"The true colour of life is the colour of the body, the colour of the covered red, the implicit and not explicit red of the living heart and the pulses. It is the modest colour of the unpublished blood"
About this Quote
The phrase “modest colour” is doing cultural heavy lifting. In late Victorian and early modern moral atmospheres, modesty is a social demand, especially on women: what must not be shown, what must be kept private, what is permitted only as suggestion. Meynell borrows that code and turns it into an aesthetic principle. The “true” color of life is not spectacle; it’s discretion, the ordinary secrecy of survival.
“Unpublished blood” sharpens the point. “Unpublished” evokes both propriety (what stays unspoken) and authorship (what stays unwritten). A poet is supposed to publish; blood is supposed to circulate. Pairing them implies a friction between inner experience and public expression: the most essential thing in us is also the least shareable without distortion. Meynell isn’t romanticizing gore; she’s making a quiet argument that the real drama of living happens offstage, under cover, in the continuous labor of the body - and that art, at its best, learns to honor that hiddenness rather than violate it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Life |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Meynell, Alice. (2026, January 16). The true colour of life is the colour of the body, the colour of the covered red, the implicit and not explicit red of the living heart and the pulses. It is the modest colour of the unpublished blood. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-true-colour-of-life-is-the-colour-of-the-body-130793/
Chicago Style
Meynell, Alice. "The true colour of life is the colour of the body, the colour of the covered red, the implicit and not explicit red of the living heart and the pulses. It is the modest colour of the unpublished blood." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-true-colour-of-life-is-the-colour-of-the-body-130793/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The true colour of life is the colour of the body, the colour of the covered red, the implicit and not explicit red of the living heart and the pulses. It is the modest colour of the unpublished blood." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-true-colour-of-life-is-the-colour-of-the-body-130793/. Accessed 10 Feb. 2026.
