Colour Quotes - Page 8

• All sorts of flowers the which on earth do spring
  In goodly colours gloriously arrayed;
  Go to my love, where she is careless laid

  Edmund Spenser

  Spring, Flower, Earth

  Edmund Spenser (1957). “Minor poems”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When the effects of female jealousy do not appear openly in their proper colours of rage and fury, we may suspect that mischievous passion to be at work privately, and attempting to undermine, what it doth not attack above-ground.

  Henry Fielding

  Jealousy, Passion, Female

  Henry Fielding (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry Fielding (Illustrated)”, p.1250, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is comparatively easy to achieve a certain unity in a picture by allowing one colour to dominate, or by muting all the colours. Matisse did neither. He clashed his colours together like cymbals and the effect was like a lullaby.

  John Berger

  Artist, Unity, Together

  John Berger (2008). “Selected Essays of John Berger”, p.71, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• When we reflect on our past sentiments and affections, our thought is a faithful mirror, and copies its objects truly; but the colours which it employs are faint and dull, in comparison of those in which our original perceptions were clothed.

  David Hume

  Past, Mirrors, Faithful

  David Hume, Eric Steinberg (1992). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding; [with] A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh; [and] An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature”, p.10, Hackett Publishing

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I testify
  to rainbow feathers, to the span of heaven
  and walls of colour,
  the colonnades of jasper.

  Hilda Doolittle

  Wall, Rainbow, Poetry

  Hilda Doolittle (1998). “Trilogy”, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• No one knows the colour of a flower
  till it is broken.

  Hilda Doolittle

  Flower, Knowledge, Broken

  Hilda Doolittle, Louis L. Martz (1986). “Collected Poems 1912-1944”, p.381, New Directions Publishing

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The more veiled becomes the outside world, steadily losing in colour, tone and passions, the more urgently the inner world calls us

  Carl Jung

  Passion, World, Tone

  68 Copy quote

• The sensation of colour cannot be accounted for by the physicist's objective picture of light-waves.

  Erwin Schrodinger

  Light, Color, Wave

  "Mind and Matter". Book by Erwin Schrodinger, 1958.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• I believe that it is of the utmost importance that we all should feel and inculcate among the people and circulate amongst them what I call a sense of compatriotism. We should all feel that we are all nationals of one country, whatever our race, colour, creed, or sect.

  A. D. Patel

  Country, Believe, Race

  5 Copy quote

• I like, you may say, the glitter and colour that comes from the mouth, and I've always hoped in a sense to be able to paint the mouth like Monet painted a sunset.

  Francis Bacon

  I Like You, Sunset, Glitter

  David Sylvester, Francis Bacon (1975). “Francis Bacon”, Pantheon

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The problem of direct colour photography has been facing us since the turn of the last century.

  Gabriel Lippmann

  Photography, Lasts, Problem

  8 Copy quote

• I use a wide selection of colours. It is impossible to produce work like mine using only the primary colours as they only mix a certain range of colour.

  John Dyer

  Insomnia, Use, Impossible

  4 Copy quote

• I had been living with dialysis for three years or so, and the new kidney felt like a reprieve, a new gift of life. I felt alive again and I guess that has had an effect on my use of colour.

  Peter Wright

  Life, Years, Three

  8 Copy quote

• For many ages it has been allowed by sensible men, Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuit prius in sensu: That is, There is nothing in the understanding which was not first perceived by some of the senses. All the knowledge which we naturally have is originally derived from our senses. And therefore those who want any sense cannot have the least knowledge or idea of the objects of that sense; as they that never had sight have not the least knowledge or conception of light or colours.

  John Wesley

  Men, Light, Sight

  John Wesley, John Emory (1835). “The Works of the Late Reverend John Wesley, A.M.: From the Latest London Edition with the Last Corrections of the Author, Comprehending Also Numerous Translations, Notes, and an Original Preface, Etc”, p.406

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• I use about 20 different colours to retain the luminance in my work.

  John Dyer

  Different, Use, Different Colours

  4 Copy quote

• Religion is a wizard, a sibyl . . . She faces the wreck of worlds, and prophesies restoration. She faces a sky blood-red with sunset colours that deepen into darkness, and prophesies dawn. She faces death, and prophesies life.

  Felix Adler

  Religious, Sunset, Blood

  Felix Adler (1956). “Life and destiny”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I never know what it's going to look like. Wouldn't be much point in painting if I already knew the outcome. I have a subject in front of me and I start flooding colour and making marks, I don't know, it's improvisation isn't it?

  Peter Wright

  Looks, Outcomes, Painting

  4 Copy quote

• When the shot is afterwards subjected to white light, colour appears because of selective reflection.

  Gabriel Lippmann

  Reflection, White, Light

  12 Copy quote

• In the case of composite colour, an infinity of systems must be obtained for maxima infinitely slight and with an infinity of interval values separating them - that is to say, the whole thickness of the sensitive layer is occupied in continuous manner by these maxima.

  Gabriel Lippmann

  Layers, Infinity, Sensitive

  9 Copy quote

• I first came up with the idea for the colour-chart pictures back in 1966, and my preoccupation with the topic culminated in 1974 with a painting that consisted of 4,096 colour fields. Initially I was attracted by the typical Pop Art aestheticism of using standard colour-sample cards; I preferred the unartistic, tasteful and secular illustration of the different tones to the paintings of Albers, Bill, Calderara, Lohse, etc.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Illustration, Ideas

  Gerhard Richter, Dietmar Elger, Hans-Ulrich Obrist (2009). “Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007”, Distributed Art Pub Inc

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Turning to the colour-classification methodology: The starting point are the four pure colours red, yellow, green and blue; their in-between shades and scales of brightness result in colour schemes containing 16, 64, 256 and 1,024 shades. More colours would be pointless because it wouldn't be possible to distinguish between them clearly.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Blue, Yellow

  Gerhard Richter, Dietmar Elger, Hans-Ulrich Obrist (2009). “Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007”, Distributed Art Pub Inc

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Well, the beginning is actually quite easy, because I can still be quite free about the way I handle things - colours, shapes. And so a picture emerges that may look quite good for a while, so airy and colourful and new. But that will only last for a day at most, at which point it starts to look cheap and fake. And then the real work begins - changing, eradicating, starting again, and so on, until it's done.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Real, Fake

  9 Copy quote

• Democritus sometimes does away with what appears to the senses, and says that none of these appears according to truth but only according to opinion: the truth in real things is that there are atoms and void. 'By convention sweet', he says, 'by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention colour: but in reality atoms and void.'

  Sextus Empiricus

  Sweet, Real, Science

  18 Copy quote

• In acute diseases the physician must conduct his inquiries in the following way. First he must examine the face of the patient, and see whether it is like the faces of healthy people, and especially whether it is like its usual self. Such likeness will be the best sign, and the greatest unlikeness will be the most dangerous sign. The latter will be as follows. Nose sharp, eyes hollow, temples sunken, ears cold and contracted with their lobes turned outwards, the skin about the face hard and tense and parched, the colour of the face as a whole being yellow or black.

  Hippocrates

  Eye, Self, Yellow

  25 Copy quote

• For three days now this angel, almost too heavenly for earth has been my fiancée ... Life stands before me like an eternal spring with new and brilliant colours. Upon his engagement to Johanne Osthof of Brunswick; they married 9 Oct 1805.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Spring, Angel, Science

  5 Copy quote