Weekend Words: Sign
"When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."
This week, The New York Times reported that a 72-year-old woman named Jenny Heinz, “a longtime Metropolitan Opera and New York Philharmonic subscriber,” was turned away from a performance by the Budapest Festival Orchestra at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall when she refused to remove an 8-by-11-inch sign affixed to the back of her jacket that read: ‘NO! In the name of humanity we refuse to accept a fascist America.'”
A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign.
—Matthew 16:4 (KJV)
Signs may be but the sympathies of nature with man.
—Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Signs are taken for wonders. ‘We would see a sign!’
The word within a word, unable to speak a word,
Swaddled with darkness.
—T.S. Eliot, “Gerontion”
If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn’t rub out even half the “Fuck you” signs in the world. It’s impossible.
—J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
He will lie even when it’s inconvenient: the sign of a true artist.
—Gore Vidal
The god whose oracle is at Delphi neither speaks plainly nor conceals, but indicates by signs.
—Heraclitus
Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
—Blaise Pascal
Digressions, objections, delight in mockery, carefree mistrust are signs of health; everything unconditional belongs in pathology.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Give signs, sweet girl, for here are none but friends.
—Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus
The importance of an artist is to be measured by the quantity of new signs which he has introduced to the language of art.
—Henri Matisse
Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he does not wish to sign his work.
—Anatole France
It’s a sure sign of summer if the chair gets up when you do.
—Walter Winchell
When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
—Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
Whoever comes to shroud me, do not harm
Nor question much
That subtle wreath of hair about mine arm;
They mystery, the sign you must not touch,
For tis my outward soul.
—John Donne, “Funeral”
Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.
—H. L. Mencken
