The colors of the underwater rock [are] as pale and delicate as those in the wardrobe of an 18th-century marchioness.

Color had been made the mark of enslavement and was taken to be also the mark of inferiority; for prejudice does not reason, or it would not be prejudice... If prejudice could reason, it would dispel itself.

I was a pale young curate then.

I wondered vaguely if this was when it would end, whether I would pull up tonight's darkness like a quilt and be dead and at peace evermore.

The coconut trees, lithe and graceful, crowd the beach like a minuet of slender elderly virgins adopting flippant poses.

An Edwardian lady in full dress was a wonder to behold, and her preparations for viewing were awesome.