Quotes about champagne

A collection of quotes on the topic of champagne, likeness, drink, drinking.

Quotes about champagne

“Rub one out like a man, it's the champagne of victory.”

Bill Burr (1968) American actor, comedian and a celebrity podcaster

You People Are All the Same (2012)

Victory

“Birthdays was the worst days; now we sip champagne when we're thirsty.”

The Notorious B.I.G. (1972–1997) American rapper

Song lyrics, Ready to Die (1994), "Juicy"

Birthday

“I should have drunk more champagne.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Last Words, as quoted in Ben Trovato's Art of Survival (2007) by Ben Trovato, p. 196
Attributed

“A dry martini,' he said. 'One. In a deep champagne goblet.'…
Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel. Got it?”

Ian Fleming book Casino Royale

Source: Casino Royale (1953), Ch. 7 : Rouge et Noir
Context: Bond insisted ordering Leiter's Haig-and-Haig "on the rocks" and then he looked carefully at the barman. "A Dry Martini", he said. "One. In a deep champagne goblet." "Oui, monsieur." "Just a moment. Three measures of Gordons, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?" "Certainly, monsieur." The barman seemed pleased with the idea.

“He'd heard that writers spent all day in their dressing gowns drinking champagne. This is, of course, absolutely true.”

Terry Pratchett book Snuff

Source: Snuff

Drink

“One should be a painter. As a writer, I feel the beauty, which is almost entirely colour, very subtle, very changeable, running over my pen, as if you poured a large jug of champagne over a hairpin.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Source: The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Volume Six, 1936-1941

Beauty, Feeling

“There comes a time in every woman's life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne.”

Bette Davis (1908–1989) film and television actress from the United States

Life, Time, Help

“There are three intolerable things in life - cold coffee, lukewarm champagne, and overexcited women…”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Life, Women, Coffee

“Fighting is like champagne. It goes to the heads of cowards as quickly as of heroes. Any fool can be brave on a battlefield when it's be brave or else be killed.”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

Fools, Fight

“There is something about safari life that makes you forget all your sorrows and feel as if you had drunk half a bottle of champagne — bubbling over with heartfelt gratitude for being alive.”

Karen Blixen book Out of Africa

Out of Africa (1937)

Life, Feeling, Forgetting, Gratitude

“Sex is wonderful, but it's like champagne. If you're forced to have four glasses at every meal you start to fantasize about a glass of water.”

Stephen Clarke book A Year in the Merde

On Sex
A Year in the Merde (2005)

Sex, Water

“Teach us that wealth is not elegance; that profusion is not magnificence; and that splendour is not beauty. Teach us that taste is a talisman which can do greater wonders than the millions of the loanmonger. Teach us that to vie is not to rival, and to imitate not to invent. Teach us that pretension is a bore. Teach us that wit is excessively good-natured, and, like champagne, not only sparkles, but is sweet. Teach us the vulgarity of malignity. Teach us that envy spoils our complexions, and that anxiety destroys our figure.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Books, Coningsby (1844), The Young Duke (1831), Chapter 10.

Beauty, Nature, Envy, Wealth

“I drink champagne on two occasions: when I'm in love, and when I'm not. ”

Coco Chanel (1883–1971) French fashion designer

Love, Drink

“Champagne makes you feel like it's Sunday and better days are just around the corner.”

Marlene Dietrich (1901–1992) German-American actress and singer

Making love, Feeling

“We must choose between champagne for a few or drinking water for all.”

Thomas Sankara (1949–1987) President of Upper Volta

Quoted in Le Monde https://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2021/12/23/thomas-sankara-l-itineraire-tourmente-d-un-homme-integre-sur-brutx_6107156_3246.html

Drink, Water

“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Men, Girl, Star

“A cause may be inconvenient, but it's magnificent. It's like champagne or high heels, and one must be prepared to suffer for it.”

Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) English novelist

Act I
The Title (1918)
Source: The Title: A Comedy in Three Acts

Suffering

“This is a hell of dull talk… How about some of that champagne?”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Source: The Sun Also Rises

Hell

“Goodbye, Papa, you saved me. You taught me to read. No one can play like you. I'll never drink champagne. No one can play like you."
-Liesel”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Drink, Reading

“The four most over-rated things in life are champagne, lobster, anal sex, and picnics.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/10/16/he-knew-he-was-right-2 note: Our Short National Nightmare note: The New Yorker note: In The New Yorker, October 16, 2006 note: 2000s, 2006

Life, Sex

“Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Source: The Portable Dorothy Parker

Envy

“I wanted to hold happiness in reserve, like a bottle of champagne. I postponed it because I was afraid, because I overvalued it, and then I didn't want to use it up, because what do you wish for then?”

Curtis Sittenfeld (1975) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Man of My Dreams

Happiness

“Champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

Pain

“I'll drink your champagne. I'll drink every drop of it, I don't care if it kills me.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Source: Gatsby Girls

Drink

“Champagne, always champagne. Make mine Veuve-Clicquot.”

Patricia Wells

“I was enjoying myself now. I had taken two finger bowls of champagne and the scene had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental and profound.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Change

“Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Pain

“Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully.”

Graham Greene book Travels with My Aunt

Travels with My Aunt (1969)

Truth, Lie

“Too much of anything is bad, but too much Champagne is just right.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

New Year

“I get no kick from champagne.
Mere alcohol doesn't thrill me at all,
So tell me why it should be true
That I get a kick out of you?”

Cole Porter (1891–1964) American composer and songwriter

"I Get a Kick Out of You"
Anything Goes (1934)
Source: The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter

Alcohol

“Fun, like champagne bubbles, can't completely fill you up.”

Bette Greene book Summer of My German Soldier

Summer of My German Soldier

“I am a grown woman-- mostly-- and I can guzzle champagne with whomever I choose.”

Annie Barrows book The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

“At the time I started in ballet they were dancing 'The Spirit of Champagne' on pointe, in Paris. I thought, 'I don't want to dance the spirit of champagne, I want to drink it!”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

Source: Blood Memory

Drink, Time, Dance

“Mr. Jorrocks then called upon the company in succession for a toast, a song, or a sentiment. Nimrod gave, "The Royal Staghounds"; Crane gave, "Champagne to our real friends, and real pain to our sham friends."”

Robert Smith Surtees (1805–1864) English writer

Jorrocks's Jaunts and Jollities (1838) ch. 12

Pain, Success

“The accursed power which stands on Privilege
(And goes with Women, and Champagne and Bridge)
Broke — and Democracy resumed her reign:
(Which goes with Bridge, and Women and Champagne).”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

"On a Great Election"
Hilaire Belloc (1925)

Women, Democracy

“In response to Lady Mary Montague's line 'And we meet, with champagne and a chicken at last' (from Montague's poem 'The Lover: A Ballad'):
"What say you to such a supper with such a woman? … Is not her 'champagne and chicken' worth a forest or two? Is it not poetry?"”

Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) writer and poet from England

Lovers

“How beautiful life is! Music and dancing! The violins are sobbing. The first stopper of a bottle of champagne bangs. And now there's a mad singing and shouting. Everybody joins in and sings and shouts! Embracing, friendship, eternal friendship! How beautiful the women are! Dressed in black and red. But you are the prettiest, Hertha! … Hey, you grumblers, go to hell! Music and dancing. The violins are sobbing. Women dressed in black and red. But you are the prettiest, Hertha!”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Wie schön ist das Leben! Musik und Tanz! Die Geigen schluchzen. Der erste Sektpfropfen knallt. Und nun ein tolles Singen und Schreien. Man singt und schreit mit. Umarmung, Freundschaft, ewige Freundschaft! Welch' schöne Frauen! In schwarz und rot! Und doch bist Du die Schönste, Hertha Holk! … Heda, ihr Miesmacher, der Teufel soll euch holen! Musik und Tanz. Die Geigen schluchzen. Frauen in schwarz und rot. Und doch bist Du die Schönste, Hertha Holk!
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Life, Women, Friendship, Beauty

“When her guests were awash with champagne and with gin
She was recklessly sober, as sharp as a pin:
An abstemious man would reel at her look
As she rolled a bright eye and praised his last book.”

William Plomer (1903–1973) South African-British writer

"Slightly Foxed", line 25.
The Dorking Thigh, and Other Satires

Books

“These cats drink champagne and toast to death and pain,
Like slaves on a ship talking about who's got the flyest chain”

Talib Kweli (1975) American rapper

Africa Dream (track 8)
Albums, Reflection Eternal (2000)

Death, Pain, Cats, Drink

“In the little moment that remains to us between the crisis and the catastrophe, we may as well drink a glass of champagne.”

Paul Claudel (1868–1955) French diplomat

Quoted by Claud Cockburn, In Time of Trouble (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1956) p. 264.
Remark to a party of American officials invited to the French Embassy, as the Hoover Moratorium was being agreed in 1931.

Drink

“Man has such a capacity for rationalization that when he finds himself affluent and able to spend as he pleases he is quick to justify his most indefensible expenditures on the ground that they give some people employment. There is probably no rich person who upon quaffing a glass of champagne does not experience a happy glow of pleasure at the thought of all the vintners, bottlers, freighters, and servants to whom his simple act has given livelihood.”

Ferdinand Lundberg America's 60 Families

America's 60 Families, p. 445 (Vanguard Press, 1938)

Happiness, People, Pleasure, Personality

“We are concerned with the artistic and social side of life, and have only to notice the coincidence that while the Virgin was miraculously using the power of spiritual love to elevate and purify the people, Eleanor and her daughters were using the power of earthly love to discipline and refine the Courts. Side by side with the crude realities about them, they insisted on teaching and enforcing an ideal that contradicted the realities, and had no value for them or for us except in the contradiction.

The ideals of Eleanor and her daughter Mary of Champagne were a form of religion, and if you care to see its evangels, you had best go directly to Dante and Petrarch.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Love, Life, People, Religion

“The idea that this world is a playground instead of a battleground has now been accepted in practice by the vast majority of Christians. They are facing Christ and the world. …The ‘worship’ growing out of such a view of life is as far off center as the view itself—a sort of sanctified nightclub without the champagne and the dressed-up drunks.”

Aiden Wilson Tozer (1897–1963) American missionary

This World: Playground or Battleground? pp. 5-6

Life, World, Idea, Christ

“She ain't into wine and roses
Beer just makes her turn up her nose and
She can't stand the thought of sipping champagne
No Cuervo gold margaritas
Just ain't enough good burn in tequila
She needs somethin' with a little more edge
And a little more pain
She's my little whiskey girl, she's my little whiskey girl
My ragged on the edges girl, ah but I like em rough.”

Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor

Whiskey Girl, written with Scotty Emerick.
Song lyrics, Shock'n Y'all (2003)

Pain, Girl, Beer, Wine

“July 1952/the 27th/This morning an exceptional defecation: two small turds in the shape of a rhinoceros horns. Such a scanty stool worries me. I would have thought the champagne, so alien to my routine, would have had a laxative effect.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

DG p. 59
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1961 - 1970, Diary of a Genius (1964)

“Winston Churchill led the life that many men would love to live. He survived 50 gunfights and drank 20,000 bottles of champagne.”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

Churchill’s Finest Hour (2009)

Love, Life, Men

“He is interested in the feelings of the squash ball, and of the champagne bottle that launches the ship. In a football match his sympathy is not with either of the teams but with the ball, or, in a match ending nil-nil, with the hunger of the goalmouth.”

Alan Bennett (1934) English actor, author

"Kafka in Las Vegas", p. 336.
Writing Home (1994)

Hunger, Feeling, Football

“It isn't that the beau monde was too big for Capote's talents. The beau monde was too small for Capote's talents. Here, at least, in human terms the Very Rich are very poor. Interestingly, they are not interesting; incredibly, they are not even credible. They are certainly not the 'unspoiled monsters' of Capote's chapter title: they are spoiled mediocrities, they are boring freaks. The backgammon bums, the sweating champagne buckets, 'the Racquet Club, Le Jockey, the Links, White's', 'Lafayette, The Colony, La Grenouille, La Caravelle', 'Vuitton cases, Battistoni shirts, Lanvin suits, Peal shoes': how keen can a writer afford to be on all this?”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Review of "Answered Prayers" by Truman Capote, p. 311
The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000 (2001)

Shoe

“The slim and agile baritone, Vytas Juozapaitis, portrayed the Don as a self centered nobleman. He sang with a pleasant voice, and unlike most interpreters of the role, he had no trouble tossing off the 'Champagne Aria' at top speed.”

Vytautas Juozapaitis (1963) Lithuanian opera singer

Opera Japonica (October, 2003)

Speed

“Meeting Roosevelt was like uncorking your first bottle of champagne.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Winston Churchill's visit to FDR's grave site at Hyde Park, NY, reflecting on his past and the relationship he had with FDR, as quoted in PBS series, American Experience [The Presidents: FDR]
Post-war years (1945–1955)

“What earthly use are these Confucian graphs?
Masters and doctors lie curled up and wilt.
Why not take lessons and become a clerk?
At night champagne, at break of day cow's milk!”

Trần Tế Xương (1870–1907) poet

Poem 71 in An Anthology of Vietnamese Poems, trans. Huỳnh Sanh Thông (Yale University Press, 1996), ISBN 978-0300064100
Variant translation:
What good are Chinese characters?
All those Ph.D.'s are out of work.
Much better to be a clerk for the French:
You get milk in the morning and champagne at night.
Source: Understanding Vietnam by Neil L. Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), ISBN 978-0520916586, p. 55

Lie, Night

“Who'll love Aladdin Sane?
Battle cries and champagne just in time for sunrise.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

Aladdin Sane
Song lyrics, Aladdin Sane (1973)

Love, Time

“I like champagne—because it always tastes like my foot's asleep.”

Art Buchwald (1925–2007) journalist, humorist, United States Marine

Some Heady Phrases on Wine http://books.google.com/books?id=uFDq4ORNvPkC&q=%22I+like+champagne+because+it+always+tastes+like+my+foot's+asleep%22&pg=PA143#v=onepage, New York Herald Tribune (1954) http://goodgrape.com/index.php/articles/comments/wine_sediments6

“How many special people change? / How many lives are living strange? / Where were you while we were getting high?
People believe that they're gonna get away for the summer/ But you and I/ We live and die/ The world still spins around we don't know why.
Someday you will find me, caught beneath the landslide / In a champagne supernova in the sky.”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Champagne Supernova
(What's the Story) Morning Glory? (1995)

People, World, Change, Summer

“Dinner at the "Continental" to commemorate the great reform [the abolition of the serfdom in 1861]. Tedious and incongruous. To dine, drink champagne, make a racket, and deliver speeches about national consciousness, the conscience of the people, freedom, and such things, while slaves in tail-coats are running round your tables, veritable serfs, and your coachmen wait outside in the street, in the bitter cold—that is lying to the Holy Ghost.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Diary, 9 February 1897
Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

People, Lying, Drink, Freedom

“Harry Dresden: Tequila? Are you sure on that one? I thought the base for a love potion was supposed to be champagne.
Bob: Champagne, tequila, what's the difference, so long as it'll lower her inhibitions?
Harry Dresden: Uh, I'm thinking it's going to get us a, um, sleazier result.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Storm Front (2000), Chapter 8

Love, Thinking

“Top back, candy paint
Damn I got expensive taste
Flex on 'em everyday
Champagne, celebrate
I get freaky, all my girls we have a kiki
Rock a party like
Purple boomin' Lamborghini”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

"Cars"
Song lyrics, Other songs

Girl, Painting

“[Churchill's wartime menus] show him slurping bottles of whisky, champagne [and] brandy with every sumptuous meal, while the underclass fought and starved for the privilege of poverty and unemployment. Thankfully, the Germans bombed Glasgow back to full employment. Even in the 1960s Earl Mountbatten was prosecuted for adding water to the milk on his farm so you can imagine how the landed gentry 'rationed' themselves during the war.”

Ian Brady (1938–2017) British serial killer, perpetrator of the Moors murders

As quoted by Jean Rafferty in "My friend Ian Brady" http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/crime-courts/my-friend-ian-brady.18076533, Scotland Herald (8 July 2012)

War, Imagination, Water

“I'm only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler. I don't like beer.”

George Bernard Shaw book Candida

Candida, Act III
1890s

Beer

“So rare,
You're like the sparkle of old champagne;
Orchids in cellophane
Couldn't compare to you.”

Gus Arnheim (1897–1955) American musician

Song So Rare

“If I wanted, I could have changed cars on a daily basis. I could drink selected French Champagne everyday. When thousands of people would queue-up to enter the grounds of the Imperial Palace I had unfettered access to the Emperor. I chose to forfeit these privileges and opportunities and decided to free my people and country from darkness, poverty and underdevelopment. I had no other ambition.”

Mengistu Neway (1919–1961) Commander of the Ethiopian Imperial Bodyguard

As quoted by Dr. Yacob Haile-Mariam (January 2007) Open Letter to the People of Ethiopia and the Judges

People, Cars, Drink, Change

“(Sylvia) The experienced traveler always flies first class so that when the engine falls off the plane, she’s drinking champagne.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 50

Travel, Drink

“I forsook the company and the dinner-parties, the port-wine and champagne of the middle-classes, and devoted my leisure-hours almost exclusively to the intercourse with plain working men; I am both glad and proud of having done so. Glad, because thus I was induced to spend many a happy hour in obtaining a knowledge of the realities of life—many an hour, which else would have been wasted in fashionable talk and tiresome etiquette; proud, because thus I got an opportunity of doing justice to an oppressed and calumniated class of men who with all their faults and under all the disadvantages of their situation, yet command the respect of every one but an English money-monger.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Source: The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (1845), p. 27

Life, Men, Money, Happiness

“Oh, I suppose my wife and I will open a bottle of champagne with another couple.”

Paul Scofield (1922–2008) English actor

On being told that he had won an Oscar for Best Actor (1967) <br class="br">Quoted in Robert Simonson, "Paul Scofield, Commanding Actor of the British Stage, Is Dead at 86" http://www.playbill.com/news/article/116080.html, Playbill (2008-03-20)

“If this were the last night of the world
What would I do
What would I do that was different
Unless it was champagne with you…”

Bruce Cockburn (1945) Canadian folk/rock guitarist and singer-songwriter

Breakfast in New Orleans, Dinner in Timbuktu (1999)

World, Night

“The house - a substantial but essentially modest suburban villa - was furnished with voluptuous grandeur in approximations of various styles, predominantly those of several Louis, with late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century additions. Heavy coloured glass ashtrays of monstrous size and weight rested in inlaid marquetry tables of vaguely Pompadour associations. At dinner we drank champagne from ruby Bohemian glasses: the meat was carved at a Boulle-type sideboard. ‘Regency’ wallpaper of dark green and lighter green stripes was partially covered by gilt-framed landscapes of no style whatsoever.”

Anita Brookner (1928–2016) British novelist and art historian.

A Friend From England (1987)

Housing

“I can't help preferring champagne to ditch water — I doubt if the universe does.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) United States Supreme Court justice

Letter to http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HLS.Libr:8362502?n=37 William James (24 March 1907); this was misquoted as "I happen to prefer champagne to ditchwater, but there is no reason to suppose that the cosmos does" in "Our Mission Statement" http://article.nationalreview.com/346187/our-mission-statement/william-f-buckley-jr by William F. Buckley, Jr., in National Review (19 November 1955). <br class="br">1900s

Universe, Water, Help

“My only regret is that I have not drunk more champagne in my life.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

At a King's College college feast, as quoted in 1949, John Maynard Keynes, 1883-1946, Fellow and Bursar, (A memoir prepared by direction of the Council of King’s College, Cambridge University, England), Cambridge University Press, 1949, page 37. This in turn quoted in Quote Investigator, " My Only Regret Is That I Have Not Drunk More Champagne In My Life https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/07/11/more-champagne/", 2013-07-11 <br class="br">Attributed

Life