Emblematic Quotes & Sayings

I've grown fonder for Hillary Clinton since she ran for the presidency. I think that it's emblematic of the Rolling Stones song, you can't always get what you want, i.e., the grail. Sometimes you get what you need. And whatever she's gotten over the last couple of years, being humbled or be it being humbled and see the proletariat come to bat for her, getting outside of the bubble, getting out of this man's shadow, not quite getting the job she wants but a great wonk job. — Dennis Miller

The Internet is emblematic of an era in which what happens in Southeast Asia or southern Africa - from democratic advances to deforestation to the fight against aids - can affect Americans. As has been observed about water pollution, we all live downstream now. — Shashi Tharoor

The appearance of precision and order are so important to military commanders because they are generally idiots who couldn't plan a decent cocktail party, especially the bureaucrats who float to the top of the Officer Personnel Management System. They require the appearance of precision and order because their operations, this one being emblematic, are goat fucks. — Stan Goff

That's the spirit, kid," said the voice of the grown man. "Come on, Snow Scouts, let's all say the Snow Scout Alphabet Pledge together."
Instantly the cave echoed with the sound of many voices speaking in perfect unison, a phrase here which means "reciting a list of very odd words at the very same time." "Snow Scouts," recited the Snow Scouts, "are accommodating, basic, calm, darling, emblematic, frisky, grinning, human, innocent, jumping, kept, limited, meek, nap-loving, official, pretty, quarantines, recent, scheduled, tidy, understandable, victorious, wholesome, xylophone, young, and zippered - every morning, every afternoon, every night, and all day long! — Lemony Snicket

Bob Gates is really emblematic of the modern CIA. He joins it in 1968, just a day before the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia. And, of course, he rises very quickly. In less than six years, he's on the National Security Council staff, at the closing weeks of Richard Nixon's presidency and then on into Gerald Ford. — Roger Morris

The founding father of Albanian literature is the nineteenth-century writer Naim Frasheri. Without having the greatness of Dante or Shakespeare, he is nonetheless the founder, the emblematic character. He wrote long epic poems, as well as lyrical poetry, to awaken the national consciousness of Albania. — Ismail Kadare

If you encounter a human shadow burned permanently into the concrete in Hiroshima, you realize that this is the trace of a very ordinary person now elevated into the emblematic. Time, shame, complicity, or discomfort are the only things that make us pretend History is impersonal or far removed from the power and consequences of our every lived moment. — Chris Abani

Every state's emblematic propaganda is worshiped by the consumer-citizen as a super-logo, a brand Juggernaut. — Bryant McGill

The longer I think about a food industry organized around an animal that cannot reproduce itself without technical assistance, the more I mistrust it. Poultry, a significant part of the modern diet, is emblematic of the whole dirty deal. Having no self-sustaining bloodlines to back up the industry is like having no gold standard to underpin paper currency. Maintaining a natural breeding poultry flock is a rebellion, at the most basic level, against the wholly artificial nature of how foods are produced. — Barbara Kingsolver

Emblematic of this era was the prolific Viennese surgeon Theodor Billroth. Born in 1821, Billroth studied music and surgery with almost equal verve. (The professions still often go hand in hand. Both push manual skill to its limit; both mature with practice and age; both depend on immediacy, precision, and opposable thumbs.) — Siddhartha Mukherjee

'Great Expectations' was an important novel in my adolescence. It was very much one of those emblematic novels that made me wish I could write like that. It helped that my models as a writer were dead over a hundred years before I began to write. — John Irving

Our very walking is an incessant falling; a falling and a catching of ourselves before we come actually to the pavement. It is emblematic of all things a man does. — Thomas Carlyle

Sugar crystallizes something in our American soul. It is emblematic of all industrial processes. And of the idea of becoming white. White being equated with pure and 'true': it takes a lot of energy to turn brown things into white things. A lot of pressure. — Kara Walker

The Oracle at Delphi contained three maxims emblematic of Greek life. "Know yourself." "Nothing in excess." and, "Offer a guarantee and disaster threatens. — Anthony Everitt

The words Lafayette used to describe that triumph - "I did not hesitate to be disagreeable to preserve my independence" - applied to getting his way regarding America as well. Perhaps the most emblematic anecdote foretelling Lafayette's stubborn refusal to give up his American dream was the boyhood story about how one day, one of his Parisian schoolteachers was talking up the virtues of an obedient horse. According to Lafayette, "I described the perfect horse as one which, at the sight of the whip, had the sense to throw his rider to the ground before he could be whipped. — Sarah Vowell

The technique of the book and the technique carried by the figure of Scheherazade is one of opening the Sultan's mind. He's emblematic of the ignorant person: the ignorant, lock-in, raging man who wants to kill all he doesn't understand. The model of the book is the extraordinary, very-large, Mirror of Princes. — Marina Warner

Come I am determin'd to unbare this broad breast of mine, I have long enough stifled and choked; Emblematic and capricious blades I leave you, now you serve me not, I will say what I have to say by itself, I will sound myself and comrades only, I will never again utter a call only their call, I will raise with it immortal reverberations through the States, I will give an example to lovers to take permanent shape and will through the States, — Walt Whitman

London has been used as the emblematic English city, but it's far from representative of what life in England is actually about. — Alan Moore

basis. Because many Americans still bartered, Hamilton wanted to encourage the use of coins. As part of his campaign to foster a market economy, Hamilton suggested introducing a wide variety of coins, including gold and silver dollars, a ten-cent silver piece, and copper coins of a cent or half cent. He wasn't just thinking of rich people; small coins would benefit the poor "by enabling them to purchase in small portions and at a more reasonable rate the necessaries of which they stand in need." 42 To spur patriotism, he proposed that coins feature presidential heads or other emblematic designs and display great beauty and workmanship: "It is a just observation that 'The perfection of the coins is a great safeguard against counterfeits. — Ron Chernow

The bowl that emerged was one of those gifts whose first impact produces in the recipient's mind a colored image, a blazoned blur, reflecting with such emblematic force the sweet nature of the donor that the tangible attributes of the thing are dissolved, as it were, in this pure inner blaze, but suddenly and forever leap into brilliant being when praised by an outsider to whom the true glory of the object is unknown. — Vladimir Nabokov

The "little theme" from Vinteuil, heard by Swann as emblematic of his love for Odette, remains a point of reference for him, as the character of that love changes and as the love eventually fades. — Philip Kitcher

Hillary [Clinton] is neither the demon of the right's perception, nor a feminist saint, nor is she particularly emblematic of her time perhaps more old-fashioned than modern. — Carl Bernstein

The headdresses of the Egyptians have great symbolic and emblematic importance, for they represent the auric bodies of the superhuman intelligences, and are used in the same way that the nimbus, halo, and aureole are used in Christian religious art. — Manly Hall

For Hegel, freedom was not just a psychological phenomenon,
but the essence of what was distinctively human. In this sense,
freedom and nature are diametrically opposed. Freedom does not mean the freedom to live in nature o r according to nature; rather, freedom begins only where nature ends. Human freedom emerges only when man is able to transcend his natural, animal existence, and to create a new self for himself The emblematic starting point for this process of self-creation is the struggle to the death for pure prestige. — Francis Fukuyama

I don't think we can say that all working women will get divorced - it's so dangerous to make these things emblematic of anything - but having said that, every person who has a big, important job and tries to have a family, has to make decisions every single minute. — Meryl Streep

The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Crime seems to change character when it crosses a bridge or a tunnel. In the city, crime is taken as emblematic of class and race. In the suburbs though, it's intimate and psychological, a mystery resist to generalization, a mystery of the individual soul. — Barbara Ehrenreich

Grey's chalky, flat, impassive face, dead eyes and squeaky monotone are now virtually emblematic of extreme mainstream pornography. For the uninitiated: her pornographic videos are something like plumbing tutorials by Eli Roth. Some women pride themselves on their quilting; Grey prides herself on choking on oversized genitals. — Antonella Gambotto-Burke

Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism
victimless collecting, as it were ... in a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments. — Susan Sontag

Every conflict is emblematic of the throwaway culture. — Pope Francis

By now you may have concluded that the conversation was neither
about Descartes nor about philosophy, although it certainly was
about mind, brain, and body. My friend suggested it should take
place under the Sign of Descartes, since there was no way of approaching
such themes without evoking the emblematic figure who
shaped the most commonly held account of their relationship. At
this point I realized that, in a curious way, the book would be about
Descartes' Error. You will, of course, want to know what the Error
was, but for the moment I am sworn to secrecy. I promise, though,
that it will be revealed. — Antonio R. Damasio

These are the quicksilver moments of my childhood I cannot remember entirely. Irresistible and emblematic, I can recall them only in fragments and shivers of the heart. — Pat Conroy

The problem ... is emblematic of what hasn't changed during the equal opportunity revolution of the last 20 years. Doors opened; opportunities evolved. Law, institutions, corporations moved forward. But many minds did not. — Anna Quindlen

Timbre is the emblematic tone, or voice, generated by each type of instrument or biological sound source. Not only do musical instruments have singular voice characteristics but so does every living organism and most man-made machines. The difference between the sound of a violin and that of a trumpet is as distinctive as that between a cicada and an American robin, or a cat and a dog - or between a Rolls-Royce and a Formula 1 automobile. When Paul Beaver and I first began — Bernie Krause

Coca-Cola remains emblematic of the best and worst of America and Western civilization. The history of Coca-Cola is the often funny story of a group of men obsessed with putting a trivial soft drink "within an arm's reach of desire." But at the same time, it is a microcosm of American history. Coca-Cola grew up with the country, shaping and shaped by the times. The drink not only helped to alter consumption patterns, but attitudes toward leisure, work, advertising, sex, family life, and patriotism. — Mark Pendergrast

In a time of disorder [Laertes] has returned to the care of the earth, the foundation of life and hope. And Odysseus finds him in an act emblematic of the best and most responsible kind of agriculture: an old man caring for a young tree. (pg. 123, The Body and the Earth) — Wendell Berry

Would a watermelon in the midst of a chase sequence not be, in its own organic way, emblematic of our entire misunderstood enterprise? At once totally logical and perfectly irrational? — W. D. Richter

Tis emblematic, the rose of youth and health soon fades when watered by the tear of affliction. — Susanna Rowson

The term trans-rational is emblematic of a worldview within which rationality is included and transcended, not repressed or dismissed. — Gudjon Bergmann

(The bill) is emblematic of the attempt by the majority party to control every aspect of our lives. — Virginia Foxx

Postmodernism came nowhere close in quality to Modernism at its apogee, not least because that later style wholly lacked the social impetus that animated the designs most emblematic of the Modern Movement. — Martin Filler

I would say that the emblematic photographic image is a picture from inside a room looking out. I think this defines photography. It's the metaphor for the notion of first sight. What one saw first. — Robert Polidori

I avoided nudity unless a film couldn't be told without those scenes. If you look at my films, few of them have that element, yet nudity and male fantasies have become emblematic of my work. — Greta Scacchi

I'm drawn to write about upstate New York in the way in which a dreamer might have recurring dreams. My childhood and girlhood were spent in upstate New York, in the country north of Buffalo and West of Rochester. So this part of New York state is very familiar to me and, with its economic difficulties, has become emblematic of much of American life. — Joyce Carol Oates

Our fascination with the outlaw, the killer, the meth dealer, is emblematic of a pretty embarrassing problem: we trim the fat of evil. We size it up, add a glitter to it never present in reality, and make it pretty for the cameras. It looks more boring and crude than anything else, so we give it a tummy tuck. — John Thomas Allen

The last line of Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen is addressed to the American people and their congressmen. "As they deal with me and my people, kindly, generously, and justly, so may the Great Ruler of all nations deal with the grand and glorious nation of the United States of America." It's clever to imply that if the U.S. swallows up her little country, God will smite it. As I reread the last sentance of a book written by a Hawaiian queen wh was taught to read and write by American missionaries, her final thought seems emblematic of how hierarchical Hawaiians adapted to Christianity. Jehovah, "the Great Ruler of all nations," is the highest high chief in the universe. — Sarah Vowell

Everything seems different now. The room I am in looks no more familiar to me than it did this morning when I woke up and stumbled into it, trying to find the kitchen, desperate for a drink of water, desperate to piece together what happened last night. And yet it no longer seems shot through with pain, and sadness. It no longer seems emblematic of a life I cannot consider living. The ticking of the clock at my shoulder is no longer just marking time. It speaks to me. Relax, it says. Relax, and take what comes. — S.J. Watson

I always think a good sports movie is emblematic in the same way that a great Greek tragedy really has a certain kind of structure, or a Shakespearean play if you're looking at a comedy or a tragedy, is that these are the heights and depths of human emotion. — Carla Gugino