#trousers

Read through the most famous quotes by topic #trousers




One also, in our milieu, simply didn't meet enough Americans to form an opinion. And when one did—this was in the days of crew-cuts and short-legged pants—they, too, often really did sport crew-cuts and trousers that mysteriously ended several inches short of the instep. Why was that? It obviously wasn't poverty. A colleague of my father's had a daughter who got herself married and found that an American friend she had met on holiday had offered to pay the whole cost of the nuptial feast. I forget the name of this paladin, but he had a crew-cut and amputated trouser-bottoms and a cigar stub and he came from a place called Yonkers, which seemed to me a ridiculous name to give to a suburb. (I, who had survived Crapstone… ) Anyway, once again one received a Henry Jamesian impression of brash generosity without overmuch refinement. There was a boy at my boarding school called Warren Powers Laird Myers, the son of an officer stationed at one of the many U.S. Air Force bases in Cambridgeshire. Trousers at The Leys School were uniform and regulation, but he still managed to show a bit of shin and to buzz-cut his hair. 'I am not a Yankee,' he informed me (he was from Norfolk, Virginia). 'I am a CON-federate.' From what I was then gleaning of the news from Dixie, this was unpromising. In our ranks we also had Jamie Auchincloss, a sprig of the Kennedy-Bouvier family that was then occupying the White House. His trousers managed to avoid covering his ankles also, though the fact that he shared a parent with Jackie Kennedy meant that anything he did was accepted as fashionable by definition. The pants of a man I'll call Mr. 'Miller,' a visiting American master who skillfully introduced me to J.D. Salinger, were also falling short of their mark. Mr. Miller's great teacher-feature was that he saw sexual imagery absolutely everywhere and was slightly too fond of pointing it out [...]. Meanwhile, and as I mentioned much earlier, the dominant images projected from the United States were of the attack-dog-and-firehose kind, with swag-bellied cops lying about themselves and the political succession changed as much by bullets as by ballots.


Christopher Hitchens


#trousers #world-war-ii #change

Never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.


Henrik Ibsen


#fight #freedom #go #never #out

Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.


Georg C. Lichtenberg


#covered #decorum #every #every man #his

Just as we outgrow a pair of trousers, we outgrow acquaintances, libraries, principles, etc., at times before they're worn out and times - and this is the worst of all - before we have new ones.


Georg C. Lichtenberg


#before #etc #just #libraries #new

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.


T.S. Eliot


#trousers #walking #love

Banks operate like a man who either wears his trousers round his chest, stifling breathing, as now, or round his ankles, exposing his assets. We want their trousers tied round their middle: steady lending growth; particularly to productive British business, especially small scale enterprise.


Vince Cable


#assets #banks #breathing #british #business

You gotta wear the right trousers if you're gonna be a rock star.


Chris Martin


#gotta #right #rock #rock star #star

If you prefer, I'll be pure raging meat, or if you prefer, as the sky changes tone, I'll be absolutely tender, not a man, but a cloud in trousers!


Vladimir Mayakovsky


#russian-poetry #change

Here's how I used to think you made a book: a poet comes along, mouth half open, inspired, then suddenly the idiot bursts into song - fancy that!


Vladimir Mayakovsky


#russian-poetry #inspirational

But I am convinced that those Jews who stand aside today with a malicious smile and with their hands in their trousers' pockets will also want to dwell in our beautiful home.


Theodor Herzl


#am #aside #beautiful #beautiful home #convinced