quotations about beards
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
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
'Tis merry in hall
Where beards wag all.
THOMAS TUSSER
Hundred Points of Good Husbandry
Unless you're in an early seventies-era Eagles cover band, a founding member of a religious cult, or sleeping under a bridge in Seattle, lose the beard and get a haircut. Power doesn't have time for any form of hirsute hipster self expression.
ARI GOLD
The Gold Standard: Rules to Rule By
You call it facial hair. I call it awesomeness escaping through my face.
ANONYMOUS
And slight Sir Robert with his watery smile
And educated whisker.
ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
Edwin Morris
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
A goatee is to beards what diamonds are to ornaments.
PAWAN MISHRA
Coinman: An Untold Conspiracy
Men for their sins
Have shaving, too, entailed upon their chins--
A daily plague.
LORD BYRON
Don Juan
It's always the same: if someone is against convention his only way of attacking it is by creating another convention, so that when most people are clean-shaven he grows a beard, and when beards are worn he shaves his off. He's merely changing from one convention to another.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
Jorge Luis Borges: Conversations
Lord, I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face: I had rather lie in the wollen.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Much Ado About Nothing
Thy face is valanced since I saw thee last;
comest thou to beard me?
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
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
My beard wants to know if you would like a comfortable place to sit down?
VICTORIA DENAULT
Slammed
His beard is like an old mop; he shall be called Grisly-beard.
JACOB & WILHELM GRIMM
"King Grisley-Beard"
Now I know the difference between a father's rough beard and a young man's untried bristles.
STEVEN CHOPADE
attributed, goodreads
He has not past three or four hairs on his chin.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Troilus and Cressida
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