Gold Leaf Quotes & Sayings

The pale leaf falls in pallor, but the green leaf turns to gold; We that have found it good to be young shall find it good to be old; — G.K. Chesterton

I found ways to seal off the powdery surface of pastel so that gold leaf can adhere to it. Similarly, I found ways to roughen the texture of the gold leaf so pastel can be applied over it. — Doug Dawson

For I shall learn from flower and leaf,
That color every drop they hold,
To change the lifeless wine of grief
To living gold. — Sara Teasdale

Outside the snow was falling. In the lamplight icy leaf-patterns could be seen glittering on the blue-black windows, and hoar-frost sparkled like melted sugar in the hollows of the bottle-glass panes, all splattered with gold.
The little house, lying snug and sleepy in the darkness, was wrapped in a deep silence. — Joris-Karl Huysmans

One never thinks of China, but it is there all the time on the tips of your fingers and it makes your nose itchy; and long afterward, when you have forgotten almost what a firecracker smells like, you wake up one day with gold leaf choking you and the broken pieces of punk waft back their pungent odor and the bright red wrappers give you a nostalgia for a people and a soil you have never known, but which is in your blood, mysteriously there in your blood, like the sense of time or space, a fugitive, constant value to which you turn more and more as you get old, which you try to seize with your mind, but ineffectually, because in everything Chinese there is wisdom and mystery and you can never grasp it with two hands or with your mind but you must let it rub off, let it stick to your fingers, let it slowly infiltrate your veins. — Henry Miller

Nothing Stay Forever"
"Nature's first green is gold,
"Her hardest hue to hold.
"Her early leaf's a flower;
"But only so an hour.
"Then leaf subsides to leaf.
"So Eden sank to grief,
"So dawn goes down today.
"Nothing gold can stay.
Robert Frost — S.E. Hinton

I am covered with fine gold," said the Prince, "you must take it off, leaf by leaf, and give it to my poor. — Oscar Wilde

Autumn in the Highlands would be brief - a glorious riot of color blazing red across the moors and gleaming every shade of gold in the forests of sheltered glens. Those achingly beautiful images would be painted again and again across the hills and in the shivering waters of the mountain tarns until the harsh winds of winter sent the last quaking leaf to its death on the frozen ground. — Elizabeth Stuart

Icons are also beautiful, with their luminous colors and gold leaf. On first glance, the subjects can seem flat, their poses artificial. But the wonder of the icons has to do with the relationship which develops between the panel and the viewer. Looking at an icon brings me a feeling of serenity; it's like a form of prayer. So I suppose in this sense, the icon is unsurpassed. — Mary Pope Osborne

Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in fibre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things. There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation. The thin beaten-out leaf of tremulous gold that chronicles the direction of forces the eye cannot see is in comparison coarse. It is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it, and even then must bleed again, though not in pain. — Oscar Wilde

Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. — S.E. Hinton

Rikiu was watching his son Shoan as he swept and
watered the garden path. "Not clean enough," said Rikiu, when Shoan had finished his task, and bade him try again. After a weary hour the son turned to Rikiu: "Father, there is nothing more to be done. The steps have been washed for the third time, the stone lanterns and the trees are well sprinkled with water, moss and lichens are shining with a fresh verdure; not a twig, not a leaf have I left on the ground."
"Young fool," chided the tea-master, "that is not the way a garden path should be swept." Saying this, Rikiu stepped into the garden, shook a tree and scattered over the garden gold and crimson leaves, scraps of the brocade of autumn! — Kakuzo Okakura

ALKERMES (ALKE'RMES) n.s.In medicine, a term borrowed from the Arabs, denoting a celebrated remedy, of the form and consistence of a confection; whereof the kermes berries are the basis. The other ingredients are pippin-cyder, rose-water, sugar, ambergrease, musk, cinnamon, aloes-wood, pearls, and leaf-gold; but the sweets are usually omitted. The confectio alkermes is chiefly made at Montpelier, which supplies most part of Europe therewith. The grain, which gives it the denomination, is nowhere found so plentifully as there.Chambers. — Samuel Johnson

Light, my light, the world-filling light, the eye-kissing light, heart-sweetening light!
Ah, the light dances, my darling, at the centre of my life; the light strikes, my darling, the chords of my love; the sky opens, the wind runs wild, laughter passes over the earth.
The butterflies spread their sails on the sea of light. Lilies and jasmines surge up on the crest of the waves of light.
The light is shattered into gold on every cloud, my darling, and it scatters gems in profusion.
Mirth spreads from leaf to leaf, my darling, and gladness without measure. The heaven's river has drowned its banks and the flood of joy is abroad. — Rabindranath Tagore

Catherine [of Siena] sent the Pope five oranges which she had candied and covered with gold leaf ... She develops the theme of the difference between the bitter and the sweet pain, and gives the Pope a recipe for making candied oranges. — Sigrid Undset

A jagged object cut the sky above the roofs; it was half a spire, still holding the glow of the sunset; the gold leaf had long since peeled off the other half. The glow was red and still, like the reflection of a fire: not an active fire, but a dying one which it is too late to stop. — Ayn Rand

Catholic, I discovered, meant a type of Christianity for humans who like gold leaf, Latin, and guilt. — Matt Haig

Let China's earth, enrich'd with colour'd stains,
Pencil'd with gold, and streak'd with azure veins,
The grateful flavour of the Indian leaf,
Or Mocho's sunburnt berry glad receive.'
MRS. BARBAULD. — Elizabeth Gaskell

I started experimenting with jewelry in my 20s - I was playing around with gemstones and painting things in gold leaf, and it turned into this huge obsession for me, so I launched my first jewelry line, Jade Inc. — Jade Jagger

How long before the eaves gave way
to the sky, or the bathroom floor
was jack-hammered to bone,
while the trees outside were left
to redirect the wind?

How quickly the den must have become more kitchen
and bedrooms lost their privacy. I see the books
we'd packed up and moved years ago

under a pile of fresh rubble, still sending off dust -
titles stunned to a babble
in gold leaf. — Kristen Henderson

Let's take down the gold leaf," Caldenia said. "Elegance is never ostentatious, and there is nothing more bourgeois than covering everything in gold. It screams that one has too much money and too little taste, and it infuriates peasants. A palace should convey a sense of power and grandeur. One should enter and be awestruck. I've found the awe tends to cut down on revolts. — Ilona Andrews

Some were encased in gold leaf hammered to an incredible thinness. We were supposed to eat these, gold and all. Some were still in their shells, and when cracked open these proved to contain the sort of party favors esteemed by wealthy hosts: perfumes, pearls, gems, golden chains, and so forth. While the ladies made delighted sounds I tried to figure out how they had gotten those items inside the shells, but to no avail. I could see no hole or seam in the complete shells. Maybe, I thought, they just fed the things to the chickens and ducks and this was the result. — John Maddox Roberts

I was thinking of Anna. I make myself think of her, I do it as an exercise. She is lodged in me like a knife and yet I am beginning to forget her. Already the image of her that I hold in my head is fraying, bits of pigments, flakes of gold leaf, are chipping off. Will the entire canvas be empty one day? I have come to realise how little I knew her, I mean how shallowly I knew her, how ineptly. I do not blame myself for this. Perhaps I should. Was I too lazy, too inattentive, too self-absorbed? Yes, all of those things, and yet I cannot think it is a matter of blame, this forgetting, this not-having-known. I fancy, rather, that I expected too much, in the way of knowing. I know so little of myself, how should I think to know another? — John Banville

Fall leaves are brilliant with gold and red. You can cup them in your hand and wonder at them, be amazed at their uniqueness and glory. But eventually they are gone, brown, crumbling, scattered on the wind. But the tree remains. The tree is what is important. The tree lives on. That was a difficult knowledge to bear, and an even more difficult life to live. Of course, being the leaf wasn't exactly desirable either. — Rob Thurman

The sweet calm sunshine of October, now
Warms the low spot; upon its grassy mold
The pur0ple oak-leaf falls; the birchen bough
drops its bright spoil like arrow-heads of gold. — William C. Bryant

Angel and Muse approach from without; the Angel sheds light and the Muse gives form (Hesiod learned of them). Gold leaf or chiton-folds: the poet finds his models in his laurel coppice. But the Duende, on the other hand, must come to life in the nethermost recesses of the blood. — Federico Garcia Lorca

I'm the kind of person who would have liked to have lived at the Plaza. I love crystal chandeliers and gold leaf, velvets and mirrors, Oriental rugs and marble. — Candace Bushnell

Sometimes the buzz of reading about others eating comes from the voyeuristic thrill of seeing how the other half lives: the gold leaf and truffles or - in the case of Trimalchio's feast in Petronius' 'Satyricon' - the dormice and honey. — Bee Wilson

Beauty, the world seemed to say. And as if to prove it (scientifically) wherever he looked at the houses, at the railings, at the antelopes stretching over the palings, beauty sprang instantly. To watch a leaf quivering in the rush of air was an exquisite joy. Up in the sky swallows swooping, swerving, flinging themselves in and out, round and round, yet always with perfect control as if elastics held them; and the flies rising and falling; and the sun spotting now this leaf, now that, in mockery, dazzling it with soft gold in pure good temper; and now again some chime (it might be a motor horn) tinkling divinely on the grass stalks - all of this, calm and reasonable as it was, made out of ordinary things as it was, was the truth now; beauty, that was the truth now. Beauty was everywhere. — Virginia Woolf

I especially remember that on All Souls Day, when so many people wanted new monuments for the graves, our whole family pitched in. I did the lettering on the stones, my brother did the carving, and my sisters put the finishing touches on them, the gold leaf and all that. — Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

Besides, Prague is famous for its many churches with gold-leaf covered domes. In the sunshine, Prague is golden. I fell in love for ever. At the end of the five day stay, the entire group boarded a train for Paris. Although my parents knew the time of my arrival, they could not travel on the — Pearl Fichman

Her insanely high Christian Louboutin stilettos made a click-clacking sound on the airport floor. Amber rolled a small Louis Vuitton luggage bag behind her. She wore a baby-blue Chanel skirt suit, which made her look like an elegant celebrity. Her hair was long and blond today and pinned up into a perfectly smooth up-do. A pair of gold earrings in the shape of four-leaf clovers and a matching pendant completed the outfit. — A.O. Peart

Let not thy sword skip one:
Pity not honour'd age for his white beard;
He is an usurer: strike me the counterfeit matron;
It is her habit only that is honest,
Herself's a bawd: let not the virgin's cheek
Make soft thy trenchant sword; for those milk-paps,
That through the window-bars bore at men's eyes,
Are not within the leaf of pity writ,
But set them down horrible traitors: spare not the babe,
Whose dimpled smiles from fools exhaust their mercy;
Think it a bastard, whom the oracle
Hath doubtfully pronounced thy throat shall cut,
And mince it sans remorse: swear against objects;
Put armour on thine ears and on thine eyes;
Whose proof, nor yells of mothers, maids, nor babes,
Nor sight of priests in holy vestments bleeding,
Shall pierce a jot. There's gold to pay soldiers:
Make large confusion; and, thy fury spent,
Confounded be thyself! Speak not, be gone. — William Shakespeare