Quotes about coat
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“I've been struggling for years to get a fur coat. How did you get yours?"
"I left off struggling.”

Donald McGill (1875–1962) British artist

George Orwell "The Art of Donald McGill"

“Axiom: hatred of the bourgeois is the beginning of wisdom. But I include in the word bourgeois, the bourgeois in blouses as well the bourgeois in coats. It is we and we alone, that is to say the literary men, who are the people, or to say it better: the tradition of humanity.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

Source: Correspondence, Letters to George Sand, 10 May 1867

Wisdom, Men, People

“Sometimes we walk into something that is not for us at all. We pretend it is. We think we can shrug it off like a coat, but it's not a coat at all, it's more like another skin.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book Three: All Hail and Hallelujah

Thinking

“It can take up to 100 chinchillas to make one coat and Jennifer Lopez has one made of 80 of them, all killed by electrocution or having their necks snapped. … Besides, wearing fur makes you look like an old woman!”

Natalie Imbruglia (1975) British-Australian singer and actor

Interview with Britain's Cosmopolitan magazine; as quoted in "Jennifer Lopez's coat massacre", FemaleFirst.co.uk (November 2005) http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/celebrity/Jennifer+Lopez-7304.html.

“It is because I have confidence in the reasoned appeal the Socialist Party can make to all sections of the community – manual workers and black coats alike – that I have decided to go to East Lewisham, if I am selected, emphasizing by this action my conviction that the soundest socialist appeal is that which is most universal in its scope.”

Herbert Morrison (1888–1965) British Labour politician

The Times, 10 January 1945.
Morrison abandoned his safe seat in Hackney South for Lewisham East in the 1945 general election despite it being a Conservative-held seat that had never previously returned a Labour MP. The move paid off, and he was elected there.

Confidence, Communication, Universe

“The history of Canada has been profoundly influenced by the habits of an animal which very fittingly occupies a prominent place on her coat of arms.”

Harold Innis (1894–1952) Canadian professor of political economy

The Beaver (1930) Part I of The Fur Trade in Canada, (1970 edition), p. 3.
The Fur Trade in Canada (1930)

History, Animals

“If the past is a house of many chambers, then the present is the most recent coat of paint.”

Jack Vance (1916–2013) American mystery and speculative fiction writer

Section 12 (p. 211)
Short fiction, Rumfuddle (1973)

Past, Painting, Housing

“This I (still) believe:
Fire is not necessarily your friend. Neither are dogs. Things with lit fuses should not be held onto. Beware the savage croquet ball. If it is -30 out, put on a coat before you leave the house. Just because the snow keeps you from seeing other objects the objects do not cease to exist. Clotheslines are the enemy of the bicyclist. If you don't remember how you got on the ground or where the blood came from, don't get up right away. Gym teachers think it's funny to commit assault with a baseball so don't day-dream during PE even if they have you so far in the outfield there are DEW line posts on either side of you. All guns are loaded. So are many bows. Trebuchets are for outside use only…”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

Facebook post (2014) https://www.facebook.com/james.nicoll.927/posts/10152710405547985 <br class="br">2010s

Dogs, Dreams, Thinking, Teachers

“I was also not willing to accept the orders of the leaders regarding my personal life or the personal lives of the other members. I had refused to allow the government to tell me how to live, so why should I allow the leadership of Progressive Labor to reorient my life?… Open criticism of the leadership dictums did not sit well with them, and they immediately began to accuse me of ‘trying to create a splinter group.’… The leaders became so paranoid over the issue of their ‘public image’ that they told members to shave their mustaches, wear coats and ties, forget the cowboy boots, be careful whom they are seen with, stay away from people who take dope, date only certain girls, attend classes regularly, and watch their language in public. Strange concerns, indeed, for Communists who at times attempted to pose as libertarians!”

Phillip Abbott Luce (1935–1998)

Source: The New Left: The Resurgence of Radicalism Among American Students (1966), p. 44

Life, People, Girl, Time

“I remember a picture I saw in a paper not long before the wall came down. There was a man standing holding a very young daughter, my guess was that she was only about one or two years old. She had on a rather plain dress, he had on a coat and a tie and he was carrying probably a cardboard suitcase. And my guess is that everything he owned in the world was in that suitcase. And he was weeping. He wasn't weeping because he left his car and the rest of his family back on the other side of that Iron Curtain; he was weeping because he was free. He was weeping because now he had opportunity, he had the chance to choose for the first time in his life, and his daughter whom he was holding in his hands had a future, whereas before she would not have had one. That struck me as a very, very vivid picture of what this all meant.”

Leighton W. Smith, Jr. (1939) United States Navy admiral

On the end of the Cold War, in part 7: The End of the Cold War http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/conversations/LWSmith/lwsmith-con02.html <br class="br">Interview at USC Berkeley (1997)

Life, World, Family, Cars

“Italian husbands, in order to buy their wives a fur coat, spend more than all their European collegues.”

Indro Montanelli (1909–2001) Italian journalist

Controcorrente, 1974-1986.
1950s - 1990s

“Old Grimes is dead, that good old man
We never shall see more;
He used to wear a long black coat
All buttoned down before.”

Albert Gorton Greene (1802–1868) American judge

Old Grimes, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: Compare: "John Lee is dead, that good old man,— / We ne'er shall see him more; / He used to wear an old drab coat / All buttoned down before", Inscription in Matherne Churchyard, To the memory of John Lee, who died May 21, 1823; "Old Abram Brown is dead and gone,— / You'll never see him more; / He used to wear a long brown coat / That buttoned down before", James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, Nursery Rhymes of England, p. 60.

Dead

“I don’t think a living being should suffer for the sake of fashion, period. End of story. When I realized what went into—not just, we’re not just even talking about a full-length fur coat, I’m talking about just … fur on your gloves or on your jacket or—what goes into making that little piece of fur ripped my heart out. And as humans, we have control. What if someone said, ‘Black skin is the new fur’?”

Taraji P. Henson (1970) American actress

Interview with PETA (27 January 2011); quoted in "Taraji P. Henson Bares All For PETA" https://teamyee.tv/taraji-p-henson-bares-all-for-peta/, TeamYee.tv.

Fashion, Thinking, Suffering, Heart

“I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that you call a Gentleman and is nothing else.”

Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) English military and political leader

Letter to Sir William Spring (September 1643)

Love, Fight

“Standing at the mirror, I tilted my hat over one eye and examined myself. The image in the glass seemed only vaguely familiar. I didn't like my new tie, so I took off my coat and tried another. I didn't like the change either. All at once everything began to irritate me. The stiff collar was strangling me. The shoes pinched my feet. The pants smelled like a clothing store basement and were too tight in the crotch. Sweat broke out at my temples where the hat band squeezed my skull. Suddenly I began to itch, and when I moved everything crackled like a paper sack. My nostrils picked up the powerful stench of lotions, and I grimaced. Mother in Heaven, what had happened to the old Bandini, author of The Little Dog Laughed? Could this hog-tied, strangling buffoon be the creator of The Long Lost Hills?”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

I pulled everything off, washed the smells out of my hair, and climbed into my old clothes.
Source: Ask the Dust (1939), Chapter Eight

Dogs, Shoe, Change, Clothes

“As washing is very cheap, I wear two shirts at a time, and, for want of a wardrobe, I hang my great coat upon my own back, and generally keep on my boots in imitation of my namesake of Sweden. Indeed, since the snow became two feet deep (as I wanted a 'chaappin of Yale' from the public-house), I made an offer of them to Margery the maid, but her legs are too thick to make use of them, and I am told that the greater part of my parishioners are not less substantial, and notwithstanding this they are remarkable for agility.”

Charles Dodgson (bishop) Anglican bishop

Quoted in Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (1898), p. 5

Time, Parting, Housing

“[about how people in the 90's used "awesome" wrongly]
Webster's dictionary defines awesome as "anything that leaves you in awe and wonder." Like winning the lottery—twice. That's awesome. Getting a call from the IRS saying you've been audited and they owe you $50,000—that would be awesome. Ladies, you wake up tomorrow morning and the newspaper reads, "Scientists have discovered a way for men to experience childbirth." That would be awesome. Getting invited to the Playboy Mansion—on trampoline night, that would be awesome. And I started thinking, ladies and gentlemen, what would be awesome for Bill Engvall? What would leave me in awe and wonder? And it would have to be, if I left this stage tonight and I went back to my hotel room, and Shania Twain met me at my door, wearing nothing but a fur coat, holding a note from my wife that said, "Have a good time!"”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

THAT would be AWESOME! It ain't gonna happen—but that would be awesome.
Now That's Awesome (2000)

Men, People, Way, Thinking

“I have spent now more than a quarter of a century of my life in public affairs, and as I grow older I become more and more pessimistic. I started-if the House will forgive me this personal note - my career in public affairs in a small colliery town in South Wales. When I was quite a young boy my father took me down the street and showed me one or two portly and complacent looking gentlemen standing at the shop doors, and, pointing to one, he said, "Very important man. That's Councillor Jackson. He's a very important man in this town." I said, "What's the Council?" "Oh, that's the place that governs the affairs of this town," said my father. "Very important place indeed, and they are very powerful men." When I got older I said to myself, "The place to get to is the council. That's where the power is." So I worked very hard, and, in association with my fellows, when I was about 20 years of age, I got on to the council. I discovered when I got there that the power had been there, but it had just gone. So I made some inquiries, being an earnest student of social affairs, and I learned that the power had slipped down to the county council. That was as where it was, and where it had gone to. So I worked very hard again, and I got there-and it had gone from there too. Then I found out that it had come up here. So I followed it, and sure enough I found that it had been here, but I just saw its coat tails round the corner.”

Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) Welsh politician

Hansard, House of Commons 5th series, vol 395, columns 1616-1617.
Speech in the House of Commons, 15 December 1943.
1940s

Life, Men, Age, Boy

“You have seen bigger horses than his thirteen and a half, perhaps fourteen hands, his nine hundred pounds. You have seen handsomer profiles than this Roman nose, slightly convex. Burrs cling to his long sweeping tail. His coat is dark and unglossed. Yet look again, while he is still, for he will not be still long. Sense the vitality in those muscles, trembling beneath the skin; see the pride in that high head, hear the haughty command to his voice. For this is a wild horse, my friend. Once he claimed the western range. Then they took his range away from him. But nothing, no one claims him. He feels the wind and the air with his nose, with his ears, with his very soul, and what he feels is good. He tosses his head, once, quickly, and behind him his harem of six mares trot up to join him, and behind them, a yearling colt, a filly and two stork-legged foals. Coats dusty and chewed, tails spiked with bits of the desert, sage and nettle and leftover pine needles from winter climbs down from timberland. The Barb-nosed stallion led his family down to the waterhole. Not Barb from barbed wire, though perhaps the chewed skin was from barbed wire, but Barb from the Spanish horses from which he descended, brought to the New World over four hundred years ago, from the Barbary states of North Africa, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Fez, Tripoli. Indians stole them from the Spaniards; the Barbs stole themselves free from the Indians. Running wild, a few still run free.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From Running Wild (1973) by Hano, p. 10
Other Topics

World, Family, Feeling, Soul

“The heart of government, coated with whatever velvet gloves you want to put on it, is a mailed fist of force and coercion.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Renew America rally in Orem, Utah, March 8, 2000. http://renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/00_03_08utah.htm. <br class="br">2000

Heart

“We've created a range of clothing which is almost like a prescription from the doctor. Our clothes do the same thing. If you're not happy with your bum, then there's a coat that's going to hide it. If you want to create a waist, there's a dress that's going to do that for you too. We've designed it very much around the female body.”

Susannah Constantine (1962) British fashion designer and journalist

Scots Are So Stylish... (2007)

Happiness, Clothes

“"What are you trying to do, Kerouac?" I'd ask myself in my sleepingbag at night, "trying to deny reality with all this Buddha stuff, ya jerk?" … "Poor detailed immaculate incarnate fool, and you call yourself Self … Take off your coat and crash wits." And I realized that all this Buddhism was a STRAIN at telling the untellable emptiness yet that nothing was truer, a perfect paradox.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Meditation in the Woods (1958)

Fools, Jerk, Reality, Perfection

“Breakaway, the breeze is sighin'
Breakaway, the time is flyin'
So, I'm gonna pack a bag and get my coat
Lock my door and leave a note
Take a train or take a boat
Well, I'm gonna breakaway.”

Tom Springfield (1934) English musician, songwriter and record producer

Song Breakaway.

Time, Training

“I never was against wearing fur because I truly did not know how these animals were tortured and killed in order to have these coats and accessories. I am done with fur forever and I have now found so many amazing faux fur lines that are great alternatives for women who love the look and love animals. I love that PETA is all about individuals taking baby steps in becoming aware of animal rights. I am not a full vegetarian but I have not eaten red meat or pork in over 10 years. … I am also extremely careful now not to purchase products that are tested on animals. I have started with fur but I hope that over time I will become a full vegetarian.”

Khloé Kardashian (1984) American television personality

"My PETA Billboard Has Been Unveiled!!!!!" https://archive.fo/gSKe, on her blog Khloekardashian.celebuzz.com (10 December 2008).

Love, Women, Hope, Time

“Without the heroic, man has no meaning; without the economic, he has no sense. Economic man is most likely to be economic woman — a good wife, pulling the coat tails of her heroic husband, checking his extravagances of speech and action with words of caution and good sense. But without the heroic coat tails to pull, life for both of them would be dull and savorless indeed.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, The Skills of the Economist, 1958, p. 183

Life, Sense

“When we had been in Ashenstovo [1873, located near the Prussian border]] a few days my mother took us children to see a famous Polish church, Kostjol, famous for its miraculous Madonna icon. This icon had three precious coats, one of gold, one of coral and one with pearls and diamonds... Many peasant men and women were were lying prostrate on the floor as if crucified, with their arms outstretched. It was very quiet. Suddenly a great blare of trumpets shattered the silence. Terribly frightened I saw the gold curtain open and the Madonna appear wearing a gold robe.”

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) Russian painter

from his 'Memories', in 'Catalogue Raisonné of the oil Paintings', ed. Maria Jawlensky, Angelica Jawlensky and Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky; published resp. in 1991, 1992, 1993
Source: 1936 - 1941, Life Memories' (1938), p.274

Women, Men, Children, Lying

“He that respects himself is safe from others; he wears a coat of mail that none can pierce.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

From 'Michael Angelo' (published posthumously), as included in The poetical works, Houghton Mifflin (1887), p. 316.

“[The] National Rifle Association is always arguing that the Second Amendment determines the right to bear arms. But I think it really is the people's right to bear arms in a militia. The NRA thinks it protects their right to have Teflon-coated bullets. But that's not the original understanding.”

Robert Bork (1927–2012) American legal scholar

In Miriam Bensimhorn, Advocates: Point and Counterpoint, Laurence Tribe and Robert Bork Debate the Framers' Spacious Terms, LIFE magazine, Fall 1991 (Special Issue).

People, Understanding, Thinking

“Do what we can, summer will have its flies: if we walk in the woods, we must feed mosquitos: if we go a-fishing, we must expect a wet coat.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841)

Fish, Summer

“Visitor: Monsieur Degas, were there any of Monet's pictures at the Durand-Ruel exhibition?
Degas: Why, I met Monet himself there, and I said to him, 'Let me get out of here. Those reflections in the water hurt my eyes!' His pictures were always too draughty for me. If it had been any worse I should have had to turn up my coat collar.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

"The Crime and the Punishment" (p. 46)
posthumous quotes, Degas: An Intimate Portrait' (1927)

Water, Hurt

“Old hates lie in wait for the infant
till he grows into a man.
Then they leap upon him
when he puts his father's coat on.
When the father's bones drop into the grave,
the lice flock up as the dark earth turns,
to feed on a son's guilt-love.

No man can look in his son's face,
for what was done to him, he does in turn,
and he carries the hate in his blood;
ghosts of times forgotten,
tragedies unseen, unspoken,wait in the past's proud flesh,
and nothing will shake them off.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto (1981), p. 28

Love, Hate, Lie, Time

“At this time a high-ranking SS leader hinted to me that Himmler was preparing decisive steps. In February 1945, the Reichsführer-SS had assumed command of the Vistula Army Group, but he was no better than his successor at stopping the Russian advance. Hitler was now berating him also. Thus what personal prestige Himmler had retained was used up by a few weeks of commanding frontline troops. Nevertheless, everyone still feared Himmler, and I felt distinctly shaky one day on learning that Himmler was coming to see me about something that evening. This, incidentally, was the only time he ever called on me. My nervousness grew when Theodor Hupfauer, the new chief of our Central Office- with whom I had several times spoken rather candidly- told me in some trepidation that Gestapo chief Kaltenbrunner would be calling on him at the same hour. Before Himmler entered, by adjutant whispered to me: "He's alone." My office was without window panes; we no longer bothered replacing them since they were blasted out by bombs every few days. A wretched candle stood at the center of the table; the electricity was out again. Wrapped in our coats, we sat facing one another. Himmler talked about minor matters, asked about pointless details, and finally made the witless observation: "When the course is downhill there's always a floor to the valley, and once it is reached, Herr Speer, the ascent begins again." Since I expressed neither agreement nor disagreement with this proverbial wisdom and remained virtually monosyllabic throughout the conversation, he soon took his leave. I never found out what he wanted of it, or why Kaltenbrunner called on Hupfauer at the same time. Perhaps t hey had heard about my critical attitude and were seeking allies; perhaps they merely wanted to sound us out.”

Albert Speer (1905–1981) German architect, Minister of Armaments and War Production for Nazi Germany

Source: Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs (1970), p. 427-428

Wisdom, Fear, Decision, Learning

“Professor Branestawm, like all great men, had simple tastes. He wore simple trousers with two simple legs. His coat was simply fastened with safety pins because the buttons had simply fallen off…”

Norman Hunter (1899–1995) author

The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm, Ch 1. The Professor Invents a Machine (1933)

Men

“Animals are just always a passion of mine. … I would like to use my voice to promote anti-fur. … Throughout my reign, I was offered a lot of gifts, you know, either they were fur shoes or fur coats. Sometimes, sponsors of course wanted me to wear their products, but I would always put my foot down, because it's just so cruel and I don't want to be a supporter of that. I don’t want to show anyone that I support what they do to animals for the benefit of fashion. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Alyssa Campanella (1990) American model

"Miss USA Winners Bare All and Say NO to Fur" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGM9mDRd0Cs, video interview with PETA (June 13, 2013).

Shoe, Fashion, Support, Sense

“When the army was mustered, it was found to amount to "fifty thousand mounted men clad in armour and coats of mail," with which they advanced to fight against the Rai of Benares… The Rai of Benares, Jai Chand, the chief of idolatry and perdition, advanced to oppose the royal troops with an army… The Rai of Benares, who prided himself on the number of his forces and war elephants," seated on a lofty howdah, received a deadly wound from an arrow, and "fell from his exalted seat to the earth." His head was carried on the point of a spear to the commander, and " his body was thrown to the dust of contempt." "The impurities of idolatry were purged by the water of the sword from that land, and the country of Hind was freed from vice and superstition."… From that place the royal army proceeded towards Benares 'which is the centre of the country of Hind, and here they destroyed nearly one thousand temples, and raised mosques on their foundations; and the knowledge of the law became promulgated, and the foundations of religion were established.”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

About the fight with the Rai of Banares and capture of Asni and of Benares. Hasan Nizami: Taju’l-Ma’sir, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 222-223 Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.

Men, War, Religion, Law

“How, then, was the Devil dressed?
Oh! he was in his Sunday's best;
His coat was red, and his breeches were blue,
And there was a hole where his tail came through.”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

St. 3. <br class="br"> The Devil's Walk http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/shelley/devil/devil.rs1860.html (1799)

“The public examination of homosexuality in our contemporary life is still so coated with distasteful moral connotations that even a reviewer is bound to wonder uneasily why he was selected to evaluate a book on the subject, and to assert defensively at the outset that he is happily married, the father of four children and the one-time adornment of his college boxing, track and tennis teams.”

Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) American journalist

On Jess Stearn’s The Sixth Man, Saturday Review (April 22, 1961)

Life, Children, Books, Time

“He kissed her anyway, lightly on the cheek, before she turned to get her coat, thinking how long he had known her and how little he knew her and how little he knew of how much or little there was in her to know.”

Patricia A. McKillip (1948) American fantasy writer

The Snow Queen in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (eds.) Snow White, Blood Red (1993), p. 363
Short fiction

Kiss, Thinking

“Why does the monstrous men of an Alauddin Khalji, a Firuz Shah Tughlaq, a Sikandar Lodi, and an Aurangzeb, to name only the most notorious, pop out so soon from the thickest coat of cosmetics?
The answer is provided by the Muslim historians of medieval India. They painted their heroes in the indelible dyes of Islamic ideology. They did not anticipate the day when Islamic imperialism in India will become only a painful memory of the past. They did not visualise that the record of Islam in India will one day be weighed on the scales of human values.”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Sita Ram Goel: The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

Men, Pain, Memory, Past

“In the "fall of Adam" we must see, not the personal transgression of man, but simply the law of the dual evolution. Adam, or "Man," begins his career of existences by dwelling in the garden of Eden, "dressed in the celestial garment, which is a garment of heavenly light" (Sohar, ii., 229 b); but when expelled he is "clothed" by God, or the eternal law of Evolution or necessarianism, with coats of skin. But even on this earth of material degradation — in which the divine spark (Soul, a corruscation of the Spirit) was to begin its physical progression in a series of imprisonments from a stone up to a man's body — if he but exercise his WILL and call his deity to his help, man can transcend the powers of the angel. "Know ye not that we shall judge angels?" asks Paul (1 Corinthians, vi. 3). The real man is the Soul (Spirit), teaches the Sohar. "The mystery of the earthly man is after the mystery of the heavenly man… the wise can read the mysteries in the human face"”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

ii., 76 a
Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume II, Chapter VI

God, Law, Angels, Exercises

“When they see us coming, the birdies all try an' hide,
But they still go for peanuts when coated with cyanide.
My pulse will be quickenin',
With each drop of strych-a-nine,
We feed to a pigeon
it just takes a smidgen
To poison a pigeon in the park.”

Tom Lehrer (1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician

"Poisoning Pigeons in the Park"
An Evening (Wasted) With Tom Lehrer (1959)

“After us they’ll fly in hot air balloons, coat styles will change, perhaps they’ll discover a sixth sense and cultivate it, but life will remain the same, a hard life full of secrets, but happy. And a thousand years from now man will still be sighing, “Oh! Life is so hard!””

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

and will still, like now, be afraid of death and not want to die.
Act II
The Three Sisters (1901)

Life, Death, Happiness, Secret

“A mirror does not develop because an historical pageant passes in front of it. It only develops when it gets a fresh coat of quicksilver”

E.M. Forster book Aspects of the Novel

in other words, when it acquires new sensitiveness; and the novel's success lies in its own sensitiveness, not in the success of its subject matter.
Source: Aspects of the Novel (1927), Chapter One: Introductory

“I decided to get Ph. D. in experimental physics because experimental physicists have their own room in the Institute where they can hang their coat, whereas theoretical physicists have to hang their coat at the entrance.”

George Gamow (1904–1968) Russian-American physicist and science writer

"Interview with George Gamow" http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4325.html, by Charles Weiner at Professor Gamow's home in Boulder, Colorado (25 April 1968)

“The bubbles on the foam which coats a stormy sea are floating episodes, made and unmade by the forces of the wind and water. Our private selves are like those bubbles—epiphenomena”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Lecture XX, "Conclusions"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Context: Science... has ended by utterly repudiating the personal point of view. She catalogues her elements and records her laws indifferent as to what purpose may be shown forth by them, and constructs her theories quite careless of their bearing on human anxieties and fates. Though the scientist may individually nourish a religion, and be a theist in his irresponsible hours, the days are over when it could be said that for Science herself the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Our solar system, with its harmonies, is seen now as but one passing case of a certain sort of moving equilibrium in the heavens, realized by a local accident in an appalling wilderness of worlds where no life can exist. In a span of time which as a cosmic interval will count but as an hour, it will have ceased to be. The Darwinian notion of chance production, and subsequent destruction, speedy or deferred, applies to the largest as well as to the smallest facts. It is impossible, in the present temper of the scientific imagination, to find in the driftings of the cosmic atoms, whether they work on the universal or on the particular scale, anything but a kind of aimless weather, doing and undoing, achieving no proper history, and leaving no result. Nature has no one distinguishable ultimate tendency with which it is possible to feel a sympathy. In the vast rhythm of her processes... she appears to cancel herself. The books of natural theology which satisfied the intellects of our grandfathers seem to us quite grotesque, representing, as they did, a God who conformed the largest things of nature to the paltriest of our private wants. The God whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals. The bubbles on the foam which coats a stormy sea are floating episodes, made and unmade by the forces of the wind and water. Our private selves are like those bubbles—epiphenomena, as Clifford, I believe, ingeniously called them; their destinies weigh nothing and determine nothing in the world's irremediable currents of events.

Water, Sea

“A simple maiden in her flower
Is worth a hundred coats-of-arms.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson Lady Clara Vere de Vere

Stanza 2
Lady Clara Vere de Vere (1832)

Flowers

“I should say this — that Pat doesn't have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat. And I always tell her that she'd look good in anything.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

1950s, Checkers speech (1952)
Context: p>That's what we have and that's what we owe. It isn't very much but Pat and I have the satisfaction that every dime that we've got is honestly ours. I should say this — that Pat doesn't have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat. And I always tell her that she'd look good in anything.One other thing I probably should tell you because if we don't they'll probably be saying this about me too, we did get something — a gift — after the election. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog. And, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was. It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he'd sent all the way from Texas. Black and white spotted. And our little girl — Tricia, the 6-year old — named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're gonna keep it.</p

Clothes

“Americans wanted to blame everything but Columbine High for the massacre- they blamed a violent media, Marilyn Manson, Goth culture, the Internet, the Trench Coat Mafia, video games, lax gun control laws, and liberal values.”

Mark Ames (1965) American writer and journalist

Part V: More Rage. More Rage., page 184.
Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion, From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005)
Context: Americans wanted to blame everything but Columbine High for the massacre- they blamed a violent media, Marilyn Manson, Goth culture, the Internet, the Trench Coat Mafia, video games, lax gun control laws, and liberal values. And still skipping over the school, they peered into the opposite direction, blaming the moral and/or mental sickness, or alleged homosexuality, of these two boys, as if they were exceptional freaks in a school of otherwise happy kids. They searched all over the world for a motive, except for one place: the scene of the crime.

Law, Game

“I fight against the gluttony of time with so many very amusing weapons — with gestures and with three attitudes and with charming phrases; with tears and with tinsel, and with sugar-coated pills, and with platitudes slightly regilded.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

Horvendile, in Ch. 13 : What a Boy Thought
The Way of Ecben (1929)
Context: I fight against the gluttony of time with so many very amusing weapons — with gestures and with three attitudes and with charming phrases; with tears and with tinsel, and with sugar-coated pills, and with platitudes slightly regilded. Yes, and I fight him also with little mirrors wherein gleam confusedly the corruptions of lust, and ruddy loyalty, and a bit of moonshine, and the pure diamond of the heart's desire, and the opal cloudings of human compromise: but, above all, I fight that ravening dotard with the strength of my own folly.

Tear, Time, Fight

“The league between virtue and nature engages all things to assume a hostile front to vice. The beautiful laws and substances of the world persecute and whip the traitor. He finds that things are arranged for truth and benefit, but there is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel and mole. You cannot recall the spoken word, you cannot wipe out the foot-track, you cannot draw up the ladder, so as to leave no inlet or clew. Some damning circumstance always transpires. The laws and substances of nature — water, snow, wind, gravitation — become penalties to the thief.
On the other hand, the law holds with equal sureness for all right action. Love, and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation. The good man has absolute good, which like fire turns every thing to its own nature, so that you cannot do him any harm; but as the royal armies sent against Napoleon, when he approached, cast down their colors and from enemies became friends, so disasters of all kinds, as sickness, offence, poverty, prove benefactors: —
::"Winds blow and waters roll
Strength to the brave, and power and deity,
Yet in themselves are nothing."”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

The good are befriended even by weakness and defect. As no man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him, so no man had ever a defect that was not somewhere made useful to him.
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Compensation

Love, Hostility, Truth, World

“Basically it’s a velociraptor with a fur coat and an outsize sense of entitlement. Right now it has convinced Pete that it is harmless, but I know better: just give them thumbs and in no time at all they’ll have us working in the tuna mines, delivering cans from now until eternity.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Rhesus Chart (2014), Chapter 12, “Green Lime” (p. 240)

Sense, Time

“Bet you he’s a smart sociopath, the kind that does well in midlevel management, all fur coat and no knickers—and willing to shed blood without a second thought if it’s to defend his position.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

The Concrete Jungle (p. 305)
The Laundry Files, The Atrocity Archives (2004)

“It Suicide is the deliberate or the hurried action of the man who is trying to get out of a trouble and escape from it. Yet he cannot escape from it…He is wide awake on the other side of death, exactly the same man he was a moment before… no more changed than if he had merely taken off his coat. The result of his losing the physical body is that his capacity for suffering is very much increased…. All the part of him that drove him to suicide is there… The result of that is that he has still in him everything which made him commit the act; the consequence of this is that he keeps on committing it, going through the whole of the trouble that drove him up to the final act.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Suicides and Compassion 1932, The Theosophist https://www.theosophyforward.com/index.php/theosophy/609-suicides-and-compassion.html (2012)

Death, Suicide, Suffering, Change

“Since the time of Aristarchus, the great Alexandrian scholar, it has been the rule among philologists not to base the interpretation of Homeric words on references to classical Greek, and not to allow themselves to be influenced by the usage of a later generation when investigating Homeric speech. Today we may expect even richer rewards from this rule than Aristarchus hoped to glean for himself. Let us explain Homer in no terms but his own, and our understanding of the work will be the fresher for it. Once the words are grasped with greater precision in their meaning and relevance, they will suddenly recover all their ancient splendour. The scholar too, like the restorer of an old painting, may yet in many places remove the dark coating of dust and varnish which the centuries have drawn over the picture, and thus give back to the colours their original brilliance.”

Bruno Snell book The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought

"classical Greek" here refers to Greek in the classical period spanning approximately the time between 5th and 4th centuries BC, i.e., in contrast to Homeric Greek from Archaic Greece.
Source: The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought (1953), p. 1

Hope, Understanding, Time, Painting

“He introduced me to all the intellectuals at S. F. State and convinced me I should be a writer since I had so many fucking stories to tell. Little did he know I was scared shitless of all those guys with the tweed coats and fancy pipes.”

Oscar Zeta Acosta book Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 100.

Guy

“Go to Old Delhi, behind the Jama Masjid, and look at the way they keep chickens there in the market. Hundreds of pale hens and brightly colored roosters, stuffed tightly into wire mesh cages, packed as tightly as worms in a belly, pecking each other and shitting on each other, jostling just for breathing space; the whole cage giving off a horrible stench—the stench of terrified, feathered flesh. On the wooden desk above this coop sits a grinning young butcher, showing off the flesh and organs of recently chopped-up chicken, still oleaginous with a coating of dark blood. The roosters in the coop smell the blood from above. They see the organs of their brothers lying around them. They know they’re next. Yet they do not rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop.The very same thing is done with human beings in this country.”

Aravind Adiga book The White Tiger

The Fifth Night.
The White Tiger (2008)

Color, Way, Lying, Country

“This beautiful-looking guy with a fur coat and mad, curly hair walked in. He went to the bar and got a pint of Guinness, then plugged in his Fender and began to sing. Everybody was completely blown away. Who was it? It was Jeff Buckley.”

Jeff Buckley (1966–1997) American singer, guitarist and songwriter

Douglas Payne of Travis from Dream Brother (the book) written by David Browne.

Beauty, Guy, Singing, Madness

“I Photo Elfed all day for a variety of Santas and it struck me that many of the parents don't allow their children to speak at all. A child sits upon Santa's lap and the parents say, 'All right now, Amber, tell Santa what you want. Tell him you want a Baby Alive and My Pretty Ballerina and that winter coat you saw in the catalog.'
The parents name the gifts they have already bought. They don't want to hear the word 'pony' or 'television set,' so they talk through the entire visit, placing words in the child's mouth. When the child hops off the lap, the parents address their children, each and every time, with, 'What do you say to Santa?'
The child says, 'Thank you, Santa.'”

David Sedaris book Barrel Fever

It is sad because you would like to believe that everyone is unique and then they disappoint you every time by being exactly the same, asking for the same things, reciting the exact same lines as though they have been handed a script.
All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to the fingerprints.
Essay, "Santaland diaries" - p.233-234, 235
Barrel Fever (1994)

Children, Photo, Parent, Winter

“I am no prophet — and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.”

T.S. Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)

“What are you trying to do, Kerouac? I'd ask myself in my sleepingbag at night, trying to deny reality with all this Buddha stuff, ya jerk?... Poor detailed immaculate incarnate fool, and you call yourself Self ... Take off your coat and crash wits.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

And I realized that all this Buddhism was a STRAIN at telling the untellable emptiness yet that nothing was truer, a perfect paradox.

Meditation in the Woods (1958)

Fools, Jerk, Reality, Self-confidence