Quotes about cloth
page 9

Noel Coward photo
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo

“The view of things [called Pantheism] … — that all plurality is only apparent, that in the endless series of individuals, passing simultaneously and successively into and out of life, generation after generation, age after age, there is but one and the same entity really existing, which is present and identical in all alike; — this theory … may be carried back to the remotest antiquity. It is the alpha and omega of the oldest book in the world, the sacred Vedas, whose dogmatic part, or rather esoteric teaching, is found in the Upanishads. There, in almost every page this profound doctrine lies enshrined; with tireless repetition, in countless adaptations, by many varied parables and similes it is expounded and inculcated. That such was, moreover, the fount whence Pythagoras drew his wisdom, cannot be doubted … That it formed practically the central point in the whole philosophy of the Eleatic School, is likewise a familiar fact. Later on, the New Platonists were steeped in the same … In the ninth century we find it unexpectedly appearing in Europe. It kindles the spirit of no less a divine than Johannes Scotus Erigena, who endeavours to clothe it with the forms and terminology of the Christian religion. Among the Mohammedans we detect it again in the rapt mysticism of the Sufi. In the West Giordano Bruno cannot resist the impulse to utter it aloud; but his reward is a death of shame and torture. And at the same time we find the Christian Mystics losing themselves in it, against their own will and intention, whenever and wherever we read of them! Spinoza's name is identified with it.”

Part IV, Ch. 2, pp. 269 https://archive.org/stream/basisofmorality00schoiala#page/269/mode/2up-272
On the Basis of Morality (1840)

Báb photo
Ippen photo

“In this brief span this body exists,
Clothing and food are of course indispensable;
But knowing them to be fruits of former lives,
I make no effort at all to obtain them.”

Ippen (1239–1289) Japanese Buddhist monk, founder of the Jishu school.

"A Gist in Empty Words" (Chapter 2, p. 11).
No Abode: The Record of Ippen (1997)

Derren Brown photo
Katherine Paterson photo
George Bernard Shaw photo
Alfred Denning, Baron Denning photo
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel photo
Andreas Heldal-Lund photo
Bruce Springsteen photo

“[Pelsaert laments] “the utter subjection and poverty of the common people-poverty so great and miserable that the life of the people can be depicted or accurately described only as the home of stark want and the dwelling place of bitter woe.” He continues: “There are three classes of people who are indeed nominally free, but whose status differs very little from voluntary slavery-workmen, peons or servants and shopkeepers. For the workmen there are two scourges, the first of which is low wages. Goldsmiths, painters (of cloth or chintz), embroiderers, carpet makers, cotton or silk weavers, black-smiths, copper-smiths, tailors, masons, builders, stone-cutters, a hundred crafts in all-any of these working from morning to night can earn only 5 or 6 tackas (tankahs), that is 4 or 5 strivers in wages. The second (scourge) is (the oppression of) the Governor, the nobles, the Diwan, the Kotwal, the Bakshi, and other royal officers. If any of these wants a workman, the man is not asked if he is willing to come, but is seized in the house or in the street, well beaten if he should dare to raise any objection, and in the evening paid half his wages, or nothing at all. From these facts the nature of their food can be easily inferred… For their monotonous daily food they have nothing but a little khichri… in the day time, they munch a little parched pulse or other grain, which they say suffices for their lean stomachs… Their houses are built of mud with thatched roofs. Furniture there is little or none, except some earthenware pots to hold water and for cooking… Their bedclothes are scanty, merely a sheet or perhaps two… this is sufficient in the hot weather, but the bitter cold nights are miserable indeed, and they try to keep warm over little cowdung fires… the smoke from these fires all over the city is so great that the eyes run, and the throat seems to be choked.””

Francisco Pelsaert (1591–1630) Dutch merchant, commander of the ship Batavia

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7
Jahangir’s India

Robert Herrick photo

“A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness.”

"Delight in Disorder".
Hesperides (1648)

Edward German photo
Honoré de Balzac photo

“Whoso says "Investigate" says "Revolt." All revolt is either the cloak that hides a prince, or the swaddling-clothes of a new mastery.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Qui dit examen, dit révolte.Toute révolte est, ou le manteau sous lequel se cache un prince, ou les langes d'une domination nouvelle.
Source: About Catherine de' Medici (1842), Part I: The Calvinist Martyr, Ch. I: A House Which No Longer Exists at the Corner of a Street Which No Longer Exists in a Paris Which No Longer Exists.

Kris Kristofferson photo

“And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad
So I had one more for dessert
Then I fumbled through my closet for my clothes
And found my cleanest dirty shirt..”

Kris Kristofferson (1936) American country music singer, songwriter, musician, and film actor

Sunday Morning Comin' Down
Song lyrics, Kristofferson (1970)

Joss Whedon photo

“Hello, I'm the writer and director. Now take your clothes off and get on top of Morena.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

Reportedly said on the set of Serenity to Phillip Sternborg on his first day of filming, as quoted in the DVD commentary of Firefly boxset (2003).

Alexander Woollcott photo

“I must get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini.”

Alexander Woollcott (1887–1943) American critic

Reported as a misattribution in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 132.
Misattributed

Pierre-Auguste Renoir photo
Almazbek Atambayev photo

“I’m a showman. I believe that you’re a character every time you put on clothes. Tomorrow I may be another in hoops and tight jeans and a bomber. Clothes, to me, or wardrobe express characters.”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

Erika Jayne interview to Vogue https://www.vogue.com/article/erika-girardi-jayne-real-housewives-of-beverly-hills-bella-gigi-hadid-tom-ford-celebrity-style (2017)

Talib Kweli photo

“Back in the day they stole our smile, so we clothe our teeth in gold.”

Talib Kweli (1975) American rapper

The Manifesto, Lyricist Lounge, Vol. 1 (1998)
Albums, Singles and compilations

Stanisław Lem photo
Yehuda Ashlag photo
John Lancaster Spalding photo
Camille Paglia photo

“Our feminist culture at the present moment is completely dependent on capitalism. My grandmother was still scrubbing clothes on the back porch on a washboard!”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 260

George D. Herron photo
Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
H. G. Wells photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Xenophanes photo

“Mortals deem that the gods are begotten as they are,
and have clothes like theirs, and voice and form.”

Xenophanes (-570–-475 BC) Presocratic philosopher

Diels-Kranz (D-K), fragment 14

David Dixon Porter photo
C. A. R. Hoare photo

“Most work for their belly, for cloth of cubit dimension
Some worship Lakshmi’s spouse for salvation
Lifting palanquins Is for their belly
Fighting powerful wrestlers is for the belly
Telling lies is for the belly
Thinking of Lord is for salvation
Concocting politics is for the belly
Riding elephant or horse is for the belly
Hurting other people is for belly
To pray Lord is for emancipation
Lifting heavy rocks is for the belly
Yelling loud is for the belly
Pray Purandara Vittala is for salvation
With pre-planned contemplation.”

Purandara Dasa (1484–1564) Music composer

In this composition Dasa describes the plight of the working class to work for their survival as the rich exploit them, as quoted here[Narayan, M.K.V., Lyrical Musings on Indic Culture: A Sociology Study of Songs of Sant Purandara Dasa, http://books.google.com/books?id=-r7AxJp6NOYC&pg=PA79, 1 January 2010, Readworthy, 978-93-80009-31-5, 85]

Wisława Szymborska photo
François Bernier photo
Hussein of Jordan photo

“Jordan itself is a beautiful country. It is wild, with limitless deserts where the Bedouin roam, but the mountains of the north are clothed in green forests, and where the Jordan River flows it is fertile and warm in winter. Jordan has a strange, haunting beauty and a sense of timelessness. Dotted with the ruins of empires once great, it is the last resort of yesterday in the world of tomorrow. I love every inch of it.”

Hussein of Jordan (1935–1999) King of Jordan

King Hussein http://www.kinghussein.gov.jo/views_envi.html
Cited in: Arab Information Center, The Arab World https://books.google.nl/books?id=_7AMAQAAMAAJ&q=%22Jordan+itself+is+a+beautiful+country.+It+is+wild,+with+limitless+deserts+where+the+Bedouin+roam,+but+the+mountains+of+the+north+are+clothed+in+green+forests,+and+where+the+Jordan+River+flows+it+is+fertile+and+warm+in+winter.+Jordan+has+a+strange,+haunting+beauty+and+a+sense+of+timelessness.+Dotted+with+the+ruins+of+empires+once+great,+it+is+the+last+resort+of+yesterday+in+the+world+of+tomorrow.+I+love+every+inch+of+it%22&dq=%22Jordan+itself+is+a+beautiful+country.+It+is+wild,+with+limitless+deserts+where+the+Bedouin+roam,+but+the+mountains+of+the+north+are+clothed+in+green+forests,+and+where+the+Jordan+River+flows+it+is+fertile+and+warm+in+winter.+Jordan+has+a+strange,+haunting+beauty+and+a+sense+of+timelessness.+Dotted+with+the+ruins+of+empires+once+great,+it+is+the+last+resort+of+yesterday+in+the+world+of+tomorrow.+I+love+every+inch+of+it%22&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiE34nT8Z_LAhWGLA8KHbTAAH0Q6AEIJTAB, 1965, p. 30

Theodore Dalrymple photo
Robert Silverberg photo
Harold Lloyd photo
John Bright photo

“If a man have three or four children, he has just three or four times as much interest in having the Corn Laws abolished as the man who has none. Your children will grow up to be men and women. It may be that your heads will be laid in the grave before they come to manhood or womanhood; but they will grow up, and want employment at honest trades—want houses and furniture, food and clothing, and all the necessaries and comforts of life. They will be honest and industrious as yourselves. But the difficulties which surround you will be increased tenfold by the time they have arrived at your age. Trade will then have become still more crippled; the supply of food still more diminished; the taxation of the country still further increased. The great lords, and some other people, will have become still more powerful, unless the freemen and electors of Durham and of other places stand to their guns, and resolve that, whatever may come of Queen, or Lords, or Commons, or Church, or anybody—great and powerful, and noble though they be—the working classes will stand by the working classes; and will no longer lay themselves down in the dust to be trampled upon by the iron heel of monopoly, and have their very lives squeezed out of them by evils such as I have described.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech during the general election of 1843, quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 113-114.
1840s

Al Sharpton photo

“I do believe the [Democratic] party has moved far to the right. I do believe that the party has a bunch of elephants running around in donkey clothes.”

Al Sharpton (1954) American Baptist minister, civil rights activist, and television/radio talk show host

Interview with Robert Novak (January 2003)[citation needed]

Jeff Foxworthy photo
Heinz Isler photo

“Among others there are three methods for shaping shells: the freely shaped hill, the membrane under pressure and the hanging cloth reversed.”

Heinz Isler (1926–2009) engineer

"New Shapes for Shells" (1961) Bulletin of the International Association for Shell Structures, No. 8: pp. 123-130, as quoted by John Chilton, "39 etc… : Heinz Isler’s infinite spectrum of new shapes for shells" (2009) Proceedings of the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS) Symposium 2009, Valencia, Evolution and Trends in Design, Analysis and Construction of Shell and Spatial Structures, 28 September – 2 October 2009, Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Spain, eds. Alberto Domingo, Carlos Lazaro.

Mahatma Gandhi photo
Muhammad photo
Apollonius of Tyana photo
Gloria Estefan photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Osama bin Laden photo
Anthony Giddens photo

“There's a big difference between the words, ‘naked’ and ‘nekkid.’ ‘Naked’ means you don't have any clothes on. ‘Nekkid’ means you don't have any clothes on - and you're up to something.”

Lewis Grizzard (1946–1994) American journalist

Source: Lewis Grizzard Naked vs. Nekkid from the Best Of Lewis Grizzard album, September 15, 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=achROqQBP9g,

Patrick Buchanan photo
John Burroughs photo
William L. Shirer photo
Sufjan Stevens photo
Richard Quest photo
Neil Gaiman photo
Bobby Sands photo

“The days were long and lonely. The sudden and total deprivation of such basic human necessities as exercise and fresh air, association with other people, my own clothes and things like newspapers, radio, cigarettes books and a host of other things, made my life very hard.”

Bobby Sands (1954–1981) Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army

On his experience in solitary confinement in prison, in An Phoblacht/Republican News (1978), under the pseudonym "Marcella."
Other writings

Taryn Terrell photo
Ramakrishna photo

“If a white cloth is stained even with a small spot, the stain appears very ugly indeed. So the smallest fault of a holy man becomes painfully prominent.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 299

John Fante photo
Sharon Stone photo

“It's traumatizing for me to come to Washington during a Republican administration because I don't have any Republican clothes.”

Sharon Stone (1958) American actress and fashion model

Washington Post (June 20, 2001)

Raymond Chandler photo
John Wycliffe photo

“Crown and cloth maken no priest, nor emperor's bishop with his words, but power that crist giveth; and thus by life have been priests known.”

John Wycliffe English theologian and early dissident in the Roman Catholic Church

As quoted in Typical English Churchmen (1909) by John Neville Figgis, p. 15

Charles Stross photo
Thomas Hughes photo
Molière photo

“If everyone were clothed with integrity,
If every heart were just, frank, kindly,
The other virtues would be well-nigh useless,
Since their chief purpose is to make us bear with patience
The injustice of our fellows.”

Si de probité tout était revêtu,
Si tous les cœurs était francs, justes et dociles,
La plupart des vertus nous seraient inutiles,
Puisqu'on en met l'usage à pouvoir sans ennui
Supporter dans nos droits l'injustice d'autrui.
Act V, sc. i
Le Misanthrope (1666)

Yvette Cooper photo

“I have to say, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the Ministers are like fraudsters in the fairy tale, telling gullible Liberal Democrat MPs about the beautiful progressive clothes that the emperor is wearing, if only they are clever enough and loyal enough to see them. And desperately, we have Liberal Democrats clinging to shreds of invisible cloth, reaching deep into their Liberal and Conservative history to pretend that they can be progressive now. They are claiming that Keynes might have backed the Budget. They are calling on Beveridge for support, kidding themselves that they can call on their history and that they are following in the footsteps of great liberal Conservatives like Winston Churchill, who supported the minimum wage, but the truth is that the emperor has no clothes.
The truth is that if you look at the detail, the Budget is nastier than any brought in by Margaret Thatcher. Instead of Churchill, Keynes or the founders of the welfare state, the Liberal Democrats have signed up, with the Right Honourable Member for Chingford and his Chancellor, to cut support for the poor. It is perhaps apt that in this week of World Cup disappointments, it was actually a footballer who got it right. In 2002, after England were defeated in the World Cup by Brazil, Gareth Southgate reflected ruefully on England's performance and said:
"We were expecting Winston Churchill and instead got Iain Duncan Smith."
That is the reality for the Liberal Democrats now. With all their high hopes, they have betrayed the poor and the vulnerable, whom they stood up to defend.
[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb) rose]
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman because I know he has a history of supporting people on low incomes and I do not know why he is betraying it now.”

Yvette Cooper (1969) British politician

During a budget response debate http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm100628/debtext/100628-0012.htm, 28 July, 2010. Link to the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtORBuxY0MU.

Julian of Norwich photo
Dashiell Hammett photo
Peter Greenaway photo
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham photo
Simone Bittencourt de Oliveira photo
Shaun Ellis photo
Bob Dylan photo

“Take your clothes, put 'em in a sack. You goin' down the road, baby, and you cant come back. Someday baby, you ain't gonna worry po' me any more.”

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

Song lyrics, Modern Times (2006), Someday Baby

Emma Goldman photo
Anthony Trollope photo
Johnny Cash photo

“Jesus wore designer clothes.”

John Avanzini (1936) American televangelist, bible teacher, author

Believer's Voice of Victory, TBN, 20 January 1991

Anna Sui photo
Karel Čapek photo
Oksana Shachko photo
Alfred Denning, Baron Denning photo
Joseph Addison photo

“A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 475 (4 September 1712).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

Robin Lane Fox photo
Susannah Constantine photo
Peter Sloterdijk photo

“Enlightenment does nothing more than eavesdrop on likely wolves in their dressing rooms, where they put on and take off their sheep’s clothing.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 43

Ian McEwan photo

“Nearby, where the main road forked, stood an iron cross on a stone base. As the English couple watched, a mason was cutting in half a dozen fresh names. On the far side of the street, in the deep shadow of a doorway, a youngish woman in black was also watching. She was so pale they assumed at first she had some sort of wasting disease. She remained perfectly still, with one hand holding an edge of her headscarf so that it obscured her mouth. The mason seemed embarrassed and kept his back to her while he worked. After a quarter of an hour an old man in blue workman's clothes came shuffling along in carpet slippers and took her hand without a word and led her away. When the propriétaire came out he nodded at the other side of the street, at the empty space and murmured, 'Trois. Mari et deux frères,' as he set down their salads.This sombre incident remained with them as they struggled up the hill in the heat, heavy with lunch, towards the Bergerie de Tédenat. They stopped half way up in the shade of a stand of pines before a long stretch of open ground. Bernard was to remember this moment for the rest of his life. As they drank from their water bottles he was struck by the recently concluded war not as a historical, geopolitical fact but as a multiplicity, a near-infinity of private sorrows, as a boundless grief minutely subdivided without diminishment among individuals who covered the continent like dust, like spores whose separate identities would remain unknown, and whose totality showed more sadness than anyone could ever begin to comprehend; a weight borne in silence by hundreds of thousands, millions, like the woman in black for a husband and two brothers, each grief a particular, intricate, keening love story that might have been otherwise. It seemed as though he had never thought about the war before, not about its cost. He had been so busy with the details of his work, of doing it well, and his widest view had been of war aims, of winning, of statistical deaths, statistical destruction, and of post-war reconstruction. For the first time he sensed the scale of the catastrophe in terms of feeling; all those unique and solitary deaths, all that consequent sorrow, unique and solitary too, which had no place in conferences, headlines, history, and which had quietly retired to houses, kitchens, unshared beds, and anguished memories. This came upon Bernard by a pine tree in the Languedoc in 1946 not as an observation he could share with June but as a deep apprehension, a recognition of a truth that dismayed him into silence and, later, a question: what possible good could come of a Europe covered in this dust, these spores, when forgetting would be inhuman and dangerous, and remembering a constant torture?”

Page 164-165.
Black Dogs (1992)

Francis Bacon photo

“Sir Henry Wotton used to say that critics are like brushers of noblemen's clothes.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

No. 64
Apophthegms (1624)