quotations about blushing
The striking thing about blushing is its implicitly mixed signals. A blush is a funny mixture of wanting to hide and at the same time wanting to attract someone.
MURRAY BILMES
attributed, The Odd Body
The blush is beautiful, but it is sometimes inconvenient.
CARLO GOLDONI
Pamela
Such was the colour--when her cheek
Spoke what the lip might never speak.
The crimson flush which could confess
All that we hoped--but dared not guess.
That blush which through the world is known
To love, and to the rose alone--
LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1834
Mr. Phunky, blushing into the very whites of his eyes, tried to look as if he didn't know that everybody was gazing at him: a thing which no man ever succeeded in doing yet, or, in all probability, ever will.
CHARLES DICKENS
Pickwick Papers
What, canst thou say all this and never blush?
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Titus Andronicus
Her pure and eloquent blood
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought,
That one might almost say, her body thought.
JOHN DONNE
Of the Progress of the Soul
The rising blushes, which her cheek o'er-spread,
Are opening roses in the lily's bed.
JOHN GAY
Dione
I always take blushing either for a sign of guilt or ill-breeding.
WILLIAM CONGREVE
The Way of the World
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 beat away those blushes.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Much Ado About Nothing
Blushing is physiological evidence of both our self-consciousness and our sociability--a manifestation of not only our awareness of ourselves but our sensitivity to how others perceive us.
SCOTT STOSSEL
My Age of Anxiety
And when my face is fair, you shall perceive
Whether I blush or no.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Coriolanus
"Nay, nay," quod she, and waxed as red as rose.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
Troilus and Criseyde
Miss Clerricot blushes most charmingly and raises a hand to cover a portion of her countenance. It is a shame, this ill-feeling that exists between Miss Clerricot and her face.
WILLIAM TREVOR
The Boarding-House
He blushes: all is well.
TERENCE
Adelphi
Blushing is actually an instinctive way to get back into the good graces of others. It is an attempt to avoid being ostracized from a group for breaching unwritten rules of society.
STEPHEN JUAN
The Odd Body
Better a blush on the cheek than a spot in the heart.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
So sweet the blush of bashfulness,
E'en pity scarce can wish it less!
LORD BYRON
The Bride of Abydos
Blushes are the echo of sensibility.
MME. DE SALM
attributed, Edge-tools of Speech
Rather bring the blood into a man's cheek than let it out of his body.
TERTULLIAN
Apologetics
From every blush that kindles in thy cheeks,
Ten thousand little loves and graces spring
To revel in the roses.
NICHOLAS ROWE
Tamerlane