Red

“ We follow the Red and the Blue today,
And love thee forever more.
Blue is the heav'nly hue that shows
When a cloud above us parts;
Red is the tint of the tide that flows,
The life-blood of our hearts ”

“ Red is the colour of blood,—a colour allied necessarily from time immemorial with violent mental impressions, whether of war, or love, or the chase, or religious sacrifice. Green itself is the colour of the world. Blue,—the blue of the far away sky,—has necessarily always been for man the colour mysterious and holy,—always associated with those high phenomena of heaven which first inspired wonder and fear of the Unknown. ”

“ Red breaks and diffuses with white with peculiar loveliness. It is discordant when standing with orange only, requiring to be joined or accompanied by their proper contrast, to resolve or harmonize the dissonance. In landscapes, &c., abounding with hues allied to green, a red object properly placed as regards light, shade, or distance, conduces wonderfully to the life, beauty, harmony, and connexion of the colouring. Red is, indeed, the chief element of beauty in floral nature, the prime ornament of the green garb of the vegetal kingdom. ”

“ The song of the red, red rose that blossoms beyond the seas.
Would I could see it, the rose, when the light begins to fail,
And a lone white star in the West is glimmering on the mail;
The red, red passionate rose of the sacred blood of the Christ,
In the shining chalice of God, the cup of the Holy Grail.
The dusk comes gathering grey, and the darkness dims the West,
The oxen low to the byre, and all bells ring to rest;
But I ride over the moors, for the dusk still bides and waits,
That brims my soul with the glow of the rose that ends the Quest. ”

“ There pulsed the mystic glowing red, heart and lord of colour; there the jubilant yellow, light-glorified to ethereal gold; there the loveliest blue, the truth unfathomable, profounder yet than the human red; there the green, that haunts the brain with Nature’s soundless secrets! all together striving, yet atoning, fighting and fleeing and following, parting and blending, with illimitable play of infinite force and endlessly delicate gradation. ”

“ Yellow being the colour of the sun and of corn and gold, represents riches, generosity, and light. Red stands between the dark and the lively colours, and represents warmth and animation, dignity, splendour, life, love, and joy. ”

“ Her hair was red and her eyes were purple with fire in them; her lips were red as a flame-tree's flower, or maybe more red. She was slender without being slim and moved as easily as a pandanus leaf swinging in a little breeze. ”

“ All colors of red were red. Black was black, and brown was just plain brown until it became yellow, when it was no longer brown. Purple he had always imagined was red, something like blood, until she taught him better. Once they rode out on a high hill brow where wind-blown poppies blazed about their horses' knees, and she was in an ecstasy over the lines of the many distances. ”

“ Crimson, red, scarlet, orange, yellow, greenish yellow, green, bluish green, blue, violet, and with added red get back to crimson.
A room or a series of rooms may run to all colors and be still a harmony of analogy if the sequence or succession is gradual.
35. No more delightful harmonies can be imagined than those provided by nature. One may start with the brown of the earth and run into several shades of green, and from that touch upon yellow, and from yellow to orange, and from orange to red, and red to violet, and violet to the blue of the sky. ”

“ First, because it conveys this notion of filling the world with one private folly; and secondly, because of the profound idea involved in the choice of colour. Red is the most joyful and dreadful thing in the physical universe; it is the fiercest note, it is the highest light, it is the place where the walls of this world of ours wear thinnest and something beyond burns through. It glows in the blood which sustains and in the fire which destroys us, in the roses of our romance and in the awful cup of our religion. ”

“ Red yields to Fair, and Black excells the Brown;
Some ask a plenteous Store of scented Grains;
Some, none at all; and please with little Pains:
Those, wanting Order, scarce endure the Test,
And These, in careless Favorites are best. ”

“ Decking thyself, thou makest bare thy bosom, shining in majesty, thou Goddess Morning. 3. Red are the kine and luminous that bear her the Blessed One who spreadeth through the distance. The foes she chaseth like a valiant archer, like a swift warrior she repelleth darkness. ”

“ The kerchief about her shoulders over a light chemise rivals the rainbow. I try to fix my eyes on some predominating colour, but when I decide that it is yellow, in will blaze a green stronger than the yellow, and then huge red roses splash their lurid colour into the yellow and green, and royal purple and blue daisies and magenta buttercups career around in wild indifference as to conventional form and tint. ”

“ With red Nature heightens the brilliant parts of the most beautiful flowers. She has given a complete clothing of it to the rose, the queen of the garden: and bestowed this tint on the blood, the principle of life in animals: she invests most of the feathered race, in India, with a plumage of this color, especially in the season of love ”

“ But with the approach of autumn, the juicy fruit begins to ripen among the brown and faded leaves, reddening most on the side next the sun, as if all the intensity and passion of vegetable nature were concentrated therein. You see that even here red is as ever the symbol of passion. It is the color of luxury and delight ”

“ In fact, red, yellow and blue are the primitive colors. All others are derived from these three rudimentary colors.
Why have we painted the column that corresponds to the life red? Because red is the color of blood, and the life is in the blood. But life is the fountain of strength and power. Hence red is the proper symbol of strength and power in God, in man and in the demon.
Why blue in the column of the concentric state, the mind? Because blue, from its transparency, is most soothing to our eyes. ”

“ A real red intoxication and no perspiring blaze not even a silk hat, is there no stranger showing, is there not a selection. The pleasantest elegance is in a collar, it is and there is the red exactness that shows color and no such light. ”

“ "Why, what a wonderful piece of luck!" he cried; "here is a red rose! I have never seen any rose like it in all my life. It is so beautiful that I am sure it has a long Latin name;" ”

“ Poppy red,
Blood-like, red,
Pale throat wound with a poppy scarf
Gleaming out of the crowd.
Background of grey,
A rain-wet street;
Shuffling, shambling
Beating feet,
Past the corner where four ways meet. ”

“ The head and forelegs of the robe typify that part of the earth whence rises the god of day to take his westward journey. Red is the color of the day when it is young, the time when you will rise and go forth to prepare food for the little one whose tender life is wholly dependent upon your efforts. ”

“ We are familiar with the effects of red which are stimulating, exciting, or irritating. The toreador, recognizing this principle, waves a flaming red mantle before the bull. Blue has an exactly opposite effect. It quiets and soothes, and when it runs into violet, it becomes depressing. Experiment with purple lights and you will find that they give a note of gloom, mystery, or of impending disaster. Yellow is the color that brings gaiety and light-heartedness, as you will recall when you contrast your own feelings on a sunshiny day and on a gray day. ”

“ And when he put into rhythm that "any color, so long as it's red, is the color that suits me best," he spoke not only as a poet but as a man, for red conveyed to him the idea of warmth and cheeriness, and seemed to express to him in color his temperamental demand. ”

“ The red-blind, be it recollected, sees no red, and if I can place in front of the lens of the lantern some medium which cuts off the red as completely as possible, the audience as well as myself will see the colours approximately as the red-blind would do. ”

“ The pleasure in bright red, or yellow, for instance, may thus well be the feeling-tone arising in the purely physiological effect of the color. If red works like a trumpet call, while blue calms and cools, and if red is preferred to blue, it is because a sharp stimulation is so felt, and so preferred. ”

“ The red stars have been described by various observers as resembling 'a drop of blood on a black field,' 'most magnificent copper-red,' 'most intense blood-red,' and 'glowing like a live coal out of the darkness of space.' Some people see them as a shining red, like that of a glowing cloud at sunset. Therefore there can be no doubt that the colours are genuine enough, and are telling us some message. ”

“ Those tints which contain the element of red are by painters called warm, and those in which the element of azure abounds are termed cold.
Red is the strongest and the most vivid colour: it is the colour of fire and of blood, and it warms and inflames all the tints into which it is introduced. ”

“ Red—the deep blood red—is decidedly the favorite color among the enslaved damsels of my acquaintance. If a red ribbon does not encircle the neck, you will be certain to find all the hair of their woolly heads tied up with red strings of one sort or another. ”

“ With a hot mass of red like a huntsman's coat in your picture, the coolest colour should be looked for everywhere else. Seen in a November landscape, how well a huntsman's coat looks, but then, how cold and grey is the colouring of the landscape. The right thing to do is to support your red with as many cool and neutral tones as possible and avoid hot shadows. With so strong a red, blue might be too much of a contrast, unless your canvas was large enough to admit of its being introduced at some distance from the red. ”

“ The rose-red ghost which is thus developed has a color which is complementary to that which called it into existence, and this will also be the case if we employ little squares of other colors: red will give rise to a greenish-blue image, blue to a yellow, violet to a greenish-yellow, etc., the color of the image being always complementary to that which gave rise to it. ”

“ Those who are red-blind do not see the red end of the spectrum, and the blue-green appears grey, though they have distinct colour vision of the parts of the spectrum on either side of the blue-green. In matching red with a green, they put a bright red with a dark green. ”

“ The blending of colors so as to secure their greatest effect depends on this fact; red and green go well together because each rests the parts of the visual apparatus most excited by the other, and so each appears bright and vivid as the eye wanders to and fro; while red and orange together, each exciting and exhausting mainly the same visual elements, render dull, or in popular phrase 'kill,' one another. ”

“ Some shade of red is always appropriate. Remember in choosing decorations that the colors of the spectrum—violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red—run the gamut of emotive influence from depression to exhilaration. ”

“ The extreme red: a ray which can only be discovered when the eye is protected from the glare of the other rays by a cobalt blue glass, is of a crimson character—a mixture of the red and the blue, red predominating. ”

“ These are the blues of our Lord’s garments, of the Blessed Virgin, and of the Seraphim, and have nothing to do with penitence.
The green should not be too blue in tone, and the red is best kept to tawny shades, or real, true red. However beautiful any one colour may be alone, its behaviour in company with others must be tested if it is to be used with them. ”

“ If we have clearly in our minds the appearance of the normal red and yellow, and clearly in our minds the orange that is made up by combining the two, we ought to be able to fix in our imagination the colors that come midway between the red and the orange, or the colors that come nearer the red or nearer the orange. ”

“ The red never dies out in the woman, but the white in the man always changes into a dirty, muddy red. I laid awake a long while tryin' to figger out a way to block his game, but the only thing I could think of was to tie him up and wear out a cinch on him. ”

“ The principal red pigments are carmine, vermilion, chrome red, scarlet lake, madder lake, light red, burnt sienna, for yellow reds; and Venetian red, Indian red, crimson lake, for blue reds. Red, in Christian art, represented by the ruby, signified fire, divine love, the Holy Spirit, heat or the creative power, and royalty. In a bad sense, red signified blood, war, hatred, and punishment. Red and black combined were the colours of purgatory and the devil. (See Realgar, Indigo.)
Red Chalk or Reddle is a mixture of clay and red iron OCHRE, used as a crayon in drawing. (See Ochre.) ”

“ The red rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
Oh, the red rose is a falcon.
And the white rose is a dove. ”

“ Both in Murray Island and Mabuiag the chief words for red were derived from the name for blood, and this derivation is found in many languages, including our own. To whatever cause it may be due, there is no doubt that red is the most important color in the life of the savage, and it is natural that the predominant color should also be that which has the most definite name. ”

“ Red is the color of all those banners which wave above the societies which were established in the days of Socialism, and among them are many national flags—blue, red, and white—the standards of the old guilds and corporations. ”

“ Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!
Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways:
Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide;
The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed,
Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold; ”

“ The three primary colours, green, red and blue—green being now generally accepted as a primary instead of yellow—offer the greatest contrast to each other. They are the strongest and most powerful and exercise a greater influence on the mind than any of the others ”