Totem Quotes

“We are all but symbols of some greater thing—totems of ourselves--subject to change and growth. When we forget that metaphoric sense of ourselves, we lose sight of the overall path.”

“The gym cat appears to those who will die. He is our totem." This thought came to me a few weeks ago. I shared it with no one of course.”

“Magna Carta has become totemic. It is in the comedy of Tony Hancock, in the poetry of Kipling, never far from the front pages in a constitutional crisis.”

“I'm of the age and immaturity level that I cannot give you my respect solely because you are older or ranked higher on an imaginary totem pole. I give you my respect because of your actions.”

“When people have tried everything and have discovered that nothing works, they will tend to revert to what they know best—which will often be the tribe, the totem, or the taboo.”

“I’m in a secret underground hideout of a group of monster hunters, filled with magical totems, brass monkeys that move and enough firepower to take over a small country.”

“How much living have you done?From it the patterns that you weaveAre imaged:Your own life is your totem pole,Your yard of cloth,Your living.How much loving have you done?How full and free your giving?For living is but lovingAnd loving only giving.”

“Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.”

“All these things we do bespeak a terrible anxiety: that our children simply will not be able to make it through life if we do not perform totemic acts to keep them on the path toward self-perfection and keep their lives pure and unfettered by distracting emotion, personality foibles, or less-than-ideal experiences.”