Quotes about dining

A collection of quotes on the topic of dining, room, doing, likeness.

Quotes about dining

Xenophon photo
Ariana Grande photo
Virginia Woolf photo
Virginia Woolf photo

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

Source: A Room of One's Own (1929), Ch. 1, p. 18
Context: The human frame being what it is, heart, body and brain all mixed together, and not contained in separate compartments as they will be no doubt in another million years, a good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

Charlemagne photo

“It is not lack of self-restraint but care for others which makes me dine in Lent before the hour of evening.”

Charlemagne (748–814) King of the Franks, King of Italy, and Holy Roman Emperor

Quoted in Notker's The Deeds of Charlemagne (translated 2008 by David Ganz)

Lewis Carroll photo

“To the Looking-Glass world it was Alice that said 'I've a sceptre in hand, I've a crown on my head. Let the Looking-Glass creatures, whatever they be, Come and dine with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

Robert Burns photo
Peter Ustinov photo

“Playwrights are like men who have been dining for a month in an Indian restaurant. After eating curry night after night, they deny the existence of asparagus.”

Peter Ustinov (1921–2004) English actor, writer, and dramatist

As quoted in Contemporary Quotations (1988) by James Beasley Simpson

Mark Twain photo
W.B. Yeats photo

“I know what wages beauty gives,
How hard a life her servant lives,
Yet praise the winters gone:
There is not a fool can call me friend,
And I may dine at journey’s end
With Landor and with Donne.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

To A Young Beauty http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1728/, st. 3
The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)

Galén photo
Martha C. Nussbaum photo

“When I arrived at Harvard in 1969, my fellow first-year graduate students and I were taken up to the roof of the Widener Library by a well-known professor of classics. He told us how many Episcopal churches could be seen from that vantage point. As a Jew (in fact a convert from Episcopalian Christianity), I knew that my husband and I would have been forbidden to marry in Harvard's church, which had just refused to accept a Jewish wedding. As a woman I could not eat in the main dining room of the faculty club, even as a member's guest. Only a few years before, a woman would not have been able to use the undergraduate library. In 1972 I became the first female to hold the Junior Fellowship that relieved certain graduate students from teaching so that they could get on with their research. At that time I received a letter of congratulation from a prestigious classicist saying that it would be difficult to know what to call a female fellow, since "fellowess" was an awkward term. Perhaps the Greek language could solve the problem: since the masculine for "fellow" in Greek was hetairos, I could be called a hetaira. Hetaira, however, as I knew, is the ancient Greek word not for “fellowess” but for “courtesan.””

Martha C. Nussbaum (1947) American philosopher

[Martha C. Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity, https://books.google.com/books?id=V7QrAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA6, 1 October 1998, Harvard University Press, 978-0-674-73546-0, 6–7]

Virginia Woolf photo

“As for the soul: why did I say I would leave it out? I forget. And the truth is, one can't write directly about the soul. Looked at, it vanishes; but look at the ceiling, at Grizzle, at the cheaper beasts in the Zoo which are exposed to walkers in Regent's Pak, and the soul slips in. Mrs Webb's book has made me think a little what I could say of my own life. But then there were causes in her life: prayer; principle. None in mine. Great excitability and search after something. Great content – almost always enjoying what I'm at, but with constant change of mood. I don't think I'm ever bored. Yet I have some restless searcher in me. Why is there not a discovery in life? Something one can lay hands on and say 'This is it'? What is it? And shall I die before I can find it? Then (as I was walking through Russell Square last night) I see mountains in the sky: the great clouds, and the moon which is risen over Persia; I have a great and astonishing sense of something there, which is 'it' – A sense of my own strangeness, walking on the earth is there too. Who am I, what am I, and so on; these questions are always floating about in me. Is that what I meant to say? Not in the least. I was thinking about my own character; not about the universe. Oh and about society again; dining with Lord Berners at Clive's made me think that. How, at a certain moment, I see through what I'm saying; detest myself; and wish for the other side of the moon; reading alone, that is.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Saturday 27 February 1926
A Moment's Liberty (1990)

Lewis Carroll photo

“One winter night, at half past nine,
Cold, tired, and cross, and muddy,
I had come home, too late to dine”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Opening lines
Phantasmagoria (1869)

Ron White photo
Napoleon I of France photo

“To be able to go about incognito in London and other parts of England, to the restaurateurs, with a friend, to dine in public at the expense of half a guinea or a guinea, and listen to the conversation of the company”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Barry Edward O'Meara, in Napoleon in Exile : or, A Voice from St. Helena (1822), Vol. II, p. 155
About
Context: "What do you think," said he, "of all things in the world would give me the greatest pleasure?" I was on the point of replying, removal from St. Helena, when he said, "To be able to go about incognito in London and other parts of England, to the restaurateurs, with a friend, to dine in public at the expense of half a guinea or a guinea, and listen to the conversation of the company; to go through them all, changing almost daily, and in this manner, with my own ears, to hear the people express their sentiments, in their unguarded moments, freely and without restraint; to hear their real opinion of myself, and of the surprising occurrences of the last twenty years." I observed, that he would hear much evil and much good of himself. "Oh, as to the evil," replied he, "I care not about that. I am well used to it. Besides, I know that the public opinion will be changed. The nation will be just as much disgusted at the libels published against me, as they formerly were greedy in reading and believing them. This," added he, "and the education of my son, would form my greatest pleasure. It was my intention to have done this, had I reached America. The happiest days of my life were from sixteen to twenty, during the semestres, when I used to go about, as I have told you I should wish to do, from one restaurateur to another, living moderately, and having a lodging for which I paid three louis a month. They were the happiest days of my life. I was always so much occupied, that I may say I never was truly happy upon the throne."

Virginia Woolf photo

“We have dined well. The fish, the veal cutlets, the wine have blunted the sharp tooth of egotism. Anxiety is at rest.”

Bernard, section VIII
The Waves (1931)
Context: We have dined well. The fish, the veal cutlets, the wine have blunted the sharp tooth of egotism. Anxiety is at rest. The vainest of us, Louis perhaps, does not care what people think. Neville’s tortures are at rest. Let others prosper — that is what he thinks. Susan hears the breathing of all her children safe asleep. Sleep, sleep, she murmurs. Rhoda has rocked her ships to shore. Whether they have foundered, whether they have anchored, she cares no longer.

Nathuram Godse photo
Choudhry Rahmat Ali photo
Steven Pressfield photo
Edward Lear photo
Alison Croggon photo
Frank Miller photo

“Spartans… tonight we dine in Hell!”

Source: 300

Neil deGrasse Tyson photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Fate
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)

Rick Riordan photo
Suzanne Collins photo
Nora Roberts photo
Barney Frank photo
André Maurois photo
Jack Vance photo

“The less a writer discusses his work—and himself—the better. The master chef slaughters no chickens in the dining room; the doctor writes prescriptions in Latin; the magician hides his hinges, mirrors, and trapdoors with the utmost care.”

Jack Vance (1916–2013) American mystery and speculative fiction writer

Afterword to "The Bagful of Dreams" in The Jack Vance Treasury (2007). First appeared in Epoch (1775), ed. Robert Silverberg and Roger Elwood.

Ma Zhanshan photo
Sueton photo

“His wastefulness showed most of all in the architectural projects. He built a palace, stretching from the Palatine to the Esquiline, which he called…"The Golden House". The following details will give some notion of its size and magnificence. The entrance-hall was large enough to contain a huge statue of himself, 120 feet high…Parts of the house were overlaid with gold and studded with precious stones and mother-of pearl. All the dining-rooms had ceilings of fretted ivory, the panels of which could slide back and let a rain of flowers, or of perfume from hidden sprinklers, shower upon his guests. The main dining-room was circular, and its roof revolved, day and night, in time with the sky. Sea water, or sulphur water, was always on tap in the baths. When the palace had been decorated throughout in this lavish style, Nero dedicated it, and condescended to remark: "Good, now I can at last begin to live like a human being!"”
Non in alia re tamen damnosior quam in aedificando domum a Palatio Esquilias usque fecit, quam…Auream nominavit. De cuius spatio atque cultu suffecerit haec rettulisse. Vestibulum eius fuit, in quo colossus CXX pedum staret ipsius effigie…In ceteris partibus cuncta auro lita, distincta gemmis unionumque conchis erant; cenationes laqueatae tabulis eburneis versatilibus, ut flores, fistulatis, ut unguenta desuper spargerentur; praecipua cenationum rotunda, quae perpetuo diebus ac noctibus vice mundi circumageretur; balineae marinis et albulis fluentes aquis. Eius modi domum cum absolutam dedicaret, hactenus comprobavit, ut se diceret quasi hominem tandem habitare coepisse.

Source: The Twelve Caesars, Nero, Ch. 31

Sydney Smith photo

“Serenely full, the epicure would say,
Fate cannot harm me, I have dined today.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Source: Recipe for Salad, p. 374

John McCain photo

“You know, the French remind me a little bit of an aging actress of the 1940s who is still trying to dine out on her looks but doesn't have the face for it.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

Supposedly said during an interview with Fox News http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/7/5/00548.shtml
Disputed

Victor Hugo photo

“To rise at six, to sleep at ten,
To sup at ten, to dine at six,
Make a man live for ten times ten.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Lever à six, coucher à dix,
Dîner à dix, souper à six,
Font vivre l'homme dix fois dix.
Inscription in Hugo's dining room, quoted in Gustave Larroumet, La maison de Victor Hugo: Impressions de Guernesey (1895), Chapter III

J. Michael Straczynski photo

“Your assumption, and the truth, dine at totally separate tables.”

J. Michael Straczynski (1954) American writer and television producer

[Specualtion and Worries on New B5 project, J. Michael Straczynski, 11 February 2004, rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated, 20040217173540.19352.00001496@mb-m26.aol.com, http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated/msg/a1c75369be24e657]

John Banville photo
Diogenes of Sinope photo

“Aristotle dines when it seems good to King Philip, but Diogenes when he himself pleases.”

Diogenes of Sinope (-404–-322 BC) ancient Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the Cynic philosophy

Plutarch, On Exile, 12 (Moralia, 604D)
Quoted by Plutarch

Martial photo

“You praise, in three hundred verses, Sabellus, the baths of Ponticus, who gives such excellent dinners. You wish to dine, Sabellus, not to bathe.”
Laudas balnea versibus trecentis Cenantis bene Pontici, Sabelle. Vis cenare, Sabelle, non lavari.

Laudas balnea versibus trecentis
Cenantis bene Pontici, Sabelle.
Vis cenare, Sabelle, non lavari.
IX, 19.
Epigrams (c. 80 – 104 AD)

Daniel Handler photo
William Cobbett photo
George W. Bush photo
Alan Kotok photo

“It's hard to lose weight when you're dining on the company's money.”

Alan Kotok (1941–2006) American computer scientist

on business travel; quoted in [John E. McNamara, Remembering Alan's Humor, 2006, http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-memoria/2006Jun/0009.html, 2006-12-26]

John Dryden photo

“The true Amphitryon is the Amphitryon where we dine.”

Amphitryon (1690), Act IV scene i.

Robert Jordan photo

“The pike does not ask the frog’s permission before dining.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Lini
(15 October 1994)

William Hazlitt photo

“Few things tend more to alienate friendship than a want of punctuality in our engagements. I have known the breach of a promise to dine or sup to break up more than one intimacy.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

" On the Spirit of Obligations http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Hazlitt/SpiritObligations.htm" (1824)
The Plain Speaker (1826)

Antoni Tàpies photo
Daryl Palumbo photo

“He's a winner, he's a God damn sinner; when he dines I'm on the wrong side of the day.”

Daryl Palumbo (1979) Vocalist musician

Ape Dos Mil (Glassjaw)

Berthe Morisot photo

“Would you do us the great favour, you and Mademoiselle Geneviève, of coming to dine next Thursday? Monet will be there, Renoir also..”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

short letter of Berthe to Stéphane Mallarmé, c. 1885-86; as cited in Vie de la Mallarmé, Henri Mondor, publisher Gallimard 1941, p. 501
at the Thursday-evening diners were frequently invited Berthe's relations; a. o. Monet, Degas, Renoir, Manet, Mallarmé etc..
1881 - 1895

Oliver Goldsmith photo
Arthur Guiterman photo

“The Deer don't dine
When a Wolf's about,
And the Porcupine
Sticks his quill-points out.”

Arthur Guiterman (1871–1943) United States writer

Safety First https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/html/1807/4350/poem3072.html

Charles Mackay photo
Bob Dylan photo

“I have dined with kings, I've been offered wings
And I've never been too impressed”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Street-Legal (1978), Is Your Love In Vain?

Henry Adams photo
Tomas Kalnoky photo
John F. Kennedy photo

“I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Address at a White House dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners (29 April 1962), quoted in The White House Diary, at the JFK Library http://www.jfklibrary.org/white%20house%20diary/1962/April/29
1962

John Aubrey photo
Fran Lebowitz photo
Gabrielle Roy photo
Walter Besant photo
Zakir Hussain (musician) photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Marshall McLuhan photo
Robert T. Bakker photo
Albert Speer photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo
Noel Coward photo
Kurt Tucholský photo

“Man has—next to the drives of reproduction and dining—two passions: making noise and not listening.”

Kurt Tucholský (1890–1935) German-Jewish journalist, satirist and writer

Michel De Montaigne photo

“The art of dining well is no slight art, the pleasure not a slight pleasure.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Attributed

Charlotte Brontë photo
John Hall photo

“By any precise definition, Washington is a city of advanced depravity. There one meets and dines with the truly great killers of the age, but only the quirkily fastidious are offended, for the killers are urbane and learned gentlemen who discuss their work with wit and charm and know which tool to use on the escargots.
On New York's East Side one occasionally meets a person so palpably evil as to be fascinatingly irresistible. There is a smell of power and danger on these people, and one may be horrified, exhilarated, disgusted or mesmerized by the awful possibilities they suggest, but never simply depressed.
Depression comes in the presence of depravity that makes no pretense about itself, a kind of depravity that says, "You and I, we are base, ugly, tasteless, cruel and beastly; let's admit it and have a good wallow."
That is how Times Square speaks. And not only Times Square. Few cities in the country lack the same amenities. Pornography, prostitution, massage parlors, hard-core movies, narcotics dealers — all seem to be inescapable and permanent results of an enlightened view of liberty which has expanded the American's right to choose his own method of shaping a life.
Granted such freedom, it was probably inevitable that many of us would yield to the worst instincts, and many do, and not only in New York. Most cities, however, are able to keep the evidence out of the center of town. Under a rock, as it were. In New York, a concatenation of economics, shifting real estate values and subway lines has worked to turn the rock over and put the show on display in the middle of town.
What used to be called "The Crossroads of the World" is now a sprawling testament to the dreariness which liberty can produce when it permits people with no taste whatever to enjoy the same right to depravity as the elegant classes.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"Cheesy" (p.231)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

Sylvia Earle photo
Shulgi photo

“To strut about in the E-kur is a glory for Bird, as its singing is sweet. … It shall utter its cries in the temple of the great gods. The Anuna gods rejoice at its voice. It is suitable for banquets in the great dining hall of the gods.”

In Debate between Bird and Fish, early 2nd millennium BCE. Text online http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section5/tr535.htm at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.

Jonathan Swift photo
Cédric Villani photo

“If paparazzi specialized in mathematical celebrities they'd camp outside the dining hall at the IAS and come away with a new batch of pictures every day.”

[Cédric Villani, Birth of a Theorem: A Mathematical Adventure, https://books.google.com/books?id=aN8tBQAAQBAJ&pg=PT70, 5 March 2015, Random House, 978-1-4481-5657-3, 70]

Anton Chekhov photo
Anthony Trollope photo

“The affair simply amounted to this, that they were to eat their dinner uncomfortably in a field instead of comfortably in the dining room.”

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) English novelist (1815-1882)

On a picnic, in Can You Forgive Her? (1864), Ch. 78

Helen Garner photo
John R. Bolton photo
Vanna Bonta photo

“The masses once dined on opera and Shakespeare.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

State of the Art (2000)

Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton photo

“Sir Christopher Wren
Said, "I am going to dine with some men.
If anyone calls
Say I am designing St. Paul's."”

Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875–1956) British writer

Clerihews: Biography for Beginners (1905)

Nathanael Greene photo
Chuck Jones photo
Alexander Pope photo

“The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,
And wretches hang that jurymen may dine.”

Canto III, line 21.
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)

Gay Talese photo
Anna Akhmatova photo
D. V. Gundappa photo