Quotes about blush (137 quotes, page 2)

“It is difficult to live up to one's posters…When I pass my name in such large letters I blush, but at the same time instinctively raise my hat.”

Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852–1917) English actor and theatre manager

Page 188.
Beerbohm Tree (1956)

Time

“I feel it, but I cannot express it,… I cannot analyse the Celtic genius to my own satisfaction. In the Middle Ages art came from groups, not from individuals. It was anonymous; the sculptors of cathedrals no more put their names to their works than our workmen put theirs on the pavement that they lay. Ah! what an admirable scorn of notoriety! The signature is what destroys us. We do portraits, but what we do is not so great. Thèse kings and queens, on the cathedrals, were not portraits. The fellow-workers stood for one another, and they interpreted; they did not copy. They made clothed figures; the nude and portraiture only date from the Renascence. And then those fellows cut with the tool's end into the block, that is why they were called sculptors. As for us, we are modellers. And what a disgraceful thing that casting from life is, which so many well-known sculptors do not blush to use! It is a mere swindling in art. Art was a vital function to the image-makers of the thirteenth century; they would hâve laughed at the idea of signing what they did, and never dreamed of honours and titles. When once their work was finished, they said no more about it, or else they talked among themselves. How curious it would hâve been to hear them, to be present at their gatherings, where they must hâve discussed in amusing phrases, and with simple, deep ideas!… Whenever the cathedrals disappear civilisation will go down one step. And even now we no longer understand them, we no longer know how to read their silent language. We need to make excavations not in the earth, but towards heaven…”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Auguste Rodin: The Man, His Ideas, His Works, 1905, p. 63-64; About the genius of the Gothic sculptors.

Life , Age , Dreams , Art

“Has it been found that bodies of men act with more rectitude or greater disinterestedness than individuals? The contrary of this has been inferred by all accurate observers of the conduct of mankind; and the inference is founded upon obvious reasons. Regard to reputation has a less active influence, when the infamy of a bad action is to be divided among a number than when it is to fall singly upon one. A spirit of faction, which is apt to mingle its poison in the deliberations of all bodies of men, will often hurry the persons of whom they are composed into improprieties and excesses, for which they would blush in a private capacity.”

Alexander Hamilton Federalist Papers

No. 15
The Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

Men , Personality

“Though Rather is congenitally bad – an admirable heir to Walter Cronkite and his special form of treasonous broadcasting – more insidious are certain chirpy girl-next-door morning TV hosts who characterize the beliefs of ordinary middle-class Americans in terms that would make Goebbels blush.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2002, Ann Coulter : Left Is 'out to Destroy the Country' (2002)

Girl

“The conscious water saw its God and blushed.”

Richard Crashaw (1612–1649) British writer

Epigrammatum sacrorum liber (1634). Translated by John Dryden from Crashaw's Latin original: "Nympha pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit (The modest Nymph saw the god, and blushed)", Complete works of Richard Crashaw (1872), edited by Alexander B. Grosart, vol. 2, p. 96.

God , Water

“Oft did I wonder why the setting sun
Should look upon us with a blushing face:
Is't not for shame of what he hath seen done,
Whilst in our hemisphere he ran his race?”

Lyman Heath (1804–1870) American musician

First Century, On the Setting Sun; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 70.

Sun

“When a man has been the lover of a woman as that man had been hers, with the vibrating communion of a voluptuousness unbroken for two years, that woman maintains a sort of physiological, quasi-animal instinct. A gesture, the accent of a word, a sigh, a blush, a pallor, are signs for her that her intuition interprets with infallible certainty. How and why is that instinct accompanied by absolute oblivion of former caresses? It is a particular case of that insoluble and melancholy problem of the birth and death of love.”

Paul Bourget (1852–1935) French writer

Source: Cosmopolis (1892), Ch. 5 "Countess Steno"

Love , Death , Lovers , Birth

“5306. Truth makes the Devil blush.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Truth

“I pity bashful men, who feel the pain
Of fancied scorn and undeserved disdain,
And bear the marks upon a blushing face,
Of needless shame, and self-impos'd disgrace.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

Source: Conversation (1782), Line 347.

Men , Pain , Feeling

“Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image.”

Charles Dickens book The Old Curiosity Shop

Source: The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), Ch. 12

Happiness

“I only believe in those who can still blush.”

Nélson Rodrigues (1912–1980) Brazilian writer and playwright

Asfalto Selvagem: Engraçadinha, seus amores e seus pecados: novel - Page 176, by Nelson Rodrigues, Ruy Castro - Published by Companhia das Letras, 1994 ISBN 8571643717, 9788571643710 - 555 páginas

“Civil limitation daunts
His utterance never; the nymphs blush, not he.”

George Meredith (1828–1909) British novelist and poet of the Victorian era

An Orson of the Muse http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/MeredithPoems2/00000028.htm (1883).

“Where may the wearied eye repose
When gazing on the Great;
Where neither guilty glory glows,
Nor despicable state?
Yes — one — the first — the last — the best — The Cincinnatus of the West,
Whom envy dared not hate,
Bequeath'd the name of Washington,
To make man blush there was but one!”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte http://readytogoebooks.com/LB-Nap-06.htm, st. 29 (1814).

Hate , Envy

“There are names written in her immortal scroll, at which FAME blushes!”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

No. 53
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

“Where'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade,
Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade:
Where'er you tread, the blushing flow'rs shall rise,
And all things flourish where you turn your eyes.”

Alexander Pope Pastorals

Summer, line 73.
Pastorals (1709)

Tree

“Tis Summer Time on Bredon,
And now the farmers swear:
The cattle rise and listen
In valleys far and near,
And blush at what they hear.

But when the mists in autumn
On Bredon top are thick,
And happy hymns of farmers
Go up from fold and rick,
The cattle then are sick.”

Hugh Kingsmill (1889–1949) British writer and journalist

"Two Poems, After A. E. Housman", no. 2, line 1

Autumn , Time , Summer , Happiness

“Shells with lip, or tooth, or bleeding gum,
Tell-tale shells, and shells that whisper 'Come',
Shells that stammer, blush, and yet are dumb – "
"O let me hear!”

Thomas Sturge Moore (1870–1944) British playwright, poet and artist

"A Duet", line 5; from The Sea is Kind (London: Grant Richards, 1914) p. 78.

“It was a face, with nothing but the blush
To mark it from the sculptured features round :
As perfect in its beauty; but the flush
Of earthly warmth and earthly feeling crowned
The master-piece of nature;— that rich gush
Was from the heart, which thus a language found,
The eloquence of truth and silence ever : —
Words, sighs, and smiles deceive, but blushes never.”

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

24th December 1825) Metrical Fragments - No.1 Anecdote of Canova (under the pen name Iole
The London Literary Gazette, 1825

Truth , Smile , Beauty , Feeling

“Now had Aurora displayed her mantle over the blushing skies, and dark night withdrawn her sable veil.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book III, Ch. 6.

Night

“Cato instigated the magistrates to punish all offenders, saying that they that did not prevent crimes when they might, encouraged them. Of young men, he liked them that blushed better than those who looked pale.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Cato the Elder
Roman Apophthegms

Men

“She picks up the baby and contemplates the Bonsai-bush, and, as we watch, in the growing half-dark, the Bonsai-bush flowers. On the black-and-white film, the thousands of flower-petals blush a deep red.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Conclusion of the published script.
The Pillow Book

Flowers , Baby

“Blushing is the colour of virtue.”

Matthew Henry (1662–1714) Theologician from Wales

Jeremiah 20.
Commentaries

“Hail, gentle Dawn! mild blushing goddess, hail!
Rejoic'd I see thy purple mantle spread
O'er half the skies, gems pave thy radiant way,
And orient pearls from ev'ry shrub depend.”

William Somervile (1675–1742) English poet

Bk. II, line 79.
The Chace (1735)

Way , Dependency

“Truth does not blush.”
Nihil veritas erubescit

Tertullian (155–220) Christian theologian

Adversus Valentinianos, 3.2

Truth

“What though our eyes with tears be wet?
The sunrise never failed us yet.The blush of dawn may yet restore
Our light and hope and joy once more.”

Celia Thaxter (1835–1894) American writer

"The Sunrise Never Failed Us Yet" in Drift-Weed (1878), p. 64.
Context: What though our eyes with tears be wet?
The sunrise never failed us yet.The blush of dawn may yet restore
Our light and hope and joy once more.
Sad soul, take comfort, nor forget
That sunrise never failed us yet!

Hope , Tear , Light , Joy

“Why should they not blush with indignant shame if the community that owns them is vile in any way whatsoever? Individuals, daily more numerous, now feel this civic passion.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

1900s, The Moral Equivalent of War (1906)
Context: The war-party is assuredly right in affirming and reaffirming that the martial virtues, although originally gained by the race through war, are absolute and permanent human goods. Patriotic pride and ambition in their military form are, after all, only specifications of a more general competitive passion. They are its first form, but that is no reason for supposing them to be its last form. Men are now proud of belonging to a conquering nation, and without a murmur they lay down their persons and their wealth, if by so doing they may fend off subjection. But who can be sure that other aspects of one's country may not, with time and education and suggestion enough, come to be regarded with similarly effective feelings of pride and shame? Why should men not some day feel that is it worth a blood-tax to belong to a collectivity superior in any respect? Why should they not blush with indignant shame if the community that owns them is vile in any way whatsoever? Individuals, daily more numerous, now feel this civic passion. It is only a question of blowing on the spark until the whole population gets incandescent, and on the ruins of the old morals of military honor, a stable system of morals of civic honor builds itself up. What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise. The war-function has grasped us so far; but the constructive interests may some day seem no less imperative, and impose on the individual a hardly lighter burden.

Way , Feeling , Communication , Passion

“You shall not know her — she who sat
Unconscious in my heart all time
I dream'd and wove this wayward rhyme,
And loved and did not blush thereat.”

Joaquin Miller (1837–1913) American judge

IV, p. 25.
The Ship in the Desert (1875)
Context: I only saw her as she pass'd —
A great, sad beauty, in whose eyes
Lay all the loves of Paradise....
You shall not know her — she who sat
Unconscious in my heart all time
I dream'd and wove this wayward rhyme,
And loved and did not blush thereat.

Love , Time , Heart

“The superior man has three things in which he delights, and to be ruler over the kingdom is not one of them. That his father and mother are both alive, and that the condition of his brothers affords no cause for anxiety;—this is one delight. That, when looking up, he has no occasion for shame before Heaven, and, below, he has no occasion to blush before men;—this is a second delight. That he can get from the whole kingdom the most talented individuals, and teach and nourish them;—this is the third delight.”

Mencius (-372–-289 BC) Chinese philosopher

7A:20, as translated by James Legge in The Chinese Classics, Vol. II (1861), p. 335
The Mencius

Men

“Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

"On Three Ways of Writing for Children" (1952) — in Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories (1967), p. 25
Context: Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

Childhood

“When we appreciate how natural it is for man to strive to be a hero, how deeply it goes in his evolutionary and organismic constitution, how openly he shows it as a child, then it is all the more curious how ignorant most of us are, consciously, of what we really want and need. In our culture anyway, especially in modern times, the heroic seems too big for us, or we too small for it. Tell a young man that he is entitled to be a hero and he will blush. We disguise our struggle by piling up figures in a bank book to reflect privately our sense of heroic worth. Or by having only a little better home in the neighborhood, a bigger car, brighter children. But underneath throbs the ache of cosmic specialness, no matter how we mask it in concerns of smaller scope. Occasionally someone admits that he takes his heroism seriously, which gives most of us a chill, as did U.S. Congressman Mendel Rivers, who fed appropriations to the military machine and said he was the most powerful man since Julius Caesar. We may shudder at the crassness of earthly heroism, of both Caesar and his imitators, but the fault is not theirs, it is in the way society sets up its hero system and in the people it allows to fill its roles. The urge to heroism is natural, and to admit it honest. For everyone to admit it would probably release such pent-up force as to be devastating to societies as they now are.”

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death

The Recasting of Some Basic Psychoanalytic Ideas
The Denial of Death (1973)

Home , Time , Children , People

“I will not blush like my predecessor Sigismund.”

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (1500–1558) Holy Roman Emperor

Context: This was supposedly said by Charles when Martin Luther appeared at the Diet of Worms (16 - 18 April 1521) under an imperial safe-conduct; members of the pro-papal party (sometimes Johann Maier von Eck is specified) are supposed to have urged the emperor to seize Luther in despite of the safe-conduct, whereupon Charles alluded to the story that when Jan Huss had appeared before the Emperor Sigismund under a similar safe-conduct and had been arrested anyway, Hus reproached Sigismund, who visibly reddened at his own lack of faith. The quotation appears in various similar forms, e. g., "I shall not blush as Sigismund did at Constance." The saying is attributed to Charles by the French ecclesiastical historian Jacques Lenfant in his Histoire du Concile de Constance (1714) without a specific source.

“When'er with soft serenity she smiled,
Or caught the orient blush of quick surprise,
How sweetly mutable, how brightly wild,
The liquid lustre darted from her eyes?”

William Mason (poet) (1724–1797) poet

Source: On the Death of a Lady (1760), The poems of William Mason, vol. 1, 1822, p. 86 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101032743732&view=1up&seq=94

Smile

“A girl still able to blush is to be trapped in the heart, so as not to make her escape.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Una ragazza ancora in grado di arrossire è da intrappolare nel cuore, per non farla fuggire.
Source: prevale.net

Girl , Making love , Heart

“For, as blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)

Whore , Sense , Making love , Fools

“Be assured I will die as I have lived, and that you will have no reason to blush for me.”

Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763–1798) Irish politician

Letter to his wife, Matilda Tone (10 November 1798), quoted in T. W. Moody, R. B. McDowell and C. J. Woods (eds.), The Writings of Theobald Wolfe Tone, 1763–98, Volume III: France, the Rhine, Lough Swilly and Death of Tone, January 1797 to November 1798 (2007), p. 403

“When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are to become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the desire to mate every second of the day. It is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every part of your body. No … don’t blush. I am telling you some truths. For that is just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over, when being in love has burned away. Doesn’t sound very exciting, does it? But it is!”

Louis De Bernières (1954) English novelist

Source: Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

Imagination , Lying , Madness , Night

“The over-bearing insolence of ignorant men, who had arisen to sudden wealth by successful gambling, made men of true gentility of mind and manners blush that gold should have power to raise the unworthy in the scale of society.”

Charles Mackay book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841)

Success , Wealth , Men

Quotes about blush page 2

Quotes about blush
page 2