Plaits Quotes

And what was she like?" "Tall, fine bust, sloping shoulders; long, graceful neck: olive complexion, dark and clear; noble features; eyes rather like Mr. Rochester's: large and black, and as brilliant as her jewels. And then she had such a fine head of hair; raven-black and so becomingly arranged: a crown of thick plaits behind, and in front the longest, the glossiest curls I ever saw. She was dressed in pure white; an amber-coloured scarf was passed over her shoulder and across her breast, tied at the side, and descending in long, fringed ends below her knee. She wore an amber-coloured flower, too, in her hair: it contrasted well with the jetty mass of her curls. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Beautiful, long, loose hair was a rarity, an indication of a woman's position, her status, the sign of a free woman, a woman who belonged to herself. The sign of an unusual woman – because "normal" maidens wore their hair in plaits, "normal" married women hid theirs beneath a caul or a coif. Women of high birth, including queens, curled their hair and styled it. Warriors cut it short. Only druids and magicians – and whores – wore their hair naturally so as to emphasise their independence and freedom. ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

At some point during the summer of 1944 she started wearing two plaits instead of one, and sometimes wore her hair loose. It was ... indescribable. That hair, a dark firefall, a molten mass, I would have given everything - everything! - to run my fingers through it, to have a taste of the girl, nothing else was important, you could have shown me thousands of similar creatures or even brought them to me, she was the one I wanted, no one else, only her, and wholly, entirely, with everything.
And yet: my love could have lighted on any girl, on any one of all the pretty girls this side of death. ~ Helmut Krausser

Quickly, she pulls out a photograph from the same drawer. Two girls; one English, one Japanese. Their hair is in plaits, knees in the same position, peeking out under school skirts. There is no gap between their bodies. They look entirely different. Chinatsu is delicate, so flawless that she seems like a drawing, whereas Fleur is scrawny and ablaze with freckles. And yet, they look like sisters; the same posture, the same sadness in their eyes. She remembers that day. It was the worst and best of her life. ~ Sarah Dobbs

Autumn imagined the girl, with long dark hair in plaits and a red cape, running through the wood and stopping because she hears something: soft paws crushing damp moss, an animal breathing. She runs on. She's frightened. She knows what will happen is inevitable. All the while the wolf is keeping pace with her, watching her, its pink tongue lolling over its sharp, white teeth. Waiting for its chance. ~ Sanjida Kay

Why do you do up your hair in those tortured plaits, now, Melanie? Why?
Because, she said.
You know that's no answer. You're spoiling your pretty looks, pet. Come here.
She did not move. He ground out his cigarette on the window-ledge and laughed.
Come here, he said again, softly.
So she went. ~ Angela Carter

Horace, hands on hips, paced around the circle, frowning as he studied them. They were a scruffy bunch, he thought, and none too clean. Their hair and beards were overlong and often gathered in rough and greasy plaits, like Nils's. There were scars and broken noses and cauliflower ears in abundance, as well as the widest assortment of rough tattoos, most of which looked as if they had been carved into the skin with the point of a dagger, after which dye was rubbed into the cut. There were grinning skulls, snakes, wolf heads and strange northern runes. All of the men were burly and thickset. Most had bellies on them that suggested they might be overfond of ale. All in all they were as untidy, rank smelling and rough tongued a bunch of pirates as one could be unlucky enough to run into. Horace turned to Will and his frown faded. 'They're beautiful,' he said. ~ John Flanagan

And as the train whistled its imminent departure, a small girl wearing neat plaits and someone else's shoes climbed its iron stairs. Smoke filled the platform, people waved and hollered, a stray dog ran barking through the crowds. Nobody noticed as the little girl stepped over the shadowed threshold; not even Aunt Ada, who some might've expected to be sheperherding her orphaned niece towards her uncertain future. And so, when the essence of light and life that had been Vivien Longmeyer contracted itself for safekeeping and disappeared deep inside her, the world kept moving and nobody saw it happen. ~ Kate Morton

Be yourself, that's what makes the world go round! ~ Katy Perry

These wickets of the soul are plac'd so high,
Because all sounds do highly move aloft;
And that they may not pierce too violently,
They are delay'd with turns and twinings oft.
For should the voice directly strike the brain,
It would astonish and confuse it much;
Therefore these plaits and folds the sound restrain.
That it the organ may more gently touch. ~ Sir John Davies

I got a servant, a nice clean German girl from the Volga. Her village had been devastated - no other word can convey my meaning - by the liquidation of the Kulaks. In the German Volga Republic the peasants, who had been settled there two hundred years before to set an example to the Russians, had been better farmers and so enjoyed a higher standard of life than most peasants in Russia. Consequently, the greater part of them were classified as Kulaks and liquidated.
***
The girls came to the towns to work as servants, and were highly prized, since they were more competent, cleaner, more honest and self-respecting than the Russian peasants. Curiously, they were the most purely Teutonic Germans I had ever seen, Germans like the pictures in Hans Andersen fairy tales, blue-eyed, with long golden plaits and lovely, fair skins. Being Protestants, and regarding the Russians around them as no better than barbarians, they had intermarried little and retained a racial purity which would no doubt have delighted Hitler.
***
My Hilda seemed a treasure. She could cook, she could read and write, she kept herself and the rooms clean and looked like a pink and flaxen doll. I could treat her as an equal without finding that this led to her stealing my clothes and doing no work.
The servant problem in Moscow for Jane and me lay in our inability to bully and curse and drive, which was the only treatment the Russian servant understood. It was quite natural that this should ~ Freda Utley

At such moments Gilberte's plaits used to brush my cheek. They seemed to me, in the fineness of their grain, at once natural and supernatural, and in the strength of their constructed tracery, a matchless work of art, in the composition of which had been used the very grass of Paradise. To a section of them, even infinitely minute, what celestial herbary would I not have given as a reliquary. But since I never hoped to obtain an actual fragment of those plaits, if at least I had been able to have their photograph, how far more precious than one of a sheet of flowers traced by Vinci's pencil! To acquire one of these, I stooped - with friends of the Swanns, and even with photographers - to servilities which did not procure for me what I wanted, but tied me for life to a number of extremely tiresome people. ~ Marcel Proust

We each pine to express our uniqueness. Is it absurd to take ourselves seriously, and resolutely search out a means to discover and express the story that plaits a modicum of coherent reality out of our existence? Is it ridiculous to garner joy from walking in the woods, spending dashes of time intermingling with family and friends, and by working unerringly at our jobs? Is it right to take solace in minor moments of wonder woven together similar to strands of wool in a familiar sweater? Can I wring joy from the snug encounters of daily living by participating in an interlinked web of community of life? Can I foster goodwill by saturating my heart in time-tested faith? ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

she was always careful to brush and re-braid her hair, making sure the blond plaits were straight ~ Ellen Marie Wiseman

He lives near me so we do some things together." His throat felt tight. "Well, lots of things, actually. But of course we have our own lives. Both know it's important we don't get in each other's way. It's not like he needs me, needs my help for anything."
"But you do."
Garry turned his head so swiftly, he heard it crick.
"You need him," Emily announced, gravely. "Don't you?"
And while he desperately searched for something to say that would stop this right now, she peered carefully at his shoulders and neck.
"You need him to do your hair, to comb out those very nasty dangles. It's difficult, I know. I can't do my plates on my own."
Max caught Garry's eye. "Tangles," he mouthed. "Plaits. ~ Clare London

Men like to pleasure us, girl. They like to undo our plaits and give us water to drink from their own mouths. That's what makes the world go round. ~ Federico Garcia Lorca