Dress Quotes

“Good humor may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Sketches and Travels, Etc.

“I think everything in life is art. What you do. How you dress. The way you love someone, and how you talk. Your smile and your personality. What you believe in, and all your dreams. The way you drink your tea. How you decorate your home. Or party. Your grocery list. The food you make. How your writing looks. And the way you feel. Life is art.”
― Helena Bonham Carter

“A woman's dress should be like a barbed-wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view.”
― Sophia Loren

“My nails dug into his back, and he trailed his lips down the edge of my chin, down the center of my neck. He kept going until he reached the bottom of the dress’s V-neck. I let out a small gasp, and he kissed all around the neckline, just enough to tease.”
― Richelle Mead, The Indigo Spell

“Luxury is the ease of a t-shirt in a very expensive dress.”
― Karl Lagerfeld

“Ladies should also remember that gentlemen look more to the effect of a dress in setting off the figure and countenance of a lady than to its cost. Very few gentlemen have any idea the value of ladies' dresses. This is a subject for female criticism. Beauty of person and elegance of manners in women will always command more admiration from the opposite sex than beauty, elegance or costliness of clothing."
The Scholars' Companion and Ball Room Vade Mecum
Thomas Hillgrove, 1857”
― Thomas Hillgrove

“It occurs to me that I really can't remember your face in any precise detail. Only the way you walked away through the tables in the café, your figure, your dress, that I still see.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“I've no idea when I'm going to wear it, the girl replied calmly. I only knew that I had to have it. Once I tried it on, well... She shrugged. The dress claimed me.”
― Isabel Wolff, A Vintage Affair

“Your red dress,’ she said, and laughed.

But I looked at the dress on the floor and it was as if the fire had spread across the room. It was beautiful and it reminded me of something I must do. I will remember I thought. I will remember quite soon now.”
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

“It's like the old question, "Do you lock your house to keep people out, or to protect what's inside?" Should a person act modestly and dress modestly in order to prevent intrusion from the outside, undesirable things from happening, or to preserve and maintain what is inside: the delicate and sensitive ability to have and maintain an intimate relationship.”
― Manis Friedman, Doesn't Anyone Blush Anymore: Love, Marriage and the Art of Intimacy

“Take care of your costume and your confidence will take care of itself.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“You cannot score a goal when you are sitting on the bench. To do so, you have to dress up and enter the game.”
― Israelmore Ayivor

“Never be complacent about the current steps; don't agree and follow the status quo. Be determined that you are making an indelible impact with great change. Now, dress up and go to make it happen!”
― Israelmore Ayivor, The Great Hand Book of Quotes

“I tried to avoid looking at the dress full on, lest it burn out my retinas with its glittering hideousness. ”
― Katie MacAlister, Holy Smokes

“Don't allow yourself to get into the habit of dressing carelessly when there is 'only' your husband to see you. Depend upon it he has no use for faded tea-gowns and badly dressed hair, and he abhors the sight of curling pins as much as other men do. He is a man after all, and if his wife does not take the trouble to charm him, there are plenty of other women who will.”
― Blanche Ebbutt, Don'ts for Wives

“It was strapless, the bodice peacock-blue and edged in gold, full skirted at the front and gathered into an elaborate, foaming bustle of satin and peacock feathers at the back. I insisted that every inch of bare skin was powdered with gold: my shoulders, décolletage, and the lower part of my face. The golden mask would cover my eye, and my lips were painted with more gold. I carried a golden fan that, when it was opened, revealed hundreds of eyes and looked exactly like a peacock's tail.”
― Rhiannon Hart, Blood Song

“like it or not, what we dress in is a direct reflection of who we are personally, socially, and historically.”
― Leah Wilson, The Girl Who Was on Fire: Your Favorite Authors on Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games Trilogy

“I would rather wear a suit everyday and be respected than dress half naked and be disrespected.”
― Bianca Frazier

“Charles went to kiss her shoulder.
-Leave me alone! she said, you're creasing my dress.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“A commission of haberdashers could alone have reported what
the rest of her poor dress was made of, but it had a strong general
resemblance to seaweed, with here and there a gigantic tea-leaf.
Her shawl looked particularly like a tea-leaf after long infusion.”
― Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

“I was to grow used to hearing, around New York, the annoying way in which people would say: 'Edward Said, such a suave and articulate and witty man,' with the unspoken suffix 'for a Palestinian.' It irritated him, too, naturally enough, but in my private opinion it strengthened him in his determination to be an ambassador or spokesman for those who lived in camps or under occupation (or both). He almost overdid the ambassadorial aspect if you ask me, being always just too faultlessly dressed and spiffily turned out. Fools often contrasted this attention to his tenue with his membership of the Palestine National Council, the then-parliament-in-exile of the people without a land. In fact, his taking part in this rather shambolic assembly was a kind of noblesse oblige: an assurance to his landsmen (and also to himself) that he had not allowed and never would allow himself to forget their plight. The downside of this noblesse was only to strike me much later on.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“I think the skin revolution for women, I will call it, really all started with Mariah Carey. Madonna was pretty risqué too, but she was pretty much always known as a "bad girl." Mariah was a good girl, supposedly Christian, turning very bad, in the late 90's. So then, all the other little girls and teens and women across America thought it would be ok for them to "come out" too essentially, or flaunt whatever they had. Modesty went completely out the window for many women, starting in the late 90's.”
― Lisa Bedrick, On Christian Hot Topics

“The magicked dress danced over to the princess. Despite her misgivings, she stood up to receive it- it would have been rude not to. The dress easily smoothed itself over her. Dark green velvet skirts, full and soft, twirled around down to her ankles. Golden buttons fastened themselves up the placket on the bodice and over the elegant, tight sleeves. From her elbows, wisps of dark green mist flowed to the ground for tippets. A collar around her neck drifted out into a cape of the same material.
"Truly, you are the most beautiful princess in the world," a fairy breathed.
Aurora Rose looked at herself in the mirror of dewdrops. She was indeed the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Long neck, golden hair, wide violet eyes, narrow waist, lips perfectly pink and rosy.
She turned, just a little bit, to see how her figure looked from a different angle. The green velvet flowed softly and majestically, making delicious little noises when its folds rippled. As talented as the castle seamstresses were, the princess had never worn anything as elegant or perfect as this.”
― Liz Braswell, Once Upon a Dream

“The gown is the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen,' I say to her, as I can pay her no other way without insult. It has been a long time since I have been given a gift, barbed though it may be. 'It does feel as though it might come from a dream.'

That makes Habetrot's cheeks pink. 'Good. Maybe you will come back and tell me how the Prince of Sunlight liked the Queen of Night.'

Embarrassed, I step out into the hall, wondering how she could believe that a dress- no matter how beautiful- could make me into an object of desire.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“In this hair, and with this dress, I look pretty. The kind of pretty that allows monsters to deceive people into forests, into dances where they will find their doom.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“Once, the thing I am wearing was a sundress, with fluttery sleeves. A diaphanous white gown that flowed around me when I spun. I found it in a shop late one night. I'd stripped off the clothes given to me in the Court of Teeth, left them behind, and put them on instead.

I liked the dress so much that I wove myself a crown of hellebores and danced through the night streets. I stared at myself in puddles, convinced that so long as I didn't smile, I might even be pretty. I know it doesn't look like that anymore, but I can no longer picture myself in anything else.

I wish Oak could have seen the dress as it was, even though it hasn't looked that way in a long time.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“It is a gown, but one such as I have never seen before. It is composed mostly of the cloth she showed me, but there are strips of other material running through it, some diaphanous and others satiny, some patterned in butterfly wings, some felted wool. Dangling threads hang from torn edges, and a few pieces of thin fabric have been wadded up to give them a new texture. The swirling patchwork she has created is at once tattered and beautiful.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“...the dress clings to my chest and waist, skirt flaring over my hips. The tattered edges give it a haunting elegance, as though I am wrapped in the shadows of dusk. I look the picture of mysterious courtier, rather than someone who sleeps in dirt.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“Crafted of tiny blue gems so pale they were almost white, it clung to every curve and hollow before draping to the floor and pooling like liquid starlight. The long sleeves were tight, capped at the wrists with cuffs of pure diamond. The neckline grazed my collarbones, the modesty of it undone by how the gown hugged areas I supposed a female might enjoy showing off. My hair had been swept off my face with two combs of silver and diamond, then left to drape down my back. And I thought, as I stood alone in my bedroom, that I might have looked like a fallen star.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“The dress was perfect, every inch of it, covering me in emerald green drapery that flowed like the boughs of a weeping willow, the bodice embellished with crushed pearls that made a whispery sound when I moved.”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries