Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I'll not look for wine.
Ben Jonson (1573–1637)
To Celia
For when the wine is in, the wit is out.
Thomas Becon (1512–1567)
Catechism, 375
[Grapes are] the most noble and challenging of fruits.
Malcolm Dunn, Head Gardener to the 7th Viscount Powerscourt, c 1867
Quotes in 'Phylloxera' by Christy Campbell
The air is like a draught of wine.
The undertaker cleans his sign,
The Hull express goes off the line,
When it's raspberry time in Runcorn.
Noel Coward (1899-1973)
On With the Dance, 'Poor Little Rich Girl'
Good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Othello, II. iii. (315)
You need not hang up the ivy branch over the wine that will sell.—Publius Syrius (c. 43 BC)
Maxim 968
Good wine needs no bush.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
As You Like It, Epilogue.
To happy convents, bosomed deep in vines,
Where slumber abbots, purple as their wines.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
The Dunciad, Bk iv. 30
A man may surely be allowed to take a glass of wine by his own fireside.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Refreshing himself at the Piazza Coffee House as his Drury Lane theatre in went up in flames on 24th February 1809. Quoted in Thomas Moore, Memoirs of the Life of Sheridan, Vol. ii. Ch. 20 (His mistress, Lady Bessborough, said 'Sheridan is never sober for a moment'.)
This bread I break was once the oat,
This wine upon a foreign tree
Plunged in its fruit;
Man in the day or wind at night
Laid the crops low, broke the grape's joy.
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
This bread I break
After-dinner talk
Across the walnuts and the wine.
Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
The Miller's Daughter, 31
Pour out the wine without restraint or stay,
Pour not by cups, but by the bellyful,
Pour out to all that wull.
Edmund Spenser (1552?-1599)
Epithalamion, 250
There's nothing serious in mortality.
All is but toys; renown and grace is dead,
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Macbeth, II. iii. (100)
Go, little book, and wish to all
Flowers in the garden, meat in the hall,
A bin of wine, a spice of wit,
A house with lawns enclosing it,
A living river by the door,
A nightingale in the sycamore!
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
Underwoods, I. 1, 'Envoy'
Seamen three! what men be ye?
Gotham's three Wise Men we be.
Whither in your bowl so free?
To rake the moon from out the sea.
The bowl goes trim. The moon doth shine,
And our ballast is old wine.
T.L. Peacock (1785-1866)
Nightmare Abbey, Ch. 11, 'Three Men of Gotham'
Ah, wasteful woman, she who may
On her sweet self set her own price,
Knowing man cannot choose but pay,
How has she cheapened paradise;
How given for nought her priceless gift,
How spoiled the bread and spilled the wine,
Which, spent with due respective thrift,
Had made brutes men and men divine.
Coventry Patmore (1823-1896)
The Angel in the House, Bk i. 3, Prelude 3
A man not old, but mellow, like good wine,
Stephen Phillips (1845-1915)
Ulysses, III. ii
His element is so fine
Being sharpened by his death,
To drink from the wine-breath
While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.
W.B.Yeats (1865-1939)
All Souls' Night
Oh some are fond of Spanish wine, and some are fond of French.
John Masefield (1878-1967)
Captain Stratton's Fancy
Days of wine and roses laugh and run away,
Like a child at play.
Johnny Mercer (1909-1976)
Days of Wine and Roses
Fill high the cup with Samian wine!
Lord Byron (1788–1824)
Don Juan, III. 86. 9
Go fetch to me a pint o' wine,
An' fill it in a silver tassie.
Robert Burns (1759-1796)
Go Fetch to me a Pint o' Wine
And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine,
'I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine'.
G.K. Chesterton(1874–1936)
Wine and Water
The wine they drink in Paradise
They make in Haute Lorraine.
G.K. Chesterton (1874–1936)
A Cider Song
Souls of poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host's Canary wine?
John Keats (1795–1821)
Lines on the Mermaid Tavern
Wino Forever
Johnny Depp
(The tattoo once read 'Winona Forever'!)
Wine buffs write and talk as though the food and wine will be in your mouth at the same time, that one is there to be poured over the other. This is bullshit. Gustatory enjoyment comes from food and wine and cigars of your liking. So far no one has said that a Monte Cristo is the only cigar to smoke after Armagnac, Romeo and Juliet after Calvados ... but the time may yet come.
Clement Freud
"...No-one Else Has Complained"
Bacchus we thank who gave us wine
Which warms the blood within our veins;
That nectar is itself divine.
The man who drinks not, yet attains
By godly grace to human rank
Would be an angel if he drank.
Pierre Motin
French drinking song
A German wine label is one of the things life's too short for, a daunting testimony to that peculiar nation's love of detail and organization.
Kingsley Amis
Everyday Drinking
When I find someone I respect writing about an edgy, nervous wine that dithered in the glass, I cringe. When I hear someone I don't respect talking about an austere, unforgiving wine, I turn a bit austere and unforgiving myself. When I come across stuff like that and remember about the figs and bananas, I want to snigger uneasily. You can call a wine red, and dry, and strong, and pleasant. After that, watch out....
Kingsley Amis
Everyday Drinking
Give me women, wine and snuff
Until I cry out 'hold, enough!'
You may do so san objection
Till the day of resurrection;
For bless my beard then aye shall be
My beloved Trinity.
John Keats
Women, Wine and Snuff
Oh, wherefore come ye forth in triumph from the north,
With your hands, and your feet, and your raiment all red?
And wherefore doth your rout send forth a joyous shout?
And whence be the grapes of the wine-press which ye tread?
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)
The Battle of Naseby
These laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,
That men call age; and those who would have been,
Their sons, they gave, their immortality.
Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)
The Dead
Here's to the corkscrew - a useful key to unlock the storehouse of wit, the treasury of laughter, the front door of fellowship, and the gate of pleasant folly.
W.E.P. French
(From the wine list of Commander's Palace in New Orleans, LA courtesy of John McDonald, Dallas, TX)
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 favorable surroundings.
H. Warner Allen
(From the wine list of Commander's Palace in New Orleans, LA courtesy of John McDonald, Dallas, TX)
... the odour of Burgundy, and the smell of French sauces, and the sight of clean napkins and long loaves, knocked as a very welcome visitor at the door of our inner man.
Jerome K. Jerome
Three Men in a Boat
Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.
Jerome K. Jerome
Three Men in a Boat
The smell of wine, oh how much more delicate, cheerful, gratifying, celestial and delicious it is than that of oil.
Rabelias
Gargantua
The king sits in Dunfermline town
Drinking the blude-red wine.
Trad Ballad 'Sir Patrick Spens'
Wine gives great pleasure; and every pleasure is of itself a good. It is a good, unless counterbalanced by evil.
Samuel Johnson
Boswell's Life of Johnson
He said that few people had intellectual resources sufficient to forgo the pleasures of wine. They could not otherwise contrive how to fill the interval between dinner and supper.
Samuel Johnson
Boswell's Life of Johnson
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
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
If God forbade drinking, would He have made wine so good?
Cardinal Richeleu
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
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
Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter,
Sermons and soda-water the day after.
Lord Byron
Don Juan
Wine and wenches empty men's purses
English Proverb
Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities
1 Timothy, 5:23
There is a devil in every berry of the grape.
The Koran
Wine gives us liberty, love takes it away.
Wine makes us princes, love makes us beggars.
Wycherly
The Country Life
Wine is the first weapon that devils use in attacking the young
St. Jerome
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 saying
A little saint best fits a little shrine,
A little prop best fits a little vine,
As my small cruse best fits my little wine.
Robert Herrick (1591–1674)
'A Ternary of Littles'
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
Wine ... cheereth God and man.
Judges, 9:13
A man cannot make him laugh - but that's no marvel; he drinks no wine.
SHAKESPEARE
Henry IV Part 2
Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness -
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.
The Rubiyaiyat of Omar Khayyam
translated by Edward Fitzgerald
In vino veritas
Pliny
Historia Naturalis
Wine is bottled poetry.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Poetry is devil's wine.
St. Augustine
Good wine ruins the purse; bad wine ruins the stomach
Spanish saying
I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)
She Stoops to Conquer, I
The best use of bad wine is to drive away poor relations.
French proverb
I beg you come tonight and dine
A welcome waits you and sound wine
The Roederer chilly to a charm
As Juno's breasts the claret warm ...
T.B. Aldrich
I like best the wine drunk at the cost of others.
Diogenes the Cynic
A sight of the label is worth 50 years experience.
Michael Broadbent
Wine Tasting
The wine seems to be very closed-in and seems to have entered a dumb stage. Sort of a Marcel Meursault.
Paul S. Winalski
Burgundy for kings, champagne for duchesses, claret for gentlemen.
Anon French Proverb
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.
Ernest Dowson (1867–1900)
Vita Summa Brevi
He who loves not wine, women and song remains a fool his whole life long.
Martin Luther, 1777
God made only water, but man made wine.
Vixtor Hugo, 1856
Wine is the most healthful and most hygienic of beverages.
Louis Pasteur
What though youth gave love and roses age still leaves us friends and wine.
Thomas Moore
Up to the age of forty eating is beneficial. After forty, drinking.
The Talmud, 200BC
Wine rejoices the heart of man and joy is the mother of all virtues.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1771
The great evil of wine is that it first seizes the feet, it is a crafty wrestler.
Titus Maccius, 190 BC
Thou hast showed thy people hard things: Thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment.
The Book of Psalms, 60:3
Wine that maketh glad the heart of man.
The Book of Psalms, 104:15
Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging.
The Proverbs, 20:1
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.
The Proverbs, 31:6 - 7
A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry: but money answereth all things.
Ecclesiastes; or The Preacher, 10:19
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
They are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink.
The Book of the Prophet Isaiah, 29:9
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
Neither do men put new wine into old bottles.
The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 9:17
Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake.
The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Timothy, 5:23
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, bk. XIV, l. 463
Over the wine-dark sea.
Homer
Iliad, I. 350
Wine is a peep-hole on a man.
Alcaeus c. 625 - c. 575 B.C.
Fragment 104
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.
Fragment 27
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, fragment 108
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.], l. 274
The Duke of Clarence . . . a prisoner in the Tower, was secretly put to death and drowned in a barrel of Malmesey wine.
Robert Fabyan (?–1513)
Chronicles, Pt II. 1477
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.
Knights [424 B.C.], l. 92
You're walking by the tomb of Battiades,
Who knew well how to write poetry, and enjoy
Laughter at the right moment, over the wine.
Callimachus c. 300 - 240 B.C.
From The Greek Anthology [1973], PETER JAY, ed., no. 150, On Himself
It was a wine jar when the molding began:
as the wheel runs round why does it turn out a water pitcher?
Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus]
Epistles, bk. III (Ars Poetica) [c. 8 B.C.], l. 21
You need not hang up the ivy branch over the wine that will sell.
Publilius Syrus
Maxim 968
In vino veritas [In wine is truth].
Proverb quoted by PLATO,
Symposium 217 (also attributed to Pliny the Elder)
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 Map [Mapes] c. 1140 - c. 1210
De Nugis Curialium
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]
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 1561 - 1626
Apothegms [1624], no. 97
I am falser than vows made in wine.
William Shakespeare 1564 - 1616
As You Like It [1599 - 1600], act III, sc. v, l. 73
O thou invisible spirit of wine! if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!
William Shakespeare 1564 - 1616
Othello [1604 - 1605], act II, sc. iii, l. 285
Had I but died an hour before this chance
I had liv'd a blessed time; for, from this instant,
There's nothing serious in mortality,
All is but toys; renown and grace is dead,
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.
William Shakespeare 1564 - 1616
Macbeth [1606], act II, sc. iii, l. 98
A cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber in 't.
William Shakespeare 1564 - 1616
Coriolanus [1607 - 1608], act II, sc. i, l. 52
Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup
And I'll not look for wine.
Ben Jonson c. 1573 - 1637
The Forest [1616], To Celia, st. 1
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], pt. I, sec. 2, member 3, subsec. 13
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], (in collaboration with DEKKER), act II, sc. ii
Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine.
Robert Herrick 1591 - 1674
Hesperides [1648], Ode for Ben Jonson
Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape
Crush'd the sweet poison of misused wine.
John Milton 1608 - 1674
Comus [1634], l. 46
When night
Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons
Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.
John Milton 1608 - 1674
Paradise Lost [1667], bk. I, l. 500
Thanks be to God, since my leaving drinking of wine, I do find myself much better, and do mind my business better, and do spend less money, and less time lost in idle company.
Samuel Pepys 1633 - 1703
Diary, January 26, 1662
If all be true that I do think,
There are five reasons we should drink:
Good wine - a friend - or being dry -
Or lest we should be by and by -
Or any other reason why.
Henry Aldrich 1647 - 1710
Five Reasons for Drinking
Some of the most dreadful mischiefs that afflict mankind proceed from wine; it is the cause of disease, quarrels, sedition, idleness, aversion to labor, and every species of domestic disorder.
François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon 1651 - 1715
Télémaque [1699], bk. X
To treat a poor wretch with a bottle of Burgundy, and fill his snuffbox, is like giving a pair of laced ruffles to a man that has never a shirt on his back.
Thomas [Tom] Brown 1663 - 1704
Laconics [1707]
I was going home two hours ago, but was met by Mr. Griffith, who has kept me ever since. . . . I will come within a pint of wine.
Sir Richard Steele 1672 - 1729
Letters to His Wife [Eleven at night, January 5, 1708]
From wine what sudden friendship springs!
John Gay 1685 - 1732
Fables, pt. II [1738], The Squire and His Cur
Fill ev'ry glass, for wine inspires us,
And fires us
With courage, love and joy.
Women and wine should life employ.
Is there ought else on earth desirous?
John Gay 1685 - 1732
The Beggar's Opera [1728], act II, sc. i, air 19
And we meet, with champagne and a chicken, at last.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu 1689 - 1762
The Lover [1748]
Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.
Samuel Johnson 1709 - 1784
From JAMES BOSWELL, Life of Johnson [1791], April 7, 1779
Did you ever hear of Captain Wattle?
He was all for love, and a little for the bottle.
Charles Dibdin 1745 - 1814
Captain Wattle and Miss Roe
Who does not love wine, women, and song
Remains a fool his whole life long.
Johann Heinrich Voss 1751 - 1826
Attributed
What though youth gave love and roses,
Age still leaves us friends and wine.
Thomas Moore 1779 - 1852
National Airs [1815], Spring and Autumn, st. 1
Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host's Canary wine?
John Keats 1795 - 1821
Poems [1820], Lines on the Mermaid Tavern
Knowledge enormous makes a God of me.
Names, deeds, gray legends, dire events, rebellions,
Majesties, sovran voices, agonies,
Creations and destroyings, all at once
Pour into the wide hollows of my brain,
And deify me, as if some blithe wine
Or bright elixir peerless I had drunk,
And so become immortal.
John Keats 1795 - 1821
Poems [1820], Hyperion: A Fragment, bk. III, l. 113
Upon the first goblet he read this inscription, monkey wine; upon the second, lion wine; upon the third, sheep wine; upon the fourth, swine wine. These four inscriptions expressed the four descending degrees of drunkenness: the first, that which enlivens; the second, that which irritates; the third, that which stupefies; finally the last, that which brutalizes.
Victor Hugo 1802 - 1885
Les Misérables [1862], Cosette, bk. VI, ch. 9
I rather like bad wine . . . one gets so bored with good wine.
Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield 1804 - 1881
Sybil; or, The Two Nations [1845], bk. I, ch. 1
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread - and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness -
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
Edward FitzGerald 1809 - 1883
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 12
Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and - sans End!
Edward FitzGerald 1809 - 1883
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 24
Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match'd with mine,
Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson 1809 - 1892
Locksley Hall [1842], l. 151
"It wasn't the wine," murmured Mr. Snodgrass, in a broken voice. "It was the salmon."
Charles Dickens 1812 - 1870
Pickwick Papers [1836-1837], ch. 8
For singing till his heaven fills,
'Tis love of earth that he instills,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup,
And he the wine which over flows
To lift us with him as he goes.
George Meredith 1828 - 1909
The Lark Ascending [1881], l. 65
I tasted - careless - then -
I did not know the Wine
Came once a World - Did you?
Oh, had you told me so -
This Thirst would blister - easier - now -
Emily Dickinson 1830 - 1886
No. 296 [c.1861], st. 3
When I demanded of my friend what viands he preferred,
He quoth: "A large cold bottle, and a small hot bird!"
Eugene Field 1850 - 1895
The Bottle and the Bird, st. 1
Let first the onion flourish there,
Rose among roots, the maiden-fair,
Wine-scented and poetic soul
Of the capacious salad bowl.
Robert Louis Stevenson 1850 - 1894
Underwoods [1887], Bk. I, In English. To a Gardener
I'm only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler. I don't like beer.
George Bernard Shaw 1856 - 1950
Candida [1898], act III
To succeed you must add water to your wine, until there is no more wine.
Jules Renard 1864 - 1910
Journal
I have eaten your bread and salt.
I have drunk your water and wine.
The deaths ye died I have watched beside
And the lives ye led were mine.
Rudyard Kipling 1865 - 1936
Departmental Ditties [1886], Prelude, st. 1
I struck the board, and cried, No more:
I will abroad.
What? shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free; free as the road,
Loose as the wind, as large as store.
Shall I be still in suit?
Have I no harvest but a thorn
To let me blood, and not restore
What I have lost with cordial fruit?
Sure there was wine
Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn
Before my tears did drown it;
Is the year only lost to me?
Have I no bays to crown it?
George Herbert 1593 - 1633
The Temple [1633], The Collar
Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
William Butler Yeats 1865 - 1939
The Green Helmet and Other Poems [1910], A Drinking Song
Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
Ernest Dowson 1867 - 1900
Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae [1896], st. 1
I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine.
Ernest Dowson 1867 - 1900
Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae [1896], st. 4
They are not long, the days of wine and roses;
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.
Ernest Dowson 1867 - 1900
Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam [1896]
And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine,
"I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine."
Gilbert Keith Chesterton 1874 - 1936
Wine and Water
How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. . . . All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.
Nikos Kazantzakis 1883 - 1957
Zorba the Greek [1946], ch. 7
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 [Karen Blixen] 1885 - 1962
Seven Gothic Tales [1934], The Dreamers
I get no kick from champagne.
Mere alcohol doesn't thrill me at all,
So tell me why should it be true
That I get a kick out of you.
Cole Albert Porter 1891 - 1964
Anything Goes [1934], I Get a Kick Out of You
It's a naive domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.
James Thurber 1894 - 1961
Caption for cartoon in The New Yorker
There is a tavern in the town,
And there my true love sits him down,
And drinks his wine with laughter and with glee,
And never, never thinks of me.
Anonymous
Con pan y vino se anda el camino [With bread and wine you can walk your road].
Anonymous: Spanish Proverb
Wine gives courage and makes men more apt for passion.
Ovid
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
Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.
Aristophanes
"Hey Man, I'm drinking wine, eating cheese and catching some rays."
Donald Sutherland as Oddball
in "Kelly's Heros"
"Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence"
Robert Fripp
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
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
WINE, n.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
"Despair is vinegar from the wine of hope."
Austin O'Malley
"The giving of riches and honors to a wicked man is like giving strong wine to him that hath a fever."
Plutarch
"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
"In water one sees one's own face; But in wine, one beholds the heart of another."
An Old Frech proverb
courtesy of Bob Higgins
"Give me wine to wash me clean of the weather-stains of care."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Movie and TV Lines
The following were derived from http://us.imdb.com/, courtesy of Bob Ross:
"Why do you take aspirin with champagne?"
Ivan in Author! Author! (1982)
"Oh, champagne gives me a headache."
Alice in Author! Author! (1982)
"Ah. Fortune smiles. Another day of wine and roses. Or, in your case, beer and pizza!"
Two-Face in Batman Forever (1995)
"Oh, we could give it a try. I'll bring the wine, you bring your scarred psyche."
Chase in Batman Forever (1995)
"You know. Wine drinkers. Pea soup eaters. French Canadians!"
Highway Patrolman in Canadian Bacon (1994)
"Oh bliss! Bliss and heaven! Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now. As I slooshied, I knew such lovely pictures!"
Alex in A Clockwork Orange (1971)
"Mr. Alexander: Try the wine!"
Alexander in A Clockwork Orange (1971)
"You’d be surprised how much fun you can have sober. When you get the hang of it."
Joe (Jack Lemmon) in Days of Wine and Roses (1962)
"I don't smoke, I only drink champagne when I'm lucky enough to get it, my hair is naturally natural, I live alone...and so do you."
Bunny Watson in Desk Set (1957)
"This is very old wine. I hope you will like it."
Count Dracula in Dracula (1931)
"I never drink wine."
Count Dracula in Dracula (1931)
"I'm drinking wine...and eating chicken! And it's good!"
Dracula in Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995)
"Where do you keep your champagne? Near the furnace?"
Lord Rutledge in Dunston Checks In (1996)
"Hey Cool, don't drink that wine, it struck me blind!"
King Blues in Flip Out (1983)
"I can certainly see you know your wine. Most of the guests who stay here wouldn't know the difference between Bordeaux and Claret."
Basil Fawlty (John Cleese) in Fawlty Towers
"All these weddings, all these years, all that blasted salmon and Champagne and here I am on my own wedding day, and I'm... eh... em... eh... still thinking."
Charles in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)
[Bond has just been surprised by the double agent, Grant.] "Red wine with fish. Well, that should have told me something."
Bond in From Russia with Love (1963)
"I like to drink wine more than I used to."
Vito Corleone in The Godfather (1972)
"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!"
Bond in Goldfinger (1964)
"It's the same things your whole life. 'Clean up your room!', 'Stand up straight!', 'Pick up your feet!', 'Take it like a man!', 'Be nice to your sister!', 'Don't mix beer and wine, ever!'. Oh yeah, 'Don't drive on the railroad track!'"
Phil Connors in Groundhog Day (1993)
"God knows what you've unleashed on the unsuspecting South. It'll be wine, women, and song all the way with Ringo when he gets the taste for it."
Norm in A Hard Day's Night (1964)
"I would think it means that she wishes you to dine with her. I'd take my own wine if I were you!"
Herod in "I, Claudius" (1976) (mini)
"Won't you join me in a glass of wine?"
Peggy in International House (1933)
"I'm drinking some wine, eating some cheese, and catching some rays, you know..."
Oddball in Kelly's Heroes (1970)
"If Plato is a fine red wine, then Aristotle is a dry martini."
Chet in Kicking and Screaming (1995)
"Dynamite? It's like wine, it only gets better with age."
Tracker Lewis Gates in Last of the Dogmen (1995)
"More Brandy wine? They were boiling it in Ireland before the snakes left!"
King Henry II in The Lion in Winter (1968)
"Sparkling Muscatel. One of the finest wines of Idaho."
Waiter in The Muppet Movie(1979)
"The last time that I trusted a dame was in Paris in 1940. She was going out to get a bottle of wine. Two hours later, the Germans marched into France."
Sam Diamond in Murder by Death (1976)
"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 in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break
"During one of my treks through Afghanistan, we lost our corkscrew. We were compelled to live on food and water for several days."
Cuthbert J. Twillie (W.C.Fields) in My Little Chickadee (1940)
"This is a red wine glass. Can I have my water in a water glass?"
The Griffin Mill in Player (1992)
"Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me..."
Vizzini in The Princess Bride (1987)
[A woman in taffeta is seen lighting candles for a formal dinner for two. She sits down at the table, lifts a wine glass and toasts an imaginary guest. Dining alone, in style, is used as a metaphor for loneliness and even madness.] Georgia Dullea.
Anonymous woman in Rear Window (1954)
"Hamlet's mother, she's the queen / Buys it in the final scene / Drinks a glass of funky wine / Now she's Satan's Valentine."
Soldiers chanting in Renaissance Man (1994)
"P.J. Pontiac: Lili, a sizzler at the Fol-de-Rol. A figure like champagne and a heart like the cork."
Pontiac in Scene of the Crime (1949)
"Champagne yes, philosophy no."
Kit Moresby in The Sheltering Sky (1990)
"The picnic was delicious, the wine was excellent, remind me to send the Cardinal a note."
Porthos in The Three Musketeers (1993)
"Champagne?"
Porthos in The Three Musketeers (1993)
[During a chase, in the Cardinal's own coach] Porthos: "For a chase, the Cardinal recommends his excellent '24 Cabernet." Porthos to D'Artagnan: "You can't have any, you're too young."
Porthos in the Three Musketeers
"I love waking up in the morning not knowing what I'm gonna do or who I'm gonna meet. Just yesterday I was sleeping under a bridge, and today I'm on the grandest liner in the world drinking champagne with you fine people. I'll have some more please."
Jack Dawson in Titanic (1997)
"I don't believe I've ever had French champagne before..."
Cassandra in Wayne's World (1992)
"Oh, actually all champagne is French, it's named after the region. Otherwise it's sparkling white wine. Americans of course don't recognize the convention so it becomes that thing of calling all of their sparkling white champagne, even though by definition they're not."
Benjamin Kane in Wayne's World (1992)
"I know I don't have his looks. I know I don't have his money. I know I don't have his connections, his knowledge of fine wines. I know sometimes when I eat I get this clicking sound in my jaw..."
Wayne Campbell in Wayne's World (1992)
"We want the finest wines available to humanity, we want them here, and we want them now!"
Withnail in Withnail and I (1987)
"What contemptible scoundrel stole the cork from my lunch?"
Larson E. Whipsnade (W.C. Fields) You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (1939)
"Alcohol - the cause of and solution to all of life's problems"
Homer Simpson
