Mustaches Quotes

Quotes About Mustaches From Million Quotes

 

I've had requests for quotations on mustaches and although I already had several scattered on various pages, I didn't feel I had quite enough for an entire page on its own. And there's not much out there on the Web either, despite the latest hipster mustache trend — just a couple of silly one-liners, for the most part. So I decided to spend some time — what turned out to be quite a bit of time! but wonderfully happy time — digging around in the old treasures of Google Books, and I've found lots of old writings about beards, mustaches, facial hair, and the like. So please enjoy, and Happy Movember!  —tεᖇᖇ¡·g, October 2013


A man without a moustache is like a cup of tea without sugar. - English Proverb


The great ages of prose are the ages in which men shave. The great ages of poetry are those in which they allow their beards to grow. - Robert Lynd


Our French professor is simply a duck. His moustache would give you kerwollops of the heart. - L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables (Josie)


Brother, dost mark
That puff of hair upon Alonzo's lip...
The time shall come, and we shall live to see it,
When, for that multiplicity of hair,
Piled, against nature, on an urchin's face,
The maidens shall give up their hearts! nay, more
Not only shall a "whiskered pandour" take
His choicest choice among them—but the jades
Shall love according to the mustache's fulness:
Love him alone who cultivates their growth—
And love no longer than they flourish there!
- From Whiskerandos, a Tragedy, quoted in The Parterre of Fiction, Poetry, History, Literature, and the Fine Arts, Vol. I, 1834


But, to a brave man, honour is dearer than life; and to the major, his whiskers were dearer than honour itself! - Cassio, "Memoir of a Pair of Whiskers," in The Parterre of Fiction, Poetry, History, Literature, and the Fine Arts, Vol. I, 1834  [This 19th century short story is hilarious, about a woman who sabotages her man's mustache to prevent him from marrying another woman who is attracted to his facial hair! —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]


If you’re ever in a jam, a crayon scrunched up under your nose makes a good pretend mustache. - "Phil’s-osophy" by Phil Dunphy (Christopher Lloyd, Steven Levitan, and Dan O’Shannon, Modern Family, "Schooled," original airdate 2012 October 10th)


His face wore a pleasant expression; his lips parted in a smile beneath his budding mustache. - M.E.M. David, "A Miracle," published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, June 1895  ["His" referring to Achille. —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]


Kissing a man with a beard is a lot like going to a picnic. You don't mind going through a little bush to get there! - Minnie Pearl


Seize opportunity by the beard, for it is bald behind. - Bulgarian Proverb


The scissors cut the long-grown hair;
The razor scrapes the remnant fuzz.
Small-jawed, weak-chinned, big-eyed, I stare
At the forgotten boy I was.
- John Updike (1932–2009), "Upon Shaving Off One's Beard"


It always seemed to me that men wore their beards, like they wear their neckties, for show. - D.H. Lawrence


Being a great father is like shaving. No matter how good you shaved today, you have to do it again tomorrow. - Reed Markham


Well, and so you've joined "the movement,"
And have laid out lots of cash
In Macassar oil and bear's grease
Coaching up your pet moustache.
You look just as though your eyebrows
From above had had a slip,
And in falling down had settled
Snugly on your upper lip.
Let me warn you—with the ladies
You'll be in a pretty pickle;
For you can have no idea
How those horrid things do tickle...
- A Master of Hearts, "To a Youth with a Moustache," New and Original Valentines, Serious & Satirical, Sublime & Ridiculous, On All the Ordinary Names, Professions, Trades, Etc., 1857


He had an almost swarthy complexion, with full lips, badly moulded, though red and smooth, above which was a well-groomed black moustache with curled points, though his age could not be more than three- or four-and-twenty. Despite the touches of barbarism in his contours, there was a singular force in the gentleman's face... - Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, 1891


[H]e hath a most remarkable Beard, the largest and blackest I ever saw. - Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, 1749


Yes, indeed, my Whiskerandos,
I declare it makes me laugh—
You seem wedded to your whiskers,
For they're quite your better half.
Were you lost, I'd advertise you
(And just think how folks would stare)
As a fragment of humanity
Between two lumps of hair!...
- A Master of Hearts, "To an Individual with Whiskers," New and Original Valentines, Serious & Satirical, Sublime & Ridiculous, On All the Ordinary Names, Professions, Trades, Etc., 1857


The discovery of a grey hair when you are brushing out your whiskers of a morning—first fallen flake of the coming snows of age—is a disagreeable thing.... - Alexander Smith, "An Essay on an Old Subject"


Winter giveth the fields, and the trees so old,
Their beards of icicles and snow...
- Charles duc d’Orléans, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Jones being impatient to be drest... thought the Shaver was very tedious in preparing his Suds, and begged him to make Haste.... "Sir," said he, "since I have dealt in Suds, I could never discover more than two Reasons for shaving, the one is to get a Beard, and the other to get rid of one. I conjecture, Sir, it may not be long since you shaved, from the former of these Motives..." - Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, 1749  [The entire exchange is quite humorous, or at least as a quotation addict I find it so, as the barber is continually spouting Latin and proverbs — to Jones' rushed disgust — and is self-admittedly "too much addicted to the Study of Philosophy." —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]


If your dad doesn't have a beard, you've got two mums. - Tom Bettany, Michael Bidstrup, Joshua Fielder, and Joel McMillan (The Beards), 2009




Nicholas was tall and well formed. The ladies said he was a perfect Apollo in form, and I'm inclined to believe that he was, although, as I was never intimately acquainted with the original Apollo, I can't be positively sure. Nicholas wore black hair, glossy and curly; and he had a pair of beautiful dark eyes, and a Grecian nose; but his goatee was what did it. Yes, it took an uncommonly stout-hearted woman to face that goatee unmoved. You could not do it, my dear little girl, although you think you can face anything. But you never saw Nicholas Lymberleg's goatee, and well it is for your peace of mind that you haven't... - N.P. Darling, "What My Friend Did For Me," in Ballou's Monthly Magazine, September 1891


[A beard] gives fierceness to the warrior, and renders the lover irresistible. - Anonymous, The Ladies' Repository, "Editor's Table: Beards," September 1862


The care that we bestow on our person is a species of politeness towards others; thus it is that many persons shave some part of their beard, in order to unite freedom of toilette with an appearance of cleanliness and trimness. - Charles Blanc, Art in Ornament and Dress, 1875


If they were richer, one would say, "They are dandies"; if they were poorer, one would say, "They are idlers".... At that period a dandy was composed of a tall collar, a big cravat, a watch with trinkets, three vests of different colors, worn one on top of the other.... Add to this, high shoes with little irons on the heels, a tall hat with a narrow brim, hair worn in a tuft, an enormous cane, and conversation set off by puns of Potier. Over all, spurs and a mustache. At that epoch mustaches indicated the bourgeois, and spurs the pedestrian. The provincial dandy wore the longest of spurs and the fiercest of mustaches. - Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, translated from French by Isabel F. Hapgood


Guys are lucky because they get to grow mustaches. I wish I could. It's like having a little pet for your face. - Anita Wise  [Or according to Old Hippy Paul, it is more like having a hobby on your upper lip. —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]


A particular face shows determination merely by the turn of the moustache; but the moustache is robbed of all its expression unless it be worn by itself. Accompanied by the other parts of the beard, it loses its originality, it ceases to be a marked characteristic of will or temper. - Charles Blanc, Art in Ornament and Dress, 1875


Thus we have now for many centuries triumphed over nature to the extent of making certain secondary characteristics of the male (such as the beard) disagreeable to nearly all the females—and there is more in that than you might suppose. - C.S. Lewis (Screwtape letter)


Do not mistake a goat's beard for a fine stallion's tail. - Irish Proverb


His mouth as perfect as Cupid's bow in form, and as cherry-red in colour as hers. Bright curly hair; bright sparkling blue-gray eyes; a boy's blush and manner; neither whisker nor moustache, unless a little light-brown fur on his upper lip deserved the latter title... - Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes, originally published in Tinsleys' Magazine, 1872


I'm one of those people, who when I draw birds I just draw flying mustaches. - Author Unknown


A dark mustache shaded his upper lip, and a strange, nameless beauty lit up and softened his handsome face whenever he smiled. Adored by the ladies, envied by the men... - May Agnes Fleming, The Gypsy Queen's Vow, 1875





But what, then, is the use of beards?.... The first is to stimulate the ingenuity of man, and give field and scope for the exercise of a rampant fancy. Observe what an opportunity a beard affords for studying effect in the infinite variety of cutting and chipping which it undergoes, and how much it is made to contribute to the personality and character of the individual.... Women have almost an infinite range of fabrics and colors with which they set off the charms of their persons. Of ribbons, bows, fringes, and jewels, there is no end. Men have nothing but their beards... - Anonymous, The Ladies' Repository, "Editor's Table: Beards," September 1862


But he wore a moustache—a shaggy moustache too: nothing in the meek and merciful way, but quite in the fierce and scornful style: the regular Satanic sort of thing—and he wore, besides, a vast quantity of unbrushed hair. - Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, 1843


There is always a period when a man with a beard shaves it off. This period does not last. He returns headlong to his beard. - Jean Cocteau (1889–1963), translated from French


There are others still, who believe that beards are given men chiefly or wholly as an ornament, as peacocks are decked with enormous tails.... Something must be done, say the philosophers, to distinguish men from women, and what could be more obvious or striking than a good beard? - Anonymous, The Ladies' Repository, "Editor's Table: Beards," September 1862


Weep for the fate of Serjeant Thin,
A man of a desperate courage was he,
More he rejoiced in the battle's din,
Than in all the mess-room revelry;
But he died at last of no ugly gash,—
He choked on a hair of his own mustache!
- "The Fate of Serjeant Thin" (A new original Ballad, founded on Fact. Edin Lit Jour.), published in The Olio; or, Museum of Entertainment, 1831 September 4th


I took up the weekly paper, Ha! what's this? "Cupid taking Lodgings among the Whiskers!... A coterie of fine ladies received and encouraged the addresses of a company of fine smooth-faced Englishmen. Presently, a party of strangers, with whiskers, cut in, and cut out the Englishmen. Before long, a party of Frenchmen appeared, and very soon supplanted the strangers. Messieurs wore mustaches! After a time, a party of Prussians appeared; they added the imperial to the whiskers and mustaches, and it is unnecessary to say, that the Frenchmen had to stand aside. By and by came a company of Russians, so enveloped in whiskers, mustaches, &c. that no one could tell on which side of their heads the face was. This was decisive! The Russians married the ladies!" - Cassio, "Memoir of a Pair of Whiskers," in The Parterre of Fiction, Poetry, History, Literature, and the Fine Arts, Vol. I, 1834


It would be trifling to dwell on the comical expression of a man's face when one whisker was taken off clean, and the other was left standing... - Cassio, "Memoir of a Pair of Whiskers," in The Parterre of Fiction, Poetry, History, Literature, and the Fine Arts, Vol. I, 1834


I'll have a double cappuccino, half-caff, nonfat milk, with enough foam to be aesthetically pleasing but not so much that it would leave a moustache. - From the television show Frasier (Angell, Casey, Lee), spoken by the character Niles Crane


Millie looked up. Her pulse went up to fever-heat; her heart leaped into her throat. There at last stood her ideal man—he of whom in the careless days of girlhood, she had dreamed so often. If he had been made to order, she could hardly have been better pleased. Tall, graceful, splendidly proportioned, he seemed a very prince in bearing. His skin was a clear olive, with the crimson burning through upon each cheek; his hair lay in thick masses, and was of that purple-black hue which you see on a raven's wing; his moustache was superb, soft, silky, dark, and with such an exquisite wave. - Caroline A. Soule, "Mollie's Ideal," in The Ladies' Repository, April 1863  [Ah, the young Spanish nobleman, Don Carlos! —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]


It is almost impossible to bear the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing someone's beard. - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799), translated from German by R.J. Hollingdale


If you had half as much brains as you have beard, you would have looked before you leaped. - Aesop  [Context note: The beard here mentioned is on a goat. The fox is speaking to him in this fable. —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]


Do you suppose that your beard creates brains and therefore you grow that fly-flapper? Take my advice and shave it off at once; for that beard is a creator of lice and not of brains. - Ammianus (2nd century A.D.), in The Greek Anthology, Volume IV, "Book XI: The Convivial and Satirical Epigrams," epigram 156, translated by W.R. Paton, 1918


If you think that to grow a beard is to acquire wisdom, a goat with a fine beard is at once a complete Plato. - Lucian of Samosata, in The Greek Anthology, Volume IV, "Book XI: The Convivial and Satirical Epigrams," epigram 430, translated by W.R. Paton, 1918


I moustache you a question, but I'll shave it for later. - Author Unknown


"Here, papa, take the young lady.... She is fonder of gentlemen than ladies, I perceive. She wouldn't be a true female, though, if she wasn't." Miss Erminie, in a paroxysm of delight, immediately buried her "long, aristocratic, white fingers" in papa's thick burnished locks, with variations of pulling his whiskers and mustache and then tenderly kissing the above hirsute appendages to make them well again. And papa, like all other young papas, looked, as if he thought her the most wonderful baby that ever lived, and danced her up and down until she forgot all sense of etiquette and propriety, and fairly screamed with delight. - May Agnes Fleming, The Gypsy Queen's Vow, 1875


Ah Fate, cannot a man
Be wise without a beard?
East, West, from Beer to Dan,
Say, was it never heard
That wisdom might in youth be gotten,
Or wit be ripe before 't was rotten?
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Fame"


He took a seat at her side with respectful coldness, although he was trembling with desire, to such an extent had this mysterious and seductive creature in a few minutes succeeded in disturbing his senses. He took her hand and gently removed the glove, then carried the slender white fingers to his mouth and began to kiss them, one after another, with caressing devotion. Finally he reached the wrist and the tapering arm, grazing with his mustache the satin-like flesh that thrilled slightly beneath his ardent touch. - Georges Ohnet, What Pierre Did With His Soul (L'âme de Pierre), 1890, translated from French by E.P. Robins


One day soon the Gillette company will announce the development of a razor that, thanks to a computer microchip, can actually travel ahead in time and shave beard hairs that don't even exist yet. - Dave Barry


One shaves his whole face, and looks as much like a great masculine woman as it is possible for him to look. Another leaves his moustache, and another a goatee. One cultivates a pair of delicate whiskers, while another makes them broad and strong as the back of Hercules. One curves them gracefully round this way, and another in that, while a third presents them square and hard, or pointed and piquant. Indeed, there is no end to the diversity which our five hundred millions of men manage to create with so simple a thing as a human beard. - Anonymous, The Ladies' Repository, "Editor's Table: Beards," September 1862


My facial hair is imperative. I put the must in mustache. - Jarod Kintz, Whenever You're Gone, I'm Here For You


This is what the beard represents. The beard is hair that grows down from the head to the rest of the body. It is the bridge between mind and heart, thoughts and actions, theory and practice, good intentions and good deeds. So we don't cut the beard, but rather let it flow freely, to open a direct flow from the ideals and philosophies of our minds into our everyday lifestyle. - Aron Moss, "The Beard," on Chabad.org, 2007





When not otherwise engaged, men are almost uniformly busy in stroking their beard, pulling their moustache, or coaxing their goatee. Without such a resource, what could they do? Women can manage to hold their hands gracefully in their laps, if they have nothing else to occupy them. Men find this impossible, and hence resort at once to their beards. - Anonymous, The Ladies' Repository, "Editor's Table: Beards," September 1862


An universal impression prevails that genuine poets should have an abundance of hair like Bryant, Longfellow, Tennyson, and Walt Whitman, who rather suggest this as an infallible test of the true virile bard and seer. Consequently a poet, even if he is not hairy, is popularly and paradoxically regarded—if you will pardon the vulgarism—as a hairy poet. See now how eccentric is my Axeman Bard.
His dark hair is cut short; a modest moustache covers his firm upper lip, and—in flagrant violation of every canon relating to the external appearance of poets from Homer down to the sweet singer of Michigan—from beneath the swell of his lower lip there depends a thin goatee barely an inch in length. Upon the wisdom or taste of this whim I must remain mute. It hardly seems right to me that a poet should wear a goatee; but then did not Pope wear a canvas bodice and three pairs of stockings?
- Melville Philips, "Discovery of a Poet" (in Chicago Current), quoted in "Some Friendly Comments on the Poetical Works of the 'Axeman Bard,'" in The Lady of Winderslee: A Saintly Romance, and Other Poems by George Washington Kettoman, 1892  [Geo. W. Kettoman, a.k.a. the Axeman Bard, was a police officer by day and a poet and artist by night. —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]


The variations which this appendage throws into the expression of the face are numerous. Molière, following the King's example, cultivated on his upper lip a thin thread of moustache, which showed the entire outline of his amiable and sensitive mouth, and it only wanted a few cuts of the scissors and razor to give an external form to the refinement of his genius, to that raillery without bitterness, to that extreme kindness, which characterised him. - Charles Blanc, Art in Ornament and Dress, 1875


[I]n bounded De Courci, hair and all! Cloak, hat, and hair were instantly thrown aside, and a smooth, young, laughing face revealed itself from behind whiskers, moustaches, imperials, and goatee. - T.S. Arthur, "Marrying a Count," Off-Hand Sketches, A Little Dashed with Humour, 1851


She'll be cured of moustaches, or I'm no prophet.... The moral effect will tell upon our silly young ladies, whose heads are turned with a foreign accent and a hairy lip. You acted the whiskered fop to a charm. - T.S. Arthur, "Marrying a Count," Off-Hand Sketches, A Little Dashed with Humour, 1851


Wast thou not yesterday a boy, and we had never even dreamt of this beard coming? How did this accursed thing spring up, covering with hair all that was so pretty before? Heavens! what a marvel! - Strato of Sardis, in The Greek Anthology, Volume IV, "Book XII: Strato's Musa Puerilis," epigram 191, translated by W.R. Paton, 1918


When it grows naturally, the moustache is always a sign of a manly temperament. It never, or at any rate seldom, happens that it is bristling, hirsuta, in gentle and thoughtful characters, and it is rarely rounded, turned under, or softly curled in men of rough natures born for contradiction and conflict. - Charles Blanc, Art in Ornament and Dress, 1875


Your character tells the world you're a real man, and your beard is the exclamation point! - Author Unknown


Although I'm at a loss as to what's behind this specific spike in mustache mania... I have noticed a particular proliferation of one very specific style of tonsorial topiary — the meticulously groomed and shaped, hipster-appropriated handlebar — which has become so ubiquitous in popular culture that walking down the street is starting to feel like venturing into a carnival tent into a Wild West saloon and out through a blacksmith's shop of yore.... My theory? The handlebar mustache, simple to render and instantly recognizable in silhouette, has become entrenched as a kind of bifurcated byword for nostalgic longing, a symbolic shorthand that's being used to signify, key into and co-opt a larger, overarching trend — that of modern-day culture's renewed appreciation of authenticity and heritage brands. Or maybe I'm just splitting hairs. - Adam Tschorn, "What's behind the modern-day mustache mania?" 2013 June 19th, Los Angeles Times





Your beard never stops growing. It never gives up on you, so never give up on your beard. - Author Unknown


Not for one moment, beautiful aged Walt Whitman,
have I failed to see your beard full of butterflies,
nor your shoulders of corduroy worn out by the moon,
nor your thighs of virginal Apollo,
nor your voice like a pillar of ashes;
ancient and beautiful as the mist...
- Federico García Lorca (1898–1936), translated from Spanish by Stephen Spender and J.L. Gili


[H]ow long were you occupied, sir, this very Sabbath morning, with these whiskers? Ay, whiskers! What do you mean to insinuate by them, sir? Why are they not shaved? Are they wholly senseless, or have you an aim, object, and end in cherishing that loathsome lair? - John Wilson, The Young Lady's Book; or, Manual of Elegant Recreations, Exercises, and Pursuits, 1829


A man without a beard is like a lion without a mane. - Dutch proverb


The little white goatee that stuck out from the side of his chin was as crooked as his temper. - Margaret Sutton Briscoe, "The Price of Peace," Jimty, and Others, 1897








To draw it to a fine point, as was done under the Empire... is to give the face of the wearer a factitious and evanescent expression, since the points cannot be kept stiff without the use of a cosmetic, easily detected and soon melted. - Charles Blanc, Art in Ornament and Dress, 1875


I'm not growing a beard — I'm just too lazy to shave. - Author Unknown


You're a model gentleman.... Bon jour, Seigneur Don Monsieur Moustache Whiskerando! - May Agnes Fleming, The Gypsy Queen's Vow, 1875


Make beard, not war. - Author Unknown


Another objection Sir Walter Scott had against poor Foscolo was that his Italian bête noire was "intolerably conceited;" and it is by no means unlikely that, like other ugly men, the Italian, aware of his inability to conceal his ugliness, had ended by being proud of it; that he thought a countenance debarred from any chance of being lovable might as well aspire to be formidable. He valued it, perhaps, as Mirabeau did his hure, or "boar's head," or as so many do value at the present day the bristling Victor Emanuel mustachios, the Lincoln goatee, and other variety of hirsute, satyr-like hairy appendages, as if afraid of their smooth faces not being sufficiently hideous. - A. Gallenga, "The Sorrows of Ugly Men," in London Society, May 1887


You offer a sincere compliment on a great mustache and suddenly she's not your friend. - Marty Feldman


With smoking axle hot with speed, with steeds of fire and steam,
Wide-waked To-day leaves Yesterday behind him like a dream.
Still, from the hurrying train of Life, fly backward far and fast
The milestones of the fathers, the landmarks of the past.
But human hearts remain unchanged: the sorrow and the sin,
The loves and hopes and fears of old, are to our own akin;
And if, in tales our fathers told, the songs our mothers sung,
Tradition wears a snowy beard, Romance is always young.
- John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892), "Mary Garvin"


You can measure time in days, weeks, months, or in beards. - Author Unknown


Hitler ruined that mustache for everybody. [I]t's an interesting mustache, and now nobody can wear it... - Larry David, Alec Berg, David Mandel, and Jeff Schaffer


So when people see mustaches now, they think hipster, not Hitler. And that, people, is the power of creative rebranding. - Kenya Barris, black‑ish, "Crazy Mom" (season 1, episode 4), original airdate 2014 October 15th


Beards: they grow on you. - Author Unknown


Even the swallowing the moustache by Whiskerandos, which has so often been denounced as "too broad" was taken from an accident which really happened on the first night of Leigh Hunt's play of A Legend of Florence to a Mr. Moore, who played the principal character in it, and who was obliged to leave the stage for some minutes, being totally unable to proceed with his part. - J. Brander Matthews, "Sheridan's 'Critic,'" in Tinsleys' Magazine, November 1872


In England and America a beard usually means that its owner would rather be considered venerable than virile; on the continent of Europe it often means that its owner makes a special claim to virility. - Rebecca West, The Thinking Reed, 1936