What's great about symbols, what a writer can do with them is provide a really vivid, interesting image, and the reader will do the rest of the work. That's always been very interesting to me. Like if I just introduce the storks, I don't have to say what they mean because the reader will do that. And if I bring in the dark history of the region, other trends come up, for example how in ancient Egypt they are associated with the souls of the dead. You can surprise yourself by introducing an image and then see how developing the story fills it with meaning that is suddenly new.
Natural causes, as we know, are at work, which tend to modify, if they do not at length destroy, all the arrangements and dimensions of the earth and the whole solar system. But though in the course of ages catastrophes have occurred and may yet occur in the heavens, though ancient systems may be dissolved and new systems evolved out of their ruins, the molecules [i. e. atoms] out of which these systems are built-the foundation stones of the material universe-remain unbroken and unworn. They continue to this day as they were created-perfect in number and measure and weight.
All the aftermath that so frequently follows in the wake of war still confront the nation, and we now, as ever before, must hold fast to the ancient landmarks and see to it that all of these plagues that threaten so mightily shall be rendered harmless.
Ancient and modern languages teem with happily expressed sentiments of more or less force and beauty, sufficiently individualized and excellent to warrant their reproduction and classification.
Society therefore is an ancient as the world.
When a young person is moved by a passion and feels compelled to go on this sort of quest, I think you have to let him. You can't stop him. In our culture we don't have formal rights of passage like in some ancient cultures. Subjecting yourself to risk. . . may be something you have to go through to be a man or a woman.
All societies, ancient or modern, primitive or sophisticated, have guided themselves by values and goals rooted in the experience of 'deep intuition'.
Atlantis: Fabled. Mystical. Golden. Mysterious. Glorious and magical. There are those who claim that it never was. But then there are also those who think they are safe in this modern world of technology and weapons. Safe from all the ancient evils. They even believe that wizards, warriors, and dragons are long dead. They are fools clinging to their science and logic while thinking it will save them. (Thrylos)
There is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book.
Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes. In our time, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance. The metaphor of the cosmic dance thus unifies ancient mythology, religious art and modern physics.
Now when the ancient Egyptians, awestruck and wondering, turned their eyes to the heavens, they concluded that two gods, the sun and the moon, were primeval and eternal; and they called the former Osiris, the latter Isis.
I should describe mine own nature as tripartite, my interests consisting of three parallel and dissociated groups--(a) Love of the strange and fantastic. (b) Love of the abstract truth and of scientific logic. (c) Love of the ancient and the permanent. Sundry combinations of these three strains will probably account for all my odd tastes and eccentricities.
Well, love is insanity. The ancient Greeks knew that. It is the taking over of a rational and lucid mind by delusion and self-destruction. You lose yourself, you have no power over yourself, you can't even think straight.
Each new Clarice, compact as a living body with its smells and its breath, shows off, like a gem, what remains of the ancient Clarices, fragmentary and dead.
Dharma is an ancient word for truth.
The impulse to mar and to destroy is as ancient and almost as nearly universal as the impulse to create. The one is an easier way than the other of demonstrating power.
The Torah is the foundational text for Jewish law, but the Haggadah is our book of living memory. We are not merely telling a story here. We are being called to a radical act of empathy. Here we are, embarking on an ancient, perennial attempt to give human lives - our lives - dignity.
I belong to an ancient, idle, wild, and useless tribe. . . I am a storyteller.
China, slavishly dedicated to ancient scholars, incapable of generating within herself sufficient rulers to continue, without bloodshed, a nation.
The stability of modern governments above the ancient, and the accuracy of modern philosophy, have improved, and probably will still improve, by similar gradations.