Rags Quotes

• Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

  John Donne

  Love, Time, Months

  'Songs and Sonnets' 'The Sun Rising'

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• There is no scandal like rags, nor any crime so shameful as poverty.

  George Farquhar

  Justice, Scandal, Poverty

  'The Beaux' Stratagem' (1707) act 1, sc. 1

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• With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread.

  Thomas Hood

  Inspirational, Red, Heavy

  'The Song of the Shirt' (1843)

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• Well, that's baseball. Rags to riches one day and riches to rags the next. But I've been in it 36 years and I'm used to it.

  Casey Stengel

  Baseball, Years, One Day

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• [Autobiographies] are all the same - it's always rags-to-riches or I-slept-with-so-and-so. Damned if I'm going to say that.

  Deborah Kerr

  Riches, Autobiography, Ifs

  54 Copy quote

• There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.

  Herman Melville

  Purple, Devil, Democracy

  Herman Melville (2016). “Redburn.His First Voyage”, p.310, Herman Melville

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• Rags will always make their appearance where they have a right to do it.

  Samuel Johnson

  Laziness, Appearance

  Samuel Johnson, James Boswell (1825). “The Table Talk of Dr. Johnson: Comprising Opinions and Anecdotes of Life and Literature, Men, Manners, and Morals”, p.90

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• A man will remain a rag-picker as long as he has only the vision of a rag-picker.

  Orison Swett Marden

  Men, Long, Vision

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• We are rag dolls made out of many ages and skins, changelings who have slept in wood nests, and hissed in the uncouth guise of waddling amphibians. We have played such roles for infinitely longer ages than we have been human. Our identity is a dream. We are process, not reality.

  Loren Eiseley

  Dream, Sleep, Reality

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• Oh, my tattered rags are caught on your coffee table.

  Homer

  Coffee, Tables, Caught

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• Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen.

  Charles Dickens

  Purple, Doe, Virtue

  Charles Dickens (2009). “Speeches: Literary and Social: Easyread Large Bold Edition”, p.13, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• There is such a love, a love that creates value in what is loved. There is a love that turns rag dolls into priceless treasures. There is a love that fastens itself onto ragged little creatures, for reasons that no one could ever quite figure out, and makes them precious and valued beyond calculation. This is love beyond reason. This is the love of God.

  John Ortberg

  Dolls, Treasure, Littles

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• I record at the same place [Toe Rag or FatSounds Studios in London], with the same people [Liam Watson at Toe Rag and Ed Deegan at Fatsounds], every time. It makes it effortless, and another reason for the vast output when I do go in and record stuff.

  Holly Golightly

  People, Records, London

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• When a child of the streets stands before you in rags, with a tear-stained face, you cannot easily forget him. And yet, you are perplexed what to do. The human soul is difficult to interfere with. You hesitate how far you should go.

  Charles Loring Brace

  Children, Choices, Soul

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• Even in rags I am a god,fallen I am divine,high I triumph when down-trod,long I live when slain!

  Sri Aurobindo

  Long, Triumph, Divine

  Sri Aurobindo, “Life”

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• Politics' the polite word for antediluvian prejudices, the rags put on by enmity and tribal resentment.

  Joseph O'Connor

  Prejudice, Enmity, Resentment

  Joseph O'Connor, Random House UK (2004). “Star of the Sea”, p.11, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Mine was a patchwork God, sewn together from bits of rag and ribbon, Eastern and Western, pagan and Hebrew, everything but the kitchen sink and Jesus.

  Anne Lamott

  Jesus, Kitchen, Together

  Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, p.41, Anchor

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• Now suzanne takes you hand And she leads you to the river She is wearing rags and feathers From salvation army counters And the sun pours down like honey On our lady of the harbour And she shows you where to look Among the garbage and the flowers There are heroes in the seaweed There are children in the morning They are leaning out for love And they will lean that way forever While suzanne holds the mirror And you want to travel with her And you want to travel blind And you know that she will trust you For shes touched your perfect body with her mind.

  Leonard Cohen

  Morning, Children, Hero

  Leonard Cohen, “Suzanne”

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• Rags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the beggar's robes, and graceful insignia of his profession, his tenure, his full dress, the suit in which he is expected to show himself in public.

  Charles Lamb

  Dresses, Poverty, Suits

  Charles Lamb (1835). “Essays of Elia”, p.127

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• I wouldn't mind if the consumer culture went poof! overnight because then we'd all be in the same boat and life wouldn't be so bad, mucking about with the chickens and feudalism and the like. But you know what would be absolutely horrible. The worst? ... If, as we were all down on earth wearing rags and husbanding pigs inside abandoned Baskin-Robbins franchises, I were to look up in the sky and see a jet -- with just one person inside even -- I'd go berserk. I'd go crazy. Either everyone slides back into the Dark Ages or no one does.

  Douglas Coupland

  Crazy, Dark, Pigs

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• I was an arden Hayes man, but that was natural, for I was pretty young at the time, I have since convinced myself that the political opinioins of a nation are of next to no value, in any case, but that what little rag of value they posess is to be found among the old, rather than among the young.

  Mark Twain

  Men, Political, Politics

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• I don't belong to any side. What's more, I think flags are nothing but painted rags that represent rancid emotions. Just seeing someone wrapped up in one of them, spewing out hymns, badges and speeches, gives me the runs. I've always thought that anyone who needs to join a herd so badly must be a bit of a sheep himself

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Running, Thinking, Sheep

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• Fair play with others is primarily the practice of not blaming them for anything that is wrong with us. We tend to rub our guilty conscience against others the way we wipe dirty fingers on a rag. This is as evil a misuse of others as the practice of exploitation.

  Eric Hoffer

  Dirty, Practice, Play

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• Busy old fool, unruly sun, Why dost thou thus, Through windows, and through curtains, call on us? Must to thy motions lovers'seasons run? Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide Late schoolboys, and sour prentices, Go tell court-huntsmen that the King will ride, Call countryants to harvest offices; Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

  John Donne

  Running, Time, Kings

  'Songs and Sonnets' 'The Sun Rising'

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• Woman, thou shouldst ever be clothed in rags and in mourning, appearing only as a penitent, drowned in tears, and expiating thus the sin of having caused the fall of the human race. Woman thou art the gate of the devil. It is thou who hast corrupted those whom Satan dare not attack face to face.

  Tertullian

  Art, Fall, Race

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