Rags Quotes - Page 6

• After all, there is such a thing as looking like a gentleman. There are men whose class no dirt or rags can hide, any more than they could Ulysses. I have seen such men in plenty among workmen, too; but, on the whole, the gentleman--by whom I do not mean just now the rich--have the superiority in that point. But not, please God, forever. Give us the same air, water, exercise, education, good society, and you will see whether this "haggardness," this "coarseness" (etc., for the list is too long to specify), be an accident, or a property, of the man of the people.

  Charles Kingsley

  Mean, Exercise, Men

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• Rogues in rags are kept in countenance by rogues in ruffles.

  Alexander Pope

  Ruffles, Rogues, Countenance

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• Then might ye see
  Cowls, hoods, and habits with their wearers tost
  And flutter'd into rags; then reliques, beads,
  Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls,
  The sport of winds; all these upwhirl'd aloft
  Fly to the rearward of the world far off
  Into a limbo large and broad, since called
  The paradise of fools.

  John Milton

  Sports, Wind, Bulls

  John Milton, “Paradise Lost: Book 03”

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• He sits in an old armchair in the corner covered with bits of blankets and a bucket behind the chair that stinks enough to make you sick and when you look at that old man in the dark corner you want to get a hose with hot water and strip him and wash him down and give him a big feed of rashers and eggs and mashed potatoes with loads of butter and salt and onions.I want to take the man from the Boer War and the pile of rags in the bed and put them in a big sunny house in the country with birds chirping away outside the window and a stream gurgling.

  Frank McCourt

  Country, War, Dark

  Frank McCourt (1999). “Angela's Ashes: A Memoir”, p.317, Simon and Schuster

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• The balancing of the budget will not in itself place a teaspoonful of milk in a hungry baby's stomach, or remove the rags from its mother's back.

  John L. Lewis

  Mother, Baby, Economic Inequality

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• And so when I couldn't stand it no longer, I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied.

  Mark Twain

  Cute, Sugar, Satisfied

  Mark Twain (2010). “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, p.7, Collector's Library

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• About 25 years ago, I took a bicycle across the United States. I soon found out that the greatest item of clothing was the trusty bandanna. There were dozens of uses for a bandanna - as a pot holder, a chain cleaner, a sun shield, a headband, a snot rag, a declaration of Kerouacian intent.

  Colum McCann

  Years, United States, Use

  "How I Dress Now: Colum McCann" by Colum Mccann, www.esquire.com. January 31, 2013.

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• The man forget not, though in rags he lies,
  And know the mortal through a crown's disguise.

  Mark Akenside

  Lying, Men, Crowns

  Mark Akenside (1808). “The Poetical Works of Mark Akenside ...: Collated with the Best Editions”

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• Marching onward, marching onward
  Marching to that lovely tune
  Marching onward, marching onward
  Happy as a bird in June
  
  Sliding onward, sliding onward
  Listen to that rag
  Hop and skip now do that slow, oh
  Do that slow drag
  
  Dance slowly, prance slowly
  Now you hear that pretty rag
  Dance slowly, prance slowly
  Now you do the real slow drag
  
  Waltz slowly, waltz slowly
  Listen to the ragtime
  Hop and skip
  Now do the slow, oh, do the slow drag

  Scott Joplin

  Real, June, Bird

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• Like a lot of what happens in novels, inspiration is
  a sort of spontaneous combustion--the oily rags of the head and heart.

  Stanley Elkin

  Inspiration, Heart, Spontaneous

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• Oh! it offends me to the soul to hear a robust periwig-pated fellow, tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings.

  William Shakespeare

  Passion, Soul, Tears

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 3, sc. 2, l. 1

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• When you go to Africa, and you see children, they're usually barefoot, dirty and in rags, and they'd love to go to school.

  Annie Lennox

  Children, Dirty, School

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• The oat is the Horatio Alger of cereals, which progressed, if not from rags to riches, at least from weed to health food.

  Waverley Root

  Weed, Cereal, Oats

  Waverley Root (1996). “Food”, William S. Konecky Associates

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• No picture is made to endure nor to live with but it is made to sell and sell quickly with usura, sin against nature, is thy bread ever more of stale rags is thy bread dry as paper.

  Ezra Pound

  Nature, Paper, Dry

  Cantos no. 45, l. 11 (1937)

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• I saw a man clothed with rags . . . a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back.

  John Bunyan

  Book, Men, Hands

  John Bunyan (1845). “The Pilgrim's Progress from this World to that which is to Come: Delivered Under the Similitude of a Dream”, p.1

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• Strip the human race, absolutely naked, and it would be a real democracy. But the introduction of even a rag of tiger skin, or a cowtail, could make a badge of distinction and be the beginning of a monarchy.

  Mark Twain

  Real, Race, Clothes

  Mark Twain, Caroline Thomas Harnsberger (1948). “Mark Twain at your fingertips”

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• I just kind of opened up and said, 'I feel like a rag doll. I have hair and makeup people coming to my house every day and putting me in new, uncomfortable, weird dresses and expensive shoes, and I just shut down and raise my arms up for them to get the dress on, and pout my lips when they need to put the lipstick on.'

  Jennifer Lawrence

  Makeup, Hair, Shoes

  "The Hunger Games: First look at Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss!". www.ew.com. May 18, 2011.

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• We don't leave home without my daughter's doll La-La. She looks like a bit of a rag, but India is obsessed with her.

  Georgina Chapman

  Daughter, Mother, Home

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• When you set about your composing, it may be necessary for your ease, and better distillation of wit, to put on your worst clothes, and the worse the better; for an author, like a limbeck, will yield the better for having a rag about him: besides that, I have observed a gardener cut the outward rind of a tree (which is the surtout of it) to make it bear well; and this is a natural account of the usual poverty of poets, and is an argument why wits, of all men living, ought to be ill clad.

  Jonathan Swift

  Cutting, Men, Clothes

  Jonathan Swift (1812). “The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D.D. ...: With Notes, Historical and Critical”, p.73

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• Unfortunately I have no rags-to-riches story to tell. Money never played a big role for me. My parents just had it.

  Stelios Haji-Ioannou

  Parent, Roles, Stories

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• He had never been interested in stories at any age, and had never quite understood the basic concept. He'd never read a work of fiction all the way through. He did remember, as a small boy, being really annoyed at the depiction of Hickory Dickory Dock in a rag book of nursery rhymes because the clock in the drawing was completely wrong for the period.

  Terry Pratchett

  Book, Boys, Drawing

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• Books lie, he said. God dont lie. No, said the judge. He does not. And these are his words. He held up a chunk of rock. He speaks in stones and trees, the bones of things. The squatters in their rags nodded among themselves and were soon reckoning him correct, this man of learning, in all his speculations, and this the judge encouraged until they were right proselytes of the new order whereupon he laughed at them for fools.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Lying, Book, Men

  Cormac McCarthy (2010). “Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West”, p.122, Vintage

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• Style is indeed the valet of genius, and an able one too; but as the true gentleman will appear, even in rags, so true genius will shine, even through the coarsest style.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Shining, Gentleman, Style

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.10

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• Good-bye -- if you hear of my being stood up against a stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease or falling down the cellar stairs.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Wall, Fall, Thinking

  Ambrose Bierce, S. T. Joshi, Tryambak Sunand Joshi, David E. Schultz (2003). “A Much Misunderstood Man: Selected Letters of Ambrose Bierce”, p.243, Ohio State University Press

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• Now that my ladder's gone, I must lie down where all my ladders start, In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

  William Butler Yeats

  Lying, Heart, Gone

  Last Poems (1939) "The Circus Animals' Desertion" pt. 3

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