the intense yellow ochreous glare
“Shackle called me up about 5:30 A.M. to see a glorious sunrise. . . . The sunset was even more glorious than the sunrise, for the sky was almost cloudless and we got the intense yellow ochreous glare after sunset uninterrupted by any clouds. It was almost uncanny. One felt as though something terrible was about to happenthe same sort of feeling that one gets in a dense yellow London fog, only this was beautiful, and magnificent, as well as terrifying. Everyone was on the bridge watching it.”
—Edwin Wilson, a member of Sir Ernest Shackletons expedition to Antarctica, Monday, 9 September, 1901.
Three colorsblack, green, white
“[C]olors are used in the tea world as a system of categorizing the various teas in existence. In the West we are mostly familiar with what we call black tea. . . . In the last dozen years or so, green tea . . . has made a grand comeback. . . . More recently, we are being introduced to some of the rarest and most expensive teas: white teas. Three colorsblack, green, whitesounds simple. Yet white teas are a type of green tea, according to some. What we call black teas are considered red teas in China. And the Chinese oolong (or wu-long) tea . . . is not a recognizable color in Western languages, although in Chinese wu means dark, black. . . .”
—Beatrice Hohenegger, Liquid Jade: The Story of Tea from East to West, 2006.
white paper
“Let us supppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE.”
—John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1690; Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, 2002.
the newest and most beautiful words
“A blank sheet of paper has no blotches, and so the newest and most beautiful words can be written on it, the newest and most beautiful pictures can be painted on it.”
—Mao Zedong; Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, 2002.
spotless
“Only the newborn baby is spotless.”
—Khmer Rouge slogan; Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, 2002.
Deep Blue
“In 1997 an IBM computer called Deep Blue defeated the world chess champion Garry Kasparov, and unlike its predecessors, it did not just evaluate trillions of moves by brute force but was fitted with strategies that intelligently responded to patterns in the game. Newsweek called the match The Brains Last Stand. Kasparov called the outcome, the end of mankind.”
—Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, 2002.
Red and green
“The difference in kind between our experience of red and our experience of green does not mirror any difference in kind in lightwaves in the worldthe wavelengths of light, which give rise to our perception of hue, form a smooth continuum. Red and green, perceived as qualitatively different properties are constructs of the chemistry and circuitry of our nervous system. They could be absent in an organism with different photopigments or wiring; indeed, people with the most common form of colorblindness are just such organisms.”
—Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, 2002.
your tears
“Give me your tears, gypsy, or I will take them.”
—Borat, in Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, 2006.
a mote
“I am half distracted, captain Shandy, said Mrs. Wadman, holding up her cambrick handkerchief to her left eye, as she approachd the door of my uncle Tobys sentry-boxa moteor sandor somethingI know not what, has got into this eye of minedo look into itit is not in the white . . .
Widow Wadmans left eye shines this moment as lucid as her rightthere is neither mote, or sand, or dust, or chaff, or speck, or particle of opake matter floating in itThere is nothing, my dear paternal uncle! but one lambent delicious fire, furtively shooting out from every part of it, in all directions, into thine
If thou lookest, uncle Toby, in search of this mote one moment longerthou art undone.”
—Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Vol. 8, 1765.
the amorous mirror
“I refuse to see the most beautiful countries of the world microscopically reflected in the amorous mirror of your eyes.”
—Collette, The Vagabond; translated by Enid McLeod, 1955.