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

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 Co

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

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