10 quotes
It is easy to replace man, and it will take no great time, where Nature has lapsed, to replace Nature.
The Colour of Life and Other Essays (1896)
Let a man turn to his own childhood—no further—if he will renew his sense of remoteness, and of the mystery of change.
The Colour of Life and Other Essays (1896)
Spring and autumn are inconsiderable events in a landscape compared with the shadows of a cloud.
The Colour of Life and Other Essays (1896)
We talk of sunshine and moonshine, but not of cloud-shine, which is yet one of the illuminations of our skies.
The Colour of Life and Other Essays (1896)
A child is beset with long traditions. And his infancy is so old, so old, that the mere adding of years in the life to follow will not seem to throw it back—it is already so far.
The Colour of Life and Other Essays (1896)
The true colour of life is the colour of the body, the colour of the covered red, the implicit and not explicit red of the living heart and the pulses. It is the modest colour of the unpublished blood.
The Colour of Life and Other Essays (1896)
Terrestrial scenery is much, but it is not all. Men go in search of it; but the celestial scenery journeys to them; it goes its way round the world. It has no nation, it costs no weariness, it knows no bonds.
The Colour of Life and Other Essays (1896)
The cloud controls the light.[...] It is the cloud that, holding the sun's rays in a sheaf as a giant holds a handful of spears, strikes the horizon, touches the extreme edge with a delicate revelation of light, or suddenly puts it out and makes the foreground shine.
The Colour of Life and Other Essays (1896)
Red has been praised for its nobility as the colour of life. But the true colour of life is not red. Red is the colour of violence, or of life broken open, edited, and published. Or if red is indeed the colour of life, it is so only on condition that it is not seen. Once fully visible, red is the colour of life violated, and in the act of betrayal and of waste.
The Colour of Life and Other Essays (1896)
Women might be, and were, duly suppressed when, by the mouth of Olympe de Gouges, they claimed a "right to concur in the choice of representatives for the formation of the laws"; but in her person, too, they were liberally allowed to bear political responsibility to the Republic. Olympe de Gouges was guillotined. Robespierre thus made her public and complete amends.
The Colour of Life and Other Essays (1896)