“her photo on the dust jacket shows a face that, as H.L. Mencken said, makes you want to burn every bed in America.”
An author whose name I did not record in Chronicles magazine September 1991 re an author who I shall not name
“He looks like the dog’s been keepin’ him under the porch.”
James Langton’s Sunday Telegraph guide to expressions British leaders might encounter from George W. Bush, quoted in Ottawa Citizen December 17, 2000 [with the helpful note that it means “Not the most handsome of men.”]
“you’re as ugly as the mornin’ after payday in a minin’ town.”
“Milligan” in Louis L’Amour The Trail to Seven Pines
“Hair-dos and hair-don’ts.”
Quoting myself again, a thought inspired by I recall not what in August 2001 but certainly reinforced by my own appearance during the lockdown.
“Does your garage door put the ugh in ugly?”
Crawford Door Sales ad on NBC 14/4/90
An election-night pundit “appeared to have had her hair fried for the occasion.”
John Doyle, “Television,” in Globe & Mail November 3, 2004
“Give your brain as much attention as you do your hair and you'll be a thousand times better off.”
Malcolm X (widely quoted online; I was first alerted to it in a paraphrase in the Ottawa Citizen March 7, 1999)
“As for Gussie Fink-Nottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming on sight.”
P.G. Wodehouse, quoted by Joseph Bottum in First Things #156 (October 2005)