Tailors

Master Tailor. Agne Widenheim Sweden 1918-2007.

Tailors are people who make, repair, or alter clothing professionally, especially suits and men's clothing. Although the term dates to the thirteenth century, tailor took on its modern sense in the late eighteenth century, and now refers to makers of men's and women's suits, coats, trousers, and similar garments, usually of wool, linen, or silk.

Quotes

• May Moorland weavers boast Pindaric skill,
  And tailors' lays be longer than their bill!
  While punctual beaux reward the grateful notes,
  And pay for poems—when they pay for coats.
  • Lord Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809), line 781.

• Thy clothes are all the soul thou hast.
  • John Fletcher, The Honest Man's Fortune, (1613; published 1647), Act V, scene 3, line 170.

• 'Twas when young Eustace wore his heart in's breeches.
  • John Fletcher, The Elder Brother (c. 1625; 1637), Act V.

• Sister, look ye,
  How, by a new creation of my tailor's
  I've shook off old mortality.
  • John Ford, The Fancies Chaste and Noble (1635-6; printed 1638), Act I, scene 3.

• Th' embroider'd suit at least he deem'd his prey;
  That suit an unpaid tailor snatch'd away.
  • Alexander Pope, The Dunciad (1728; 1735; 1743), Book II, line 117.

• 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.
  • William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1611), Act IV, scene 2, line 80.

• 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.
  • William Shakespeare, King Lear (1608), Act II, scene 2, line 61.

• 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!
  • William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1593-94), Act IV, scene 3, line 86.

• All his reverend wit
  Lies in his wardrobe.
  • John Webster, The White Devil (1612), Act II, scene 1.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 776-77.

• Great is the Tailor, but not the greatest.
  • Thomas Carlyle, Essays, Goethe's Works.

• A tailor, though a man of upright dealing,—
  True but for lying,—honest but for stealing,—
  Did fall one day extremely sick by chance
  And on the sudden was in wondrous trance.
  • Sir John Harrington, Of a Precise Tailor.

• One commending a Tayler for his dexteritie in his profession, another standing by ratified his opinion, saying tailors had their business at their fingers' ends.
  • William Hazlitt, Shakespeare Jest Books, Conceits, Clinches, Flashes and Whimzies, No. 93.

• 'Tis not the robe or garment I affect;
  For who would marry with a suit of clothes?
  • John Heywood, Royal King and Loyal Subject, Act II, scene 2.

• Yes, if they would thank their maker,
  And seek no further; but they have new creators,
  God tailor and god mercer.
  • Philip Massinger, A Very Woman, Act III, scene 1, line 161.

• What a fine man
  Hath your tailor made you!
  • Philip Massinger, City Madam, Act II, scene 2.

• 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.
  • Philip Massinger, Fatal Dowry, Act III, scene 1.

• Get me some French tailor
  To new-create you.
  • Philip Massinger, Renegade, Act III, scene 1.

• King Stephen was a worthy peere,
  His breeches cost him but a crowne;
  He held them sixpence all too deere,
  Therefore he call'd the taylor lowne.
  • Thomas Percy, Reliques, Take Thy Old Cloak About Thee, Stanza 7; quoted in Othello, Act II, scene 2.

• Il faut neuf tailleurs pour faire un homme.
  • It takes nine tailors to make a man.
  • Quoted by Comte de la Villemarque as a Breton proverb.