I have enjoyed great health at a great age because everyday since I can remember I have consumed a bottle of wine except when I have not felt well. Then I have consumed two bottles.
A Bishop of Seville
The cheapness of wine seems to be a cause, not of drunkenness, but of sobriety. ...People are seldom guilty of excess in what is their daily fare...On the contrary, in the countries which, either from excessive heat or cold, produce no grapes, and where wine consequently is dear and a rarity, drunkenness is a common vice.
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
Last week I had to offer my publisher a bottle that was far too good for him, simply because there was nothing between the insulting and the superlative.
A. J. Liebling, Between Meals
Our hypothetical rich client might even have ordered a Pommard, because it was listed at a higher price.....He would have never learned [about other wines]. A man who is rich in his adolescence is almost doomed to be a dilettante at table. This is not because all millionaires are stupid but because they are not impelled to experiment.
A. J. Liebling, Between Meals
Wine is a puzzle yearning to be solved.
Aaron B. Sherman
Wine is a peep-hole on a man.
Alcaeus c. 625 - c. 575 B.C.
It had the taste of an apple peeled with a steel knife.
Aldous Huxley, 1894–1963, Sebastian Barnack, in Time Must Have a Stop, 1944, assessing a Roederer 1916 champagne.
If penicillin can cure those that are ill, Spanish sherry can bring the dead back to life.
Sir Alexander Fleming
Drink is the feast of reason and the flow of soul.
Alexander Pope
Conversation is the enemy of good wine and food.
Alfred Hitchcock
Wine, madam, is God's next best gift to man.
Ambrose Bierce, 1842 - 1914, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
An old wine-bibber having been smashed in a railway collision, some wine was poured on his lips to revive him." Pauillac, 1873," he murmured and died.
Ambrose Bierce, 1842 - 1914, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
Hail, high Excess especially in wine,
To thee in worship do I bend the knee
Who preach abstemiousness unto me
My skull thy pulpit, as my paunch thy shrine.
Precept on precept, aye, and line on line,
Could ne'er persuade so sweetly to agree
With reason as thy touch, exact and free,
Upon my forehead and along my spine.
At thy command eschewing pleasure's cup,
With the hot grape I warm no more my wit;
When on thy stool of penitence I sit
I'm quite converted, for I can't get up.
Ungrateful he who afterward would falter
To make new sacrifices at thine altar!
Ambrose Bierce, 1842 - 1914, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
WINE, noun, Fermented grape-juice known to the Women's Christian Union as "liquor," sometimes as "rum." Wine, madam, is God's next best gift to man.
Ambrose Bierce, 1842 - 1914, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
Bring water, bring wine, boy! Bring flowering garlands to me! Yes, bring them, so that I may try a bout with love.
Anacreon, c. 570 - c. 480 B.C.
Wine makes every meal an occasion, every table more elegant, every day more civilized.
Andre Simon, Commonsense of Wine
People spend too much time tasting wine; not enough time drinking it
Andre Tchelistcheff
Appreciating old wine is like making love to a very old lady. It is possible. It can even be enjoyable. But it requires a bit of imagination.
Andre Tchelistcheff
Wine...moderately drunken, it doth quicken a man's wits, it doth comfort the heart.
Andrew Boorde, 1562, Dyetary of Helth
When men drink, then they are rich and successful and win lawsuits and are happy and help their friends. Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.
Aristophanes, c. 450 - 385 B.C., Knights, 424 B.C.
Poetry is devil's wine.
St. Augustine
Despair is vinegar from the wine of hope.
Austin O'Malley
On one occasion some one put a very little wine into a [glass], and said that it was sixteen years old. 'It is very small for its age,' said Gnathaena.
Athenaeus, cira A.D.200, The Deipnosophists
Champagne is not so much wine; but more an alcopop gone wrong.
Wine never dies. Instead it lives in the soul of the person who consumes it.
Baron Philippe de Rothschild
I rather like bad wine ... one gets so bored with good wine.
Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, 1804 - 1881, The Two Nations, 1845
[God] made wine to gladden the heart of men; do not, therefore, when at table you see your neighbor pour wine into his glass, be eager to mingle water with it. Why would you drown truth?.. Man...is framed in a manner that he may raise his glass to his mouth...Let us, then, with glass in hand, adore this benevolent wisdom; let us adore and drink!
Benjamin Franklin, Letter to Abbé Morellet, 1779
Wine is a constant proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Benjamin Franklin
Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried, with fewer tensions and more tolerance.
Benjamin Franklin
We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana as of a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, and which incorporates itself with the grapes, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.
Benjamin Franklin
The discovery of a wine is of greater moment than the discovery of a constellation. The universe is too full of stars.
Benjamin Franklin
When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep. When we fall asleep, we commit no sin. When we commit no sin, we go to Heaven. So, lets all get drunk and go to Heaven.
Brian O'Rourke
If God forbade drinking, would He have made wine so good?
Cardinal Richeleu
One evening, wine sang out with all its soul: "I send you, Man, dear disinherited, From my glass prison with its scarlet seals, A song of sunshine and of brotherhood!"
Charles Baudelaire
... Mr. Tulkinghorn sits at one of the open windows, enjoying a bottle of old port. Though a hard-grained man, close, dry, and silent, he can enjoy old wine with the best. He has a priceless bin of port in some artful cellar under the Fields, which is one of his many secrets. When he dines alone in chambers, as he has dined to-day, and has his bit of fish and his steak or chicken brought in from the coffee-house, he descends with a candle to the echoing regions below the deserted mansion, and, heralded by the remote reverberation of thundering doors, comes gravely back, encircled by an earthy atmosphere and carrying a bottle from which he pours a radiant nectar, two score and ten years old, that blushes in the glass to find itself so famous,and fills the whole room with the fragrance of southern grapes.
Charles Dickens, Bleak House
A thousand cups of wine do not suffice when true friends meet, but half a sentence is too much when there is no meeting of minds.
Chinese proverb
To take wine into your mouth is to savor a droplet of the river of human history.
Clifton Fadiman
A bottle of wine begs to be shared; I have never met a miserly wine lover.
Clifton Fadiman
If we sip the wine, we find dreams coming upon us, Out of the imminent night
D.H. Lawrence, Grapes
You haven't drunk too much wine if you can still lie on the floor without holding on.
Dean Martin
I like best the wine drunk at the cost of others.
Diogenes the Cynic
Come quickly! I am tasting stars!
Dom Perignon, 1638-1714, at his first sip of champagne
Hey Man, I'm drinking wine, eating cheese and catching some rays.
Donald Sutherland as Oddball in Kelly's Heros
It’s impossible to separate a great wine from a great experience.
Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher, The Wall Street Journal Guide to Wine
Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favours what you do.
Ecclesiastes 9:7
Forsake not an old friend; for the new is not comparable to him: a new friend is as new wine; when it is old, thou shalt drink it with pleasure.
The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach or Ecclesiasticus, 9:10
A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry: but money answereth all things.
Ecclesiastes; or The Preacher, 10:19
There is no back label with a story on a beer can.
Ely Callaway, founder of Callaway Winery
Wine and wenches empty men's purses.
English proverb
In Europe we thought of wine as something as healthy and normal as food and also a great giver of happiness and well being and delight. Drinking wine was not a snobbism nor a sign of sophistication nor a cult; it was as natural as eating and to me as necessary.
Ernest Hemingway
Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world and one of the most natural things of the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection, and it offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than, possibly, any other purely sensory thing.
Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon
I drank a bottle of wine for company. It was Chateau Margaux. It was pleasant to be drinking slowly and to be tasting the wine and to be drinking alone. A bottle of wine was good company.
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don’t want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. You lose the taste.
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Port is not for the very young, the vain and the active. It is the comfort of age and the companion of the scholar and the philosopher.
Evelyn Waugh
Both to the rich and poor, wine is the happy antidote for sorrow.
Euripides
Mankind . . . possesses two supreme blessings. First of these is the goddess Demeter, or Earth whichever name you choose to call her by. It was she who gave to man his nourishment of grain. But after her there came the son of Semele, who matched her present by inventing liquid wine as his gift to man. For filled with that good gift, suffering mankind forgets its grief; from it comes sleep; with it oblivion of the troubles of the day. There is no other medicine for misery.
Euripides c. 485 - 406 B.C. The Bacchae, c. 407 B.C.
The late Herman Makiewicz, a writer and wit, tippled a little too much at [a dinner party], with the result that he became ill in the midst of the repast and committed the unpardonable social error of losing his food at the ..table...A deadly hush descended...Mankiewicz broke the silence himself. ..."It's all right, Arthur, the white wine came up with the fish."
Ezra Goodman, The Fifty Year Decline and Fall of Hollywood
Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things, old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
Francis Bacon, Apothegms
The two professions are almost the same. Each depends on source material and each takes a lot of time to perfect. The big difference: Today's winemakers still worry about quality.
Francis Ford Coppola, Filmmaker & Winemaker
Strategy is buying a bottle of fine wine when you take a lady out for dinner. Tactics is getting her to drink it.
Frank Muir
I feel sorry for the people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day.
Frank Sinatra
In water one sees one's own face; But in wine one beholds the heart of another.
French proverb
Burgundy for kings, champagne for duchesses, claret for gentlemen.
French proverb
The best use of bad wine is to drive away poor relations.
French proverb
We ...drank a Chateauneuf du Pape which tasted like nice chewed grass. This was Rosemary's defnition...Personally, I found as little suggestion of chewed grass, eve of nice chewed grass, as I had found of rose-petals in Tavel, or of gun-flint in Saint Peray. By this time I was growing humble about my indiscriminating olfactory nerves, and content to accept the verdicts of my friends.
G. B. Stern, Bouquet
And water is on the Bishop's board and the Higher Thinker's shrine, But I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine.
G.K. Chesterton
Wine is sunlight, held together by water!
Galileo Gallilei
I have often thought that the aim of port is to give you a good and durable hangover, so that during the next day you should be reminded of the splendid occasion the night before.
George Mikes
A mind of the caliber of mine cannot derive its nutrient from cows.
George Bernard Shaw
When [wines] were good they pleased my sense, cheered my spirits, improved my moral and intellectual powers, besides enabling me to confer the same benefits on other people.
George Saintsbury, Notes on a Cellar Book
I often wonder whether those who so vehemently proscribe certain wine and food combinations do so from unhappy experience or from an untested acceptance of "rules..." [J]ust a few years ago .... we raised our glasses [unknowingly filled with 1923 Rayne-Vigneau Sauternes and] there was a delighted murmur from each of us at the quite unexpected taste sensation produced by this dry-sweet old wine---rich in flavors rather than sugars---in combination with the delicate richness of the fish. What rule would have told me to drink fine old Sauternes with smoked salmon?"
Gerald Asher, Wine and Food I
You needn’t tell me that a man who doesn’t love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He’s simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.
Saki [H. H. Munro] 1870–1916, The Match-Maker, 1911
The wines that one best remembers are not necessarily the finest that one has ever tasted, and the highest quality may fail to delight so much as some far more humble beverage drunk in more favourable surroundings.
H. Warner Allen
The First Duty of wine is to be Red...the second is to be a Burgundy
Harry Waugh
If you wish to grow thinner, diminish your dinner, And take to light claret instead of pale ale.
Henry Leigh, Carols of Cocayne - On Corpulence
When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.
Henny Youngman
It is better to hide ignorance, but it is hard to do this when we relax over wine.
Heraclitus c. 540 - c. 480 B.C. On the Universe
The wine urges me on, the bewitching wine, which sets even a wise man to singing and to laughing gently and rouses him up to dance and brings forth words which were better unspoken.
Homer, The Odyssey, 9th c. B.C.
Whenever a man is tired, wine is a great restorer of strength.
Homer, The Iliad
Wine can of their wits the wise beguile, Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.
Homer, Odyssey, 9th c. B.C.
Alcohol - the cause of and solution to all of life's problems
Homer Simpson
What is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machine for turning, with infinite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into urine?
Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales
Sometimes when I reflect on all the wine I drink I feel shamed, then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the winery and all of their hopes and dreams. If I don't drink this wine they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered. Then I say to myself, It is better that I drink this wine and let their dreams come true than be selfish and worry about my liver.
Jack Handy
French wines may be said but to pickle meat in the stomach, but this is the wine that digests, and doth not only breed good blood, but it nutrifieth also, being a glutinous substantial liquor; of this wine, if of any other, may be verified that merry induction: That good wine makes good blood, good blood causeth good humors, good humors cause good thoughts, good thoughts bring forth good works, good works carry a man to heaven, ergo, good wine carrieth a man to heaven.
James Howell
What is better than to sit at the end of the day and drink wine with friends, or substitutes for friends?
James Joyce
Fill up, fill up, for wisdom cools; When e'er we let the wine rest. Here's death to Prohibition's fools, And every kind of vine-pest!
Jamrach Holobom
There is not the hundredth part of the wine consumed in this kingdom that there ought to be. Our foggy climate wants help.
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
If it's red, French, costs too much, and tastes like the water that's left in the vase after the flowers have died and rotted, it's probably Burgundy.
Jay McInerney, Bacchus & Me
A meal without wine is like a day without sunshine.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
Burgundy makes you think of silly things, Bordeaux makes you talk of them and Champagne makes you do them.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
A hard drinker, being at the table, was offered grapes for dessert. "Thank you," said he, pushing the dish away from him, "but I am not in the habit of taking my wine in pills."
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste
Wine is the first weapon that devils use in attacking the young.
St. Jerome
A waltz and a glass of wine invite an encore.
Johann Strauss
Once was asked which three things he would take to an island. He stated: "Poetry, a beautiful woman and enough bottles of the world's finest wines to survive this dry period!" Then he was asked what he would leave back first, if it was allowed to take only two things to the island. And he briefly replied: "The poetry!" Slightly surprised, the man asked the next question: "And Sir, what would you leave back if only one was allowed?" And Goethe thought for a couple of minutes and answered: "It depends on the vintage!"
Johann Wolfgang van Goethe, German Poet
Wine rejoices the heart of man and joy is the mother of all virtues.
Johann Wolfgang van Goethe, German Poet
Wine is the drink of the gods, milk the drink of babies, tea the drink of women, and water the drink of beasts.
John Stuart Blackie
I can certainly see that you know your wine. Most of the guests who stay here wouldn't know the difference between Bordeaux and Claret.
John Cleese (Basil Fawlty), Fawlty Towers
From wine what sudden friendship springs!
John Gay, The Squire and the Cur, Fables
My only regret in life is that I did not drink more Champagne.
John Maynard Keynes.
Wine, one sip of this will bathe the drooping spirits in delight beyond the bliss of dreams. Be wise and taste.
John Milton
Is not old wine wholesomest, old pippins toothsomest, old wood burn brightest, old linen wash whitest? Old soldiers, sweethearts, are surest, and old lovers are soundest.
John Webster, c. 1580 - c. 1625, Westward Hoe, 1607
The custom of saluting [i.e., embracing] ladies by their relatives and friends was introduced, it is said, by the early Romans, not out of respect originally, but to find by their breath whether they had been drinking wine, this being criminal for women to do, as it sometimes led to adultery.
Joseph Haydn, Dictionary of Dates
It sloweth age, it strengtheneth youth,it helpeth digestion,it abandoneth melancholie, it relisheth the heart, it lighteneth the mind, it quickenth the spirits, it keepeth and preserveth the head from whirling, the eyes from dazzling, the tongue from lisping, the mouth from snaffling, the teeth from chattering and the throat from rattling; it keepeth the stomach from wambling, the heart from swelling, the hands from shivering, the sinews from shrinking, the veins from crumbling, the bones from aching,and the marrow from soaking.
Copied by Joseph Lyons from a 16th Century manuscript
Wine cheereth God and man.
Judges 9:13
Wine is a living liquid containing no preservatives. Its life cycle comprises youth, maturity, old age, and death. When not treated with reasonable respect it will sicken and die.
Julia Child
A gourmet ordered with dinner in a restaurant a bottle of magnificent old vintage Burgundy. The waiter who brought it handled the bottle carelessly. "Look here," exclaimed the gourmet, "you haven't shaken up the bottle, have you?" "No sir, " the waiter replied, "but I will." And he suited the action to the word.
Julian Street, Table Topics
Blind tastings are to wine what strip poker is to love.
Kermit Lynch
One not only drinks the wine, one smells it, observes it, tastes it, sips it and - one talks about it.
King Edward VII
It fills one's mouth with a gushing freshness--then goes down cool and feverless--then you do not feel it quarrelling with your liver--no, it is rather a peacemaker, and it lies as quiet as it did in the grape; then it is as fragrant as the queen bee, and the more ethereal part of it mounts into the brain...like Aladdin about his enchanted palace so gently that you do not feel his step.
John Keats, 1819, on claret
When asked what wines he liked to drink he replied, 'That which belongs to another.'
Laertius Diogenes
It is well to remember that there are five reasons for drinking: the arrival of a friend; one's present or future thirst; the excellence of the wine; or any other reason.
Latin proverb
There can be no bargain without wine.
Latin proverb
It is well to remember that there are five reasons for drinking: the arrival of a friend, one’s present or future thirst, the excellence of the wine, or any other reason.
Latin proverb
In vino veritas - In Wine, truth.
Latin proverb. Quoted by Alcibiades in Plato's Symposium.
You have only so many bottles in your life, never drink a bad one.
Len Evans
Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, Sermons and soda-water the day after.
Lord Byron, Don Juan
Wine is the most healthful and most hygienic of beverages
Louis Pasteur
No one that has drunk old wine wants new; for he says, "The old is nice."
Luke 5:39
It is is better for pearls to pass through the lips of swine than good wine to pass through the lips of the indifferent
Mark Luedtke
There are no standards of taste in wine... Each man's own taste is the standard, and a majority vote cannot decide for him or in any slightest degree affect the supremacy of his own standard.
Mark Twain
He who loves not wine, women and song remains a fool his whole life long.
Martin Luther, 1777
Neither do men put new wine into old bottles.
The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 9:17
Drink wine, and you will sleep well. Sleep, and you will not sin. Avoid sin, and you will be saved. Ergo, drink wine and be saved.
Medieval German saying
Old wood to burn! Old wine to drink! Old friends to trust! Old authors to read! Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appeared to be best in these four things.
Melchior de Santa Cruz, Floresta Española de Apothegmas o sentencias
A sight of the label is worth 50 years experience.
Michael Broadbent, Wine Tasting
Broad minded professionals don't mind making fools of themselves in the company of others in the business [when doing blind tastings]. At least...their friends in the trade know how really difficult it is to identify wines, and they all have comforting knowledge of their common manifold blunders.
Michael Broadbent, Wine Tasting
In victory I deserve Champagne, in defeat I need it.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Sweetness belongs in the Mosel wine like the bubbles belong in the Champagne.
Nik Weiss, German Wine Society Annual Convention, 2004
May our love be like good wine, grow stronger as it grows older.
Old English Toast
I love everything that's old, old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.
Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer
I have often wondered what the vintners buy, one half so precious as the goods they sell
Omar Khayyam
Wine gives courage and makes men more apt for passion.
Ovid
When there is plenty of wine, sorrow and worry take wing.
Ovid, The Art of Love, c. A.D. 8
Fermented beverages have been preferred over water throughout the ages: they are safer, provide psychotropic effects, and are more nutritious. Some have even said alcohol was the primary agent for the development of Western civilization, since more healthy individuals (even if inebriated much of the time) lived longer and had greater reproductive success.
Dr. Patrick McGovern, et al., The Origins & Ancient History of Wine
Gentlemen, in the little moment that remains to us between the crisis and the catastrophe, we may as well drink a glass of Champagne.
Paul Claudel
The wine seems to be very closed-in and seems to have entered a dumb stage. Sort of a Marcel Meursault.
Paul S. Winalski
Consuming wine in moderation daily will help people to die young as late as possible.
Dr Philip Norrie
Wine is the thinking person's health drink.
Dr. Phillip Norrie
No thing more excellent nor more valuable than wine was ever granted mankind by God.
Plato
When a man drinks wine at dinner, he begins to be better pleased with himself.
Plato
The giving of riches and honors to a wicked man is like giving strong wine to him that hath a fever.
Plutarch
Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging.
Proverbs, 20:1
Who hath woe? Who hath sorrow? Who hath contentions? Who hath babblings? Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.
Proverbs 23:29-30
Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.
Proverbs 31:6-7
Thou hast showed thy people hard things: Thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment.
Psalms, 60:3
For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red.
Psalms 75:8
Vinum bonum laetificat cor hominis - wine gladdens a man's heart
Psalms 104:15
You need not hang up the ivy branch over the wine that will sell.
Publius Syrius, c. 43 BC, Maxim 968
There is a devil in every berry of the grape.
Qur'an
The smell of wine, oh how much more delicate, cheerful, gratifying, celestial and delicious it is than that of oil.
Rabelias, Gargantua
Give me wine to wash me clean of the weather-stains of care.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Too much sentimentality has been wasted upon small producers....Dirt and disease are integral parts of peasant life....Third-rate vines which produce nasty fruit but a lot of it, moldewed grapes which the owner is too poor or obstinate to reject, dirty barns, foul vats, ancient and ill-smelling wine-presses, masses of flies and muck. All these are the tolerated plagues of makers of "little local wines".
Raymond Postgage, Portuguese Wines
Red with meat, white with fish, except lox or herring. Rosé with any endangered species or an ice cream cone. Wine should be stored in a cool, dry place. The glove compartment of a Jaguar or an abandoned washing machine are my personal favorites. Good French wine should carry the phrase: "Mise en bouteilles au chateau." This assures you that only the owner of the vineyard has had a chance to tamper with the wine.
Richard Smith, A Gentleman's Guide To Understanding Fine Wines
I may not here omit those two main plagues and common dotages of human kind, wine and women, which have infatuated and besotted myriads of people; they go commonly together.
Robert Burton, 1577 - 1640, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621 - 1651
Compromises are for relationships, not wine.
Sir Robert Scott Caywood
Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence
Robert Fripp
Wine to me is passion. It's family and friends. It's warmth of heart and generosity of spirit. Wine is art. It's culture. It's the essence of civilization and the art of living.
Robert Mondavi, Harvests Of Joy
Wine has been a part of civilized life for some seven thousand years. It is the only beverage that feeds the body, soul and spirit of man and at the same time stimulates the mind.
Robert Mondavi, Harvests Of Joy
... and the wine is bottled poetry.
Robert Louis Stevenson referring to the Napa Valley
Other countries drink to get drunk, and this is accepted by everyone; in France, drunkenness is a consequence, never an intention. A drink is felt as the spinning out of a pleasure, not as the necessary cause of an effect which is sought: wine is not only a philtre, it is also the leisurely act of drinking.
Roland Barthes 1915 – 1980, French semiologist, Mythologies - Wine and Milk 1957
Drink a glass of wine after your soup and you steal a ruble from your doctor.
Russian proverb
Wine gives great pleasure; and every pleasure is of itself a good. It is a good, unless counterbalanced by evil.
Samuel Johnson, 1709 - 1784
Wine gives a man nothing… it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.
Samuel Johnson, 1709 - 1784
Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.
Samuel Johnson, 1709 - 1784
My dear girl, there are some things that just aren't done, such as drinking Dom Perignon '53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That's just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs!
Sean Connery as James Bond, in Goldfinger, 1964
Vinum incendit iram - wine causes anger.
Seneca
What find you better or more honourable than age? Take the preheminence of it in everything,—in an old friend, in old wine, in an old pedigree.
Shackerley Marmion, 1602 - 1639, The Antiquary
Wine has been created to make people happy.
Wine drunk at the proper time and in moderation is rejoicing heart and gladness of soul.
Wine drunk to excess leads to bitterness of spirit, to quarrels and stumbling.
Drunkenness increases the anger of a fool to his own heart, reducing his strength and adding wounds.
Sirach 31:27-30
How much better is thy love than wine!
The Song of Solomon, 4:10
Like the best wine . . . that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak.
The Song of Solomon, 7:9
Sparkling Muscatel. One of the finest wines of Idaho.
Steve Martin, as waiter, The Muppet Movie, 1979
How much better is thy love than wine!
The Song of Solomon, 4:10
Good wine ruins the purse; bad wine ruins the stomach.
Spanish proverb
For a bad night, a mattress of wine.
Spanish proverb
A man not old, but mellow, like good wine.
Stephen Phillips, Ulysses
I made wine out of raisins so I wouldn't have to wait for it to age.
Stephen Wright
Up to the age of forty eating is beneficial. After forty, drinking.
The Talmud, 200 BC
Wherever wine is lacking, medicines become necessary.
The Talmud, 200 BC
They are astoundingly vivid, undeflected, radiantly seethingly alive on the palate, not just larger than life, but realer than reality. Drinking them I have been moved to every emotion under the sun: wonder, sadness in the face of such utter beauty, frustration when the wine was so celestially multifaceted I couldn't assimilate all the flavors, shattering excitement at the sheer electricity, helpless yielding at the total seductiveness, tears of gladness, sorrow, and almost rage at one special wine that was so fiercely beautiful I felt I couldn't rise up high enough to meet it.
Terry Thiese, Companion Wine Review
Wine is made to be drunk as women are made to be loved; profit by the freshness of youth or the splendor of maturity; do not await decrepitude.
Theophile Malvezin
Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine.
Thomas Aquinas.
For when the wine is in, the wit is out.
Thomas Becon, 1512 - 1567, Catechism
Good wine is a necessity of life for me.
Thomas Jefferson.
I have lived temperately....I double the doctor's recommendation of a glass and a half of wine each day and even treble it with a friend.
Thomas Jefferson
I rejoice as a moralist at the prospect of a reduction of the duties on wine by our national legislature.... Its extended use will carry health and comfort to a much enlarged circle.
Thomas Jefferson
Wine ... the true old man's milk and restorative cordial.
Thomas Jefferson
I think it is a great error to consider a heavy tax on wines as a tax on luxury. On the contrary, it is a tax on the health of our citizens.
Thomas Jefferson
No nation is druken where wine is cheap, and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage
Thomas Jefferson
There are two reasons for drinking wine...when you are thirsty, to cure it; the other, when you are not thirsty, to prevent it... prevention is better than cure.
Thomas Love Peacock
What though youth gave love and roses age still leaves us friends and wine.
Thomas Moore
Never understood a single word he said but I helped him drink his wine…and he always had some mighty fine wine.
Three Dog Night
'To which University,' said a lady, some time since, to the late sagacious Dr. Warren, 'shall I send my son?' 'Madam,' replied he, 'they drink, I believe, near the same quantity of Port in each of them.'
The Times of London, clipping, c. 1798
Drink no longer water but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities.
The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Timothy 5:23
The great evil of wine is that it first seizes the feet, it is a crafty wrestler.
Titus Maccius, 190 BC
Sauvignon blanc bangs you in the mouth - like an old peasant with his wooden shoe....The Sauvignon is the whipper-snapper. It's not solid enough. It's violent, it's sharp, it bites, it cries, it's like a ferocious dog you keep on a leash.
Troisgros, as quoted by Israel Shenker in the N.Y. Times
God made only water, but man made wine.
Victor Hugo
What contemptible scoundrel stole the cork from my lunch?
W. C. Fields, You Can't Cheat an Honest Man, 1939
Once... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were forced to live on nothing but food and water for days.
W. C. Fields, My Little Chickadee
I cook with wine. Sometimes I even add it to the food.
W.C. Fields
I was in love with a beautiful blonde once. She drove me to drink; that's the one thing I'm indebted to her for.
W. C. Fields, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break
I intend to die in a tavern; let the wine be placed near my dying mouth, so that when the choirs of angels come, they may say, "God be merciful to this drinker!"
Walter Mapes, c. 1140 - c. 1210, De Nugis Curialium
Good wine needs neither bush nor preface to make it welcome.
Sir Walter Scott, Perveril of the Peak
Wine had such ill effects on Noah’s health that it was all he could do to live 950 years. Show me a total abstainer that ever lived that long.
Will Rogers
Come, come, good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used; exclaim no more against it.
William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616, Othello
A man cannot make him laugh - but that's no marvel; he drinks no wine.
William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616, Henry IV
Good wine is a good familiar creature if it well used.
William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616
... good company, good wine, good welcome, can make good people.
William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616, Henry VIII.
I am falser than vows made in wine.
William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616, As You Like It, 1600
O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil! * * * O, that men should put an enemy to their mouths to steal away their brains; that we should, with joy, revel, pleasure and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!
William Shakespeare
Wine gives us liberty, love takes it away. Wine makes us princes, love makes us beggars.
Wycherly, The Country Life
So far as drinking is concerned, you have my hearty approval; for wine does of a truth moisten the soul and lull our griefs to sleep....[and with small cups] we shall ...be brought by its gentle persuasion to a more sportive mood.
Xenophon, quoting Socrates
On a moonlit night, after a snowfall, or under cherry blossoms, it adds to our pleasure if, while chatting at our ease, we bring forth the wine cups.
Yoshida Kenko, 1283 - 1350, Tsurezure - Gusa (Essays in Idleness), c. 1340
One should write not unskillfully in the running hand, be able to sing in a pleasing voice and keep good time to music; and, lastly, a man should not refuse a little wine when it is pressed upon him.
Yoshida Kenko, 1283 - 1350, Tsurezure - Gusa (Essays in Idleness), c. 1340
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