quotations about beards
If you think that to grow a beard is to acquire wisdom, a goat is at once a complete Plato.
LUCIAN
Greek Anthology
Beards are, like tusks or antlers, secondary sexual characters but, unlike these, they are not much use for intra-specific combat.
RICHARD M. WILSON
"On Beards", New Scientist, January 21, 1982
All the men in my family were born bearded, and most of the women.
W.C. FIELDS
attributed, The English Shaving Co.
Alas, poor chin! many a wart is richer.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Troilus and Cressida
Now Jove, in his next commodity of hair, send thee a beard!
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Twelfth Night
If certain beards are archetypal (like Santa or Satan), then what are all of us modern guys saying with our hairy Rorschachs, and why now? Is it rebellion, conformity, or a half-hearted compromise between the two? Do women like beards? Did they ever? What's the post-modern, post-feminist meaning of facial hair?
ALLAN PETERKIN
One Thousand Beards: A Cultural History of Facial Hair
His beard is like the thistle of the pastures, when the northwind whistleth on the hills. Ewen hath mowed it with his cutlass, as the wildgoat goat croppeth the flower.
JAMES MACPHERSON
The Fingal of Ossian
Why do old men grow huge beards as if to proclaim a manhood that has long since fled?
JEANE WESTIN
His Last Letter
There was an old man with a beard,
Who said: "It is just as I feared--
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren
Have all built their nests in my beard.
EDWARD LEAR
Book of Nonsense
There is something about a man with a beard I cannot stand. No particular reason for it. Prejudice, I suppose. I feel the same way about cats.
CHARLES WILLEFORD
Pick-Up
He was letting his hair grow, and it was only because Nature is unkind and has no regard for the immortal longings of youth that he did not attempt a beard.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Of Human Bondage
And slight Sir Robert with his watery smile
And educated whisker.
ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
Edwin Morris
Thy face is valanced since I saw thee last;
comest thou to beard me?
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
You call it facial hair. I call it awesomeness escaping through my face.
ANONYMOUS
Moustache, no
Sideburns, no
Goatee, maybe
Beard, beard
PSYCHOSTICK
"Obey the Beard"
Men for their sins
Have shaving, too, entailed upon their chins--
A daily plague.
LORD BYRON
Don Juan
My beard wants to know if you would like a comfortable place to sit down?
VICTORIA DENAULT
Slammed
You should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Macbeth
Does he offer you his foolish beard to pluck at?
PERSIUS
Satires
A beard creates lice, not brains.
AMMIANUS
epigram