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

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

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