Quotes about hair
page 10

Olaudah Equiano photo
David Spade photo
Robert Silverberg photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo
Jaroslav Seifert photo

“A lad changed to a shrub in spring,
the shrub into a shepherd boy,
A fine hair to a lyre string,
snow into snow on hair piled high.”

Jaroslav Seifert (1901–1986) Czechoslovak poet, Nobel prize laureate

Transformations translated by Edward Osers
An Apple from your Lap (1933)

Kamala Surayya photo
A. M. Klein photo
Bertie Ahern photo

“Some people dye their hair yellow or put rings in their noses”

Bertie Ahern (1951) Irish politician, 10th Taoiseach of Ireland

Explaining to the Mahon Tribunal on 20 December 2007 why he did not have a bank account in 1993. Planning Tribunal Transcript http://www.planningtribunal.ie/images/SITECONTENT_784.pdf planningtribunal.ie. 2007-12-20.

Charlie Brooker photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Thomas Wolsey photo

“Master Kingston, I see the matter against me now it is framed; but if I had served God as diligently as I have done the King He would not have given me over in my gray hairs.”

Thomas Wolsey (1473–1530) English political figure and cardinal

To the messenger summoning him to see Henry VIII. http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/Bios/ThomasWolsey(Cardinal).htm.

Herbert Hoover photo

“Many years ago, I concluded that a few hair shirts were part of the mental wardrobe of every man. The president differs from other men in that he has a more extensive wardrobe.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

Quoted in the New York Times (17 October 1964)

Rāmabhadrācārya photo

“What is to be seen in this fallen world, which is false and filled with vices, is full of disputes and is governed by the sins of deceitful and wicked humans? Only Rama is worth seeing, whose flocks of hair cover his lotus-like face, who is completely blissful, who has the form of a child, and who is the giver of liberation.”

Rāmabhadrācārya (1950) Hindu religious leader

kiṃ dṛṣṭavyaṃ patitajagati vyāptadoṣe'pyasatye
māyācārāvratatanubhṛtāṃ pāparājadvicāre ।
dṛṣṭavyo'sau cikuranikuraiḥ pūrṇavaktrāravindaḥ
pūrṇānando dhṛtaśiśutanuḥ rāmacandro mukundaḥ ॥
[Aneja, Mukta, J. K., Kaul, Abraham, George, 2005, Abilities Redefined – Forty Life Stories Of Courage And Accomplishment, All India Confederation of the Blind, Delhi, India, Shri Ram Bhadracharyaji – A Religious Head With A Vision, http://www.aicb.in/images/success_story.pdf, 25 April 2011, 66–68]
[Nagar, Shanti Lal, The Holy Journey of a Divine Saint: Being the English Rendering of Swarnayatra Abhinandan Granth, Acharya Divakar, Sharma, Siva Kumar, Goyal, Surendra Sharma, Susila, B. R. Publishing Corporation, First, Hardback, New Delhi, India, 2002, 8176462888]

Taylor Swift photo

“We're drivin' down the road,
I wonder if you know.
I'm tryin' so hard
Not to get caught up now.
But you're just so cool.
Run your hands through your hair,
Absent mindedly makin' me want you.”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

Fearless, written by Taylor Swift, Liz Rose, and Hillary Lindsey
Song lyrics, Fearless (2008)

Alain de Botton photo

“I passed by a corner office in which an employee was typing up a document relating to brand performance. … Something about her brought to mind a painting by Edward Hopper which I had seen several years before at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. In New York Movie (1939), an usherette stands by the stairwell of an ornate pre-war theatre. Whereas the audience is sunk in semidarkness, she is bathed in a rich pool of yellow light. As often in Hopper’s work, her expression suggests that her thoughts have carried her elsewhere. She is beautiful and young, with carefully curled blond hair, and there are a touching fragility and an anxiety about her which elicit both care and desire. Despite her lowly job, she is the painting’s guardian of integrity and intelligence, the Cinderella of the cinema. Hopper seems to be delivering a subtle commentary on, and indictment of, the medium itself, implying that a technological invention associated with communal excitement has paradoxically succeeded in curtailing our concern for others. The painting’s power hangs on the juxtaposition of two ideas: first, that the woman is more interesting that the film, and second, that she is being ignored because of the film. In their haste to take their seats, the members of the audience have omitted to notice that they have in their midst a heroine more sympathetic and compelling than any character Hollywood could offer up. It is left to the painter, working in a quieter, more observant idiom, to rescue what the film has encouraged its viewers not to see.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), pp. 83-84.

Ludovico Ariosto photo

“His eyes were almost sunken in his head;
His face was thin and fleshless as a bone.
His tangled, bristling hair, inspiring dread,
And shaggy beard were wild to look upon.”

Quasi ascosi avea gli occhi ne la testa,
La faccia macra, e come un osso asciutta,
La chioma rabuffata, orrida e mesta,
La barba folta, spaventosa e brutta.
Canto XXIX, stanza 60 (tr. B. Reynolds)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

Robert A. Heinlein photo

“It was so darn quiet you could hear your hair grow.”

Source: Farmer in the Sky (1950), Chapter 13, “Johnny Appleseed” (p. 131)

Peter Greenaway photo
Hayley Williams photo
Mike Huckabee photo

“It's more likely I'll dye my hair green, get a bunch of tattoos and go on tour with Amy Winehouse.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

[Quotes of note, 2008-02-16, Boston.com, http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/02/16/quotes_of_note/, 2011-03-01]
On the possibility of him running for the Senate seat after losing the White House run.

Gwendolyn Brooks photo
Ian Holloway photo
Tom Robbins photo
Willie Nelson photo

“When I left Nashville I went to Texas because that's where I came from, and because I was playing in Texas a lot in different places. And I saw hippies and rednecks drinking beer together and smoking dope together and having a good time together and I knew it was possible to get all groups of people together – long hair, short hair, no hair – and music would bring them together.”

Willie Nelson (1933) American country music singer-songwriter.

Willie Nelson: 'If We Made Marijuana Legal, We'd Save a Whole Lotta Money and Lives', Michael, Hann, May 17, 2012, May 20, 2012, The Guardian, Guardian News and Media Ltd. http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/may/17/30-minutes-with-willie-nelson,

Vālmīki photo
James Thomas Fields photo

“The skipper stormed and tore his hair,
Hauled on his boots and roared at Marden—
"Nantucket's sunk and here we are
Right over old Marm Hackett’s garden!"”

James Thomas Fields (1817–1881) American writer and publisher

The Nantucket Skipper, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Stephen Vincent Benét photo
William Wordsworth photo
Mickey Spillane photo
Jonathan Swift photo
Alexander Pope photo
Slash (musician) photo
Johnny Cash photo
Gerard Manley Hopkins photo

“Wild air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere,
That each eyelash or hair
Girdles; goes home betwixt
The fleeciest, frailest-fixed
Snowflake; that’s fairly mixed
With, riddles, and is rife
In every least thing’s life.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

" The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe http://www.bartleby.com/122/37.html", lines 1-8
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Karl Pilkington photo

“The Elephant Man would never have gotten up and gone, ‘Oh, God. Look at me hair today.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Xfm 21 December 2002
On The Elephant Man

Rachel Maddow photo
Lily Allen photo
Oksana Shachko photo
Margaret Cho photo
A. A. Attanasio photo

“Yet every hair on the body is numbered. And in truth, every day is the beautiful day, the last day.”

A. A. Attanasio (1951) writer

A.A. Attanasio. Centuries. 1997. p.310 ISBN 978-1-60450-283-1

Charles Lamb photo
William Golding photo
Helen Keller photo
Warren Zevon photo
Sherman Alexie photo
Rose Fyleman photo
Robert Newman photo
John Fante photo
Gillian Anderson photo

“Above anything else, stay true to yourself. Whether that means for you that you like to have blue hair, or you don't like to drink, or you are attracted to the same sex, or you want to remove yourself from Facebook, or you've got 3 different kids from 3 different dads but you know you're a really good mom, or you cry for a week because your turtle died. Whatever your truth is, stay true to yourself. But be a good person while you're at it.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

When asked what advice would she give young feminist — Reddit "Sunday morning with Gillian Anderson. Grab a cup of coffee and A Vision of Fire. AMA." https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2j12o1/sunday_morning_with_gillian_anderson_grab_a_cup#cl7c2ps (October 12, 2014)
2010s

John Buchan photo
Dante Gabriel Rossetti photo

“The blessed damozel lean'd out
From the gold bar of Heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters still'd at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were seven.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) English poet, illustrator, painter and translator

Stanza 1.
The Blessed Damozel http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/715.html (1850)

“One of my earliest recollections in life was being taken for holidays to the little farm where my father had been born. … The cows "gave" milk, the hens "gave" eggs … but I couldn't for the life of me see what the pigs "gave", and they seemed … such friendly creatures, always glad to see me, and grateful for almost anything that was thrown to them in the sty. … I still have vivid recollections of the whole process from start to finish, including all the screams of course, which were only feet away from where this pig's companion still lived. And then, when the pig had finally expired, the women came out, one after another, with buckets of this scalding water, and the body of the pig was scraped – all the hairs were taken away. The thing that shocked me, along with the chief impact of the whole setup, was that my Uncle George, of whom I thought very highly, was part of the crew, and I suppose at that point I decided that farms, and uncles, had to be re-assessed. They weren't all they seemed to be, on the face of it, to a little, hitherto uninformed boy. And it followed that this idyllic scene was nothing more than Death Row. A Death Row where every creature's days were numbered by the point at which it was no longer of service to human beings.”

Donald Watson (1910–2005) English vegan activist

Interview with George D. Rodger (15 December 2002), in VeganSociety.com https://www.vegansociety.com/sites/default/files/DW_Interview_2002_Unabridged_Transcript.pdf.

Kent Hovind photo

“I think what happened: the mammoths were up there chopping on their tropical flowers. It was a beautiful day, and it began to snow super cold snow. They had never seen snow before. One of the mammoths looked at his buddy and said, "Herman, this is peculiar weather we're having here. What is this white stuff falling out of the sky?" "I don't know, but let's get out of here." They started running around trying to find a place to hide and the snow got deeper and deeper and deeper and they got stuck in the snow standing up, and they couldn't even fall down. How many of you have ever been in a snow drift so deep you couldn't even fall over? Ever been in one of those? I think that's what happened to the mammoths. People say, "Well the mammoths have long hair. They're designed for cold weather." No, mammoths are not designed for cold weather. A lot of animals in the jungle have long hair. It is hot there. If the temperature is seventy degrees, long hair is just simply a decoration. There's a lot of things about the mammoth that shows that they were not designed for cold weather. There's a whole section just in this book about mammoths showing that they were not designed for cold weather. You can read all about that. For the mammoths, some of them ended frozen standing up. It was in super cold ice, perhaps 300 degrees below zero!”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Hovind theory

Josh Billings photo
Derren Brown photo

“There are three things I noticed about being thirty-three: Failing memory, hair loss and failing memory.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Dashiell Hammett photo
Jon Stewart photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Judith Krug photo

“Blocking material leads to censorship. That goes for pornography and bestiality, too. If you don't like it, don't look at it… Every time I hear someone say, I want to protect the children, I want to pull my hair out.”

Judith Krug (1940–2009) librarian and freedom of speech proponent

"Preventing Kids From Seeing Illegal Smut Is Not Unconstitutional; It's Common Sense" http://www.ncpa.org/bothside/krt/krt051700a.html by Janet M. LaRue, Senior Director of Legal Studies at the Family Research Council, National Policy Center: Idea House (2001)

Paula Modersohn-Becker photo
George Gordon Byron photo

“My hair is grey, but not with years,
Nor grew it white
In a single night,
As men's have grown from sudden fears.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

The Prisoner of Chillon http://readytogoebooks.com/PC31.htm, st. 1 (1816).

Charles Stuart Calverley photo

“And then, all of a sudden, it was as though through those dark eyes an electrical circuit had been struck. She sat fascinated. Snake-and-bird fascinated. Afterwards she could not recall the details of what he had said. She remembered only that she had been absorbed, rapt, lost, for over ten minutes by the clock. She had perceived images conjured up from the dead past: a hand trailed in clear river water, deliciously cool, while the sun smiled and a shoal of tiny fishes darted between her fingers; the crisp flesh of a ripe apple straight from the tree, so juicy it ran down her chin; grass between her bare toes, the turf like springs so that she seemed not to bear the whole of her weight on her soles but to be floating, dreamlike, in slow motion, instantly transported to the moon; the western sky painted with vast heart-tearing slapdash streaks of red below the bright steel-blue of clouds, and stars coming snap-snap into view against the eastern dark; wind gentle in her hair and on her cheeks, bearing flower perfumes, dusting her with petals; snow cold to the palm as it was shaped into a ball; laughter echoing from a dark lane where only lovers walked, not thieves and muggers; butter like an ingot of soft gold; ocean spray sharp and clean as the edge of an axe; with the same sense of safe, provided rightly used; round pebbles polychrome beside a pool; rain to which a thirsty mouth could open, distilling the taste of a continent of air... And under, and through, and in, and around all this, a conviction: “Something can be done to get that back!”
She was crying. Small tears like ants had itched their paths down her cheeks. She said, when she realized he had fallen silent, “But I never knew that! None of it! I was born and raised right here in New York!””

”But don’t you think you should have known it?” Austin Train inquired gently.
September “MINE ENEMIES ARE DELIVERED INTO MY HAND”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Urvashi Vaid photo
Brian W. Aldiss photo

“It is not Beauty I demand,
A crystal brow, the moon's despair,
Nor the snow's daughter, a white hand,
Nor mermaid's yellow pride of hair.”

George Darley (1795–1846) Irish poet, novelist, and critic

Poem The Loveliness of Love http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~ridge/local/iinbid.html

Nathaniel Hawthorne photo
Hayley Jensen photo
William Drummond of Hawthornden photo
Dylan Moran photo

“Your nose hair… which is grey… is in my eye.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On how to hurt the ones you really love.
Like, Totally (2006)

Alan Ayckbourn photo

“A comedy is just a tragedy interrupted, I once said. Do you finish with the kiss or when she opens her eyes to tell him she loves him and sees blonde hairs on his collar?”

Alan Ayckbourn (1939) English playwright

"A Crash Course in Playwriting" (1993) http://education.alanayckbourn.net/EducationInterviewsPlaywriting.htm.

Victor Davis Hanson photo
James Brown photo

“Hair is the first thing. And teeth the second. Hair and teeth. A man got those two things he's got it all.”

James Brown (1933–2006) American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist

Brown, J. & Tucker, B.B. (1986). James Brown: The Godfather of Soul. Macmillan: New York. ISBN 0-02517-430-4

Robert Patrick (playwright) photo
Samuel Butler (poet) photo
Angelique Rockas photo
Chelsea Handler photo
T.S. Eliot photo
Bruce Springsteen photo
Dietrich von Choltitz photo

“I stood in front of him and I saw an old, stooped, bloated man with gray, slick hair, barely standing on his legs.”

Dietrich von Choltitz (1894–1966) German general

About Adolf Hitler. Quoted in one of the German newspapers from 1994.

Will Eisner photo

“International Jews.
In violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish effort rise the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all, of them have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia) Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxemborg (Germany) and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognizable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.
Graves: This was written by Winston Churchill, a highly regarded M. P. in England…so, I need hardly remind you that it will take strong evidence to prove the “Protocols” ‘’’a fake!’’’
Raslovlev: At an old bookshop I got a copy of “The Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu,” by Maurice Joly, 1864.
I examined what I had. It was obvious that the “Protocols of Zion” was copied from it.
Graves: How did you get this?
Raslovlev: I bought this book from a friend, formerly of the Okhrana, our secret agents in France. They ordered the plagiarism!
When the Bolsheviks came in, we left with what we could take out with us.
How much is it worth to you, or your paper, Mr. Graves?
Graves: Hmm…can’t say yet! …Is Geneva really the place of publication??
Raslovlev: I do know that the “Protocols of Zion: was intended to prove to the Tsar that the Revolt in Russia was a Jewish Plot…it was written by an Okhrana agent…a plagiarist, Mathieu Golovinski!
When it was first published in Russia round 1902, its publisher, Dr. Nilus, claimed it to be notes stolen from an 1897 Zionist congress by French agents!
Graves: But that congress was convened by Theodore Herzl to promote a Jewish state. It was not a secret meeting…Dr. Nilus’s claim is a lie!
Raslovlev: Yes, it is indeed! Let me show you…we will compare the “Protocols” with Joly’s Book.
Raslovlev: Set them side by side Graves, and you will see obvious plagiarism of Joly’s “dialogue!”
Graves: I see…be patient while I go through it…yes! Yes! Yes!”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp. 70-73

Jerome David Salinger photo
M.I.A. photo

“GAVRAS: I’d love to have his hair. He has very good curly, shiny hair.”

M.I.A. (1975) British recording artist, songwriter, painter and director

Sourced quotes, Interview with Romain Gavras for Interview (2010)

M. K. Hobson photo
Plutarch photo
Linda McQuaig photo
Raymond Chandler photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“The days of Black Power are numbered. Its course, indeed is onward. But with the swiftness of an arrow, it rushes to the tomb. While crushing its millions, it is also crushing itself. The sword of Retribution, suspended by a single hair, hangs over it. That sword must fall. Liberty must triumph.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

As quoted in "Sustaining Black Studies", by Winston A. Van Horne, Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 37, No. 3, (January 2007)
1850s

Muhammad photo

“Jabir B. Abdillah reported that once he was on an expedition with the Prophet salla Allahu ʿalayhi wa sallam, and when they were close to the city of Madinah, he sped on his mount. The Prophet salla Allahu ʿalayhi wa sallam asked him why he was in such a hurry to return home. Jabir replied, “I am recently married!” The Prophet salla Allahu ʿalayhi wa sallam asked, “To an older lady or a younger one?” [the Arabic could also read: “To a widow or a virgin?”], to which he replied, “A widow.” The Prophet salla Allahu ʿalayhi wa sallam said, “But why didn’t you marry a younger girl, so that you could play with her, and she could play with you, and you could make her laugh, and she could make you laugh?”He said, “O Messenger of Allah! My father died a martyr at Uhud, leaving behind daughters, so I did not wish to marry a young girl like them, but rather an older one who could take care of them and look after them.” The Prophet salla Allahu ʿalayhi wa salam replied, “You have made the correct choice.”Jabir continues, “So when we were about to enter the city, the Prophet salla Allahu ʿalayhi wa sallam said to me, "Slow down, and enter at night, so that she who has not combed may comb her hair, and she who has not shaved may shave her private area."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Then he said to me, "When you enter upon her, then be wise and gentle.”
Narrated Jabir bin 'Abdullah [Reported by al-Bukhari and Muslim, with various wordings, in their two Sahihs]
Sunni Hadith

Rudyard Kipling photo

“A fool there was and he made his prayer
(Even as you and I!)
To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair
We called her the woman who did not care),
But the fool he called her his lady fair”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Even as you and I!
The Vampire http://www.readprint.com/work-973/The-Vampire-Rudyard-Kipling, Stanza 1.
Departmental Ditties and other Verses (1886)

Johnny Cash photo

“The hairs on your arm will stand up.
At the terror in each sip and in each sup.
Will you partake of that last offered cup,
Or disappear into the potter's ground.
When the man comes around.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

Song lyrics, American IV: The Man Comes Around (2002), The Man Comes Around

Raymond Chandler photo
Dylan Moran photo
John Fante photo
Nicole Lapin photo

“It’s not about hair, it’s about being you--whether that’s something the industry has seen before and accepts or not.”

Nicole Lapin (1984) American journalist

On not cutting her hair
Powergirls Magazine Cover Story

Theodor Mommsen photo

“The man, whose head and heart had in a desperate emergency and amidst a despairing people paved the way for their deliverance, was no more, when it became possible to carry out his design. Whether his successor Hasdrubal forbore to make the attack because the proper moment seemed to him to have not yet come, or whether, more a statesman than a general, he believed himself unequal to the conduct of the enterprise, we are unable to determine. When, at the beginning of [221 B. C], he fell by the hand of an assassin, the Carthaginian officers of the Spanish army summoned to fill his place Hannibal, the eldest son of Hamilcar. He was still a young man--born in [247 B. C], and now, therefore, in his twenty-ninth year [221 B. C]; but his had already been a life of manifold experience. His first recollections pictured to him his father fighting in a distant land and conquering on Ercte; he had keenly shared that unconquered father's feelings on the Peace of Catulus (also see Treaty of Lutatius), on the bitter return home, and throughout the horrors of the Libyan war. While yet a boy, he had followed his father to the camp; and he soon distinguished himself. His light and firmly-knit frame made him an excellent runner and fencer, and a fearless rider at full speed; the privation of sleep did not affect him, and he knew like a soldier how to enjoy or to dispense with food. Although his youth had been spent in the camp, he possessed such culture as belonged to the Phoenicians of rank in his day; in Greek, apparently after he had become a general, he made such progress under the guidance of his confidant Sosilus of Sparta as to be able to compose state papers in that language. As he grew up, he entered the army of his father, to perform his first feats of arms under the paternal eye and to see him fall in battle by his side. Thereafter he had commanded the cavalry under his sister's husband, Hasdrubal, and distinguished himself by brilliant personal bravery as well as by his talents as a leader. The voice of his comrades now summoned him--the tried, although youthful general--to the chief command, and he could now execute the designs for which his father and his brother-in-law had lived and died. He took up the inheritance, and he was worthy of it. His contemporaries tried to cast stains of various sorts on his character; the Romans charged him with cruelty, the Carthaginians with covetousness; and it is true that he hated as only Oriental natures know how to hate, and that a general who never fell short of money and stores can hardly have been other than covetous. But though anger and envy and meanness have written his history, they have not been able to mar the pure and noble image which it presents. Laying aside wretched inventions which furnish their own refutation, and some things which his lieutenants, particularly Hannibal Monomachus and Mago the Sammite, were guilty of doing in his name, nothing occurs in the accounts regarding him which may not be justified under the circumstances, and according to the international law, of the times; and all agree in this, that he combined in rare perfection discretion and enthusiasm, caution and energy. He was peculiarly marked by that inventive craftiness, which forms one of the leading traits of the Phoenician character; he was fond of taking singular and unexpected routes; ambushes and stratagems of all sorts were familiar to him; and he studied the character of his antagonists with unprecedented care. By an unrivaled system of espionage--he had regular spies even in Rome--he kept himself informed of the projects of the enemy; he himself was frequently seen wearing disguises and false hair, in order to procure information on some point or other. Every page of the history of this period attests his genius in strategy; and his gifts as a statesman were, after the peace with Rome, no less conspicuously displayed in his reform of the Carthaginian constitution, and in the unparalleled influence which as a foreign exile he exercised in the cabinets of the eastern powers. The power which he wielded over men is shown by his incomparable control over an army of various nations and many tongues--an army which never in the worst times mutinied against him. He was a great man; wherever he went, he riveted the eyes of all.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

The History of Rome, Volume 2 Translated by W.P. Dickson
On Hannibal the man and soldier
The History of Rome - Volume 2