quotations about beards
Growing a beard is like undertaking a flight. First you have the idea which you dare not reveal to a soul. You feel that there will be wide open spaces you cannot cover. If it fails, have you the courage to face the condescending pity which people have for failures? If it succeeds, have you the endurance to be pleasant to everyone who asks why you did it?
SIR FRANCIS CHICHESTER
Lonely Sea and Sky
'Tis merry in hall
Where beards wag all.
THOMAS TUSSER
Hundred Points of Good Husbandry
Any man can start a beard. A true man never finishes one.
ANONYMOUS
The only reason to shave your beard is the joy of growing it again.
ANONYMOUS
For me, the great problem growing up in England was that I had a very narrow concept of what god can be, and it was damn close to an old man with a beard.
JOHN CLEESE
The Gospel According to John Cleese
Mendham was a cadaverous man with a magnificent beard. He looked, indeed, as though he had run to beard as a mustard plant does to seed.
H.G. WELLS
The Wonderful Visit
You should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Macbeth
A goatee is to beards what diamonds are to ornaments.
PAWAN MISHRA
Coinman: An Untold Conspiracy
This beard is like a winter night, long, dark, and cold.
GEORGE LAMB
New Arabian Nights Entertainments
Thy face is valanced since I saw thee last;
comest thou to beard me?
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
Why do old men grow huge beards as if to proclaim a manhood that has long since fled?
JEANE WESTIN
His Last Letter
Alas, poor chin! many a wart is richer.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Troilus and Cressida
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
His beard is like an old mop; he shall be called Grisly-beard.
JACOB & WILHELM GRIMM
"King Grisley-Beard"
And slight Sir Robert with his watery smile
And educated whisker.
ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
Edwin Morris
His beard grows fast as blazes, like a damp wicket in springtime sun, green, and Rachel's skin is so fine, his bristles can score her red the way a new ball marks a bat, English alum on English unbleached willow, finest quality, special selection, Rachel-grade.
EMMA RICHLER
Be My Wolff
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
It's a little tragic, it's a little weird
ZZ Top are prisoners of their beards
Imagine them weightless in outerspace
Beards and shades flyin' all over the place
CHRISTINE LAVIN
"Prisoners of Their Hairdos"
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
Jimmy wearing a beard is like Beth wearing one of her big, black, shapeless sweaters that covers her butt. But she's not wearing one of those sweaters tonight. She's wearing her Goldie Hawn dress, and Jimmy's wearing a beard. Interesting.
LISA GENOVA
Love Anthony