"Umbrellas, like faces, acquire a certain sympathy with the individual who carries them…. May it not be said of the bearers of these inappropriate umbrellas, that they go about the streets "with a lie in their right hand?"… Except in a very few cases of hypocrisy joined to a powerful intellect, men, not by nature, umbrellarians, have tried again and again to become so by art, and yet have failed—have expended their patrimony in the purchase of umbrella after umbrella, and yet have systematically lost them, and have finally, with contrite spirits and shrunken purses, given up their vain struggle, and relied on theft and borrowing for the remainder of their lives."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Robert Louis Stevenson, Philosophy of Umbrellas.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Umbrellas
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Related Quotes
"Accipe quæ nimios vincant umbracula soles; Sit licet et ventus, te tua vela tegent."
"We bear our shades about us; self-deprived Of other screen, the thin umbrella spread, And range an Indian waste witho…"
"Of doues I haue a dainty paire Which, when you please to take the aier, About your head shall gently houer, Your clee…"
"Good housewives all the winter's rage despise, Defended by the riding-hood's disguise; Or, underneath the umbrella's …"
"When my water-proof umbrella proved a sieve, sieve, sieve, When my shiny new umbrella proved a sieve."
"The inseparable gold umbrella which in that country [Burma] as much denotes the grandee as the star or garter does in…"
"See, here's a shadow found; the human nature Is made th' umbrella to the Deity, To catch the sunbeams of thy just Cre…"
"It is the habitual carriage of the umbrella that is the stamp of Respectability. The umbrella has become the acknowle…"
"It is not for nothing, either, that the umbrella has become the very foremost badge of modern civilization—the of res…"
"The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides."