“To eat the lotus of the Nile
And drink the poppies of Cathay.”

—  John Greenleaf Whittier

The Tent on the Beach, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "To eat the lotus of the Nile And drink the poppies of Cathay." by John Greenleaf Whittier?
John Greenleaf Whittier photo
John Greenleaf Whittier 47
American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slave… 1807–1892

Related quotes

Janet Fitch photo

“Their love as a dragonfly, skimming over echo park, stoppin to visit the lotus. Eating dreams and drinking blue sky.”

Janet Fitch (1955) American writer

Source: Paint it Black

Phaedrus photo

“It has been related that dogs drink at the river Nile running along, that they may not be seized by the crocodiles.”

Phaedrus book Fables

Book I, fable 25, line 3.
Fables

Pliny the Elder photo

“It is asserted that the dogs keep running when they drink at the Nile, for fear of becoming a prey to the voracity of the crocodile.”

Pliny the Elder book Natural History

Book VIII, sec. 148.
Naturalis Historia

Ogden Nash photo

“Leave the earth to the strong and athletic,
And the sea to adventure upon.
But the sun and the sand
No contractor can copy;
We lie in the land
Of the lotus and poppy;
We vegetate, calm and aesthetic,
On the beach, on the sand, in the sun.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Many Long Years Ago (1945), Pretty Halcyon Days

Denise Levertov photo

“Let Ariel learn
a blessing for Caliban
and Caliban drink dew from the lotus
open upon the waters.”

Denise Levertov (1923–1997) Poet

Conversation in Moscow, The Freeing of the Dust

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

Plutarch photo

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

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

How a Young Man ought to hear Poems, 4
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Paul F. Tompkins photo

“You have to eat before you drink! If you remember nothing else I've said tonight, remember to eat before you drink!”

Paul F. Tompkins (1968) American actor

Driven to Drink (1998)

Sören Kierkegaard photo

“Death induces the sensual person to say: Let us eat and drink, because tomorrow we shall die – but this is sensuality’s cowardly lust for life, that contemptible order of things where one lives in order to eat and drink instead of eating and drinking in order to live.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1840s, Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions (1845), p. 83

Related topics