“What keeps my heart awake is colorful silence.”
Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter
A collection of quotes on the topic of color, likeness, people, use.
“What keeps my heart awake is colorful silence.”
Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter
“Here's to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned
Source: The Beautiful and Damned
“Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer
“And what difference is there in the color of the soul?”
Solomon Northup book Twelve Years a Slave
Variant: What difference is there in the color of the soul?
Source: Twelve Years a Slave
“When someone shows you their true colors, believe them.”
Dolly Parton (1946) American singer-songwriter and actress
Source: Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business
“Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.”
Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter
“Each day has a color, a smell.”
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni book The Mistress of Spices
Source: The Mistress of Spices
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
Variant: I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
“I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.”
Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)
Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter
Out of the Woods, written by Taylor Swift and Jack Antonoff
Song lyrics, 1989 (2014)
Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician
Variant: If there's any message, it is ultimately that it's okay to be different; that it's good to be different, that we should question ourselves before we pass judgment on someone who looks different, behaves different, talks different, is a different color.
John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer
Sermon Number 10 on I Corinthians, 698. As quoted in John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait (1989) by William J. Bouwsma, pp. 134–135.
Epistles to the Corinthians
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer
Source: Writings: The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade / The Souls of Black Folk / Dusk of Dawn / Essays
“I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love.”
Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer
Source: What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire
George Lincoln Rockwell (1918–1967) American politician, founder of the American Nazi Party
White Self-Hate: Master-Stroke Of The Enemy
1962, White Self-Hate: Master-Stroke Of The Enemy
Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer
http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2014, Statement on Cuban policy (December 2014)
“It is not bright colors but good drawing that makes figures beautiful.”
Titian (1488–1576) Italian painter
As quoted in The Quotable Artist (2002) by Peggy Hadden, p. 32.
undated quotes
Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory
Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Fragments
“The Great Dancer is my husband," Mira says, "rain washes off all the other colors.””
Meera Bai Hindu mystic poet
Mīrābā, in Christian Mysticism East and West: What the Masters Teach Us http://books.google.co.in/books?id=u2EBULLB-uQC&pg=PA121, p. 121
John Green book The Fault in Our Stars
A desert blessing, an ocean curse. What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers."
Augustus "Gus" Waters, p. 310-313
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)
Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821–1877) Confederate Army general
1870s, Speech before the Pole-Bearers Association (1875)
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2015, Remarks to the People of Africa (July 2015)
Context: Every one of us is equal. Every one of us has worth. Every one of us matters. And when we respect the freedom of others -- no matter the color of their skin, or how they pray or who they are or who they love -- we are all more free. Your dignity depends on my dignity, and my dignity depends on yours. Imagine if everyone had that spirit in their hearts. Imagine if governments operated that way. Just imagine what the world could look like -- the future that we could bequeath these young people.
Yuri Gagarin (1934–1968) Soviet pilot and cosmonaut, the first human in space
Statement of April 1961, as quoted in Warrior of Light : The Life of Nicholas Roerich : Artist, Himalayan explorer and visionary (2002) by Colleen Messina, p. 46
Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)
As quoted in "Daughter of Ronald Reagan breaks silence on ‘monkeys’ remark" https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/daughter-of-ronald-reagan-breaks-silence-on-monkeys-remark (2 August 2019), by Zachary Halaschak, The Washington Examiner
Orhan Pamuk (1952) Turkish novelist, screenwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient
Source: My Name is Red
John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Variant: What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.
Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America
“My hands are of your color, but I shame to wear a heart so white.”
Variant: My hands are of your colour; but I shame
To wear a heart so white.
Source: Macbeth
“I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.”
Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist
from: Joan Miro: Selected Writings and Interviews, M.Rowell, Thames and Hudson, 1987
1940 - 1960
“In this world
love has no color
yet how deeply
my body
is stained by yours.”
Izumi Shikibu Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan
Source: Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan
Eugene O'Neill (1888–1953) American playwright, and Nobel laureate in Literature
Source: The Great God Brown and Other Plays
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer
Source: The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century
Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist
1970 - 1986, Some Memories of Drawings (1976)
Context: It is surprising to me to see how many people separate the objective from the abstract. Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or a tree. It is lines and colours put together so that they say something. For me that is the very basis of painting. The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint. … I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way — things I had no words for.<!-- Also quoted in Georgia O’Keeffe: Nature and Abstraction (2007), edited by Richard Marshall, p. 13
Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist
From a speech entitled Come September http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/politics/comeSeptember.pdf, given at the Lensic Performing Arts Center, Santa Fe, NM, 29 Sep 2002. <br class="br">Speeches <br class="br">Source: War Talk
“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
William Gibson book Neuromancer
Source: Neuromancer (1984)
“Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.”
Henry Ford book My Life and Work
Source: My Life and Work (1922), p. 72. Chapter IV, : Remark about the Model T in 1909; this has often been paraphrased, e.g.: "You can have any color as long as it's black."
“One beach-colored.
One brown.
One Loved.
One Loved a Little Less.”
Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist
Orhan Pamuk (1952) Turkish novelist, screenwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient
Source: My Name is Red
George Lincoln Rockwell (1918–1967) American politician, founder of the American Nazi Party
White Self-Hate: Master-Stroke Of The Enemy
1962, White Self-Hate: Master-Stroke Of The Enemy
Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor
1914 - 1916, Pittura e scultura futuriste' Milan, 1914
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer
Letter to his wife, reprinted in Rilke’s Letters on Cézanne (1952, trans. 1985). (October 21, 1907)
Rilke's Letters
George Seldes (1890–1995) American journalist
Lords of the Press (1938)
Incorporates the famous observation of Joseph de Maistre that "every nation gets the government it deserves."
“But I fancy that I hear some (for there will never be wanting men who would rather be eloquent than good) saying "Why then is there so much art devoted to eloquence? Why have you given precepts on rhetorical coloring and the defense of difficult causes, and some even on the acknowledgment of guilt, unless, at times, the force and ingenuity of eloquence overpowers even truth itself? For a good man advocates only good causes, and truth itself supports them sufficiently without the aid of learning."”
Videor mihi audire quosdam (neque enim deerunt umquam qui diserti esse quam boni malint) illa dicentis: "Quid ergo tantum est artis in eloquentia? cur tu de coloribus et difficilium causarum defensione, nonnihil etiam de confessione locutus es, nisi aliquando vis ac facultas dicendi expugnat ipsam veritatem? Bonus enim vir non agit nisi bonas causas, eas porro etiam sine doctrina satis per se tuetur veritas ipsa."
Quintilian (35–96) ancient Roman rhetor
Book XII, Chapter I, 33; translation by Rev. John Selby Watson
De Institutione Oratoria (c. 95 AD)
Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter
Quote in Monet's letter, September 1879; as cited in The Private Lives of the Impressionists Sue Roe; Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2006, p. 209
1870 - 1890
Kofi Annan (1938–2018) 7th Secretary-General of the United Nations
As quoted in Simply Living: The Spirit of the Indigenous People (1999) edited by Shirley A. Jones
Theodore Roszak (1933–2011) American social historian, social critic, writer
Source: The Gendered Atom: Reflections on the Sexual Psychology of Science (1999), Ch.7 The Rape of Nature
Huey Long (1893–1935) American politician, Governor of Louisiana, and United States Senator
Huey Long, U.S. Senate floor speech, March 5, 1935
Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821–1877) Confederate Army general
1870s, Speech before the Pole-Bearers Association (1875)
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer
Boisgeloup, winter 1934
As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 313
Quotes, 1930's
Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist
Schwitters (1921) in: Abstract Art, Anna Moszynska, Thames and Hudson, London 1990, p. 68-69.
1920s
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
1860s, Second Inaugural Address (1865)
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Source: 1950s, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (1956), p. 159
Mark Twain book Concerning the Jews
Concerning the Jews (Harper's Magazine, Sept. 1899)
Variant: I have no race prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.
Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter
quote from an interview Claude Monet par lui-meme, by Thiébault-Sisson / translated by Louise McGlone Jacot-Descombes; published in 'Le Temps newspaper', 26 November 1900
about Eugène Boudin, who was landscape-painting in and around Le Havre c. 1856; Monet was 16 years old, then
1900 - 1920
“I never saw a more beautiful woman, enormous eyes, skin the color of Devonshire cream.”
Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright
After meeting Anna Magnani, as quoted in Tennessee Williams : Rebellious Puritan (1961) by Nancy Marie Patterson Tischler, p. 175
Nas (1973) American rapper, record producer and entrepreneur
"Ghetto Prisoners"
On Albums, I Am... (1999)
H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author
However, that wouldn't work in Poland or New York City, where the Jews are of an inferior strain, & so numerous that they would essentially modify the physical type.
Letter to Natalie H. Wooley (22 November 1934), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 77
Non-Fiction, Letters
Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist
Text of a letter written following his Hajj (1964)
Ali Khamenei (1939) Iranian Shiite faqih, Marja' and official independent islamic leader
Message of Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei To the Youth in Europe and North America http://english.khamenei.ir//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2001, Khamenei.ir (January 21, 2015) <br class="br">2015
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
1900s, Letter to Winfield T. Durbin (1903)
Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French
Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
About
Friedrich Nietzsche book Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks
Source: Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (posthumous), p. 81
R.L. Stine (1943) American writer and producer
Reading Rockets interview http://www.readingrockets.org/books/interviews/stine/transcript hi you know it’s me cardi B
Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist
Nobel Peace Prize Winner Speech (October 10, 2014)
Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist
Text of a letter written following his Hajj (1964)