"Taller Than My Hair" – Notable Quotes about Hair Loss

FROM POETS AND POLITICIANS TO PROVERBS, WE FIND MANY QUOTES ABOUT HAIR LOSS THAT ARE FUNNY, INSIGHTFUL AND ALMOST ALWAYS TRUE.

Where would the world be without quotes – especially politicians and after-dinner speakers? It’s always handy to have a quote to support your point of view or back up your statements and arguments. The more illustrious the person quoted the better, of course, but even quoting someone your audience has never heard of can be effective at assuring them that your wild idea has extra validity. If you look hard enough, you can find quotes about anything and everything. Naturally, there are quotes that involve hair loss and baldness, and they come at the subject from several different angles.

Very popular, of course, are the quotes that utilize hair loss as something “different” or “atypical,” frequently as a condition that is not desirable, such as:

• “Opportunity has hair in front, but behind she is bald; if you seize her by the forelock, you may hold her, but if suffered to escape, not Jupiter himself can catch her again.” – Latin proverb
• “Too much knowledge makes the head bald.” – Russian proverb
• “It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.” – Cicero

Why does anyone talk about hair loss?

Then there are quotes that are a little ambivalent about hair loss; they don’t necessarily come down solidly against it, but they don’t give it a ringing endorsement either. For example, when Mae West says, “a man can be short and dumpy and getting bald, but if he has fire, women will like him,” it lists baldness as a deficit. Yet the quote as a whole makes it clear that sex appeal is related to something other than preconditioned definitions of “handsome.”

Along a similar line, Helen Rowland once said that “the tenderest spot in a man’s make-up is sometimes the bald spot on the top of his head.” It’s not necessarily a compliment, but it does get to a truth about the insecurity that many men with hair loss can recognize.

Zach Lund says “I’d rather be bald than be labeled a cheat.” This is rather a left-handed compliment, but the not-too-dissimilar Seamus MacManus quote, “Better a bald head than no head at all,” comes across as much more supportive of hair loss.

When Jorge Luis Borges describes the Falklands conflict as “a fight between two bald men over a comb,” it’s sufficiently evocative and abstract that it doesn’t really seem a slap at the so-called slapheads. And the Chinese saying that “experience is a comb which Nature gives us when we are bald” says more about humanity than it does about the non-hirsute.

Larry David has said that “anyone can be confident with a full head of hair. But a confident bald man – there’s your diamond in the rough.” It’s a good quote, as it acknowledges both the problems that may come with hair loss and the fortitude that can come with confronting those problems.

Hair loss quotes: Pride and acceptance

Perhaps the most appealing quotes are those that demonstrate acceptance of or pride in hair loss. There are actually quite a few of these, including:

• “Bald is the new black.” – Gail Porter
• “I’m too sexy for my hair; that’s why it isn’t there.” – Anonymous
• “God only made so many perfect heads; the rest he covered in hair.” – Anonymous
• “Long hair, short wit.” – French proverb
• “Gray hair is to be honored; a bald head deserves a bow.” – Proverb
• “There is more felicity on the far side of baldness than young men can possibly imagine.” – Logan Pearsall Smith
• “I’m a man and I will beat up anybody who tries to tell me that I am not a man just because my hair is thinning.” – Bruce Willis
• “Bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness full of grandeur.” – Matthew Arnold
• “Going bald isn’t about losing your hair, it’s about getting more head.” – Billy Joel

Hair loss quotes that make us smile

Baldness has been a subject of countless jokes, usually in a deprecatory manner. But there are also amusing quotes on the subject that aren’t really put-downs:

• “I don’t consider myself bald; I’m just taller than my hair.” – Lucius Annaeus Seneca
• “I knew I was going bald when it was taking longer and longer to wash my face.” – Harry Hill

We’ll close with a quote from Jamie Lee Curtis that isn’t about baldness per se but which certainly seems applicable:

“People get real comfortable with their features. Nobody gets comfortable with their hair. Hair trauma. It’s the universal thing.”

See? Even the hirsute-headed have their insecurities.