The Symbol (n.) is always more than we can understand at first sight while a sign is always less than the thing it points to. Therefore we stop at the sign but go on to the goal it indicates... but we remain with the symbol because it promises more than it reveals.
A Symbol (n.) is not an allegory or a sign, but an image that describes in the best possible way the dimly discerned nature of the spirit. A symbol does not define or explain... it points beyond itself to a meaning that is darkly divined yet still beyond our grasp, and cannot be adequately expressed in the familiar words of our language.
The Symbol (n.) is that which, in the dream, has more the value of a parable: it does not conceal, it teaches.
A Symbol (n.) lets us think about our own situation when facing it directly would be too painful: Judas was Oegger's symbol for his own unconscious wish.
A Symbol (n.) is not an allegory and not a sign but an image of contents that for the most part transcend consciousness — real agents we must come to terms with.
A Symbol (n.) is an indefinite expression with many meanings, pointing to something not fully known; a sign has a fixed meaning because it abbreviates something known.
A Symbol (n.) grows clearer the more variants it has: dwarfs toiling in secret, the phallus begetting in darkness, the key unlocking the forbidden door all draw the same hidden process.
A Symbol (n.) arises from a complex's striving to dissolve into the common totality of thought — robbed of its personal quality; that dissolution is the mainspring of all art.
A Symbol (n.) has no meaning unless it strives against the resistance of instinct — and undisciplined instinct would ruin man if the symbol did not give it form.
A Symbol (n.) is a transformer converting libido from a lower to a higher form; it works by suggestion, carrying conviction and expressing its content in one stroke.
A Symbol (n.) makes the crossing easy — the alchemists said the passage is easy for those who have the symbol.
A Symbol (n.) is the primordial image arriving as mediator: concrete enough to embrace crude feeling, meaningful enough to embrace the idea — and so it unites them, a redeeming power it has always had in religion.
A Symbol (n.) is not a sign: the railwayman's winged wheel marks the staff; it would be a symbol only if it were the best possible expression of an unknown system.
A Symbol (n.) is alive only while pregnant with meaning; once its meaning is born out of it in a better expression, it is dead and has only historical significance.
A Symbol (n.) cannot be manufactured from known associations: what is thus produced never contains more than was put into it.
A Symbol (n.) depends chiefly on the attitude of the observer: a man can establish a fact that is not in the least symbolic to him but profoundly so to someone else.
A Symbol (n.) sometimes forces itself on us: a triangle with an eye in it is so meaningless as bare fact that it immediately conjures up a symbolic reading.
A Symbol (n.) really lives only when it is the best expression for something divined but not yet known — then it compels unconscious participation and enhances life.
A Symbol (n.) that a whole society shares must be made by the most differentiated minds of the age, yet express what is so primitive that its ubiquity cannot be doubted — herein lies its redeeming power.
A Symbol (n.) is neither rational nor irrational: it appeals to thinking and feeling by its meaning and to sensation and intuition by its imagery.