Quotes about food and drink

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“What do you say about making a libation out of this cup to any god? …I may and I must pray to the gods to prosper my journey from this to that other world—may this, then, which is my prayer, be granted to me. [Then holding the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully he drank off the poison. And hitherto most of us had been able to control their sorrow; but now, when we saw him drinking, and saw too, that he had finished the draft, we could no longer forbear, and in spite of myself my own tears were flowing fast; so that I covered my face and wept over myself, for certainly I was not weeping over him, but at my own calamity at having lost such a companion. Nor was I the first, for Crito, when he found himself unable to restrain his tears, had got up, and moved away, and I followed; and at that moment, Apollodorus, who had been weeping all the time, broke out in a loud cry which made cowards of us all. Socrates alone retained his calmness:] What is this strange outcry? …I sent away the women mainly in order that they might not offend in this way, for I have heard that a man should die in peace. Be quiet then, and have patience.”

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

Plato, Phaedo

“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

“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)

“And did you ever stop to think that im old enough to go to war but i aint old enough to drink.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

“For many years I believed that I remembered helping my grandfather drink his whisky toddy when I was six weeks old, but I do not tell about that any more, now; I am grown old, and my memory is not as active as it used to be. When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying, now, and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the latter. It is sad to go to pieces like this, but we all have to do it.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010), p. 210

“Never refuse to do a kindness unless the act would work great injury to yourself, and never refuse to take a drink— — under any circumstances.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“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 book Following the Equator

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

“I used to worship the mighty genius of Michael Angelo — that man who was great in poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture — great in every thing he undertook. But I do not want Michael Angelo for breakfast — for luncheon — for dinner — for tea — for supper — for between meals. I like a change, occasionally.”

Mark Twain book The Innocents Abroad

Source: The Innocents Abroad (1869), Ch. 27

“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.”

Mark Twain book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

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

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

Mark Twain book What Is Man?

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

“She had run down and down and down, and had at last reached a point where medicines no longer had any helpful effect upon her. I said I knew I could put her upon her feet in a week. It brightened her up, it filled her with hope, and she said she would do everything I told her to do. So I said she must stop swearing and drinking, and smoking and eating for four days, and then she would be all right again. And it would have happened just so, I know it; but she said she could not stop swearing, and smoking, and drinking, because she had never done those things. So there it was. She had neglected her habits, and hadn’t any. Now that they would have come good, there were none in stock. She had nothing to fall back on. She was a sinking vessel, with no freight in her to throw overboard and lighten ship withal.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

Source: Following the Equator (1897), Ch. I

“… to speak of them out loud, to speak of their hunger and pain and loneliness and humour, to make them visible so that can not be ravaged in the dark without great consequence.”

Eve Ensler book The Vagina Monologues

Source: The Vagina Monologues

“I don't see any use in having a uniform and arbitrary way of spelling words. We might as well make all clothes alike and cook all dishes alike. Sameness is tiresome; variety is pleasing.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“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

“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) <br class="br">Misattributed

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

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Notebook

“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.