Cloth Quotes & Sayings

He let his head rest against the crisp cloth of her uniform jacket a moment longer. She shifted, her arms reaching toward him. Was she about to hug him? If she did, Miles decided, he was going to grab her and kiss her right there. And then see what happened - Behind him, Galeni's office doors swished open. Elli and he both flinched away from each other, Elli coming to parade rest with a toss of her short dark curls, Miles just standing and cursing inwardly at the interruption. He — Lois McMaster Bujold

A book is not necessarily made of paper. A book is not necessarily made to be read on a Kindle. A book is a collection of text, organized in one of a variety of ways. You could say that words printed on paper and bound between cloth covers will someday be obsolete. But if and when that day comes, there will still be a thing called books. — James Gleick

It rarely snows because Antarctica is a desert. An iceberg means it's tens of millions of years old and has calved from a glacier. (This is why you must love life: one day you're offering up your social security number to the Russia Mafia; two weeks later you're using the word calve as a verb.) I saw hundreds of them, cathedrals of ice, rubbed like salt licks; shipwrecks, polished from wear like marble steps at the Vatican; Lincoln Centers capsized and pockmarked; airplane hangars carved by Louise Nevelson; thirty-story buildings, impossibly arched like out of a world's fair; white, yes, but blue, too, every blue on the color wheel, deep like a navy blazer, incandescent like a neon sign, royal like a Frenchman's shirt, powder like Peter Rabbit's cloth coat, these icy monsters roaming the forbidding black. — Maria Semple

He dusted off the shoulder tab and stared at it, so light in his hand, so inconsequential. It was hard to believe that a shred of cloth could have so much destructive power locked away in it. — Mark Mills

The problem that I think is reasonable to assert about Fox and its coverage is that they make up stories out of whole cloth and then make a big deal out of them. — Rachel Maddow

Do not presume to judge the Qui, Mr. President. Your society aspires to an ideal that exists only at levels like the United Regions. Analyze your world's history and you find pockets of feudal life that continue to exist today. Cultures where rape victims are killed so as not to dishonor their family; countries where the male of your species has so little self-control, the female is obliged to hide behind cloth for fear they will tempt them into carnal acts; regions where children are slaughtered for no reason. And this was all before our invasion. — Kayla Stonor

Imagine the universe is like this cloth." Philippos said, lifting up an old rag off the ground. "There are thousands of tiny threads woven in tiny, little patterns. If you follow one thread it will lead you to the end, but also you'll see that more threads are connected to it. What if you decide to follow another? Where would that lead you? And if you cut one thread, what would happen to the cloth then? Would it fray until it fell apart? Or would it just change pattern?" he paused thoughtfully. "Wielders like you can see those possibilities. You can follow the threads and see where they begin and end, where and how they connect with everything else and what might happen if something changes along the way. — D.M. Enslin

Okies who had just stepped into the corridor long enough to get a tin can of water for our boiling radiator. There are other stories, other dilemmas, but the characters never change. We're always standing around, unwashed, uncurled, harried, penniless, memory gone, no lipstick, no hose, unmatched shoes, and using the dirtiest cloth in the house to bind our wounds. Makes — Erma Bombeck

Though she'd try to do otherwise, she had never been able to stop cluttering her present with her past. Now somebody she didn't know would pack her treasures into plastic bags and carry them away. A life, at its end, is a pile of cloth and paper, and goods that can be bagged and labelled. None of the best things - the voice and the laugh, the tilt of the head, the things seen and felt and spoken - are allowed to stay behind. — Sonya Hartnett

LINEN, n. "A kind of cloth the making of which, when made of hemp, entails a great waste of hemp." — Ambrose Bierce

We should call on the Creator to show more modesty. He created the world in a frenzy of excitement. Instead of revising his rough drafts, he had his work printed straightaway. What a lot of contradictions there are in it. What a log of typing errors, inconsistencies in the plot, passages that are too long and wordy, characters that are entirely superfluous. But it is painful and difficult to cut and trim the living cloth of a book written and published in too much of a hurry — Vasily Grossman

Smaller than a breadbox, bigger than a TV remote, the average book fits into the human hand with a seductive nestling, a kiss of texture, whether of cover cloth, glazed jacket, or flexible paperback. — John Updike

I am happy to see him on the couch, his huge feet on the arm, dirtying the cloth. I am happy to hear him stomping upstairs across the floorboards and whipping towels at his sisters after he has showered. I am happy to hear him screaming for no reason, bounding down the stairs, reaching the bottom and wildly petting Nelly, shaking her head back and forth, and calling her a good girl. I think how it doesn't matter who shot my son. My son is back. — Yannick Murphy

Mig watched her father walk away, the red table cloth billowing out behind him. He left his daughter. And, as you already know, he did not look back. Not even once. — Kate DiCamillo

Memories

Hello, duck,
in yellow

cloth stuffed from
inside out,

little
pillow. — Robert Creeley

Jane, who is much better at reading guide books than I am (I always read them on the way back to see what I missed, it's often quite a shock), discovered something wonderful in the book she was reading. Did I know, she asked, that Brisbane was originally founded as a penal colony for convicts who committed new offences after they had arrived in Australia ? I spent a good half hour enjoying this single piece of information. It was wonderful. There we British sat, poor grey sodden creatures, huddling under our grey northern sky that seeped like a rancid dish cloth, busy sending those we wished to punish most severely to sit in bright sunlight on the coast of the Tasman Sea at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef and maybe do some surfing too. No wonder the Australians have a particular kind of smile that they reserve exclusively for use on the British. — Douglas Adams

Socially we are woven into the fabric of society, where every man is like one thread in a piece of cloth. No single thread has a right to say, "I will stay here no longer," and draw out. No man has a right to make a hole in the well-woven fabric of society. — Henry Ward Beecher

Hers to be his to be hers ad
infinitum, smoke smudging
the
bell of her throat. To what had
been or might've been her
thoughts migrated, cloth wall
he
pressed his hand against, he of
the indelicate embrace. — Nathaniel Mackey

And we took off-whoosh-into the night. Through the clouds, we hurtled up into the sky. And this man farted. I will never forget it as long as I live. Not only was it the worst fart, it was the longest. Maybe, it was the position he was in, he had squeezed his ass all up. But he was kinda leanin over and pointing his ass up toward me. And it made the strangest noise. It was like cloth tearing. — Billy Connolly

She'd already memorized the short Psalm and was hungry for more. Indeed, each word seemed woven into her soul the way the weaver wove his wares, taking the barest threads of her faith and making something beautiful and enduring as fine cloth deep inside her. — Laura Frantz

Do you mind?" she said indignantly, pointedly glancing at his all-too-masculine display.
He gave a lazy shrug. "It is not exactly as if I can comfortably put everything back together again."
She blushed furiously. "Well, don't talk about it, for heaven's sake!"
He found himself smiling in spite of the raging demands of his body. With unhurried movements he positioned himself within the confines of the tight cloth and buttoned the fly. "Does that make you feel safer?" he teased tenderly. — Christine Feehan

We had a signal. When I turned the pail upside down by the kitchen house, that meant everything was clear. Mauma would open the window and throw down a taffy she stole from missus' room. Sometimes here came a bundle of cloth scraps - real nice calicos, gingham, muslin, some import linen. One time, that true brass thimble. Her favorite thing to take was scarlet-red thread. She would wind it up in her pocket and walk right out the house with it. — Sue Monk Kidd

In a pinch, when my leather shoes need a quick shine, I take the inside of a banana peel and rub it on the leather like I would a shoe wax. Then I spit-shine it and buff it with a cloth, and my shoes look great. — Chris Diamantopoulos

And now for the vapor-bath: on a framework of three sticks, meeting at the top, they stretch pieces of woolen cloth, taking care to get the joints as perfect as they can, and inside this little tent they put a dish with red-hot stones in it. Then they take some hemp seed, creep into the tent, and throw the seed on to the hot stones. At once it begins to smoke, giving off a vapor unsurpassed by any vapor-bath one could find in Greece. The Sythians enjoy it so much that they howl with pleasure. This is their substitute for an ordinary bath in water, which they never use. — Herodotus

A piece of cloth that is called "linen" has more validity than calling you and me "black" or "negro." "Cotton" has more validity as cotton than yours and my being "black." — Jamaica Kincaid

Everything can draw inspiration: a vintage cloth, a book, a street-when I was in Japan, I was deeply inspired by Japanese pharmacies. — Renzo Rosso

I knew now what my earlier passion for Harry had hidden from me. That although I had bedded him as a free woman I was as bound as if I were the slave. For it was not a free choice. I had wanted him because he was the Squire, not for himself ... And it was no free choice, because I could not choose to say "No." My safety and security on the land meant I had to keep my special, costly hold on its owner. I paid him rent as surely as the tenants who came to my round rent table with their coins tied up in a scrap of cloth. When I lay on my back, or strode round the room threatening him with every imaginable, ridiculous torment, I was paying my dues. And the knowledge galled me. — Philippa Gregory

April comes to us, with her showers sweet. I wake to the cries of little birds before the light comes across the heath. They wait all night with open eyes. Now, with the rain at dawn, their voices make melody.
I turn back the reveled cloth of gold on my bed and walk to gaze beyond my glazed casement window. In the plaintive voices of the wood fowl, I imagine my mother calling to me, her words echoing across the years. — Ned Hayes

Lastly he looked at the face so caved and drawn among the folds of funeral cloth, the yellowed moustache, the eyelids paper thin. That was not sleeping. That was not sleeping. — Cormac McCarthy

Tromping through the woods with yards of cloth swaddled around her was more work than tromping through a tangled field of dried cornstalks on the way to the barn. — Maeve Greyson

Today at school I will learn to read at once; then tomorrow I will begin to write, and the day after tomorrow to cipher. Then with my acquirements I will earn a great deal of money, and with the first money I have in my pocket I will immediately buy for my papa a beautiful new cloth coat. But what am I saying? Cloth, indeed! It shall be all made of gold and silver, and it shall have diamond buttons. That poor man really deserves it; for to buy me books and to have me taught he has remained in his shirt sleeves ... And in this cold! It is only fathers who are capable of such sacrifices! ... — Carlo Collodi

The fabric of Lady Islay's gown certainly cost as much as Claribel's entire quarterly allowance. It was a pearly silk taffeta shot with threads of silver. Her breasts were scarcely covered, and from there the gown fell straight to the ground in a hauntingly beautiful sweep of cloth.
The pink brought out the color of her hair- burnt amber enticed with brandy and buttercup. If only she had left it free around her face and perhaps created some charming curls! Claribel made up her mind to tell her privately about the newest curling irons. She herself had lovely corkscrew curls bobbing next to her ears. — Eloisa James

(Those women whom the distaff
no longer claims
nor spun cloth)
driven made,
mad,
mad
by Bacchus. — Hilda Doolittle

There was a small woven basket waiting on his desk
the next day, still smelling like warmed-from-the-oven
sin. A note was attached written with the words
"Have a good day!" A drawing of a tiny dog chasing
a butterfly completed the absurdity.
He stood in front of his desk, just staring at it and
the basket for a full minute. Asps didn't smell like
baked items, but the latter were no less dangerous.
He tented the edge of the cloth cover with his
smallest finger. Three fruit tarts lay inside.
Poisoned most likely. — Anne Mallory

Patterns of cloth busier than the makeup girl at a Kiss concert — Jim Butcher

Please tell me there is coffee."
Aunt B grimaced. "They're already crazy. If I let them have coffee, they'd be bouncing off the walls. We have herbal tea,"
...
I needed to find Julie, find her mom, convince a sociopath to donate some blood for the good of mankind, and deal with a tentacled atrocity swaddled in cloth and his rabid mermaids. I needed coffee. — Ilona Andrews

I'm not mad at you." He presses the cold cloth against my forehead. "I'm mad at myself. I did this. Well, Easton and I. I brought this on you. I'm Reed the Destroyer." He sounds sad. "Didn't you know that?"

"I don't like that name." He sits next to me, drawing the cloth around and around my face, down my neck and onto my shoulder. It feels heavenly.

"Yeah, and what would you call me instead?" I open my mouth and say, "Mine. — Erin Watt

Oh, but this,' I think I say, 'is perfect! This is all I have longed for! What are you gazing at? Do you suppose a girl is sitting here? That girl is lost! She has been drowned! She is lying, fathoms deep. Do you think she has arms and legs, with flesh and cloth upon them? Do you think she has hair? She has only bones, stripped white! She is as white as a page of paper! She is a book, from which the words have peeled and drifted
— Sarah Waters

A lot of children don't have a developed aesthetic. I did. I made early choices in life, even about cloth; I liked flannel and not polyester. — Patti Smith

I think, on a personal level, everybody, when you go through the checkout line after you get your groceries and they say, 'Paper or plastic?' We should be saying, 'Neither one.' We should have our own cloth bags. — Woody Harrelson

The stallion and his mare,
unbridled, with arrow-pattern,
are worked on.
the blue cloth
before the door
of religion and inspiration ... — Hilda Doolittle

His wax-white skin was cool to the touch when she brushed his neck to find the knot of cloth. She'd never been this close to a vampire,never realized what it would be like to be so near to someone who didn't breathe, who could be as still as any statue. His chest neither rose not fell. Her hands shook. — Holly Black

Nakedness is very common in the tribe. It is not a shameful thing; it is an expression of one's relationship with the spirit of nature. To be naked is to be open-hearted. Normally kids stay naked until puberty and even beyond. It was only with the introduction of cheap cloth from the West, through Goodwill and other Christian organisations, that nakedness began to be associated with shame. — Malidoma Patrice Some

We stink more of the world than we stink of sack cloth and ashes. A lot of contemporary churches today would feel more at home in a movie house rather than in a house of prayer, more afraid of holy living than of sinning, know more about money than magnifying Christ in our bodies. It is so compromised that holiness and living a sin-free life is heresy to the modern church. The modern church is, quite simply, just the world with a Christian T-shirt on! — Nicky Cruz

For the modern economist this is very difficult to understand. He is used to measuring the "standard of living" by the amount of annual consumption, assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is "better off" than a man who consumes less. A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption. Thus, if the purpose of clothing is a certain amount of temperature comfort and an attractive appearance, the task is to attain this purpose with the smallest possible effort, that is, with the smallest annual destruction of cloth and with the help of designs that involve the smallest possible input of toil. The less toil there is, the more time and strength is left for artistic creativity. — E.F. Schumacher

I don't know that I'm going to entirely do cloth diapers. I'd like to be ambitious about it, but in all honesty, I can't say that I will. — Lisa Ling

Dear Night! this world's defeat; The stop to busy fools; care's check and curb; The day of spirits; my soul's calm retreat Which none disturb! Christ's progress, and His prayer-time; The hours to which high Heaven cloth chime. — Henry Vaughan

A German goldsmith covered a bit of metal with cloth in the 14th century and gave mankind its first button. It was hard to know this as politics, because it plays like the work of one person, but nothing is isolated in history
certain humans are situations. — Lyn Hejinian

Some six weeks ago
I was allowed by the doctor to have white bread to eat instead of the coarse
black or brown bread of ordinary prison fare. It is a great delicacy. It will
sound strange that dry bread could possibly be a delicacy to any one. To me
it is so much so that at the close of each meal I carefully eat whatever crumbs
may be left on my tin plate, or have fallen on the rough towel that one uses
as a cloth so as not to soil one's table; and I do so not from hunger - I get
now quite sufficient food - but simply in order that nothing should be
wasted of what is given to me. So one should look on love. — Oscar Wilde

These managers all know their onions and cut their cloth accordingly. — Mark Lawrenson

Stars poked through like holes in the cloth of the sky and shed no light on anything. — Elizabeth Wein

An unfaithful wife is like a cloth in an open marketplace. — Abdulazeez Henry Musa

Ordinary moments make the life. This is what she knew to be trustworthy and this is what I learned, eventually, from those years we spent together. No leaps or falls. I inhale the little drizzly details of the past and know who I am. What I failed to know before is clearer now, filtered up through time, an experience belonging to no one else, not remotely, no one, anyone, ever. I watch her use the roller to remove lint from her cloth coat. Define coat, I tell myself. Define time, define space. — Don DeLillo

As they stood there together, Ekwefi's mind went back to the days when they were young. She had married Anene because OKonkwo was too poor then to marry. Two years after her marriage to Anene she could bear it no longer and she ran away to Okonkwo. It had been early in the morning. The moon was shining. She was going to the stream to fetch water. Okonkwo's house was on the way to the stream. She went in and knocked at his door and he came out. Even in those days he was not a man of many words. He just carried her into his bed and in the darkness began to feel around her waist for the loose end of her cloth. — Chinua Achebe

Which end of the needle are you going to be- the side held by string or the point that pierces the cloth? — Sue Monk Kidd

I have observed that you treat a man as an old garment to be taken apart and stitched again. Perhaps you could think of him as good cloth, rich fabric that wants only to be embroidered upon. And perhaps, if you will do that, you will see that you love Tailor yourself. — Martine Leavitt

What if time stole
my tenderness,
what if I am worn through
and grace was wasted
in the waiting?
can I climb out
of what you have buried
me under?
When will it stop feeling
like I am breathing
though a cloth soaked
in salt water?
When will home
stop being a silent cemetery
of every wish
I've had to bury? — Tyler Knott Gregson

I believe the vulpine greed of the corporate world is cut from the very same cloth as the tyrant of history. — Adam Nevill

He had been bored, that's all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen - and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen, even loveless slavery, even war or death. Hurray then for funerals! — Albert Camus

The dream of poor Bazin had always been to serve a man of the cloth. — Alexandre Dumas

The genuine values in America arose from rational thought and breaking with tradition, not from blind allegiance to dirt and cloth. — Stefan Molyneux

My mother will emerge with a towel on her head, Nefertiti fashion, and a good terry-cloth robe, and make herself a tall gin-and-tonic and look like a movie star for an hour. Being around her is like being on safari; there is an elusive something we are after, in difficult conditions, and we will look good in the getting there. — Padgett Powell

The door of the jail being flung open, the young woman stood fully revealed before the crowd. It seemed to be her first impulse to clasp the infant closely to her bosom that she might conceal a certain token which was wrought or fastened to her dress. In a moment, however, wisely judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another, she took the baby on her arm, and, with a burning blush and yet a haughty smile, looked around at her townspeople and neighbors. On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

I tell myself every offseason I'm not going to say anything crazy. I'm just going to have a peaceful season ... Can't do it. I'm cut from a different cloth. — Gary Sheffield

Compared with this simple, fibrous life, our civilized history appears the chronicle of debility, of fashion, and the arts of luxury. But the civilized man misses no real refinement in the poetry of the rudest era. It reminds him that civilization does but dress men. It makes shoes, but it does not toughen the soles of the feet. It makes cloth of finer texture, but it does not touch the skin. Inside the civilized man stands the savage still in the place of honor. We are those blue-eyed, yellow-haired Saxons, those slender, dark-haired Normans. — Henry David Thoreau

Cold?" Ravus echoed. He took her arm and rubbed it between his hands, watching them as though they were betraying him. "Better?" He asked warily.
His skin felt hot, even through the cloth of her shirt, his touch was both soothing and electric.
She leaned into him without thinking. His thighs parted, rough black cloth scratching against her jeans as she moved between his long legs. His eyes half-lidded as he pushed himself off the desk, their bodies sliding together, his hands still holding hers. Then, suddenly, he froze. — Holly Black

He steps away from her, going to a little side table and removing a cloth that's lying on top. Underneath are severale shiny bits of metal. Mr. Hammar picks one up.
"And now for the second part of our interview", he says, approaching the woman.
Who starts to scream.
"That was," Davy says, pacing around as we wait outside but it's all he can get out. "That was." He turns to me. "Holy crap, Todd."
I don't say nothing, just take the apple I've been saving outta my pocket. "Apple," I whisper to Angharrad, my head close to hers. — Patrick Ness

Leo and I are kindred spirits
we're cut from the same cloth, — Kate Winslet

I feel nothing."
Crouching down beside her, Bercelak took a cloth from off the table and placed it over the wound. "Nothing? You feel no pain?"
"Oh. I feel pain. Lots of pain. But nothing else. — G.A. Aiken

If time were a bolt of cloth," said Om, "I would cut out all the bad parts. Snip out the scary nights and stitch together the good parts, to make time bearable. Then I could wear it like a coat, always live happily. — Rohinton Mistry

Free folk don't follow names, or little cloth animals sewn on a tunic," the King-Beyond-the-Wall had told him. "They won't dance for coins, they don't care how your style yourself or what that chain of office means or who your grandsire was. They follow strength. They follow the man. — George R R Martin

In Italy they take cheap cloth and make it look expensive, but I take expensive cloth and make it look cheap. They just don't understand. — Vivienne Westwood

David would wear no purple cloth, no symbols of his kingship, when he went to greet the ark. In its presence, we were all of us servants. — Geraldine Brooks

When she had the strength, she began to fold the tiny clothes and blankets and cloth diapers and put them into plain brown boxes. She didn't stop working, but the sobs came and distorted her face, bleared her eyes, made her nose run. She didn't hear Jack come to the door. When she looked up he was watching her silently, and then he turned away, uncomfortable, embarrassed by her unharnessed grief. He didn't put his hand on her shoulder. Didn't hold her. Didn't say a word. Even these many years later, she was unable to forgive him that. — Eowyn Ivey

Her little hands, Crumb. Her little paws, like a child's. She has no guile in her. And she never speaks. And if she does I hate to bend my head to hear what she says. And in the pause I can hear my heart. Her little bits of embroidery, her scraps of silk, her halcyon sleeves, she cut out of the cloth some admirer gave her once, some poor boy struck with love for her...and yet she has never succumbed. Her little sleeves, her seed pearl necklace...she has nothing...she expects nothing...' A tear at last sneaks from Henry's eye, meanders down his cheek and vanishes into the mottled grey and ginger of his beard. — Hilary Mantel

Bonnie saw ropes hanging loose, poles falling away, tree-tops sinking beneath her. As they rose, the sun rose with them. Its warmth turned the dark skin of the fiery balloon midnight blue. They flew straight up. Above them, the sweet, clear music of the lonely pipe called to them. Then the smooth sky puckered into cloth-of-blue and drew aside. They passed straight through ... — Pauline Fisk

The pin was the smallest part of a pair of scissors, and the easiest made, but without it, the scissors cut no cloth. — Robert Jordan

If a white cloth is stained even with a small spot, the stain appears very ugly indeed. So the smallest fault of a holy man becomes painfully prominent. — Ramakrishna

The jobs, the housing, the relationships, the routines --- so many aspects of life that had been cut out of the whole cloth of the war emergency were now so intrinsic that it was easy to believe things had always been this way. Despite the best intentions of returning to their former lives, the come-heres tarried, realizing in small sips of awareness over the course of the war years --- or with great gulping realizations at the war's end abrupt end --- that they would not, or could not, go home again. — Margot Lee Shetterly

Will tossed the bloody cloth aside. "And you wonder why we aren't friends."
"I just wondered," Gabriel said, in more subdued voice, "if perhaps you have ever had enough."
"Enough of what?"
"Enough of behaving as you do."
Will crossed his arms over his chest. His eyes glistening dangerously. "Oh, I can never get enough," he said. "Which, incidentally, is what your sister said to me when-"
The carriage door flew open. A hand shot out, grabbed Will by the back of his shirt, and hauled him inside. — Cassandra Clare

I love my privacy too, but at the end of the day, when it comes down to it with my woman, I call her a "special cloth alert." She's a rare breed and I love her and I don't ever want her to change because I think that's the balance of my relationship. — DJ Khaled

My mom gave me one of those cloth calendars for the kitchen. It took me three hours to sew in a dental appointment. — Emo Philips

By the light of the hominy fire Sixo straightens. He is through with his song. He laughs. A rippling sound like Sethe's sons
make when they tumble in hay or splash in rainwater. His feet are cooking; the cloth of his trousers smokes. He laughs.
Something is funny. Paul D guesses what it is when Sixo interrupts his laughter to call out, Seven-O! Seven-O! — Toni Morrison

And while English workmen are often unemployed and in great want, Indian women weave cotton by machinery, for the Far East at wages of six-pence a day. In short, the intelligent manufacturers are fully aware that the day is not far off when they will not know what to do with the "factory hands" who formerly wove cotton-cloth for export from England. — Pyotr Kropotkin

It's hard to think of you as a Margaret. Maizy suits you."
"I doubt I'd answer to anything else." Maizy smiled as she adjusted the cloth. — Mary Connealy

When you wear a tattered cloth to a banquet of the honorable, you look weird — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

One day, Oliver and Noah had descended into the kitchen at the usual dinner-hour, to banquet upon a small joint of mutton - a pound and a half of the worst end of the neck - when Charlotte being called out of the way, there ensued a brief interval of time, which Noah Claypole, being hungry and vicious, considered he could not possibly devote to a worthier purpose than aggravating and tantalising young Oliver Twist. Intent upon this innocent amusement, Noah put his feet on the table-cloth; and pulled Oliver's hair; and twitched his ears; and expressed his opinion that he was a 'sneak'; and furthermore announced his intention of coming to see him hanged, whenever that desirable event should take place; and entered upon various topics of petty annoyance, like a malicious and ill-conditioned charity-boy as he was. But, — Charles Dickens

The roar of the traffic, the passage of undifferentiated
faces, this way and that way, drugs me into dreams; rubs the
features from faces. People might walk through me. And what is
this moment of time, this particular day in which I have found
myself caught? The growl of traffic might be any uproar - forest trees or
the roar of wild beasts. Time has whizzed back an inch or two on its reel;
our short progress has been cancelled. I think also that our bodies are in truth
naked. We are only lightly covered with buttoned cloth; and beneath these
pavements are shells, bones and silence. — Virginia Woolf

In contrast to earlier textually-focused studies, recent scholarship on worship also highlights diversity and change. Projects to create new rituals and to redesign familiar ones, particularly in ways that make them more fluid and open-ended, have been a hallmark of much Western religious life since the 1960s.7 To take one example within Judaism, some couples now personalize or customize the traditional huppah or canopy beneath which they are married. In some instances, guests decorate a panel of cloth, and meet before the ceremony to offer the bride and groom their encouragement and advice, and join the pieces together. Vanessa Ochs characterizes this as part of a broader, explicit drive 'to personalize and to create community' within contemporary Judaism. — Melanie J. Wright

Truman Capote famously claimed to have nearly absolute recall of dialogue and used his prodigious memory as an excuse never to take notes or use a tape recorder, but I suspect his memory claims were just a useful cover to invent dialogue whole cloth. — Joshua Foer

And last week, when he finally began to erase it, he noticed something very strange: the accent on the letter E was actually formed from a piece of materiel. We all watched as he stared at the letter E for a very long time. Then he slowly unpeeled the rolled-up cloth fro the blackboard and unfurled the biggest pair of polka dot panties anyone in the room had ever seen. — Jennifer Allison

What she revealed was not sexy lingerie, but a supportive piece of athletic equipment. After the consolation match that preceded the championship game, both Brazilian and Norwegian players removed their jerseys and exchanged them on the floor of the Rose Bowl. Chastain had previously removed her jersey after regulation to air it out. While training in Florida, the players frequently doffed their shirts after practice in the smothering heat, and they sometimes gave interviews in their sports bras, which were items of utility, not titillation. Chastain 'has brought instant attention to a piece of clothing that is humble and practical, not a traditional bra of shine and lace and cleavage, but a sturdy compression garment,' wrote Ann Gerhart of the Washington Post. 'The sports bra is the cloth symbol of Title IX's success. — Jere Longman

The unchanging Man of history is wonderfully adaptable cloth by his power of endurance and in his capacity for detachment. The fact seems to be that the play of his destiny is too great for his fears and too mysterious for his understanding. Were the trump of the Last Judgement to sound suddenly on a working day the musician at his piano would go on with his performance of Beethoven's Sonata and the cobbler at his stall stick to his last in undisturbed confidence in the virtues of the leather. And with perfect propriety. For what are we to let ourselves be disturbed by an angel's vengeful music too mighty for our ears and too awful for our terrors ? Thus it happens to us to be struck suddenly by the lightning of wrath. The reader will go on reading if the book pleases him and the critic will go on criticizing with that faculty of detachment born perhaps from a sense of infinite littleness and wich is yet the only faculty that seems to assimilate man to the immortal gods. — Joseph Conrad

I took the liberty of designing your pennant," said Rhy, resting his elbows on the gallery's marble banister. "I hope you don't mind."
Kell cringed. "Do I even want to know what's on it?"
Rhy tugged the folded piece of fabric from his pocket, and handed it over. The cloth was red, and when he unfolded it, he saw the image of a rose in black and white. The rose had been mirrored, folded along the center axis and reflected, so the design was actually two flowers, surrounded by a coil of thorns.
"How subtle," said Kell tonelessly.
"You could at least pretend to be grateful."
"And you couldn't have picked something a little more ... I don't know ... imposing? A serpent? A great beast? A bird of prey?"
"A bloody handprint?" retorted Rhy. "Oh, what about a glowing black eye?"
Kell glowered.
"You're right," continued Rhy, "I should have just drawn a frowning face. But then everyone would know it's you. I thought this was rather fitting. — Victoria Schwab

On the hob was a little brass kettle, hissing and boiling; spread upon the floor was a warm, thick rug; before the fire was a folding-chair, unfolded and with cushions on it; by the chair was a small folding-table, unfolded, covered with a white cloth, and upon it were spread small covered dishes, a cup and saucer, and a tea-pot; on the bed were new, warm coverings, a curious wadded silk robe, and some books. The little, cold, miserable room seemed changed into Fairyland. It was actually warm and glowing. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

Shaking his head, Tobin turned back to his picnic spread, and there, sitting on the end of the checkered cloth, and helping himself to one of Tobin's cupcakes, was a tiny brown squirrel.
Tobin blinked in surprise.
The squirrel was exceptionally bold. He made absolutely no move to leave, despite Tobin's frown, and merely stuffed more pink icing into his mouth with one tiny paw. His ears were tufted into small points, and he tilted his head to the side as he surveyed Tobin with bright, inquisitive eyes.
Tobin had to laugh. "Well, I suppose I don't mind sharing with you, little guy, even if you did eat one of my cupcakes," Tobin chuckled to himself.
"I should hope so. Frankly, I'm surprised that you thought you could even eat five cupcakes all by yourself," the squirrel replied airily. — R.S. Mollison-Read

In my prayers, I want to say: Lord, don't be far from me, and also don't come too close. Let me contemplate the stars on the texture of your cloth, but don't unveil your face to me. Allow me to hear the rivers that you send running, but Lord! Lord! Don't allow me hearing your voice — Amin Maalouf

It will suit Caroline; but you must give me a brace of pistols: I know you have pistols." "I have two pairs; one pair I can place at your disposal. You will find them suspended over the mantelpiece of my study in cloth cases." "Loaded?" "Yes, but not on the cock. Cock them before you go to bed. It is paying you a great compliment, captain, to lend you these: were you one of the awkward squad* you should not have them. — Charlotte Bronte

There is no beauty in the finest cloth if it makes hunger and unhappiness. — Mahatma Gandhi

Even as she'd come to know the real Ralston - the Ralston who was not cut from heroic cloth - Callie had failed to see the truth. And, instead of seeing her own heartbreak coming, she had fallen in love, not with her fantasy, but with this new, flawed Ralston. — Sarah MacLean