But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, likethe wind, havetaken us away.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Isaiah 64:6.

In Ko«  hln, a town of monks and bones, And pavements fang'd with murderous stones And rags, and hags, and hideous wenches; I counted two and seventy stenches, All well defined, and several stinks! Ye Nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks, The river Rhine, it is well known, Doth wash your city of Cologne; But tell me, Nymphs, what power divine Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?

-Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
  'Cologne', first published in Friendship's Offering (1834), as 'Lightheartedness in Rhyme', no.4.

What all men should avoid is the'shabby genteel'. No man ever gets over it† You had better be in rags.

-Disraeli, Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
  Endymion, ch.23.

Busy old fool, unruly sun, Why dost thou thus, Through windows, and through curtains, call on us? Must to thy motions lovers'seasons run? Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide Late schoolboys, and sour prentices, Go tell court-huntsmen that the King will ride, Call countryants to harvest offices; Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

-Donne,John
c.1595^1605  'The Sun Rising', collected in Songs and Sonnets (1633).

There is no scandal like rags, nor any crime so shameful as poverty.

-Farquhar, George
  The Beaux' Stratagem, act1, sc.1.

  Hanging upside down like rows of disgusting old rags And grinning in their sleep.

-Lawrence, D(avid) H(erbert)
  'Bats'.