Quotes about purple (168 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colours richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor of the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and is content. From a knowledge of those limitations and its richness of experience emerges a symphony of colours, richer than all, its green speaking of life and strength, its orange speaking of golden content and its purple of resignation and death.”

Lin Yutang (1895–1976) Chinese writer

Epilogue, p. 328
My Country and My People (1935)

Life , Death , Wisdom , Age

“He wrapped himself in quotations - as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.”

Rudyard Kipling book Many Inventions

The Finest Story in the World http://www.telelib.com/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/ManyInventions/fineststory.html (1893).
Other works
Source: Many Inventions
Context: When next he came to me he was drunk—royally drunk on many poets for the first time revealed to him. His pupils were dilated, his words tumbled over each other, and he wrapped himself in quotations—as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of emperors.

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”

Alice Walker book The Color Purple

Source: The Color Purple (1982)

God , Color , Thinking

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”

Alice Walker book The Color Purple

Source: The Color Purple

God , People , World , Fools

“Einstein's relativity work is a magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king… its exponents are brilliant men but they are metaphysicists rather than scientists.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

New York Times (11 July 1935), p. 23, c.8

Men , People , Error , Mathematics

“Smokin on Purple”

Lil Boosie (1982) American rapper from Baton Rouge, Louisiana

“[Thou] mad mustachio purple-hued maltworms!”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Source: Henry IV: Part 1

Madness

“There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Source: Selected Poetry

“The sky is already purple; the first few stars have appeared, suddenly, as if someone had thrown a handful of silver across the edge of the world.”

Alice Hoffman book Here on Earth

Source: Here on Earth

World , Star , Appearance

“One marvel of a day he had walked so far that when he returned the moon was high and full and all the world was purple shadow and silver.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden

Source: The Secret Garden

World

“Let me give you a piece of advice. The handsome young fellow who's trying to rescue you from a hideous fate is never wrong. Not even if he says the sky is purple and made of hedgehogs.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Fate

“Anger he smiles towering in shiney metallic purple armour,
Queen jealousy envy waits behind him,
Her fiery green gown sneers at the grassy ground.”

Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) American musician, singer and songwriter

Bold as Love
Song lyrics, Axis: Bold as Love (1967)

Jealousy , Smile , Waiting , Envy

“The sky is full of birds, the purple lupins stand up so regally and peacefully, two little old women have sat down on the box for a chat, the sun is shining on my face — and right before our eyes, mass murder. The whole thing is simply beyond comprehension.”

Etty Hillesum (1914–1943) Jewish diarist

8 June 1943, p. 602
Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943

Women , Bird , Sun , Box

“A little while ago, I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon, a magnificent tomb, and I gazed upon the sarcophagus of rare and nameless marble, where rest at last the ashes of that restless man. I leaned over the balustrade and thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world. I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon—I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris—I saw him at the head of the army of Italy—I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tri-color in his hand—I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the pyramids—I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo—at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster—driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris—clutched like a wild beast—banished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea. I thought of the orphans and widows he had made—of the tears that had been shed for his glory, and of the only woman who ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition. And I said I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing purple in the kisses of the autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky—with my children upon my knees and their arms about me—I would rather have been that man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder, known as 'Napoleon the Great.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
About

Love , Fate , Children , World

“And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before.”

Edgar Allan Poe The Raven

Stanza 3.
The Raven (1844)

Sadness

“You neither can nor should understand what it means.
Listen, it comes without guitar,
Neither in rags nor in any purple fashion.
And there is nothing in it to comfort you.”

Donald Justice (1925–2004) Poet, teacher

Poem
Departures (1973)

Fashion , Understanding

“The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold”

Sennacherib (-740–-681 BC) King of Assyria

Lord Byron, The Destruction of Sennacherib
About

Wolf

“Ah well, towards happiness others will lead me
With their tresses knotted to the horns of my brow:
You know, my passion, that purple and just ripe,
The pomegranates burst and murmur with bees;
And our blood, aflame for her who will take it,
Flows for all the eternal swarm of desire.”

Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) French Symbolist poet

The Afternoon of a Faun (1876)

Passion , Bee , Happiness

“What noble thing have you produced by your pursuit of philosophy? Who of your most eminent men has been free from vain boasting? Diogenes, who made such a parade of his independence with his tub, was seized with a bowel complaint through eating a raw polypus, and so lost his life by gluttony. Aristippus, walking about in a purple robe, led a profligate life, in accordance with his professed opinions. Plato, a philosopher, was sold by Dionysius for his gormandizing propensities.”

Tatian (120–180) Syrian writer

Ante-Nicene Christian library: v. 3 p. 6
Address to the Greeks

Life , Men

“Thomas Raith: An errand is getting a tank of gas or picking up a carton of milk or something. It is not getting chased by flying purple pyromaniac gorillas hurling incendiary poo.”

Jim Butcher book Blood Rites

Source: The Dresden Files, Blood Rites (2004)

Flying

“Five trolls in a dra-a-a-a-ag,' the four-inch man sang from my shoulder. 'Four purple condoms, three French ticklers, two horny vamps and a succubus in the snow.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: White Witch, Black Curse

Age

“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.”

Jenny Joseph (1932–2018) Poet

Poem Warning http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/warning/
Source: Warning: When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple

Money , Summer

“White pill, blue pill, yellow pill, purple pill; its like swallowing a rainbow every bedtime.”

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes Persistence of Memory

Source: Persistence of Memory

“O, with what freshness, what solemnity and beauty, is each new day born; as if to say to insensate man, "Behold! thou hast one more chance! Strive for immortal glory!" There is no speech nor language where this voice is not heard; but the bold, bad man heard it not. He woke with an oath and a curse. What to him was the gold and purple, the daily miracle of morning!”

Harriet Beecher Stowe book Uncle Tom's Cabin

Ch 36 Emmeline and Cassy
Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)

Beauty , Chance

“Calvin: I won't eat any cereal that doesn't turn the milk purple.
p86”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes
Source: The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury

“Why do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled “enemy?”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Men , Heart

“Yesterday and tomorrow cross and mix on the skyline. The two are lost in a purple haze. One forgets, one waits.”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor

Waiting , Forgetting

“What obsession do men have for destruction and murder? Who do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled 'enemy?”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Men , Heart

“Each day the storm clouds were opening like great purple flowers and pouring out their dark thunder. Each nightfall, the storm was laid down on their houses like a burden the day had carried.”

Eudora Welty (1909–2001) American author

Source: The Wide Net and Other Stories

Flowers , Housing

“The whole campfire idea freaked Piper out. It made her think of that huge purple bonfire in the dreams, and her father tied to a stake.
What she got instead was almost as terrifying: a sing-along.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Dreams , Idea , Thinking , Singing

“If Bacchus ever had a color he could claim for his own, it should surely be the shade of tannin on drunken lips, of John Keat's 'purple-stained mouth', or perhaps even of Homer's dangerously wine-dark sea.”

Victoria Finlay (1964) British journalist

Color , Wine , Sea

“But the name Magnus Bane made him think of a towering sort of figure, with huge shoulders and formal purple warlock’s robes, calling down fire and lightning. Not Magnus himself, who was more of a cross between a panther and a demented elf.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Thinking

“womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

“the redness had seeped from the day and night was arranging herself around us. Cooling things down, staining and dyeing the evening purple and blue black.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Night

“Are we fighting?" I asked Morelli.
"No. Were discussing."
"Are you sure?"
"Am I yelling?" Morelli asked. "Is my face purple? Are the cords on my neck standing out? Am I waving my arms around?"
"No."
"The were not fighting.”

Janet Evanovich book Sizzling Sixteen

Source: Sizzling Sixteen

Fight

“Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgandy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Love , Color , Sun

“It wasn’t easy looking dignified wearing a bed sheet and a purple cape.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

“purple does something strange to me”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last

“They call me Boosie Baddazz and I Zoom right by ya, 760 partna crispy cream on the tires, I smoke that fire purple kush by the pound, ask my dog Webbie this is how it goes down, from my hood to yo hood, man we makin money”

Lil Boosie (1982) American rapper from Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Boosie

Money , Dogs

“That memorable day died in purple and gold, and just as the last traces of the sunset faded in the west and the star-lilies filled the sky, the full moon looked down over the rim of the valley, and the great rocks, catching the silvery glow, came forth out of the dusky shadows like very spirits.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

" A Rival of the Yosemite: The Cañon of the South Fork of King's River, California http://books.google.com/books?id=fWoiAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA77" The Century Magazine, volume XLIII, number 1 (November 1891) pages 77-97 (at page 86)
1890s

Star

“Another stroll along the quays with Julie asking questions all the time. We stood for a long time examining the sun and the planet at a mapmaker's.... There in the Tuileries Gardens.... sitting down I began to ponder over my painting of the garden, watching the shadows on the sand and on the roof of the Louvre, and trying to find the relationship between light and shade. Julie saw pink in the light and purple in the shadows.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

a note of Berthe Morisot, June, 1887; from 'Carnet Beige', in Morisot Enchantment, Philippe Huisman, La Bibliotheque des Arts; Lausanne; Paris, 1962. p. 26
about a walk with daughter Julie, 8 years old, through Paris
1881 - 1895

Question , Light , Time , Sun

“Use materials with forceful MUSCULAR colours – the reddest of reds, the most purple of purples, the greenest of greens, intense yellows, orange, vermillion – and SKELETON tones of white, grey and black.”

Giacomo Balla (1871–1958) Italian artist

(Manuscript, 1914); as quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 148
Futurist Manifesto of Men's clothing,' 1913/1914

“To stand out in the crowd I liked the color purple.”

Anna Sui (1964) American fashion designer

CNN Interview (July 31, 2004)

Color

“I remember distinctly, during the summer of 1901, at Les Andelys-on-Seine, that upon two days and for two hours in the afternoons of those days all Nature, animate and inanimate, bore the aspect of things seen under a strong glare of violet light, exactly as though a tinted glass were suspended between the sun's rays and the earth. The effect was most curious and disturbing. Nature appears to be toneless and flat. Highlights and shadows are attenuated almost to extinction, whilst in this dull purple glare the heat became more intense than ever, possibly through lack of wind, for all was still.”

Wynford Dewhurst (1864–1941) British artist

Wynford Dewhurst, 'What is Impressionism?' in Contemporary Review. vol. XCIX, 1911, p. 300.

Nature , Light , Strong , Appearance

“Where do purple bubbles swim,
But upon the goblet's brim?
Drink not deep, howe'er it glow
Sparkles never lie below.”

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

The Golden Violet - Lady Isabelle’s First Song
The Golden Violet (1827)

Lie , Drink

“But fair the exil'd Palm-tree grew
Midst foliage of no kindred hue;
Through the laburnum’s dropping gold
Rose the light shaft of Orient mould,
And Europe’s violets, faintly sweet,
Purpled the mossbeds at its feet.”

Felicia Hemans (1793–1835) English poet

The Palm Tree http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/hemans/records/tree.html, st. 2.

Tree , Light

“They make a fine purple colour by treating bilberry in the same way and mixing it with milk.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book VII, Chapter XIV, Sec. 2

Way

“I have seen the sunset, stained with mystic horrors,
Illumine the rolling waves with long purple forms,
Like actors in ancient plays.”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet

J'ai vu le soleil bas, taché d'horreurs mystiques,
Illuminant de longs figements violets,
Pareils à des acteurs de drames très-antiques.
St. 9
Le Bateau Ivre http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Boat.html (The Drunken Boat) (1871)

“At the Galerie Colette Allendy I exhibited some twenty monochrome surfaces, all in different colours: greens, reds, yellows, purples, blues, oranges.... and so found myself at the start of my career in this style... I was trying to show colour, but I realized at the private view that the public were prisoners of a preconceived point of view and that, confronted with all these surfaces of different colours, they responded far more to the inter-relationship of the different propositions, they reconstituted the elements of a decorative polychromy.”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

In 1956; p. 30
before 1960, "Yves Klein, 1928 – 1962, Selected Writings"

“I love Mougouch [Gorky's wife]. What about papa Cézanne... I like the wheat fields the plough the apricots those flirts of the sun. And bread above all. My lever is such with the purple... About 194 feet away from our house [In Armenia] on the road to the spring my father had a little garden with a few apple trees which had retired from giving fruit... This garden was identified as the 'Garden of Wish Fulfillment' and often I had seen my mother and other village women opening their bosoms and taking their soft and dependable breasts in their hands to rub them on the rocks. Above all this stood an enormous tree all bleached under the sun the rain the cold and deprived of leaves. This was the Holy Tree..”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

quote in 1942
1942 - 1948
Source: text for MoMA, describing the 'Garden in Sochi' - series, 26 June 1942

Love , Women , Quotes , Spring

“The human eye loves to rest upon wide expanses of pure colour: the moors in the purple heyday of heather, miles of green downland, and the sea when it lies calm and blue and boundless, all delight it; but to some none of these, lovely though they all are, can give the same satisfaction of spirit as acres upon acres of golden corn. There is both beauty and bread and the seeds of bread for future generations.”

Flora Thompson book Lark Rise

Source: Lark Rise, ch. 15, Harvest Home

Love , Beauty , Future , Sea

“After all, though beauty be deceitful, and favour be vain, yet beauty is the most exquisite gift ever lavished by fairies around an infant cradle. Its charm is nameless; it wins us, we know not why — and lingers on our memory, we know not wherefore. Whether in the animate or the inanimate world, it is the cause of our most delicious sensations; it belongs to the imagination, for it calls up within us whatever of poetry may be lurking in the "hidden mines of thought." It is the attribute of all that is most glorious in existence — it is on the azure sky — it clothes the earth as with a garment — it rides triumphant over the purple bosom of the sea. Look within our hearts, it has originated all that is ideal in our nature. Beauty is the shadow flung from heaven on earth — it is the type of a lovelier and more spiritual existence, and the broken and transitory lights that it flings on this our sad and heavy pilgrimage, do but indicate another and a better sphere, where the beautiful will also be the everlasting. The homage involuntarily paid to its mysterious influence is but an unconscious acknowledgment of its divine origin, and its eternal future.”

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

No.8. The Black Dwarf — ISABEL VERE.
Literary Remains

World , Sadness , Beauty , Imagination

“It was a still afternoon — the golden light was lingering languidly among the upper boughs, only glancing down here and there on the purple pathway and its edge of faintly sprinkled moss: an afternoon in which destiny disguises her cold awful face behind a hazy radiant veil, encloses us in warm downy wings, and poisons us with violet-scented breath.”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

Adam Bede (1859)

Light

“The purple morning left her crimson bed,
And donned her robes of pure vermilion hue,
Her amber locks she crowned with roses red,
In Eden's flowery gardens gathered new.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Già l'aura messaggiera erasi desta
A nunziar che se ne vien l'aurora:
intanto s'adorna, e l'aurea testa
Di rose, colte in Paradiso, infiora.
Canto III, stanza 1 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

“Much of what you see in the Catholic Church today doesn't come from God's Word, it comes from that cult-like, pagan religion. Now you say, "Pastor, how can you say such a thing? That is such an indictment of the Catholic Church. After all the Catholic Church talks about God and the Bible and Jesus and the Blood of Christ and Salvation."Isn't that the genius of Satan? If you want to counterfeit a dollar bill, you don't do it with purple paper and red ink, you're not going to fool anybody with that. But if you want to counterfeit money, what you do is make it look closely related to the real thing as possible.And that's what Satan does with counterfeit religion. He uses, he steals, he appropriates all of the symbols of true biblical Christianity, and he changes it just enough in order to cause people to miss eternal life.”

Robert Jeffress (1955) Pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas

The Response, American Family Association prayer rally, Reliant Stadium, Houston, , quoted in * 2011-10-08
Jeffress Says Satan Is Behind Roman Catholicism
Brian
Tashman
Right Wing Watch
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/jeffress-says-satan-behind-roman-catholicism

Life , Money , God , People

“The poignancy of things
A purple flower
The blossoms of spring
And the light snow of winter
How they fall”

Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician

Song lyrics, Amarantine (2005)

Spring , Flowers , Light , Winter

“Of the three primary colors, the three binary ones are formed. If you add to one of these the primary tone that is its opposite, it cancels it out. This means that you produce the required half-tone. Therefore, adding black is not adding a half-tone, it is soiling the tone whose true half-tone resides in this opposite me have just described. Hence the green shadows found in red. The heads of the two little peasants. The yellow one had purple shadows; the redder and more sanguine one had green ones.”

Paul Signac (1863–1935) French painter

Quoted by Maria Buszek, online - note 19 http://mariabuszek.com/mariabuszek/kcai/Expressionism/Readings/SignacDelaNeo.pdf
The notebook where this sentence appears was only published, in facsimile, in 1913 by J. Guiffrey. Signac therefore must have consulted it at the Conde Museum, in Chantilly. This Moroccan travel document was bought at the Delacroix sale by the painter Dauzats for the Duc of Aumale.
From Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism, 1899

Color

“.. Thus in the presence of the scorching sun, purple sea, and luxuriant blossoms, the memory of an experience of her fervid early love [Daberlohn = Alfred Wolfsohn ] came back to her. And she tried to visualize that face, that figure. And Io, she succeeded, and she noticed that this was a very interesting occupation. For she discovered that that figure…”

Charlotte Salomon (1917–1943) German painter

Charlotte's 6th ending, written page in brush, related to JHM no. 4922v https://charlotte.jck.nl/detail/M004922/part/character/theme/keyword/M004922: (553) 'Life? or Theater..', p. 818
Charlotte Salomon - Life? or Theater?

Love , Memory , Sun , Sea

“Unofficially, nobody really minded the clap. It was a joke to those who had never had it and to those who had been over it for a while. No worse than a bad cold, they said. Apparently the only time it was not a joke was when you had it. And instead of hurting your unofficial reputation it boosted you a notch, it was like getting a wound stripe. They said that in Nicaragua they used to give out Purple Hearts.
But officially it hurt your Service Record, and it automatically lost you your rating. On your papers it put a stigma on you. When he put in to get back in the Bugle Corps, he found that while he was away they had suddenly gone over-strength. He went back on straight duty for the rest of his enlistment.”

James Jones book From Here to Eternity

From Here to Eternity (1951)

Time , Heart , Hurt

“You know when it comes to racism, people say: " I don't care if they're black, white, purple or green"… Ooh hold on now: Purple or Green? You gotta draw the line somewhere! To hell with purple people!”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Unless they're suffocating - then help'em.
Just For Laughs: On The Edge - 2002

People , Hell , Drawing

“Ah, yes, I wrote the "Purple Cow"—
I'm Sorry, now, I wrote it;
But I can tell you Anyhow
I'll Kill you if you Quote it!”

Gelett Burgess (1866–1951) artist, art critic, poet, author and humorist

Poem Confession: and a Portrait Too, Upon a Background that I Rue (1897)
Reacting to the many parodies of his poem.
Confession (1897)

Quotes

“No royal palace was prepared for him;
No silken courtiers slid from room to room,
Gathering together in the gorgeous gloom
Of purple hangings, drooping rich and dim;”

John Stanyan Bigg (1828–1865) British writer

Ode to the Centenary of Burns http://www.gerald-massey.org.uk/massey/dmc_burns_centenary2.htm#7 (1858)

“But the temptation to wallow and disport myself in the purple prose of the doting collector is strong, and it will need all my vigilance to resist it.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Strong

“Just so,' agreed the King. 'So accept the escort, Adjunct, or I shall hold my breath until I achieve a most royal shade of purple.”

Steven Erikson book Dust of Dreams

Dust of Dreams (2009)

“The manuscripts in which these early Greek treatises have been preserved to us seem to be derived from an encyclopaedia compiled during the tenth century, at Constantinople, from the works of various alchemists…. The Greek text. now published by M. Berthelot and M. [Ch. Em. ] Ruelle, custodian of the Library of Ste.-Geneviève, is derived from a careful collation of all these sources, and is accompanied with notes by M. Berthelot bringing light and order into the mystical obscurity in which from the beginning the alchemists enveloped their doctrines.
First among these is the 'Physica et Mystica,' ascribed to Democritus of Abdera, a collection of fragments, among which a few receipts for dyeing in purple may be genuine, while the story of magic and the alchemical teaching are evidently spurious. The philosopher is made to state that his studies were interrupted by the death of his master, Ostanes the Magian. He therefore evoked his spirit from Hades, and learned from him that the books which contained the secrets of his art were in a certain temple. He sought them there in vain, till one day, during a feast in the sanctuary, a column opened, and revealed the precious tomes, in which the doctrines of the Master were summed up in the mysterious words: 'Nature rejoices in Nature, Nature conquers Nature, Nature rules Nature.'
The unknown Alexandrian who wrote under the name of Democritus gives not only receipts for making white alloys of copper, but others which, he positively asserts, will produce gold. M. Berthelot, however, shows in his notes that they can only result in making amalgams for gilding or alloys resembling gold or varnishes which will give a superficial tinge to metals”

Osthanes (-500) pen-name used by several pseudo-anonymous authors of Greek and Latin works of alchemy

, Marcellin Berthelot, Ch. Em. Ruelle, "The Alchemists of Egypt and Greece," Art. VIII. (Jan. 1893) in The Edinburgh Review (Jan.-Apr. 1893) Vol. 177, pp. 208-209. https://books.google.com/books?id=GuvRAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA208

Death , Secret , Books , Art

“THE quiet of the evening hour
Was laid on every summer leaf;
That purple shade was on each flower,
At once so beautiful, so brief,
Only the aspen knew not rest,
But still, with an unquiet song,
Kept murmuring to the gentle west,
And cast a changeful shade along.”

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

The Aspen Tree from The London Literary Gazette (21st August 1830)
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Beauty , Flowers , Change , Summer

“Fame to a woman is indeed but a royal mourning in purple for happiness.”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Happiness

“"Remember, I've got no idea what this is all about," said the girl when they were in the living room, a narrow room, where blue fought with red without ever compromising on purple.”

Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961) American writer

"The Assistant Murderer" (published in Black Mask, February 1926)
Short Stories

Girl , Idea

“Jeeves lugged my purple socks out of the drawer as if he were a vegetarian fishing a caterpillar out of his salad.”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Inimitable Jeeves

The Inimitable Jeeves (1923)

Fish

“He is unpardonable, therefore, who cannot distinguish one from the other; but lays on history the paint of poetry, its flattery, fable, and hyperbole: it is just as ridiculous as it would be to clothe one of our robust wrestlers, who is as hard as an oak, in fine purple, or some such meretricious garb, and put paint on his cheeks; how would such ornaments debase and degrade him!”

Lucian (120) ancient Greek writer

How to Write History

History , Painting , Clothes

“One shining morning, at the head of the Pacheco Pass, a landscape was displayed that after all my wanderings still appears as the most divinely beautiful and sublime I have ever beheld. There at my feet lay the great central plain of California, level as a lake thirty or forty miles wide, four hundred long, one rich furred bed of golden Compositae. And along the eastern shore of this lake of gold rose the mighty Sierra, miles in height, in massive, tranquil grandeur, so gloriously colored and so radiant that it seemed not clothed with light, but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some celestial city. Along the top, and extending a good way down, was a rich pearl-gray belt of snow; then a belt of blue and dark purple, marking the extension of the forests; and stretching along the base of the range a broad belt of rose-purple, where lay the miners' gold and the open foothill gardens — all the colors smoothly blending, making a wall of light clear as crystal and ineffably fine, yet firm as adamant. Then it seemed to me the Sierra should be called, not the Nevada or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light. And after ten years in the midst of it, rejoicing and wondering, seeing the glorious floods of light that fill it, — the sunbursts of morning among the mountain-peaks, the broad noonday radiance on the crystal rocks, the flush of the alpenglow, and the thousand dashing waterfalls with their marvelous abundance of irised spray, — it still seems to me a range of light.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

" The Treasures of the Yosemite http://books.google.com/books?id=ZzWgAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA483", The Century Magazine, volume XL, number 4 (August 1890) pages 483-500 (at page 483)
1890s

Beauty , Color , Way , Mountain

“While upon the subject of plants I may here mention a few of the more striking vegetable productions of Borneo. The wonderful Pitcher-plants, forming the genus Nepenthes of botanists, here reach their greatest development. Every mountain-top abounds with them, running along the ground, or climbing over shrubs and stunted trees; their elegant pitchers hanging in every direction. Some of these are long and slender, resembling in form the beautiful Philippine lace-sponge (Euplectella), which has now become so common; others are broad and short. Their colours are green, variously tinted and mottled with red or purple. The finest yet known were obtained on the summit of Kini-balou, in North-west Borneo. One of the broad sort, Nepenthes rajah, will hold two quarts of water in its pitcher. Another, Nepenthes Edwardsiania, has a narrow pitcher twenty inches long; while the plant itself grows to a length of twenty feet.”

Alfred Russel Wallace book The Malay Archipelago

The Malay Archipelago (1869)

Beauty , Mountain , Tree , Water

“I never saw a purple cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one!”

Gelett Burgess (1866–1951) artist, art critic, poet, author and humorist

The Purple Cow (1895)

Hope

“Thus, severed by the ruthless plough,
Dim fades a purple flower:
Their weary necks so poppies bow,
O'erladen by the shower.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book IX, p. 324

Flowers

“Huge bodies of vapour—a storm in each—were hurrying over a sky, dashed alike with the hues of the tempest and the morning; some of the vapours were of inky blackness, others spread like a scroll of royal purple; some undulated with the light struggling through, others were of transparent whiteness; but those upon the east were of a deep crimson—and the round, red sun had just mounted above an enormous old cedar. Red hues were cast upon everything; even the lilies blushed, and the waters of the little fountain were like melted rubies…”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Light , Water , Sun

“He [Tinky Winky] is purple—the gay-pride color, and his antenna is shaped like a triangle—the gay pride symbol.”

Jerry Falwell (1933–2007) American evangelical pastor, televangelist, and conservative political commentator

"Parents Alert: Tinky Winky Comes Out of the Closet" (February 1999), National Liberty Journal, quoted in [1999-02-15, Gay Tinky Winky bad for children, BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/276677.stm]
about Tinky Winky, a character on the children's program Teletubbies

Color

“.. 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

“Something traumatic happened to me when I was younger. I was with this old black woman, and she was very wise, very Alice Walker, The Color Purple…she looked at me and she says, "Baby…you know I used to be able to fly but I can't fly no more, baby. But baby, you…? You too fat to fly."”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Tours and CDs, Drunk With Power CD

Color , Baby , Flying

“Whether the color of your skin is black, white, yellow, brown or purple -- the extent of this tragedy is so incredibly devastating that we had to do something.”

Bert McCracken (1982) American musician

Statement about Hurricane Katrina on website of The Used, reported in L. Martinez (September 10, 2005) "Rockers plug in for Katrina", Ventura County Star, p. 1.

Color

“And loveliest sight of all, in front of the fire, stretched at full length, was his tiger – and on him – also at full length – reclined the lady, garbed in some strange clinging garment of heavy purple crepe, its hem embroidered with gold, one white arm resting on the beast's head, her back supported by a pile of the velvet cushions, and a heap of rarely bound books at her side, while between her red lips was a rose not redder than they – an almost scarlet rose.”

Elinor Glyn book Three Weeks

Three Weeks (1907), ch. 6.

Books , Support

“There is a flower, a purple flower
Sown by the wind, nursed by the shower,
O'er which Love has breathed a power and spell
The truth of whispering hope to tell.
(According to the Lady’s Book of Flowers, 1842, this is the centaury)”

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

The London Literary Gazette, 1824

Love , Truth , Books , Hope

“Poor pitied youth! …
Bring fragrant flowers, the whitest lillies bring,
With all the purple beauties of the spring;
These gifts at least, these honours I'll bestow
On the dear youth, to please his shade below.”

Christopher Pitt (1699–1748) English poet

Book VI, line 1259
The Æneid of Virgil (1740)

Youth , Beauty , Spring , Flowers

“I am sure I do not know why the beauty of Monte Carlo should not satisfy more than it does. The bluest of all seas is nowhere bluer than when you see it between the marble balustrades of the long white terrace before the casino, palms are nowhere greener than in that high garden which the mountain screen from every unkind breath, no colours could be more rich and various than those of the red and purple Alps that tower up behind the town, on whose summit such violent thunderstorms gather and break. But for me, at least, there was not at all the pleasure I had anticipated in this dazzling white and blue, these feathery palms and ragged Alps. …I had a continual restless feeling that there was nothing at all real about Monte Carlo; that the sea was too blue to be wet, the casino too white to be anything but pasteboard, and that from their very greenness the palms must be cotton. … in atmosphere and spirit the entire kingdom of Monaco is an extension of the casino.”

Willa Cather (1873–1947) American writer and novelist

Source: Willa Cather in Europe (1956), Ch. 14 (16 September 1902)

Pleasure , Beauty , Feeling , Mountain

“.. whatever may have been the style and title, the sovereign ruler was there, and accordingly the court established itself at once with all its due accompaniments of pomp, insipidity, and emptiness. Caesar appeared in public not in the robe of the consuls which was bordered with purple stripes, but in the robe wholly of purple which was reckoned in antiquity as the proper regal attire, and received, sitting on his golden chair and without rising from it, the solemn procession of the senate. The festivals in his honour commemorative of birthday, of victories, and of vows, filled the calendar. When Caesar came to the capital, his principal servants marched forth in trips to great distances so as to meet and escort him. To be near to him began to be of such importance, that the rents rose in the quarter of the city where he lived. Personal interviews with him were rendered so difficult by the multitude of individuals soliciting audience, that Caesar found himself compelled in many cases to communicate even with his intimate friends in writing, and that persons even of the highest rank had to wait for hours in the ante-chamber. People felt, more clearly than was agreeable to Caesar himself, that they no longer approached a fellow-citizen. There arose a monarchical aristocracy, which was a remarkable manner at once new and old, and which had sprung out of the idea of casting into the shade the aristocracy of the oligarchy by that of the royalty, the nobility of the patriciate. The patrician body still subsisted, although without essential privileges as an order, in the character of a close aristocratic guild; but as it could receive no new gentes it had dwindled away more and more in the course of centuries, and in Caesar's time there were not more than fifteen or sixteen patrician gentes still in existence. Caesar, himself sprung from one of them, got the right of creating new patrician gentes conferred on the Imperator by decree of the people, and so established, in contrast to the republican nobility, the new aristocracy of the patriciate, which most happily combined all the requisites of a monarchichal aristocracy - the charm of antiquity, entire dependence on the government, and total insignificance. On all sides the new sovereignty revealed itself.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, Part 2. Translated by W.P. Dickson.
The New Court.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

People , Communication , Idea , Birthday

“You should hear me on my own. It’s horrendous.
I saw Deep Purple live once and I paid money for it and I thought, Geez, this is ridiculous.”

Angus Young (1955) Scottish Australian guitarist

1983 Interview in West Hollywood, California (Sunset Marquis Hotel)

Money

“I would rather see Rome ruled by a man who once had to ask his accountant tricky questions before his steward could pay the butcher’s bill than by some mad limb like Nero, who was brought up believing himself the son and the grandson of gods, and who thought wearing the purple gave him free rein to indulge his personal vanities, execute real talent, bankrupt the Treasury, burn half of Rome – and bore the living daylights out of paying customers in theatres!”

Lindsey Davis book Shadows in Bronze

Shadows in Bronze

God , Question , Personality , Madness

“Up climb’d the sweet pea,
The butterfly of flowers:—I love it not,
Though every hue—and it has many tints—
Are dyed as if the sunset evening clouds
Had fallen to the earth in sudden rain,
And left their colours : purple, delicate pink,
And snowy white, are on thy wing-like leaves;
But thou art all too forward in thy bloom;
Thy blossoms are the sun’s, and cling to all
That can support them into open day:
And then they die, leaving no root behind,
The hope and promise of another spring;
And no perfume, whose lingering gratitude
Remains round what upheld its summer’s life.”

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

The Last of the St. Aubyns
Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Love , Life , Hope , Art

“WHAT'S WRONG WITH ASSHOLES, BABY? YOU'VE GOT AN ASSHOLE, I'VE GOT AN ASSHOLE! YOU GO TO THE STORE AND BUY A PORTERHOUSE STEAK, THAT HAD AN ASSHOLE! ASSHOLES COVER THE EARTH! IN A WAY TREES HAVE ASSHOLES BUT YOU CAN'T FIND THEM, THEY JUST DROP THEIR LEAVES. YOUR ASSHOLE, MY ASSHOLE, THE WORLD IS FULL OF BILLIONS OF ASSHOLES. THE PRESIDENT HAS AN ASSHOLE, THE CARWASH BOY HAS AN ASSHOLE, THE JUDGE AND THE MURDERER HAVE ASSHOLES... EVEN THE PURPLE STICKINPIN HAS AN ASSHOLE!”

Charles Bukowski book Post Office

Post Office (1971)

World , Way , Boy , Tree

“Take heed not to be transformed into a Caesar, not to be dipped in the purple dye, for it does happen. Keep yourself therefore, simple, good, pure, grave, unaffected, the friend of justice, religious, kind, affectionate, strong for your proper work. Wrestle to be the man philosophy wished to make you. Reverence the gods, save men. Life is brief; there is but one harvest of earthly existence, a holy disposition and neighborly acts.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

VI, 30
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VI

Life , Men , God , Justice

“Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes
That on the green turf suck the honied showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freakt with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk-rose, and the well-attir'd woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears.”

John Milton Lycidas

Source: Lycidas (1637), Line 139

Sadness , Flowers

“You know my tendency is always to imagine things in my head and to work from this idea. I am going to explain my theory of blue, yellow and red, which will probably seem as 'Spanish' to you as my face.
Blue is the male principle, astringent and spiritual. Yellow is the female principle, gentle, gay and spiritual. Red is matter, brutal and heavy and always the color to be opposed and overcome by the other two. For example, if you mix serious, spiritual blue with red, you intensify the blue to unbearable sorrow, and yellow the conciliatory, the complementary color to purple, becomes indispensable... If you mix red and yellow to make orange, you turn passive, feminine yellow into a Fury, with sensual force that again makes cool, spiritual blue indispensable, the man..”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

Quote in Franz Marc's letter to August Macke, Dec. 1910; as cited by de:Wolf-Dieter Dube, in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 129
1905 - 1910

Color , Imagination , Idea

“Whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all. Ever since history has been written, ever since philosophy has meditated, misery has been the garment of the human race; the moment has at length arrived for tearing off that rag, and for replacing, upon the naked limbs of the Man-People, the sinister fragment of the past with the grand purple robe of the dawn.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Italiens ou français, la misère nous regarde tous. Depuis que l'histoire écrit et que la philosophie médite, la misère est le vêtement du genre humain; le moment serait enfin venu d'arracher cette guenille, et de remplacer, sur les membres nus de l'Homme-Peuple, la loque sinistre du passé par la grande robe pourpre de l'aurore.
Letter To M. Daelli on Les Misérables (1862)

People , History , Tear , Past

“Thus departed Hiawatha,
Hiawatha the Beloved,
In the glory of the sunset,
In the purple mists of evening,
To the regions of the home-wind,
Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin,
To the Islands of the Blessed,
To the Kingdom of Ponemah,
To the Land of the Hereafter!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow book The Song of Hiawatha

Pt. XXII, Hiawatha's Departure, st. 29.
The Song of Hiawatha (1855)

Home

“I send thee pansies while the year is young,
Yellow as sunshine, purple as the night;
Flowers of remembrance, ever fondly sung
By all the chiefest of the Sons of Light.”

Sarah Doudney (1841–1926) English novelist and poet

Poem: Pansies.

Flowers , Light , Night

“I never meant 2 cause u any sorrow
I never meant 2 cause u any pain
I only wanted 2 one time see u laughing
I only wanted 2 see u laughing in the purple rain.”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

Purple Rain
Song lyrics, Purple Rain (1984)

Pain , Time

“In Indiana, I wasn't anything special. But in New York, I've gone out with girls with purple hair who go out with me because I'm exotic!”

Jim Gaffigan (1966) comedian, actor, author

Frazier Moore, Associated Press (December 27, 2000) "Comic Gaffigan Gets A Hayseed's Welcome to New York", Sun-Sentinel, p. 3E.

Girl

“O'er her warm cheek and rising bosom move
The bloom of young Desire and purple light of Love.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

I. 3, Line 16
The Progress of Poesy http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=pppo (1754)

Love , Light

“Pale purple as the bloom on a ripe plum, veined with the gold of late flowering gorse, set with small slender birches, just turning yellow, with red-berried rowans and thicket of bracken, the heath lay steeped in sunshine.”

Flora Thompson (1876–1947) English author and poet

Source: Heatherly, Chapter 1

Flowers

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch.7

Life , Children , Home , Lovers

“By purple death I'm seized and fate supreme.”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

Source: General sources, Lines from Homer's Iliad which Julian recited upon his elevation to Caesar by Constantius II, as recorded by Ammianus Marcellinus in book XV of his history; such elevations had often proven fatal to others.

Death , Fate