Ah, no, dear sir! let us not watch the loveliest of all earthly flowers till it becomes degraded in our eyes by a decay which it was born to undergo. Let it be a dream in our philosophy that it still remains in all its prime, and that so it will remain in some purer clime through all the vicissitudes of future ages.

- James Hogg, The Shepherd's Calendar

"The Red Lacquer Screen in the gloaming.... In the daytime all is red, is gaudy with the blowsy, blooming peonies in elegant vases flaunting their heads in a ceremonious row beneath the mountebank scene of gaiety."

-Denton Welch, Journals (6 Nov 1942)