whitewash

“There can be no whitewash at the White House.”

—Richard M. Nixon, April 30, 1973.

the purple moor

“The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highway man came riding-Riding-riding-
The highwayman came riding up to the old inn-door.”

—Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman, 1907.

not so red

“Red lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.”

—Wilfred Owen, Greater Love, from Poems, 1963.

A rose-red sissy

“A rose-red sissy half as old as time.”

—William Plomer, Playboy of the Demi-World, from The Dorking Thigh, 1945.

Night and day

“Night and day, you are the one,
Only you beneath the moon and under the sun.”

—Cole Porter, Night and Day, 1932 song.

Don’t let’s ask for the moon!

“‘Oh Jerry,’ she said when she could trust her voice. ‘Don’t let’s ask for the moon! We have the stars!’”

—Olive Higgins Prouty, Now, Voyager, 1941.

The Blue Guitar

“They said, ‘You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.’

The man replied, ‘Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.’”

—Wallace Stevens, The Man With The Blue Guitar, 1937.

starless and bible-black

“To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night
in the small town, starless and bible-black,”

—Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood, 1954.

in the simple blessing of a rainbow

“I know the colour rose, and it is lovely,
But not when it ripens in a tumour;
And healing greens, leaves and grass, so springlike,
In limbs that fester are not springlike. . . .

So in the simple blessing of a rainbow,
In the bevelled edge of a sunlit mirror,
I have seen visible, Death’s artifact
Like a soldier’s ribbon on a tunic tacked.”

—Dannie Abse, Pathology of Colours, from A Small Desperation, 1968.

Black is beautiful

“Black is beautiful.”

—American civil rights slogan, mid-1960s, cited in Newsweek, July 11, 1966.