Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Barber
With odorous oil thy head and hair are sleek;
And then thou kemb’st the tuzzes on thy cheek:
Of these, my barbers take a costly care.
Dryden—Fourth Satire of Persius. L. 89.
Of a thousand shavers, two do not shave so much alike as not to be distinguished.
Samuel Johnson—Boswell’s Life of Johnson. (1777).
But he shaved with a shell when he chose,
’Twas the manner of primitive man.
Andrew Lang—Double Ballad of Primitive Man.
Thy boist’rous locks, no worthy match
For valour to assail, nor by the sword
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But by the barber’s razor best subdued.
Milton—Samson Agonistes. L. 1,167.
The first (barbers) that entered Italy came out of Sicily and it was in the 454 yeare after the foundation of Rome. Brought in they were by P. Ticinius Mena as Verra doth report for before that time they never cut their hair. The first that was shaven every day was Scipio Africanus, and after him cometh Augustus the Emperor who evermore used the rasor.
Pliny—Natural History. Bk. VII. Ch. LIX. Holland’s trans.
Our courteous Antony,
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Being barber’d ten times o’er, goes to the feast.
Antony and Cleopatra. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 227.
Whose beard they have sing’d off with brands of fire;
And ever, as it blaz’d, they threw on him
Great pails of puddled mire to quench the hair:
My master preaches patience to him and the while
His man with scissors nicks him like a fool.
Comedy of Errors. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 171.
And his chin new reap’d,
Show’d like a stubble-land at harvest-home.
Henry IV. Pt. I. Act I. Sc. 3. L. 34.
I must to the barber’s;***for methinks I am marvellous hairy about the face.
Midsummer Night’s Dream. Act IV. Sc. 1. L. 23.
The barber’s man hath been seen with him, and the old ornament of his cheek hath already stuffed tennis-balls.
Much Ado About Nothing. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 45.
A Fellow in a market town,
Most musical, cried Razors up and down.
John Wolcot—Farewell Odes. Ode 3.