“We see the heights of heaven and the distant mountains as blue. Likewise, a blue surface seems to recede from us.

Just as we like to pursue a pleasant object retreating into the distance, we also like to look at blue—not because it attacks us but because it draws us along.”

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, from his Farbenlehre, or Theory of Color, 1808. Translated and edited Douglas Miller, 1988.