Quotes about blue
page 10

“Nancy and I were married in January 1918 at St. James's Church, Piccadilly, she being just eighteen, and I twenty-two. George Mallory acted as the best man. Nancy had read the marriage-service for the first time that morning, and been so disgusted that she all but refused to go through with the wedding, though I had arranged for the ceremony to be modified and reduced to the shortest possible form. Another caricature scene to look back on: myself striding up the red carpet, wearing field-boots, spurs and sword; Nancy meeting me in a blue-check silk wedding-dress, utterly furious; packed benches on either side of the church, full of relatives; aunts using handkerchiefs; the choir boys out of tune; Nancy savagely muttering the responses, myself shouting them in a parade-ground voice.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

Source: Goodbye to All That (1929), Ch. 25.

Marriage, Boy, Wedding, Time

“One rich light
Broke thro' the shadow of the tempest's wing,
While the black clouds, with gold and purple edged,
Caught every moment warmer hues, until
'Twas all one sparkling arch, and, like a king
In triumph o'er his foes, the Sun god sought
The blue depths of the sea; — the waters yet
Were ruffled with the storm, and the white foam
Yet floated on the billows, while the wind
Murmured at times like to an angry child,
Who sobs even in his slumber.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(2nd February 1822) Poetic Sketches, No.4
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822

God, Light, Water, Time

“These days people like Yi are more likely to end up in the Blue House or KBS than in jail.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, League Confederation Goes Outer-Track (September 2018)

People, Housing

“ROSES ARE RED. VIOLETS ARE BLUE, I'M A SCHIZOPHRENIC AND so AM I”

Larry Andersen (1953) American baseball player

He Made the saying popular on a T-Shirt he wore.
"Now Some Comic Relief" (1989)

Funny

“By the end of this long film, I would have traded any given gladiatorial victory for just one shot of blue skies… Gladiator lacks joy. It employs depression as a substitute for personality, and believes that if the characters are bitter and morose enough, we won't notice how dull they are.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/gladiator-2000 of Gladiator (5 May 2000) Reviews, Two star reviews

Victory, Joy, Personality

“The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstances, whether created by others or by one's own human failing.”

Ralph Ellison (1914–1994) American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer

"Remembering Jimmy" (1958), in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 277.

Art

“The Thames and the Mersey, the Tyne and the Wear and the Clyde
They spew slums like gravy on the banks of the poisonous tide
They washed up a pale thin girl
Alone in her ivory tower
Scratching her skin with the thorns that grow
On the stems of the wild flowers
What became of the love we knew?
We beat the swine black and blue
You and I
Me and you
What became of the love we knew?
What became of the working class?
Nike, Reebok, Adidas
Scratchcards, pitbulls, ecstasy
Hooray for the 21st Century”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

"Hooray for the 21st Century"
Lyrics and poetry

Love, Girl, Flowers, Swine

“But surely, speaking carefully, we do not sense 'red' and 'blue' any more than 'resemblance' (or 'qualities' any more than 'relations'): we sense something of which we might say, if we wished to talk about it, that 'this is red.”

J. L. Austin (1911–1960) English philosopher

Source: Philosophical Papers (1979), P. 49.

Sense

“I would suggest that we use 5% of the bailout money to endow the Banks of England, which would be established in the counties and cities of England and would be constrained to lend within the county or city. The principal of the endowment would be in trust to the people of that county or city, in perpetuity so that it could not be liquidated by its members, and the balance of power in its corporate governance will be held by a third being held by the Bank of England, a third by its workforce and a third by the civic institutions of the locality. These newly constituted ‘Banks of England’ are one of the essential feature of Blue Labour statecraft built upon endowment and institution building.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

Blue Labour, An Ancient Polity For A New Economy? http://www.bluelabour.org/2012/06/19/an-ancient-polity-for-a-new-economy/

Money, People

“But I've noticed something with other artists who do use the whole range of forms of colours and black - in Albers, for instance, who experiments with yellow, red, blue, the whole scale. Of course I love his colour paintings, but when I see a black-and-white such as 'The Homage to a Black and White Square' [ Josef Albers painted more versions], I like that best, you know. I think it has something to do with deciding just exactly what you really like best. There is always that wonderful element of doubt. I like the black painters really, even if they did work in color.... Velasquez.... also Tintoretto, and Rembrandt... Goya..”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

Quote of Kline in an interview (March 1960) with David Sylvester, edited for broadcasting by the BBC first published in 'Living Arts', Spring 1963; as cited in Interviews with American Artists, David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, pp. 61-62
1960's

Love, Color, Thinking, Painting

“On the whole [the alignment of a series of stained glass windows with the interior of a villa in The Hague] I have thought about all the time... I want to focus more on the architecture of the interior in general and that should we do together [with architect Buys]... Now I was already thinking, the enormous color effect that the window will generate - and that will certainly become powerful - must be accompanied with strong colors - the hall -, otherwise the window itself will be too much isolated. For instance the staircase, could it be painted in strong colors and not [in] oak.... deep ultramarine blue or green, with a beautiful colorful carpet.... I feel I must make designs for carpets, to create in that way a beautiful unity with the stained glass as a whole.”

Jacoba van Heemskerck (1876–1923) Dutch painter

translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van Jacoba van Heemskerck, in het Nederlands: Over het geheel [de afstemming van een serie aan Jacoba opgedragen glasramen met het interieur van een villa in Den Haag] heb ik steeds loopen denken.. ..ik wil mij veel meer op de architectuur van het binnenhuis in het algemeen toeleggen en dat moeten wij samen doen [met architect Buys].. .Nu heb ik al gedacht het enorme kleur-effekt dat het raam zal maken en dat zal zeker machtig werken, moet gedragen worden door sterke kleuren - de hal - anders staat het teveel alleen; zou de trap b.v. in de verf een sterke kleur kunnen krijgen en niet [in] eikenhout.. ..diep ultramarijn blauw of groen en dan een prachtige kleurige loper.. ..ik voel dat ik ontwerpen voor tapijten moet maken om zoo met het glas in lood een mooi geheel te hebben.
Quote in een brief van Jacoba aan architect J. Buys, 28 April 1920 in archief N.D.B., Amsterdam; as cited by Herbert Henkels, in Jacoba van Heemskerck, kunstenares van het Expressionisme, Haags Gemeentemuseum The Hague, 1982, p. 42
1920's

Beauty, Color, Way, Feeling

“We see many fine sunsets here, unique in the splendour of their colour. No doubt the surroundings in this fairyland of blue and white do much to increase their beauty.”

Roald Amundsen (1872–1928) Norwegian polar researcher, who was the first to reach the South Pole

Impressions around March 1911
Sydpolen (The South Pole) (1912)

Beauty

“People say I'm the life of the party
'Cause I tell a joke or two.
Although I might be laughing loud and hearty,
Deep inside I'm blue.

So take a
good look at my face.
You know my smile looks out of place.
If you look closer, it's easy to trace
The tracks of my tears.”

Smokey Robinson (1940) American R&B singer-songwriter and record producer

The Tracks of My Tears, written by Smokey Robinson, Marvin Tarlin, and Pete Moore (1965)
Song lyrics, With The Miracles

Life, People, Smile, Tear

“They had a crush on you, River
Blue suede jacket and boots, River
And your face shaped like a moon, River
You were like my own James Byron Dean
Private idaho was my east of eden
Hit me like a stone when you passed away
On Halloween”

River Phoenix (1970–1993) American actor, musician, and activist

Halloween by Grant Lee Buffalo

“The daughters of Albion
taking the dawn ferry to tomorrow
worrying about what happened
worrying about what hasn't happened
lacing up blue sneakers over brown ankles
fastening up brown stockings to blue suspenderbelts”

Adrian Henri (1932–2000) British poet

"Mrs Albion You've Got a Lovely Daughter", from The Mersey Sound (1967).

Daughters

“Blue eyes wash off sometimes.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

"Letters to Dr. Y."
Words for Dr. Y (1978)

“Through all these researches into an art that would lead to immaterialisation, Werner Ruhnau [German architect] and I came together in the architecture of the air. He was hindered by the last obstacle that even a w:Mies van der Rohe [also a German architect, famous for his reflecting glass skyscrapers in the U. S. ] hadn’t been able to overcome: the roof, the screen that separates us from the sky, from the blue sky. And I was hindered by the screen that the tangible blue on the canvas constitutes, which deprives man of a constant vision of the horizon.”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

In 1958; p. 45
before 1960, "Yves Klein, 1928 – 1962, Selected Writings"

Art

“We must not despair, we must not for a moment pretend that we cannot face these things. Dangers come upon the world; other nations face them. When, in old days, the sea gave access to this island, it was a danger to this island, it made it the most invadable place at any point, but by taking proper measures our ancestors gained the command of the sea, and, consequently, what had been a means of inroad upon us became our sure shield and protection; and there is not the slightest reason why, with our ability and our resources, and our peaceful intentions, our desire only to live quietly here in our island, we should not raise up for ourselves a security in the air above us which will make us as free from serious molestation as did our control of blue water through bygone centuries.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1934/mar/08/air-estimates-1934#column_2071 in the House of Commons (8 March 1934) during the debate on the Government's White Paper on Defence that announced an increase in the Royal Air Force The 1930s

World, Peace, Water, Sea

“So much to learn!
Old Nature's ways
Of glee and gloom with rapt amaze
To study, probe, and paint – brown earth,
Salt sea, blue heavens, their tilth and dearth,
Birds, grasses, trees – the natural things
That throb or grope or poise on wings.”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

Richard Eugene Burton, Memorial Day, And Other Poems (1897), 'So Much to Learn', p. 8
Misattributed

Way, Nature, Bird, Tree

“Other suns will shine as golden,
Other skies be just as blue;
Other south winds blow as softly,
Gently drinking up the dew.”

Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt (1836–1919) American writer

To-day, Stanza 1.

Drink, Sun

“The Bush plan is economic treason against the American worker. That "civil rights leaders" are silent about the dispossession of the black working class, that unions are not marching to denounce this sellout of blue-collar and white-collar America, only tells us that the amorality of the transnational corporation has infected both. Solidarity be damned, it is all about money now.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, State of Emergency (2006)

Money

“Just around the corner there's heartache
Down the street that losers use.
If you can wade in through the teardrops,
You'll find me at the Home of the Blues.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

Home of the Blues, written by Johnny Cash, Douglas L. McAlphin, and Glenn Douglas Tubb
Song lyrics, Johnny Cash Sings the Songs That Made Him Famous (1958)

Home

“They were gunning the motorcycles. There were these little backfires. There was one noise like that. I thought it was a backfire. Then next I saw Connally grabbing his arms and saying "no, no, no, no, no," with his fist beating. Then Jack turned and I turned. All I remember was a blue-gray building up ahead. Then Jack turned back so neatly, his last expression was so neat… you know that wonderful expression he had when they'd ask him a question about one of the ten million pieces they have in a rocket, just before he'd answer. He looked puzzled, then he slumped forward. He was holding out his hand … I could see a piece of his skull coming off. It was flesh-colored, not white — he was holding out his hand … I can see this perfectly clean piece detaching itself from his head. Then he slumped in my lap, his blood and his brains were in my lap … Then Clint Hill [the Secret Service man], he loved us, he made my life so easy, he was the first man in the car … We all lay down in the car … And I kept saying, Jack, Jack, Jack, and someone was yelling "he's dead, he's dead."”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

All the ride to the hospital I kept bending over him, saying "Jack, Jack, can you hear me, I love you, Jack."
The "Camelot" interview (29 November 1963)

Love, Life, Secret, Cars

“[T]he 1919 uprising is memorialized in the North without a public holiday as an example of how badly things go when a nation lacks a parental leader. This doesn’t stop propaganda from claiming the protests originated under the influence of Kim Hyŏng-jik, the father of Kim Il Sung, who himself impressed everyone at the age of six by … but never mind. The Blue House is unlikely to quibble with this version of history on the day itself. With these meshing tendencies and measures the ruling camp evidently hopes to bond with the Kim regime over a shared anti-Japanese tradition, to present today’s ROK and DPRK as branches of the same Shanghai tree, put nationalism above liberal-democratic principles, and minimize opposition to all these things. No less obvious is the larger goal.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Confederation Again (July 2018)

Age, Hope, History, Parent

“Yonder in the unknown vastness"—his long finger stabbed at the black silent jungle which brooded beyond the firelight—"yonder lies mystery and adventure and nameless terror. Once I dared the jungle—once she nearly claimed my bones. Something entered into my blood, something stole into my soul like a whisper of unnamed sin. The jungle! Dark and brooding—over leagues of the blue salt sea she has drawn me and with the dawn I go to seek the heart of her. Mayhap I shall find curious adventure—mayhap my doom awaits me. But better death than the ceaseless and everlasting urge, the fire that has burned my veins with bitter longing.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The Hills of the Dead" (1930)

Death, Soul, Heart, Sea

“Defiling their shadows, infidels, accursed of Allah, with fingernails that are foot-long daggers, with mouths agape like cauldrons full of teeth on the boil, with eyes all fire, shaitans possessed of Iblis, clanking into their wars all linked, like slaves, with iron chains. Murad Bey, the huge, the single-blowed ox-beheader, saw without too much surprise mild-looking pale men dressed in blue, holding guns, drawn up in squares six deep as though in some massed dance depictive of orchard walls. At the corners of the squares were heavy giins and gunners. There did not seem to be many horsemen. Murad said a prayer within, raised his scimitar to heaven and yelled a fierce and holy word. The word was taken up, many thousandfold, and in a kind of gloved thunder the Mamelukes threw themselves on to the infidel right and nearly broke it. But the squares healed themselves at once, and the cavalry of the faithful crashed in three avenging prongs along the fire-spitting avenues between the walls. A great gun uttered earthquake language at them from within a square, and, rearing and cursing the curses of the archangels of Islam on to the uncircumcized, they wheeled and swung towards their protective village of Embabeh. There they encountered certain of the blue-clad infidel horde on the flat roofs of the houses, coughing musket-fire at them. But then disaster sang along their lines from the rear as shell after shell crunched and the Mamelukes roared in panic and burden to the screams of their terrified mounts, to whose ears these noises were new. Their rear dissolving, their retreat cut off, most sought the only way, that of the river. They plunged in, horseless, seeking to swim across to join the inactive horde of Ibrahim, waiting for. action that could now never come. Murad Bey, with such of his horsemen as were left, yelped off inland to Gizeh.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Napoleon Symphony (1974)

Men, War, Faith, Way

“And I am very happy to have the boat motif because, when I grew up, in summer with my parents we were always in Massachusetts, and I was always by the sea. You know, sometimes little boys love cars, but I had a particular passion for boats, and now I live by the sea. For sure, it is a passage, but it's also very fascinating for lots of things. When you get interested in something you can find out a lot about things. You might meet people who are interested in one subject or another, like they collect palms. I've found people from all over the world who were fanatical about palms, which you wouldn't know unless you were interested in palms. And the sea: because, if you've noticed, the sea is white three quarters of the time, just white – early morning. Only in the fall does it get blue, because the haze is gone. The Mediterranean [where Twombly is living later in his life], at least – the Atlantic is brown – is just always white, white, white. And then, even when the sun comes up, it becomes a lighter white... Not because I paint it white; I'd have painted it white even if it wasn't, but I am always happy that I might have. It's something that has other consciousness behind it.”

Cy Twombly (1928–2011) American painter

Source: 2000 - 2011, Cy Twombly, 2000', by David Sylvester (June 2000), pp. 174-175

Love, Life, Happiness, People

“A louder sweep the music gave :
The chieftain of the charmed wave,
Graceful upon his steed of snow,
Rises from his blue halls below;
And rode he like a victor-knight
Thrice glorious in his arms of light.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Golden Violet - The Haunted Lake
The Golden Violet (1827)

Music, Light

“This is sad. I just think it’s a little ridiculous we are still only looking at the surface of one another. Red hair? Blue hair? Pink? Blonde? Short? Long? Whatever. We might as well shave our heads. Hair has nothing to do with the reason we playing music. It’s a style. Something that will never last as long as the songs we play and the words we sing. Listen up ladies in bands, I’m so proud to be one of you and I don’t care if we all look exactly alike or if we are all carbon copies of each other. We have things to say and it’s up to us to get people to not just look but to LISTEN!”

Hayley Williams (1988) American singer-songwriter and musician

Hayley on her Tumblr talking about Nikki Simmons (lead singer of the rock/metal upcoming band Morningside http://www.facebook.com/themorningside) who was being cyber-bullied because she looks like Hayley. http://yelyahwilliams.tumblr.com/post/8459667145

People, Sadness, Music, Thinking

“How shallow is this mere that gleams!
Its depth of blue is from the skies;
And from a distant sun the dreams
And lovely light within your eyes.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

By Still Waters (1906)

Love, Dreams, Light, Distant

“The place that the Lord sat on was simple, on the earth, barren and desert, alone in wilderness; his clothing was ample and full seemly, as falleth to a Lord; the colour of his cloth was blue as azure, most sad and fair. his cheer was merciful; the colour of his face was fair-brown, — with full seemly features; his eyes were black, most fair and seemly, shewing full of lovely pity, and, within him, an high Regard, long and broad, all full of endless heavens. And the lovely looking wherewith He looked upon His Servant continually, — and especially in his falling, — methought it might melt our hearts for love and burst them in two for joy. The fair looking shewed of a seemly mingledness which was marvellous to behold: the one was Ruth and Pity, the other was Joy and Bliss. The Joy and Bliss passeth as far Ruth and Pity as Heaven is above earth: the Pity was earthly and the Bliss was heavenly.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 51

Love, Sadness, Heart, Joy

“Will ye believe
The wonders of the ocean? how its shoals
Sprang from the wave, like flashing light;.. took wing,
And, twinkling with a silver glitterance,
Flew through the air and sunshine? yet were they
To sight less wondrous than the tribe who swam,
Following like fowlers, with uplifted eye,
Their falling quarry:.. language cannot paint
Their splendid tints! though in blue ocean seen,
Blue, darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,
In all its rich variety of shades,
Suffus'd with glowing gold.”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

Madoc in Wales http://olivercowdery.com/texts/1805sout.htm#pg001, Part I, Sec. V - 48 (1805). Compare: "'Darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,' As some one somewhere sings about the sky", Lord Byron, Don Juan, canto iv. stanza 110.

Light, Painting

“My favorite color is light pink. I also like baby blue because it brings out my eyes.”

Frances Bean Cobain (1992) American artist

Attributed to a Teen Vogue interview " Frances Bean Cobain: 'I'm a Different Person' http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,1101912,00.html" (2005)

Color, Light, Baby

“The little guy's face was a bloody mess. Between the puffballs of blue-black flesh that used to be eyelids, the dull gleam of shock-deadened pupils watched Dilwick uncomprehendingly. His lips were swollen things of lacerated skin, with slow trickles of blood making crooked paths from the corners of his mouth through the stubble of a beard to his chin, dripping onto a stained shirt.
Dilwick stood just outside the glare of the lamp, dangling like the Sword of Damocles over the guy's head. He was sweating too. His shirt clung to the meaty expanse of his huge neck. He pushed his beefy hand further into the leather glove and swung. The solid smack of his open hand on the little guy's jaw was nasty. His chair went over backward and his head cracked against the concrete floor of the room like a ripe melon. Dilwick put his hands on his hips and glared down at the caricature that once was human.”

Mickey Spillane book The Twisted Thing

The Twisted Thing (1966)

Guy

“Yeah I'm gonna kill myself,
Get a little headline news.
I'd like to see what the papers say
On the state of teenage blues.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

I Think I'm Going to Kill Myself
Song lyrics, Honky Château (1972)

“I came from a background of blues and rock based(music). I hadn’t listened to Jazz or even Classical Music until just recently. Listening to Stan Getz, you know, he is one of my favorite Saxophonists, so he’s influenced my sound and influences how I play this music. Right now.”

Ross Mintzer (1987) American musician and performer

NPR interview (2005)

Music

“The woodcutter is far better for skill than he is for brute strength.
It is by skill that the sea captain holds his rapid ship
on its course, though torn by winds, over the wine-blue water.
By skill charioteer outpasses charioteer.”

Homér Iliad

XXIII. 315–318 (tr. R. Lattimore).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

Water, Wine, Sea

“The real jewel of my disease-ridden woodlot is the prothonotary warbler. … The flash of his gold-and-blue plumage amid the dank decay of the June woods is in itself proof that dead trees are transmuted into living animals, and vice versa.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“November: A Mighty Fortress”, p. 77.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "November: Axe-in-Hand," "November: A Mighty Fortress," and "December: Pines above the Snow"

Disease, Tree, Animals, Dead

“In 1942 when I was in New York, I was struck by the neon advertisements flashing all over Broadway. You are there, you talk to someone, and all of a sudden he turns blue. Then the colour fades - another one comes and turns him red or yellow. The colour – the colour of neon advertising is free; it exists in space. I wanted to do the same in my canvases.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quote from Legér and America, exhibition catalogue Fernand Léger, Buffalo 1982, p. 52
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1980's

“See what the world looks like from orbit. Well, in that way, at least, there was profit to be had. Nobody could look down at the planet, green and blue, with no borders in evidence and no sign of human habitation, and not get his perspective forever altered.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 16 (p. 142)

World, Way

“You learn a lot watching that, because so much of what you do in film and television is technical. You could go to acting class until you're blue in the face, but when it really comes down to it, you'd better have that acting training where so much of what you do is actually technical.”

Tobin Bell (1942) American actor

The Only Tobin Bell Interview You'll Ever Need http://movieline.com/2009/10/16/tobin-bell-interview/ (October 16, 2009)

Learning, Training

“When you're between any kind of devil and the deep blue sea, the deep blue sea sometimes looks very inviting.”

Terence Rattigan (1911–1977) playwright, screenwriter

The Deep Blue Sea, Act I. (1952).

Sea

“You'll eat hamburgers year after year and live in dusty, vermin-infested apartments and hotels, but every morning you'll see the mighty sun, the eternal blue of the sky, and the streets will be full of sleek women you never will possess, and the hot semitropical nights will reek of romance you'll never have, but you'll still be in paradise, boys, in the land of sunshine.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Women, Boy, Sun, Night

“Actually, if you could see close in my eyes, the American flag is waving in both of them and up my spine is growing this red, white and blue stripe.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

The Quotable Walt Disney (2001)

“It was so easy living day by day
Out of touch with the rhythm and blues
But now I need a little give and take
The New York Times, The Daily News.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

New York State of Mind.
Song lyrics, Turnstiles (1976)

Time

“To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold — brothers who know now they are truly brothers.”

Archibald Macleish (1892–1982) American poet and Librarian of Congress

As quoted in Richard Nixon's First Inaugural Address (20 January 1969)
Attributed

Beauty, Silence

“This year, ladies and gentlemen, I was cool for 2 seconds of my life. I got to fly with the Air Force Thunderbirds. (Audience hoots and hollers) You betcha! They called me up out of the blue, and they go, "Hey, we want you to fly with us." And I'm like, "You got the right number?" They said, "Yeah, Bill Engvall, comedian. You stand for what America stands for. Be an honor to have you fly with us." I'm like, (dork voice) "Be an honor to fly with 'ya." He goes, "Well, we gotta get you clearance from the Pentagon."”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

I go, "Well, you're screwed."
15 Degrees Off Cool (2007)
15° Off Cool (2007)

Life, Flying

“It is the trajectory of a thrown stone. It follows the hump of a humped-back whale from nose to tail. It's bounded like a smooth, sheep-cropped, grassy hill. It is a graph-line through a grey, blue, and then a grey again, sky.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Flying Out of This World

“I have a panic room in my house, where I am supposed to take refuge if one of the adherents of the "religion of peace" makes it past my permanent security detail and into my home. In fact, it's not really my home at all—I live in a government safe house, heavily protected and bulletproof. Since November 2004, when a Muslim murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh for the crime of offending Islam, I have been surrounded by police guards and stripped of nearly all personal privacy. I am driven every day from the safe house to my office in the Dutch Parliament building in armored police cars with sirens and flashing blue lights. I wear a bulletproof jacket when I speak in public. Always surrounded by plainclothes police officers, I have not walked the streets on my own in more than seven years.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

Source: 2010s, Marked for Death (2012), Ch. 1: "The Axe Versus the Pen", pp. 4–5

Peace, Religion, Cars, Home

“I was borne on an eagle's wing,
Till with the noon-sun perishing;
Then I stood in a world alone,
From which all other life was gone,
Whence warmth, and breath, and light were fled,
A world o'er which a curse was said:
The trees stood leafless all, and bare,
The sky spread, but no sun was there:
Night came, no stars were on her way,
Morn came without a look of day,—
As night and day shared one pale shroud,
Without a colour or a cloud.
And there were rivers, but they stood
Without a murmur on the flood,
Waveless and dark, their task was o'er,—
The sea lay silent on the shore,
Without a sign upon its breast
Save of interminable rest:
And there were palaces and halls,
But silence reign'd amid their walls,
Though crowds yet fill'd them; for no sound
Rose from the thousands gather'd round;
All wore the same white, bloodless hue,
All the same eyes of glassy blue,
Meaningless, cold, corpse-like as those
No gentle hand was near to close.
And all seem'd, as they look'd on me,
In wonder that I yet could be
A moving shape of warmth and breath
Alone amid a world of death.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Canto III
The Troubadour (1825)

Life, Death, World, Way

“Blues was my first love. It was the first thing where I said "Oh man, this is the stuff." It just sounded so raw and honest, gut-bucket honest. From then I started rebelling.”

Carlos Santana (1947) Mexican and American rock musician

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0GER/is_2000_Summer/ai_63500762

Love

“Let the blue sky overhead,
The green earth on which ye tread,
All that must eternal be
Witness the solemnity.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

St. 66
(1819)

“Nearby, where the main road forked, stood an iron cross on a stone base. As the English couple watched, a mason was cutting in half a dozen fresh names. On the far side of the street, in the deep shadow of a doorway, a youngish woman in black was also watching. She was so pale they assumed at first she had some sort of wasting disease. She remained perfectly still, with one hand holding an edge of her headscarf so that it obscured her mouth. The mason seemed embarrassed and kept his back to her while he worked. After a quarter of an hour an old man in blue workman's clothes came shuffling along in carpet slippers and took her hand without a word and led her away. When the propriétaire came out he nodded at the other side of the street, at the empty space and murmured, 'Trois. Mari et deux frères,' as he set down their salads.This sombre incident remained with them as they struggled up the hill in the heat, heavy with lunch, towards the Bergerie de Tédenat. They stopped half way up in the shade of a stand of pines before a long stretch of open ground. Bernard was to remember this moment for the rest of his life. As they drank from their water bottles he was struck by the recently concluded war not as a historical, geopolitical fact but as a multiplicity, a near-infinity of private sorrows, as a boundless grief minutely subdivided without diminishment among individuals who covered the continent like dust, like spores whose separate identities would remain unknown, and whose totality showed more sadness than anyone could ever begin to comprehend; a weight borne in silence by hundreds of thousands, millions, like the woman in black for a husband and two brothers, each grief a particular, intricate, keening love story that might have been otherwise. It seemed as though he had never thought about the war before, not about its cost. He had been so busy with the details of his work, of doing it well, and his widest view had been of war aims, of winning, of statistical deaths, statistical destruction, and of post-war reconstruction. For the first time he sensed the scale of the catastrophe in terms of feeling; all those unique and solitary deaths, all that consequent sorrow, unique and solitary too, which had no place in conferences, headlines, history, and which had quietly retired to houses, kitchens, unshared beds, and anguished memories. This came upon Bernard by a pine tree in the Languedoc in 1946 not as an observation he could share with June but as a deep apprehension, a recognition of a truth that dismayed him into silence and, later, a question: what possible good could come of a Europe covered in this dust, these spores, when forgetting would be inhuman and dangerous, and remembering a constant torture?”

Ian McEwan book Black Dogs

Page 164-165.
Black Dogs (1992)

Love, Life, Death, War

“.. we parted in 1914, when Kandinsky, being an enemy alien [because of his Russian nationality], had to flee from Germany to Switzerland, as did Jawlensky and Marianne de Werefkin too [to neutral Switzerland]... Ever since we parted in 1914, I have worked mainly by myself. After the First World War, here in Munich, we found that our Blue Rider group had broken up. Franz Marc and Macke had both been killed [in World War 1. ] Kandinsky, Jawlensky and Marianne were no longer here; Bloch and Burliuk were in America. Those of us who were still in Munich remained friends, of course, but each one of us had learned to work by himself rather than in a group. Besides.... we had always been individualists and our Blue Rider group never had a style of its own as uniform as that of the Paris cubists.”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

Source: Interview by Edouard Roditi (1958), p. 121

War, World, Learning, Parting

““And then along came Satan’s Eye Itself. Television.” He laughed, as at some fatal irony. “Don’t you hear the evil hum of the word, the knell of Satan? Television! It’s the ruling character of your lives, like the moon must have been for Indians. An oracle, a companion, a signal of the changing seasons. But rather than divine illumination, each night it spews forth Satan’s imagery. Murders, car crashes, mad policemen, perverted strangers! And you lie there decomposing in its flickering, blue-gray light, absorbing His horrid fantasies!””

Lucius Shepard book Green Eyes

Source: Green Eyes (1984), Chapter 10, p. 115

Lie, Cars, Light, Evil

“Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up
Holding wonder like a cup.”

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) American writer and poet

"Barter"
Love Songs (1917)

Life, Children, Beauty, Singing

“At times, we [the White Stripes] almost ignore our own music. If we have the stage, we've gotta play Son House's music, because there's nobody to keep it alive. We don't wanna be known as the band that's conducting music instruction class. But that's all everyone talks about - why MTV's not good, why radio's not good. And the answer is really because whatever you want to call it - blues, country, folk - isn't around any more. That's why everyone's so mad, and I'm tired of it being my job to bring it back.”

Jack White (1975) American musician and record producer

On why he tends to look to the past Perry, Andrew (2004). "The White Stripes uncut" http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,13887,1349947,00.html Observer Music Monthly (accessed June 19, 2007). 2010

Music, Time, Housing, Madness

“Misty path and the night is endless,
She could be a queen
Or a desert princess.
Hero takes her hand and leads her through…
Who knows what this night will do?
Only in the blue night he comes to her
That's when the whole night
Belongs to her.”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Earth Moving (1989)

Princess, Night

“Coherent
Counsel! Good man.
Require of us our terribly excluded blue.
Constrain, repair a ripped, revolted land.
Put hand in hand land over.
Reprove
the abler droughts and manias of the day
and a felicity entreat.
Love.
Complete
your pledges, reinforce your aides, renew
stance, testament.”

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) American writer

The Good Man

Love

“Am I not among the early risers
and the long-distance walkers? Have I not stood, amazed, as I consider
the perfection of the morning star
above the peaks of the houses, and the crowns of the trees
blue in the first light?
Do I not see how the trees tremble, as though
sheets of water flowed over them
though it is only wind, that common thing,
free to everyone, and everything?”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

"Am I Not Among the Early Risers"
West Wind (1997)

Star, Tree, Light, Water

“The little wind-flower, whose just opened eye
Is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at.”

William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) American romantic poet and journalist

A Winter Piece http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page24, st. 3 (1821)

Spring, Flowers

“Suppose a surface to be part red and part blue; so that every point on it is either red or blue, and of course, no part can be both red and blue. What then, is the color of the surface in the immediate neighborhood of the point. …it follows that the boundary is half red and half blue. In like manner, we find it necessary to hold that consciousness essentially occupies time… Thus, the present is half past and half time to come. …Take another case: the velocity of a particle at any instant of time is its mean velocity during an infinitesimal instant in which that time is consumed. Just so, my immediate feeling is my feeling through an infinitesimal duration containing the present instant.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

The Law of Mind (1892)

Color, Feeling, Time, Past

“The summer skies are darkly blue,
The days are still and bright,
And Evening trails her robes of gold
Through the dim halls of Night.”

Sarah Helen Whitman (1803–1878) United States poet

Summer's Call. Compare: "I heard the trailing garments of the Night / Sweep through her marble halls", Longfellow.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Summer, Night

“Light gatherer. You fell from a star
into my lap, the soft lamp at the bedside
mirrored in you,
and now you shine like a snowgirl,
a buttercup under a chin, the wide blue yonder
you squeal at and fly in.”

Carol Ann Duffy (1955) British writer and professor of contemporary poetry

The Light Gatherer, from Feminine Gospels (2002).

Star, Light, Flying

“Above anything else, stay true to yourself. Whether that means for you that you like to have blue hair, or you don't like to drink, or you are attracted to the same sex, or you want to remove yourself from Facebook, or you've got 3 different kids from 3 different dads but you know you're a really good mom, or you cry for a week because your turtle died. Whatever your truth is, stay true to yourself. But be a good person while you're at it.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

When asked what advice would she give young feminist — Reddit "Sunday morning with Gillian Anderson. Grab a cup of coffee and A Vision of Fire. AMA." https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2j12o1/sunday_morning_with_gillian_anderson_grab_a_cup#cl7c2ps (October 12, 2014) 2010s

Truth, Sex, Moms, Drink

“When the light turns green, you go. When the light turns red, you stop. But what do you do when the light turns blue with orange and lavender spots?”

Shel Silverstein book A Light in the Attic

A Light in the Attic

Light

“The offerings arise:
Hazes of rainbow light,
Pure crystal, blue, and gold,
Through dreamland take their flight;
And 'mid the sacrifice
God moveth as of old.
In miracles of fire
He symbols forth his days;
In gleams of crystal light
Reveals what pure pathways
Lead to the soul's desire,
The silence of the height.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

God, Soul, Light, Silence

“Prospero wears a large, heavy, dark-blue cloak or gown that enfolds him like a quilted blanket… it is darkly embroidered with small wine-coloured beads and swirls of black vegetation… it has long strings and ornate tassels that trail to the ground… it is a garment that has often been worn… a little frayed and scuffed. Later it will be seen to be capable of changing colour… in seven stages comparable to the power of Prospero's magic… black, brown, dark blue, light blue, purple, dark red and fiery red… and to have a vivid lining embroidered with dazzling stars -- a lining that is only revealed in flashes as when a dark butterfly momentarily uncovers coloured underwings.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Prospero's Books

Star, Light, Wine, Change

“Opposites are:
for tone, a more luminous/lighter one for a darker one.
for tint, the complementaries, that is, a certain red opposed to its complementary, etc.
Red — Green
Orange — Blue
Yellow — Violet
for line, those making a right angle.”

Georges Seurat (1859–1891) French painter

Quotes, 1881 - 1890, Letter to Maurice Beaubourg', August 1890

“a sky of clouds completely 'out of the blue'… I'm looking, reflecting, and when it suddenly happens: hey, the clouds, and what clouds!”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

in interview with nl:Ischa Meyer, c. 1988
quote c. 1988 - from ('RM'), 157; p. 41
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)

“Back and forth the fantastic tableaux would spin, past his cruel plebe hazing, the self-discovery at the West Texas Military Academy, the patriarchal Judge MacArthur, all beard and cigar smoke, presiding over dynastic feats at Washington's 1201 N Street; the chimes of the drawing-room clock there telling off the quarters; the ceremonial changing of the guard at Leavenworth; his father's tales of Sherman's dauntless Boys in Blue; his mother's imperious commands to fight and fight and never lower his blade short of victory; the clean crack of Krag rifles and the warm prickling of desert sand as he played with his brother outside the fort stockade; the rumbling of the sunset gun and Pinky's face tilting downward, her lambent smile gilding the child's upturned features while he clutched at her cascading skirts; the yellow notes of the bugles as he stirred in his cradle; the chant of sergeants hawking cadence on the parade ground outside; and, snapping proudly in the overarching sky above him, the flag, and the flag, and the flag.”

William Manchester (1922–2004) (April 1, 1922 – June 1, 2004) American author, journalist and historian

Source: American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964 (1978), p. 709

Smile, Boy, Change, Past

“Turning away from the computer I saw through my own narrow window (at least it opened) the green, the blue, the flashes. I looked to the clock, the screen, the window. An hour passed, then two. I looked again at the clock and saw it had been only twenty minutes. I willed the second-hand, the minute-hand, the hour-hand to move faster, to deliver me to five o'clock when I would be released as from my prison term. Then suddenly I stopped, struck by the absurdity of wishing away the only thing I've got. Eight hours, eighty years, it was all too similar. Would I wish away the years until the day of my retirement, until my time was once again my own? At work I tried to keep busy to make the hours pass quickly. It was no different when watching television, socializing, moving frenetically--there are so many ways to kill time.”

Derrick Jensen book A Language Older Than Words

A Language Older Than Words (2000)

Way, Business, Time

“And he said "God, make it a dream!"
as he rode his last ride down.
And he sideswiped nineteen neat parked cars,
clipped off thirteen telephone poles,
hit two houses, bruised eight trees,
and Blue-Crossed seven people.
it was then he lost his head,
not to mention an arm or two before he stopped.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

30,000 Pounds of Bananas
Song lyrics, Verities & Balderdash (1974)

God, People, Dreams, Cars

“At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:
Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new.”

John Milton Lycidas

Source: Lycidas (1637), Line 192

“We have seven colours — violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red (Roy G. Biv). Our atmosphere has a number of particles and when light falls on them, it gets scattered. With blue colour having less wavelength and more scattering qualities, it scatters and makes the sky blue. While red colour has opposite qualities than blue so traffic lights are of this colour.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

His observations on the "strange events in our solar system" and as to why the sky looked blue and red colour was used in traffic lights to signal to vehicles to stop.
When Prof Jayant Narlikar saw the sun rise in the west

Light

“I'd play whenever I could get my hands on an electric guitar; I was trying to pick up rock'n'roll riffs and electric blues-the latest Muddy Waters. I'd spend hours and hours on the same track, back again, and back again.”

Keith Richards (1943) British rock musician, member of The Rolling Stones

[Denyer, Ralph, The Guitar Handbook, 2002, 66, 0-679-74275-1]

Water

“"I guess I make things that need energy stronger. I'm like a walking battery." "You're the table everyone wants at Starbucks," Gansey mused as he began to walk again. Blue blinked. "What?" Over his shoulder, Gansey said, "Next to the wall plug."”

Maggie Stiefvater (1981) American writer

Blue and Gansey
The Raven Cycle Series, The Raven Boys (2012)

“If you love this country, you’re working hard, you’re paying taxes and you’re obeying the law and you’d like to become a citizen, you should choose immigration reform over somebody that wants to send you back. If you’re a Muslim and you love America and freedom and you hate terror, stay here and help us win and make a future together. We want you. If you’re a young African American disillusioned and afraid, we saw in Dallas how great our police officers can be, help us build a future where nobody is afraid to walk outside, including the people that wear blue to protect our future.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

2010s, (July 26, 2016)

Love, Hate, People, Law

“There is silver blue, sky blue and thunder blue. Every color holds within it a soul, which makes me happy or repels me, and which acts as a stimulus. To a person who has no art in him, colors are colors, tones tones.... and that is all. All their consequences for the human spirit, which range between heaven to hell, just go unnoticed.”

Emil Nolde (1867–1956) German artist

Nolde's written note in 1942; as quoted in Nolde: Forbidden Pictures [exhibition catalog], Marlsborough Fine Art Ltd., London, 1970, p. 9
1921 - 1956

Happiness, Art, Color, Soul

“The life of Lord Krishna has been misunderstood by many Western commentators. Scriptural allegory is baffling to literal minds. A hilarious blunder by a translator will illustrate this point. The story concerns an inspired medieval saint, the cobbler Ravidas, who sang in the simple terms of his own trade of the spiritual glory hidden in all mankind:
Under the vast vault of blue
Lives the divinity clothed in hide.
One turns aside to hide a smile on hearing the pedestrian interpretation given to Ravidas' poem by a Western writer:
"He afterwards built a hut, set up in it an idol which he made from a hide, and applied himself to its worship."”

Paramahansa Yogananda book Autobiography of a Yogi

Source: Autobiography of a Yogi, Chapter 42 - "Last Days With My Guru"

Life, Smile, Clothes

“And then, all of a sudden, it was as though through those dark eyes an electrical circuit had been struck. She sat fascinated. Snake-and-bird fascinated. Afterwards she could not recall the details of what he had said. She remembered only that she had been absorbed, rapt, lost, for over ten minutes by the clock. She had perceived images conjured up from the dead past: a hand trailed in clear river water, deliciously cool, while the sun smiled and a shoal of tiny fishes darted between her fingers; the crisp flesh of a ripe apple straight from the tree, so juicy it ran down her chin; grass between her bare toes, the turf like springs so that she seemed not to bear the whole of her weight on her soles but to be floating, dreamlike, in slow motion, instantly transported to the moon; the western sky painted with vast heart-tearing slapdash streaks of red below the bright steel-blue of clouds, and stars coming snap-snap into view against the eastern dark; wind gentle in her hair and on her cheeks, bearing flower perfumes, dusting her with petals; snow cold to the palm as it was shaped into a ball; laughter echoing from a dark lane where only lovers walked, not thieves and muggers; butter like an ingot of soft gold; ocean spray sharp and clean as the edge of an axe; with the same sense of safe, provided rightly used; round pebbles polychrome beside a pool; rain to which a thirsty mouth could open, distilling the taste of a continent of air... And under, and through, and in, and around all this, a conviction: “Something can be done to get that back!”
She was crying. Small tears like ants had itched their paths down her cheeks. She said, when she realized he had fallen silent, “But I never knew that! None of it! I was born and raised right here in New York!””

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

”But don’t you think you should have known it?” Austin Train inquired gently.
September “MINE ENEMIES ARE DELIVERED INTO MY HAND”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Smile, Star, Spring, Flowers

“In the beginning there are those who don't quite fit in
But are somehow okay. And then some morning
There are places that suddenly seem wonderful:
Weather and water seem wonderful,
And the peaceful night sky that arrives
In time to protect us, like a sword
Cutting the blue cloak of a prince.”

John Ashbery (1927–2017) poet from the United States

"A Snowball in Hell"
Source: April Galleons (1987)

Peace, Water, Time, Weather

“I've seen those big machines come rolling through the quiet pines.
Blue suits and bankers with their Volvos and their valentines.
Give us this day our daily discount outlet merchandise.
Raise up a multiplex and we will make a sacrifice.
Now we're gonna get the big business.
Now we're gonna get the real thing.
Everybody's all excited about it.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

No Man's Land.
Song lyrics, River of Dreams (1993)

Business

“I respect Britney as a singer and artist. We’re different. She’s 20. I’m 10. She does pop. I do country and blues.”

Taylor Horn (1992) American musician and actor

On being compared to fellow Kentwoodian and singer Britney Spears. The Sunday Star http://www.webcitation.org/query?id=1256525764738342&url=www.geocities.com/thecoolchip03/sundaystar.htm article, unidentified issue

Country

“I call 'parallelism' any kind of repetition. When I feel most strongly the charm of things in nature, there is always an impression of unity. If my way leads into a pine wood where the trees reach high into heaven, I see the trunks that stand to the right and to the left of me as countless columns. One and the same vertical line, repeated many times, surrounds me. Now, if these trunks should be clearly outlined on an unbroken dark background, if they should stand out against the deep blue of the sky, the reason for this impression of unity is parallelism.”

Ferdinand Hodler (1853–1918) Swiss artist

from: Die Kunst Ferdinand Hodlers, 1923

Way, Feeling, Nature, Tree

“The plains are very wonderful now – like green gold and yellow gold and red gold – in patches – and the distance blue and pink and lavender strips and spots – May sounds like a Dow Canyon but really its wonderful – specially in the evening – I usually go alone – Yesterday rode home on a hay wagon – no it was clover with a funny old man – His mules and wagon blocked my path so we started talking... We had a great time riding toward the sunset. He was little and dried up and weather beaten – but he likes living..”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Canyon, Texas, (October 30), 1916, pp. 209, 210
1915 - 1920, Letters to Anita Pollitzer' (1916)

Home, Time, Weather

“[T]he new line that the Taehan minguk was not founded in August 1948, but instead came into existence when a provisional government was formed in Shanghai in 1919. I don't need to remind anyone of the internationally accepted criteria for statehood. The Blue House seems more interested in downgrading the republic that fought the North than in making a serious case for the statehood of something else. The original modest budget for the 70th anniversary of the ROK's founding has already been cut. The joint North-South commemoration of the March 1st uprising's 100th anniversary next year is likely to make the festivities this August 15 look subdued in comparison.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Confederation Again (July 2018)

Housing

“If we pursue this plan, by late 2006 any two adjacent public CCTV terminals — or private camcorders equipped with a digital video link — will be reprogrammable by any authenticated MAGINOT BLUE STARS superuser to permit the operator to turn them into a SCORPION STARE basilisk weapon. We remain convinced that this is the best defensive posture to adopt in order to minimize casualties when the Great Old Ones return from beyond the stars to eat our brains.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

The Concrete Jungle (2004)
The Laundry Files

Star

“Sweet empty sky of June without a stain,
Faint, gray-blue dewy mists on far-off hills
Warm, yellow sunlight flooding mead and plain,
That each dark copse and hollow overfills:”

Emma Lazarus (1849–1887) American poet

Beginning lines from Epochs I. Youth.

“BLUE CROSS: Lord, great are my woes, / greater are your deeds, / do not think of me, / remember the unbaptised! // The Lord heard the bright one's cry, / he gave a sign, changed the girl / to a blue cross-tree …”

Eino Leino (1878–1926) Finnish poet and journalist

Girl, Thinking, Tree, Change

“It was like living half your life in a tiny, stuffy, warm gray box, and being moderately happy in there because you knew no better…and then discovering a little hole in one corner of the box, a tiny opening which you could get a finger into, and tease and pull at, so that eventually you created a tear, which led to a greater tear, which led to the box falling apart around you…so that you stepped out of the tiny box’s confines into startlingly cool, clear fresh air and found yourself on top of a mountain, surrounded by deep valleys, sighing forests, soaring peaks, glittering lakes, sparkling snowfields and a stunning, breathtakingly blue sky. And that, of course, wasn’t even the start of the real story, that was more like the breath that is drawn in before the first syllable of the first word of the first paragraph of the first chapter of the first book of the first volume of the story.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Excession (1996), Chapter 4 “Dependency Principle” section III (p. 120).

Life, Happiness, Books, Mountain

“Your Nordic blue eyes looked attentively at the paintings hanging on the walls. I felt stirrings of rebellion: a whole clash between your civilization and my barbarism. Civilization from which you suffer. Barbarism which for me is a rejuvenation.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

Original: Votre œil bleu du nord regardait attentivement les tableaux pendus aux murs. J’eus comme le pressentiment d’une révolte : tout un choc entre votre civilisation et ma barbarie. Civilisation dont vous souffrez. Barbarie qui est pour moi un rajeunissement.
Source: 1890s - 1910s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 105: quote from his letter to August Strindberg (5 May 1895)

Suffering, Painting

“Violets! — deep-blue violets!
April's loveliest coronets!
There are no flowers grow in the vale,
Kiss'd by the dew, wooed by the gale, —
None by the dew of the twilight wet,
So sweet as the deep-blue violet!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Violet
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Flowers