a green sunset
“It was a green sunset. The reds, the oranges, the purples which Amanda automatically associated with sunsets had been snuffed out in the soggy cloud pile, and the nearly invisible sun that sank—beyond the fields, sloughs, rock islands and tide flats—into Puget Sound, it looked like an unripe olive photographed through gauze.”
—Tom Robbins, from Another Roadside Attraction, 1971.
both black and bright
“[Y]et even the tortoise, dark and melancholy as it is upon the back, still possesses a bright side; its calapee or breast-plate being sometimes of a faint yellowish or golden tinge. . . . The tortoise is both black and bright.”
—Herman Melville, from The Encantadas, a description of those islands also known as The Galapagos; 1854.
fairy fish
“Below the waterline, the rock seemed one honey-comb of grottoes, affording labyrinthine lurking places for swarms of fairy fish. . . . Here hues were seen as yet unpainted, and figures which are unengraved.”
—Herman Melville, from The Encantadas, 1854.
dazzling with scarlet
“She saw all the glories of the camp—its tents stretched forth in beauteous uniformity of lines, crowded with the young and the gay, and dazzling with scarlet; and, to complete the view, she saw herself seated beneath a tent, tenderly flirting with at least six officers at once.”
—Jane Austen, from Pride and Prejudice, 1813.
Both changed color
“Both changed color, one looked white, the other red.”
—Jane Austen, from Pride and Prejudice, 1813.
black-letter text
“In short, to the Spaniard’s black-letter text, it was best, for a while, to leave open margin.”
—Herman Melville, from Benito Cereno, 1855.
an old Dansker
“He was an old Dansker long anglicized in the service, of few words, many wrinkles and some honorable scars. His wizened face, time-tinted and water-stormed to the complexion of an antique parchment, was here and there peppered blue by the chance explosion of a gun-cartridge in action.”
—Herman Melville, from Billy Budd, 1924.
a deeper violet
“Yet, upon an abrupt unforeseen encounter, a red light would flash forth from his eye, like a spark from an anvil in a dusky smithy. That quick fierce light was a strange one, darted from orbs which in repose were of a colour nearest approaching a deeper violet, the softest of shades.”
—Herman Melville, from Billy Budd, 1924.
alien eyes
“Claggart deliberately advanced within short range of Billy, and mesmerically looking him in the eye, briefly recapitulated the accusation.
Not at first did Billy take it in. When he did the rose-tan of his cheek looked struck as by white leprosy. He stood like one impaled and gagged. Meanwhile the accuser’s eyes, removing not as yet from the blue, dilated ones, underwent a phenomenal change, their wonted rich violet colour blurring into a muddy purple. Those lights of human intelligence losing human expression, gelidly protruding like the alien eyes of certain uncatalogued creatures of the deep.”
—Herman Melville, from Billy Budd, 1924.
the difference of the colour
“Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colour, but where exactly does the first one visibly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity.”
—Herman Melville, from Billy Budd, 1924.