Violet Quotes - Page 8

• the blue and cloudless day closes like the lid of a casket of jewels upon the violet rim of sea, and shuts out the light.

  Margaret Deland

  Light, Blue, Jewels

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• He domesticated and developed the native wild flowers. He had one hill-side solidly clad with that low-growing purple verbena which mats over the hills of New Mexico. It was like a great violet velvet mantle thrown down in the sun; all the shades that the dyers and weavers of Italy and France strove for through centuries, the violet that is full of rose colour and is yet not lavender; the blue that becomes almost pink and then retreats again into sea-dark purple—the true Episcopal colour and countless variations of it.

  Willa Cather

  Flower, Dark, Sea

  Willa Cather (1999). “Death Comes for the Archbishop”, p.279, U of Nebraska Press

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• What if life could be this way? Only the happy parts, none of the terrible, not even the mildly unpleasant. What if we could just cut out the bad and keep the good? This is what I want to do with Violet - give her only the good, keep away the bad, so that good is all we ever have around us.

  Jennifer Niven

  Cutting, Giving, What If

  Jennifer Niven (2015). “All the Bright Places”, p.138, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• I don’t know. D’you think? He’s pretty wide in the chest.” The girl looked at me, and I was frozen. So I said, “Yeah. I work out.” Violet asked me, “What are you? What’s your cup size?” I shrugged and played along. “Like, nine and a half?” I guessed. “That’s my shoe size.” Violet said, “I think he’d like something slinky, kind of silky.” I said, “As long as you can stop me from rubbing myself up against a wall the whole time.” “Okay,” said Violet, holding her hands up like she was annoyed. “Okay, the chemise last week was a mistake.

  Matthew Tobin Anderson

  Girl, Wall, Mistake

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• Through the window I can see Rooks above the cherry-tree, Sparrows in the violet bed, Bramble-bush and bumble-bee, And old red bracken smoulders still Among boulders on the hill, Far too bright to seem quite dead. But old Death, who can't forget, Waits his time and watches yet, Waits and watches by the door.

  Robert Graves

  Doors, Tree, Waiting

  Robert Graves, Beryl Graves, Dunstan Ward (1999). “Complete poems”, Carcanet Pr

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• The learned compute that seven hundred and seven millions of millions of vibrations have penetrated the eye before the eye can distinguish the tints of a violet. What philosophy can calculate the vibrations of the heart before it can distinguish the colours of love?

  Bill Vaughan

  Love, Philosophy, Heart

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• It’s the end. It’s the end of the civilization. We’re going down. No, it’s sure not too attractive. Lenticels. I just hope my kids don’t live to see the last days. The things burning and people living in cellars. Violet. The only thing worse than the thought it may all come tumbling down is the thought that we may go on like this forever.

  Matthew Tobin Anderson

  Kids, Tumbling Down, Civilization

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• Iris all hues, roses, and jessamine Reared high their flourished heads between, and wrought Mosaic; underfoot the violet, Crocus, and hyacinth with rich inlay Broidered the ground, more coloured than with stone Of costliest emblem: other creature here Beast, bird, insect, or worm durst enter none; Such was their awe of man.

  John Milton

  Men, Rose, Bird

  1665 Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.4, l.698-705.

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• What is green? The grass is green,
  With small flowers between.
  What is violet? Clouds are violet
  In the summer twilight.
  What is orange? Why, an orange,
  Just an orange!

  Christina Rossetti

  Summer, Flower, Twilight

  Christina Rossetti (2008). “Poems and Prose”, p.202, OUP Oxford

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• Man's books are but man's alphabet,
  Beyond and on his lessons lie -
  The lessons of the violet,
  The large gold letters of the sky;
  The love of beauty, blossomed soil,
  The large content, the tranquil toil:
  The toil that nature ever taught,
  The patient toil, the constant stir,
  The toil of seas where shores are wrought,
  The toil of Christ, the carpenter;
  The toil of God incessantly
  By palm-set land or frozen sea.

  Joaquin Miller

  Lying, Book, Men

  "The Larger College". "In Classic Shades, and Other Poems". Book by Joaquin Miller, 1890.

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• I would stand transfixed before the windows of the confectioners' shops, fascinated by the luminous sparkle of candied fruits, the cloudy lustre of jellies, the kaleidoscope inflorescence of acidulated fruit drops - red, green, orange, violet: I coveted the colours themselves as much as the pleasure they promised me.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Food, Orange, Cooking

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• Tumbling-hair picker of buttercups violets dandelions And the big bullying daisies through the field wonderful with eyes a little sorry Another comes also picking flowers

  e. e. cummings

  Bullying, Sorry, Flower

  E. E. Cummings (1996). “Tulips and Chimneys”, p.30, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Oh, I love red. I'm very loyal to my colors. I love violet.

  Elizabeth Taylor

  Color, Loyal, Red

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• I don't feel myself that I Know it all, but I have enough conceit to be successful. That observation was made by a businessman in his 30s who was making notable headway, although his path bristled with difficulties. Business places no premiums on shrinking violets. Employers prefer men who have self-assurance, forcefulness, go-aheadness, men who know their jobs and know that they know it.

  B. C. Forbes

  Jobs, Pride, Successful

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• Music, when soft voices die,
  Vibrates in the memory;
  Odors, when sweet violets sicken,
  Live within the sense they quicken.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Music, Sweet, Memories

  'To-: Music when soft voices die' (published 1824).

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• I softly sink into the bath of sleep: With eyelids shut, I see around me close The mottled, violet vapors of the deep, That wraps me in repose.

  J. G. Holland

  Sleep, Vapor, Baths

  J.G. HOLLAND (1872). “THE MARBLE PROPHECY AND OTHER POEMS.”, p.44

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• He sat on as the sun's rays came slowly down through the trees, lower and lower, and when the lowest reached a branch not far above him it caught a dewdrop poised upon a leaf. The drop instantly blazed crimson, and a slight movement of his head made it show all the colours of the spectrum with extraordinary purity, from a red almost too deep to be seen through all the others to the ultimate violet and back again.

  Patrick O'Brian

  Tree, Red, Sun

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• The humble soul is like the violet, which grows low, hangs the head downward, and hides itself with its own leaves.

  Fredrika Bremer

  Humble, Soul, Lows

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• In my previous life I was a civil attorney. At one point I truly believed that was what I wanted to be- but that was before I'd been handed a fistful of crushed violets from a toddler. Before I understood that the smile of a child is a tattoo: indelible art.

  Jodi Picoult

  Tattoo, Art, Children

  Jodi Picoult (2009). “My Sister's Keeper: A Novel”, p.32, Simon and Schuster

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• To harden the earth the rocks took charge: instantly they grew wings: the rocks that soared: the survivors flew up the lightning bolt, screamed in the night, a watermark, a violet sword, a meteor. The succulent sky had not only clouds, not only space smelling of oxygen, but an earthly stone flashing here and there changed into a dove, changed into a bell, into immensity, into a piercing wind: into a phosphorescent arrow, into salt of the sky.

  Pablo Neruda

  Night, Clouds, Rocks

  Pablo Neruda (2015). “The Poetry of Pablo Neruda”, p.805, Macmillan

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• Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
  And mid-May's eldest child,
  The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
  The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

  John Keats

  Summer, Children, Wine

  'Ode to a Nightingale' (1820) st. 5

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• I almost went to bed without remembering the four white violets I put in the button-hole of your green sweater and how i kissed you then and you kissed me shy as though I’d never been your lover

  Leonard Cohen

  Sweaters, White, Four

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• Violet said nothing, though big pearly tears, like a child's, trembled at her lashes. She suddenly missed John very much. Into him she could pour all the inarticulate perceptions, all the knowings and unknowings she felt, which, though he couldn't understand them really, he would receive reverently, and out of him would come then the advice, the warnings, the clever decisions she could never have made.

  John Crowley

  Clever, Children, Knowing

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• The violet sea longs for the birth of gods,
  for to be born here is an unspeakable feast,
  a drumroll of commanding retinues and tritons.

  Jose Lezama Lima

  Sea, Birth, Born

  José Lezama Lima (2005). “José Lezama Lima: Selections”, p.9, Univ of California Press

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• The bed of flowers
  Loosens amain,
  The beauteous snowdrops
  Droop o'er the plain.
  The crocus opens
  Its glowing bud,
  Like emeralds others,
  Others, like blood.
  With saucy gesture
  Primroses flare,
  And roguish violets,
  Hidden with care;
  And whatsoever
  There stirs and strives,
  The Spring's contented,
  If works and thrives.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Spring, Flower, Glowing

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2013). “Delphi Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Illustrated)”, p.2888, Delphi Classics

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