Quotes about grey (262 quotes, page 2) | Quotes of famous people

“The 'Grey Pictures' were done at a time when there were monochrome paintings everywhere. I painted them nonetheless... Not Kelly, but Bob Ryman, Brice Marden, Alan Charlton, Yves Klein and many others.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

In an interview with Benjamin H.D. Buchloch, 1986
Richter was asked about his 'Monochrome Grey Pictures and Abstract Pictures' and their connection with the artists Yves Klein and Ellsworth Kelly.
1980's

Time , Painting

“There is not a canvas of that time that does not foreshadow the overthrow of the foundations on which the human race thought itself firmly established, where it felt itself secure. At the moment when the Ballets Russes were at their height, when the Neo-Impressionists and Fauves had dispensed with the drawing style of the Renaissance because it could not contain the purity of the colour - these humbly painted, angular, grey, ascetic pictures were, really, an unwelcome sight. It was not any upheaval of a geological nature that they prefigured, but a cataclysm in the human order. No tremor of the earth was registered, but a tremor of the spirit that disturbed the intellect of civilised man, too long the slave of his immobilised senses. At last he was beginning to suspect that something dangerous was approaching.”

Albert Gleizes (1881–1953) French painter

after 1920, The Epic, From immobile form to mobile form (1925)

Nature , Sense , Time , Drawing

“I always felt like Gandalf should have stayed dead. That was such an incredible sequence in Fellowship of the Ring when he faces the Balrog on the Khazad-dûm and he falls into the gulf, and his last words are, “Fly, you fools.” What power that had, how that grabbed me. And then he comes back as Gandalf the White, and if anything he's sort of improved. I never liked Gandalf the White as much as Gandalf the Grey, and I never liked him coming back. I think it would have been an even stronger story if Tolkien had left him dead.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

Interview on The Sound of Young America (September 2011) http://www.maximumfun.org/sound-young-america/george-r-r-martin-author-song-ice-and-fire-series-interview-sound-young-america#transcript

Fools , Thinking , Flying , Dead

“I am near the end of the wine, sweet lords and lovely ladies, but out there the big wine is being poured – thin, slow, grey. Never more shall I taste the oncoming of this particular darkness. But I shall not be sorry to go. I am not seduced by the dainty lusts, clothed in cold green and clean linen, of an English spring. If you plunge into that dark there you will emerge at length into a raging sun and all the fabled islands of my East. And that is what I shall be doing tonight, off like a bird. I see you have your pennies ready, ladies. Twitch not, hop not about nor writhe so: I shall not be long now.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Nothing Like the Sun (1964)

Love , Spring , Bird , Rage

“I have been deeply interested during the last ten years in the use of colour with form. I have applied oil colour – white, grey, and blues of different degrees of tone... I have been very influenced by the natural colour and luminosity in stones and woods and the change in colour as light travels over the surface contours. When I pierced the material tight through a great change seemed to take place in the concavities from which direct light was excluded. From this experience my use of colour developed.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

Source: 1932 - 1946, The Studio 132:643', (1946), p. 279

Travel , Nature , Light , Change

“Grey was the very type of the old whig nobleman, punctiliously honourable and high-minded, and devoted to the constitution and to popular liberty as he understood them. At the same time his views were narrow, he was personally diffident and timorous in reform, and even less democratic than many of his opponents. (For his general opinions and comments on passing events see LE STRANGE'S Correspondence of Princess Lieven and Earl Grey, 1824–34, London, 1890, a collection of his letters to the wife of the Russian ambassador, with whom he maintained a most intimate friendship.) At the time when, after his long exclusion from office, he became prime minister, he had outlived the power of feeling or inspiring enthusiasm; but it was perhaps fortunate that at a moment of so much popular excitement the ministry was led by so cold a man. He was a great orator and a great debater, and, like all great orators, was very nervous just before rising to deliver his greatest speeches. He was exceedingly ready in apprehending complicated statements of fact, and in bringing them home to his hearers.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

J. A. Hamilton, 'Grey, Charles, second Earl Grey, Viscount Howick, and Baron Grey (1764–1845)', Dictionary of National Biography (1890).
About

Friendship , Feeling , Home , Time

“To preserve the sense of the 'grey' even in the most powerful green is amazingly difficult and whoever discovers it will be a happy mortal. (translation from the Dutch original: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

Gerard Bilders (1838–1865) painter from the Netherlands

version in original Dutch / citaat van Bilders' brief, in het Nederlands: Om het sentiment van het grijze, zelfs in het krachtigste groen, te houden is verbazend moeylijk, en die het uitvindt is een gelukkig sterveling.
Quote from Gerard Bilders in his letter (July 1860) to his maecenas Johannes Kneppelhout; as cited in Dutch Art in the Nineteenth Century – 'The Hague School; Introduction' https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dutch_Art_in_the_Nineteenth_Century/The_Hague_School:_Introduction, by G. Hermine Marius, transl. A. Teixera de Mattos; publish: The la More Press, London, 1908
1860's

Sense , Happiness

“White
This is the spiritual colour of our times, the clearness which directs all our actions. It is neither grey nor ivory white, but pure white.
White This is the colour of modern times, the colour which dissipates a whole era; our era is one of perfection, purity and certitude.
White It includes everything. We have superseded both the 'brown' of decadence and classicism and the 'blue' of divisionism, the cult of the blue sky, the gods with green beards and the spectrum.
White pure white…”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote in Van Doesburg's text 'Towards white painting', Paris, December 1929, in 'Art Concret' April 1930; as quoted in Theo van Doesburg, Joost Baljeu, Studio Vista, London 1974, p. 183
1926 – 1931

God , Time , Perfection

“I look back with pride to the great measures of social reform—Unemployment Insurance, Labour Exchanges, Safety in the Coalmines, bringing Old Age Pensions down from seventy to sixty-five years of age, the Widows' and Orphans' Pensions—for which I have been responsible both as a Liberal and a Conservative Minister. I find comfort in the broad harmony of thought which prevails between the modern Tory democracy and the doctrines of the famous Liberal leaders of the past. I am sure that in accord with their speeches and writings, men like Asquith, Morley and Grey, whom I knew so well in my youth, would have regarded the establishment of a Socialist State and the enforcement of the collectivist theory as one of the worst evils that could befall Britain and her slowly-evolved, long-cherished way of life.”

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

Speech at Huddersfield Town Hall (15 October 1951), quoted in Winston Churchill, Stemming the Tide: Speeches 1951 and 1952 (London: Cassell & Co, 1953), p. 149
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Life , Men , Youth , Age

“.. Our life is a pilgrim's progress. I once saw a very beautiful picture: it was a landscape at evening. In the distance on the right-hand side a row of hills appeared blue in the evening mist. Above those hills the splendour of the sunset, the grey clouds with their linings of silver and gold and purple. The landscape is a plain or heath covered with grass and its yellow leaves, for it was in autumn. Through the landscape a road leads to a high mountain far, far away, on the top of that mountain is a city wherein the setting sun casts a glory. On the road walks a pilgrim, staff in hand. He has been walking for a good long while already and he is very tired. And now he meets a woman, or figure in black, that makes one think of St. Paul's word: As being sorrowful yet always rejoicing. That Angel of God has been placed there to encourage the pilgrims and to answer their questions and the pilgrim asks her: Does the road go uphill then all the way? And the answer is: "Yes to the very end."”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote of Vincent van Gogh, from his 'First Sunday Sermon' http://www.vggallery.com/misc/archives/sermon.htm: 'I Am a Stranger on the Earth..'; 29 October 1876
1870s

Life , God , Beauty , Angels

“The greying east brightened, metamorphosed to pink, then red, and then the giant ball of fire rose out of the blackened hills. Across the desolation lay a supreme indifference, the casualness of night and another day, and yet the secret intimacy of those hills, their silent consoling wonder, made death a thing of no great importance. You could die, but the desert would hide the secret of your death, it would remain after you, to cover your memory with ageless wind and heat and cold.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Death , Secret , Memory , Night

“Nor, though surrounded by such men, did the youngest manager pass unnoticed. At an age when most of those who distinguish themselves in life are still contending for prizes and fellowships at college, he had won for himself a conspicuous place in Parliament. No advantage of fortune or connection was wanting that could set off to the height his splendid talents and his unblemished honour. At twenty-three he had been thought worthy to be ranked with the veteran statesmen who appeared as the delegates of the British Commons, at the bar of the British nobility. All who stood at that bar, save him alone, are gone, culprit, advocates, accusers. To the generation which is now in the vigour of life, he is the sole representative of a great age which has passed away. But those who, within the last ten years, have listened with delight, till the morning sun shone on the tapestries of the House of Lords, to the lofty and animated eloquence of Charles Earl Grey, are able to form some estimate of the powers of a race of men among whom he was not the foremost.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Thomas Babington Macaulay, ‘ Warren Hastings http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/macaulay/hastings/txt_complete.html’, Edinburgh Review LXXIV (October, 1841), pp. 160–255.
About

Life , Men , Age , Appearance

“You're sent from heaven
And I know your worth.
You made a heaven for me here on the earth.
When I'm old and grey, dear,
Promise you won't stray, dear,
For I love you so, Sonny Boy.”

Buddy de Sylva (1895–1950) American musician

Song: Sonny Boy (de Sylva wrote the words; Lew Brown and Ray Henderson wrote the music; Al Jolson insisted on being credited too)

Love , Boy

“The world is always full of brilliant youth which fades into grey and embittered middle age: the first flowering takes everything. The great men are those who have developed slowly, or who have been able to survive the glamour of their early florescence and to go on learning from life.”

Willa Cather (1873–1947) American writer and novelist

"Joseph and His Brothers"; first published in The Saturday Review of Literature (6 June 1936)
Not Under Forty (1936)

Life , Men , Youth , Age

“Now if I lived in my land, which I do, if I lived in Iceland, if I lived in Greensland I'd still have Chinese children, but out of my ears my little grey baby hears.”

Devendra Banhart (1981) American folk singer

-Chinese Children
From Cripple Crow

Children , Baby

“My wife was born in Hemingford Grey in Huntingdon and we knew and loved its river, the Great Ouse. We sat by it, we meditated by it, we walked its banks, we explored it by canoe, skiff and pont. I knew its mills, its sluices, its locks, its churches, its meadows and, further afield, its fens. It became part of my life.”

George Mackley (1900–1983) Wood engraver

Preface to George Mackley's Picture Book (1981)

Love , Life , Parting

“If I dared, I should say that your [ Camille Pissarro ] letter is imprinted with sadness. The picture business isn't going well; I fear that your morale may be colored a little grey, but I'm sure that it's only a passing phase… I imagine that you would be delighted with the country where I am now…. in ', who had talked to me about it. It's like a playing card. Red roofs against the blue sea. If the weather turns favorable perhaps I'll be able to finish them off.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Quote from Cezanne's letter to Camille Pissarro, from L'Estaque 2 July 1876, taken from Alex Danchev, The Letters of Paul Cézanne, 2013; as quoted in the 'Daily Beast' online, 13 Oct. 2013 https://www.thedailybeast.com/cezannes-letter-to-pissarro-picture-business-isnt-going-well
Quotes of Paul Cezanne, 1860s - 1870s

Sadness , Fear , Color , Imagination

“After thirteen hours we arrived at Bangkok airport and I raced for the smoking room. Smoking room was a big name for a small Perspex cubicle that was opaque from the outside because of the grey pressure of the fumes within. I opened the door, saw all the other smokers sitting there face to face in two tight rows, and I realised that I would have to smoke in the standing position. Then I realised I didn’t have to light up. All I had to do was breathe in. It was the moment of truth.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Smoking the Memory', on giving up smoking
Television and radio, Radio 4: A Point of View

Truth , Light

“So, of course, the visions are painted in the colours of the rainbow, and the reality is sketched in duller tones of black and white and grey. But I ask you to accept one thing. Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right. I may have been wrong. That is your call. But believe one thing, if nothing else. I did what I thought was right for our country.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

" Full text of Tony Blair's resignation speech http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/the_blair_years/article1772414.ece", Times Online, 10 May 2007.
Announcing his impending resignation, Trimdon Labour Club, 10 May 2007.
2000s

Reality , Heart , Painting , Country

“[Venice is] somewhat disguised by the artists who usually paint Venice, who have disfigured it by turning it into a city heated by the brightest and hottest sun. On the contrary, Venice, like all luminous cities, has a grey hue, the atmosphere is mild and misty and the sky arrays itself with clouds, just like the sky of our Norman and Dutch regions.”

Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) French painter

Quote of Boudin's letter, from Venice, 1895; to art-dealer Durand-Ruel; as cited in 'Venice, The Grand Canal' 1895, by Anne-Marie Bergeret-Gourbin https://www.museothyssen.org/en/collection/artists/boudin-eugene/venice-grand-canal, Museo Thyssen
1880s - 1890s

Sun , Painting

“There’s an emptiness inside her
And she’d do anything to fill it in.
And though it’s red blood bleeding from her now,
It’s more like cold blue ice in her heart.
She feels like kicking out all the windows,
And setting fire to this life.
She could change everything about her using colors bold and bright,
But all the colors mix together - to grey.”

Dave Matthews (1967) American singer-songwriter, musician and actor

Grey Street
Busted Stuff (2002)

Life , Color , Feeling , Change

“Cruisin on the grey snakes till my dyin day
Checkin all the hen houses out along the way
Wastin time and drinkin wine
Life is short and I ain't lyin
Livin all I can through every day.”

Bob Seger (1945) American singer-songwriter

Lucifer
Song lyrics, Mongrel (1969)

Life , Way , Wine , Time

“It's the unreal, sustained glitch in naturalism that makes this genre of TV disturbing to either watch or be on. The Lynchian subjugation of our humanity; warmth and humour, usurped by a sterile, pastel-coloured steel blade benignly thrust again and again into a grey brain.”

Russell Brand (1975) British comedian, actor, and author

Russell Brand - The Guardian (2013)

Nature

“It has happened that I have begun a canvas in a brilliant tonality, going on to finish it in a grey notation. (1898)”

Albert Marquet (1875–1947) French artist

As quoted by J. E. Müller, Le Fauvisme, Paris, Hazan, 1956, p. 92

“What I like so much about Corot is that he can say everything with a bit of tree; and it was Corot himself that I found [back] in the museum of Naples – in the simplicity of the work of Pompeii and the Egyptians. These priestesses in their silver-grey tunics are just like Corot's nymphs.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1880's, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 164 : quote from Renoir's letter to Durand-Ruell, 1882, referring to a small painting with trees of the landscape-painter Corot

Tree

“Whoever heard me assert that the grey cat playing just now in the yard is the same one that did jumps and tricks there five hundred years ago will think whatever he likes of me, but it is a stranger form of madness to imagine that the present-day cat is fundamentally an entirely different one.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book The World as Will and Representation

Quoted by Jorge Luis Borges in his essay "A History of Eternity"
The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859)

Imagination , Cats , Thinking , Madness

“Some time ago I saw a painting by Thijs Maris [= Matthijs Maris, one of the three brothers Maris, all three famous Dutch impressionist painters of the Hague School ] that reminded me of it. An old Dutch town with rows of brownish red houses with step-gables and tall flights of steps, grey roofs, and white or yellow doors, window-frames and cornices; canals with ships and a large white drawbridge, a barge with a man at the tiller going under it... Some distance away a stone bridge over the canal, with people and a cart with white horses crossing it. And everywhere movement, a porter with his wheelbarrow, a man leaning against the railing, gazing into the water, women in black with white caps... A greyish white sky over everything…”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

quote from Vincent's Letter #031 to Theo van Gogh (London, 6 April 1875) http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let031/letter.html
1870s

Women , People , School , Water

“Our Youth is fleeting
Old age is just around the bend
And I can't wait to go grey
And I'll sit and wonder
Of every love that could have been
If I'd only thought of something charming to say”

Ben Gibbard (1976) American singer, songwriter and guitarist

The Sound of Settling
Transatlanticism (2003)

Love , Youth , Age , Waiting

“4545. The Fox may grow grey, but never good.”

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

Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1749) : Many Foxes grow grey, but few grow good.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“Today I walked into the sunset — to mail some letters —... But some way or other I didn't seem to like the redness much so after I mailed the letters I walked home — and kept walking - The Eastern sky was all grey blue — bunches of clouds — different kinds of clouds — sticking around everywhere and the whole thing — lit up — first in one place — then in another with flashes of lightning — sometimes just sheet lightning — and some times sheet lightning with a sharp bright zigzag flashing across it -. I walked out past the last house — past the last locust tree — and sat on the fence for a long time — looking — just looking at — the lightning — you see there was nothing but sky and flat prairie land — land that seems more like the ocean than anything else I know — There was a wonderful moon. Well I just sat there and had a great time by myself — Not even many night noises — just the wind —... I wondered what you were doing - It is absurd the way I love this country — Then when I came back — it was funny — roads just shoot across blocks anywhere — all the houses looked alike — and I almost got lost — I had to laugh at myself — I couldn't tell which house was home - I am loving the plains more than ever it seems — and the SKY — Anita you have never seen SKY — it is wonderful”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Canyon, Texas (September 11, 1916), pp. 183-184
1915 - 1920, Letters to Anita Pollitzer' (1916)

Love , Way , Home , Tree

“When all candels be out, all cats be grey,
All thingis are then of one colour, as who sey.
And this prouerbe faith, for quenching hot desyre,
Foul water as soone as fayre, will quenche hot fyre.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

When all candles are out, all cats are grey,
All things are then of one color, as who say.
And this proverb faith, for quenching hot desire,
Foul water as soon as faire, will quench hot fire.
Part I, chapter 5.
Proverbs (1546)

Faith , Cats , Water

“Mr. Grey was much obliged to his hon. friend for submitting the motion to the House. The length of time during which the nation had groaned under such vexatious and tyrannical institutions, was with him a reason why they should exist no longer, and he wished Mr. Curwen to move for a committee to inquire into the state of the game laws.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Remarks in the House of Commons on the debate on Mr. Curwen's Motion to Repeal the Game Laws (4 March 1796), reported in The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803. Vol. XXXI (London: 1818), p. 845.
1790s

Law , Game , Time , Housing

“In retrospect these years form not only the least agreeable, but the only barren and unhappy period of my life. I was happy as a child with my toys in my nursery. I have been happier every year since I became a man. But this interlude of school makes a sombre grey patch upon the chart of my journey. It was an unending spell of worries that did not then seem petty, of toil uncheered by fruition; a time of discomfort, restriction and purposeless monotony. This train of thought must not lead me to exaggerate the character of my school days … Harrow was a very good school … Most of the boys were very happy … I can only record the fact that, no doubt through my own shortcomings, I was an exception. … I was on the whole considerably discouraged … All my contemporaries and even younger boys seemed in every way better adapted to the conditions of our little world. They were far better both at the games and at the lessons. It is not pleasant to feel oneself so completely outclassed and left behind at the very beginning of the race.”

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

Source: My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 3 (Examinations).

Life , World , School , Way

“He seemed to lose interest in the subject of his daughter, glooming at a yellow card of ancient railway regulations on the wall. But when the harbingers of the coming train were audible – porters trundling, a scrambled gabble from the station announcer, frantic blowing on hot tea – he became eager again and was out swiftly on to the platform. I followed him. The train slid in. I saw the driver look down disdainful from his cosy hell, sharing – like soldier and auxiliary – a mystique with the tea-room woman. Passengers, disillusioned with arrival, got out greyly amid grey steam; passengers, hungry for the illusion of getting somewhere, jostled their way on.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Way , Hell , Tea , Daughters

“Soundlessly, shadow with shadow, we wrestled together,
Till the grey dawn.”

Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) English poet

"The Shadow" in The Empire Review (1923) Vol. 37, p. 620

“There's been a lot of analysis about the so-called gender wars... me playing the so-called gender card because heavens knows no-one noticed I was a woman until I raised it, but against that background, I do want to say about all of these issues, the reaction to being the first female Prime Minister does not explain everything about my Prime Ministership, nor does it explain nothing about my Prime Ministership. I've been a little bit bemused by those colleagues in the newspaper who have admitted that I have suffered more pressure as a result of my gender than other Prime Ministers in the past but then concluded that it had zero effect on my political position or the political position of the Labor Party. It doesn't explain everything... it explains some things. And it is for the nation to think in a sophisticated way about those shades of grey. What I am absolutely confident of is it will be easier for the next woman and the woman after that and the woman after that - and I'm proud of that.”

Julia Gillard (1961) Australian politician and lawyer, 27th Prime Minister of Australia

Resignation Press Conference after leadership ballot
"Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard Defeated In Shock Leadership Challenge by Kevin Rudd" http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/06/26/australia-julia-gillard-defeated-leadership-contest_n_3501448.html?utm_hp_ref=uk, in Huffington Post, 26 June 2013

War , Way , Confidence , Thinking

“What is the world that lies around our own? Shadowy, unsubstantial, and wonderful are the viewless elements, peopled with spirits powerful and viewless as the air which is their home. From the earth's earliest hour, the belief in the supernatural has been universal. At first the faith was full of poetry; for, in those days, the imagination walked the earth even as did the angels, shedding their glory around the children of men. The Chaldeans watched from their lofty towers the silent beauty of night — they saw the stars go forth on their appointed way, and deemed that they bore with them the mighty records of eternity. Each separate planet shone on some mortal birth, and as its aspect was for good or for evil, such was the aspect of the fortunes that began beneath its light. Those giant watch-towers, with their grey sages, asked of the midnight its mystery, and held its starry roll to be the chronicle of this breathing world. Time past on, angels visited the earth no more, and the divine beliefs of young imagination grew earthlier. Yet poetry lingered in the mournful murmur of the oaks of Dodona, and in the fierce war song of the flying vultures, of whom the Romans demanded tidings of conquest. But prophecy gradually sank into divination, and it is a singular proof of the extent both of human credulity and of curiosity, to note the various methods that have had the credit of forestalling the future. From the stars to a tea-cup is a fall indeed”

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

Literary Remains

Men , War , Children , People

“If the famous Clementi, whom I found here (Italy) in the year 1766, and bought of his father for seven years, is not still a Catholic, the fault is not with me.—I assured the Pope I would not endeavour to convert him. Meeting him one Sunday when we were in the country, I asked him—" Why he did not go to mass" (there was a Catholic chapel about ten miles distant) : he said—" There was no horse."—" No horse! Why don't you take the grey horse?"—"O quello, Signore, scappa via.( O that one, Gentleman, run off. )"—" Take then the black poney."—" E quello casca subito.( And that one falls quickly.)" So what with the horse that fell, and the horse that ran away, I fear Signior Clementi attended mass as seldom as you do a sermon.”

Peter Beckford (1643–1710) Governor of Jamaica

Familiar letters from Italy, to a friend in England (1805) by Sir Peter Beckford (1740-1811), Vol. 2

Fear , Distant , Horse , Country

“Sometimes they're grey/green, sometimes they're grey, and some people think they are blue. So, I can't tell you!”

Sarah Brightman (1960) British soprano, musical theatre actress, and dancer

The Straits Times (Singapore) (2001); on the colour of her eyes.

People , Thinking

“Starry starry night,
Paint your palette blue and grey
Look out on a summer's day with eyes that know the darkness in my soul…”

Don McLean (1945) American Singer and songwriter

Song lyrics, American Pie (1971), Vincent

Soul , Summer , Painting , Night

“"You are old, Father William." the young man cried,
"The few locks which are left you are grey;
You are hale, Father William—a hearty old man:
Now tell me the reason, I pray."”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/Classic%20Poems/Southey/the_old_man's_comforts.htm, st. 1 (1799).

“Some starlit garden grey with dew,
Some chamber flushed with wine and fire,
What matters where, so I and you
Are worthy our desire?”

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) English poet, critic and editor

Source: Poems (1898), Rhymes And Rhythms, XII

Wine

“When he was dead I raised myself to my feet and I looked about me. Everything was still. A loneliness had come upon my soul.
There was darkness everywhere now but in the forest. And even here there were wisps of grey, as if evil crept in.
I lifted my head to the sky and I shook my fist. “Oh, I reject you. I reject your Heaven and I reject your Hell. Do as you wish with me, but know that your desires are petty and your ambitions have no meaning!””

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

I addressed no one. I addressed the universe. I addressed a void.

Chapter 15 (p. 154)
The von Bek family, The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981)

Soul , Hell , Universe , Evil

“When afternoon came to Vidyasagar Road, wet clothes … hung from a clothesline which stretched from one side to another on the veranda of the first floor. The line, which had not been tightly drawn anyway, sagged with the pressure of the heavy wet clothes that dripped, from sleeves and trouser-ends, a curious grey water on to the floor, and, especially in the middle, one noticed the line curved downwards, as if a smile were forming.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Freedom Song (1998)

Smile , Water , Clothes

“What makes us decide to run away? I remember my own flight on 18 January 1960….. A calm ordinary winter, not to be compared with that eighteen years earlier. But it seems that the sudden urge to escape may be prompted by one of those cold, grey days which makes you more than ever aware of your solitude, intensifying your feeling that a trap is about to close.”

Patrick Modiano (1945) French writer

P 52
The Search Warrant (2000)

Feeling , Solitude , Winter

“Once, along with The Transfigured Night, he played a class Rachmaninoff’s Isle of the Dead. Most of the class had not seen the painting, so he went to the library and returned with a reproduction of it. Then he pointed, with a sober smile, to a painting which hung on the wall of the classroom (A Representation of Several Areas, Some of Them Grey, one might have called it; yet this would have been unjust to it—it was non-representational) and played for the class, on the piano, a composition which he said was an interpretation of the painting: he played very slowly and very calmly, with his elbows, so that it sounded like blocks falling downstairs, but in slow motion. But half his class took this as seriously as they took everything else, and asked him for weeks afterward about prepared pianos, tone-clusters, and the compositions of John Cage and Henry Cowell; one girl finally brought him a lovely silk-screen reproduction of a painting by Jackson Pollock, and was just opening her mouth to—
He interrupted, bewilderingly, by asking the Lord what land He had brought him into. The girl stared at him open-mouthed, and he at once said apologetically that he was only quoting Mahler, who had also diedt from America; then he gave her such a winning smile that she said to her roommate that night, forgivingly: “He really is a nice old guy. You never would know he’s famous.””

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

“Is he really famous?” her roommate asked. “I never heard of him before I got here. ...”
Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 4, pp. 138–139

Love , Smile , Guy , Quotes

“The founders of this New Left reasoned that neither the current political status-quo nor the socialist states, as exemplified by the Soviet Union and its slave states, were the solution to the problems they reasoned were facing the American people. But as history teaches, the New Left fell victim to the power politics of the Old Left. As the result, what is still rhetorically referred to as the New Left is, in reality, only a Dorian Grey picture of the original vision of its founders.”

Phillip Abbott Luce (1935–1998)

Source: The New Left Today: American Trojan Horse (1971), p. xi

People , History , Problem , Reality

“It was no accident that I found my way to Götz at the time [c. 1960-62]. This 'Informal' element runs through every picture I've painted, whether it's a landscape, or a family painted from a photograph, or the Colour Charts or a Grey picture. And so now it is a pursuit of the same objectives by other means... As I now see it, all my paintings are 'Informal'.... except for the landscapes, perhaps... The 'Informal' is the opposite of the constructional quality of classicism – the age of kings, of clearly formed hierarchies.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Source: after 2000, Doubt and belief in painting' (2003), p. 42, note 45 : quote on his period of Informal art

Age , Family , Way , Time

“Half the campus was designed by Bottom the Weaver, half by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; Benton had been endowed with one to begin with, and had smiled and sweated and and spoken for the other. A visitor looked under black beams, through leaded casements (past apple boughs, past box, past chairs like bath-tubs on broomsticks) to a lawn ornamented with one of the statues of David Smith; in the months since the figure had been put in its place a shrike had deserted for it a neighboring thorn tree, and an archer had skinned her leg against its farthest spike. On the table in the President’s waiting-room there were copies of Town and Country, the Journal of the History of Ideas, and a small magazine—a little magazine—that had no name. One walked by a mahogany hat-rack, glanced at the coat of arms on an umbrella-stand, and brushed with one’s sleeve something that gave a ghostly tinkle—four or five black and orange ellipsoids, set on grey wires, trembled in the faint breeze of the air-conditioning unit: a mobile. A cloud passed over the sun, and there came trailing from the gymnasium, in maillots and blue jeans, a melancholy procession, four dancers helping to the infirmary a friend who had dislocated her shoulder in the final variation of The Eye of Anguish.”

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 1: “The President, Mrs., and Derek Robbins”, p. 3; opening paragraph of novel

Smile , History , Idea , Tree

““This affair must all be unravelled from within.” He tapped his forehead. “These little grey cells. It is ‘up to them’ — as you say over here.””

Agatha Christie book The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Hercule Poirot
The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)

“1,024 Colours in 4 Permutations'
In order to represent all extant colour shades in one painting, I worked out a system which – starting from the three primaries, plus grey – made possible a continual subdivision (differentiation) through equal gradations. 4 x 4 = 16 x 4 = 64 x 4 = 256 x 4 = 1,024. The multiplier 4 was necessary because I wanted to keep the image size, the square size and the number of squares in a constant proportion to each other. To use more than 1,024 tones (4,096, for instance) seemed pointless, since the difference between one shade and the next would no longer have been detectable.
The arrangement of the colours on the squares was done by a random process, to obtain a diffuse, undifferentiated overall effect, combined with stimulating detail. The rigid grid precludes the generation of figurations, although with an effort these can be detected. This aspect of artificial naturalism fascinates me – as does the fact that, if I had painted all the possible permutations, light would have taken more than 400 billion years to travel from the first painting to the last. I wanted to paint four large, colourful pictures.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Richter's quote from the catalog of a group exhibition in 'Palais des Beaux-Arts', Brussels, 1974
1970's

Travel , Nature , Effort , Light

“… we are approaching a time when, in Moravec's words, 'almost all humans work to amuse other humans.' In rich countries, that time has already arrived. The old industries have been exported to the developing world. At home, new occupations have evolved, replacing those of the industrial era. Many of them satisfy needs that in the past were repressed or disguised. A thriving economy of psychotherapists, designer religions and spiritual boutiques has sprung up. Beyond that, there is an enormous grey economy of illegal industries supplying drugs and sex. The function of this new economy, legal and illegal, is to entertain and distract a population which - though it is busier than ever before - secretly suspects that it is useless. Industrialisation created the working class. Now it has made the working class obsolete. Unless it is cut short by ecological collapse, it will eventually do the same to nearly everyone.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

Non-Progress: An Irony of History (p. 160)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

World , Religion , Sex , Home

“Oh dear and laughing, lost to me,
Hidden in grey Eternity,
I shall attain, with burning feet,
To you and to the mercy-seat!
The ages crumble down like dust,
Dark roses, deviously thrust
And scattered in sweet wine — but I,
I shall lift up to you my cry,
And kiss your wet lips presently
Beneath the ever-living Tree.”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Source: Young Adventure (1918), The Quality of Courage

Age , Kiss , Tree , Wine

“It must not be supposed that it is always necessary to present our landscapes with an attractive and well-defined arrangement of clouds; on the contrary, it will often happen that the effect of a scene is best emphasized by a mere grey tint representing a covered sky or even a blue, cloudless sky; but this is a very different thing to rendering it as a white blank.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Composition and clouds considered as an aid to expression, p. 105

“Clouds that are grey
Can no longer be washed clean.
We open the umbrella
And simply paint the sky black.”

Gu Cheng (1956–1993) Chinese poet

"A Walk In The Rain" [Yu xing]

Painting

“Pain and penitence forsaking,
Hearts like cloisters dim and grey,
By your laughter lured, awaking
Join with you the dance of day.”

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

By Still Waters (1906)

Pain , Laughter , Heart , Dance

“Grey was an ambitious man who always wished to lead, but his overt ambition during his youth made him unpopular. He lacked the warmth of personality that made Fox revered by his followers. Grey was respected but rarely loved. His achievements were few, but they were significant. He helped to keep liberal principles alive during the years of conflict with revolutionary France, and in 1832 he safeguarded the continuity of the British constitution into an era of increasingly rapid social and political change. In character he was a man of contradictions, headstrong but easily discouraged by failure, imperious but indecisive, cautious and introspective. He was at his best when in office, for he sought fame and reputation: in opposition he often became despondent. He was a man of principle and integrity, though not always successful in execution. His bearing and attitudes were aristocratic, and his instincts were fundamentally conservative. He was a whig of the eighteenth-century school, most at home among his deferential clients, tenants, and labourers at Howick, and he never came to terms with the new industrial society which was coming into being during his later years. It is greatly to his credit that his Reform Act, whatever its conservative purpose, smoothed the path for that new society to establish its dominance without destroying the old.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

E. A. Smith, ‘ Grey, Charles, second Earl Grey (1764–1845) http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11526’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2009, accessed 8 Sept 2012.
About

Love , Youth , School , Home

“Death!
Plop.
The barges down in the river flop.
Flop, plop,
Above, beneath.
From the slimy branches the grey drips drop…
To the oozy waters, that lounge and flop…
And my head shrieks--"Stop"
And my heart shrieks--"Die"…”

Theo Marzials (1850–1920) Anglo-French poet and eccentric

A Tragedy, reported by several critics to be the worst poem published in the English language. http://www.reedleycollege.edu/academic/Departments/CompLitComm/sbowie/Tragedy.htm.

Death , Water , Heart

“507. All Cats are alike grey in the Night.”

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

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

Cats , Night

“For an instant a half-formed prayer struggled into Havor’s mouth. But he could not utter it. Not for himself. For him those words were already drowned by the noise the thong-whip had made, or the sounds of children crying out of hunger or the cold or sheer misery in that grey house of orphans in the far North, eight years ago.”

Tanith Lee (1947–2015) British writer

Source: Short fiction, Companions on the Road (1975), Chapter 7, “The Snow-Waste” (p. 69)

Hunger , Children , Housing , Cry

“When I first painted a number of canvases grey all over (about eight years ago), I did so because I did not know what to paint, or what there might be to paint: so wretched a start could lead to nothing meaningful. As time went on, however, I observed differences of quality among the grey surfaces – and also that these betrayed nothing of the destructive motivation that lay behind them. The pictures began to teach me. By generalizing a personal dilemma, they resolved it.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Quote of Richter on his 'Grey Paintings', in a letter to nl:Edy de Wilde, 23 February 1975; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: on 'Grey-paintings' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/subjects-2/grey-paintings-9
1970's

Motivation , Time , Painting , Personality

“Foolish people laugh at those readers a century ago who wept over the novels of Dickens. Is it a sign of superior intellect to read anything and everything unmoved, in a grey, unfeeling Limbo?”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

People , Reading

“Presently, however, we came to a small clearing and there, squatting at the mouth of its burrow was the musician responsible for the ringing, flute-like cry — a fat ground squirrel, wearing a tasteful suit of rust-red and grey fur. He sat as upright as a guardsman at the entrance to his home and his ribcage pumped in and out as he gave his musical warning cry. His big, liquid eyes stared at us with that intense, slightly inane expression that most squirrels wear, and his little paws trembled with his vocal efforts.”

Gerald Durrell (1925–1995) naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter

How to Shoot an Amateur Naturalist (1984)

Music , Home , Effort , Cry

“The rain has lifted enough so that we can see the horizon now, a sharp line demarking the light grey of the sky and the darker grey of the water.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29

Light , Water

“I settled everything with Mrs. Grey, while you were putting on your bonnet," replied he. "She said I might have her consent, if I could obtain yours; and I asked her, in case I should be so happy, to come and live with us — for I was sure you would like it better. But she refused, saying she could now afford to employ an assistant, and would continue the school till she could purchase an annuity sufficient to maintain her in comfortable lodgings; and, meantime, she would spend her vacations alternately with us and your sister, and should be quite contented if you were happy. And so now I have overruled your objections on her account. Have you any other?"
"No — none."
"You love me then?”

Anne Brontë book Agnes Grey

said he, fervently pressing my hand.
"Yes."
Source: Agnes Grey (1847), Ch. XXV : Conclusion

Love , School , Sister , Happiness

“The dinner that evening was dreadful, the epitome of English vacuity…they were all the same, each mind set in the same weird armour, like an archosaur’s ruff, like a fringe of icicles. All I heard the whole evening was the tinkle of broken ice-needles as people tried timidly and vainly to reach through the stale fence of words, tinkle, tinkle, and then withdraw. Nobody behaved with breadth, with warmth, with naturalness, and finally it became pathetic. We were all the same; I hardly said anything, but that made me no more innocent – or less conditioned. The solemn figures of the Old Country, the Queen, the Public School, Oxbridge, the Right Accent, People Like Us, stood around the table like secret police, ready to crush down in an instant on any attempt at an intelligent European humanity.* We…were held by those cloud-grey shapes on the world’s blue rim. Death machines holding thousands of gum-chewing, contraceptive-carrying men; for some reason more 30 years away than 30 miles; as if we were looking into the future, not the south; into a world where there were no more Prosperos, no private domains, no Poetries, fantasies, tender sexual promises…I felt acutely the fragility of time itself…”

John Fowles book Daniel Martin

Daniel Martin (1977)

Death , Men , People , Secret

“How wonderful the Doges' palace is! That pink and white marble must have been a bit cold at first, but it was magical for me, seeing it gilded by several centuries of sunlight! And the basilica of San Marco! That was what converted me from those cold Italian Renaissance churches.... as soon as one goes into San Marco one feels one is in a real place of worship – that gentle filtered light and those magnificent mosaics and the great Byzantine Christ with the grey aureole! If one hasn't been in San Marco it is impossible to imagine the beauty of heavy pillars and columns without any moulding!”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1880's, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 161-162 : (1882), in a letter to Vollard

Beauty , Feeling , Imagination , Light

“There is another earthquake in Kyoto. We appreciate it lyrically. A slide of dust slips along a roof gully. A large tree of golden petals shakes and the petals drift to the floor. Birds fly up. Bottles of clear liquid in a shop quiver on a shelf. The water in a puddle shimmers reflections up a wall. A collection of grey roof tiles shift and -- ever faster -- begin to slide down a roof slope.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Section 56
8 1/2 Women

Bird , Tree , Water , Flying

“Thus for each blunt-faced ignorant one
The great grey rigid uniform combined
Safety with virtue of the sun.
Thus concepts linked like chainmail in the mind.”

Thom Gunn (1929–2004) English poet

Considering the Snail (l. 5-10)
Collected Poems by Thom Gunn (1994)

Sun

“Day after day
They send my friends away
To mansions cold and grey.
To the far side of town
Where the thin men stalk the streets
While the sane stay underground.Day after day,
They tell me I can go.
They tell me I can blow
To the far side of town
Where it's pointless to be high,
'Cause it's such a long way down.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

All the Madmen
Song lyrics, The Man Who Sold the World (1970)

Men , Way

“Some things were perfectly clear, seen with the vision of youth.
No doubts and nothing to fear, I claimed the corner on truth.
These days it's harder to say I know what I'm fighting for.
My faith is falling away.
I'm not that sure anymore.
Shades of grey wherever I go
The more I find out the less that I know.
Black and white is how it should be
But shades of grey are the colors I see.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Shades of Grey.
Song lyrics, River of Dreams (1993)

Truth , Youth , Fear , Faith

“I have sometimes come upon the Iguana, the big lizard, as they were sunning themselves upon a flat stone in a river-bed. They are not pretty in shape, but nothing can be imagined more beautiful than their colouring. They shine like a heap of precious stones or like a pane cut out of an old church window. When, as you approach, they swish away, there is a flash of azure, green and purple over the stones, the color seems to be standing behind them in the air, like a comet's luminous tail.
Once I shot an Iguana. I thought that I should be able to make some pretty things from his skin. A strange thing happened then, that I have never afterwards forgotten. As I went up to him, where he was lying dead upon his stone, and actually while I was walking the few steps, he faded and grew pale, all colour died out of him as in one long sigh, and by the time that I touched him he was grey and dull like a lump of concrete. It was the live impetuous blood pulsating within the animal, which had radiated out all that glow and splendor. Now that the flame was put out, and the soul had flown, the Iguana was as dead as a sandbag.”

Karen Blixen book Out of Africa

Out of Africa (1937)

Beauty , Color , Soul , Imagination

“Tall, slender, with beautiful flaxen hair, grey eyes, full red lips, finely framed features, graceful of carriage and movement, fresh and always young, Ellen Terry was as much an art object as an actress.”

Ellen Terry (1847–1928) English actress

Katharine Cockin, quoted in Spartacus biography http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ACterry.htm
About

Beauty , Art

“After lengthy struggles I now find myself here [Dr Kohnstamm's sanatorium in Königstein, in Taunus] for a time to put my mind into some kind of order. It is a terribly difficult thing, of course, to be among strangers so much of the day. But perhaps I'll be able to see and create something new. For the time being, I would like more peace and absolute seclusion. Of course, I long more and more for my work and my studio. Theories may be all very well for keeping a spiritual balance, but they are grey and shadowy compared with work and life.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

Letter from Königstein, Taunus to Dr. Karl Hagemann, January 1916 (friend and patron in Leverkusen and collector of his art); as quoted in the biography-pdf http://www.kirchnermuseum.ch/data/media/downloads/Biography.pdf of the Kirchner museum, Davos
Kirchner suffered then a serious mental breakdown and was also afraid for being drafted once more in the German army, so back in the war
1916 - 1919

Life , Peace , Time

“I am hard at work, at least I work as much as the weather permits. - I began a work the motif of which is the river bank in the direction of St. Paul's Church. Looking towards Rouen I have before me all the houses on the quays lighted by the morning sun, in the background the stone bridge, to the left the island with its houses, factories, boats, launches, to the right a mass of pinnaces of all colors… Yesterday, not having the sun, I began another work on the same motif in grey weather, only I looked more to the right [603]. I must leave you for my motif. I have a room on the street. I shall start on a view of the street in fog for it has been foggy every morning until eleven o'clock—noon. It should be interesting, the square in the fog, the tramways, the goings and comings..”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote in a letter, Rouen 11 October 1883, to his son Lucien; from Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 40
1880's

Color , Light , Sun , Housing

“The sky is grey
The road is grey
The building is grey
The rain is grey
Through this stretch of dead ash
Walked two children
One in bright red
One in light green.”

Gu Cheng (1956–1993) Chinese poet

"Feeling" [Ganjue]

Children , Light , Dead

“The first class contains four, which, we are informed, may be properly called beasts for hunting; namely, the hare, the hart, the wolf, and the wild boar. The second class contains the names of the beasts of the chase, and they are five; that is to say, the buck, the doe, the fox, the martin, and the roe. In the third class we find three, that are said to afford "greate dysporte" in the pursuit, and they are denominated, the grey or badger, the wild-cat and the otter…The reader may possibly be surprised, when he casts his eye over the foregoing list of animals for hunting, at seeing the names of several that do not exist at this time in England, and especially of the wolf, because he will readily recollect the story so commonly told of their destruction during the reign of Edgar.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 17
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Animals

Cats , Wolf , Time , Animals

“The world is not black and white. More like black and grey.”

Graham Greene (1904–1991) English writer, playwright and literary critic

London Observer (January 2, 1983)

World

“By common consent grey hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respect that can never excite envy.”

George Bancroft (1800–1891) American historian and statesman

"The Ruling Passion in Death" (1833), p. 75
Literary and Historical Miscellanies (1855)

Envy

“Why should not I call my works 'symphonies', 'arrangements', 'harmonies', and 'nocturnes'?... The vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a picture as a picture, apart from any story which it may be supposed to tell. My picture of 'Harmony in Grey and Gold' is an illustration of my meaning – as snow scene with a single black figure and lighted tavern. I care nothing for the past, present, or future of the black figure, placed there because the black was wanted at that spot. All that I know is that my combination of grey and gold is the basis of the picture, Now this is precisely what my friends cannot grasp.”

James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) American-born, British-based artist

Quote in a letter to 'The World', London 22 Mai, 1878; as cited in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 186
1870 - 1903

Light , Past , Future

“The name on the mailbox was Vera Rivken, and that was her full name. It was down on the Long Beach Pike, across the street from the Ferris Wheel and the Roller Coaster. Downstairs a poolhall, upstairs a few single apartments. No mistaking that flight of stairs; it possessed her odor. The banister was warped and bent, and the grey wallpaint was swollen, with puffed places that cracked open when I pushed them with my thumb.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

“I am very happy with what I see. The grey, the not-so grey and the camouflaged That's life. One has to live with it.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Life , Happiness

““My feet they are sore, and my limbs they are weary;
Long is the way, and the mountains are wild;
Soon will the twilight close moonless and dreary
Over the path of the poor orphan child.Why did they send me so far and so lonely,
Up where the moors spread and grey rocks are piled?
Men are hard-hearted, and kind angels only
Watch o’er the steps of a poor orphan child.Yet distant and soft the night breeze is blowing,
Clouds there are none, and clear stars beam mild,
God, in His mercy, protection is showing,
Comfort and hope to the poor orphan child.Ev’n should I fall o’er the broken bridge passing,
Or stray in the marshes, by false lights beguiled,
Still will my Father, with promise and blessing,
Take to His bosom the poor orphan child.There is a thought that for strength should avail me,
Though both of shelter and kindred despoiled;
Heaven is a home, and a rest will not fail me;
God is a friend to the poor orphan child.””

Charlotte Brontë book Jane Eyre

Bessie's song (Ch. 3)
Jane Eyre (1847)

Men , God , Hope , Angels

“A face peered. All the grey night
In chaos of vacancy shone;
Nought but vast sorrow was there—
The sweet cheat gone.”

Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) English poet and fiction writer

The Ghost.

Cheating , Night

“Poor Felix Randal;
How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years,
When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers,
Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

"Felix Randal", lines 11-14
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

“When I reached C Company lines, which were at the top of the hill, I paused and looked back at the camp, just coming into full view below me through the grey mist of early morning.”

Evelyn Waugh book Brideshead Revisited

First lines of Prologue
Brideshead Revisited (1945)

“The summer was heavy with a kind of soft grey-blue weight in the sky—yet not in the sky, for it was as though there were no sky, but only air, an impalpable grey-blue substance, drugged with the weight of its own heat and hue.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan (1946), Chapter 60 “In Preparation for Violence” (p. 323)

Summer

“The Cubists used the figure, but they broke it up... But there was escape, too, even in those days, for there was Whistler living in the grey mists with a faded orange moon. The nocturne transformed itself into dreamy rooms with Chopin's music creating a mood that softened the hard core of self.”

Mark Tobey (1890–1976) American abstract expressionist painter

quote from conversation with Seitz
1950's
Source: 'Reminiscence and Reverie', Mark Tobey, Magazine of Art, 44, October 1951, pp. 228, 231

Music , Quotes , Mood

“I don't want to do any of those things you said. I want – I want – to make things right.'
'Then so you shall.'
'Is it so easy?'
'Not easy. Not easy at all. Think how much is wanting to make things wrong. All the fear in the world, and the violence that comes from the fear, and the hatred that comes from the violence, and the loneliness that comes from the hatred. All the unhappiness, all the cruelty, it gathers like clouds in the air, and grows dark and cold and heavy, and falls like grey snow in thick layers over the land. Then the world is all muffled and numb, and no one can hear each other or feel each other. Think how sad and lonely that must be.”

William Nicholson (1948) British screenwriter, playwright and novelist

Source: The "Wind on Fire" Trilogy (2000-2003), Firesong (Book 3), p. 274

World , Sadness , Fear , Feeling

“In life no such colour brightened the grey picture of a man devoted to the daily study of warfare on several continents with all the ardour of a certified public accountant.”

Alistair Cooke (1908–2004) British journalist and broadcaster

(1959) About George Marshall
Source: Letter from America, 1946-2004 (2007).

Life , Study

“the Cubists in Paris made me see that there was also a possibility of suppressing the natural aspect of form. I continued my research by abstracting the form and purifying the colour more and more. While working, I arrived at suppressing the closed effect of abstract form, expressing myself exclusively by means of the straight line in rectangular opposition; thus by rectangular planes of colour with white, grey and black. At that time, I encountered artists with approximately the same spirit, First Van der Leck, who, though still figurative, painted in compact planes of pure colour. My more or less cubist technique - in consequence still more or less picturesque - underwent the influence of his exact technique. Shortly afterwards I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Van Doesburg. Full of vitality and zeal for the already international movement that was called 'abstract', and most sincerely appreciative of my work, he came to ask me to collaborate in a review he intended to publish, and which he [Theo van Doesburg] was to call 'De Stijl.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

I was happy with an opportunity to publish my ideas on art, which I was engaged in writing down: I saw the possibility of contacts with similar efforts.
Quote of Mondrian c 1931, in 'De Stijl' (last number), p. 48; as cited in De Stijl 1917-1931 - The Dutch Contribution to Modern Art, by H.L.C. Jaffé http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/jaff001stij01_01/jaff001stij01_01.pdf; J.M. Meulenhoff, Amsterdam 1956, pp. 44-45
published in the memorial number of 'De Stijl', after the death of Theo Van Doesburg in 1931
1930's

Pleasure , Art , Idea , Nature

“The winter wind is loud and wild,
Come close to me, my darling child;
Forsake thy books, and mateless play;
And, while the night is gathering grey,
We'll talk its pensive hours away;”

Emily Brontë (1818–1848) English novelist and poet

Faith and Despondency (1846)

Books , Winter , Night

“My first concert - apart from Beethoven at School and Erik Satie at the opening of my exhibition in Kleve in 1960 - was at the gallery Parnass in Wuppertal in 1963. Dressed like a regular pianist in dark grey flannel, black tie and no hat, I played the piano all over – not just the keys – with many pairs of old shoes until it disintegrated. My intention was neither destructive nor nihilistic. 'Heal like with like' – similia similibus curantur – in the homeopathic sense. The main intention was to indicate a new beginning…. or simply a revolutionary act. This was my first public Fluxus appearance.”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

Quoted in: Joseph Beuys, Carin Kuoni. Joseph Beuys in America: Energy Plan for the Western Man. New York, 1993, p. 128; Comment on his first Fluxus performance in 1963 'Heal like with like'.
1970's, Interviews with Caroline Tisdall, 1974 & 1978

School , Shoe , Sense , Appearance

“Janeway Smithson was a little, insane, grey-haired bantam rooster of a man. He loaded five or six of us in one cab, and we rolled down to the bed of the L. A. River. Now in those days the L. A. River was a fake - there was no water, just a wide, flat, dry cement runway. The bums lived down there by the hundreds in little cement alcoves under the bridges and overpasses. Some of them even had potted plants in front of their places. All they needed to live like kings was canned heat (Sterno) and what they picked out of the nearby garbage dump. They were tan and relaxed and most of them looked a hell of a lot healthier than the average Los Angeles business man. Those guys down there had no problems with women, income tax, landlords, burial expenses, dentists, time payments, car repairs, or with climbing into a voting booth and pulling the curtain closed.”

Charles Bukowski book Factotum

Source: Factotum (1975), Ch. 71

Women , Angels , Cars , Guy

“When o'er the green undeluged earth
Heaven's covenant thou didst shine,
How came the world's grey fathers forth
To watch thy sacred sign.

And when its yellow lustre smiled
O'er mountains yet untrod,
Each mother held aloft her child
To bless the bow of God.”

Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) British writer

Theodric : A Domestic Tale; and Other Poems (1825), To the Rainbow

God , World , Smile , Mountain

“My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time.”

Evelyn Waugh book Brideshead Revisited

Brideshead Revisited (1945)

War , Memory , Time

“.. the flag is green with a red spot in the center; above, the blue of the sky, the orange-tinted white of the walls, and the orange-grey of the clouds.”

Georges Seurat (1859–1891) French painter

short notation, 1881: from 'Notes inedites de Seurat sur Delacroix', in 'Bulletin de la Vie Artistique', April 1922; as quoted by John Rewald, in Georges Seurat', a monograph https://ia800607.us.archive.org/23/items/georges00rewa/georges00rewa.pdf; Wittenborn and Compagny, New York, 1943. p. 6 - note 9
Seurat studied carefully the paintings of Eugene Delacroix, and wrote in 1881 about Delacroix's painting 'The Fanatics of Tangier' https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Eug%C3%A8ne_Delacroix_-_The_Fanatics_of_Tangier_-_WGA06195.jpg this notation
Quotes, 1881 - 1890