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Exlpore more Symbolism quotes

"The fly ought to be used as the symbol of impertinence and audacity for whilst all other animals shun man more than anything else and run away even before he comes near them the fly lights upon his very nose."

"Her sample drawings were clipped, rather subordinately, to her photograph. All of them were arresting. One of them was unforgettable. The unforgettable one was done in florid wash colors, with a caption that read: 'Forgive Them Their Trespasses.' It showed three small boys fishing in an odd-looking body of water, one of their jackets draped over a 'No Fishing!' sign. The tallest boy, in the foreground of the picture, appeared to have rickets in one leg and elephantiasis in the other--an effect, it was clear, that Miss Kramer had deliberately used to show that the boy was standing with his feet slightly apart."

"Rams wrapped in thermogene beget no lambs."

"Only the foolish, blinded by language's conventions, think of fire as red or gold. Fire is blue at it's melancholy rim, green in it's envious heart. It may burn white, or even, in it's greatest rages, black."

"His gaze, bluntedby the unnumbered processionof iron bars, uncountedas his softly padded steps.Smooth motion of blood and sinewturning in its own, small circleprescribed by bars and walls...and skin, confined.Suddenly, without warning,a flash of light and imagepierces the caged brain,and passing through its beating heartto stillness finds its way."

"All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel."
Explore more quotes by Doris Lessing

"I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer."

"Pleasure resorts are like film stars and royalty... embarrassed by the figures they cut in the fantasies of people who have never met them."

"It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction."

"The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion."

"There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best."

"If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air."

"What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better."

"Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so."
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