White is a color that is often associated with purity, cleanliness, and innocence. Throughout history and across cultures, the color white has developed many symbolic meanings and associations. As such, there are many famous quotes and sayings about the color white that reflect these various meanings. In this article, we will explore some of the most well-known and profound quotes about the color white.
Some key things we will cover include:
– Brief background on color symbolism and meaning of white
– Quotes about white representing purity, innocence, simplicity
– Quotes about white representing emptiness, blankness, new beginnings
– Quotes about white clothes and objects
– Quotes using white as a metaphor
– Selecting the most famous and insightful quote about white
Understanding what white has symbolized to writers, poets, artists, and philosophers can provide insight into human culture and psychology. By looking at the most celebrated quotes about the type of color, we can see patterns and meaning emerge.
Brief Background on White Symbolism
Before diving into famous quotes about white, it is helpful to understand the key symbolic meanings and associations of the color that have developed over time. Some of the main things white has come to represent include:
– Purity – White has long been connected to purity, virginity, and innocence in Western cultures. This is likely tied to white’s association with cleanliness.
– Simplicity – The plainness of white evokes simplicity, minimalism, and clearance. White space is often used in design and art to represent simplicity.
– Goodness – The positive attributes linked to white like purity and innocence have also given it an association with goodness, holiness, and perfection.
– Blankness/Emptiness – The blank canvas quality of white can represent emptiness, blankness, and new beginnings. This can have both positive and negative connotations.
– Cleanliness – White’s link to cleanliness comes from the tendency of dirt and stains to show up clearly on white. This ties into purity.
– Peace – In some cultures, white is associated with peace, calmness, and tranquility.
– Light – White reflects and diffuses light completely, lending to metaphors about illuminating, spreading light or understanding.
– Death – In some cultures white is associated with death and mourning. White clothes were traditionally worn to funerals in parts of Asia.
With this background in mind, we can better understand the context behind quotes about the color white. Now let’s look at some specific examples.
Quotes About White Representing Purity and Innocence
Some of the most common symbolic associations of white are with purity, virginity, and innocence. White clothes are often used to represent these qualities. Here are a few famous quotes that touch on white’s connection to purity:
“All that is golden does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, a light from the shadows shall spring; renewed shall be blade that was broken, the crownless again shall be king. – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
Tolkien uses the white light imagery to represent hope coming from despair. The light piercing the darkness represents purity and rebirth.
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” – George Orwell, 1984
In Orwell’s dystopian novel, the stark white lighting underscores the coldness and sterility of the totalitarian state. It reinforces the emptiness of the environment.
“In the white of the moon, a poem can blossom into something beautiful and pure.” – Andrea Gibson
Gibson evokes the whiteness of the moon to symbolize the potential for poetic beauty and elegance. The moon’s white purity inspires imagination.
“White as white can be, with a white little bed, and white little pillow, and white little curtains at the white window, and a little white table, and a white wash bowl–everything white, white, white!” – Frances Burnett, The Secret Garden
In this children’s novel, the abundance of white represents innocence. The white room is almost overly sterilized, with no stains or imperfections.
These quotes use white objects like light, the moon, beds, and curtains to symbolize purity in different contexts. White conveys virginity, innocence, and goodness against darkness, sterility, or blankness.
Quotes About White Representing Emptiness and New Beginnings
While white can represent purity, it can also symbolize emptiness, blankness, and ability to begin fresh. These quotations touch on the sense of possibility or loss that comes with white’s blank canvas quality:
“The page is blank before you start and now the page is full. When you read it again you see it differently. You realize it is not what you thought you had written.” – Toni Morrison
Morrison uses the white page as a metaphor for how the meaning of what we write can escape us and take on a life of its own. The emptiness allows for unforeseen possibilities.
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.” – Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
Here Dillard discusses time as a white canvas on which we can construct our lives carefully or without control. The white blankness is both an opportunity and a burden.
“I glide from one meal to another on a splendid cloud of absence.” -Stanley Elkin
The brilliant white cloud here represents the feeling of emptiness, floating from one duty to the next without deeper purpose. White embodies the loss of meaning.
“The future is a blank canvas stretched tautly over the easel of the present.” – Craig D. Lounsbrough
This quote highlights the exciting potential of the future as a white canvas we can fill with our dreams, goals, and plans in the present. It is open and full of possibility.
We see writers played with the blank, open nature of white to express both fears and hopes about emptiness and possibility. The void represents room for creativity or loss of meaning.
Quotes About White Clothes and Objects
There are also many famous quotes that reference white clothes, fabrics, and objects to touch on deeper themes. Here are some examples:
“She had on a kind of dirty-pink – – beige maybe, I don’t know — bathing suit with a little nubble all over it, and, what got me, the straps were down. They were off her shoulders looped loose around the cool tops of her arms, and I guess as a result the suit had slipped a little on her, so all around the top of the cloth there was this shining rim of bare skin…” – J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Even though this bathing suit is specifically described as pink or beige, the image of its white straps around bare skin evokes sensuality and vulnerability. The white draws attention to the skin.
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” – George Orwell, 1984
In Orwell’s dystopian novel, the stark white lighting underscores the coldness and sterility of the totalitarian state. It reinforces the emptiness of the environment.
“I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” – W.B. Yeats, He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Yeats uses soft white cloths as a metaphor for dreams and the imagination. The fragility of treading on cloth represents being gentle with others’ dreams.
“Her clothes are white, and so are her wide eyes, lovely.” – Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman
The white clothes and eyes here create an angelic image representing innocence and purity. This contrasts with underlying themes of infidelity in the play.
We see writers used white objects from bathing suits to cloths and lighting to explore themes of sexuality, sterility, fragility, and innocence. Concrete details ground these more abstract concepts.
Quotes Using White as Metaphor
White is also frequently used as a metaphor in quotes and poetry. Here are some examples:
“In the dark colony of night, when I consider man’s magnificent capacity for malice, madness, folly, envy, rage, and destructiveness, and I wonder whether we shall not end up as breakfast for insects and polyps, I seem to discover that the dark emotions plague only the dark stretches of the roads of the mind. Where men walk in bright light, the dark emotions hold little sway.” – Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Sagan uses the metaphor of walking in bright white light to represent the possibility of overcoming human evils and weaknesses by embracing knowledge, clear reason, and our better nature. Light conquers darkness.
“I have erased myself, blown myself out like a light bulb, I have lost my sovereignty in a sealed train…”
In this poetic excerpt, the extinguished light bulb represents the loss of identity and sense of agency. Like a blown out light, the speaker feels emptied of their selfhood and vitality.
“Truth is like the white light of the sun that pierces through the prism to reveal the colors of the rainbow. Beauty comes when reason leads to truth.”
This quote positions white light as a metaphor for universal truth, which can be refracted into different perspectives and insights the way light reveals rainbow colors through a prism. White embodies truth.
“Her heart was as white as snow.”
By comparing a pure white heart to newly fallen white snow, this line uses whiteness to signify innocence, goodness, and lack of sin or corruption. A metaphor for purity of spirit.
We see writers employ white light, snow, and other images to paint metaphors about human nature, truth, loss, and virtue. The color lends power to these abstract concepts.
Most Famous Quote about White
After reviewing many profound and poetic quotes about the color white, the short quote that seems to most famously and memorably encapsulate white’s multifaceted symbolism is:
“White is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black.” – Godfrey H. Hardy
This quote acknowledges that white is not simply lacking color or meaning. Rather, it has a definite identity and presence all its own with a sliding scale of symbolism that can represent purity, emptiness, peace, sterility, innocence, beginnings, and more. White contains multitudes and possesses an almost paradoxical fierceness and luminosity, transcending a blank void. The quote encapsulates white’s complex identity.
Conclusion
In summary, there are many profound and poetic quotes about the color white that touch on its varying symbolic meanings from purity to blankness. Familiar writers like Tolkien, Orwell, and Salinger used white objects and color to explore deeper themes. The famous quote by Godfrey Hardy beautifully captures white’s affirmative, fierce, and multifaceted essence. Analyzing renowned quotes provides insight into the ways white permeates culture and the collective consciousness. The color wields an enduring, layered significance.