Quotes about dress (847 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“I've always been misrepresented. You know, I could dress in a clown costume and laugh with the happy people but they'd still say I'm a dark personality.”

Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker

People , Personality , Happiness

“If teardrops could be bottled
There'd be swimming pools filled by models
Told a tight dress is what makes you a whore
If "I love you" was a promise
Would you break it, if you're honest
Tell the mirror what you know she's heard before
I don't wanna be you anymore”

Billie Eilish (2001) American singer-songwriter

"Idontwannabeyouanymore" · Official video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tn2S3kJlyU
Dont Smile At Me (2017)

Whore , Love , Making love

“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”

Charles Bukowski book Factotum

Source: Factotum

Hell , Fight , Money

“Neofascism dresses up in makeup, glamour, and pure spectacle.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

Source: 1480 AM Rock & Pop. Guadalajara, Mexico.

“Luxury is the ease of a t-shirt in a very expensive dress.”

Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer

“It's dangerous & humiliating. The whalers killed whales while green peace watched. Now, you don't walk by a child that is being abused, you don't walk by a kitten that is being kicked to death and do nothing. So I find it abhorrent to sit there and watch a whale being slaughtered and do nothing but "bear witness" as they call it. I think it was best illustrated a few years ago, the contradictions that we have, when a ranger in Zimbabwe shot and killed a poacher that was about to kill a black rhinoceros and uh human rights groups around the world said "how dare you? Take a human life to protect an animal". I think the rangers' answer to that really illustrated a hypocrisy. He said "Ya know, if I lived in, If I was a police officer in Herrari and a man ran out of Bark Place Bank with a bag of money and I shot him in the head in front of everybody and killed him, you'd pin a medal on me and call me a national hero. Why is that bag of paper more valued than the future heritage of this nation?" This is our values. WE fight, WE kill, WE risk our lives for things we believe in… Imagine going into Mecca, walk up to the black stone and spit on it. See how far you get. You’re not going to get very far. You’re going to be torn to pieces. Walk into Jerusalem, walk up to that wailing wall with a pick axe, start whacking away. See how far you’re going to get, somebody is going to put a bullet in your back. And everybody will say you deserved it. Walk into the Vatican with a hammer, start smashing a few statues. See how far you’re going to get. Not very far. But each and every day, ya know, people go into the most beautiful, most profoundly sacred cathedrals of this planet, the rainforests of the Amazonia, the redwood forests of California, the rainforests of Indonesia, and totally desecrate & destroy these cathedrals with bulldozers, chainsaws and how do we respond to that? Oh, we write a few letters and protest; we dress up in animal costumes with picket signs and jump up and down; but if the rainforests of Amazonia and redwoods of California, were as, or had as much value to us as a chunk of old meteorite in Mecca, a decrepit old wall in Jerusalem or a piece of old marble in the Vatican, we would literally rip those pieces limb from limb for the act of blasphemy that we’re committing but we won’t do that because nature is an abstraction, wilderness is an abstraction. It has no value in our anthropocentric world where the only thing we value is that which is created by humans.”

Paul Watson (1950) Canadian environmental activist

Life , Death , Money , People

“Memories mean more to me than dresses.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Memory

“I have no dress except the one I wear every day. If you are going to be kind enough to give me one, please let it be practical and dark so that I can put it on afterwards to go to the laboratory.”

Marie Curie (1867–1934) French-Polish physicist and chemist

Instructions regarding a proposed gift of a wedding dress for her marriage to Pierre in July 1895, as quoted in 'Madame Curie : A Biography (1937) by Eve Curie Labouisse, as translated by Vincent Sheean, p. 137

“Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.”

Thomas Paine book Common Sense

Source: Common Sense

“Tell me, is the rose naked
or is that her only dress?

Why do trees conceal
the splendor of their roots?

Who hears the regrets
of the thieving automobile?

Is there anything in the world sadder
than a train standing in the rain?”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: The Book of Questions

World , Tree , Training

“Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Soul

“One is never over-dressed or underdressed with a Little Black Dress.”

Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer

“Hockey is a sport for white men. Basketball is a sport for black men. Golf is a sport for white men dressed like black pimps.”

Tiger Woods (1975) American professional golfer

Men , Sport , Hockey

“The most beautiful clothes that can dress a woman are the arms of the man she loves.”

Yves Saint Laurent (1936–2008) fashion designer

Love , Beauty , Clothes

“The moon is red, sensing the future, it has dressed up for its gala, or the Devil has decorated it.”

José Baroja book Un hijo de perra y otros cuentos

Future , Sense

“Over the years I have learned that what is important in a dress is the woman who is wearing it.”

Yves Saint Laurent (1936–2008) fashion designer

Learning

“The most beautiful clothes that can dress a woman are the arms of the man she loves. But for those who haven't had the fortune of finding this happiness, I am there.”

Yves Saint Laurent (1936–2008) fashion designer

Love , Beauty , Clothes , Happiness

“The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and Out in Paris and London

“What is our life? A play of passion;
our mirth: the music of division;
our mother's wombs: the tiring houses be
where we are dressed for this short comedy.
Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is
that sits and marks still who doth act amiss.
Our graves that hide us from the searching sun
are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus march we playing to our latest rest,
only we die in earnest, that's no jest.”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

"On the Life of Man" (1612)
Attributed

Life , Music , Search , Passion

“The flower has no weekday self, dressed as it always is in Sunday clothes.”

Malcolm de Chazal (1902–1981) Mauritian artist

Sens-plastique

Flowers , Clothes

“Rudolf Hess yells this out from his cell when Streicher refused to get dressed for his execution, 10/16/46”

Rudolf Hess (1894–1987) German Nazi leader

Bravo, Streicher!
Prisoner #7: Rudolph Hess (1974)

“People ask, "Why do you dress like a woman?" I don't dress like a woman. I dress like a drag queen.”

RuPaul (1960) Actriz de Televisa, dueña y señora de los ejidos cacaoahuateros

Quoted in Let's Talk about Sex: More Than 600 Quotes on the World's Oldest Obsession, Felicia Zopol, ed. (2002)

People

“If I do not submit to the conventions of society, if in my dress I do not conform to the customs observed in my country and in my class, the ridicule I provoke, the social isolation in which I am kept, produce, although in an attenuated form, the same effects as punishment in the strict sense of the word.”

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) French sociologist (1858-1917)

Source: Rules of Sociological Method, 1895, p. 3

Sense , Country

“We crawled up to bed, tumbled down half dressed, and stayed there ten hours. Most of my Saturday nights went like this. On the whole, the two hours when one was perfectly and wildly happy seemed worth the subsequent headache. For many men in the quarter, unmarried and with no future to think of, the weekly drinking-bout was the one thing that made life worth living.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 17

Life , Men , Drink , Thinking

“What do you mean we walked around dressed like girls? We walked around in our own clothes they just happened to be dresses.”

Billie Joe Armstrong (1972) American singer and guitarist

Girl , Clothes

“Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And Secrecy the human dress.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

A Divine Image, st. 1
1790s, Songs of Experience (1794)

Heart , Jealousy

“Why was my own dress good enough to live in, and not good enough to die in?”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Diogenes Laertius

“A little girl robbed you?" Tessa said.
"Actually, she wasn’t a little girl at all, as it turns out, but a midget in a dress with a penchant for violence, who goes by the name of Six-Fingered Nigel."
"Easy mistake to make," Jem said.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Girl

“If she'd known she was going to die at his hands, she would have dressed up.”

Holly Black book The Darkest Part of the Forest

Source: The Darkest Part of the Forest

“If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young (1894)
Variant: The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest
Context: The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated.

Education

“All assassins had a full-length mirror in their rooms, because it would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them when you were badly dressed.”

Terry Pratchett book Pyramids

Source: Pyramids

“A dress should be tight enough to show you're a woman and loose enough to prove you're a lady.”

Edith Head (1897–1981) American film and television costumer

Source: The Dress Doctor

“If you do not help me," Tessa said to Jem, "I swear, I will change into you, and I will lift him myself. And then everyone here will see what you look like in a dress." She fixed him with a look. "Do you understand?”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Understanding , Change , Help

“They done
Wrong
Like ink from a busted pen
Thrown away 'cause of someone else
Used up
But he come back
Dressed in night
Fine as a king
With his queen
The wrong
Made right
So right.”

Kristin Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

Night

“It is quite impossible these days to assume anything about people's educational level from the way they talk or dress or from their taste in music. Safest to treat everyone you meet as a distinguished intellectual.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

People , Education , Music , Way

“The only rule is don't be boring and dress cute wherever you go. Life is too short to blend in.”

Paris Hilton book Confessions of an Heiress

Source: Confessions of an Heiress (2004), p. 53 (included in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1212303/Paris-Hilton-feature-Oxford-Dictionary-Quotes-alongside-Confucius-Oscar-Wilde-yes-really.html)

Cute , Life

“You should always own a black dress because no one ever remembers a black dress.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

“I forgot my purse of laughter when I dressed this mornin'," she told me. "Have you not bought anythin' the last few days? Prices have gone up. Pay or starve, it's all one to me.”

Tamora Pierce book Bloodhound

Source: Bloodhound

Laughter

“He'd heard that writers spent all day in their dressing gowns drinking champagne. This is, of course, absolutely true.”

Terry Pratchett book Snuff

Source: Snuff

Drink

“Nice dress Zoey. It looks just like mine. Oh, wait! It used to be mine.

Aphrodite laughed a throaty, I'm-so-grown-and-you're-just-a-kid laugh.

I really hate it when girls do that. I mean, yes, she's older, but I have boobs, too.”

P. C. Cast book Marked

Source: Marked

Hate , Girl , Waiting

“Why can’t I try on different lives, like dresses, to see which fits best and is more becoming?”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

“Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life's nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in "another" or "better" life.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Birth of Tragedy

Source: The Birth of Tragedy

Life , Faith

“This is war," he say quietly.
"Well thank God you're dressed for it, Griggs.”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

God , War

“I had on a beautiful red dress, but what I saw was even more valuable. I was strong. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind.
-Lindo”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

American Acheivement interview (1996)
Source: The Joy Luck Club
Context: Reading for me was a refuge. I could escape from everything that was miserable in my life and I could be anyone I wanted to be in a story, through a character. It was almost sinful how much I liked it. That's how I felt about it. If my parents knew how much I loved it, I thought they would take it away from me. I think I was also blessed with a very wild imagination because I can remember, when I was at an age before I could read, that I could imagine things that weren't real and whatever my imagination saw is what I actually saw. Some people would say that was psychosis but I prefer to say it was the beginning of a writer's imagination. If I believed that insects had eyes and mouths and noses and could talk, that's what they did. If I thought I could see devils dancing out of the ground, that's what I saw. If I thought lightning had eyes and would follow me and strike me down, that's what would happen. And I think I needed an outlet for all that imagination, so I found it in books.

Beauty , Strong

“I never saw anybody take so long to dress, and with such little result.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

“Do not conceive that fine Clothes make fine Men, any more than fine feathers make fine Birds—A plain genteel dress is more admired and obtains more credit than lace & embroidery in the Eyes of the judicious and sensible.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Letter to Bushrod Washington http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/default.xqy?keys=FOEA-chron-1780-1783-01-15-12 (15 January 1783)
1780s

Men , Bird , Clothes

“Clothes to me aren’t sexy. Like, a dress isn’t sexy. Maybe the girl who wears it is sexy.”

Marc Jacobs (1963) American fashion designer

Girl , Clothes

“My dad (Fabrizio Pausini) is big fan of Elvis Presley. So the house where I grew up is called Pausiniland, … my dad keeps all my awards, dresses I’ve worn in concerts. That’s where it’s all on display.”

Laura Pausini (1974) Italian singer

Los Angeles Daily News (October 16, 2014)

Housing

“Forebearence is the dress of a scholar, so do not get yourself undressed of it.”

Muhammad al-Taqi (811–835) ninth of the Twelve Imams of Twelver Shi'ism

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 362
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, General

“There’s no better feeling than winning when you’re up against it. More than anything I can’t wait to get back in the dressing room and celebrate with the rest of the boys.”

Joe Root (1990) English cricketer

After England vs. South Africa, quoted on Express.co.uk, "Revealed: What Joe Root said to inspire England to World T20 South Africa win" https://www.express.co.uk/sport/cricket/653851/Joe-Root-Moeen-Ali-World-T20-India-England-South-Africa-cricket-news, March 19, 2016.

Feeling , Boy , Waiting

“If you're afraid of black nationalism, you're afraid of revolution. And if you love revolution, you love black nationalism. To understand this, you have to go back to what the young brother here referred to as the house Negro and the field Negro back during slavery. There were two kinds of slaves, the house Negro and the field Negro. The house Negroes — they lived in the house with master, they dressed pretty good, they ate good because they ate his food — what he left. They lived in the attic or the basement, but still they lived near the master; and they loved the master more than the master loved himself. They would give their life to save the master's house — quicker than the master would. If the master said, "We got a good house here," the house Negro would say, "Yeah, we got a good house here." Whenever the master said "we," he said "we."”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

That's how you can tell a house Negro.
Malcolm X Speaks (1965)

Love , Life , Food , Understanding

“The beauty of a naked body is felt only by the dressed races.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 75
The Book of Disquiet
Original: A beleza de um corpo nu só o sentem as raças vestidas.

Beauty

“Disproving a claim that something exists is often quite difficult, and this difficulty is often mistaken for evidence that the claim is true…Presented as I am periodically with these and other fantastical claims, I sometimes feel a little like a formally dressed teetotaler at a drunken orgy for reiterating that not being able to conclusively refute the claims does not constitute evidence for them.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 3, “Pseudoscience” (pp. 95-96; ellipsis represents elision of new age examples)

Feeling

“Now that the steam engine rules the world, a title is an absurdity, still I am all dressed up in this title. It will crush me if I do not support it. The title attracts attention to myself.”

Stendhal book Armance

Depuis que la machine à vapeur est la reine du monde, un titre est une absurdité, mais enfin, je suis affublé de cette absurdité. Elle m'écrasera si je ne la soutiens. Ce titre attire l'attention sur moi.
Source: Armance (1827), Ch. 14

World , Support

“You dress like a cad. You act like a cad. You are a cad.”

George V of the United Kingdom (1865–1936) King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India

Allegedly said to his son, Prince Edward. Quoted by Christopher Warwick in Abdication (Sidgwick and Jackson, 1986)
Attributed

“I once absent-mindedly ordered Three Mile Island dressing in a restaurant and, with great presence of mind, they brought Thousand Island Dressing and a bottle of chili sauce”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Usenet

“The pilgrimage to Mecca, known as the Hajj, is a religious obligation that every orthodox Muslim fulfills, if able, at least once in his or her lifetime.
The Holy Quran says it, "Pilgrimage to the House [of God built by the prophet Abraham] is a duty men owe to God; those who are able, make the journey." (3:97)

Allah said: "And proclaim the pilgrimage among men; they will come to you on foot and upon each lean camel, they will come from every deep ravine" (22:27).

Every one of the thousands at the airport, about to leave for Jeddah, was dressed this way. You could be a king or a peasant and no one would know. Some powerful personages, who were discreetly pointed out to me, had on the same thing I had on. Once thus dressed, we all had begun intermittently calling out "Labbayka! (Allahumma) Labbayka!" (Here I come, O Lord!) Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people, blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky red hair -- all together, brothers! All honoring the same God, all in turn giving equal honor to each other….

That is when I first began to reappraise the "white man." It was when I first began to perceive that "white man," as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions. In America,"white man" meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That morning was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about "white" men.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Text of a letter written following his Hajj (1964)

Men , God , People , World

“On a personal level, Freaking Out is a process whereby an individual casts off outmoded and restricting standards of thinking, dress, and social etiquette in order to express creatively his relationship to his immediate environment and the social structure as a whole.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Liner notes for the album Freak Out! (27 June 1966).

Thinking , Personality

“The dressing up and puffing up of the individual erases the lineaments of protest.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Source: On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening (1938), p. 283

“The brimming waves delight the eye on sunny days;
The dimming hills give a rare view in rainy haze.
The West Lake looks like the fair lady at her best
Whether she is richly adorned or plainly dressed.”

Su Shi (1037–1101) Chinese writer

"The West Lake, the Beauty" (《饮湖上初晴后雨》) (1073), in Song of the Immortals: An Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry, trans. Yuanchong Xu (Beijing: New World Press, 1994), p. 200

“Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship may be called throughout prosaic and modern. The Romantic sinks to ruin, the Poesy of Nature, the Wonderful. The Book treats merely of common worldly things: Nature and Mysticism are altogether forgotten. It is a poetised civic and household History; the Marvellous is expressly treated therein as imagination and enthusiasm. Artistic Atheism is the spirit of the Book. … It is properly a Candide, directed against Poetry: the Book is highly unpoetical in respect of spirit, poetical as the dress and body of it are.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

Ralph Waldo Emerson in "Goethe; or, the Writer" writes of this passage, and quotes a slightly different translation: The ardent and holy Novalis characterized the book as "thoroughly modern and prosaic; the romantic is completely levelled in it; so is the poetry of nature; the wonderful. The book treats only of the ordinary affairs of men: it is a poeticized civic and domestic story. The wonderful in it is expressly treated as fiction and enthusiastic dreaming:" — and yet, what is also characteristic, Novalis soon returned to this book, and it remained his favorite reading to the end of his life.
Novalis (1829)

Books , Imagination , History , Nature

“A man goes home and masturbates his typical fantasy. A woman on her knees, a woman tied up, a woman abused.
A woman enjoys intercourse with her man — as she fantasizes being raped by three men simultaneously.
The man and woman get dressed up on Sunday — and go to Church or maybe their "revolutionary" political meeting.
Have you ever looked at the Stag, Man, Hero, Tough magazines on the shelf of your local bookstore? Do you know why the newspapers with the articles like "Girl 12 raped by 14 men" sell so well? To what in us are they appealing?
Women, for their own preservation, are trying to pull themselves together. And it is necessary for all of us that they do so.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

"Man – and Woman" in Vermont Freeman (Mid-February 1972) http://www.motherjones.com/files/Man_and_Woman_0.jpg; partially quoted, out of context in "Bernie Sanders: Woman 'fantasizes being raped'" http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/bernie-sanders-woman-fantasizes-being-raped/article/2565191 by Ariel Cohen, Washington Examiner (28 May 2015)
1970s

Women , Men , Home , Girl

“Personally, I wouldn't go anywhere important without my own favorite Hermès black bag… I have my jewelry with me in case something happens and I suddenly have to dress up. For me, going out without that purse would seem almost like going out naked. Well, almost.”

Grace Kelly (1929–1982) American actress and Princess consort of Monaco

Kelly (1954) attributed to her in: Charlotte Chandler (2005) It's Only a Movie: Alfred Hitchcock: A Personal Biography. p. 212 : Kelly had mentioned this to Hitchcock during the preparations of the movie Rear Window.

Personality

“I saw a torso falling--no legs--no head--just a torso. I am redundant because I can’t believe what I saw. I saw a torso falling--no legs--no head--just a torso--tumbling in the air--dressed in a bright white shirt--the shirt of the businessman--tucked in--neatly--under the belt--snugly fastened--holding up his pants that had no legs. He had hit a steel girder--and he was dead--dead for a ducat, dead--on the floor of Krispy Krème--with powdered donuts for a head--fresh out of the oven--crispy and round--hot and tasty--and this businessman--on the ground was clutching a briefcase in his hand--and on his finger, the wedding band. I suppose he thought his briefcase was his life--or his wife--or that both were one--because the briefcase was as tight in hand as the wedding band.”

Giannina Braschi book United States of Banana

United States of Banana (2011)

Life , Wedding , Dead

“He looked about thirty, thin, rather above average height, exaggeratedly bent over when seated but less so when he stood up, dressed with a certain negligence, which was not entirely negligence. On his pale, uninteresting face an air of suffering did not stir interest, although it was difficult to define what kind of suffering that air — it seemed to suggest several kinds: privation, anguish, and a suffering born from the indifference of having suffered a great deal.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Introduction, tr. by Alfred Mac Adam
The Book of Disquiet

Suffering , Indifference

“A woman's dress should be like a barbed-wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view.”

Sophia Loren (1934) Italian actress

Quoted on Good Morning, America ABC TV (10 August 1979).

“There's not a stupidest thing--I've dressed in women's clothes, I've dressed as a Nazi. I've gone onstage naked. I've gone on so drunk I didn't even know I did a show. I've done so many stupid things, but it's all part of Ozzy. I never pre-planned 99.9% of the things I've done. Some were drastically wrong, some were drastically right. I don't know if you saw the VH1 thing [VH1's Behind The Music Ozzy documentary] recently. In one hour, it's impossible to write my life down. I come from a rather large family, three older sisters and two younger brothers. On the documentary, they interviewed my sister and it was the first time I'd seen her in years. I've had a very, very unique life. I often sit back and remember when I had no money--when you're in the middle of it, you get depressed thinking it's going to last forever. All of a sudden, out of nowhere--a bolt of lightning--here I am! I'm very well-off; I've got property all over the place, I've had a very fruitful career. But I've never had a No.1 album in America. But I've lasted several generations and somebody says to me, "Do you notice any difference in the audience?"”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

I've been doing it now for 30 years. Some of the fans are older, but I've picked up new fans along the way.

Launch.com, October 30, 1998

Life , Women , Money , Stupidity

“Oh, I hate the thought of all those costumes and grease paint! When I think that characters like Kundry will now have to be dressed up, those dreadful artists' balls immediately spring into my mind. Having created the invisible orchestra, I now feel like inventing the invisible theatre!”

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) German composer, conductor

23 September 1878
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (1978)

Hate , Feeling , Spring , Thinking

“Do you remember back at the hotel when you promised that if we lived, you'd get dressed up in a nurse's outfit and give me a sponge bath?"
"Actually, I think you misheard," Clary said. "It was Simon who promised you the sponge bath."
Jace looked involuntarily over at Simon, who smiled at him widely. "As soon as I'm back on my feet, handsome.”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

"I knew we should have left you a rat."
Jace, Clary, and Simon, pg. 296-297
The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

Smile , Thinking

“I used to dress up like Michael Jackson. I didn’t have the glove, but I had a red jacket like in Thriller.”

James Bay (1990) British singer-songwriter

[Tim Lewis, 2015-02-28, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/feb/28/the-ballad-of-james-bay-chaos-and-calm, The ballad of James Bay, The Guardian, theguardian.com, 2018-08-25]

“Yeah, there are too many Jews in chess. They seem to have taken away the class of the game. They don't seem to dress so nicely, you know. That's what I don't like.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

1960s, Portrait of a Genius As a Young Chess Master (1961)

Game

“Every thing in life is a uniform; the only time our bodies are truly in civilian dress is when we’re naked.”

José Saramago book The Cave

Source: The Cave (2000), p. 92 (Vintage 2003)

Life , Time

“That means a lot, it goes from generation to generation, and you can't wonder why, and I think it's because it's such a good energy in it, and I think the girls and boys, they want to dress like us, and they want to sing along.”

Agnetha Fältskog (1950) Swedish recording artist and entertainer

On other musicians who has 'grown up' listening to ABBA, who wants to work with Agnetha; Interview on 'Loose Women', Interviewer: Carol Vorderman, ITV 16 May 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7USzqiSflss

Girl , Boy , Thinking , Singing

“Dressing with style is akin to issuing a manifesto; dressing fashionably is like signing a petition.”

Jani Allan (1952) South African columnist and broadcaster

http://www.theabsolute.net/minefield/pwords.html
Other

Fashion

“The dressmaker doesn't have problems unless the dress has to hide rather than reveal.”

Stefan Zweig book The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

Problem

“I wanted to be considered a good craftsman. I wanted my dresses to be constructed like buildings, molded to the curves of the female form, stylizing its shape.”

Christian Dior (1905–1957) French fashion designer

Source: Gokhan Bu, in The Master Of The Haute Couture’s Museum http://hearttoexplain.com/2011/06/06/balenciaga-museum/, Balenciaga Museum, 6 June 2011

“You're going to tell me that poverty's nothing to be ashamed of. It's not true, though. If you can't hide it, then it is something to be ashamed of. There's nothing you can do, you're ashamed just the same, the way you're ashamed when you leave a spot on somebody's table. No matter if it's deserved or not, honorable or not, poverty stinks. Yes, stinks, stinks like a ground-floor room off an airshaft, or clothes that need changing. You smell it yourself, as though you were made of sewage. It can't be wiped away. It doesn't help to put on a new hat, any more than rinsing your mouth helps when you're belching your guts out. It's around you and on you and everyone who brushes up against you or looks at you knows it. I know the way women look down on you when you're down at heels. I know it's embarrassing for other people, but the hell with that, it's a lot more embarrassing when it's you. You can't get out of it, you can't get past it, the best thing to do is get plastered, and here" (he reached for his glass and drained it in a deliberately uncouth gulp) "here's the great social problem, here's why the 'lower classes' indulge in alcohol so much more - that problem that countesses and matrons in women's groups rack their brains over at tea. For those few minutes, those few hours, you forget you're an affront to other and to yourself. It's no great distinction to be seen in the company of someone dressed lie this, I know, but it's no fun for me either.”

Stefan Zweig book The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

Women , People , Alcohol , Lie

“But still less should the gold of rich men lazily sleep its heavy sleep in the urns and gloom of treasuries. This so weighty metal, when it becomes the associate of a fancy, assumes the most active virtues of the mind. It has her restless nature. Its essence is to vanish. It changes into all things, without being itself changed. It raises blocks of stone, pierces mountains, diverts rivers, opens the gates of fortresses and the most secret hearts; it enchains men; it dresses, it undresses women with an almost miraculous promptitude. It is truly the most abstract agent that exists, next to thought. But thought exchanges and envelops images only, whereas gold incites and promotes the transmutations of all real things into one another; itself remaining incorruptible, and passing untainted through all hands.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Socrates, pp. 147–8
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)

Women , Men , Secret , Mountain

“The most we can do is dream the myth onwards and give it a modern dress.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

The Psychology of the Child Archetype [Das göttliche Kind] (1941), 1963 translation, II, 1 : The Archetype as a Link with the Past; also in Collected Works, Vol. 9, Part I, p. 160
Context: Not for a moment dare we succumb to the illusion that an archetype can be finally explained and disposed of. Even the best attempts at explanation are only more or less successful translations into another metaphorical language. (Indeed, language itself is only an image.) The most we can do is dream the myth onwards and give it a modern dress. And whatever explanation or interpretation does to it, we do to our own souls as well, with corresponding results for our own well-being. The archetype — let us never forget this — is a psychic organ present in all of us. A bad explanation means a correspondingly bad attitude toward this organ, which may thus be injured. But the ultimate sufferer is the bad interpreter himself.

Dreams

“It is everywhere present, in habits, tastes, dress, thoughts and ideas.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

"The Individual, Society and the State" (1940) http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/works/1940/individual.htm
Context: The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime. The wholesale mechanisation of modern life has increased uniformity a thousandfold. It is everywhere present, in habits, tastes, dress, thoughts and ideas. Its most concentrated dullness is "public opinion." Few have the courage to stand out against it. He who refuses to submit is at once labelled "queer," "different," and decried as a disturbing element in the comfortable stagnancy of modern life.

Idea

“They've got a brain dressed up with nowhere to go.”

Timothy Leary (1920–1996) American psychologist

Interview by David Sheff in Rolling Stone Twentieth Anniversary Issue (1987)
Context: We are dealing with the best-educated generation in history. They are a hundred times better educated than their grandparents, and ten times more sophisticated. There has never been such an open-minded group. The problem is that no one is giving them anything fresh. They've got a brain dressed up with nowhere to go.

“The French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore. True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whiskey I don't know.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Holidays in Hell

Holidays in Hell (1989)

Coffee , Drink

“I have withdrawn the red dress, the mala”

Rajneesh (1931–1990) Godman and leader of the Rajneesh movement

The Last Testament, Vol. 3
Context: I have withdrawn the red dress, the mala, because thousands of people wanted to be sannyasins but just because of the clothes and the mala they felt difficulties in the world — their job, their family, their wife, their parents, their friends — and it was too much of a trouble. I have withdrawn everything. Now whatsoever remains is something inner which neither the wife can detect nor the father nor the job nor the friends.

“A woman should dress to attract attention. To attract the most attention, a woman should either be nude or wearing something as expensive as getting her nude is going to be.”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947) American journalist

Modern Manners (1983)

“Suppose two sisters who are twins and who are equally beautiful, walk down a street. One of them is wearing the Islamic Hijab i.e. the complete body is covered except for the face and the hands up to the wrists, and the other twin is wearing a mini skirt or shorts. Around the corner there is a hooligan who is waiting for an opportunity to tease a girl. Who will he tease? The girl wearing the Islamic Hijab or the girl wearing the mini skirt or shorts? Dresses that expose more than they conceal, are an indirect temptation to the opposite sex for teasing, molestation and rape. The Qur’an rightly says that the hijab prevents women from being molested.”

Zakir Naik (1965) Islamic televangelist

In Most Common Questions Asked by the non-Muslims https://www.amazon.com/Most-Common-Questions-Asked-Muslims/dp/9675699299 p: 46

Waiting , Girl , Beauty , Sex

“He found him a tall figure, with a slightly flabby body, shining hair and well-trimmed beard. He appeared impressive, well-dressed and his eyes were exceptionally eloquent that drew everyone’s attention. There was deep note of mystery about his eyes…His style of conversation was always accompanied by his smile and too attractive which cast a spell on his addresses…He had a remarkable ability to assess others and immediately found out their mental level and their taste. Likewise, he had an enviable understanding of the context and situation in which he found himself placed.”

Zakir Hussain (politician) (1897–1969) 3rd President of India

Dr. Mujeeb, his friend during their stay in Germany in 1922, p. 75.
About Zakir Hussain, Quest for Truth (1999)

Smile , Appearance , Understanding

“Our religion and culture, our history and tradition, our social code and economic system, our laws of inheritance, succession and marriage are fundamentally different from those of most peoples living in the rest of India. The ideals which move our people to make the highest sacrifices are essentially different from those which inspire the Hindus to do the same. These differences are not confined to broad, basic principles. Far from it. They extend to the minutest details of our lives. We do not inter-dine; we do not inter-marry. Our national customs and calendars, even our diet and dress are different.”

Choudhry Rahmat Ali book Pakistan Declaration

28 January 1933, quoted in Now or Never; Are We to Live or Perish Forever? (Pakistan Declaration)
Ideology of Pakistan

Religion , Law , Success , Marriage

“I can honestly say, all the bad things that ever happened to me were directly, directly attributed to drugs and alcohol. I mean, I would never piss on a piece of stone at the fucking Alamo at nine o'clock in the morning dressed in a woman's evening dress sober. I mean I know I'm a fucking crazy-ass but still.”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

MTV News Online, 1992.

Bad luck , Alcohol

“For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity, a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.”

William Blake The Divine Image

The Divine Image, st. 3
1780s, Songs of Innocence (1789–1790)

Peace , Love , Making love , Heart

“I want to develop my aesthetic sense without being too influenced. In a dress I try to be personal and that transmits my inspiration, that makes me look and feel unique.”

Berta Castañé (2002) Spanish actress and model

Quiero desarrollar mi sentido de la estética sin dejarme influir demasiado. En un vestido busco que sea personal y que me transmita mi propia inspiración, que me haga parecer y sentir única.
From the interview of Begoña Clérigues, Cómo vestir a una actriz para la alfombra roja https://www.lasprovincias.es/revista-valencia/vestir-actriz-alfombra-20220208190641-nt.html, lasprovincias.es, 9 February 2022.

Personality , Sense , Feeling

“Did I ever tell you my pet peeve?'

No,' I said.

People who dress up their pets to look like Little Lord Fauntleroys or cowboys, clowns, ballerinas. As if it's not enough just to be a dog or cat or turtle.”

Jerry Spinelli book Love, Stargirl

Source: Love, Stargirl

People , Dogs , Cats

“If it turned out Brandon Stark also likes to dress up as Strwberry Shortcake while playing croquet with his miniture pony collection, I totally wouldn't be surprised anymore.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Runaway

“I still can't believe," Michael said, sotto voce, "that you came to the Vampires' Masquerade Ball dressed as a vampire.”

Jim Butcher book Grave Peril

Source: The Dresden Files, Grave Peril (2001), Chapter 24
Context: Michael Carpenter: I still can’t believe, that you came to the Vampires’ Masquerade Ball dressed as a vampire.
Harry Dresden: Not only that, but a cheesy vampire.