Quotes & Sayings About Formal Wear

I read somewhere that the New Orleans citizenry bought fewer copies of the New York Times than any other city in the United States, although they made up for it by buying more formal wear than anywhere else. If you're going out to formal dinners every evening, you don't get much time to read the New York Times. — John Connolly

I'm off to an island nation where formal wear consists of a leaf tired around a penis. — J. Maarten Troost

She called me Nerdy because I wore glasses and read books and ate yogurt on my lunch break. I'm not really a nerd: I only aspire to be one. Because of the high-school-dropout thing, I'm a self-didact. (Not a dirty word, look it up.) I read constantly. I think. But I lack formal education. So I'm left with the feeling that I'm smarter than everyone around me but that if I ever got around really smart people - people who went to universities and drank wine and spoke Latin - that they'd be bored as hell by me. It's a lonely way to go through life. So I wear the name as a badge of honor. That someday I may not totally bore some really smart people. The question is: How do you find smart people? — Gillian Flynn

Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untravelled, the naive, the sophisticated deplore these formalities as 'empty,' 'meaningless,' or 'dishonest,' and scorn to use them. No matter how 'pure' their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best. — Robert A. Heinlein

Real Freedom is to not feel limited when wearing this Zen robe, this troublesome formal robe. Similarly, in our busy life we should wear this civilization without being bothered by it, without ignoring it, without being caught by it. — Shunryu Suzuki

I am lucky because I can - and I like to - mix the beautiful Caraceni jackets I inherited from my grandfather with a pair of Tsubi jeans or wear a favorite pin-striped suit from him for more formal occasions. I'm crazy about pinstripes and vintage fifties fabrics. — Lapo Elkann

Men turn to formal wear when they want a new job or when they think their current one is in danger. They try to present themselves as powerful and successful. — Peter York

Through a bombed cemetery, long-forgotten Londoners unearthed and flung into trees, grinning in rotted formal wear. A curlicued swing set in a cratered playground. The horrors piled up, incomprehensible, the bombers now and then dropping flares to light it all with the pure, shining white of a thousand camera flashes. As if to say: Look. Look what we made. — Ransom Riggs

What's your problem with the Guild?"
"The only way to resolve it involves me being entangled in running it and I don't want to do it." I waved my arms. "I have the Consort crap and I have the Cutting Edge crap and whatever other bullshit the two of you throw my way. I don't want to go to the Guild every month and deal with their crap on top of everything else."
Curran leaned toward me. "I have to dress up and meet with those corpsefuckers once every three months and be civil while we're eating at the same table. You can deal with the Guild."
"You dress up? Wow, I had no idea that putting on your formal sweatpants was such a huge burden."
"Kate," Curran snarled. "They're not sweatpants, they are slacks and they have a belt. I have to wear shoes with fucking laces in them. — Ilona Andrews

I dress for the occasion. I like Tom Ford for more formal, especially his suits, and I wear a lot of Under Armour for my athletic gear. I also love Rag & Bone. — Tom Brady

I realised that I had set so many of my novels and stories abroad, because custom had prevented me from seeing how exotic my own country is. Britain really is an immense lunatic asylum. That is one of the things that distinguishes us among the nations ... We are rigid and formal in some ways, but we believe in the right to eccentricity, as long as the eccentricities are large enough ... Woe betide you if you hold your knife incorrectly, but good luck to you if you wear a loincloth and live up a tree. — Louis De Bernieres

Museum Work and Museum Problems" course, the first academic program specifically designed to cultivate and train men and women to become museum directors and curators. In addition to the connoisseurship of art, the "Museum Course" taught the financial and administrative aspects of running a museum, with a focus on eliciting donations. The students met regularly with major art collectors, bankers, and America's social elite, often at elegant dinners where they were required to wear formal dress and observe the social protocol of high culture. By 1941, Sachs's students had begun to fill the leadership positions of American museums, a field they would come to dominate in the postwar years. — Robert M. Edsel

I am going to get political on you. Because I am the most shallow person in the world, my mission is to see men's formal wear change a little bit. It is too rigid! Everybody looks like a penguin! — Steven Cojocaru

The coat went over his shoulder. It was too hot here for that, and hotter still where he was going. He'd have to wear a coat there. It was expected, one of those curious rules of formal behavior that demanded the maximum discomfort to attain the proper degree of decorum. — Tom Clancy

Kiera blushes deeply as she continues tearfully, "Jeff, our life has been crazy since the moment we met. Yet, with each challenge we face, we grow stronger. You told me before we even had our first formal date that you'd like to prove to me that you'd love me until the stars fall from the sky. Although at first, I was scared to believe, you have demonstrated in big ways and small that you love me. So, for me this ring is a tangible sign of my love for you."
Gabriel walks over to Kiera and hands her a ring, which she slides on my finger as she asks, "Jeffery Charles Whitaker, will you take this ring as a symbol of my love and faithfulness until the stars fall from the sky?"
To my shock, it is the simple gold band that I've seen my dad wear in countless pictures before he died. My eyes tear up as I breathe, "Oh Pip, this is perfect. I wanted him to be here." In a much louder voice, I reply, "Of course I will. — Mary Crawford

What is it about wearing a tuxedo or that little black dress, that makes us feel confident, beautiful, splendid, even invincible?
We put on formal wear and suddenly we become extraordinary.
On the days when you feel low and invisible, why not try this on for size: imagine you are wearing a fantastic tailored tuxedo or a stunning formal gown.
And then proceed with your day. — Vera Nazarian

On weekends, the U.S. was casual; in Italy the weekend was very formal. I came to understand that weekends are about free time, and that one could wear high quality, tasteful products that weren't so formal. — Diego Della Valle

People used to wear ordinary clothes weekdays, and formal attire on Sunday. Today it is the exact reverse. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Ballet aficionados are just sports fans in formal wear. — S.L. Price

When Paxton was a teenager, her friends had even envied her relationship with her mother. Everyone knew that neither Paxton nor Sophia scheduled anything on Sunday afternoons, because that was popcorn-and-pedicures time, when mother and daughter sat in the family room and watched sappy movies and tried out beauty products. And Paxton could remember her mother carrying dresses she'd ordered into her bedroom, almost invisible behind tiers of taffeta, as they'd planned for formal dances. She'd loved helping Paxton pick out what to wear. And her mother had exquisite taste. Paxton could still remember dresses her mother wore more than twenty-five years ago. Imprinted in her memory were shiny blue ones, sparkly white ones, wispy rose-colored ones. — Sarah Addison Allen

You need to have one element about your outfit that is imperfect, that says you live in it and you're not letting it control you. I think men and women both need a softness about them with formal wear. — Paul Feig

All living languages are promiscuous. We promiscuous speakers shamelessly shoplift words, plucking bons mots and phrases from any tempting language. We wear these words when we wish to be more formal, more elegant, more mysterious, worldly, precise, vague. — Rabih Alameddine

I recently went mad and spent 1,000 in one afternoon on bras and knickers. I love classy, lacy stuff that makes you feel dead sexy knowing you've got it on. I've never worn stockings and suspenders, though. But I could imagine they'd make you feel really sexy worn under something formal. I think I'll save that experience and wear them under my wedding dress. — Jennifer Ellison

Girls think they're only allowed to wear dresses on formal occasions, but I like a woman who says, you know, I'm going over to see a boy who is having a nervous breakdown, a boy whose connection to the sense of sight itself is tenuous, and gosh dang it, I am going to wear a dress for him. — John Green

This was a boy who could make a school uniform look good. What he did to formal wear was damn near criminal. — Rachel Hawkins

You're dressed in a tuxedo, you wear a bow tie. A bow tie with a tuxedo is more formal than a straight tie with a tuxedo. — Bill Nye

Pink was for girls.
Girly girls who wore flavored lip gloss and read magazines and talked on the phone lying on their perfect, lacy bedspreads with their feet in the air. Girls who spent six months looking for the perfect dress to wear to the school formal.
Girls who liked boys. — Lili Wilkinson

Rental formal wear of the sky-blue, brocade and shiny varieties is favored by upwardly mobile young gangsters drafted as groomsmen for weddings. — George V. Higgins