Use FontAwesome or Glyphicons with css :before

What you are describing is actually what FontAwesome is doing already. They apply the FontAwesome font-family to the ::before pseudo element of any element that has a class that starts with “icon-“.

[class^="icon-"]:before,
[class*=" icon-"]:before {
  font-family: FontAwesome;
  font-weight: normal;
  font-style: normal;
  display: inline-block;
  text-decoration: inherit;
}

Then they use the pseudo element ::before to place the icon in the element with the class. I just went to http://fortawesome.github.com/Font-Awesome/ and inspected the code to find this:

.icon-cut:before {
  content: "\f0c4";
}

So if you are looking to add the icon again, you could use the ::after element to achieve this. Or for your second part of your question, you could use the ::after pseudo element to insert the bullet character to look like a list item. Then use absolute positioning to place it to the left, or something similar.

i:after{ content: '\2022';}