«A leader may symbolize and express what is best in people, like Pericles, or what is worst, like Hitler, but he cannot successfully express what is only in his heart and not in theirs»

«The beauty of flames lies in their strange play, beyond all proportion and harmony. Their diaphanous flare symbolizes at once grace and tragedy, innocence and despair, sadness and voluptuousness. The burning transcendence has something of the lightness of great purifications. I wish the fiery transcendence would carry me up and throw me into a sea of flames, where, consumed by their delicate and insidious tongues, I would die an ecstatic death. The beauty of flames creates the illusion of a pure, sublime death similar to the light of dawn. Immaterial, death in flames is like a burning of light, graceful wings. Do only butterflies die in flames? What about those devoured by the flames within them?»

«The parks of Paris-the Bois de Boulogne, Parc Monceau, Vert Galant, Luxembourg, Tuileries, Buttes-Chaumont and others of varying size and fame-symbolize man's humanity to man.»

«Today, the degradation of the inner life is symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred from interruption is the private toilet.»

«Tattoos are like stories - they're symbolic of the important moments in your life. Sitting down, talking about where you got each tattoo and what it symbolizes, is really beautiful.»

«When the wedding march sounds the resolute approach, the clock no longer ticks, it tolls the hour.. The figures in the aisle are no longer individuals, they symbolize the human race.»

«CRAYFISH, n. A small crustacean very much resembling the lobster, but less indigestible.In this small fish I take it that human wisdom is admirably figured and symbolized; for whereas the crayfish doth move only backward, and can have only retrospection, seeing naught but the perils already passed, so the wisdom of man doth not enable him to avoid the follies that beset his course, but only to apprehend their nature afterward. --Sir James Merivale»

«CUPID, n. The so-called god of love. This bastard creation of a barbarous fancy was no doubt inflicted upon mythology for the sins of its deities. Of all unbeautiful and inappropriate conceptions this is the most reasonless and offensive. The notion of symbolizing sexual love by a semisexless babe, and comparing the pains of passion to the wounds of an arrow --of introducing this pudgy homunculus into art grossly to materialize the subtle spirit and suggestion of the work --this is eminently worthy of the age that, giving it birth, laid it on the doorstep of prosperity.»