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FASHIOn quotes
Change of fashions is the tax which industry imposes on the vanity of the rich.
Without depth of thought, or earnestness of feeling, or strength of purpose, living an unreal life, sacrificing substance to show, substituting the fictitious for the natural, mistaking a crowd for society, finding its chief pleasure in ridicule, and exhausting its ingenuity in expedients for killing time, fashion is among the last influences under which a human being who respects himself, or who comprehends the great end of life, would desire to be placed.
Fashion is the science of appearances, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.
The mere leader of fashion has no genuine claim to supremacy; at least, no abiding assurance of it. He has embroidered his title upon his waistcoat, and carries his worth in his watch chain; and if he is allowed any real precedence for this, it is almost a moral swindle—a way of obtaining goods under false pretences.
To be happy is of far less consequence to the worshippers of fashion than to appear so; even pleasure itself they sacrifice to parade, and enjoyment to ostentation.
Custom is the law of one description of fools, and fashion of another; but the two parties often clash, for precedent is the legislator of the first, and novelty of the last!
Fashion is a word which knaves and fools may use to excuse their knavery and folly.
Thus grows up fashion, an equivocal semblance; the most puissant, the most fantastic and frivolous, the most feared and followed, and which morals and violence assault in vain.
Fashion is the great governor of the world.—It presides not only in matters of dress and amusement, but in law, physic, politics, religion, and all other things of the gravest kind.—Indeed, the wisest men would be puzzled to give any better reason why particular forms in all these have been at certain times universally received, and at other times universally rejected, than that they were in, or out of fashion.
Fashion is gentility running away from vulgarity, and afraid of being overtaken by it.—It is a sign the two things are not far asunder.
Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.
Avoid singularity.—There may often be less vanity in following the new modes, than in adhering to the old ones.—It is true that the foolish invent them, but the wise may conform to, instead of contradicting them.
A fop of fashion is the mercer's friend, the tailor's fool, and his own foe.
Be not too early in the fashion, nor too long out of it; nor at any time in the extremes of it.
He alone is a man, who can resist the genius of the age, the tone of fashion, with vigorous simplicity and modest courage.
Fashion is, for the most part, nothing but the ostentation of riches.
Fashion must be forever new, or she becomes insipid.
Those who seem to lead the public taste, are, in general, merely outrunning it in the direction it is spontaneously pursuing.
We should conform to the manners of the greater number, and so behave as not to draw attention to ourselves.—Excess either way shocks, and every wise man should attend to this in his dress as well as language; never be affected in anything, but follow, without being in too great haste, the changes of fashion.
It is as absurd to suppose that everything fashionable is bad, as it would be to suppose that everything unfashionable is good.
It is the rule of rules, and the general law of all laws, that every person should observe the fashions of the place where he is.
Fashion is a tyrant from which nothing frees us.—We must suit ourselves to its fantastic tastes.—But being compelled to live under its foolish laws, the wise man is never the first to follow, nor the last to keep them.
The fashion doth wear out more apparel the man.
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
Fashion seldom interferes with nature without diminishing her grace and efficiency.
Cast an eye on the gay and fashionable world, and what see we for the most part, but a set of querulous, emaciated, fluttering fantastical beings, worn out in the keen pursuit of pleasure—creatures that know, own, condemn, deplore, and yet pursue their own infelicity? The decayed monuments of error! The thin remains of what is called delight!
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