Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Hatters
“Sye,” he seyd, “be the same hatte
I can knowe yf my wyfe be badde
To me by eny other man;
If my floures ouver fade or falle,
Then doth my wyfe me wrong wyth alle
As many a woman can.”
Adam of Cobsham—The Wright’s Chaste Wife. L. 265.
So Britain’s monarch once uncovered sat,
While Bradshaw bullied in a broad-brimmed hat.
James Bramston—Man of Taste.
One should not talk of hatters in the house of the hanged.
Cervantes—Don Quixote.
A hat not much the worse for wear.
Cowper—History of John Gilpin.
My new straw hat that’s trimly lin’d with green,
Let Peggy wear.
Gay—Shepherd’s Week. Friday. L. 125.
I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat
And the breeches and all that
Are so queer.
Holmes—The Last Leaf.
The hat is the ultimatum moriens of respectability.
Holmes—The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. VIII.
The Quaker loves an ample brim,
A hat that bows to no Salaam;
And dear the beaver is to him
As if it never made a dam.
Hood—All Round my Hat.
A sermon on a hat: “‘The hat, my boy, the hat, whatever it may be, is in itself nothing—makes nothing, goes for nothing; but, be sure of it, everything in life depends upon the cock of the hat.’ For how many men—we put it to your own experience, reader—have made their way through the thronging crowds that beset fortune, not by the innate worth and excellence of their hats, but simply, as Sampson Piebald has it, by ‘the cock of their hats’? The cock’s all.”
Douglas Jerrold—The Romance of a Keyhole. Ch. III.
He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat; it ever changes with the next block.
Much Ado About Nothing. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 75.
I never saw so many shocking bad hats in my life.
Attributed to Duke of Wellington, upon seeing the first Reformed Parliament. Sir William Fraser, in Words on Wellington (1889), P. 12, claims it for the Duke. Captain Gronow, in his Recollections, accredits it to the Duke of York, second son of George III., about 1817.