Quotes about wine
page 4

“Perplext no more with Human or Divine,
To-morrow's tangle to the winds resign,
And lose your fingers in the tresses of
The Cypress — slender Minister of Wine.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

“Then sing as Martin Luther sang,
As Doctor Martin Luther sang,
“Who loves not wine, woman and song,
He is a fool his whole life long.””

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) novelist

A Credo, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Love, Life, Fools, Singing

“A sack," Baudolino explained, like a man who knows a trade well, "is like a grape harvest: you have to divide the tasks. There are those who press the grapes, those who carry off the must in the tuns, those who cook for others, others who go to fetch the good wine from last year…. a sack is a serious job,”

Umberto Eco book Baudolino

Source: Baudolino (2000), Chapter 2, "Baudolino meets Niketas Choniates"

Cooking

“…no matter whether it was day, evening, or weekend, because she was an FBI agent, Nicole had to be fit and ready for duty at all times. She rarely drank more than a single glass of wine in the evening, and she carried her Glock to dinner, to the grocery store, and to her kid’s third-grade play”

Lis Wiehl (1961) American legal scholar

Source: Heart of Ice A Triple Threat Novel with April Henry (Thomas Nelson), pp. 10, 11

Time

“dance mehitabel dance
caper and shake a leg
what little blood is left
will fizz like wine in a keg”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

mehitabel dances with boreas
archy and mehitabel (1927)

Dance

“We such clusters had
As made us nobly wild, not mad;
And yet each verse of thine
Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine.”

Robert Herrick book Hesperides

"Ode for Ben Jonson".
Hesperides (1648)

Madness

“My idea of a fine wine was one that merely stained your teeth without stripping the enamel.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Memoirs, Falling Towards England (1985)

Idea

“And mid-May’s eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.”

John Keats Ode to a Nightingale

Stanza 5
Poems (1820), Ode to a Nightingale

Summer

“Once wine was the means to artificial happiness; now things are much more sophisticated, and what was one of the great secrets of medicine has become the only bliss many find in this life.”

Nick Drake (poet) (1961) British writer

Ch 10
The Rahotep series, Book 2: Tutankhamun

Life, Happiness, Secret

“About the hill lay other islands small,
Where other rocks, crags, cliffs, and mountains stood,
The Isles Fortunate these elder time did call,
To which high Heaven they reigned so kind and good,
And of his blessings rich so liberal,
That without tillage earth gives corn for food,
And grapes that swell with sweet and precious wine
There without pruning yields the fertile vine.The olive fat there ever buds and flowers,
The honey-drops from hollow oaks distil,
The falling brook her silver streams downpours
With gentle murmur from their native hill,
The western blast tempereth with dews and showers
The sunny rays, lest heat the blossoms kill,
The fields Elysian, as fond heathen sain,
Were there, where souls of men in bliss remain.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Ecco altre isole insieme, altre pendíci
Scoprian alfin men erte ed elevate.
Ed eran queste l'isole felici;
Così le nominò la prisca etate,
A cui tanto stimava i Cieli amici,
Che credea volontarie, e non arate
Quì partorir le terre, e in più graditi
Frutti, non culte, germogliar le viti.Quì non fallaci mai fiorir gli olivi,
E 'l mel dicea stillar dall'elci cave:
E scender giù da lor montagne i rivi
Con acque dolci, e mormorio soave:
E zefiri e rugiade i raggj estivi
Temprarvi sì, che nullo ardor v'è grave:
E quì gli Elisj campi, e le famose
Stanze delle beate anime pose.
Canto XV, stanzas 35–36 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Men, Food, Soul, Mountain

“Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible for the pneumatic pump or a poor one for a war?”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

A 14
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook A (1765-1770)

Men, War, Food, Exercises

“Would you be impressed if I said that the dead would help us counting

Every single moment that we waste our time?

All the time we're spending vaccinating this disease

I just get dizzy when I think of all the ways we try to hide our maladies

We wine (We wine!), we dine (We dine!), and everything is fine

Because it's not my fault

Now you're upset because you finally got the notion

That everything you had is spinning down the drain

Oh! Do you mean it when you beg and pray and plead?

Your "Giveittomegiveittomegiveittomegiveittome all those things we need"

And what, pray tell, will you whimper when your number will be called

You'll say "It's not my fault"

I had a dream last night where everyone was trying

Subconsciously I knew it was a lie

And when I woke I knew that it was time to pray

To make amends before the end, before my judgement day

I looked around, I stood alone, I knew what I had to say

I said "It's all my fault"”

Tomas Kalnoky (1980) American musician

"Would You Be Impressed?" from "Somewhere in the Between" (2007) http://risc.perix.co.uk/lyrics/sm/sitb/03/

Lie, Disease, Dreams, Way

“The English seem to think drinking wine is like committing adultery, something you do rarely and abroad.”

William Nicholson (1948) British screenwriter, playwright and novelist

Source: Motherland (2012 novel), p. 18

Drink, Thinking

“The Sultan himself joined in the pursuit, and went after them as far as the fort called Bhimnagar [Nagarkot, modern Kangra], which is very strong, situated on the promontory of a lofty hill, in the midst of impassable waters. The kings of Hind, the chiefs of that country, and rich devotees, used to amass their treasures and precious jewels, and send them time after time to be presented to the large idol that they might receive a reward for their good deeds and draw near to their God. So the Sultan advanced near to this crow's fruit, ^ and this accumulation of years, which had attained such an amount that the backs of camels would not carry it, nor vessels contain it, nor writers hands record it, nor the imagination of an arithmetician conceive it. The Sultan brought his forces under the fort and surrounded it, and prepared to attack the garrison vigorously, boldly, and wisely. When the defenders saw the hills covered with the armies of plunderers, and the arrows ascending towards them like flaming sparks of fire, great fear came upon them, and, calling out for mercy, they opened the gates, and fell on the earth, like sparrows before a hawk, or rain before lightning. Thus did God grant an easy conquest of this fort to the Sultan, and bestowed on him as plunder the products of mines and seas, the ornaments of heads and breasts, to his heart's content. … After this he returned to Ghazna in triumph; and, on his arrival there, he ordered the court-yard of his palace to be covered with a carpet, on which he displayed jewels and unbored pearls and rubies, shining like sparks, or like wine congealed with ice, and emeralds like fresh sprigs of myrtle, and diamonds in size and weight like pomegranates. Then ambassadors from foreign countries, including the envoy from Tagh^n Khan, king of Turkistin, assembled to see the wealth which they had never yet even read of in books of the ancients, and which had never been accumulated by kings of Persia or of Rum, or even by Karun, who had only to express a wish and Grod granted it.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

About the capture of Bhimnagar, Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 34-35 Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
Quotes (971 CE to 1013 CE)

God, Books, Fear, Imagination

“If a man go into the London Docks sober without means of getting drunk, and comes out of one of the cellars very drunk wherein are a million gallons of wine, I think that would be reasonable evidence that he had stolen some of the wine in that cellar, though you could not prove that any wine was stolen, or any wine was missed.”

William Henry Maule (1788–1858) British politician

Reg. v. Burton (1854), Dearsly's C. C. 284.

Thinking

“On one occasion some one put a very little wine into a wine-cooler, and said that it was sixteen years old. "It is very small for its age," said Gnathæna.”

Athenaeus book Deipnosophistae

XIII, 47.
Deipnosophistae (2nd century)

Age

“So touch my dying lip: so bridge that deep:
So pledge my waking from the gift of sleep,
And, sacramental, raise me the Divine:
Strong brother in God and last companion, Wine.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

Heroic Poem in Praise of Wine (1932)

God, Sleep, Strong

“Your pretended fear lest error should step in, is like the man that would keep all the wine out of the country lest men should be drunk. It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy, to deny a man the liberty he hath by nature upon a supposition that he may abuse it.”

Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) English military and political leader

Letter to Walter Dundas (12 September 1650)

Men, Fear, Jealousy, Error

“A lot of people wouldn't believe me now if I told them I used to down pints of beer with friends, loitering on the banks of the Nainital Lake while at Sherwood College. Something I would be embarrassed to admit now, but that still was youthful joie de vivre. Later in the film industry it became a kind of social compulsion to be seen at parties holding a wine glass in one hand and a cigarette in another, looking all classy and affluent. There was a certain artificiality about it I couldn't fathom. Maybe that's what gradually led me to become a teetotaler.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

People, Youth, Beer

“When I was a fighting-man, the kettle-drums they beat,
The people scattered gold-dust before my horses feet;
But now I am a great king, the people hound my track
With poison in my wine-cup, and daggers at my back.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The Phoenix on the Sword" (1932)

People, Horse, Fight

“My good friends, things cannot go on well in England, nor ever will until everything shall be in common, when there shall be neither vassal nor lord, and all distinctions levelled; when the lords shall be no more masters than ourselves. How ill they have used us!… They have wines, spices and fine bread, when we have only rye and the refuse of fine straw; and if we drink, it must be water. They have handsome seats and manors, when we must brave the wind and rain in our labours in the field; but it is from our labour they have the wherewith to support their pomp.… Let us go to the king, who is young, and remonstrate with him on our servitude, telling him we must have it otherwise, or that we shall find a remedy for it ourselves.”

John Ball (priest) (1338–1381) English rebel and priest

Typical sermon, described in the Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and other places adjoining by Jean Froissart

Drink, Support, Water

“I always thought when I got older that I'd be jealous of my children but I'm not. It's the opposite. I love seeing their possibilities. Nothing makes me as happy as sitting at dinner with loved ones, having a glass of wine with a meal that I've cooked. What could be better?”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville: Who cares whodunnit? (2013)

Love, Happiness, Children, Cooking

“If my best wines mislike thy taste,
And my best service win thy frown,
Then tarry not, I bid thee haste;
There's many another Inn in town.”

Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907) American poet, novelist, editor

Quits; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 379.

“"It's obvious that it's after dinner," says Kay, unable to hold his tongue. "There are more words in a potful of wine than in a barrel of beer".”

Chrétien de Troyes French poet and trouvère

Source: Yvain or Le Chevalier au Lion, Line 590.

Beer

“No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolfs-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d
By nightshade.”

John Keats Ode on Melancholy

"Ode on Melancholy", st. 1
Poems (1820)

Suffering, Wolf

“The Protestant churches generally hold that the elements of the sacrament are flesh and blood only in a tropical sense; they nourish our souls as meat and the juice of it would our bodies. But the Catholics maintain that they are literally just that; although they possess all the sensible qualities of wafer-cakes and diluted wine. But we can have no conception of wine except what may enter into a belief, either —
# That this, that, or the other, is wine; or,
# That wine possesses certain properties.
Such beliefs are nothing but self-notifications that we should, upon occasion, act in regard to such things as we believe to be wine according to the qualities which we believe wine to possess. The occasion of such action would be some sensible perception, the motive of it to produce some sensible result. Thus our action has exclusive reference to what affects the senses, our habit has the same bearing as our action, our belief the same as our habit, our conception the same as our belief; and we can consequently mean nothing by wine but what has certain effects, direct or indirect, upon our senses; and to talk of something as having all the sensible characters of wine, yet being in reality blood, is senseless jargon. Now, it is not my object to pursue the theological question; and having used it as a logical example I drop it, without caring to anticipate the theologian's reply. I only desire to point out how impossible it is that we should have an idea in our minds which relates to anything but conceived sensible effects of things. Our idea of anything is our idea of its sensible effects; and if we fancy that we have any other we deceive ourselves, and mistake a mere sensation accompanying the thought for a part of the thought itself. It is absurd to say that thought has any meaning unrelated to its only function. It is foolish for Catholics and Protestants to fancy themselves in disagreement about the elements of the sacrament, if they agree in regard to all their sensible effects, here or hereafter.
It appears, then, that the rule for attaining the third grade of clearness of apprehension is as follows: Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

The final sentence here is an expression of what became known as the Pragmatic maxim, first published in "Illustrations of the Logic of Science" in Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 12 (January 1878), p. 286

Soul, Motivation, Idea, Question

“Maybe the guy drank red wine or beer with breakfast instead of milk. [After a Sheffield United fan threw a bottle at Frank Lampard]”

José Mourinho (1963) Portuguese association football player and manager

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/funny_old_game/7004282.stm Chelsea FC

Guy, Beer

“God said, “I am tired of kings,”—
But that was a long while ago!
And meantime man said, “No,—
I like their looks in their robes and rings.”
So he crowned a few more,
And they went on playing the game as before,
Fighting and spoiling things.Man said, “I am tired of kings!
Sons of the robber-chiefs of yore,
They make me pay for their lust and their war;
I am the puppet, they pull the strings;
The blood of my heart is the wine they drink.
I will govern myself for awhile I think,
And see what that brings!”Then God, who made the first remark,
Smiled in the dark.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Remarks About Kings (October 1915).

God, War, Smile, Game

“As a child I remember accompanying Abbaji to private mehfils in the homes of the ‘beautiful people.’ While they wined and dined, musicians would wait in the kitchen and only come out when summoned. I personally remember bringing back large tiffin carriers with left-over food as honorarium.”

Zakir Hussain (musician) (1951) Indian tabla player, musical producer, film actor and composer

Quote, I've never wanted to fit in Abbaji's shoes: Ustad Zakir Hussain

People, Food, Beauty, Home

“Carol was discovering that the one thing that can be more disconcerting than intelligent hatred is demanding love. "She supposed that she was being gracefully dull and standardized in the Smails' presence, but they scented the heretic, and with forward-stooping delight they sat and tried to drag out her ludicrous concepts for their amusement. They were like the Sunday-afternoon mob starting at monkeys in the Zoo, poking fingers and making faces and giggling at the resentment of the more dignified race… They were staggered to learn that a real tangible person, living in Minnesota, and married to their own flesh-and-blood relation, could apparently believe that divorce may not always be immoral; that illegitimate children do not bear any special and guaranteed form of curse; that there are ethical authorities outside of the Hebrew Bible; that men have drunk wine yet not died in the gutter; that the capitalistic system of distribution and the Baptist wedding-ceremony were not known in the Garden of Eden;… that there are Ministers of the Gospel who accept evolution; that some persons of intelligence and business ability do not always vote the Republican ticket straight;… that a violin is not inherently more immoral than a chapel organ… 'Where does she get all them the'ries?'”

Sinclair Lewis book Main Street

marveled Uncle Whittier Smail.
Main Street (1920)

Love, Men, Children, Intelligence

“Some starlit garden grey with dew,
Some chamber flushed with wine and fire,
What matters where, so I and you
Are worthy our desire?”

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) English poet, critic and editor

Source: Poems (1898), Rhymes And Rhythms, XII

“Friendship's the wine of life; but friendship new
(Not such was his) is neither strong nor pure.”

Edward Young Night-Thoughts

Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night II, Line 582.

Life, Friendship, Strong

“Eat thou and drink; to-morrow thou shalt die.
Surely the earth, that's wise being very old,
Needs not our help. Then loose me, love, and hold
Thy sultry hair up from my face; that I
May pour for thee this golden wine, brim-high,
Till round the glass thy fingers glow like gold.
We'll drown all hours: thy song, while hours are toll'd,
Shall leap, as fountains veil the changing sky.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) English poet, illustrator, painter and translator

The Choice

Love, Drink, Change, Help

“An aching to be once again in the land from which he grew gave him no rest. There is no calm for those who are uprooted. They are wanderers, homesick and defiant. Love itself is helpless to heal them though the dust rises with every footfall—drifts down the corridors—settles on branch or cornice—each breath an inhalation from the past so that the lungs, like a miner’s, are dark with bygone times.
Whatever they eat, whatever they drink, is never the bread of home or the corn of their own valleys. It is never the wine of their own vineyards. It is a foreign brew.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 34 (p. 862)

Love, Home, Drink, Time

“My drug period was between the age of 17 and 18. That was a time when I was experimenting with a lot of things, I was experimenting with sleep deprivation, fasting. The longest fast I ever did was 12 days. You go that long without food and you hallucinate. I would take this powder made out of guarana seed, my friend Mary would bake it up like cocoa in muffins and leave them on my doorstep. My drinking period was when I was 13, 14. Drugs fascinated me for a short period of time but not any more. A glass of wine puts me in a weird enough state.”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

NME (1 July 1995)

Age, Food, Drink, Sleep

“For when the wine is in, the wit is out.”

Thomas Becon (1511–1567) British reformer

Catechism, 375

“On this tragic day, the death of Adolf Hitler was reported - Admiral Dönitz takes over as his nominated successor. Reach Flensburg about 8. Have to drink wine for breakfast — as nothing else is available.”

William Joyce (1906–1946) British fascist and propaganda broadcaster

Peter Martland, "Lord Haw Haw: The English voice of Nazi Germany" (The National Archives, 2003), p. 301. UK National Archives KV 2/250/2, p. 55.
Diary entry, 1 May 1945.

Death, Drink

“Son of the Devil, I turn wine into water”

Jehst (1979) British rapper

Alcoholic Author
The Return of the Drifter EP (2002)

Water

“If on my theme I rightly think,
There are five reasons why men drink,—
Good wine, a friend, because I'm dry,
Or lest I should be by and by,
Or any other reason why.”

Jean Sirmond (1589–1649) French poet

Causæ Bibendi, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). These lines are a poetic translation of a Latin epigram (erroneously ascribed to Henry Aldrich in the Biographia Britannica, second edition, vol. i. p. 131), which Menage and De la Monnoye attribute to Père Sirmond:
Si bene commemini, causæ sunt quinque bibendi:
Hospitis adventus; præsens sitis atque futura;
Et vini bonitas, et quælibet altera causa.
Menagiana, vol. i. p. 172.

Men, Drink, Thinking

“By the bye, as I must leave off being young, I find many douceurs in being a sort of chaperon, for I am put on the sofa near the fire and can drink as much wine as I like.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter (1813-11-06) on ageing [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

Drink

“No wine for me. Strange enough things happen when my head is clear. I want to know the difference.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Matrim Cauthon
(15 September 1992)

“Essential to the Catholic mind is what I would characterize as a keen sense of the prolongation of the Incarnation throughout space and time, an extension that is made possible through the mystery of the church. Catholics see God’s continued enfleshment in the oil, water, bread, imposed hands, wine, and salt of the sacraments; they appreciate it in the gestures, movements, incensations, and songs of the Liturgy; they savor it in the texts, arguments, and debates of the theologians; they sense it in the graced governance of popes and bishops; they love it in the struggles and missions of the saints; they know it in the writings of Catholic poets and in the cathedrals crafted by Catholic architects, artists, and workers. In short, all of this discloses to the Catholic eye and mind the ongoing presence of the Word made flesh, namely Christ.”

Robert Barron (bishop) (1959) priest of the Roman Catholic Church, author, scholar and Catholic evangelist.

Father Barron, Robert. Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith (Kindle Locations 75-81). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Love, God, Sense, Water

“You can grow grapes in almost any part of the world. You just have to develop your palate enough to realize wine is an expression of the place where you make it. You don't have to take over the world; just be an artist and express your area.”

Maynard James Keenan (1964) musician

George Varga (November 7, 2008) "Tool lead singer hits the right notes in the winemaking community", The San Diego Union-Tribune, p. E-1.

World, Parting

“Mr. Pritchard was a businessman, president of a medium-sized corporation. He was never alone. His business was conducted by groups of men like himself who joined together in clubs so that no foreign element or idea could enter. His religious life was again his lodge and his church, both of which were screened and protected. One night a week he played poker with men so exactly like himself that the game was fairly even, and from this fact his group was convinced that they were very fine poker players. Wherever he went he was not one man but a unit in a corporation, a unit in a club, in a lodge, in a church, in a political party. His thoughts and ideas were never subjected to criticism since he willingly associated only with people like himself. He read a newspaper written by and for his group. The books that came into his house were chosen by a committee which deleted material that might irritate him. He hated foreign countries and foreigners because it was difficult to find his counterpart in them. He did not want to stand out from his group. He would like to have risen to the top of it and be admired by it; but it would not occur to him to leave it. At occasional stags where naked girls danced on the tables and sat in great glasses of wine, Mr. Pritchard howled with laughter and drank the wine, but five hundred Mr. Pritchards were there with him.”

John Steinbeck book The Wayward Bus

Source: The Wayward Bus (1947), Ch. 3

Life, Men, Hate, People

“Wine is wont to show the mind of man.”

Theognis of Megara (-570–-485 BC) Greek lyric poet active in approximately the sixth century BC

Source: Elegies, Line 500.

“The Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation… claims… the "Whole substance" of the wine is converted into the blood of Christ,; the appearance of wine that remains is "merely accidental", "inhering in no substance". Transubstantiation is colloquially taught as meaning that the wine "literally" turns into the blood of Christ. Whether in its obfuscatory Aristotelian or its franker colloquial form, the claim of transubstantiation can be made only if we do serious violence to the normal meanings of words like 'substance' and 'literally'.”

Richard Dawkins book A Devil's Chaplain

"Viruses of the Mind"
A Devil's Chaplain (2003)

Appearance, Christ

“One problem the museum has always had in the eyes of some cadets is its worship of General Mark Clark. One whole room of the museum is dedicated to the propagation of Clark's exploits through two wars. The room itself is dark, an inner sanctum lit with tabernacle lights, and smoking with a kind of mystical incense which seems to compliment the godly aura of the man himself… Statues of Clark, pictures of Clark, letters from Clark, letters to Clark, speeches by Clark, and a seemingly endless amount of Clark memorabilia helps make the museum a monument to his career. If any pictures were available of Clark walking on water or changing wine into water, they would be dutifully placed in the museum by people who suffer guilt feelings that The Citadel has never produced an international figure of its own.”

Pat Conroy book The Boo

Source: The Boo (1970), p. 95

War, People, Feeling, Problem

“[Bai Juyi] utilized Confucianism to order his conduct, utilized Buddhism to cleanse his mind, and then utilized history, paintings, mountains, rivers, wine, music and song to soothe his spirit.”

Bai Juyi (772–846) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

Composition for his own tomb inscription, as quoted in Lin Yutang's The Importance of Living (1940), p. 411

Music, History, Mountain, Painting

“Some one wrote to me upon the publication of my book two years ago: “But you live in England! Poor man: then you are a preacher in the desert!” So I am. But I owe something to my desert. The desert is an excellent place for anybody who can make use of it, as biblical and post-biblical experience proves. Without my desert I should not have written my book. Without coming to England I should have become a modern creature, going in for money and motor-cars. For I was born with a fatal inclination for such lighter and brighter kind of things. I was born under a lucky star, so to say: I was born with a warm heart and a happy disposition; I was born to play a good figure in one of those delightful fêtes champêtres of Watteau, Lancret, and Boucher, with a nice little shepherdess on my arm, listening to the sweet music of Rossini and drinking the inspiring “Capri bianco” or “Verona soave” of that beautiful country Italy. But the sky over here is not blue—nor grows there any wine in England—and no Rossini ever lived here; and towards the native shepherdesses I adopted the ways of the Christian towards his beautiful ideals: I admired them intensely but kept myself afar. So there was nothing to console your thirsty and disenchanted traveller in the British Sahara. In the depths of his despair, there was sent to him, as to the traveller in the desert, an enchanting vision, a beautiful fata Morgana rising on the horizon of the future, a fertile and promising Canaan of a new creed that had arisen in Germany (there too as a revulsion against the desert): the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.
So I owe something to the desert. Had I not wandered there so long, I could never have fervently wished to escape nor finally succeeded in coming out of it.”

Oscar Levy (1867–1946) German physician and writer

Preface, pp. xii-xiii.
The Revival of Aristocracy (1906)

Money, Happiness, Books, Beauty

“She'd rather wear a pair of cut-off jeans
Than an evening dress.
And with the windows rolled down,
And her hair blowin all around,
Well, she's a hot Southern mess.She'd take a beer over white wine.
A campfire over candle light.
And when it comes to love,
Her idea of a romantic nightIs listenin' to old Alabama
And driving through Tennessee
A little "Dixieland Delight" and
"The Right Time of the Night",
And she can't keep her hands off of me.”

Brad Paisley (1972) American country music singer

Old Alabama, written by Brad Paisley, Chris DuBois, Dave Turnbull, and Randy Owen.
Song lyrics, This Is Country Music (2011)

Love, Idea, Beer, Light

“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.”

Richard Steele (1672–1729) British politician

Eleven at night, 5 January 1708
Letters to His Wife (1707-1712)

Home

“Of course, they (i. e., demons) had always been observed with some regularity, but that could usually be ascribed to an overabundance of piety or wine or imagination. Take your pick.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Omega (2003), Chapter 45 (p. 439)

Imagination

“Good wine needs no bush,
And perhaps products that people really want need no
hard-sell or soft-sell TV push.
Why not?
Look at pot.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

"Most Doctors Recommend or Yours For Fast Fast Fast Relief" in The Old Dog Barks Backwards (1972)

People

“As I get older the urge to write gets less and less; I've pretty much spewed out everything I have to say, none of which has been particularly monumental; nothing that will stand the test of time. Good writing like wine has to age well, and my stuff has been momentarily adequate.”

Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter

Rod Serling: American Masters.
Other

Age, Time

“Oh dear and laughing, lost to me,
Hidden in grey Eternity,
I shall attain, with burning feet,
To you and to the mercy-seat!
The ages crumble down like dust,
Dark roses, deviously thrust
And scattered in sweet wine — but I,
I shall lift up to you my cry,
And kiss your wet lips presently
Beneath the ever-living Tree.”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Source: Young Adventure (1918), The Quality of Courage

Age, Kiss, Tree, Cry

“Do they lie? Fervently. Do they steal? Only silver and gold. Do they remember? I am in constant touch. Hardly a day passes. The children. Some can’t spell, still. Took a walk in the light-manufacturing district, where everything’s been converted. Lots of little shops, wine bars. Saw some strange things. Saw a group of square steel plates arranged on a floor. Very interesting. Saw a Man Mountain Dean dressed in heavenly blue. Wild, chewing children. They were small. Petite. Out of scale. They came and went. Doors banging. They were of different sexes but wore similar clothes. Wandered away, then they wandered back. They’re vague, you know, they tell you things in a vague way. Asked me to leave, said they’d had enough. Enough what? I asked. Enough of my lip, they said. Although the truth was that I had visited upon them only the palest of apothegms—the one about the salt losing its savor, the one about the fowls of the air.”

Donald Barthelme book Sixty Stories

“Aria”.
Sixty Stories (1981)

Children, Truth, Lie, Sex

“Our families have traditions
We've heard of a thousand times
Our ancestors were unequivocally right.
They frequently went on missions
To rather peculiar climes
To lead the wretched heathen to the light.
Though some of them got beaten up and some of them stampeded
And quite a lot were eaten up - a few of them succeeded.
On one of these expeditions
An uncle we thought a bore
Turned out to be more spirited than ever he'd been before. Poor Uncle Harry
Wanted to be a missionary
So he took a ship and sailed away.
This visionary
Hotly pursued by dear Aunt Mary
Found a South Sea isle on which to stay.
The natives greeted them kindly,
And invited them to dine
On yams and clams and human hams and vintage coconut wine
The taste of which was filthy
But the after-effects divine.”

Noel Coward (1899–1973) English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer

Uncle Harry from Pacific 1860 (1946).

Family, Light, Time, Sea

“The most graphic description of the Muslim army is by a Hindu, the famous Maithli poet Vidyapati of the fourteenth century. Vidyapati was patronised by Sultans Ghiyasuddin and Nasiruddin of Bengal. Writing about Muslim soldiers, he says:
“Sometimes they ate only raw flesh. Their eyes were red with the intoxication of wine. They could run twenty yojanas within the span of half of a day. They used to pass the day with the (bare) loaf under their arm… (The soldier) takes into custody all the women of the enemy’s city… Wherever they happened to pass in that very place the ladies of the Raja’s house began to be sold in the market. They used to set fire to the villages. They turned out the women (from their homes) and killed the children. Loot was their (source of) income. They subsisted on that. Neither did they have pity for the weak nor did they fear the strong… They had nothing to do with righteousness… They never kept their promise… They were neither desirous of good name, not did they fear bad name…”
At another place he says: “Somewhere a Musalman shows his rage and attacks (the Hindus)… It appears on seeing the Turks that they would swallow up the whole lot of Hindus.””

Vidyapati

Vidyapati, Kirtilata. Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

Women, Children, Fear, Home

“Bernie wants us to live under the heavenly socialist–communist system like China. We never hear the left criticize that Mao Tse-Tung killed over 80 million people—the Chinese government admits—biggest mass murder in history. That's why there's so many liberal trendy places in Austin, in Denver, in New York, in LA, and San Francisco named after Mao. And people go and love play on their iPhones and the free market and their Chinese slave goods, and they drink beer and expensive wine and giggle about how fun it is to wear red stars. You couldn't put more bad luck on you, you couldn't trash your mojo better. Wearing swastika armbands, you stupid snot-nosed crud! That live off the backs of everybody that fought Nazism and Communism. You need to have your jaws broken! Don't you worry, reality is gonna crash in on you, trash! Who lowered our defenses and brought the Republic down; oh, we're already gone! And you celebrate it like you've joined the globalists mounting America's head on the wall, your great victory! A mass rape of women across Europe. The national draft coming in for women! The families falling apart! Women degraded into nothing but sexual objects! ALL in the name of Gloria Steinem and the Central Intelligence Agency program! And a Bernie Sanders with his fake Einstein hair, and his 'I'm a man of the people!' We go out and talk to Bernie Sanders' supporters, they can hardly talk—they're like him—'Free! Free! I want free stuff!' As if the New World Order is gonna give you anything free! Oh, it's free like a piece of cheese. And a little mouse comes out and it smells it and goes to bite it and, WA BAM! Breaks your neck. But your stupider than the little mouse. You can see all the countries and all the people caught in the mouse traps, caught in the big bear traps. You know what you do? You go into a trendy shop. On some capitalist strip. And you go in and you snuggle in with that credit card that daddy put money in for the trust fund. And you put on that little fur-rimmed coat and you're all sexy with your hammer and sickle on, and your Che Guevara and, you know, shirt from Rage Against the Machine, and the whole capitalist record company system selling it to you, and you go out on the street and you walk into McDonald's and you have yourself a double latte, oh yeah. Pathetic! Scum! Oh, how you'll burn in the camps, later. Wishing you had done something; I mean, you are the ultimate chumps, the ultimate buffoons, the ultimate schmucks!… But the public had so much freedom! They were so wealthy, even our poorest, they had no idea that what they were replacing it with was abject slavery.”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

"Sanders Supporters are Pathetic Scum" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooNxJnf_UAI, February 2016

Love, Women, Money, Bad luck

“Find a cosy table
Inside a restaurant,
Somewhere formidable
Where you’ll be très contents.
Let your lady fair know
That she is all you see,
Prime her with a Pernod
Or three.
Watch her crack a lobster
And strip it to the buff,
Rough as when a mobster
Gets tough.
Keep the wine cascading
And you’ll ensure
Une petite spécialité called l’amour….”

Anthony Burgess book Earthly Powers

Earthly Powers.
Poetry

“20. You cannot know wine by the barrell.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

“To paraphrase Thoreau, it was not sherry I drank nor I who drank sherry; it was the wine of the Hesperides and I was served it by the wind from the west.”

Mary Lee Settle (1918–2005) Novelist, biographer, academic

Spanish Recognitions: The Road from the Past (2004)

“As for your circumcisions, the chief modin can arrange all. Your wine must return to the earth, whence the grape came. Haram.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Napoleon Symphony (1974)

“I had never heard a Mass like that one.. the church vault was split open, the walls were rasped and peeling, the altars were wrecked or had been thrown out; worst of all, that great dark hole at the end, where the high altar had been, the paving hidden beneath the powder and rubble, no pews to sit on, everyone standing or kneeling before a wooden table with a crucifix placed on it, a sunbeam shining sharply down through a gap in the vault and a cloud of flies dancing in the harsh light that illuminated the whole Church and made it seem as though we were hearing Mass in the middle of the street. [-] I had never heard a Mass like that one [-] The bread and the Wine appeared as though they were fresh: the Host appeared to be beating and, in the sunlight, when the Wine was poured into the chalice, it appeared to be blood that was flowing [-] and then the thought, the sentiment occurred to me that Mass should always be heard in this way, in fear and trembling”

Joan Maragall (1860–1911) Spanish writer

Fear, Way, Light, Appearance

“To desire to be perpetually in the society of a pretty woman until the end of one's days, is as if, because one likes good wine, one wished always to have one's mouth full of it.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)

“To thee of All Being /A te, de l’essere
The First Cause immense /Principio immenso,
Of matter and spirit, /Materia e spirito,
Of reason and sense /Ragione e senso;

Whilst in the full goblet /Mentre ne’ calici
Shall sparkle the wine, /Il vin scintilla
So bright the pupil /Si’come l’anima
The souls of men shine, /Ne la pupilla

Whilst earth still is smiling, /Mentre sorridono
And the sun smiles above, /La terra e il sole
And men are exchanging /E si ricambiano
Their sweet words of love, /D’amor parole

Thrills mystic of Hymen /E corre un fremito
Through high mountains course, /D’imene arcano
And broad plains are heaving /Da’ monti e palpita
With life's fertile force, /Fecondo il piano;

On thee in verse daring, /A te disfrenasi
From tight rein released, /Il verso ardito,
On thee I call, Satan, /Te invoco, o Satana
The King of the feast. /Re del convito”

Giosuè Carducci (1835–1907) Italian poet and teacher

-lines 1-20 (as Printed by the Nobel Prize Library)
Hymn to Satan (1865), Inno a Satana

Love, Life, Men, Smile

“Like a drum my heart was beating,
And your kiss was sweet as wine,
But the joys of love are fleeting
For Pierrot and Columbine.”

Tom Springfield (1934) English musician, songwriter and record producer

Song The Carnival Is Over.

Love, Kiss, Heart, Joy

“Red, red wine
Go to my head.
Make me forget that I
Still need her so.Red, red wine,
It's up to you.
All I can do, I've done.
But memories won't go.
No, memories won't go.”

Neil Diamond (1941) American singer-songwriter

Red Red Wine
Song lyrics, Just for You (1967)

Memory, Forgetting

“136. Old wine and an old friend are good provisions.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

“Everything about Florence seems to be coloured with a mild violet, like diluted wine.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

Letter to Henry James Sr. (26 October 1869).

“Ikävä: If I'm off to see you with a bottle of red wine, shall I find some blue cheese at the petrol station, I wonder.”

Pauli Hanhiniemi (1964) Finnish musician and composer

“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 The Chronicles of Clovis

"The Match-Maker"
The Chronicles of Clovis (1911)

Love, Soul

“I was once the wine, and you the wineglass.
I was once alive, when you held me.
God became the glass:
All things left were emptiness.”

Aaron Weiss

Nice and Blue.
A→B Life (2002)

God

“Vazkor had picked his creatures well—narrow, unintelligent men, good fighters, unafraid because they had no imagination, loyal because they responded to their own sense, and until now, there had always been enough food and wine, women and prestige; trustworthy in this last extremity because the old order had been good to them, and Vazkor seemed able to restore it.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Two, Part V “Tower-Eshkorek”, Chapter 4 (p. 305)
The Birthgrave (1975)

Women, Men, Food, Imagination

“The crop of spiritual talent that is born to you, of human nobleness and intellect and heroic faculty, this is infinitely more important than your crops of cotton or corn, or wine or herrings or whale-oil, which the Newspapers record with such anxiety every season.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The New Downing Street (April 15, 1850)

Season

“He went to Paris, looking for answers
To questions that bothered him so.
He was impressive, young and aggressive,
Saving the world on his own.
But the warm Summer breezes,
The French wines and cheeses
Put his ambition at bay.
And Summers and Winters
Scattered like splinters,
And four or five years slipped away.”

Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman

He Went to Paris
Song lyrics, A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean (1973)

World, Question, Winter, Summer

“The rites were just the husks left over from deeper things, no pith remaining and no mystery, nothing to lift up the soul or go to the brain like wine. And, as generally happens, the more truth the ritual lost the more they bolstered it with significance. There is a saying among the Moi: The chief is clad in gold and purple, only the god dares to go naked.”

Tanith Lee book Vazkor, Son of Vazkor

Book One, Part I “The Krarl”, Chapter 3 (p. 20)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978)

God, Truth, Soul

“How can reason possibly grasp that immensity beyond all being where the precious food of the Eucharist is, in some marvellous way, made one with us, drawing us wholly to itself and changing us into itself? It is a union more intimate than any that the human mind can conceive, totally unlike any other change, a union more compatible than a tiny drop of water losing itself in the wine-vat and becoming one with the wine, or that of the rays of the sun made one with the sun's splendour; or the soul with the body, the two together making one person, one being. In this union the soul is lifted above the infirmity of its natural state, its own insufficiency, and there it is purified, transfigured and raised above its own powers, its human operations, its very self. Both being and activities are penetrated through and through by God, formed and transformed in a divine manner, the soul's new birth is accomplished in truth, and the spirit, losing all its native incompatibility, flows into divine union.”

Johannes Tauler (1300–1361) German theologian

Sermons, From Our Daily Bread

God, Truth, Food, Way

“So Marigold, my love, you've had too much to drink

And I need not remind you, our discount tickets for this sinking ship

Take-backs and sweet regrets, that's all that we have left

No one is looking out for anyone but number one

One to one, two to dance, we all get our sweet romance

Though sour grapes will turn to wine it's all just vinegar with time”

Tomas Kalnoky (1980) American musician

"The Receiving End of it All" from "Somewhere in the Between" (2007) http://risc.perix.co.uk/lyrics/sm/sitb/09/

Love, Drink, Time, Dance

“If Bordeaux red wines were carbonated, McDonald's would be a lot more interested in selling them.”

Xavier Leroy (1968) French computer scientistand programmer

Sources Source: Xavier Leroy (2002-06-20), Post to the Caml mailing list, 2010-08-06 http://caml.inria.fr/pub/ml-archives/caml-list/2002/06/4d57fe13abe8b7823d9c5ca9379d37ce.en.html,

“All organic. No chemicals here, no way. The red globe grapes, $8.99 a kilo. I take a pawful, pop em, one at a time. They crunch. This is my only wine. This is my Sunday sacrament…sweet and honest and decent. No lies from chemists, or from priests.
You wanna heal your soul? Step one is healing your soil.”

Malcolm Azania book The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad

Source: The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad (2004), Chapter 44 “The Long, Long Drive to Nowhere” (p. 250)

Way, Soul, Time

“Once, I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed.”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet

Jadis, si je me souviens bien, ma vie était un festin où s'ouvraient tous les coeurs, où tous les vins coulaient. Une Saison en Enfer http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Season.html (A Season in Hell) (1873)

Life, Heart

“For "Is" and "Is-not" though with Rule and Line
And "Up" and "Down" by Logic I define,
Of all that one should care to fathom,
Was never deep in anything but — Wine.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

“In our time the Biblical prophecies are being realized. As the prophet Amos said, they shall rebuild ruined cities and inhabit them. They shall plant vineyards and drink their wine. They shall till gardens and eat their fruit. And I will plant them upon their soil never to be uprooted again. Ladies and gentlemen, the people of Israel have come home never to be uprooted again.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

Netanyahu speech at the UN General Assembly 1 October 2013 http://www.timesofisrael.com/full-text-netanyahus-2013-speech-to-the-un-general-assembly/. 2010s, 2013

People, Home, Drink, Time

“We live in a predominately Christian culture which has lost its living connection to the symbolism of wafer and wine. Lacking spiritual sustenance there is a genuine hunger and thirst. The archetypal structure behind the wafer and wine is slowly giving way to a new configuration, but we are in chaos during the transition. That chaos breeds loneliness, fear and alienation. While that sense of aloneness is hard to endure, it can be of supreme value in the analytic process. The new life always comes out of the dispossessed, as Christ came from the cow stable.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: Addiction to Perfection (1982), p. 28

Life, Hunger, Fear, Way

“Cursed be all those on land and sea who eat their fill,
cursed be all those who starve yet raise no hand in protest,
cursed be all the bread, the wine, the meat which day by day
descends deep in the entrails of the exploited man
and turns not into freedom's cry, the murderer's ruthless knife!”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

Prayer of three revolutionaries, Book X, line 391
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

Freedom, Cry, Sea

“What though youth gave love and roses,
Age still leaves us friends and wine.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

National Airs, Spring and Autumn, st. 1 (1815).

Love, Youth, Age

“The wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys, and even the girls,
Devoured her with their eager, passionate gaze;
But looking at her falsely-smiling face,
I knew her self was not in that strange place.”

Claude McKay (1889–1948) Jamaican American writer, poet

The Harlem Dancer, l. 11-14

Smile, Girl, Boy, Passion

“You see, my children, when the corn is ripe it must be cut; when the wine is drawn it must be drunk.”

Alphonse Daudet book Letters From My Windmill

Voyez-vous, mes enfants, quand le blé est mûr, il faut le couper; quand le vin est tiré, il faut le boire.
Lettres de mon moulin (1869; repr. Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1882) p. 112; John P. Macgregor (trans.) Letters from My Mill (New York: Taplinger, 1967) p. 86.

Children

“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 Kenkō (1283–1350) japanese writer

Tsurezure-Gusa (Essays in Idleness)

Music, Singing, Time

“[…] I observed he [Samuel Johnson] poured a large quantity of it [wine] into a glass, and swallowed it greedily. Everything about his character and manners was forcible and violent; there never was any moderation; many a day did he fast, many a year did he refrain from wine; but when he did eat, it was voraciously; when he did drink wine, it was copiously. He could practise abstinence, but not temperance.”

James Boswell book The Life of Samuel Johnson

March 1781
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791)

Drink

“I drink alot of wine when I'am alone.”

Ed Harcourt (1977) British musician

Apple Of My Eye

Drink

“This is nothing against Sir Alex whatsoever. After the game on Wednesday we were together in my office and we spoke and drank wine. Unfortunately it was a very bad bottle of wine and he was complaining, so when we go to Old Trafford for the second leg, on my birthday, I will take a beautiful bottle of Portuguese wine.”

José Mourinho (1963) Portuguese association football player and manager

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/c/chelsea/4175077.stm Chelsea FC

Beauty, Game, Birthday

“She held the cup; and he the while
Sat gazing on her playful smile,
As all the wine he wished to sip
Was one kiss from her rosebud lip.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(8th February 1823) Medallion Wafers: Hercules and Iole
22nd February 1823) Leander and Hero see The Vow of the Peacock (1835
1st March 1823) An Old Man over the Body of his Son see The Vow of the Peacock (1835
The London Literary Gazette, 1823

Smile, Kiss

“While we are laid on the battle plain,
Drenched to the skin by the midnight rain,
Pleasant dreams may thy slumber crown,
As thou sinkest to rest amid silk and down :
But shame beside thy pillow stand!
A German maid shall kiss thee not,
A German song rejoice thee not,
And German wine shall warm thee not!
He who has strength to wield a brand,
Let him draw it now for his father-land!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The London Literary Gazette (3rd January 1835) Versions from the German (First Series.) - 'The Gathering' — Koerner.
Translations, From the German

Dreams, Kiss, Drawing

“Let me know when you begin the new tea, and the new white wine. My present elegancies have not yet made me indifferent to such matters. I am still a cat if I see a mouse.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to Cassandra (1813-09-23) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

Cats, Tea, Indifference

“joke's on you; i actually love being body slammed by one dozen perfect wrestlers. and my mouth isn't filled with bloodm, it's victory wine”

Dril Twitter user

[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/460673146451161088] Tweets by year, 2014