Quotes & Sayings About Petticoats

At the Serima Mission, in Victoria Province, I am shown around by an enchantingly pretty African nun called Sister Balbina ... She cannot be more than 25, and has the most delightful figure. How poignant that she should have dedicated her life in this way.
When we come to the bell tower, I ask her to climb up the ladder in front of me.It was rather a caddish request, I suppose, but I had often wondered. Black petticoats and pink knickers. To think I had to come all this way to find out. — Auberon Waugh

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed. — Dylan Thomas

A female war correspondent so popular that she had some credibility in saying she controlled half of her newspaper's circulation approached General Winfield Scott during the Mexican War with information that could help him. He was unwilling to get help from someone in petticoats. — Harold Holzer

Onua smiled. She knew an old grievance when she heard one. "Then why wear 'em? Get yourself breeches and a shirt like me." Daine gaped at her. "Men's gear? With folk talking about me all the time as is?" Onua shook her head. "You're not home now. The rules have changed." Daine opened her mouth to object - then closed it. She looked at her skirts. To be rid of them, and the petticoats . . . it hit her, really hit her, that she was free of Snowsdale. What could they do to her now? — Tamora Pierce

I have to console myself with the hope that I'd seen Isabeau soften, even hesitate, as if she might actually have taken my arm. It was suddenly very easy to picture her in a gown with petticoats and ringlets in her hair and diamonds at her throat. It was just as easy to picture Magda with horns and pitchfork. - Logan, page 95 — Alyxandra Harvey

Why couldn't I be more like other girls my age? Take Mrs. Brown's niece. She spent every waking hour sizing up this beau or that, stitching tea towels and petticoats and putting aside a little each month for a set of Spode Buttercup dishes. — Kirby Larson

Drug addicts perplex me. They're a relatively recent development, historically speaking. Everyone has their theories - monotheists like to blame it on godlessness - but I think it was a plague that developed in the sooty petticoats of the Industrial Revolution and its concomitant division of labor. Once people specialized their labors and separated themselves from food production and the daily needs of basic survival, there was a hollow place in their lives that they did not know how to fill. — Kevin Hearne

Note savages, eh? They live in mountain caves and dress like wild men. They walk about in woolen petticoats, which they are not in the least modest about casting aside when they need their sword arms free. Dash me, can you even begin to imagine the sight of a horde of naked, hairy-legged creatures charging at you across a battlefield like bloody fiends out of hell - screaming and flailing those great bloody swords and axes of theirs like scythes? Not savages? — Marsha Canham

Espionage, Sophronia had learned, was tough on petticoats. — Gail Carriger

Hmph," she said. "I'd like to see you learn how to manage sitting and standing up straight in stays and petticoats and a dress with a foot's worth of train!"
"So would I," said Gideon from across the room. — Cassandra Clare

From insipid sweet wine; from men who wear moustaches; from the sort of people that call legs 'limbs'; from bedraggled white petticoats: Kind Devil, deliver me. — Mary MacLane

He had an image in his mind of a gaggle of long-necked geese, all done up in petticoats and crinolines, sitting around a stuffy parlor and talking about him. — Stefan Bachmann

It always seemed to me that the herbaceous peony is the very epitome of June. Larger than any rose,
it has something of the cabbage rose's voluminous quality; and when it finally drops from the vase, it
sheds its petticoats with a bump on the table, all in an intact heap, much as a rose will suddenly fall,
making us look up from our book or conversation, to notice for one moment the death of what had
still appeared to be a living beauty. — Vita Sackville-West

I liked long skirts," he said nostalgically. "I liked the underthings women wore. The petticoats. — Charlaine Harris

When I was invited to write a story for A Tyranny of Petticoats, I had two ideas. One was a murder mystery
I've written that kind of thing before. The other was a cross-dressing, bank-robbing teen bandit on the run. I've never written that kind of thing before. How to choose? How to choose? As Mae West once said, I went with the evil I'd never tried before. — Saundra Mitchell

[regarding US conquest of the Philippines] I turn green in bed at midnight if I think of the horror of a year's warfare in the Philippines [ ... ] We must slaughter a million or two foolish Malays in order to give them the comforts of flannel petticoats and electric railways. — Henry Adams

It is quite certain that the skirt means female dignity, not female submission; it can be proved by the simplest of all tests. No ruler would deliberately dress up in the recognized fetters of a slave; no judge would would appear covered with broad arrows. But when men wish to be safely impressive, as judges, priests or kings, they do wear skirts, the long, trailing robes of female dignity. The whole world is under petticoat government; for even men wear petticoats when they wish to govern. — G.K. Chesterton

The room smells of lemon oil, heavy cloth, fading daffodils, the leftover smells of cooking that have made their way from the kitchen or the dining room, and of Serena Joy's perfume: Lily of the Valley. Perfume is a luxury, she must have some private source. I breathe it in, thinking I should appreciate it. It's the scent of pre-pubescent girls, of the gifts young children used to give their mothers, for Mother's Day; the smell of white cotton socks and white cotton petticoats, of dusting powder, of the innocence of female flesh not yet given over to hairiness and blood. It makes me feel slightly ill, as it I'm in a closed car on a hot muggy day with an older woman wearing too much face powder. This is what the sitting room is like, despite its elegance. — Margaret Atwood

The women looked pretty, except when you got near them, but they were very clumsy about the waist. They had all full white sleeves of some kind or other, and most of them had big belts with a lot of strips of something fluttering from them like the dresses in a ballet, but of course there were petticoats under them. The strangest figures we saw were the Slovaks, who were more barbarian than the rest, with their — Bram Stoker

I sometimes, in my sprightly moments, consider myself, in my great chair at school, as some dictator at the head of a common-wealth. In this little state I can discover all the great geniuses, all the surprising actions and revolutions of the great world in miniature. I have several renowned generals but three feet high, and several deep-projecting politicians in petticoats. I have others catching and dissecting flies, accumulating remarkable pebbles, cockleshells, etc., with as ardent curiosity as any virtuoso in the Royal Society ... . At one table sits Mr. Insipid foppling and fluttering, spinning his whirligig, or playing with his fingers as gaily and wittily as any Frenchified coxcomb brandishes his cane and rattles his snuff box. At another sits the polemical divine, plodding and wrangling in his mind about Adam's fall in which we sinned, all as his primer has it. — John Adams

Do as the beautiful woman: see to your figure and your petticoats. Though, of course, I am not speaking literally. — Jean Cocteau

Now is the time when we reenter the womb of the world, dreaming the dreams of snow and silence. Waking to the shock of frozen lakes under waning moonlight and the cold sun burning low and blue in the branches of the ice-cased trees, returning from our brief and necessary labors to food and story, to the warmth of firelight in the dark. Around a fire, in the dark, all truths can be told, and heard, in safety. I pulled on my woolen stockings, thick petticoats, my warmest shawl, and went down to poke up the kitchen fire. I stood watching wisps of steam rise from the fragrant cauldron, and felt myself turn inward. The world could go away, and we would heal. — Diana Gabaldon

Among my favorite half-dozen topics is the field of Victorian female explorers, the intrepid women who packed up their parasols and petticoats and roamed the world in search of adventure. Some were scientists, some artists, some unabashed curiosity-seekers who simply went out to see what they could see. — Deanna Raybourn

Although she was aware that somewhere under her complicated strata of vests and petticoats there was some skin, that didn't mean to say she approved of it. — Terry Pratchett

There were dresses with trains, deep mysteries, anguish hidden beneath smiles. Then came the society of the duchesses; all were pale; all got up at four o'clock; the women, poor angels, wore English point on their petticoats; and the men, unappreciated geniuses under a frivolous outward seeming, rode horses to death at pleasure parties, — Gustave Flaubert

There is a particular circle of hell not mentioned in Dante's famous book. It is called comportment, and it exists in schools for young ladies across the empire. I do not know how it feels to be thrown into a lake of fire. I am sure it isn't pleasant. But I can say with all certainty that walking the length of a ballroom with a book upon one's head and a backboard strapped to one's back while imprisoned in a tight corset, layers of petticoats, and shoes that pinch is a form of torture even Mr. Alighieri would find too hideous to document in his Inferno. — Libba Bray

Twelve years ago you decided what I deserved, and I ended up alone. So this time I will decide what I deserve." Ignoring a twinge of self-consciousness, she faced him and began to undo the front fastenings of her pelisse-robe. "And I deserve this. I deserve you."
His breathing grew labored as he stared at her hands with a searing intensity. "What are you doing, Jane?"
"What does it look like?" She slid out of her gown and let it fall to the floor, leaving her standing before him in only her petticoats, corset, and shift. "I'm seducing you."
Dom's eyes narrowed on her, and she panicked. Was she being too bold? Too shameless?
Too daft?
She was daft, to be standing half-dressed like this in a stable, when all it would take was a groom coming down from his room above to turn this into the most mortifying night of her life. — Sabrina Jeffries

She did not understand why women complicated their lives with corsets and petticoats, so she sewed herself a coarse cassock that she simply put over her and without further difficulties resolved the problem of dress, without taking away the feeling of being naked, which according to her lights was the only decent way to be when at home. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Off come her skirts and petticoats, her lace cuffs and collar, her shoes and whalebone stay, until she lies on her side in nothing but a cotton shift and endless strands of pearls. Dust hangs in a crack of light between red velvet drapes, like stars.

Her dreams are glimpses, bewildered--celestial charts, oceanic swells, massive, moving bodies of water, the heavens as heavenly liquid, familiar whirlpools, the universe as a ship lost at sea--but the ship she imagines arrived safely, years ago, loaded with their possessions. — Danielle Dutton

One might fancy that day, the London day, was just beginning. Like a woman who had slipped off her print dress and white apron to array herself in blue and pearls, the day changed, put off stuff, took gauze, changed to evening, and with the same sigh of exhilaration that a woman breathes, tumbling petticoats on the floor, it too shed dust, heat, colour; the traffic thinned; motor cars, tinkling, darting, succeeded the lumber of vans; and here and there among the thick foliage of the squares an intense light hung. I resign, the evening seemed to say, as it paled and faded above the battlements and prominences, moulded, pointed, of hotel, flat, and block of shops, I fade, she was beginning. I disappear, but London would have none of it, and rushed her bayonets into the sky, pinioned her, constrained her to partnership in her revelry. — Virginia Woolf

I sells ladies fings, and vis nun, she comes up to me stall an' afore you can blink an eye, she picks up a couple of bread an' cheeses, tucks 'em in 'er petticoats, an' is off round the Jack Horner, dahn ve frog an' toad, quick as shit off a stick. I couldn't Adam an' Eve it, bu' vats wot she done. When I tells me carvin' knife wot I seen, she calls me an 'oly friar, an' says she'll land me one on me north and south if I calls Sister Monica Joan a tea-leaf. Very fond of Sister, she is. So I never says nuffink to no one, like. — Jennifer Worth

Nevertheless, I quickly pulled my feet onto the seat and would have gathered my petticoats tightly around me if I had been wearing any. After — Dean Koontz

In college, I wrote newspaper articles and songs. Then, on my 21st birthday, I sold my first book. It was a nonfiction book about women pirates - 'Pirates in Petticoats.' After that, I was a book writer for good. — Jane Yolen

Yet most women I know - no matter how clever, no matter how strong - are dragged down by husbands or fathers or titles or too many petticoats, or priests clutching at their hems, telling them, 'No, you cannot do that, you cannot be that.' I never listened. That's rare. Even a woman like the Comtesse pretends to pay attention to the sermons and the instructions, but then does whatever she wishes. I — Kelly Gardiner

You may scold your carpenter, when he has made a bad table, though you can't make a table yourself.' I say to you - 'Mr. Finch, you may point out a defect in a baby's petticoats, though you haven't got a baby yourself!' Doesn't that satisfy you? All right! Take another illustration. Look at your room here. I can see in the twinkling of an eye, that it's badly lit. You have only got one window - you ought to have two. Is it necessary to be a practical builder to discover that? Absurd! Are you satisfied now? No! Take another illustration. What's this printed paper, here, on the chimney-piece? Assessed Taxes. Ha! Assessed Taxes will do. You're not in the House of Commons; you're not a Chancellor of the Exchequer - but haven't you an opinion of your own about taxation, in spite of that? Must you and I be in Parliament before we can presume to see that the feeble old British Constitution is at its last gasp? — Wilkie Collins

The select natures who pant after the ideal, and find nothing in pantaloons or petticoats great enough to command their reverence and love, are curiously in unison with the narrowest and pettiest. — George Eliot

She has more names than petticoats. — Boris Pasternak

In my criminal work anything that wears skirts is a lady, until the law proves her otherwise. From the frayed and slovenly petticoats of the woman who owns a poultry stand in the market and who has grown wealthy by selling chickens at twelve ounces to the pound, or the silk sweep of Mamie Tracy, whose diamonds have been stolen down on the avenue... — Mary Roberts Rinehart

A beautiful woman is a casus belli; a pretty woman is flagrant misdemeanour. All the invasions of history have been determined by petticoats. — Victor Hugo

Victorian rigidities were such that ladies were not even allowed to blow out candles in mixed company, as that required them to pucker their lips suggestively. They could not say that they were going "to bed"
that planted too stimulating an image
but merely that they were "retiring." It became effectively impossible to discuss clothing in even a clinical sense without resort to euphemisms. Trousers became "nether integuments" or simply "inexpressibles" and underwear was "linen." Women could refer among themselves to petticoats or, in hushed tones, stockings, but could mention almost nothing else that brushed bare flesh. — Bill Bryson

Lady Windermere: Windermere and I married for love.

Duchess of Berwick: Yes, we begin like that. It was only Berwick's brutal and incessant threats of suicide that made me accept him at all, and before the year was out, he was running after all kinds of petticoats, every colour, every shape, every material. — Oscar Wilde

Being, however, nothing but a woman, condemned to patience, propriety, and petticoats for life, I must respect the house-keeper's opinions, and try to compose myself in some feeble and feminine way. — Wilkie Collins

Sunnybrook Farm is now a parking lot; the petticoats are in the garbage can, where they belong in the modern world; and I detest censorship. — Shirley Temple

To those great geniuses now in petticoats, who shall write novels for the beloved reader's children, these men and things will be as much legend and history as Nineveh, or Coeur de Lion, or Jack Sheppard. — William Makepeace Thackeray

A proper Irishman always does what a lady asks him. Sure an' it's been the ruin av us. We're at the mercy av the petticoats. — L.M. Montgomery