Quotes about cloth
page 8

Thomas Carlyle photo
Luther Burbank photo
Demi Moore photo

“Models, even male models — how small they've gotten! It looks great for the clothes, but it's not what you want in real life. Why do we have to keep looking at ourselves and measuring?”

Demi Moore (1962) American actress

Demi Moore Cover Interview - Demi Moore on Fame and Family - Harper's BAZAAR August 3, 2010 http://www.harpersbazaar.com/magazine/cover/demi-moore-cover-interview-0410

Mandell Creighton photo
Zalman Schachter-Shalomi photo

“I realized that all forms of religion are masks that the divine wears to communicate with us. Behind all religions there’s a reality, and this reality wears whatever clothes it needs to speak to a particular people.”

Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (1924–2014) American writer and activist, Jewish Renewal movement pioneer

The December Project: An Extraordinary Rabbi and a Skeptical Seeker Confront Life’s Greatest Mystery, with Sara Davidson.

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax photo
Bashō Matsuo photo

“Sabi is the color of the poem. It does not necessarily refer to the poem that describes a lonely scene. If a man goes to war wearing stout armor or to a party dressed up in gay clothes, and if this man happens to be an old man, there is something lonely about him. Sabi is something like that.”

Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet

sabi wa ku no iro nari. kanjaku naru ku wo iu ni arazu. tatoeba, roujin no katchuu wo taishi senjou ni hataraki, kinshuu wo kazari goen ni haberitemo, oi no sugata aru ga gotoshi.
Classical Japanese Database, Translation #42 http://carlsensei.com/classical/index.php/translation/view/42 (Translation: Robert Hass)
Statements

Charles Baudelaire photo

“A man who from the beginning has long been soaked in the languid atmosphere of a woman, the scent of her hands, her bosom, her knees, her hair, her lithe and flowing clothes,Sweet bath, suavely
Scented with ointments,has acquired a delicacy of skin, a refinement of tone, a kind of androgyny without which the toughest and most virile of geniuses remains, when it comes to artistic perfection, an incomplete being.”

<p>L’homme qui, dès le commencement, a été longtemps baigné dans la molle atmosphère de la femme, dans l’odeur de ses mains, de son sein, de ses genoux, de sa chevelure, de ses vêtements souples et flottants,</p><p>Dulce balneum suavibus
Unguentatum odoribus,</p><p>y a contracté une délicatesse d’épiderme et une distinction d’accent, une espèce d’androgynéité, sans lesquelles le génie le plus âpre et le plus viril reste, relativement à la perfection dans l’art, un être incomplet.</p>
"Un mangeur d'opium," VII: Chagrins d'enfance http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Paradis_artificiels_-_II#VII_CHAGRINS_D.E2.80.99ENFANCE
Les paradis artificiels (1860)

John Flavel photo
Murray N. Rothbard photo
Andrew Kennedy Hutchison Boyd photo
Frank McCourt photo
John Calvin photo
Davey Havok photo
Margaret Atwood photo
Mike Oldfield photo
Nigella Lawson photo

“I lurch from chaos to chaos. I can’t find my driving licence and my clothes are everywhere – cooking is the neatest thing I do.”

Nigella Lawson (1960) British food writer, journalist and broadcaster

As quoted in "Envy, Lust and Gluttony - The Perfect Recipe" by Jane Warren in Daily Express http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/19663/Envy,-lust-and-gluttony---the-perfect-recipe (20 September 2007)

Thomas Fuller photo

“Miracles are the swaddling-clothes of infant churches.”

Thomas Fuller (1608–1661) English churchman and historian

The Church History of Britain; Book 4, Section 4 http://books.google.com/books?id=AkcaAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Miracles+are+the+swaddling+clothes+of+infant+churches%22&pg=PA239#v=onepage (1655)

Victor Villaseñor photo
Benjamin Franklin King, Jr. photo

“Nothing to do but work,
Nothing to eat but food,
Nothing to wear but clothes
To keep one from going nude.”

Benjamin Franklin King, Jr. (1857–1894) American humorist and poet

The Pessimist, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Gardiner Spring photo
Robert E. Howard photo

“I'm not going to vote. I won't vote for a Catholic and I won't vote for a damned Republican. Maybe I've said that before. My ancestors were all Catholic and not very far back. And I have reason to hate the church.
I feel a curious kinship, though, with the Middle Ages. I have been more successful in selling tales laid in that period of time, than in any other. Truth it was an epoch for strange writers. Witches and werewolves, alchemists and necromancers, haunted the brains of those strange savage people, barbaric children that they were, and the only thing which was never believed was the truth. Those sons of the old pagan tribes were wrought upon by priest and monk, and they brought all their demons from their mythology and accepted all the demons of the new creed also, turning their old gods into devils. The slight knowledge which filtered through the monastaries from the ancient sources of decayed Greece and fallen Rome, was so distorted and perverted that by the time it reached the people, it resembled some monstrous legend. And the vague minded savages further garbed it in heathen garments. Oh, a brave time, by Satan! Any smooth rogue could swindle his way through life, as he can today, but then there was pageantry and high illusion and vanity, and the beloved tinsel of glory without which life is not worth living.
I hate the devotees of great wealth but I enjoy seeing the splendor that wealth can buy. And if I were wealthy, I'd live in a place with marble walls and marble floors, lapis lazulis ceilings and cloth-of-gold and I would have silver fountains in the courts, flinging an everlasting sheen of sparkling water in the air. Soft low music should breathe forever through the rooms and slim tigerish girls should glide through on softly falling feet, serving all the wants of me and my guests; girls with white bare limbs like molten gold and soft dreamy eyes.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to Harold Preece (received October 20, 1928)
Letters

Megan Mullally photo
Geoffrey Chaucer photo
Catharine A. MacKinnon photo
Bob Dylan photo

“The vagabond who's rapping at your door,
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore,
Strike another match, go start anew!
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

Judith Sheindlin photo
Trinny Woodall photo
Wilfred Thesiger photo
Alice A. Bailey photo
Mata Amritanandamayi photo
Edward Thomson photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Conor Oberst photo
Denis Diderot photo

“Although a man may wear fine clothing, if he lives peacefully; and is good, self-possessed, has faith and is pure; and if he does not hurt any living being, he is a holy man.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

Gautama Buddha, as quoted in the Dhammapada.
Misattributed

Marshall McLuhan photo

“The content or time-clothing of any medium or culture is the preceding medium or culture.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1970s, Culture Is Our Business (1970), p. 168

Margaret Mead photo

“We may say that many, if not all, of the personality traits which we have called masculine or feminine are as lightly linked to sex as are the clothing, the manners, and the form of headdress that a society at a given period assigns to either sex.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1930s, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), p. 280, cited in Perspectives in Cultural Anthropology (1987) by Herbert A. Applebaum, p. 141

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley photo

“Lord Byron, who was writing the third canto of Childe Harold, was the only one among us who put his thoughts upon paper. These, as he brought them successively to us, clothed in all the light and harmony of poetry, seemed to stamp as divine the glories of heaven and earth, whose influences we partook with him.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer

Introduction http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/1831v1/intro.html to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

Edgar Degas photo
Joseph Joubert photo
Naomi Klein photo
Cory Doctorow photo

“I'm of the opinion that science fiction writers suck at predicting the future. We mostly go around describing the present in futuristic clothes - (such as) Mary Shelley, Bill Gibson, and many others.”

Cory Doctorow (1971) Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author

"Where is my flying car?", 3rd Degree (September 2007) https://web.archive.org/web/20110305022421/http://3degree.ecu.edu.au/articles/1378

Bernard Harcourt photo
Augustus De Morgan photo
David Hume photo

“Art may make a suit of clothes; but nature must produce a man.”

Part I, Essay 15: The Epicurean
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748)

James Comey photo
Bernard Cornwell photo
Thornton Wilder photo
William Ellery Channing photo
Katherine Heigl photo
Merrick Garland photo

“If the CIA is the emperor, you're asking us to say the emperor has clothes when the emperor's bosses say that the emperor doesn't. I mean, how can you ask the court to say that at this point?”

Merrick Garland (1952) American judge

[2012, ACLU v. CIA, Merrick Garland, Oral arguments, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit]; quote then excerpted in:
[Mike Scarcella, http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2013/03/dc-circuit-revives-public-records-suit-over-drone-documents.html, March 18, 2016, D.C. Circuit Revives Public Records Suit Over Drone Documents, March 15, 2013, The BLT]; quote then cited from this source subsequently in:
[March 18, 2016, The Quotable Merrick Garland: A Collection of Writings and Remarks, http://www.nationallawjournal.com/home/id=1202752327128/The-Quotable-Merrick-Garland-A-Collection-of-Writings-and-Remarks, Zoe Tillman, The National Law Journal, March 16, 2016, 0162-7325]
Court opinions and media comments

Azar Nafisi photo
Michael A. Stackpole photo
Wyndham Lewis photo
Lucy Stone photo
Sebastian Vettel photo

“The chequered flag is really just a stupid wooden stick and a piece of cloth. It's a small thing, but it means so much when you cross the line at moments like that. It was unbelievable.”

Sebastian Vettel (1987) German racing driver in Formula 1

http://www.sebastian-vettel.org/quotes.htm
After his 4th position in China 2007.
Sourced quotes

William Croswell Doane photo
Trinny Woodall photo

“Having an interest in clothes is a sign of vanity and English men don't like to be seen to be vain. That's what is so fantastic about this format, it gives men permission to take an interest in clothes and their appearance. And as a result their self-esteem goes up.”

Trinny Woodall (1964) English fashion advisor and designer, television presenter and author

Regarding Trinny & Susannah Undress...; as quoted in "Laid Bare" by Nicola Methven in The Daily Mirror http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories/tm_objectid=17846372&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=laid-bare-name_page.html (30 September 2006)

Madonna photo

“Phallic symbols. You know Catholics. I used to draw people naked all the time in my art class and my nun teachers used to tell me I had to put clothes on them. So I just drew lines around their bodies. See-through clothes.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Madonna Interview : Island Magazine (October 1983), Island, 1983-10-01 http://allaboutmadonna.com/madonna-library/madonna-interview-island-magazine-october-1983,
(When asked what she used to draw as a kid).

Bruce Springsteen photo

“Ain't no angel gonna greet me.
It's just you and I my friend.
My clothes don't fit me no more.
I walked a thousand miles
Just to slip this skin.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Streets of Philadelphia"
Song lyrics, Singles

Pete Doherty photo
Auguste Rodin photo

“I feel it, but I cannot express it,… I cannot analyse the Celtic genius to my own satisfaction. In the Middle Ages art came from groups, not from individuals. It was anonymous; the sculptors of cathedrals no more put their names to their works than our workmen put theirs on the pavement that they lay. Ah! what an admirable scorn of notoriety! The signature is what destroys us. We do portraits, but what we do is not so great. Thèse kings and queens, on the cathedrals, were not portraits. The fellow-workers stood for one another, and they interpreted; they did not copy. They made clothed figures; the nude and portraiture only date from the Renascence. And then those fellows cut with the tool's end into the block, that is why they were called sculptors. As for us, we are modellers. And what a disgraceful thing that casting from life is, which so many well-known sculptors do not blush to use! It is a mere swindling in art. Art was a vital function to the image-makers of the thirteenth century; they would hâve laughed at the idea of signing what they did, and never dreamed of honours and titles. When once their work was finished, they said no more about it, or else they talked among themselves. How curious it would hâve been to hear them, to be present at their gatherings, where they must hâve discussed in amusing phrases, and with simple, deep ideas!… Whenever the cathedrals disappear civilisation will go down one step. And even now we no longer understand them, we no longer know how to read their silent language. We need to make excavations not in the earth, but towards heaven…”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Auguste Rodin: The Man, His Ideas, His Works, 1905, p. 63-64; About the genius of the Gothic sculptors.

Marilyn Monroe photo

“They feel fame gives them some kind of privilege to walk up to you and say anything to you, of any kind of nature — and it won't hurt your feelings — like it's happening to your clothes not you.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Comment on fame, quoted in Marilyn Monroe: A Life of the Actress (1993) by Carl E. Rollyson, and in Symbolic Leaders: Public Dramas and Public Men (2006) by Orrin Edgar Klapp
Variant: People feel fame gives them some kind of privilege to walk up to you and say anything to you, of any kind of nature — and it won't hurt your feelings — like it's happening to your clothing.
As quoted in Ms. magazine (August 1972) p. 40
Context: When you're famous you kind of run into human nature in a raw kind of way. It stirs up envy, fame does. People you run into feel that, well, who does she think she is, Marilyn Monroe? They feel fame gives them some kind of privilege to walk up to you and say anything to you, of any kind of nature — and it won't hurt your feelings — like it's happening to your clothes not you.

Brandon Boyd photo

“Since when did what we paid for colored cloth gauge our gravity?”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

Lyrics, A Crow Left of the Murder... (2004)

Paz de la Huerta photo
Basil of Caesarea photo
Hillary Clinton photo

“MODERATOR 1: Okay. Which designers do you prefer?
SECRETARY CLINTON: What designers of clothes?
MODERATOR 1: Yes.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Would you ever ask a man that question? [Laughter, applause]
MODERATOR 1: Probably not. Probably not. [Applause]”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Townterview Hosted by KTR http://web.archive.org/web/20101204161545/http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/12/152294.htm, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State. KTR Studio, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (December 2, 2010)
Secretary of State (2009–2013)

Margaret Caroline Anderson photo
James Macpherson photo
Lysander Spooner photo

“The key to a successful restaurant is dressing girls in degrading clothes.”

Michael O'Donoghue (1940–1994) American actor and writer

Mr. Mike's America: A Comic's Trek with SNL's First Head Writer (1983)

“The fact that we have been forgiven our debts does not mean that our president has to use the donkey as a means of travel. Does this also mean we can't buy clothes and therefore walk naked?”

Basil Mramba (1940) Tanzanian politician

Quoted in "Tanzania defends presidential jet plans," http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2146298.stm BBC News (2002-07-23). Mramba was defending the purchase of a Presidential Jet while he was the Minister of Finance.

Jack Johnson (musician) photo
Thomas Malory photo

“In the midst of the lake Arthur was ware of an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in that hand.”

Book I, ch. 25
Le Morte d'Arthur (c. 1469) (first known edition 1485)

Maddox photo
Martin Lomasney photo

“The great mass of people are interested in only three things—food, clothing, and shelter. A politician in a district like mine sees to it that his people get these things.”

Martin Lomasney (1859–1933) American politician

[O'Connor, Thomas H., The Boston Irish: A Political History, Northeastern University Press, Boston, 1995, 9781555532208, 122, https://books.google.com/?id=ld8YAQAAMAAJ]

Bob Dylan photo

“His clothes are dirty, but his hands are clean, and you're the best thing that he's ever seen.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Nashville Skyline (1969), Lay Lady Lay

“Siward, the stalwart earl, being stricken by dysentery, felt that death was near, and said, "How shameful it is that I, who could not die in so many battles, should have been saved for the ignominious death of a cow! At least clothe me in my impenetrable breastplate, gird me with my sword, place my helmet on my head, my shield in my left hand, my gilded battle-axe in my right, that I, the bravest of soldiers, may die like a soldier." He spoke, and armed as he had requested, he gave up his spirit with honour.”
Siwardus, consul rigidissimus, pro fluuio uentris ductus mortem sensit imminere. Dixitque, "Quantus pudor me tot in bellis mori non potuisse, et uaccarum morti cum dedecore reseruarer! Induite me saltem lorica mea impenetrabili, precingite gladio. Sublimate galea. Scutum in leua. Securim auratam michi ponite in dextra, ut militum fortissimus modo militis moriar." Dixerat, et ut dixerat armatus honorifice spiritum exalauit.

Siwardus, consul rigidissimus, pro fluuio uentris ductus mortem sensit imminere. Dixitque, "Quantus pudor me tot in bellis mori non potuisse, et uaccarum morti cum dedecore reseruarer! Induite me saltem lorica mea impenetrabili, precingite gladio. Sublimate galea. Scutum in leua. Securim auratam michi ponite in dextra, ut militum fortissimus modo militis moriar."
Dixerat, et ut dixerat armatus honorifice spiritum exalauit.
Book VI, §24, pp. 378-81.
Historia Anglorum (The History of the English People)

Emma Goldman photo
Susie Bright photo
Rod Serling photo
Yohji Yamamoto photo
H. G. Wells photo

“Suppose, now, there is such a thing as an all-round inferior race. Is that any reason why we should propose to preserve it for ever…? Whether there is a race so inferior I do not know, but certainly there is no race so superior as to be trusted with human charges. The true answer to Aristotle’s plea for slavery, that there are “natural slaves,” lies in the fact that there are no “natural” masters… The true objection to slavery is not that it is unjust to the inferior but that it corrupts the superior. There is only one sane and logical thing to be done with a really inferior race, and that is to exterminate it. Now there are various ways of exterminating a race, and most of them are cruel. You may end it with fire and sword after the old Hebrew fashion; you may enslave it and work it to death, as the Spaniards did the Caribs; you may set it boundaries and then poison it slowly with deleterious commodities, as the Americans do with most of their Indians; you may incite it to wear clothing to which it is not accustomed and to live under new and strange conditions that will expose it to infectious diseases to which you yourselves are immune, as the missionaries do the Polynesians; you may resort to honest simple murder, as we English did with the Tasmanians; or you can maintain such conditions as conduce to “race suicide,” as the British administration does in Fiji. Suppose, then, for a moment, that there is an all-round inferior race… If any of the race did, after all, prove to be fit to survive, they would survive—they would be picked out with a sure and automatic justice from the over-ready condemnation of all their kind. Is there, however, an all-round inferior race in the world? Even the Australian black-fellow is, perhaps, not quite so entirely eligible for extinction as a good, wholesome, horse-racing, sheep-farming Australian white may think. These queer little races, the black-fellows, the Pigmies, the Bushmen, may have their little gifts, a greater keenness, a greater fineness of this sense or that, a quaintness of the imagination or what not, that may serve as their little unique addition to the totality of our Utopian civilisation. We are supposing that every individual alive on earth is alive in Utopia, and so all the surviving “black-fellows” are there. Every one of them in Utopia has had what none have had on earth, a fair education and fair treatment, justice, and opportunity…Some may be even prosperous and admired, may have married women of their own or some other race, and so may be transmitting that distinctive thin thread of excellence, to take its due place in the great synthesis of the future.”

Source: A Modern Utopia (1905), Ch. 10, sect. 3

Oliver Goldsmith photo

“A kind and gentle heart he had,
To comfort friends and foes;
The naked every day he clad
When he put on his clothes.”

Source: The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Ch. 17, An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog, st. 3.

Daniel Drake photo

“A religious spirit animates the infancy of our literature, and must continue to gloe in its maturity. The public taste calls for this quality, and would relish no work in which it might be supplanted by a principle of infidelity. Our best authors have written under the influence of Christian feeling; but had they been destitute of this sentiment, they would have found it necessary to accommodate themselves to the opinions of the people, and follow Christian precedents. The beneficent influence of religion on literature, is like that of our evening sun, when it awakens in the clouds those beautiful and burning tints, which clothe the firmament in gold and purple. It constitutes the heart of learning - the great source of its moral power. Religion addresses itself to the highest and holiest of our sentiments - benevolence and veneration, and their excitement stirs up the imagination, strengthens the undeerstanding, and purifies the taste. Thus, both in the mind of the author and the reader, Christianity and literature act and react on each other, with the effect of elevating both, and carrying the human character to the highest perfection which it is destined to reach. Learning should be proud of this companionship, and exert all her wisdom to render it perpetual.”

Daniel Drake (1785–1852) American physician and writer

Daniel Drake (1834). Discourse on the History, Character, and Prospects of the West: Delivered to the Union Literary Society of Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, at Their Ninth Anniversary, September 23, 1834. Truman and Smith. p. 31

Amber Benson photo

“Willow: Hey, clothes.
Tara: Better not get used to 'em.”

Amber Benson (1977) actress from the United States

Older and Far Away [6.14]
Willow & Tara (2000-2002)

“I disagree with Les. We always found good cunt at the Lyceum. Friendly cunt, clean cunt, spare cunt, jeans and knicker stuffed full of nice juicy hairy cunt, handfuls of cunt, palmful grabbing the cunt by the stem, or the root – infantile memories of cunt – backrow slides – slithery oily cunt, the cunt that breathes – the cunt that’s neatly wrapped in cotton, in silk, in nylon, that announces, that speaks or thrusts, that winks that’s squeezed in a triangle of furtive cloth backed by an arse that’s creamy, springy billowy cushiony tight, knicker lined, knicker skinned, circumscribed by flowers and cotton, by views, clinging knicker, juice ridden knicker, hot knicker, wet knicker, swelling vulva knicker, witty cunt, teeth smiling the eyes biting cunt, cultured cunt, culture vulture cunt, finger biting cunt, cunt that pours, cunt that spreads itself over your soft lips, that attacks, cunt that imagines – cunt you dream about, cunt you create as a Melba, a meringue with smooth sides – remembered from school boys’ smelly first cunt, first foreign cunt, amazing cunt – cunt that’s cruel. Cunt that protects itself and makes you want it even more cunt – cunt that smells of the air, of the earth, of bakeries, of old apples, of figs, of sweat of hands of sour yeast of fresh fish cunt. So – are we going Les? We might pick up a bit of crumpet.”

East (1975), Scene 17

Frederick Douglass photo
Auguste Rodin photo