What's a Beard?

"There are two kinds of people in this world that go around beardless—boys and women—and I am neither one."- Greek saying

"A woman with a beard looks like a man. A man without a beard looks like a woman."

- Afghan Saying

"The beard is the handsomeness of the face, and a wife is the joy in a man's heart."

- R' Akiva, Eicha Rabbah

Leonato: You may light on a husband that hath no beard.
Beatrice: What should I do with him? Dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting-gentlewoman? He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man: and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him...

- William Shakespeare - Excerpt from Much Ado About Nothing – Act 2, Scene I

"And yet your beards forbid me..."

- Banquo, to the witches, in Shakespeare's Macbeth.

"Shaving was a custom of the Macedonian military, taken over by Hellenic and Roman society. From then on the beard becomes a philosophical status symbol, a sign of non-conformism."

- Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason, pg. 210, n.4