Paul Tillich Quotes

Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration: it is inherent in the very texture of human life.

Faith is not a rational thing, and yet to understand the universe, rationality alone will not give it to us. Our understanding of the universe must transcend the rational.

Being a literature major, you know, I'm very familiar with the ways symbolism is used in our sort of mythic tales of society, so anyone who is consciously trying to pull that off I think is really interesting and clearly very smart.

Religious speech is extreme, emotional, and motivational. It is anti-literal, relying on metaphor, allusion, and other rhetorical devices, and it assumes knowledge within a community of believers.

I dislike Allegory - the conscious and intentional allegory - yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language.

I think cinema is closer to allegories than to reality. It's closer to our dreams.

The whole concept of the devil is a metaphor on one level.

All that passes is raised to the dignity of expression; all that happens is raised to the dignity of meaning. Everything is either symbol or parable.

Everything for me becomes allegory.

I seldom deal in symbolisms; if there be hidden meanings in my verse, they are there without my knowledge.

I wouldn't even like to begin to define God - I have absolutely no idea. But what I feel, and what touches me, is a great spiritual power, which I don't even want to name. If I had to, I would say God, because I don't know any other.

Some truths are expressed best in the form of myth.

Nature speaks in symbols and in signs.

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

Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth--penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.

They [Fairy Tales] are talking about real emotions, telling true stories, through the medium of metaphor. People used to understand metaphor better than I think we do now. But these stories are so potent, they refuse to die.

Fiction to me is a kind of parable. You have got to make up your mind it's not true. Some kind of truth emerges from it, but it's not fact.

The myth does not point to a fact; the myth points beyond facts to something that informs the fact

I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.

Just because something is a metaphor doesn't mean it can't be real.

A powerful enough metaphor grows its own truth.

Symbols and emblems were everywhere. Buildings and pictures were designed to be read like books. Everything stood for something else; if you had the right dictionary, you could read Nature itself. It was hardly surprising to find philosophers using the symbolism of their time to interpret knowledge that came from a mysterious source.

The metaphor is the story, not the character.

I don't think any of us really knows why we're here. But I think we're supposed to believe we're here for a purpose.

Any ritual is an opportunity for transformation.