Buttoned Up Quotes & Sayings

American secretaries of state have typically been more buttoned up than bon vivant, but John Quincy Adams's diplomatic successes - bigger than anything presidential or legislative that he achieved - still surprise a student of his personality. — Thomas Mallon

The titular counselor buttoned up his collar and replied seriously: If you live in a state, you should either ch-cherish it or leave it - anything else is either parasitism or mere lackeys' gossip. — Boris Akunin

More often than not, your best move is to keep quiet. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Postwar America was a very buttoned-up nation. Radio shows were run by censors, Presidents wore hats, ladies wore girdles. We came straight out of the blue - nobody was expecting anything like Martin and Lewis. A sexy guy and a monkey is how some people saw us. — Jerry Lewis

Too racy?" I asked.
She snorted. "Too asinine. For being such a brilliant woman in all other respects, apparently, she was completely flummoxed by sex. When she wrote about it, it was either all buttoned up or completely, pardon the expression,screwy. Between you and me, the letters to Willing are just sloppy and boring. The spicy bits read like old Cosmopolitans now. The rest is just simpering and scolding him for not writing in kind."
"Of course he didn't. He loved Diana."
Maxine swept a shred of paper from her desk with a quick backhand. "Oh, for heavens sake." She huffed out a breath. "The heart of a teenager. — Melissa Jensen

Should i even bother scanning the crowd for my parents? I could turn around and go back to the dormitory. Then I see her. My mother stands alone near the railing with her hands clasped in front of her. she has never looked more out of place, with her gray slacks and gray jacket buttoned at the throat, her hair in its simple twist and her face placid. I start toward her, tears jumping into my eyes. She came. She came for me. I walk faster. She sees me, and for a second her expression is blank, like she doesn't know who I am. Then her eyes light up, and she opens her arms. She smells like soap and laundry detergent. — Veronica Roth

One of the things I've always thought is a drag in so many period adaptations is that they are always buttoned up to the neck in so many clothes all the time. I'm always looking for excuses to get them out of their clothes. — Andrew Davies

That's a male pornographic fantasy that we're buttoned-up all day and let our boobs hang out at night. The truth is, some girls are very girly and feminine, and they love to wear makeup and high heels. Other girls are more tomboyish, and they don't. — Cara Santa Maria

Zane rolled his eyes. "At least I think with my head and not with my ass," he muttered as he buttoned his jeans and zipped up.
"Your ass is more fun to look at," Ty shot back from under the pillow.
Stopping in place, Zane boggled at the pillow. "You did not just say you've looked at my ass." Dear God. The tease of that was fucking inflammatory. He didn't need this kind of torture.
"You show it often enough," Ty countered in a sly tone, still muffled.
"You don't mean that literally," Zane muttered as he started stacking folders on the table, trying to make room for food. []"I mean everything I say literally.Literally," he said with wry emphasis. — Abigail Roux

I love nothing better than to get all the nuts and bolts out of the way - show up on time, with lines learned, clear on what the director expects of me, with my buttons buttoned and my jewelry on correctly - and then I completely commit to play acting. — Jane Elliot

A suburban pastor maintained services appropriate for his respected, professional parish. His father, an excitable traveling evangelist, visited and challenged the congregation to confront pride and sing out loudly with the windows open. The next day, the pastor's banker mentioned overhearing, and he was sheepish. The buttoned-up banker said, though, that the neighborhood had been WAITING TO HEAR the church live out the joy they claimed. — David Wilkerson

We stare at each other pop-eyed over the burlap sack and laugh as if we're afraid to stop. Somebody needs to say the magical, abracadabrical words that will turn tonight's crime into a joke. Marta has buttoned her wet sweater up to her neck. Petey's vanished. Now Raffy swirls the flashlights with true panic. Our joke keeps hatching and waddling forward in a snaky black procession, growing longer and less funny by the second, and this time nobody, not even Raffy, knows the punch line. — Karen Russell

Humans are often more stupid than they realize. Because of our weaknesses are so easily exploited. Just like a child's clumsy fingers messing up the buttons on a shirt. It's easy to mock someone who buttoned his shirt wrongly. It's easy to mock someone who had buttoned wrongly yet remains oblivious to it. But there are also people who completely fail to realize that they buttoned them all wrongly. Just a moment's error, a wrong choice, traps us on the road of no return. But who can reprimand them for that? Why can't humans be lonely? Why can't we yearn for those right by our side? On such a cold lonely night, who can stand to bear it alone? Imagine the fright when we realize the severity of our mistakes. Whoever said love was a happy affair? — Yuuri Eda

I never meet a ragged boy in the street without feeling that i may owe him a salute, for I know not what possibilities may be buttoned up under his coat. — James A. Garfield

He slipped his arms into the scarlet woollen cassock and fastened the thirty-three buttons that ran from his neck to his ankles - one button for each year of Christ's life. Around his waist he tied the red watered-silk sash of the cincture, or fascia, designed to remind him of his vow of chastity, and checked to make sure its tasselled end hung to a point midway up his left calf. Then he pulled over his head the thin white linen rochet - the symbol, along with the mozzetta, of his judicial authority. The bottom two-thirds and the cuffs were of white lace with a floral pattern. He tied the tapes in a bow at his neck and tugged the rochet down so that it extended to just below his knees. Finally he put on his mozzetta, an elbow-length nine-buttoned scarlet cape. — Robert Harris

Roetown, of mixed economy, neither boom nor bust, just ordinary times - that is, hard - had a slightly run-down aspect, I suppose. But in a pleasing way, like a man you love who has buttoned his coat up wrong. — Yann Martel

I'd been at the mercy of a prick on a power trip, the kind of buttoned-up bantam rooster who gets off on control and then, when you resist him, tells you that you've got issues with control. — Norah Vincent

A successful presentation needs to be both buttoned up (orderly) and free-flowing (a conversation). The tension between the two, the fact that both things are happening at once, defines the process. — Dale Ludwig

Ryan couldn't believe his eyes. Gran wearing leather chaps in a Harley shop, talking about her ass. It was a living nightmare.
"What am I doing here?" he asked Gran. Before he could read her the riot act on safety, Liz stepped in front of him. Her pink shirt was buttoned all the way to the top and tucked into ironed white pants. Her hair was straight and perfect. He had the strangest urge to muss her up. — Kylie Gilmore

Even more difficult to explain, than the breaking-up of a single mass into fragments, and the drifting apart of these blocks to form the foundations of the present-day continents, is the explanation of the original production of the single mass, or PANGAEA, by the concentration of the former holosphere of granitic sial into a hemisphere of compressed and crushed gneisses and schists. Creep and the effects of compression, due to shrinking or other causes, have been appealed to but this is hardly a satisfactory explanation. The earth could no more shrug itself out of its outer rock-shell unaided, than an animal could shrug itself out of its hide, or a man wriggle out of his skin, or even out of his closely buttoned coat, without assistance either of his own hands or those of others. — Amadeus William Grabau

At some point, Alice slipped one arm and then the other into the coat's sleeves, she buttoned its buttons, starting at the top. Silas had followed her, still not seeing what an emblem of defeat, shame, loss, hopelessness, the coat was. With such gaps in his understanding, he saw very clearly how the boy he'd been had grown up to be the man he was. — Tom Franklin

I will be on the look out for you, my dear girl," he wrote. "You must expect to give yourself up when you come." For this buttoned-up age, for Burnham, it was a letter that could have steamed itself open. — Erik Larson

Man's earthly interests,'are all hooked and buttoned together, and held up, by Clothes. — Thomas Carlyle

Why are you all buttoned up like that?" Cameron ran his gaze down the blackberry-shaped buttons of her bodice.[ ... ] "You were happy to bare all last night," Cameron said. He let his mallet handler hover an inch from her chest. "Your bodice was down here."
Ainsley cleared her throat. "Low neckline for evening, high for morning."[ ... ]
"This doesn't suit you," Cameron said.
"I can't help the fashion, Lord Cameron."
Cameron poked the top button with his gloved finder. "Undo this."
Ainsley jumped. "What?"
"Unbutton your damned frock."
She nearly choked. "Why?"
"Because I want you to." Cameron's smile spread across his face, slow and sinful, and his voice went low. Dangerous. "Tell me, Mrs. Douglas. How many buttons will you undo for me? — Jennifer Ashley

He shrugged. "Yeah, but me dad said th' only way to learn is t' ask questions. An' it's hard to do that with buttoned-up lips. Anyway, I c'n tell that one you're followin' is a bad bloke. He has those eyes. He always give me the evil look when he comes up that hill, kinda like you did this mornin', but I could tell you was jus' scared. Not mean."
"I was not scared," I said.
"'Course you were," he replied matter-of-factly. "You're new here and followin' some bad guy. But you got a good guide now, so you'll get your story and then your boss'll be happy, right?"
It seemed pointless to argue with an eight-year-old kid, especially when he was essentially correct, so I just buttoned my lip and followed. — Rysa Walker

Bayleigh got up from the table and walked slowly toward Cade, the shirt she'd stolen from him barely buttoned and enticing him with every step. His pupils dilated with desire and she watched his cock swell beneath his jeans. She moved as if she were going to straddle his lap, but at the last second, she moved her knee so it was pressed directly against his balls. His indrawn breath was enough to know that she was using the right amount of pressure.
"Don't you ever threaten me with my brothers", she whispered in his ears. "I get enough of that from them and I won't take it from you too, no matter how much control you think our sleeping together gives you. I'm old enough to make my own decisions and take the consequences of my actions. I control my life. No one else."
She nipped at his ear and felt satisfaction at his indrawn breath. — Liliana Hart

The message sent by this policy is that if women are to be accepted into the exclusive ranks of men, then they have to look like men: buttoned up, stuffy, and no-nonsense. As if to show a little cleavage, to highlight a curvaceous figure, or to in any way appear feminine would discount, discredit, and disqualify them.
I strongly disagree with this idea. I feel that women should wear clothes that suit their bodies rather than forcing themselves into unflattering men's suits and that it is feminist to to make a wide range of women's clothes acceptable business attire. — Tim Gunn

The "through-and-through" universe seems to suffocate me with its infallible impeccable all-pervasiveness. Its necessity , with no possibilities; its relations, with no subjects, make me feel as if I had entered into a contract with no reserved rights ... It seems too buttoned-up and white-chokered and clean-shaven a thing to speak for the vast slow-breathing unconscious Kosmos with its dread abysses and its unknown tides. — William James

At school, there was an annual school disco and I'd be standing in my bedroom wondering what to wear for hours on end. Eventually I'd arrive at a decision that was just the most ridiculous costume you could have ever devised - I think it was probably knitted Christmas jumpers on top of buttoned-up white shirts. — Guy Berryman

They say that in D.C., all the museums and the monuments have been concessioned out and turned into a tourist park that now generates about 10 percent of the Government's revenue.
The Feds could run the concession themselves and probably keep more of the gross, but that's not the point. It's a philosophical thing. A back-to-basics thing. Government should govern. It's not in the entertainment industry, is it? Leave entertaining to Industry weirdos
people who majored in tap dancing. Feds aren't like that. Feds are serious people. Poli-sci majors. Student council presidents. Debate club chairpersons. The kinds of people who have the grit to wear a dark wool suit and a tightly buttoned collar even when the temperature has greenhoused up to a hundred and ten degrees and the humidity is thick enough to stall a jumbo jet. The kinds of people who feel most at home on the dark side of a one-way mirror. — Neal Stephenson

Sitting in the bathroom, reading the book again, he became so involved in the story that his legs fell asleep. He kept reading, intending to get up at the end of this page, then at the end of this page, if only because he would feel more comfortable with his pants up and buttoned, but he read on. He rose finally at the end of a chapter, although he read a little into the next chapter before he made himself stop. His legs were buoyant with saws and needles as he buttoned up, and he had to hold a hand against the wall not to sway from balance. Then he checked the thickness of pages he had read between his fingers, and experienced something he had never experienced before. Some of it was pride - he was reading a book - and some of it was a preciousness the book had assumed. Feeling relaxed, unthreatened, he wanted to keep the book in his hands, for what it offered. He did not want to turn the pages, for then they would be gone and spent; nor did he want to do anything but turn the pages. — Theodore Weesner

People see me as pretty low key in a lot of ways. And for me, like, even choosing to be John Legend and to be who I am as a star, as an artist, it's a risk 'cause I - you know, I graduated from college and worked as a management consultant, and I could have had this very kind of buttoned-up life and worn suits to work every day. — John Legend

...a Nigerian couple visiting from Maryland, their two boys sitting next to them on the sofa, both buttoned-up and stiff, caged in the airlessness of their parents' immigrant aspirations. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

My chest clenched as I looked down at the oil-stained asphalt. Here but not. Existing but not living. I knew that feeling. Lived it for several years. Some days it felt like I was still wearing that feeling like a heavy jacket buttoned up too tightly. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

As we've grown 'The Daily Muse' and met contacts who want to collaborate with us, knowing who does what has helped us be clear on who we want our partners to connect with - and makes us look buttoned up, too. SEO firm? Talk to our COO. An editor from the 'Huffington Post?' Meet our Editor-in-Chief. — Kathryn Minshew

She sat up, cheeks flushed and golden hair tousled. She was so beautiful that it made my soul ache. I always wished desperately that I could paint her in these moments and immortalize that look in her eyes. There was a softness in them that I rarely saw at other times, a total and complete vulnerability in someone who was normally so guarded and analytical in the rest of her life. But although I was a decent painter, capturing her on canvas was beyond my skill.
She collected her brown blouse and buttoned it up, hiding the brightness of turquoise lace with the conservative attire she liked to armor herself in. She'd done an overhaul of her bras in the last month, and though I was always sad to see them disappear, it made me happy to know they were there, those secret spots of color in her life. — Richelle Mead

Fair enough." She lowered her knees, stared down as she buttoned her shirt again. "Ty, I'm really
sorry. I'd never do anything to upset Eli, or to cause trouble between the two of you."
"I know." He pushed to his feet and after a brief hesitation held out his hand to help her up.
"I want to make love with you."
His already jangled system suffered. "I think what we both want's pretty clear. I just don't know
what we're going to do about it. I have to go after him."
"Yes. — Nora Roberts

Just like the NBA, the NFL has guys that can pull off multiple looks, ranging from street style to more dapper, buttoned-up looks, and people are starting to notice. — Cam Newton

I was used to the buttoned up, wealthy, Casper-skinned whites that always spoke in their library voices and used words like sassy and spicy to describe me. I was used to white people that embodied the suburban American dream. White people like Lainie's parents, who wished their daughters weren't dating me, but tolerated it and engaged me in discussions about affirmative action and how I benefited from it. — Gabby Rivera

Don't look so stunned," she teased. "I want you, Bram. So much. All the time. When it comes to you, this buttoned-up spinster is just seething with wild, insatiable passion." She kissed him, teasing her tongue over his lips. "It should hardly come as any surprise. You've been telling me so since the very beginning."
"I know," he said wonderingly. "I know. The surprise is that you listened." He cradled her neck in one hand and claimed her mouth in a deep, masterful kiss.

-Susanna & Bram — Tessa Dare

Most of the drug CEOs I know, they're not themselves - they're what people want them to be. It's pretty obvious of the different drug executives. They're old white men, very buttoned up. They're appropriate, so to speak. I'm a little bit more irreverent, and I'm not going to change just because I have this job. — Martin Shkreli