102 Symbolic Meaning Quotes

Following is our list of symbolic meaning quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about what is symbolic means.

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Famous Symbolic Meaning Quotes

Symbols are powerful because they are the visible signs of invisible realities. — Saint Augustine

Symbolism is the language of the Mysteries. By symbols men have ever sought to communicate to each other those thoughts which transcend the limitations of language. — Manly Hall

Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration: it is inherent in the very texture of human life. — Alfred North Whitehead

People who look for symbolic meaning fail to grasp the inherent poetry and mystery of the images. — Rene Magritte

Everything in this world has a hidden meaning. - Nikos Kazantzakis

Everything in this world has a hidden meaning. — Nikos Kazantzakis

People have the idea that an image must stand for something else, that the real meaning needs to be described with language. Instead it is the image itself that is the meaning. — Mark Ryden

All that passes is raised to the dignity of expression; all that happens is raised to the dignity of meaning. Everything is either symbol or parable. — Paul Claudel

There is no meaning if meaning is not shared, and not because there would be an ultimate or first signification that all beings have in common, but because meaning is itself the sharing of Being. — Jean-Luc Nancy

The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them. — Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Synchronistic events offer us perceptions that may be useful in our psychological and spiritual growth and may reveal to us, through intuitive knowledge, that our lives have meaning. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

Synchronicity...means a 'meaningful coincidence' of outer and inner events that are not themselves causally connected. The emphasis lies on the word 'meaningful'. — Marie-Louise von Franz

No pattern should be without some sort of meaning. — William Morris

Synchronistic events constitute moments in which a 'cosmic' or 'greater' meaning becomes gradually conscious in an individual; generally it is a shaking experience. — Marie-Louise von Franz

All nature is a vast symbolism: Every material fact has sheathed within it a spiritual truth. — Edwin Powell Hubble

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

Short Symbolic Meaning Quotes

  • Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it. — Hannah Arendt
  • Every little moment has a meaning all its own. — Sanford Meisner
  • Synchronicity reveals the meaningful connections between the subjective and objective world. — Carl Jung
  • The true Tarot is symbolism; it speaks no other language and offers no other signs. — A. E. Waite
  • Without context words and actions have no meaning at all — Gregory Bateson
  • Man is a being in search of meaning. — Plato
  • The meanings of words are not in the words, they are in us. — S. I. Hayakawa

Symbolic Meaning Image Quotes

Symbolic meaning quote Just because my path is different doesn't mean I'm lost.
Just because my path is different doesn't mean I'm lost.

Symbolic Meaning Of Quotes

I wore black because I liked it. I still do, and wearing it still means something to me. It's still my symbol of rebellion -- against a stagnant status quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others' ideas. — Johnny Cash

The symbol in Chinese for crisis is made up of two ideographs: one means danger, the other means opportunity. This symbol is a reminder that we can choose to turn a crisis into an opportunity or into a negative experience. — Virginia Satir

You must understand what the Parthenon Marbles mean to us. They are our pride. They are our sacrifices. They are our noblest symbol of excellence. They are a tribute to the democratic philosophy. They are our aspirations and our name. They are the essence of Greekness. — Melina Mercouri

Symbolic meaning quote Fear has two meanings - Forget Everything And Run or Face Everything And Rise. The choice is yours.
Fear has two meanings - Forget Everything And Run or Face Everything And Rise. The choice is yours.

We have the power of the Holy Cross, our holy symbol, the divine grace of Christ, only as long as we have the holy marking of the Holy Baptism, meaning we have denied the devil and sided with Christ, and received the Holy Marking, the seal of the Gift of the Holy Spirit. — Elder Paisios of Mount Athos

Rhetoric is rooted in an essential function of language itself, a function that is wholly realistic and continually born anew: the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols. — Kenneth Burke

The simplest and most basic meaning of the symbol of the Goddess is the acknowledgment of the legitimacy of female power as a beneficent and independent power. — Carol P. Christ

Symbolic meaning quote One bad chapter does not mean your story is over.
One bad chapter does not mean your story is over.

The geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out an inner journey. The inner journey is the interpolation of the meanings and signs of the outer pilgrimage. One can have one without the other. It is best to have both. — Thomas Merton

Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith. — Paul Tillich

Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Mickey Mouse is, to me, a symbol of independence. He was a means to an end. — Walt Disney

What Is Symbolic Means Quotes

...What does the blessing of heaven mean? We know the kirin is just an animal, not a mythical creature." It has become a symbol now.... That is the way human beings deal with the world. — Lian Hearn

Machines will never be able to give the thinking process a model of thought itself, since machines are not mortal. What gives humans access to the symbolic domain of value and meaning is the fact that we die. — Regis Debray

Telling someone about what a symbol means is like telling someone how music should make them feel. — Dan Brown

Symbolic meaning quote You will continue to suffer if you have an emotional reaction to everything that is said to you. Tru
You will continue to suffer if you have an emotional reaction to everything that is said to you. True power is sitting back and observing everything with logic. If words control your that means everyone can control you. Breathe and allow things to pass.

A person gets from a symbol the meaning he puts into it, and what is one man's comfort and inspiration is another's jest and scorn. — Robert H. Jackson

It's the emotion...each word has got a connotation and symbolism and the thing is finding what's behind the word-what meaning it has and what emotion. I'm really into vocal repetition as a definite art form. — Van Morrison

Symbolic Quotes

The Black skin is not a badge of shame, but rather a glorious symbol of national greatness. — Marcus Garvey

My success symbolizes loyalty, great friends, Dedication, hard work, routine builds character. In a world full of snakes, rats and scavengers — Nas

Behold the crucifix; what does it symbolize? Pallid incompetence hanging on a tree. — Anton Szandor LaVey

Symbolic meaning quote Don't confuse your path with your destination. Just because it's stormy now doesn't mean that you ar
Don't confuse your path with your destination. Just because it's stormy now doesn't mean that you aren't headed for sunshine.

At the rate America is decaying morally, we shall have to change our national symbol from an eagle to a vulture. — Vance Havner

That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there. — George Orwell

Let's not forget that in India the symbol of strength is a woman; the goddess Shakti. — Indira Gandhi

Instead of friends, I see in Washington only mortal enemies. Instead of loving the old flag of the stars and stripes, I see in it only the symbol of murder, plunder, oppression, and shame. — Rose O'Neal Greenhow

The artist constructs a new symbol with his brush. This symbol is not a recognizable form of anything which is already finished, already made, already existing in the world - it is a symbol of a new world, which is being built upon and which exists by way of people. — El Lissitzky

I don't mind being a symbol but I don't want to become a monument. There are monuments all over the Parliament Buildings and I've seen what the pigeons do to them. — Tommy Douglas

My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally. — John Dominic Crossan

Symbolism Quotes

Share your smile with the world. It's a symbol of friendship and peace. - Christie Brinkley

Share your smile with the world. It's a symbol of friendship and peace. — Christie Brinkley

The flag that was the symbol of slavery on the high seas for a long time was not the Confederate battle flag, it was sadly the Stars and Stripes. — Alan Keyes

Im a hard worker, and everything with me is, if I work hard, I should get paid for it. Everything with me, I try to symbolize something flashy like jewelry or a car. The rubbing hands is a symbol of hustling, so it goes back to the money. — Birdman

When people read erotic symbols into my painting, they're really thinking about their own affairs. — Georgia O'Keeffe

If you take myth and folklore, and these things that speak in symbols, they can be interpreted in so many ways that although the actual image is clear enough, the interpretation is infinitely blurred, a sort of enormous rainbow of every possible colour you could imagine. — Diana Wynne Jones

The act of bell ringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people. — Ezra Pound

Food has become entertainment and a status symbol. — Rangan Chatterjee

Numbers have life; they’re not just symbols on paper. — Shakuntala Devi

The anchor in our world today is freedom, holding us steady in times of change, a symbol of hope to all the world. — George H. W. Bush

I think any girl who comes to Hollywood with sex symbol or bombshell hanging over her has a rough road. — Kim Basinger

People Writing About Symbolic Meaning

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Marie-Louise von Franz

Marie-Louise von Franz
quotes on love, marriage and dreams

27 427
Read quotes by Saint Augustine

Saint Augustine
quotes on faith, friendship and death

707 10196
Read quotes by Manly Hall

Manly Hall
quotes on reincarnation, symbolism

36 689
Read quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

Alfred North Whitehead
quotes on god, education

327 1529
Read quotes by Rene Magritte

Rene Magritte
quotes on his art

37 1216
Read quotes by Nikos Kazantzakis

Nikos Kazantzakis
quotes on love, crete and russia

156 2106

More Symbolic Meaning Quotes

Woman, then, stands in patriarchal culture as a signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his fantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of a woman still tied to her place as the bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning. — Laura Mulvey

A dog has no use for fancy cars or big homes or designer clothes. Status symbols mean nothing to him. A waterlogged stick will do just fine. A dog judges others not by their color or creed or class but by who they are inside. A dog doesn't care if you're rich or poor, educated or illiterate, clever or dull. Give him your heart and he will give you his. — John Grogan

The mistake we make is to turn upon our past with angry wholesale negation. … The way of wisdom is to treat it airily, lightly, wantonly, and in a spirit of poetry; and above all to use its symbols, which are its spiritual essence, giving them a new connotation, a fresh meaning. — John Cowper Powys

Secondly, figures, the symbols of numerical magnitude, are frequently also the symbols of operations, as when they are the indices of powers. Wherever terms have a shifting meaning, independent sets of considerations are liable to become complicated together, and reasoning and results are frequently falsified. — Ada Lovelace

Aikido can be summed up like this: True victory is self-victory; let that day arrive quickly! (True victory) means unflinching courage; (self-victory) symbolizes unflagging effort; and (let that day arrive quickly) represents the glorious moment of triumph in the here and now. — Morihei Ueshiba

A story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it. — Ian McEwan

You become aware of an illness by understanding yourself and understanding the meaning that that illness has in your own life, symbolically and, more importantly, quite literally. — Kay Redfield Jamison

The world rarely shrieks its meaning at you. It whispers, in private languages and obscure modalities, in arcane and quixotic imagery, through symbol systems in which every element has multiple meanings determined by juxtaposition. — Gregory Maguire

But even in the Christian religion, much of its real meaning is hidden by words that are misleading and symbols that but few understand. — Ernest Holmes

In prayer the soul comes nearest the experience of absolute love: in belief it ascends by means of symbols towards absolute truth. — Evelyn Underhill

To grasp life and meaning, we assume constancy where it does not exist. We name experiences, emotions, and subjective states and assume that what is named is as enduring as its name. Human beings blessed and cursed with consciousness - especially consciousness of their own being - think in terms of names, words, symbols. — James Bugental

In the 20th century, the position of the monarch as head of the Church of England was given a meaning which it never had before. You took the fact that the monarch was head of the Church of England to mean that the British monarchy was itself a religious or moral institution and the monarchy became a symbol of national public morality. — David Starkey

Nourishing spirituality means cultivating the inward space, the basis of which all things can be brought together. It means overwhelming deadness and stagnation and living reality in terms of values, inspiration, and symbols of higher meaning. — Leonardo Boff

The whole of life is symbolic because the whole of it has meaning. — Boris Pasternak

If I can mean to people - if I can symbolize the ability to pursue gender equality, racial equality, and to be truthful about our experiences, then, absolutely, that's what I want to be. — Anita Hill

I look in the mirror and I don't see a sex symbol. I just see a guy who looks like he's been beaten with a baseball bat. I mean, is this the face of a sex symbol? They say that because I work in the movies. — Javier Bardem

My name, Paloma, means 'dove' in Spanish. It stands as a symbol of peace and purity. — Paloma Picasso

My intention was to grapple with the metaphysical meaning behind Scheherazade and present that meaning in its essence. Scheherazade is the symbol of the savior. She weaves tales not to save her own life, but to save humanity from its unending retributive response to injury. — Alonzo King

The Navy speaks in symbols and you may suit what meaning you choose to the words. — Patrick O'Brian

As a former English professor, I can assure you that grammar is the qualitative interpolation of language. Adjectives, pronouns, predicates, past pluperfect indicative - ridiculous. It has qualities, shadings, differentiations, rhythmic structures of symbolic meaning. — Frederick Lenz

Everything that enters our field of perception means something, large or small. Everything speaks to us, if we will take off our headphones and hear a different sound track. Everything corresponds. We travel better in the forest of symbols when we are open and available to all the forms of meaning that are watching†and waiting for us. — Robert Moss

To me, every dirty act was simply a sacrament of sin, a passionately religious protest against Christianity, which was for me the symbol of all vileness, meanness, treachery, falsehood and oppression. — Aleister Crowley

Our principles fix what our life stands for, our aims create the light our life is bathed in, and our rationality, both individual and coordinate, defines and symbolizes the distance we have come from mere animality. It is by these means that our lives come to more than what they instrumentally yield. And by meaning more, our lives yield more. — Robert Nozick

The number eighteen is symbolically meaningful because it is the numerical equivalent of the Hebrew word chai, which means life. — Michael Bamberger

HAIL HERMES! Mr. Lantiere has created something very special for all of us who love the history of mystery. The Magicician's Wand book opens doors to the past where we have an opportunity to explore the deeper meanings, myths and symbols of our art. — Jeff McBride

In fact, the new malleability of the image may eventually lead to a profound undermining of photography's status as an inherently truthful pictorial form... If even a minimal confidence in photography does not survive, it is questionable whether many pictures will have meaning anymore, not only as symbols but as evidence. — Fred Ritchin

When the symbols are 'public' they usually act in an oblique manner, revealing themselves as archetypal symbols, which though familiar, have their central meanings obscured as is usual in esoteric imagery. — Kenneth Coutts-Smith

Real shapes and real patterns are things you would observe in nature, like the marks on the back of a cobra's hood or the markings on a fish or a lizard. Imaginary shapes are just that, symbols that come to a person in dreams or reveries and are charged with meaning. — Jim Woodring

If a lunatic scribbles a jumble of mathematical symbols it does not follow that the writing means anything merely because to the inexpert eye it is indistinguishable from higher mathematics. — Eric Temple Bell

Indian names were either characteristic nicknames given in a playful spirit, deed names, birth names, or such as have a religious and symbolic meaning. — Charles Alexander Eastman

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