Quotes about food and drink

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Socrates photo
Socrates photo

“Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plutarch Moralia, How the Young Man Should Study Poetry

Variant translation: Base men live to eat and drink, and good men eat and drink to live.
Plutarch

Tupac Shakur photo

“And you can't go, "There's a hair in my Jell-O. I'd like to send this back. Can I see the cook, please?" The cook is a big dude named Bubba Joe.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Posthumous attributions, Tupac: Resurrection (2003)

Mark Twain photo
Mark Twain photo
Mark Twain photo

“The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd druther not.”

Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XLIX
Following the Equator (1897)

Mark Twain photo
Mark Twain photo

“Why, it was like reading about France and the French, before the ever memorable and blessed Revolution, which swept a thousand years of such villany away in one swift tidal-wave of blood -- one: a settlement of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for each hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and shame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell. There were two "Reigns of Terror," if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror -- that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”

Ch. 13 http://www.literature.org/authors/twain-mark/connecticut/chapter-13.html
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)

Mark Twain photo

“It may be called the Master Passion—the hunger for Self-Approval.”

Source: What Is Man? (1906), Ch. 6

Mark Twain photo
Eve Ensler photo
Mark Twain photo
Mark Twain photo

“He had had much experience of physicians, and said 'the only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd druther not'.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

Mark Twain photo

“Whiskey is for drinking. Water is for fighting over.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

It seems likely that the attribution to Twain is apocryphal. It is not listed as authentic on Twainquotes http://twainquotes.com/, and is not listed at all in either R. Ken Ramussen's The Quotable Mark Twain (1998) or David W. Barber's Quotable Twain (2002)
Misattributed

Mark Twain photo

“My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Notebook

Mark Twain photo

“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Variant: If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

Rabindranath Tagore photo
Rabindranath Tagore photo

“Come oh come ye tea-thirsty restless ones -- the kettle boils, bubbles and sings, musically.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Source: Collected Poems and Plays of Rabindranath Tagore

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien photo