the Jungle, the symbol and spirit of wild life, this spontaneous minstrelsy has a charm peculiarly its own. A charm of the simplest, certainly; for at camp-fires the banjo reigns supreme; and the aptest songs are those that ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... must be, to a certain extent, a poet. We are such imaginative creatures, that nothing so works on the human mind, barbarous or civil, as a trope. Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol, and an audience is electrified. They feel as if they already possessed some new right and power over a fact, which they can detach, and so completely master in thought. It is a wonderful aid to the memory, which carries away the image, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... retiring modesty which needs a little encouragement before it fully reveals its beauty and its perfume? If one were to pass his life in moving in a palace car from one plush hotel to another, a bunch of chrysanthemums in his hand would seem to be a good symbol of his life. There are aged people who can remember that they used to choose various roses, as to their color, odor, and degree of unfolding, to express the delicate shades of advancing passion and of devotion. What can one do with this new favorite? Is not a bunch of chrysanthemums a sort of take-it-or-leave-it ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... to talk to the disk, at first in a very rapid mumble and then, as there was no frightening response, with less speed and more confidence. There were symbol lines on the vista-plate in accordance, and some of them made sense! Ross ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton

... was decided for him by the door of the room being thrown suddenly open, and the rotund person of the clergyman of the parish, bearing, in the "fair round belly with fat capon lined," the sign and symbol affixed by Shakspeare to the "Justice of Peace," entered the apartment. He gazed with some surprise upon two persons, who, notwithstanding some slight disarray in their apparel from all the events which had lately taken place, still bore the appearance of belonging to the ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... the air, high and low, high and low; lie shrinking, awaiting the second summons that never failed to terrify, the siren of the Chippering Mill,—to her the cry of an insistent, hungry monster demanding its daily food, the symbol of a stern, ugly, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... had discovered that the only thing worth worshiping is Force. By it all things might be secured, all that toil and trade had laboriously obtained. The confiscation of goods and lands, the taxation of provinces, were the reward of successful warfare; and the emperor was the symbol of force. There was a social splendor, but it was the phosphorescent corruption of the ancient ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... but in vain. It was plainly and clearly to be seen, in the progress of the affair, that they did not intend to leave. It is matter of evidence that above Maghchachansie, near the Sankikans, the arms of Their High Mightinesses were erected by order of Director Kieft, as a symbol that the river, with all the country and the lands around there, were held and owned under Their High Mightinesses. But what fruits has it produced as yet, other than continued derision and derogation of dignity? For the Swedes, with intolerable ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor

... deepest pledge of honor; though in many climes, whiteness typifies the majesty of Justice in the ermine of the Judge, and contributes to the daily state of kings and queens drawn by milk-white steeds; though even in the higher mysteries of the most august religions it has been made the symbol of the divine spotlessness and power; by the Persian fire worshippers, the white forked flame being held the holiest on the altar; and in the Greek mythologies, Great Jove himself made incarnate in a snow-white bull; and though ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... unimaginable lodge For solitary thinkings; such as dodge Conception to the very bourne of heaven, Then leave the naked brain: be still the leaven, That spreading in this dull and clodded earth Gives it a touch ethereal—a new birth: Be still a symbol of immensity; A firmament reflected in a sea; 300 An element filling the space between; An unknown—but no more: we humbly screen With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending, And giving out a shout most heaven rending, Conjure ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats

... but it remained for the Rosicrucians and the fire philosophers of the Sixteenth Century under the lead of Paracelsus to establish a concrete religious belief on that basis, finding in the Scriptures what seemed to them ample proof that fire was the symbol of the actual presence of God, as in all cases where He is said to have visited this earth. He came either in a flame of fire, or surrounded with glory, which they conceived ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... the philosopher employs are always the same, whereas the numbers which are used in practice represent different sizes or quantities. He does not see that this power of expressing different quantities by the same symbol is the characteristic and not the defect of numbers, and is due to their abstract nature;—although we admit of course what Plato seems to feel in his distinctions between pure and impure knowledge, that the imperfection of matter enters ...
— Philebus • Plato

... even national 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

... its broken reflection And its shadows shall appear, As the symbol of love in heaven, And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... more, my son, for more than once when I Sat all alone, revolving in myself That word which is the symbol of myself, The mortal symbol of the Self was loosed, And past into the Nameless, as a cloud Melts into Heaven. I touched my limbs, the limbs Were strange, not mine—and yet no shadow of doubt, But utter clearness, and through loss of Self The gain of such large life as ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... edge of the Park, one to right, and one to left—last gardes du corps of the House of France!—threw long shadows on the water; and across the opening which they marked, drifted the smoke of burning weeds, the only but sufficient symbol, amid the splendid scene, of that peasant France which destroyed Versailles. It was four o'clock, and to their left, as they sat sheltered on the southern side of the chateau, the visitors of the day were pouring ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the sepulchre I may add, that one principal part of the solemn rites referred to above consisted in depositing a consecrated wafer or, as at Durham Cathedral, a crucifix within its recess—a symbol of the entombment of our blessed Lord—and removing it with great pomp, accompanied sometimes with a mimetic representation of the visit of the Marys to the tomb, on the morning of Easter Sunday. This is a subject capable of copious illustration, for which, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various

... he had nevertheless succeeded in securing for her a place of proud pre-eminence in maritime Hellas. Athens having achieved such a position as she now held, it was the idea of Pericles that the Athenians should so adorn their city that it should be a fitting symbol of the power and glory of their empire. Nor was it difficult for him to persuade his art-loving countrymen to embellish their city with those masterpieces of genius that in their ruins still excite the admiration ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... through the broken clouds, the sun Looked out serene and warm, Painting its holy symbol-light ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... intrusion into their territory, on to their rock, past their promontory, or tree. When passing the residence of one of these beings, the traveller must go by silently, or with some cabalistic invocation, with bowed or bared head, and deposit some symbol of an offering or tribute even if it be only a pebble. You occasionally come across great trees that have fallen across a path that have quite little heaps of pebbles, small shells, etc., upon them deposited by previous passers-by. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... their clerical identity they concealed the tonsure by covering the upper part of their heads with a black cap or coif. When ultimately clerical barristers were driven from the law-courts, the "coif" or black patch on the crown of a barrister's wig became the symbol of the rank of serjeant-at-law. That this distinguishing mark has been, in later years, occasionally misunderstood is illustrated in the story of Serjeant Allen and Sir Henry Keating, Q.C., who were opposed to one another in a case before the Assize Court at Stafford. During the ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... had looked out into opaqueness with the drum-beat of rain on the roof; into the faint starlight when there was only the vagueness of heights and levels; into the harvest moonlight with its spectral unreality. Now the symbol of what the ear had heard the eye saw: war, working in tones of the landscape by day with smokeless powder; war, revealed by its tongues of flame at night. Ugly bursts of fire from the higher hills spread to the heavens like an aurora borealis and broke their messengers in sheets of flame over ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... think especially that obtained from the Pandanus fruit) is also often applied in staining the whole body, this being especially done for dances and visiting; though a young dandy will often do it at other times. The black is the symbol of mourning, and will be referred ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... glimmer of the clairvoyant insight which had come to her on the country road, she understood that O'Hara was for her an embodied symbol of life—that she must either take him or leave him completely and without reserve or evasion. He was not an ideal. In the love she felt for him there was none of the sentimental glamour of her passion for George. She saw his imperfections, but she saw that the man was bigger than any attributes, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... an illustration of provinces and bishoprics, see accompanying map of France showing the ecclesiastical divisions. The seats of the archbishops are indicated by [Symbol]; those of the ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... on the earth, suggesting that electricity is not only in the earth, but around it. He carries his symbol, electricity. ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James

... Wales to Ireland:—"There is no need for a foreign prince to come to Ireland. The Irish people have nothing to say to the Prince of Wales. He has no connection with Ireland except that link of the Crown that has been formed for the country, which is the symbol of Ireland's slavery." This priest said he hated landgrabbers; all except one. "There is but one landgrabber I like, and that is the Tsar of Russia, who threatens to take territory on the Afghan border from England." Father Arthur Ryan, of Thurles, the seat of Archbishop Croke, has printed ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... discovery, Maui set the bird free. But to this day every alae bird wears the symbol of punishment for telling its secret—a tuft of red feathers on ...
— Legends of Wailuku • Charlotte Hapai

... with a red (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 ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... as a sign that the ordering of the universe had a "good intention" even for inveterate idlers, and that the great Arranger of the world felt some kindness for such gipsy-hearts as ours? What law, human or divine, was there to prevent us from making this stream our symbol of deliverance from the conventional and commonplace, our guide to liberty and ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke

... agreed that the device should consist of a very small jack in the top corner, and in the middle a crown with a wooden leg under it—the timber toe being in both Westlake's and Plum's opinion the most pregnant symbol of Britannia's greatness that the imagination ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell

... that everything in nature is a symbol of something like a specimen of an abstruse cryptogram, all the characters of which conceal some meaning. But when we have succeeded in deciphering these living texts, and have grasped the allusion; when, beside the symbol, we have succeeded in finding the commentary, ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... plaster—no. But don't you think it possible that truth, emanating from certain regions and affecting the souls of men, might move them unconsciously to embody it in symbol? What if this Pool were blessed, and men, feeling that it was blessed, put San Francesco here ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... sort of symbol of achievement to Fleming. Then, he was one of these old-model paternalistic employers, and he was afraid that if he relinquished control, a lot of his old retainers would be turned out to grass. And finally, he was opposed in principle to concentration of business ownership. He claimed ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper

... had vanished. But it was exactly like a thousand, a hundred thousand other such street-shrines on Wolf, a smudge of incense reeking and stinking before the squatting image of Nebran, the Toad God whose face and symbol are everywhere on Wolf. I stared for a moment at the ugly idol, then ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... owes much of its peculiar beauty to the religious or superstitious feelings of its inhabitants. At every step we see a white cross gleaming amongst the trees, in a solitary path, or on the top of some rugged and barren rock—a symbol of faith in the desert place; and wherever the footsteps of man have rested, and some three or four have gathered together, there, while the ruined huts proclaim the poverty of the inmates, the temple of God rises in ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... (fighting-cook), the, i. at the Canaries. Gambia (river), the, ii. the French on the. Garajao (Madeira), physical formation of, ii. Garraway trees, the, ii. Gibraltar, physical outline of, i. from English and Spanish points of view. Gold Axe, the Ashanti, powers and purport of the symbol, ii. Gold Coast, Captain Brackenbury on the, ii. Mining Company, Limited, the. Gold-digging in N.W. Africa, i. origin and history, description of the best known gold provinces, gold signs, estimate of the gold supply. Gold-region, the threshold of the, i. Gold-weights, ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... "the Sacrament is, of course, a holy thing, a very holy thing, the sign and symbol of Christ Himself, but in that church sign and symbol were forgotten; the Sacrament was worshipped as if it ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable

... of genius took a lump of formless clay, and beneath the cunning of his hand there grew a great symbol of life. He called it Earthbound. An old man is bowed beneath the sorrow of the world. Under the weight of burdens that seemingly they cannot escape, a younger man and his faithful mate stagger with bent ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... over the French at the battle of Cressy, when Edward ordered his garter to be displayed as a signal of battle; to commemorate which, he made a garter the principal ornament of an order, and a symbol of the indissoluble union of the knights. The order is under the patronage or protection of St. George, whence he figures in its insignia. Such is the account of Camden, Fern, and others. The common story of the order being instituted in honour of a garter of the Countess of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various

... some people remembered better even than their own sorrows—the sight in that grey clear morning, when the fatal cart with the two young women in it was descried by the waiting watching multitude, cleaving its way towards the hideous symbol of a deliberately ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... B, you say, may simultaneously command a double quantity of C, in consequence of doubling their value; and this they may do without absurdity. But how shall I know that, until I know what you cloak under the symbol of C? For if the same thing shall have happened to C which my argument assumes to have happened to B (namely, that its value has altered), then the same demonstration will hold; and the very same absurdity will follow any attempt to infer the quantity from ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... her full, round arm, on the surface of which was spread that light and charming down, symbol of maturity. I applied ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... that this was the symbol carried by the Aztec commanders in chief. He called to his comrades—Sandoval, Olid, Alvarado, Avila, and the other cavaliers—and pointing to ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty

... proper that the writer's position on this point should be clearly understood. He does not claim that the Maya scribes had reached that advanced stage where they could indicate each letter-sound by a glyph or symbol. On the contrary, he thinks a symbol, probably derived in most cases from an older method of picture writing, was selected because the name or word it represented had as its chief phonetic element a certain consonant sound or syllable. If this consonant element were b, the symbol would be ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas

... the ground of al orthographie, leading the wryter from the sound to the symbol, and the reader from the symbol to the sound. As, for exemple, if I wer to wryte God, the tuich of the midle of the tongue on the roofe of the mouth befoer the voual, and the top of the tongue on the teeth behind the voual, myndes me to wryte it god. The voual is judged be ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume

... to impute the most death to the faith which has the most form. We did not gather how this abounding life can afford, though making more of our little fleshly sojourn than any other patron, to compare a skull with the life of the spirit, and relegate it to ornamentation and symbol. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... thou art a man to be trusted. I am interested in these Christians. I would hear more. Come to me tomorrow, at the Temple, after sundown. There is a little back entrance in the alleyway. Ask for Lycidon, the priest of Jupiter, and show the porter this symbol. It ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark

... miniature stilettos. Many men wore crape on their arms in pretended memory of friends who had been kissed by Madame Guillotine. There was fever in the air, fever in the blood, and the passions held high carnival. In solitude, danger depresses all save the very strongest, but the mob (ever the symbol of weakness) is made up of women—it is an effeminate thing. It laughs hysterically at death and cries, "On with the dance!" Women represent the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... Angele's sad reflections passed away, and the thought smote her that, were it not for such as this black-toothed priest, Michel would not now be on his way to England, a prisoner. To her this vesper bell was the symbol of tyranny and hate. It was fighting, it was martyrdom, it was exile, it was the Medici. All that she had borne, all that her father had borne, the thought of the home lost, the mother dead before her time, the name ruined, the heritage dispossessed, the red ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... together at last! What an ecstasy it was to be actually unpacking, and to be mingling their effects! A kind of symbol it was of their spiritual union, so that the most commonplace things became touched with meaning. Thyrsis thrilled when the other brought in an armful of books to him—all this wealth was to be added to his store! He owned no books himself, save a few text-books, ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... the darkness of secrecy, to be gone, without a trace, without symbol or vestige of their presence, leaving only the scorched circle of land for the jungle to reclaim, so that no eyes, not even the sharpest, would ever know how long they had stayed, nor where they might ...
— The Link • Alan Edward Nourse

... and cherish and that—nine calendar months, and my gentleman is off with another woman! Bone of his bone!—pish!" exclaimed Mrs. Berry, reckoning her wrongs over vividly. "Here's my ring. A pretty ornament! What do it mean? I'm for tearin' it off my finger a dozen times in the day. It's a symbol? I call it a tomfoolery for the dead-alive to wear it, that's a widow and not a widow, and haven't got a name for what she is in any Dixonary, I've looked, my dear, and"—she spread out her arms—"Johnson haven't got a name ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... ideas began to take shape in Hugh's mind, and he came to the conclusion that it was necessary in a place like London, and working among the harassed and ill-educated poor, to materialise religion—that is to say, to fit some definite form, rite, symbol, and practice to religious emotion. He thought that the bright, dignified, and stately adjuncts of worship, such as they had at the Eton Mission, were not adequate to awaken the sense of the personal and intimate relation between ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson

... nature by the judgment. But nothing can be known or disclosed to the object by means of this concept, which is indeterminate in itself and not adapted for knowledge. Its determining reason is perhaps situated in "the suprasensible substratum of humanity." Thus beauty becomes a symbol of morality. "The subjective principle alone, that is, the indeterminate idea of the suprasensible in us, can be indicated as the sole key to reveal this faculty, which remains unknown to us in its origin. Nothing but this principle can make that ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... will then, indeed, be an Empire on which the sun never sets, and in which Parliament always sits. It need not, of course, be the same Parliament in every case, but can be varied, to suit local customs and prejudices. As a symbol of unity His Majesty the King might be conveyed by a special service of air-ships from one country to another, so that he might always open every Parliament in person. England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales would thus take their proper places in the Empire ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various

... no wise resist evil, but if any one smite thee turn to him the other cheek also;" and into that part which is changed and converted from that which is bodily into that which is spiritual, as he expounds allegorically a symbol which is commanded as an image of things that are excellent. For these images and symbols, fitted to represent other things, were good so long as the truth was not yet present; but when the truth is present, it ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... The Downs are the symbol of Sussex. The sea, the Weald, the heather hills of her great forest district, she shares with other counties, but the Downs are her own. Wiltshire, Berkshire, Kent and Hampshire, it is true, have also their turf-covered chalk hills, but the Sussex Downs ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... citizens, fraternity for their daily intercourse; probity for their conduct; good sense for their mental qualities; modesty for their public actions, which were to have for object the welfare of the state, and not their own: such was the symbol of this democracy. Fanaticism could not go further. The authors of this system did not inquire into its practicability; they thought it just and natural; and having power, they tried to establish it by violence. Not one of these words but served to ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... was to her the symbol of work. To have cared for his home, to have looked after his daily needs, to have sheltered him humbly from little things, would have been her one true happiness. And this was denied her. Had she been a man, it would have been so easy. She could have ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... called the Tonacaquahutl, or "tree of life," which was represented with branches somewhat in the form of a cross, surmounted by a bird. This symbol also appears on a tablet discovered by Mr Stevens at Palenque. In various parts of the country terra cotta figures have been dug up. Some of them are rude, but others are extremely artistic; and though ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... have 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 ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... is the title of the Lutheran corpus doctrinae, i.e., of the symbols recognized and published under that name by the Lutheran Church. The word symbol, sumbolon, is derived from the verb sumballein, to compare two things for the purpose of perceiving their relation and association. Sumbolon thus developed the meaning of tessara, or sign, token, badge, banner, watchword, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... once or twice in our acquaintance—a look which I may call an absolute concatenation of inductive and deductive ratiocination—from which all that was human, tender, or sympathetic was absolutely discharged. He was simply an icy algebraic symbol! Indeed, his whole being was concentrated to that extent that his clothes fitted loosely, and his head was absolutely so much reduced in size by his mental compression that his hat tipped back from his forehead and literally hung on ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte

... otherwise, for me. So the years go on and so our cherished flowers drop from us; so we feel our roots of life chilling and growing old; and the marriage-veil that we wrap round a beloved child becomes the symbol of the shroud that is to fold us from her. I knew that I should one day have to give up my Karen; I wished it; she knows that; but now that it has come and that the torch is in her hand, I can only feel the darkness in which her going leaves me. Not ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... knowledge of some other language than one's own is, in fact, of singular intellectual value. Many of the faults and mistakes of the ancient philosophers are traceable to the fact that they knew no language but their own, and were often led into confusing the symbol with the thought which it embodied. I think it is Locke who says that one-half of the mistakes of philosophers have arisen from questions about words; and one of the safest ways of delivering yourself from the bondage of words is, to know how ideas look in words to which you are not accustomed. That ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... "What do you mean? The government is a constitutional monarchy with the king merely a powerless symbol. The standard of living is high. Elections are honest and democratic. They've got ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... pictures treated in this way, and the ceilings and lintels were embellished with symbolic forms in the same manner. All the ornaments, as distinguished from the paintings, were symbolical, at least in their origin. Over the gateway was the solar disk or globe with wide-spread wings, the symbol of the sun winging its way to the conquest of night; upon the ceiling were sacred vultures, zodiacs, or stars spangled on a blue ground. Externally the temples presented only masses of unbroken wall; but ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... free-will, the absolute mind, spirit instead of matter, have for their sole meaning a better promise as to this world's outcome. Be they false or be they true, the meaning of them is this meliorism. I have sometimes thought of the phenomenon called 'total reflexion' in optics as a good symbol of the relation between abstract ideas and concrete realities, as pragmatism conceives it. Hold a tumbler of water a little above your eyes and look up through the water at its surface—or better still look similarly through ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James

... of view we see the value and importance of the resurrection of Jesus, and why Easter Sunday should be the chief festival of Christianity. It was the great triumph of life over death, of good over evil. It was the apt symbol and illustration ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... independence and well-being of forty millions of Germans was unguaranteed, and the peace of all Europe uninsured? If so, what remained to be achieved? to complete what the German Cavour, the Precursor Stein, had begun, to embody and make real the glorious dreams of which Queen Louise had been the symbol, the Joan of Arc?[8] ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various

... a few 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 ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.

... together. I do not say there is anything here more notable than the Annunciation attributed to Andrea at the Spedale degli Innocenti, while of course, for most people, his putti on the facade of that building are the della Robbia symbol; nor is there anything finer than Luca's work at Impruneta; but as a collection of sweetness and gentle domestic beauty these Bargello reliefs are unequalled, both in character and in volume. Here you see what one might call Roman Catholic art—that ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... Plantagenets, and the legitimate successor to the English throne." She immediately assigned to him an equipage suited to his supposed rank, appointed a guard of thirty halberdiers to wait upon him, and gave him the title of "The White Rose of England"—the symbol of ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... conventionality," she replied, allowing him to place it on her finger; "there is no need to advertise the situation publicly; besides, it is a fitting symbol of ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... the same spot for eight hundred years, through good and bad repute, but in nearly uninterrupted prosperity. The Baroness, who hankered after greatness, felt that the gloom was a twilight of gods. She stood still before the canopy, the symbol of princely rank and privilege, the invisible silk bellows were silent for a few seconds, and she wondered whether there were any procurable sum which she and her husband would grudge in exchange for the acknowledged right to display a crowned eagle, cheeky, argent and sable, in ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... noblest in 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

... one or two of the rarer phenomena of the outer world which must not be left quite without mention in our list. The transmutation of metals is commonly supposed to be a mere dream of the mediaeval alchemists, and no doubt in most cases the description of the phenomenon was merely a symbol of the purification of the soul; yet there seems to be some evidence that it was really accomplished by them on several occasions, and there are petty magicians in the East who profess to do it under test ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater

... acknowledged by foreign powers and by the mother country as the United States, not as severally independent sovereign states. Severally they have never exercised the full powers of sovereign states; they have had no flag—symbol of sovereignty—recognized by foreign powers, have made no foreign treaties, held no foreign relations, had no commerce foreign or interstate, coined no money, entered into no alliances or confederacies with foreign states or with one another, and in several respects have been more restricted ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... be a more poignant symbol of irreclaimable vanished things than that so happily hit on ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne



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