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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Blushes

The heart’s meteors tilting in the face.

Shakespeare.

Blushes are the rainbow of modesty.

Mme. Necker.

The sunset glow of self-possession.

Chamfort.

Young roses kindled into thought.

Moore.

Blushing is the livery of virtue.

Bacon.

Blushes are the echo of sensibility.

Mme. de Salm.

The glow of the angel in woman.

Mrs. Balfour.

Innocence is not accustomed to blush.

Molière.

The lily and the rose in her fair face striving for precedence.

N. P. Willis.

Blushes cannot be counterfeited.

Marguerite de Valois.

The man that blushes is not quite a brute.

Young.

Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.

Pope.

Such war of white and red within her cheeks.

Shakespeare.

The bloom of young desire and purple light of love.

Gay.

A blush is the sign which Nature hangs out to show where chastity and honor dwell.

Gotthold.

Men blush less for their crimes than for their weaknesses and vanity.

La Bruyère.

  • The lilies faintly to the roses yield,
  • As on thy lovely cheek, they struggling vie.
  • Hoffman.

    The rose was budded in her cheek, just opening to the view.

    Mallet.

    The inconvenience or the beauty of the blush, which is the greater?

    Madame Necker.

    One blushes oftener from the wounds of self-love than from modesty.

    Mme. Guibert.

    The blush is beautiful, but it is sometimes inconvenient.

    Goldoni.

    Like the last beam of evening thrown on a white cloud, just seen and gone.

    Walter Scott.

    They teach us to dance; O that they could teach us to blush, did it cost a guinea a glow!

    Madame Deluzy.

  • Playful blushes, that seemed nought
  • But luminous escapes of thought.
  • Moore.

    The ambiguous livery worn alike by modesty and shame.

    Mrs. Balfour.

    A blush is no language; only a dubious flag-signal which may mean either of two contradictories.

    George Eliot.

    On her cheek blushes the richness of an autumn sky with ever-shifting beauty.

    Longfellow.

    Like the faint streaks of light broke loose from darkness, and dawning into blushes.

    Dryden.

  • The rising blushes, which her cheek o’erspread,
  • Are opening roses in the lily’s bed.
  • Gay.

    The eloquent blood spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, you might have almost said her body thought.

    Donne.

    The blush is nature’s alarm at the approach of sin, and her testimony to the dignity of virtue.

    Fuller.

    Troubled blood through his pale face was seen to come and go, with tidings from his heart, as it a running messenger had been.

    Spenser.

    Bid the cheek be ready with a blush, modest as Morning when she coldly eyes the youthful Phœbus.

    Shakespeare.

    A faint blush melting through the light of thy transparent cheek like a rose-leaf bathed in dew.

    Whittier.

  • From every blush that kindles in thy cheeks,
  • Ten thousand little loves and graces spring
  • To revel in the roses.
  • Nicholas Rowe.

    Once he saw a youth blushing, and addressed him, “Courage, my boy; that is the complexion of virtue.”

    Diogenes Laërtius.

  • Such a blush
  • In the midst of brown was born,
  • Like red poppies grown with corn.
  • Hood.

    Her cheeks blushing, and withal, when she was spoken to, a little smiling, were like roses when their leaves are with a little breath stirred.

    Sir P. Sidney.

    Had he not long read the heart’s hushed secret in the soft, dark eye, lighted at his approach, and on the cheek, coloring all crimson at his lightest look?

    L. E. Landon.

    The bold defiance of a woman is the certain sign of her shame,—when she has once ceased to blush, it is because she has too much to blush for.

    Talleyrand.

  • An Arab, by his earnest gaze,
  • Has clothed a lovely maid with blushes;
  • A smile within his eyelids plays
  • And into words his longing gushes.
  • Wm. R. Alger.

    One day, a daughter of Aristotle, Pythias by name, was asked what color pleased her most. She replied, “The color with which modesty suffuses the face of simple, inoffensive men.”

    Joubert.

  • Give me the eloquent cheek,
  • When blushes burn and die
  • Like thine its changes speak,
  • The spirit’s purity.
  • Mrs. Osgood.

  • Forgot the blush that virgin fears impart
  • To modest cheeks, and borrowed one from art.
  • Cowper.

  • I pity bashful men, who feel the pain
  • Of fancied scorn and undeserved disdain,
  • And bear the marks upon a blushing face
  • Of needless shame, and self-impos’d disgrace.
  • Cowper.

  • The blushing cheek speaks modest mind,
  • The lips befitting words most kind,
  • The eye does tempt to love’s desire,
  • And seems to say ’tis “Cupid’s fire.”
  • Harrington.

  • ———the blush is formed—and flies—
  • Nor owns reflection’s calm control;
  • It comes, it deepens—fades and dies,
  • A gush of feeling from the soul.
  • Mrs. Dinnies.

  • By noting of the lady I have mark’d
  • A thousand blushing apparitions
  • To start into her face, a thousand innocent shames,
  • In angel whiteness bear away those blushes.
  • Shakespeare.

  • Who has not seen that feeling born of flame
  • Crimson the cheek at mention of a name?
  • The rapturous touch of some divine surprise
  • Flash deep suffusion of celestial dyes:
  • When hands clasped hands, and lips to lips were pressed,
  • And the heart’s secret was at once confessed?
  • Abraham Coles.

  • Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive,
  • Half wishing they were dead to save the shame.
  • The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow;
  • They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats,
  • And flare up bodily, wings and all.
  • E. B. Browning.

    Though looks and words, by the strong mastery of his practiced will, are overruled, the mounting blood betrays an impulse in its secret spring too deep for his control.

    Southey.