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clothes quotes

  • And the smell of the library was always the samethe musty odour of old clothes mixed with the keener scent of unwashed bodies, creating what the chief librarian had once described as 'the steam of the social soup'.

    - Peter Ackroyd
      Chatterton, ch.5.

  •    She had a womanly instinct that clothes possess an influence more powerful over many than the worth of character or the magic of manners.

    - Louisa May Alcott
      Little Women, pt.2, ch.34.

  • Let's get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini.

    -Anonymous
    c.1925  The origin of this line is disputed; it has been attributed to Billy Wilder, Charles Butterworth,  Alexander Woollcott and Robert Benchley's press agent. It was used by Mae West in Every Day's a Holiday (1937 film) and by Benchley in The Major and the Minor (1942 film).

  •    Now king David was old and stricken in years; and they covered him with clothes, but he gat no heat.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Kings1:1.

  • And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said,Who touched my clothes?

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Mark 5:30.

  • And the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man's feet, whose name was Saul.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Acts of the  Apostles 7:57^8.

  • In Slaka, sex is just politics with the clothes off.

    - Malcolm Stanley Bradbury
      Rates of Exchange, pt.4, ch.3.

  •    The benison of hot water; furs to touch; The good smell of old clothes.

    - Rupert Chawner Brooke
      'The Great Lover'.

  •    Friends! trust not the heart of that man for whom Old Clothes are not venerable.

    -Thomas Carlyle
    ^4  Sartor Resartus, bk.3, ch.6.

  • Man's earthly interests,'are all hooked and buttoned together, and held up, by Clothes.'

    -Thomas Carlyle
    ^4  Sartor Resartus, bk.1, ch.8.

  • Clothes are our weapons, our challenges, our visible insults.

    - Angela Olive Carter
      'Notes for a Theory of Sixties Style', in New Society (1967). Collected in Nothing Sacred (1982).

  • Alcohol islike love† The first kissismagic, thesecond is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off.

    - Raymond Chandler
      The Long Good-Bye, ch.4.

  • Quandelle le' v esespaupie' r es,ondiraitqu'ellesede s habille. When she raises her eyelids it's as if she weretaking off all her clothes.

    -Colette full name Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
      Claudine et  Annie, ch.3 (translated by Antonia White).

  • The right honourable gentleman caught the Whigs bathing and walked away with their clothes.

    - Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield Disraeli
      House of Commons speech, 28 Feb, attacking Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel for bullying his back-benchers into supporting the Government's action in intercepting the private mail of radical MPs.

  • Good clothes open all doors.

    -Thomas Fuller
      Gnomologia, no.1705.

  • Bright grayness.Both the clothes and hair were neat and gray. The gray-framed spectacles magnified the gray hazel eyes, but there was no grayness in the mind.

    -John Gunther
    Of Harry S  Truman. Quoted in David McCullough Truman (1992).

  • Clothes make the poor invisible too: America has the best-dressed poverty the world has ever known.

    - Michael Harrington
      The Other America: Poverty in the United States, ch.1.

  • Since no normal humble man can help but feel magnificent in a brand-new suit of clothes, it is not surprising that those who don a fresh suit of bright white linen every day should feel magnificent always. Nor is it surprising that a normal humble head should swell beneath a solar topee, since a topee is more a badge of authority than a hat, as is the hat of a soldier.

    - Xavier Herbert
      Capricornia,'Psychological Effect of a Solar Topee'.

  • When as in silks my Julia goes, Then, then (me thinks) how sweetly flows That liquefaction of her clothes.

    - Robert Herrick
      'Upon  Julia's Clothes'.

  • A sweet disorder in the dress 400 Kindles in clothes a wantonness: A lawn about the shoulders thrown Into a fine distraction† A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility: Do more bewitch me, than when Art Is too precise in every part.

    - Robert Herrick
      'Delight in Disorder'.

  • Art may make a suit of clothes; But nature must produce a man.

    - David Hume
    ^2  Essays Moral, Political and Literary,'The Epicurean'.

  • Fine clothes are good onlyas they supply the want of other means of procuring respect.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Remark, 27 Mar. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.2.

  • I don't design clothes, I design dreams.

    - Ralph Lauren
      In the NewYork Times,19  Apr.

  • Thus did they live:Thus did they love, Repeating only joys above; And Angels were, but with clothes on, Which they would put off cheerfully, To bathe them in the galaxy, Then gird them with the Heavenly zone.

    - Richard Lovelace
      Lucasta,'Love Made in the First  Age'.

  • It is from Italy that we launch through the world this violently upsetting incendiary manifesto of ours.With it, today, we establish Futurism, because we want to free this land from its smelly gangrene of professors, archaeologists, ciceroni and antiquarians. For too long has Italy beena dealer insecond-hand clothes.Wemean to free her from the numberless museums that cover her like so many graveyards. 550

    - Emilio FilippoTomasso Marinetti
      Manifesto of Futurism.

  • Fishing is a delusion entirely surrounded by liars in old clothes.

    - Don(ald Robert Perry) Marquis
    Attributed.

  • There comes a time whenyou haveto let yourclothesgo out in the world and try to make it on their own.

    - Bette Midler
      On relinquishing the mermaid costume she wore in the 1970s film Clams on the Half Shell. In People, 31  Aug.

  • Their whole business abroad (as far as I can perceive)

    - Lady Mary Wortley ne  e Pierrepoint Montagu
    English   novelist   and   essayist   of   Irish   parentage.   He   wrote various novels, a collection of essays  and many articles for  the Manchester Guardian (1890^1925).

  • He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot; A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a pedlar just opening his pack.

    - Clement Moore
      The Night Before Christmas.

  • There was a young belle of old Natchez Whose garments were always in patchez. When comment arose On the state of her clothes, She drawled, When Ah itchez, Ah scratchez.

    - (Frederic) Ogden Nash
      I'm a Stranger Here Myself,'Requiem'.

  • A woman is stripped of everything by them [saloons]. Her husband is torn from her; she is robbed of her sons, her home, her food, and her virtue; and then they strip her clothes off and hang her up bare in these dens of robbery and murder. Truly does the saloon make a woman bare of all things!

    - CarryAmelia ne  e Moore Nation
    c.1893  Quoted in Carleton Beals Cyclone Carry (1962), ch.14.

  • A fashionable woman wears clothes; the clothes don't wear her.

    - Mary Quant
      Quant by Quant.

  • The things people had once held against her† unconventional beauty†un-American elegance, the taste for French clothes and French foodwere suddenly no longer liabilities but assets.

    - Arthur M(eier),Jr Schlesinger
      OnJacqueline Kennedy's post-election image. AThousand Days.

  • So fashion is born by small facts, trends, or even politics, never by trying to make little pleats and furbelows, by trinkets, by clothes easy to copy, or by the shortening or lengthening of a skirt.

    -Wolfgang Rudolph Schmitt
      A Shocking Life, ch.9.

  • I'll make my old clothes know who's master. I shall straightaway cashier the hunting-frock, and render my leather breeches incapable. My hair has been in training some time.

    - Richard Brinsley Sheridan
      Bob Acres.The Rivals, act 2, sc.1.

  • The Englishwoman's clothes, too, have improved out of all knowledge†no longer are our hats, as inVictorian days, a kind of Pageant of Empire, whereon the products of all the colonies battle for precedence.

    - Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell
      EnglishWomen.

  • My parents kept me from children who were rough Whothrew wordslikestones and who woretornclothes

    - Sir Stephen Harold Spender
      'My Parents Kept Me from ChildrenWhoWere Rough'.

  •    I think she was cut out for a Gentlewoman, but she was spoiled in the making. She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork; and, for the fashion, I believe they were made in the days of Queen Bess.

    -Jonathan Swift
      Polite Conversation, dialogue1.

  • I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

    - Henry David Thoreau
      Walden, or Life in theWoods,'Economy'.

  • If I were shabby no one would have me: a woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for herself.

    - Edith Newbold ne  e Jones Wharton
      The House of Mirth, bk.1, ch.1.

  • The fact that you don't buy a teenager new clothes doesn't mean he isn't going to grow.

    - George Malcolm White
      On the need for a fourth Senate office building. In Connoisseur, Apr.

  • She wore far too much rouge last night, and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.

    - Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills Wilde
      Lord Goring. An Ideal Husband, act 2.

  • The Right Honwas atubby little chapwho looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say 'When!'

    -Plum
      Very Good, Jeeves,'Jeeves and the Impending Doom'.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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