C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917. Tailor
Great is the tailor, but not the greatest.Carlyle.
1 Thy clothes are all the soul thou hast.Beaumont and Fletcher.
2 Thou art a strange fellow: a tailor make a man? Ay, a tailor, sir; a stone-cutter or a painter could not have made him so ill, though he had been but two hours at the trade.Shakespeare.
3 Thy gown? why, ay,—come, tailor, let us see’t. O mercy, God! what masquing stuff is here? What’s this? a sleeve; ’tis like a demi-cannon: What, up and down, carv’d like an apple-tart? Here’s snip and nip and cut and slish and slash. Like to a censer in a barber’s shop; Why, what i’ devil’s name, tailor, call’st thou this!
Shakespeare.
4 O monstrous arrogance, thou liest, thou thread, Thou thimble, Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail, Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket, thou:— Brav’d in mine own house with a skein of thread! Away thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant; Or I shall so be-mete thee with thy yard, As thou shalt think on prating whilst thou liv’st!
Shakespeare.
5 What a fine man Hath your tailor made you!
Massinger.
6 Sister, look ye, How, by a new creation of my tailor’s I’ve shook off old mortality.
John Ford.
7 Yes, if they would thank their maker, And seek no further; but they have new creators, God tailor and god mercer.
Massinger.
8 Thou villain base, Know’st me not by my clothes? No, nor thy tailor, rascal, Who is thy grandfather; he made those clothes, Which, as it seems, make thee.
Shakespeare.
9 As if thou e’er wert angry But with thy tailor! and yet that poor shred Can bring more to the making up of a man, Than can be hoped from thee; thou art his creature; And did he not, each morning, new create thee, Thou’dst stink and be forgotten.
Massinger.
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