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'

  58 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  48 Copy quote

• 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)

  72 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• [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

  48 Copy quote

• 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

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  65 Copy quote

• 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

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  50 Copy quote

• 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

  175 Copy quote

• In our rags of light, all dressed to kill.

  Leonard Cohen

  Light

  Song: If It Be Your Will

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• [My characters are] conglomerations of past and present stages of civilization, bits from books and newspapers, scraps of humanity, rags and tatters of fine clothing, patched together as is the human soul

  August Strindberg

  Book, Character, Past

  August Strindberg “Twelve Major Plays”, AldineTransaction

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• And they heard the roaring thunder of a third brilliantly lighted express. "Are they pursuing the first travelers?" demanded the little prince. "They are pursuing nothing at all," said the switchman. "They are asleep in there, or if they are not asleep they are yawning. Only the children are flattening their noses against the windowpanes." "Only the children know what they are looking for," said the little prince. "They waste their time over a rag doll and it becomes very important to them; and if anybody takes it away from them, they cry..." "They are lucky," the switchman said.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Children, Yawning, Important

  6 Copy quote

• Only the children know what they are looking for. They waste their time over a rag doll and it becomes very important to them; and if anybody takes it away from them, they cry.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Children, Yawning, Important

  2 Copy quote

• 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”

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• He (Pres. Bush) rightly decided that it was far better to return all Haitians than to encourage, deliberately or not, tens of thousands of people to take to the open ocean in unseaworthy, overcrowded boats.... When the Haitians sense the door has been cracked open, they will once again prepare their rag-tag armada and set sail for the land of plenty - America.

  Robert Byrd

  Ocean, Doors, Land

  3 Copy quote

• Suttree stood among the screaming leaves and called the lightning down. It cracked and boomed about and he pointed out the darkened heart within him and cried for light. If there be any art in the weathers of this earth. Or char these bones to coal. If you can, if you can. A blackened rag in the rain.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Art, Rain, Weather

  Cormac McCarthy (2010). “Suttree”, p.440, Pan Macmillan

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• and nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old

  Jack Kerouac

  Growing, Forlorn, Nobody Knows

  Jack Kerouac (2007). “On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.366, Penguin

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is something wrong in a government where they who do the most have the least. There is something wrong when honesty wears a rag, and rascality a robe; when the loving, the tender, east a crust, while the infamous sit at banquets.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Honesty, Equality, Government

  Robert Green Ingersoll, Herman E. Kittredge (1909). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• When shall I at last retire into solitude alone, without companions, without joy and without sorrow, with only the sacred certainty that all is a dream? When, in my rags—without desires—shall I retire contented into the mountains? When, seeing that my body is merely sickness and crime, age and death, shall I—free, fearless, and blissful—retire to the forest? When? When, oh when?

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Dream, Joy, Fearless

  Nikos Kazantzakis, Carl Wildman (1953). “Zorba the Greek”, p.25, Simon and Schuster

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Giants are usually described as rag tag, kind of a great garage sale team, and the Democrats are described as the Mommies to the Republican Daddies; and everyone hates the mommies, but wait, wait - I didn't intend to get into the pathos and thrill of being a Democratic Giants fan.

  Anne Lamott

  Hate, Team, Daddy

  0 Copy quote

• I don't buy these rag magazines that feed off of stolen, you know, press. They're basically stealing someone's image in order to make money for themselves... They wait at the end of my street in their cars. Every time I exit my home, I have company.

  Ashton Kutcher

  Home, Order, Car

  0 Copy quote