Quotes about bread
page 3

“[He] spread his bread with all sorts of butter, yet none would stick thereon.”

Thomas Tusser (1524–1580) English poet

Thomas Fuller, describing Tusser's failure to profit from numerous ventures.
About

Terence photo

“Without Ceres (bread) and Bacchus (wine) Venus (love) freezes.”
Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus

Act IV, scene 1, 1, line 5.
Eunuchus

John Angell James photo
Jean Paul Sartre photo
Poul Anderson photo

“Man does not live by bread alone, nor guns, paperwork, theses, naked practicalities.”

Poul Anderson (1926–2001) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Gibraltar Falls (p. 118)
Time Patrol

Jean Froissart photo
Harriet Beecher Stowe photo
Alastair Reynolds photo

“Steal a loaf of bread and they hang you, steal a land and they'll make you king.”

Source: Rigante series, Stormrider, Ch. 5

Samuel I. Prime photo
John Donne photo

“He was the Word, that spake it:
He took the bread and brake it;
And what that Word did make it,
I do believe and take it.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

Divine Poems, "On the Sacrament"; attributed by many writers to Elizabeth I. It is not in the original edition of Donne, but first appears in the edition of 1654, p. 352.
Disputed

Marc Chagall photo
Edmund Burke photo

“And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Thoughts and Details on Scarcity (1795)
Thoughts and Details on Scarcity (1795)

“They didn't want votes, either. A vote wasn't going to raise wages or make bread cheaper. What did it matter to them what Government was in power.”

Flora Thompson (1876–1947) English author and poet

Source: Dashpers http://www.dashper.net.nz/dashpers.htm (unfinished, unpublished novel), Chapter Two - A House is built

Thomas Jefferson photo

“Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Autobiography (1821), reprinted in Basic Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Philip S. Foner, New York: Wiley Book Company (1944} p. 464
1820s

John P. Gaines photo
Hermann Adler photo

“The object of education is not merely to enable our children to gain their daily bread and to acquire pleasant means of recreation, but that they should know God and serve Him with earnestness and devotion.”

Hermann Adler (1839–1911) Chief Rabbi of the British Empire from 1891 to 1911

Source: Quoted in Joseph H. Hertz, The Pentateuch and Haftorahs (One-volume edition), p. 78-9

“Fee-fi-fo-fum,
I smell the blood of an Englishman,
Be he alive or be he dead
I'll have his bones to grind my bread.”

said by the ogre or giant. Now rendered as I'll grind his bones to make my bread.
English Fairy Tales (1890), Preface to English Fairy Tales, Jack and the Beanstalk

Ayn Rand photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“Eaten bread is soon forgotten. Dangers which are warded off by effective precautions and foresight are never even remembered.”

The World Crisis, 1911–1914 : Chapter XVII (The Grand Fleet and the Submarine Alarm), Churchill, Butterworth (1923), p. 399.
Early career years (1898–1929)

Mark Steyn photo
John Harvey Kellogg photo
Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo

“God knows, it is as much as I can do to put meat and bread on my own table; & hourly some poor starving wretch comes to my door, to put in his claim for a part of it.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Letter to Thomas Poole (23 March 1801)
Letters

Bertolt Brecht photo

“Every day, to earn my daily bread
I go to the market where lies are bought
Hopefully
I take up my place among the sellers.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

"Hollywood" (1942)
quoted in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 382
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

Marcus Brigstocke photo
John Harvey Kellogg photo
Samuel Butler (poet) photo
John Banville photo
Dorothy Thompson photo
Jean Froissart photo

“If we all spring from a single father and mother, Adam and Eve, how can they claim or prove that they are lords more than us, except by making us produce and grow the wealth which they spend? They are clad in velvet and camlet lined with squirrel and ermine, while we go dressed in coarse cloth. They have the wines, the spices and the good bread: we have the rye, the husks and the straw, and we drink water. They have shelter and ease in their fine manors, and we have hardship and toil, the wind and the rain in the fields. And from us must come, from our labour, the things which keep them in luxury”

Jean Froissart (1337–1405) French writer

Et, se venons tout d'un père et d'une mere, Adam et Eve, en quoi poent il dire ne monstrer que il sont mieux signeur que nous, fors parce que il nous font gaaignier et labourer ce que il despendent? Il sont vestu de velours et de camocas fourés de vair et de gris, et nous sommes vesti de povres draps. Il ont les vins, les espisses et les bons pains, et nous avons le soille, le retrait et le paille, et buvons l'aige. Ils ont le sejour et les biaux manoirs, et nous avons le paine et le travail, et le pleue et le vent as camps, et faut que de nous viengne et de nostre labeur ce dont il tiennent les estas.
Book 2, p. 212.
Froissart is again quoting John Ball.
Chroniques (1369–1400)

Peter F. Drucker photo
John Heywood photo

“Yes yes (quoth she) for all those wyse woordis vttred,
I know on which syde my bread is buttred.
But there will no butter cleaue on my breade.
And on my bread any butter to be spreade.
Euery promise that thou therin dost vtter,
Is as sure as it were sealed with butter.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

Yes yes, said she, for all those wise words uttered,
I know on which side my bread is buttered.
But there will no butter cleave on my bread.
And on my bread any butter to be spread.
Every promise that you therein do utter,
Is as sure as it were sealed with butter.
Part II, chapter 7.
Proverbs (1546)

Marianne von Werefkin photo
Thomas Wolfe photo
Thomas Hood photo

“Oh, God! that bread should be so dear,
And flesh and blood so cheap!”

Thomas Hood (1799–1845) British writer

St. 5.
1840s, The Song of the Shirt (1843)

Lalu Prasad Yadav photo

“Wagon is the bread-earning horse of the Railways. Load it adequately. Make it run and don't stable it.”

Lalu Prasad Yadav (1948) Indian politician

When some of the Railway Board members expressed apprehensions in increasing wagon loads, a decision which alone generated Rs 7,200 crore (Rs 72 billion) (Source: Lalu to teach management at IIM-A http://in.rediff.com/money/2006/aug/30iim1.htm).

Subh-i-Azal photo
Anton Mauve photo

“Dear friend! I am still staying in Oosterbeek as you can see but I will now leave in 2 days. The last days I spent on two small paintings ordered by Mr. de Visser. I painted them in a happy atmosphere... I send them to you because they were still wet when I sent them away and I could hardly do that to Mr. de Visser. Please, do you want to give them a layer of egg-varnish and when you discover here or there a badly seen dash, or you see a chance to make a witty thing in the paintings, oh chap, I pray you do so, because if he doesn't like them, I'll get no bread and have nasty problems, because I need the money so badly..”

Anton Mauve (1838–1888) Dutch painter (1838–1888)

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Anton Mauve's brief, in het Nederlands:) Waarde Vriend! Ik zit zoo als gij ziet nog altijd te Oosterbeek doch zal nu over 2 dagen vertrekken de laatste tijd heb ik aan twee kleine schilderijtjes besteed voor den Heer de Visser, ik heb ze onder een gelukkige atmosfeer geschilderd.. ..ik zend ze jou omdat ze nat waren toen ik ze afzond en ik dat moeyelijk aan den Heer de Visser kon doen, wilt gij ze s.v.p. met een eivernisje bestrijken en vindt gij ze hier of daar eene slecht geziene greep, of ziet gij gemakkelijk kans er nog eene geestige zet in te doen, och kerel ik bid je doe het, want als ze hem niet bevielen en ik krijg geen duiten dan zit ik er leelijk mee in, ik heb ze hoog noodig..
In a letter of Mauve from Oosterbeek 4 Nov. 1867, to Willem Maris in The Hague; from the original letter https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/109, RKD Archive, The Hague
1860's

Pier Gerlofs Donia photo

“Butter, bread, and green cheese: whoever cannot say that is not a true Frisian.”

Pier Gerlofs Donia (1480–1520) Frisian warrior, pirate, and rebel

Quoted in: The Linguist: Journal of the Institute of Linguists. Volumes 42-43, The Institute, 2003. p. 192
According to legend, Pier forced his captives to repeat this shibboleth to distinguish Frisians from Dutch and Low Germans.

Thomas Gainsborough photo

“I grow dauntless as I grow old, I believe any one that plods on in any one way, especially if that one way will bring him bread & cheese, will grow the same.”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote in: Undated letters to Jackson, in The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough, ed. Mary Woodall, 1961
undated, Undated letters to William Jackson

Wendell Phillips photo

“The agitator must stand outside of organizations, with no bread to earn, no candidate to elect, no party to save, no object but truth — to tear a question open and riddle it with light.”

Wendell Phillips (1811–1884) American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, orator and lawyer

1880s, The Scholar in a Republic (1881)

Huldrych Zwingli photo
John Ruskin photo
Anthony Burgess photo
James Anthony Froude photo
Primo Levi photo
Matthew Henry photo

“It was a common saying among the Puritans, "Brown bread and the Gospel is good fare."”

Matthew Henry (1662–1714) Theologician from Wales

Isaiah 30.
Commentaries

John Muir photo

“The United States government has always been proud of the welcome it has extended to good men of every nation, seeking freedom and homes and bread.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Source: 1900s, Our National Parks (1901), chapter 10: The American Forests

George Herbert photo

“737. The best smell is bread, the best savour salt, the best love that of children.”

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

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

“Life is like a bowl of old bread.”

Radio From Hell (February 6, 2007)

Thomas Gainsborough photo

“By God you are the only great man, except George Pitt, that I care a farthing for, or would wear out a pair of shoes in seeking after. Long-headed cunning people and rich fools are so plentiful in our country that I don’t fear getting now and then a face to paint for bread, but a man of genius with truth and simplicity, sense and good nature, I think worth his weight in gold - [signed:] 'Your Likeness Man”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote in Gainsborough's letter to Hon. Constantine Phipps, undated; as cited in 'My Dear Maggoty Sir – The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough' http://thedabbler.co.uk/2011/10/my-dear-maggoty-sir-the-letters-of-thomas-gainsborough/, review by Roger Hudson, in Slightly Foxed, 18 Oct, 2011
undated

Florence Earle Coates photo
William Cobbett photo

“Now, this free Government of America… imposed a duty of fifty per cent on foreign wool; and not a word of complaint was heard from any party against that protecting duty. Why, therefore, was all this outcry about the duties which were enforced in this country for the protection of the land, and which, after all, was no protection at all?… the landlord and farmer had nothing whatever to do with the increase in the price of bread. If the petitioners were rational persons, they would not have asked for cheap bread; they would have asked for a reduction of those taxes that caused the bread to be so high… He did not know but he ought to vote for the repeal of the Corn-laws, upon account of their foolishness, their utter absurdity, and inefficiency. He explained all these things to his constituents, who were just as fond of a cheap loaf as the people of Liverpool, or any other place. He said to them, "Don't go to the landlords to ask for cheap bread, because they cannot give it you. Go to the Government, and tell them to take off the taxes, that the baker may be enabled to give you cheap bread." This was the language he addressed to his constituents. He recollected perfectly well when this Corn Bill was first brought forward he gave it his most strenuous opposition, not because he objected to the principle of the Bill, but solely because he conceived it would be wholly inoperative”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1834/mar/21/free-trade-liverpool-petition-adjourned in the House of Commons on a petition in favour of free trade (21 March 1834).

“[Neoinstitutional Economics…] theory has made an indispensable contribution in recent times to advances of understanding in this area. But it seems to me that in the economics of institutions theory is now outstripping empirical research to an excessive extent. No doubt the same could be said of other fields in economics, but there is a particular point about this one. Theoretical modelling may or may not be more difficult in this field than in others, but empirical work is confronted by a special difficulty. Because economic institutions are complex, they do not lend themselves easily to quantitative measurement. Even in the respects in which they do, the data very often are not routinely collected by national statistical offices. As a result, the statistical approach which has become the bread and butter of applied economics is not straightforwardly applicable. Examples of it do exist, the literature on the economics of slavery being perhaps the most fully developed - not surprisingly because slavery is an institution that is sharply defined. But to a large extent the empirical literature has consisted of case-studies which are interesting but not necessarily representative, together with a certain amount on legal court cases, which are almost certainly not representative. Is this the best we can do? There is a challenge here on the empirical side to economists to see what is the best way forward.”

R. C. O. Matthews (1927–2010) British economist
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker photo

“Seven cities claimed blind Homer, dead,
Through which blind Homer, living, begged his bread.”

Avram Davidson (1923–1993) novelist

Vergil in Averno (1987)

George Herbert photo

“166. Of all smells, bread; of all tasts, salt.”

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

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

John Aubrey photo
Jimmy Hoffa photo

“A slab of bread "buttered" with lard and, if you were lucky, seasoned with salt and pepper, was a luxury.”

Jimmy Hoffa (1913–1982) American labor leader

Source: Hoffa The Real Story (1975), Chapter 2, How It All Started, p. 28

John Heywood photo

“I know on which side my bread is buttred.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

Part II, chapter 7.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Elia M. Ramollah photo
John Ball (priest) photo
Edgar Degas photo

“Draw all kind of everyday object placed, in such a way that they have in them the life of the man or woman – corsets that have just been removed, for example, and which retain the form of the body. Do a series in aquatint on mourning, different blacks – black veils of deep mourning floating on the face – black gloves – mourning carriages, undertaker’s vehicles – carriages like Venetian gondolas. On smoke – smoker’s smoke, pipes, cigarettes, cigars – smoke from locomotives, from tall factory chimneys, from steam boats, etc. On evening – infinite variety of subjects in cafes, different tones of glass robes reflected in the mirrors. On bakery, bread. Series of baker's boys, seen in the cellar itself or through the basement windows from the street – backs the colour of the pink flour – beautiful curves of dough – still-life's of different breads, large, oval, long, round, etc. Studies in color of the yellows, pinks, grays, whites of bread…… Neither monuments nor houses have ever been done from below, close up as they appear when you walk down the street. [a working note in which Degas planned series of views of modern Paris, the same time when he sketched the backstreet brothels, making graphic unflinching and even his realistic 'pornographic' sketches he called his 'glimpses through the keyhole', in which he also experimented with perspectives]”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Quote from Degas' Notebooks; Clarendon Press, Oxford 1976, nos 30 & 34 circa 1877; as quoted in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 182
quotes, undated

Marc Chagall photo

“Two or three o'clock in the morning. The sky is blue. Dawn is breaking. Down there, a little way off, they slaughtered cattle, cows bellowed, and I painted them. I used to sit up like that all night long. It's already a week since the studio was cleaned out. Frames, eggshells, empty two-sou soup tins lie about higgledy-piggledy... On the shelves, reproductions of El Greco and Cézanne lay next tot the remains of a herring I had cut in two, the head for the first day, the tail for the next, and Thank God, a few crusts of bread.”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

Quote in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, pp. 29-30
Chagall describes a morning in his studio in Paris, c. 1911, in 'La Ruche' an old factory where many artists as Soutine, Archipenko, Léger and Modigliani had their studio
1920's, My life (1922)

Sinclair Lewis photo
Aldo Leopold photo

“Bread and beauty grow best together. Their harmonious integration can make farming not only a business but an art; the land not only a food-factory but an instrument for self-expression, on which each can play music to his own choosing.”

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist

"The Conservation Ethic" [1933]; Published in The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold, Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott (eds.) 1991, p. 191.
1930s

Clive Staples Lewis photo
Antonio Llidó photo
Miguel de Cervantes photo

“I never thrust my nose into other men's porridge. It is no bread and butter of mine; every man for himself, and God for us all.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Unplaced as yet by chapter, Ch. 11.

George Gordon Byron photo

“Besides, they always smell of bread and butter.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Stanza 39.
Beppo (1818)

Halldór Laxness photo
Primo Levi photo
Robert Barron (bishop) photo
Vladimir Lenin photo
Theodor Mommsen photo

“When Sulla died in the year [78 B. C. ], the oligarchy which he had restored ruled with absolute sway over the Roman state; but, as it had been established by force, it still needed force to maintain its ground against its numerous secret and open foes. it was opposed not by any single party with objects clearly expressed and under leaders distinctly acknowledged, but by a mass of multifarious elements, ranging themselves doubtless under the general name of the popular party, but in reality opposing the Sullan organization of the commonwealth on very various grounds and with very different designs…There were… the numerous and important classes whom the sullan restoration had left unsatisfied, or whom the political or private interest it had directly injured. Among those who for such reasons belonged to the opposition ranked the dense and prosperous population of the region between the Po and the Alps, which naturally regarded the bestowal of Latin rights in [89 B. C. ] as merely an installment of the full Roman franchise, and so afforded a ready soil for agitation. To this category belonged also the freedman, influential in numbers and wealth, and specially dangerous through their aggregation in the capital, who could not brook their having been reduced by the restoration to their earlier, practically useless, suffrage. In the same position stood, moreover, the great capitalists, who maintained a cautious silence, but still as before preserved their tenacity of resentment and their equal tenacity of power. The populace of the capital, which recognized true freedom in free bread-corn, was likewise discontented. Still deeper exasperation prevailed among the burgess bodies affected by the Sullan confiscations - whether they, like those of Pompeii, lived on their property curtailed by the Sullan colonists, within the same ring-wall with the latter, and at perpetual variance with them; or, like the Arrentines and Volaterrans, retained actual possession of their territory, but had the Damocles' sword of confiscation suspended over them by the Roman people..”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, Part: 1. Translated by W.P. Dickson.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 1

John Ross Macduff photo
Galén photo

“He who has two cakes of bread, let him dispose of one of them for some flowers of the narcissus; for bread is the food of the body, and the narcissus is the food of the soul.”

Galén (129–216) Roman physician, surgeon and philosopher

Arabian Society In The Middle Ages, by Edward William Lane, (1883) citing Nowwájee, En-, Shems-ed-deen Moḥammad (died 1454), Ḥalbet El-Kumeyt, at footnote 167.
Latter day attributions

Sharron Angle photo

“And these programs that you mentioned — that Obama has going with Reid and Pelosi pushing them forward — are all entitlement programs built to make government our god. And that's really what's happening in this country is a violation of the First Commandment. We have become a country entrenched in idolatry, and that idolatry is the dependency upon our government. We're supposed to depend upon God for our protection and our provision and for our daily bread, not for our government.”

Sharron Angle (1949) Former member of the Nevada Assembly from 1999 to 2007

Jon
Ralston
Angle: “What’s happening (in America)..is a violation of the 1st Commandment,” entitlements “make government our God.”
2010-08-04
Las Vegas Sun
http://www.lasvegassun.com/blogs/ralstons-flash/2010/aug/04/angle-whats-happening-america-violation-1st-comman/
from interview with TruNews Christian Radio's Rick Wiles, 2010-03-21

İsmail Enver photo

“How can we furnish bread to the Armenians when we can't get enough for our own people? I know that they are suffering and that it is quite likely that they cannot get bread at all this coming winter. But we have the utmost difficulty in getting flour and clothing right here in Constantinople.”

İsmail Enver (1881–1922) Turkish military officer and a leader of the Young Turk revolution

Quoted in "The Armenians, from Genocide to Resistance: From Genocide to Resistance" - Page 82 - by Gérard Chaliand, Yves Ternon - Social Science – 1983.

Ja'far al-Sadiq photo
Pelagius photo

“Do you consider a man to be a Christian by whose bread no hungry man is ever filled?”

Pelagius (360–420) British monk

On The Christian Life

Edward Bellamy photo

“If bread is the first necessity of life, recreation is a close second.”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext96/lkbak10.txt (1888), Ch. 18.

Jane Austen photo
Joan Maragall photo
Garth Brooks photo
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
George Herbert photo

“473. Hope is the poor man's bread.”

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

Jacula Prudentum (1651)