“Christ on the cross – what a symbol. A symbol of love surpassed by sorrow, which lies at the root of human condition, the main symbol of human poetry.. ..but that's enough of that, I'm getting morbid. It's Siredey's fault [his doctor during his last years, when Manet was seriously ill: syphilis]. Doctors always remind me of undertakers. Though I must say, I feel a lot better this evening.”

— Edouard Manet

quoted in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe; Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 232
1880s
while working on Antonin Proust's portrait https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PeinturesMus%C3%A9eFabre089-Manet.jpg in 1881-82

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Edouard Manet 29

French painter 1832–1883

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“No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by that word. It is every individual’s individual code of behavior by means of which he makes himself a better human being than his nature wants to be, if he followed his nature only. Whatever its symbol — cross or crescent or whatever — that symbol is man’s reminder of his duty inside the human race.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Paris Review interview (1958)
Context: No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by that word. It is every individual’s individual code of behavior by means of which he makes himself a better human being than his nature wants to be, if he followed his nature only. Whatever its symbol — cross or crescent or whatever — that symbol is man’s reminder of his duty inside the human race. Its various allegories are the charts against which he measures himself and learns to know what he is. It cannot teach a man to be good as the textbook teaches him mathematics. It shows him how to discover himself, evolve for himself a moral codes and standard within his capacities and aspirations, by giving him a matchless example of suffering and sacrifice and the promise of hope.

“Art is the creation of forms symbolic of human feeling.”

Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985) American philosopher

Source: Feeling and Form (1953), Ch. 3, p. 40

“I'm aware that people see me as a sex symbol, and it’s getting me attention. But I know I can act.”

Diora Baird (1983) American actress and model

[Cory, Jones, "Who's Your Caddy?", August 2006, Maxim Magazine Online, http://www.maximonline.com/articles/index.aspx?a_id=7251, 2007-01-23]

“The cross is a very powerful symbol and it symbolizes suffering, but it also is connected to a person who was loving and sharing and his message was about unconditional love. I tried to take a powerful image and use it to draw attention to a situation that needs attention. For me, we all need to be Jesus in our time. Jesus' message was to love your neighbor as yourself and these are people in need.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Explaining the controversial crucifixion scene in her Confessions tour http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/showbiz/2007-02/17/content_811558.htm

“Everything is a symbol of a symbol, and a symbol of what? Of mind.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet

30 December 1850
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries
Context: Everything which is, is thought, but not conscious and individual thought. The human intelligence is but the consciousness of being. It is what I have formulated before: Everything is a symbol of a symbol, and a symbol of what? of mind.

“SPAN ID=The_process_by>The process by means of which human beings can arbitrarily make certan things stand for other things may be called the symbolic process. Whenever two or more human beings can communicate with each other, they can, by agreement, make anything stand for anything. For example, here are two symbols:
X Y
We can agree to let X stand for buttons and Y for bows; then we can freely change our agreement and let X stand for […] North Korea, and Y for South Korea. We are, as human beings, uniquely free to manufacture and manipulate and assign values to our symbols as we please. Indeed, we can go further by making symbols that stand for symbols. […] This freedom to create symbols of any assigned value and to create symbols that stand for symbols is essential to what we call the symbolic process. </SPAN”

S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), The Symbolic Process, p. 24

“SPAN ID=A_frustrated_or_unhappy_animal> A frustrated or unhappy animal can do relatively little about its tensions. A human being, however, with an extra dimension (the world of symbols) to move around in, not only undergoes experience, but he also symbolizes his experience to himself. Our states of tension--especially the unhappy tensions -- become tolerable as we manage to state what is wrong -- to get it said -- whether to a sympathetic friend, or on paper to a hypothetical sympathetic reader, or even to oneself. If our symbolizations are adequate and sufficiently skillful, our tensions are brought symbolically under control.”

S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

To achieve this control, one may employ what Kenneth Burke has called "symbolic strategies" -- that is, ways of reclassifying our experiences so that they are "encompassed" and easier to bear. Whether by processes of "pouring out one's heart" or by "symbolic strategies" or by other means, we may employ symbolizations as mechanisms of relief when the pressures of a situation become intolerable. </SPAN>
Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), Bearing the Unbearable, p. 144-145

“The symbol is the tool which gives man his power, and it is the same tool whether the symbols are images or words, mathematical signs or mesons.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

"The Reach of Imagination" (1967)

“It was not that the figure had been removed, not that the figures had been swept away, but the symbols for the figures, and in turn the shapes in the later canvases were substitutes for the figures…. these new shapes say…. what the symbols said. [Rothko, explaining Seitz his new way of painting during the mid-1940s]”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983, p. 142
after 1970, posthumous

“It should also be remembered that the Bible is written in the language of symbols, a special category of literature designed both to conceal and to reveal spiritual truths. Blindness is a symbol for temporary unawareness of spiritual light. The Christ partly represents spiritual intuitiveness. When one who is spiritually blind becomes intuitively awakened and active or, symbolically, enters the presence of the Christ and is healed by him, the scales are said to have fallen from his eyes. This I believe to be the true symbolical interpretation; for I look upon the story as one of the many beautiful miniature mystery dramas to be found in the Bible, portraying in allegory and symbol the soul’s awakening from darkness to light. Nevertheless, symbolism apart, the answer given by the Lord was, as stated above, doctrinally and technically correct.”

Geoffrey Hodson (1886–1983) New Zealand occultist

Reincarnation & Christianity (1967)

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