Quotes About Colour

I had an idea for a story about a young woman who was living with people who were different, not just superficially different - such as hair colour, or eye colour, or skin colour - but different in some significant way.

There either is or is not, that’s the way things are. The colour of the day. The way it felt to be a child. The saltwater on your sunburnt legs. Sometimes the water is yellow, sometimes it’s red. But what colour it may be in memory, depends on the day. I’m not going to tell you the story the way it happened. I’m going to tell it the way I remember it.

Now, among the heresies that are spoken in this matter is the habit of calling a grey day a "colourless" day. Grey is a colour, and can be a very powerful and pleasing colour.... A grey clouded sky is indeed a canopy between us and the sun; so is a green tree, if it comes to that. But the grey umbrellas differ as much as the green in their style and shape, in their tint and tilt. One day may be grey like steel, and another grey like dove’s plumage. One may seem grey like the deathly frost, and another grey like the smoke of substantial kitchens.

He domesticated and developed the native wild flowers. He had one hill-side solidly clad with that low-growing purple verbena which mats over the hills of New Mexico. It was like a great violet velvet mantle thrown down in the sun; all the shades that the dyers and weavers of Italy and France strove for through centuries, the violet that is full of rose colour and is yet not lavender; the blue that becomes almost pink and then retreats again into sea-dark purple—the true Episcopal colour and countless variations of it.

Ronald Reagan perfected the subtler version long ago by talking about "welfare mothers" - a code phrase for people of colour.

The lily I condemned for thy hand, And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair: The roses fearfully on thorns did stand, One blushing shame, another white despair; A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both And to his robbery had annex'd thy breath; But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth A vengeful canker eat him up to death. More flowers I noted, yet I none could see But sweet or colour it had stol'n from thee.

As your relationship with the music gets stronger, so does your motivation for playing it and finding different sounds. If you have the idea that you can find a colour that is better for one composer or another, even if it’s an illusion, this generates enormous pleasure.

The variety of colour in objects cannot be discerned at a great distance, excepting in those parts which are directly lighted up by the solar rays.

The more ugly, old, nasty, ill, and poor I become the more I want to get my own back by producing vibrant, well-arranged, radiant colour.

When I look in the mirror, I see my late mother: I have her nose, her dark eyes - I call them chocolate eyes - I have her colouring, and my hair is greying the same way, although I use colour and she didn't.

I wish myself to be a prop, if anything, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle for my songs. I would like to colour the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.

I like, you may say, the glitter and colour that comes from the mouth, and I've always hoped in a sense to be able to paint the mouth like Monet painted a sunset.

I rather incline towards 'conceptualism', in line with my view of colour perception - I don't think that we can represent objects and properties for which we have no concepts, not even in perceptual experience. In this sense I differ from those who defend 'non-conceptual content' like Michael Tye and Chris Peacocke.

On the prairie one can see the colour of the air.

Colour has taken hold of me; no longer do I have to chase after it. I know that it has hold of me forever. That is the significance of this blessed moment

I think love is caramel. Sweet and fragant; always welcome. It is the gentle golden colour of a setting harvest sun; the warmth of a squeezed embrace; the easy melting of two souls into one and a taste that lingers even when everything else has melted away. Once tasted it is never forgotten.

A novelist can shift view-point if it comes off. ... Indeed, this power to expand and contract perception (of which the shifting view-point is a symptom), this right to intermittent knowledge - I find one of the great advantages of the novel-form ... this intermittence lends in the long run variety and colour to the experiences we receive.

The first of all simple colours is White ... We shall set down White for the representative of light, without which no colour can be seen; Yellow for the earth; Green for water; Blue for air; Red for fire; and Black for total darkness.

In my early work I didn't use much colour. I had no confidence about how I could do this.

The colours red, blue and green are real. The colour yellow is a mystical experience shared by everybody.

I thought I could not breathe in that fine air That pure severity of perfect light I yearned for warmth and colour which I found In Lancelot.

Why can't I believe? she asked the darkness. Behind her eyelids she saw an animal. It was golden colour, with gentle green eyes and canine teeth, and curly wool instead of fur. It opened its mouth, but it did not speak. Instead, it yawned.It gazed at her. She gazed at it. "You are the effect of a carefully calibrated blend of plant toxins," she told it.Then she fell asleep.

Nor is the darkness of colour a proof of the earth's baseness; for the brightness of the sun, which is visible to us, would not be perceived by anyone who might be in the sun.

She had put on make-up in a colour scheme that indicated she might be colourblind.

Alfred Nobel stipulated that no distinction of race or colour will determine who received of his generosity.

It was octarine, the colour of magic. It was alive and glowing and vibrant and it was the undisputed pigment of the imagination, because wherever it appeared it was a sign that mere matter was a servant of the powers of the magical mind. It was enchantment itself. But Rincewind always thought it looked a sort of greenish-purple.

Those loves which are for the sake of a colour are not love. In the end they are a disgrace.

There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate--not to the artist but to the public.... Without them we would judge a man simply by his work; but at present the newspapers are trying hard to induce the public to judge a sculptor, for instance, never by his statues but by the way he treats his wife; a painter by the amount of his income and a poet by the colour of his necktie.

Hair is the greatest thing to experiment with because it's not permanent. If I didn't like my colour, I'd just change it.

In the case of composite colour, an infinity of systems must be obtained for maxima infinitely slight and with an infinity of interval values separating them - that is to say, the whole thickness of the sensitive layer is occupied in continuous manner by these maxima.

I always saw Michael Gambon wearing madly psychedelic socks, and I always thought that's it is one of the few areas where men can really express colour and have a bit of a dandyish quality to their outfit.

The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh. The effect that they make in space is as bound up with them as might be their colour or smell ... Therefore the painter must be as concerned with the air surrounding his subject as with the subject itself. It is through observation and perception of atmosphere that he can register the feeling that he wishes his painting to give out.

astonishing splashes of colour

And as hearbes and trees are bettered and fortified by being transplanted, so formes of speach are embellished and graced by variation.... As in our ordinary language, we shall sometimes meete with excellent phrases, and quaint metaphors, whose blithnesse fadeth through age, and colour is tarnish by to common using them.

Bear in mind that the children of life are the children of joy; that the lower animals are only unhappy when made so by man; that man alone of all the creatures, has "found out many inventions", the chief of which appears to be the art of making himself miserable, and of seeing all Nature stained with that dark and hateful colour.

... on these expanded membranes [butterfly wings] Nature writes, as on a tablet, the story of the modifications of species, so truly do all changes of the organisation register themselves thereon. Moreover, the same colour-patterns of the wings generally show, with great regularity, the degrees of blood-relationship of the species. As the laws of nature must be the same for all beings, the conclusions furnished by this group of insects must be applicable to the whole world.

William," the professor said, softly, "what now is your weapon?"...."Truth," he whispered, his voice rasping. He cleared his throat. "Truth is my sword." ...."And what now is your defense?" Colour returned to Billy's face, and his jaw tightened. His voice surged with emotion. "Faith...faith is my shield.

When you say to a person of colour, 'When I see you, I don't see you Black; I just see everybody the same' think about that. You don't have the right to say to a person, 'I do not see you as you are; I want to see you as I would be more comfortable seeing you.'

From the time I entered cabinet, the emphasis was on reforms, but reforms which did not abolish separate development, but reforms which were aimed at changing the very, very dehumanising aspects. Giving greater freedom of movement, giving private property ownership within so-called white South Africa also to blacks. Abolishing the concept of job reservation on the basis of race and colour. Allowing free organisation for trade unions, also black trade unions.

I think it's because it was an emotional story, and emotions come through much stronger in black and white. Colour is distracting in a way, it pleases the eye but it doesn't necessarily reach the heart.

Afterwards, in bed with a book, the spell of television feels remote compared to the journey into the page. To be in a book. To slip into the crease where two pages meet, to live in the place where your eyes alight upon the words to ignite a world of smoke and peril, colour and serene delight. That is a journey no one can end with the change of a channel. Enduring magic.

There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion," said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. "It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.

When the short days of winter came, dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown sombre. The space of sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent street.

You know, I always say white is not a colour, white is an attitude, and if you haven't got trillions of dollars in the bank that you don't need, you can't be white.

As a singer, I've had many opportunities to travel, and one thing I've learned is that through my music, I can be accepted by people all over the world. I often wonder why so many of us can't accept people who are different here, in our country? It's just not fair to be prejudiced against those whose race, religion or colour aren't the same as ours.

True beauty is a ray That springs from the sacred depths of the soul, and illuminates the body, just as life springs from the kernel of a stone and gives colour and scent to a flower.

The air of England is too pure for a slave to breathe, and so everyone who breathes it becomes free. Everyone who comes to this island is entitled to the protection of English law, whatever oppression he may have suffered and whatever may be the colour of his skin.

Complete independence through truth and non-violence means the independence of every unit, be it the humblest of the nation, without distinction of race, colour or creed.