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afa77b6
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Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes.
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beauty
truth
breakfast-of-champions
sometimes
kurt-vonnegut
symbols
symbol
symbolism
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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a131d8e
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Don't confuse the teacher with the lesson, the ritual with the ecstasy, the transmitter of the symbol with the symbol itself.
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symbol
symbolic
teacher
lesson
ritual
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Neil Gaiman |
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b9723a1
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There is no remedy against this reversal of the natural order. Man cannot escape from his own achievement. He cannot but adopt the conditions of his own life. No longer in a merely physical universe, man lives in a symbolic universe. Language, myth, art, and religion are parts of this universe. They are the varied threads which weave the symbolic net, the tangled web of human experience. All human progress in thought and experience refines and strengthens this net. No longer can man confront reality immediately; he cannot see it, as it were, face to face. Physical reality seems to recede in proportion as man's symbolic activity advances. Instead of dealing with the things themselves man is in a sense constantly conversing with himself. He has so enveloped himself in linguistic forms, in artistic images, in mythical symbols or religious rites that he cannot see or know anything except by the interposition of this artificial medium. His situation is the same in the theoretical as in the practical sphere. Even here man does not live in a world of hard facts, or according to his immediate needs and desires. He lives rather in the midst of imaginary emotions, in hopes and fears, in illusions and disillusions, in his fantasies and dreams. 'What disturbs and alarms man,' said Epictetus, 'are not the things, but his opinions and fantasies about the things.
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mediation
symbol
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Ernst Cassirer |
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the difference between poets and mystics . . . The mystic nails a symbol to one meaning that was true for a moment but soon becomes false. The poet, on the other hand, sees that truth but understands that symbols are always in flux and that their meanings are fleeting.
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truth
symbol
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Neal Stephenson |
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5a04ea4
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We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard defining edges.
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symbol
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Gene Wolfe |
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But what a feeling can come over a man just from seeing the things he believes in and hopes for symbolized in the concrete form of a man. In something that gives a focus to all the other things he knows to be real. Something that makes unseen things manifest and allows him to come to his hopes and dreams through his outer eye and through the touch and feel of his natural hand.
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hopes
reality
dreams
truth
symbol
hero
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Ralph Ellison |
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cf1c1c8
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"I catch sight of Luis with one of my bandannas on his head and my gut tightens. I yank it off him. "Don't ever touch this, Luis." "Why not?" he asks, his deep brown eyes all innocent. To Luis, it's a bandanna. To me, it's a symbol of what is and will never be. How the hell am I supposed to explain it to an eleven-year-old kid? He knows what I am. It's no secret the bandanna has the Latino Blood colors on it. Payback and revenge got me in and now there's no way out. But I'll die before I let one of my brothers get sucked in. I ball the bandanna in my fist. "Luis, don't touch my shit. Especially my Blood stuff." "I like red and black." That's the last thing I need to hear. "If I ever catch you wearin' it again, you'll be sportin' black and blue," I tell him. "Got it, little brother?" He shrugs. "Yeah. I got it."
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latino-blood
bandanna
luis-fuentes
innocent
gang
brother
symbol
red
colors
blood
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Simone Elkeles |
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21eebfe
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I'd hoped for someone who was remarkably intelligent, but disadvantaged by home circumstance, someone who only needed an hour's extra tuition a week to become some kind of working-class prodigy. I wanted my hour a week to make the difference between a future addicted to heroin and a future studying English at Oxford. That was the sort of kid I wanted, and instead they'd given me someone whose chief interest was in eating fruit. I mean, what did he need to read for? There's an international symbol for the gents' toilets, and he could always get his mother to tell him what was on television.
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reading
disadvantaged
gents-toilets
martin-sharpe
pacino
telly
learning-to-read
oxford
prodigy
intelligent
symbol
tutoring
english
fruit
heroin
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Nick Hornby |