Red Imported Fire

Famous quotes containing the words red, imported and/or fire:

    Iconic clothing has been secularized.... A guardsman in a dress uniform is ostensibly an icon of aggression; his coat is red as the blood he hopes to shed. Seen on a coat-hanger, with no man inside it, the uniform loses all its blustering significance and, to the innocent eye seduced by decorative colour and tactile braid, it is as abstract in symbolic information as a parasol to an Eskimo. It becomes simply magnificent.
    Angela Carter (1940–1992)

    If the jests that you crack have an orthodox smack,
    You may get a bland smile from these sages;
    But should it, by chance, be imported from France,
    Half-a-crown is stopped out of your wages!
    Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)

    The duce of any other rule have I to govern myself by in this affair—and if I had one ... I would twist it and tear it to pieces, and throw it into the fire when I had done—Am I warm? I am, and the cause demands it—a pretty story! is a man to follow rules—or rules to follow him?
    Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)