Quotes about dress
page 8

Bouck White photo
Richard Dawkins photo

“As a liberal I would hesitate to propose a blanket ban on any style of dress because of the implications for individual liberty and freedom of choice.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

As quoted in Richard Dawkins causes outcry after likening the burka to a bin liner https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7936221/Richard-Dawkins-causes-outcry-after-likening-the-burka-to-a-bin-liner.html (10 August 2010), The Telegraph.

Bernard Mandeville photo
George Bernard Shaw photo
Robert Southey photo
Roger Ebert photo

“I know that the real Brockovich liked to dress provocatively; that's her personal style and she's welcome to it. But the Hollywood version makes her look like a miniskirted hooker, with bras that peek cheerfully above her necklines.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/erin-brockovich-2000 of Erin Brockovich (17 March 2000)
Reviews, Two star reviews

Mickey Spillane photo
Julius Streicher photo

“If you know these things, the question has enormous importance: who will be the judge in the future? It is not trivial, who is the judge. It's not sufficient to dress somebody in a robe, put a beret on his head and open the lawbook! It's a big difference whether a German or a negro takes place on the judgement seat. Sure, you can teach a negro the German language, the schematic application of laws and paragraphs -- and yet the negro will always judge like his blood commands!”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Wenn man diese Dinge weiß, dann ist die Frage von ungeheurer Bedeutung: Wer soll künftig Richter sein? Es ist nicht gleichgültig, wer Richter ist. Damit, dass einer die schwarze Robe anlegt, das Barett aufsetzt und das Gesetzbuch aufschlägt, ist es nicht getan! Es ist ein großer Unterschied, ob ein Deutscher oder ein Neger auf dem Richterstuhl sitzt. Gewiß, Sie können einen Neger die deutsche Sprache, die schematische Anwendung der Gesetze und Paragraphen lehren -- trotzdem wird der Neger immer so richten, wie es ihm sein Blut gebietet!
04/20/1926, speech in the Bavarian regional parliament ("Kampf dem Weltfeind", Stürmer publishing house, Nuremberg, 1938)

Danie Craven photo

“Sexual depravity is directing us towards a precipice. Women are to blame for broken marriages because they dress to attract the attention of men even after they are married.”

Danie Craven (1910–1993) South African rugby union player and administrator

1957 paraphrase
Sunday Times interview (1980s)

Craig David 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

“Give me to live with Love alone
And let the world go dine and dress;
For Love hath lowly haunts…
If life's a flower, I choose my own—
'T is "love in Idleness."”

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–1845) British author and journalist

"Dolce far Niente", Stanza 4, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Thomas Lovell Beddoes photo
Sania Mirza photo

“I'm partial to stilettos. Stilettos and long, flowing dresses are my new favourites. I like my dresses in lively shades these days, a teal or bright mix of orange and red.”

Sania Mirza (1986) Indian tennis player

Source: Prajwal Hegde "I am enjoying my partnership with Cara Black: Sania Mirza"

Kay Bailey Hutchison photo
Joseph Addison photo

“There is not so variable a thing in Nature as a lady's head-dress.”

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

No. 98 (22 June 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

Wallace Stevens photo

“The dress of a woman of Lhassa,
in its place
is an invisible element of that place
made visible.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"Anecdote of Men by the Thousand"

S. I. Hayakawa photo
Jane Austen photo
C. D. Broad photo
John Buchan photo
Thomas Hood photo

“A wife who preaches in her gown,
And lectures in her night-dress.”

Thomas Hood (1799–1845) British writer

The Surplice Question; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
20th century

Ben Croshaw photo
Rudyard Kipling photo
Ben Harper photo
Roberto Clemente photo

“Jackie, what is the matter with you? You did not lose this ball game. We all lost it. No one man loses any ball game. You remember that. You are a good ball player. We need you to play shortstop. Come now, get dressed, let's go out and have a steak.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

English translation of pep talk given on August 21, 1971, after Hernandez' 6th-inning miscue—scored as a hit—had contributed significantly to Cincinnati's 6-3 come-from-behind victory over Pittsburgh http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1971/B08210CIN1971.htm, as quoted in "Playing Games: Bad Day in Cincy" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=iG8mAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Bm0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=5765%2C1664013&dq=clemente-began-talk-spanish by Charley Feeney, in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Tuesday, September 28, 1971), p. 23
Baseball-related, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1971</big>

Sinclair Lewis photo
Chris Rea photo

“Beware! By Allah the son of Abu Quhafah (Abu Bakr) dressed himself with it (the caliphate) and he certainly knew that my position in relation to it was the same as the position of the axis in relation to the hand-mill. The flood water flows down from me and the bird cannot fly upto me. I put a curtain against the caliphate and kept myself detached from it.
Then I began to think whether I should assault or endure calmly the blinding darkness of tribulations wherein the grown up are made feeble and the young grow old and the true believer acts under strain till he meets Allah (on his death). I found that endurance thereon was wiser. So I adopted patience although there was pricking in the eye and suffocation (of mortification) in the throat. I watched the plundering of my inheritance till the first one went his way but handed over the Caliphate to Ibn al-Khattab after himself.
(Then he quoted al-A`sha's verse):
My days are now passed on the camel's back (in difficulty) while there were days (of ease) when I enjoyed the company of Jabir's brother Hayyan.
It is strange that during his lifetime he wished to be released from the caliphate but he confirmed it for the other one after his death. No doubt these two shared its udders strictly among themselves. This one put the Caliphate in a tough enclosure where the utterance was haughty and the touch was rough. Mistakes were in plenty and so also the excuses therefore. One in contact with it was like the rider of an unruly camel. If he pulled up its rein the very nostril would be slit, but if he let it loose he would be thrown. Consequently, by Allah people got involved in recklessness, wickedness, unsteadiness and deviation.
Nevertheless, I remained patient despite length of period and stiffness of trial, till when he went his way (of death) he put the matter (of Caliphate) in a group and regarded me to be one of them. But good Heavens! what had I to do with this "consultation"? Where was any doubt about me with regard to the first of them that I was now considered akin to these ones? But I remained low when they were low and flew high when they flew high. One of them turned against me because of his hatred and the other got inclined the other way due to his in-law relationship and this thing and that thing, till the third man of these people stood up with heaving breasts between his dung and fodder. With him his children of his grand-father, (Umayyah) also stood up swallowing up Allah's wealth like a camel devouring the foliage of spring, till his rope broke down, his actions finished him and his gluttony brought him down prostrate.
At that moment, nothing took me by surprise, but the crowd of people rushing to me. It advanced towards me from every side like the mane of the hyena so much so that Hasan and Husayn were getting crushed and both the ends of my shoulder garment were torn. They collected around me like the herd of sheep and goats. When I took up the reins of government one party broke away and another turned disobedient while the rest began acting wrongfully as if they had not heard the word of Allah saying:
That abode in the hereafter, We assign it for those who intend not to exult themselves in the earth, nor (to make) mischief (therein); and the end is (best) for the pious ones. (Qur'an, 28:83)
Yes, by Allah, they had heard it and understood it but the world appeared glittering in their eyes and its embellishments seduced them. Behold, by Him who split the grain (to grow) and created living beings, if people had not come to me and supporters had not exhausted the argument and if there had been no pledge of Allah with the learned to the effect that they should not acquiesce in the gluttony of the oppressor and the hunger of the oppressed I would have cast the rope of Caliphate on its own shoulders, and would have given the last one the same treatment as to the first one. Then you would have seen that in my view this world of yours is no better than the sneezing of a goat.”

Known as the Sermon of ash-Shiqshiqiyyah (roar of the camel), It is said that when Amir al-mu'minin reached here in his sermon a man of Iraq stood up and handed him over a writing. Amir al-mu'minin began looking at it, when Ibn `Abbas said, "O' Amir al-mu'minin, I wish you resumed your Sermon from where you broke it." Thereupon he replied, "O' Ibn `Abbas it was like the foam of a Camel which gushed out but subsided." Ibn `Abbas says that he never grieved over any utterance as he did over this one because Amir al-mu'minin could not finish it as he wished to.
Nahj al-Balagha

Thomas Gainsborough photo
W.C. Fields photo

“She's all dressed up like a well-kept grave.”

W.C. Fields (1880–1946) actor

In reference to Jan Duggan's character in The Old Fashioned Way (1934)

“The Muslim Mashaikh were as keen on conversions as the Ulama, and contrary to general belief, in place of being kind to the Hindus as saints would, they too wished the Hindus to be accorded a second class citizenship if they were not converted. Only one instance, that of Shaikh Abdul Quddus Gangoh, need be cited because he belonged to the Chishtia Silsila considered to be the most tolerant of all Sufi groups. He wrote letters to Sultan Sikandar Lodi, Babur and Humayun to re-invigorate the Shariat and reduce the Hindus to payers of land tax and Jiziyah. To Babur he wrote,
“Extend utmost patronage and protection to theologians and mystics… that they should be maintained and subsidized by the state… No non-Muslim should be given any office or employment in the Diwan of Islam. Posts of Amirs and Amils should be barred to them. Furthermore, in confirmity with the principles of the Shariat they should be subjected to all types of indignities and humiliations. The non-Muslims should be made to pay Jiziyah, and Zakat on goods be levied as prescribed by the law. They should be disallowed from donning the dress of the Muslims and should be forced to keep their Kufr concealed and not to perform the ceremonies of their Kufr openly and freely… They should not be allowed to consider themselves equal to the Muslims.””

Abdul Quddus Gangohi (1456–1537) Sufi poet

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 6

Robert Murray M'Cheyne photo
Margaret Cho photo
John Godfrey Saxe photo
Agatha Christie photo
Vanna White photo

“I enjoy getting dressed as a Barbie doll.”

Vanna White (1957) American model and game show hostess

Source: Laura K. McClure (2008), Sexuality and Gender in the Classical World. p. 164

Pat Condell photo

“Faith' is merely fear dressed up as virtue.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Your faith is a joke" (16 December 2010) http://youtube.com/watch?v=P4dSiHqpULk
2010

Ed Harcourt photo
T.S. Eliot photo
Colin Wilson photo
Gregory Benford photo
Harriet Harman photo

“Hague: I'd like to congratulate the Leader of the House on being the first female Labour member ever to answer Prime Minister's Questions. She must be proud, three decades on, to be following in the footsteps of Margaret Thatcher, who we on this side of the House and the Prime Minister so admire.
Harman: Well I thank him for his congratulations but I would ask him, why is he asking the questions today? Because he is not the Shadow Leader of the House - the Shadow Leader of the House is sitting next to him! Is this the situation in the modern Conservative Party; that women should be seen but not heard? And if I may, perhaps I could offer the Shadow Leader of the House a bit of sisterly advice: she should not let him get away with it!
Hague: Turning to domestic issues, I was going to be nice to the Rt. Hon. Lady - she has had a difficult week and she had to explain yesterday that she dresses in accordance with wherever she goes; she wears a helmet to a building site; wears Indian clothes to Indian parts of her constituency; presumably, when she goes to a Cabinet meeting, she dresses as a clown.
Harman: Well I would just start by saying that if I'm looking for advice on what to wear and what not to wear, the very last man I would look to for advice would be the man in the baseball cap!”

Harriet Harman (1950) British politician

During Prime Minister's Questions, 2 April 2008 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AsiKI7uCog&feature=related, with Deputy Conservative Party Leader, William Hague

William Hazlitt photo

“Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

" On the Clerical Character http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Hazlitt/Political/ClericalCharacter.htm" (January/February 1818)
Political Essays (1819)

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield photo

“Style is the dress of thoughts.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

24 November 1749
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

Van Morrison photo
Robert Southey photo

“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.
The Devil's Walk http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/shelley/devil/devil.rs1860.html (1799)

Justin Martyr photo
Beck photo
Marianne von Werefkin photo
Ayumi Hamasaki photo
Samuel Butler photo

“A man’s style in any art should be like his dress — it should attract as little attention as possible.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

A Man's Style
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books

Daniel Drake photo

“Probably there is no department of science, no form o humanity, in which greater advances have been made of late years, than in the medical and moral management of the insane. When we contrast the spacious and airy apartments of the insane. When we contrast the spacious and airy apartments and the grounds of our asylums, with the dark, and narrow, and dirty cells, in which, twenty years ago, the best accommodated of these poor creatures were immured - their neat and confortable dress, with their former rags and nakedness - their wholesome food, with their former rags and nakedness - their wholesome food, their former rations - and abovel all, the kindness and affection which is shown to them noew, with their ulter neglect in the days when they were executed from the privileges and society of men, we find ourselves shuddering at the thought of what we have seen, and lost in admiration of what we now see.
Wherever the Christian religion exists, we find the same rapid advances making towards the accomplishment of the great purposes of humanity. It seems as if the miracles of our Saviour were meant as protoypes of what his religion was to accomplish. It is by the influence of this religion of the march of science and philosophical discovery, that, by all Christian nations, the winds and the waves have been rebuked - that man is enabled to ride out the storm upon the ocean, as if it were hushed, and, like Peter of old, to walk upon the sea as on dry land.”

Daniel Drake (1785–1852) American physician and writer

Daniel Drake (1834). The Western Journal of the Medical & Physical Sciences http://books.google.com.mx/books?id=gtpXAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false. Volume 7, p. 618

George Carlin photo
Rem Koolhaas photo

“Architecture has been a domain of architects, a discipline presumably dominated by immaculately dressed bookish pedants that have a stream of thought well displaced from regular human thought.”

Rem Koolhaas (1944) Dutch architect (b.1944)

Rem Koolhaas Interview with Jennifer Sigler in Index Magazine http://www.indexmagazine.com/interviews/rem_koolhaas.shtml, (2000)

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky photo
Ben Croshaw photo
Umberto Boccioni photo

“The harmony of the lines and folds of modern dress works upon our sensitiveness with the same emotional and symbolical power as did the nude upon the sensitiveness of the old masters.”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

as quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 154.
1914 - 1916

Bill Hicks photo
Chetan Bhagat photo
Jerome K. Jerome photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“It's all right to steal and to rob and extort, but do it with a bit of finesse. It's even all right to hate, but just dress your hate up in the garments of love and make it appear that you are loving when you are actually hating. Just get by! That's the thing that's right according to this new ethic. My friends, that attitude is destroying the soul of our culture. It's destroying our nation.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Rediscovering Lost Values (1954)
Context: Now that isn't the only thing that convinces me that we've strayed away from this attitude, this principle. The other thing is that we have adopted a sort of a pragmatic test for right and wrong—whatever works is right. If it works, it's all right. Nothing is wrong but that which does not work. If you don't get caught, it's right. [laughter] That's the attitude, isn't it? It's all right to disobey the Ten Commandments, but just don't disobey the eleventh, "Thou shall not get caught." [laughter] That's the attitude. That's the prevailing attitude in our culture. No matter what you do, just do it with a bit of finesse. You know, a sort of attitude of the survival of the slickest. Not the Darwinian survival of the fittest, but the survival of the slickest—whoever can be the slickest is the one who right. It's all right to lie, but lie with dignity. [laughter] It's all right to steal and to rob and extort, but do it with a bit of finesse. It's even all right to hate, but just dress your hate up in the garments of love and make it appear that you are loving when you are actually hating. Just get by! That's the thing that's right according to this new ethic. My friends, that attitude is destroying the soul of our culture. It's destroying our nation.

Salma Hayek photo

“The whole society is obsessed…. I'm not complaining — I'm just saying, "Don't be too impressed with me. Don't try to dress like me or wear your hair like mine. Find your own style. Don't spend your savings trying to be someone else. You're not more important, smarter, or prettier because you wear a designer dress." I only wear the expensive clothes because I get them free and I'm too lazy to go out and look for my own.”

Salma Hayek (1966) Mexican-American actress and producer

O interview (2003)
Context: The whole society is obsessed.... I'm not complaining — I'm just saying, "Don't be too impressed with me. Don't try to dress like me or wear your hair like mine. Find your own style. Don't spend your savings trying to be someone else. You're not more important, smarter, or prettier because you wear a designer dress." I only wear the expensive clothes because I get them free and I'm too lazy to go out and look for my own. I, a rich girl from Mexico, came here with designer clothes. And one day when I was starving in an apartment in Los Angeles, I looked at my Chanel blouses and said, "If only I could pay the rent with one of these." … In those days, the rag I used to dry my dishes was more useful. Now many who start in this business come to me for advice and ask, "How do I get started?" And I have to say, "I honestly have no idea." I think it's a bunch of accidents that happen to you and somehow you survive them and take advantage of them and something magical happens — and you have an agent.

Alan Watts photo

“And therefore, one of the most sacred missions to be imposed upon those who would be liberated from this culture is that they shall love material, that they shall love color, that they shall dress beautifully, that they shall cook well, that they shall live in lovely houses, and that they shall preserve the face of nature.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

Beat Zen and Hasidism talk with Maurice Friedman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPYuvHcRoyw
Context: This is what troubles me about what we'll call vaguely "the new youth". There's a certain sloppiness. For example, at Millbrook in New York - that place is a mess, it's an unspeakable mess! Everything is dilapidated, it's a pad, not just a pad, but a mattress with the stuffing coming out of it. And this bothers me - because, after all, in America, it's bad enough anyway, we don't revere material, we mistreat it terribly. Los Angeles is the most amazing mistreatment of material that one can see in centuries. This is not a materialistic civilization at all. It is a civilization devoted to the hatred and destruction of material, its conversion into junk and poison gas. And therefore, one of the most sacred missions to be imposed upon those who would be liberated from this culture is that they shall love material, that they shall love color, that they shall dress beautifully, that they shall cook well, that they shall live in lovely houses, and that they shall preserve the face of nature. And this is the cardinal thing in your tradition, my friend, because when the Lord God created the material world, he surprised himself. And having already created it, he sat back, and saw then, that it was good. Very good.

P. J. O'Rourke photo
Yevgeny Zamyatin photo

“My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity;
Before I taught my tongue to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or had the black art to dispense
A several sin to every sense,
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness.”

Henry Vaughan (1621–1695) Welsh author, physician and metaphysical poet

"The Retreat," l. 7 - 19.
Silex Scintillans (1655)
Context: When yet I had not walk'd above
A mile or two from my first Love,
And looking back, at that short space
Could see a glimpse of His bright face;
When on some gilded cloud or flower
My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity;
Before I taught my tongue to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or had the black art to dispense
A several sin to every sense,
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness.

James Burke (science historian) photo

“Small wonder that centuries afterwards the Greeks and Romans came here and gawked like peasants at a civilisation that made their efforts look like well-dressed mud huts. It still has that effect today. You come here from the great modern cities, full of the immense power of modern technology at your finger tips, press a button, turn a switch. And this place… stops you dead.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

Connections (1979), 1 - The Trigger Effect
Context: These are the great ancient temples of Karnak, on the edge of the Nile about 450 miles south of Cairo. They were the center of Egyptian religion, built in the imperial city of Thebes, when the Egyptian empire was at its height, the greatest power in the world. This was the New York of its time. The temples were built over a period of 2,000 years, each pharaoh adding his bit, leaving his name in stone, to last forever. Inside the temple domain, there were 65 towns, 433 gardens & orchards, 400,000 animals, and it took 80,000 people just to run the place. Small wonder that centuries afterwards the Greeks and Romans came here and gawked like peasants at a civilisation that made their efforts look like well-dressed mud huts. It still has that effect today. You come here from the great modern cities, full of the immense power of modern technology at your finger tips, press a button, turn a switch. And this place... stops you dead.

Jerome photo

“Sometimes the character of the mistress is inferred from the dress of her maids.”
Interdum animus dominarum ex ancillarum habitu iudicatur.

Jerome (345–420) Catholic saint and Doctor of the Church

Letter 54
Letters

Sharon Tate photo

“I'd like to be a fairy princess — a little golden doll with gossamer wings, in a voile dress, adorned with bright, shiny things. I see that as something totally pure and beautiful. Everything that's realistic has some sort of ugliness in it. Even a flower is ugly when it wilts, a bird when it seeks its prey, the ocean when it becomes violent.”

Sharon Tate (1943–1969) actress, victim of murder by Charles Manson followers

As quoted in "Who I'd Like To Be In My Next Life"] featuring celebrity responses to that question, Eye magazine Vol. 2 No. 1 (January 1969) - online text and images http://www.badmags.com/bmtate.html
Context: I'd like to be a fairy princess — a little golden doll with gossamer wings, in a voile dress, adorned with bright, shiny things. I see that as something totally pure and beautiful. Everything that's realistic has some sort of ugliness in it. Even a flower is ugly when it wilts, a bird when it seeks its prey, the ocean when it becomes violent. I'm very sensitive to ugly situations. I'm quick to read people, and I pick up if someone's reacting to me as just a sexy blonde. At times like that, I freeze. I can be very alone at a party, on the set, or in general, if I'm not in harmony with things around me.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo
Alan Moore photo

“We dress these basic ideas in language we can understand. Sometimes there are sizable errors of translation.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: As I understand, or as I hallucinate conceptual space, nearly all form in conceptual space is language, I might even say all the form in non-conceptual space is language, I’m not even sure of what the difference between physical space and conceptual space is anymore, in the interface. All form is language. The forms that we see, or imagine, or perceive, or whatever it is Remote Viewers are doing, in conceptual space are mindforms made from language, and by language I also mean images, sounds. We dress these basic ideas in language we can understand. Sometimes there are sizable errors of translation.

Czeslaw Milosz photo

“All was taken away from you: white dresses,
wings, even existence.
Yet I believe you,
messengers.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"On Angels"
Context: All was taken away from you: white dresses,
wings, even existence.
Yet I believe you,
messengers. There, where the world is turned inside out,
a heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts,
you stroll, inspecting the trustworthy seams.

Alaska Thunderfuck 5000 photo

“At the end of the day and at the beginning of the day, I am a man who dresses up like a lady who is from outer space. Not everyone is going to get that.”

Alaska Thunderfuck 5000 (1985) American Drag queen

Advocate interview (2015)
Context: At the end of the day and at the beginning of the day, I am a man who dresses up like a lady who is from outer space. Not everyone is going to get that. Not everyone is going to be on board with that. And not everyone is going to be able to swallow that.

P. J. O'Rourke photo
Epictetus photo
John Ruskin photo

“But now, having no true business, we pour our whole masculine energy into the false business of money-making; and having no true emotion, we must have false emotions dressed up for us to play with”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Sesame and Lilies.
Context: When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work, as the colour-petals out of a fruitful flower;—when they are faithfully helpful and compassionate, all their emotions become steady, deep, perpetual, and vivifying to the soul as the natural pulse to the body. But now, having no true business, we pour our whole masculine energy into the false business of money-making; and having no true emotion, we must have false emotions dressed up for us to play with, not innocently, as children with dolls, but guiltily and darkly.

T. E. Lawrence photo

“Feisal asked me if I would wear Arab clothes like his own while in the camp. I should find it better for my own part, since it was a comfortable dress in which to live Arab-fashion as we must do.”

Source: Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922), Ch. 20
Context: Feisal asked me if I would wear Arab clothes like his own while in the camp. I should find it better for my own part, since it was a comfortable dress in which to live Arab-fashion as we must do. Besides, the tribesmen would then understand how to take me. The only wearers of khaki in their experience had been Turkish officers, before whom they took up an instinctive defence. If I wore Meccan clothes, they would behave to me as though I were really one of the leaders; and I might slip in and out of Feisal's tent without making a sensation which he had to explain away each time to strangers. I agreed at once, very gladly; for army uniform was abominable when camel-riding or when sitting about on the ground; and the Arab things, which I had learned to manage before the war, were cleaner and more decent in the desert.

“I dressed up for the CD.”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Strategic Grill Locations

Imelda Marcos photo

“When I go out into the barrios, I get dressed because I know my little people want to see a star.”

Imelda Marcos (1929) Former First Lady of the Philippines

Quoted in The Los Angeles Times (1980).
Context: I am my little people's star and slave. When I go out into the barrios, I get dressed because I know my little people want to see a star. Other presidents' wives have gone to the barrios wearing housedresses and slippers. That's not what people want to see. People want someone they can love, someone to set an example.

Joyce Kilmer photo

“Have pity on our foolishness
And give us eyes, that we may see
Beneath the shopman's clumsy dress
The splendor of humanity!”

Trees and Other Poems (1914), Delicatessen
Context: O Carpenter of Nazareth,
Whose mother was a village maid,
Shall we, Thy children, blow our breath
In scorn on any humble trade?
Have pity on our foolishness
And give us eyes, that we may see
Beneath the shopman's clumsy dress
The splendor of humanity!

Ellen Page photo

“There are pervasive stereotypes about masculinity and femininity that define how we are all supposed to act, dress and speak. They serve no one. Anyone who defies these so-called 'norms' becomes worthy of comment and scrutiny. The LGBT community knows this all too well. Yet there is courage all around us.”

Ellen Page (1987) Canadian actress

Coming Out Speech (2014)
Context: There are pervasive stereotypes about masculinity and femininity that define how we are all supposed to act, dress and speak. They serve no one. Anyone who defies these so-called 'norms' becomes worthy of comment and scrutiny. The LGBT community knows this all too well. Yet there is courage all around us. The football hero, Michael Sam. The actress, Laverne Cox. The musicians Tegan and Sara Quinn. The family that supports their daughter or son who has come out. And there is courage in this room. All of you.

John Crowley photo
Epictetus photo

“Dare to look up to God and say, "Make use of me for the future as Thou wilt. I am of the same mind; I am one with Thee. I refuse nothing which seems good to Thee. Lead me whither Thou wilt. Clothe me in whatever dress Thou wilt."”

Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece

That we do not study to make Use of the established Principles concerning Good and Evil, Chap. xvi.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Ellen Willis photo

“In its original literal sense, "moral relativism" is simply moral complexity. That is, anyone who agrees that stealing a loaf of bread to feed one's children is not the moral equivalent of, say, shoplifting a dress for the fun of it, is a relativist of sorts.”

Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist

"Our Mobsters, Ourselves", The Nation (2 April 2001) https://www.thenation.com/article/our-mobsters-ourselves/
Context: In its original literal sense, "moral relativism" is simply moral complexity. That is, anyone who agrees that stealing a loaf of bread to feed one's children is not the moral equivalent of, say, shoplifting a dress for the fun of it, is a relativist of sorts. But in recent years, conservatives bent on reinstating an essentially religious vocabulary of absolute good and evil as the only legitimate framework for discussing social values have redefined "relative" as "arbitrary." That conflation has been reinforced by social theorists and advocates of identity politics who argue that there is no universal morality, only the value systems of particular cultures and power structures. From this perspective, the psychoanalytic – and by extension the psychotherapeutic – worldview is not relativist at all. Its values are honesty, self-knowledge, assumption of responsibility for the whole of what one does, freedom from inherited codes of family, church, tribe in favor of a universal humanism: in other words, the values of the Enlightenment, as revised and expanded by Freud's critique of scientific rationalism for ignoring the power of unconscious desire.

Amanda Palmer photo

“The dress-up freaks are coming back, and it’s wonderful to watch.”

Amanda Palmer (1976) American punk-cabaret musician

As quoted in "Amanda Palmer Freaks Out With Evelyn Evelyn" by Scott Thill in WIRED (29 March 2010) http://www.wired.com/2010/03/amanda-palmer/
Context: Rock needs theater, rock is theater. We just go through different eras of guilty admission about this. Having risen with The Dresden Dolls in the heyday of The Strokes and The White Stripes, everyone was looking at us as completely misfit theater dorks. But it’s really encouraging to see a more theater-dork wave of bands like The Scissor Sisters, Antony & The Johnsons, CocoRosie, Patrick Wolf and even Arcade Fire and Decembrists becoming popular. The dress-up freaks are coming back, and it’s wonderful to watch.

Richard Wright photo
Coco Chanel photo

“Ask me who I don't dress!”

Coco Chanel (1883–1971) French fashion designer

When asked who she dressed, as quoted in Paris, Paris : Journey Into the City of Light‎ (2005) by David Downie, p. 93

Queen Rania of Jordan photo

“Islam neither requires one to be practising, nor to dress in one way or another. So imposing the veil on a woman is contrary to the principles of Islam.”

Queen Rania of Jordan (1970) Queen consort of Jordan

Interview with Corriere della Sera, as quoted in " Muslim women don't have to wear veils: Rania http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2007/February/middleeast_February139.xml&section=middleeast&col=", Khaleej Times (9 February 2007)
Context: Islam neither requires one to be practising, nor to dress in one way or another. So imposing the veil on a woman is contrary to the principles of Islam. … Unfortunately, after all the suspicion weighing on Islam, many people have begun to consider the veil as a political problem, but this is not the case … Wearing the veil is a free personal choice.

John Keats photo
Audrey Hepburn photo
Charles Baudelaire photo
John Ruskin photo
Plutarch photo