Literary notes about Signs (AI summary)
The word "signs" in literature is a versatile and multi-layered term, used to denote everything from physical gestures to symbolic indicators of deeper meanings. In some texts, signs are literal signals or gestures—actions such as a captain’s directional motions ([1]) or the subtle nonverbal communications between characters ([2], [3]) that serve as immediate cues in social interactions. In religious and philosophical contexts, “signs” are often miraculous or divinely ordained markers, as seen in biblical passages that speak of wonders and portents, affirming faith and destiny ([4], [5], [6]). Meanwhile, in more secular narratives, signs become tokens or evidences of change, decay, or forthcoming events—whether it’s the physical evidences of illness ([7], [8]), subtle hints in nature that foreshadow impending shifts ([9], [10]), or even abstract symbols that capture emotional or societal states ([11], [12]). Thus, across genres and epochs, the term "signs" operates on multiple levels, simultaneously grounding narratives in tangible reality and elevating them into the realm of symbolic interpretation ([13], [14]).
- In vain the captain made various signs to him.
— from A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Iurevich Lermontov - The Indian—first touching the boy’s head, and making signs over it in the air—then said, “Look.”
— from The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins - He only speaks by signs, but those signs are more readily obeyed by everyone than the statutes of senates or commands of monarchs.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais - But they going forth preached every where: the Lord working withal, and confirming the word with signs that followed.
— from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete - The most high God hath wrought signs and wonders towards me.
— from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete - And there shall be great earthquakes in divers places and pestilences and famines and terrors from heaven: and there shall be great signs.
— from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete - This evaporated milk was well borne for months, although slightly caramelized in the course of heating, and did not lead to any signs of scurvy.
— from Scurvy, Past and Present by Alfred F. Hess - She wore her poor old burnous and the green shawl; her face still showed signs of illness, it was thinner and paler.
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - There were some signs of a calm at noon, and these became more distinct as the sun descended toward the horizon.
— from Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne - Several new kinds of plants sprung up in the garden, which they dressed; and these signs of comfort increased daily as the season advanced.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - Where there is thought, things present act as signs or tokens of things not yet experienced.
— from How We Think by John Dewey - Perhaps the signs of evil had already gone away.
— from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde - I recognized the signs, the portents—I recognized the moment, the spot.
— from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James - Affirmation and obstinacy are express signs of want of wit.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne