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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Hair

Gray hairs are death’s blossoms.

Schiller.

When you see fair hair, be pitiful.

George Eliot.

The ungrown glories of his beamy hair.

Addison.

Sweet girl graduates, in their golden hair.

Tennyson.

Robed in the long night of her deep hair.

Tennyson.

Thy fair hair my heart enchained.

Sir Philip Sidney.

Fair tresses man’s imperial race ensnare.

Pope.

Her luxuriant hair;—it was like the sweep of a swift wing in visions!

Willis.

The robe which curious Nature weaves to hang upon the head.

Decker.

How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!

Shakespeare.

Comb down his hair; look, look! it stands upright.

Shakespeare.

  • And her sunny locks
  • Hang on her temples like a golden fleece.
  • Shakespeare.

  • Golden hair, like sunlight streaming
  • On the marble of her shoulder.
  • J. G. Saxe.

  • I pray thee let me and my fellow have
  • A hair of the dog that bit us last night.
  • John Heywood.

    Make false hair, and thatch your poor thin roofs with burthens of the dead.

    Shakespeare.

    Loose his beard and hoary hair streamed, like a meteor, to the troubled air.

    Gray.

    For deadly fear can time outgo, and blanch at once the hair.

    Sir Walter Scott.

    There seems a life in hair, though it be dead.

    Leigh Hunt.

  • Her hair down-gushing in an armful flows,
  • And floods her ivory neck, and glitters as she goes.
  • Allan Cunningham.

    Whose every little ringlet thrilled, as if with soul and passion filled!

    Moore.

    The hoary head is a crown of glory if it be found in the way of righteousness.

    Bible.

    A large head of hair adds beauty to a good face, and terror to an ugly one.

    Lycurgus.

  • The glittering tresses which, now shaken loose,
  • Shower’d gold.
  • Owen Meredith.

    His hair is of a good color,—an excellent color; your chestnut was ever the only color.

    Shakespeare.

    By common consent gray hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respect that can never excite envy.

    Bancroft.

    Long, glorious locks, which drop upon thy cheek like gold-hued cloud-flakes on the rosy morn.

    Bailey.

    Give me a look, give me a face that makes simplicity a grace—robes loosely flowing, hair as free!

    Ben Jonson.

  • Dear, dead women, with such hair, too—what’s become of all the gold
  • Used to hang and brush their bosoms?
  • Robert Browning.

    Her hair was not more sunny than her heart, though like a natural golden coronet it circled her dear head with careless art.

    Lowell.

    The hair is the finest ornament women have. Of old, virgins used to wear it loose, except when they were in mourning.

    Luther.

    The redundant locks, robustious to no purpose, clustering down—vast monument of strength.

    Milton.

  • An angel face! its sunny “wealth of hair,”
  • In radiant ripples, bathed the graceful throat
  • And dimpled shoulders.
  • Mrs. Osgood.

  • Her cap of velvet could not hold
  • The tresses of her hair of gold,
  • That flowed and floated like the stream,
  • And fell in masses down her neck.
  • Longfellow.

  • Her hair is bound with myrtle leaves,
  • (Green leaves upon her golden hair!)
  • Green grasses through the yellow sheaves
  • Of autumn corn are not more fair.
  • Oscar Wilde.

  • Come, let me pluck that silver hair
  • Which ’mid thy clustering curls I see;
  • The withering type of time or care
  • Has nothing, sure, to do with thee.
  • Alaric Alex Watts.

  • Ah, thy beautiful hair! so was it once braided for me, for me;
  • Now for death is it crowned, only for death, lover and lord of thee.
  • Swinburne.

    A large bare forehead gives a woman a masculine and defying look. The word “effrontery” comes from it. The hair should be brought over such a forehead as vines are trailed over a wall.

    Leigh Hunt.

    Her golden locks she roundly did uptie in braided trammels, that no looser hairs did out of order stray about her dainty ears.

    Spenser.

    Her head was bare, but for her native ornament of hair, which in a simple knot was tied above—sweet negligence, unheeded bait of love!

    Dryden.

  • Her long loose yellow locks lyke golden wyre,
  • Sprinckled with perle, and perling flowres atweene,
  • Doe lyke a golden mantle her attyre.
  • Spenser.

  • A silver line, that from the brew to the crown,
  • And in the middle, parts the braided hair,
  • Just serves to show how delicate a soil
  • The golden harvest grows in.
  • Wordsworth.

  • Her hair
  • In ringlets rather dark than fair,
  • Does down her ivory bosom roll,
  • And hiding half adorns the whole.
  • Prior.

  • Her locks are plighted like the fleece of wool
  • That Jason and his Grecian mates achiev’d,
  • As pure as gold, yet not from gold deriv’d;
  • As full of sweets as sweet of sweets is full.
  • Robert Greene.

  • Beware of her fair hair, for she excels
  • All women in the magic of her locks;
  • And when she winds them round a young man’s neck,
  • She will not ever set him free again.
  • Goethe.

    Gray hair is beautiful in itself, and so softening to the complexion and so picturesque in its effect that many a woman who has been plain in her youth is, by its beneficent influence, transformed into a handsome woman.

    Miss Oakey.

  • It was brown with a golden gloss, Janette,
  • It was finer than silk of the floss, my pet;
  • ’Twas a beautiful mist falling down to your wrist,
  • ’Twas a thing to be braided, and jewelled, and kissed—
  • ’Twas the loveliest hair in the world, my pet.
  • Chas. G. Halpine.

    God doth bestow that garment, when we die, that, like a soft and silken canopy, is still spread over us. In spite of death, our hair grows in the grave; and that alone looks, fresh when all our other beauty’s gone.

    Decker.

    Look on beauty, and you shall see ’tis purchased by the weight; which therein works a miracle in Nature, making them lightest that wear most of it: so are those crispèd snaky golden locks which make such wanton gambols with the wind upon supposed fairness, often known to be the dowry of a second head, the skull that bred them in the sepulchre.

    Shakespeare.

  • This nymph, to the destruction of mankind,
  • Nourished two locks, which graceful hung behind
  • In equal curls, and well conspir’d to deck,
  • With shining ringlets, the smooth ivory neck.
  • Love in these labyrinths his slaves detains,
  • And mighty hearts are held in slender chains,
  • With hairy springes we the birds betray,
  • Slight lines of hair surprise the finny prey.
  • Pope.

  • Bind up those tresses. O, what love I note
  • In the fair multitude of those her hairs!
  • Where but by chance a silver drop hath fallen,
  • Even to that drop ten thousand wiry friends
  • Do glue themselves in sociable grief,
  • Like true, inseparable, faithful loves,
  • Sticking together in calamity.
  • Shakespeare.

    Hair is the most delicate and lasting of our materials, and survives us, like love. It is so light, so gentle, so escaping from the idea of death, that, with a lock of hair belonging to a child or friend, we may almost look up to heaven and compare notes with the angelic nature,—may almost say, “I have a piece of thee here not unworthy of thy being now.”

    Leigh Hunt.