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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• 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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• [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

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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 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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• Is she become a rag doll? Are the wolves become children? It seems quite possible, there on the twilight fringes of dying. With some faint spark of herself, the little girl holds on to the idea. Even a rag doll has more life than does a dying child.

  Jane Lindskold

  Girl, Children, Twilight

  Jane Lindskold (2002). “Through Wolf's Eyes”, p.211, Macmillan

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• Whatever comes," she said, "cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it.

  Frances Hodgson Burnett

  Princess, Gold, Triumph

  Frances Hodgson Burnett (2012). “A Little Princess”, p.146, Collector's Library

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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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• First of all, don't mix your hairpins up with mine! You .... Oh! All right, mix your muck with mine. Mix it! Mix your rags with my tatters! Mix it all up.

  Jean Genet

  Firsts, Mines

  Jean Genet (1994). “The Maids and Deathwatch: Two Plays”, p.31, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Not to rag on myself, but when people say, 'What does it feel like to be an icon?' I'm like, 'My dog does not think I'm an icon, my cat does not think I am an icon, my cousin does not think I am an icon.' I have a really lovely group of friends, and I just don't think about it.

  Kathleen Hanna

  Dog, Cousin, Cat

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