What is the meaning of red?
“ ‘My dear master, explain red to somebody who has never known red.’
‘If we touched it with the tip of a finger, it would feel like something between iron and copper. If we took it into our palm, it would burn. If we tasted it, it would be full-bodied, like salted meat. If we took it between our lips, it would fill our mouths. If we smelled it, it’d have the scent of a horse. If it were a flower, it would smell like a daisy, not a red rose.‘. . .
‘What is the meaning of red?’ the blind miniaturist . . . asked again.
‘The meaning of a color is that it is there before us and we see it,’ said the other. ‘Red cannot be explained to he who cannot see.’ ”
—Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red, 2001.
our own eyes
“ ‘After beholding the portraits of the Venetian masters, we realize with horror,’ said my father, ‘that, in painting, eyes can no longer simply be holes in a face, always the same, but must be just like our own eyes, which reflect light like a mirror and absorb it like a well.’ ”
—Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red, 2001.
The mystery is your eye
“No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye.”
—Elizabeth Bowen, 21st Century Dictionary of Quotations, edited by the Princeton Language Institute, 1993.
The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond
“The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen if the eye is too near.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 21st Century Dictionary of Quotations, edited by the Princeton Language Institute, 1993.
like quicksilver in the hand
“Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away.”
—Dorothy Parker, 21st Century Dictionary of Quotations, edited by the Princeton Language Institute, 1993.
the only gold
“Love is the only gold.”
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 21st Century Dictionary of Quotations, edited by the Princeton Language Institute, 1993.
When a man has nothing new to say, why doesn’t he keep quiet?
“Of all writers, there are none whom I despise more than anthologists, who search on all sides for scraps out of other people’s works, which they cram into their own like slabs of turf into a lawn. They are not better than compositors arranging letters so that in combinations they will form a book, for which they have done nothing but provide the use of their hands. I should like the originality of a book to be respected, and it seems to me that there is a kind of profanation in removing its component parts from their sanctuary and exposing them to contempt when they do not deserve it.
When a man has nothing new to say, why doesn’t he keep quiet? Why do things have to be used twice over? ‘But I want to put them in a new order.’ ‘What a clever thing to do! You come into my library, you move books from a high shelf to a low one, and from a low shelf to a high one: a fine piece of work that is!’”
—Montesquieu, Persian Letters, 1721, translated by C.J.Betts, 1973.
I do not find it surprising that the negroes paint the devil sparkling white, and their gods black as coal
“It seems to me, Usbek, that all our judgements are made with reference covertly to ourselves. I do not find it surprising that the negroes paint the devil sparkling white, and their gods black as coal, or that certain tribes have a Venus with her breasts hanging down to her thighs, or in brief that all the idolatrous peoples represent their gods with human faces, and endow them will all their own impulses. It has been well said that if triangles had a god, they would give him three sides.”
—Montesquieu, Persian Letters, 1721, translated by C.J.Betts, 1973.