Quotes about hat

A collection of quotes on the topic of hat, likeness, doing, use.

Quotes about hat

Ben Kowalewicz photo

“Lesson one: If you're ever in a beautiful cathedral, take your hat off!”

Ben Kowalewicz (1975) musician

From "The Diary of Billy Talent":

Woody Allen photo
Monte Melkonian photo
The Notorious B.I.G. photo
Tove Jansson photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo

“Big Brother isn’t watching. He’s singing and dancing. He’s pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you’re awake. He’s making sure you’re always distracted. He’s making sure you’re fully absorbed.”

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 3
Context: Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn't watching. He's singing and dancing. He's pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you're awake. He's making sure you're always distracted. He's making sure you're fully absorbed. He's making sure your imagination withers. Until it's as useful as your appendix. He's making sure your attention is always filled. And this being fed, it's worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what's in your mind. With everyone's imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington photo

“I never saw so many shocking bad hats in my life.”

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769–1852) British soldier and statesman

When asked what he thought of the first Reformed Parliament, as quoted in Words on Wellington (1889) by Sir William Fraser, p. 12.

Jopie Huisman photo

“Over the years I kept everything and anything from stuff and things that I came across during my life in trade, if they had emotional value to me. Always the simple goods and tools, from the farmers, the blacksmith, the carpenter, the baker and so on. I loved those things most in which I saw reflected the struggle for life very clearly.... old used up shoes, trousers, jackets, hats and children's vests, which I found in the rags, often patched up endlessly.”

Jopie Huisman (1922–2000) Dutch painter

translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van Jopie Huisman, in het Nederlands: Door de jaren heen heb ik van alles en nog wat bewaard aan dingen en voorwerpen die ik in mijn leven in de handel tegenkwam, als ze gevoelswaarde voor me hadden. Altijd eenvoudig gebruiksgoed en gereedschap van de boer, de smid, de timmerman, de bakker enzovoorts. Dingen waarin ik de strijd om het bestaan het duidelijkst weerspiegeld zag vond ik het mooist.. ..afgetrapte oude schoenen, broeken, jassen, hoeden en kindervestjes, die ik in de vodden vond, vaak tot in den treure versteld en opgelapt.
Source: Jopie de Verteller' (2010) - postumous, p. 19

Shigeru Miyamoto photo

“I don't know what Mario will look like next; maybe he will wear metallic clothing with a red hat.”

Shigeru Miyamoto (1952) Japanese video game designer and producer

1991, before the release of Super Mario 64.

G. K. Chesterton photo
Ozzy Osbourne photo

“I tried out that Buckethead guy. I met with him and asked him to work with me but only if he got rid of the fucking bucket. So I came back a bit later and he's wearing this green fucking Martian's-hat thing. I said, 'Look, just be yourself!' He told me his name was Brian, so I said that's what I'd call him. He says, 'No one calls me Brian except my mother.' So I said, 'Pretend I'm your mum then!' I haven't even got out of the room and I'm already playing fucking mind games with the guy. What happens if one day he's gone and there's a note saying, 'I've been beamed up?”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

[Laughs] Don't get me wrong, he's a great player. He plays like a motherfucker!
Revolver interview; as quoted in "Ozzy Osbourne "Says Ex-GUNS N' ROSES Guitarist Buckethead Auditioned For His Solo Band" http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/ozzy-osbourne-says-ex-guns-n-roses-guitarist-buckethead-auditioned-for-his-solo-band/, Blabbermouth.net, January 5, 2005

John Steinbeck photo
Robert F. Kennedy photo
Jared Diamond photo
Terry Pratchett photo

“Hat = wizard, wizard = hat. Everything else is frippery.”

Source: Night Watch

Mark Twain photo
Miyamoto Musashi photo
H.P. Lovecraft photo
Jean Jacques Rousseau photo
Matthew Perry (actor) photo
Edvard Munch photo

“I thought I should make something – I felt it would be so easy – it would take form under my hands like magic.
Then people would see!
A strong naked arm – a tanned powerful neck a young woman rests her head on the arching chest.
She closes her eyes and listens with open and quivering lips to the words he whispers into her long flowing hair.
I should paint that image just as I saw it – but in the blue haze.
Those two at that moment, no longer merely themselves, but simply a link in the chain binding generation to generation.
People should understand the significance, the power of it. They should remove their hats like they do in church.
There should be no more pictures of interiors, of people reading and women knitting.
There would be pictures of real people who breathed, suffered, felt, loved.
I felt impelled – it would be easy. The flesh would have volume – the colours would be alive.
There was an interval. The music stopped. I was a little sad. I remembered how many times I had had similar thoughts – and that once I had finished the painting – they had simply shaken their heads and smiled.
Once again I found myself out on the Boulevard des Italiens.”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

written in Saint Cloud, 1889
Quotes from his text: 'Saint Cloud Manifesto', Munch (1889): as quoted in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, pp. 120 -121
1880 - 1895

Slash (musician) photo
Friedrich Schiller photo

“The hat is the pride of man; for he who cannot keep his hat on before kings and emperors is no free man.”

Act IV, sc. v, Kellermeister (Master of the Cellar)
Wallenstein (1798), Part I - Die Piccolomini (The Piccolomini)

Abraham Lincoln photo
Eminem photo
Leonardo DiCaprio photo
Ani DiFranco photo
Alvar Aalto photo

“Building art is a synthesis of life in materialised form. We should try to bring in under the same hat not a splintered way of thinking, but all in harmony together.”

Alvar Aalto (1898–1976) Finnish architect and designer

Alvar Aalto, quoted in: Bruce Newlands The Art of Building http://www.cicstart.org/userfiles/file/IR9_28-38.pdf, cicstart.org

David Tennant photo
Barack Obama photo
Peter Ustinov photo
Lewis Carroll photo
Stefan Zweig photo

“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.”

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

H.P. Lovecraft photo

“For example, I never cheat or steal. Also, I never wear a top-hat with a sack coat or munch bananas in public on the streets, because a gentleman does not do those things either.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Woodburn Harris (25 February-1 March 1929), in Selected Letters II, 1925-1929 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 288-289
Non-Fiction, Letters
Context: About my own attitude toward ethics—I thought I made it plain that I object only to (a) grotesquely disproportionate indignations and enthusiasms, (b) illogical extremes involving a reductio ad absurdum, and (c) the nonsensical notion that "right" and "wrong" involve any principles more mystical and universal than those of immediate expedience (with the individual's own comfort as a criterion) on the other hand. I believe I was careful to specify that I do not advocate vice and crime, but that on the other hand I have a marked distaste for immoral and unlawful acts which contravene the harmonious traditions and standards of beautiful living developed by a culture during its long history. This, however, is not ethics but aesthetics—a distinction which you are almost alone in considering negligible. … So far as I am concerned—I am an aesthete devoted to harmony, and to the extraction of the maximum possible pleasure from life. I find by experience that my chief pleasure is in symbolic identification with the landscape and tradition-stream to which I belong—hence I follow the ancient, simple New England ways of living, and observe the principles of honour expected of a descendant of English gentlemen. It is pride and beauty-sense, plus the automatic instincts of generations trained in certain conduct-patterns, which determine my conduct from day to day. But this is not ethics, because the same compulsions and preferences apply, with me, to things wholly outside the ethical zone. For example, I never cheat or steal. Also, I never wear a top-hat with a sack coat or munch bananas in public on the streets, because a gentleman does not do those things either. I would as soon do the one as the other sort of thing—it is all a matter of harmony and good taste—whereas the ethical or "righteous" man would be horrified by dishonesty yet tolerant of course personal ways. If I were farming in your district I certainly would assist my neighbours—both as a means of promoting my standing in the community, and because it is good taste to be generous and accommodating. Likewise with the matter of treating the pupils in a school class. But this would not be through any sense of inner compulsion based on principles dissociated from my personal welfare and from the principle of beauty. It would be for the same reason that I would not dress eccentrically or use vulgar language. Pure aesthetics, aside from the personal-benefit element; and concerned with emotions of pleasure versus disgust rather than of approval versus indignation.

Voltaire photo

“He advanced toward me without moving his hat, or making the least inclination of his body; but there appeared more real politeness in the open, humane air of his countenance, than in drawing one leg behind the other, and carrying that in the hand which is made to be worn on the head.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Voltaire's account of meeting the Quaker Andrew Pit
The History of the Quakers (1762)
Context: He advanced toward me without moving his hat, or making the least inclination of his body; but there appeared more real politeness in the open, humane air of his countenance, than in drawing one leg behind the other, and carrying that in the hand which is made to be worn on the head. "Friend," said he, "I perceive thou art a stranger, if I can do thee any service thou hast only to let me know it." "Sir," I replied, bowing my body, and sliding one leg toward him, as is the custom with us, "I flatter myself that my curiosity, which you will allow to be just, will not give you any offence, and that you will do me the honor to inform me of the particulars of your religion." "The people of thy country," answered the Quaker, "are too full of their bows and their compliments; but I never yet met with one of them who had so much curiosity as thyself. Come in and let us dine first together."

Voltaire photo

“William inherited very large possessions, part of which consisted of crown debts, due to the vice-admiral for sums he had advanced for the sea-service. No moneys were at that time less secure than those owing from the king. Penn was obliged to go, more than once, and "thee" and "thou" Charles and his ministers, to recover the debt; and at last, instead of specie, the government invested him with the right and sovereignty of a province of America, to the south of Maryland. Thus was a Quaker raised to sovereign power.
He set sail for his new dominions with two ships filled with Quakers, who followed his fortune. The country was then named by them Pennsylvania, from William Penn; and he founded Philadelphia, which is now a very flourishing city. His first care was to make an alliance with his American neighbors; and this is the only treaty between those people and the Christians that was not ratified by an oath, and that was never infringed. The new sovereign also enacted several wise and wholesome laws for his colony, which have remained invariably the same to this day. The chief is, to ill-treat no person on account of religion, and to consider as brethren all those who believe in one God. He had no sooner settled his government than several American merchants came and peopled this colony. The natives of the country, instead of flying into the woods, cultivated by degrees a friendship with the peaceable Quakers. They loved these new strangers as much as they disliked the other Christians, who had conquered and ravaged America. In a little time these savages, as they are called, delighted with their new neighbors, flocked in crowds to Penn, to offer themselves as his vassals. It was an uncommon thing to behold a sovereign "thee'd" and "thou'd" by his subjects, and addressed by them with their hats on; and no less singular for a government to be without one priest in it; a people without arms, either for offence or preservation; a body of citizens without any distinctions but those of public employments; and for neighbors to live together free from envy or jealousy. In a word, William Penn might, with reason, boast of having brought down upon earth the Golden Age, which in all probability, never had any real existence but in his dominions.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Variants:
No oaths, no seals, no official mummeries were used; the treaty was ratified on both sides with a yea, yea — the only one, says Voltaire, that the world has known, never sworn to and never broken.
As quoted in William Penn : An Historical Biography (1851) by William Hepworth Dixon
William Penn began by making a league with the Americans, his neighbors. It is the only one between those natives and the Christians which was never sworn to, and the only one that was never broken.
As quoted in American Pioneers (1905), by William Augustus Mowry and Blanche Swett Mowry, p. 80
It was the only treaty made by the settlers with the Indians that was never sworn to, and the only one that was never broken.
As quoted in A History of the American Peace Movement (2008) by Charles F. Howlett, and ‎Robbie Lieberman, p. 33
The History of the Quakers (1762)

Voltaire photo

“William Penn, when only fifteen years of age, chanced to meet a Quaker in Oxford, where he was then following his studies. This Quaker made a proselyte of him; and our young man, being naturally sprightly and eloquent, having a very winning aspect and engaging carriage, soon gained over some of his companions and intimates, and in a short time formed a society of young Quakers, who met at his house; so that at the age of sixteen he found himself at the head of a sect. Having left college, at his return home to the vice-admiral, his father, instead of kneeling to ask his blessing, as is the custom with the English, he went up to him with his hat on, and accosted him thus: "Friend, I am glad to see thee in good health."”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

The viceadmiral thought his son crazy; but soon discovered he was a Quaker. He then employed every method that prudence could suggest to engage him to behave and act like other people. The youth answered his father only with repeated exhortations to turn Quaker also. After much altercation, his father confined himself to this single request, that he would wait on the king and the duke of York with his hat under his arm, and that he would not "thee" and "thou" them. William answered that his conscience would not permit him to do these things. This exasperated his father to such a degree that he turned him out of doors. Young Penn gave God thanks that he permitted him to suffer so early in His cause, and went into the city, where he held forth, and made a great number of converts; and being young, handsome, and of a graceful figure, both court and city ladies flocked very devoutly to hear him. The patriarch Fox, hearing of his great reputation, came to London — notwithstanding the length of the journey — purposely to see and converse with him. They both agreed to go upon missions into foreign countries; and accordingly they embarked for Holland, after having left a sufficient number of laborers to take care of the London vineyard.
The History of the Quakers (1762)

Abraham Lincoln photo
Kanye West photo
Raymond Chandler photo
Victor Hugo photo

“What Is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.”

Variant: I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was threadbare - there were holes at his elbows; the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.
Source: Les Misérables

Anne Sexton photo
Jim Butcher photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Dorothy Parker photo
Tom Waits photo

“Got a head full of lightning, a hat full of rain.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.”

Jenny Joseph (1932–2018) Poet

Poem Warning http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/warning/
Source: Warning: When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple

Maira Kalman photo
Cassandra Clare photo

“Magnus gazed dreamily in his direction. "You should leave him here. I could hang hats on him and things.”

Variant: Nice, bah. He's gorgeous." Magnus gazed dreamily in his direction. "You should leave him here. I could hang hats on him and things.
Source: City of Glass

Jennifer Egan photo
Julia Quinn photo
Jean Webster photo

“The way you wear your hat,
The way you sip your tea,
The mem'ry of all that –
No, no! They can't take that away from me!”

Ira Gershwin (1896–1983) American lyricist

"They Can't Take That Away from Me", Shall We Dance.

Joanne Harris photo
Dorothy Koomson photo
Ellen DeGeneres photo
Susan Elizabeth Phillips photo
Robert E. Howard photo

“I don't believe I ever saw an Oklahoman who wouldn't fight at the drop of a hat — and frequently drop the hat himself.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to H. P. Lovecraft (July 13, 1932)
Letters

Dorothy Parker photo

“All I need is room enough to lay a hat and a few friends.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist
Susan Kay photo
Gustave Flaubert photo
Rick Riordan photo
Margaret Peterson Haddix photo

“Nobody can buy a hat without gossiping.”

Source: Howl's Moving Castle

Frederick Buechner photo
Philip Reeve photo
Emily Dickinson photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Brandon Sanderson photo
Brandon Sanderson photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Brian Andreas photo
Muhammad Ali photo

“I'll beat him so bad he'll need a shoehorn to put his hat on.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist
Scott Adams photo
Jim Butcher photo
Rick Riordan photo

“It was the kind of sword that would make a lifelong pacifist look for tall boots and a hat with feathers.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

Derek Landy photo
Brandon Sanderson photo
Jim Butcher photo
Richelle Mead photo
Walt Whitman photo

“I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out.”

Source: Leaves of Grass

P.G. Wodehouse photo

“You know what's the rage this year?… Hats.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Source: The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

Yann Martel photo
Phil Foglio photo

“Any plan where you lose your hat is a bad plan.”

Phil Foglio (1956) American cartoonist

Source: Agatha Heterodyne and the Beetleburg Clank

“You cannot rob robbers with a kitten in your hat!”

Source: Castle in the Air

Brandon Sanderson photo
Brandon Sanderson photo