Quotes about feast (170 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Never forget that there are only two philosophies to rule your life: the one of the cross, which starts with the fast and ends with the feast. The other of Satan, which starts with the feast and ends with the headache.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Source: Seven Words of Jesus and Mary: Lessons from Cana and Calvary

Life , Forgetting

“The company, then, were feasting in silence, as though some one in authority had commanded them to do so, when Philip the buffoon knocked at the door and told the porter to announce who he was and that he desired to be admitted; he added that with regard to food he had come all prepared, in all varieties—to dine on some other person's,—and that his servant was in great distress with the load he carried of—nothing, and with having an empty stomach. Hearing this, Callias said, “Well, gentlemen, we cannot decently begrudge him at the least the shelter of our roof; so let him come in.” With the words he cast a glance at Autolycus, obviously trying to make out what he had thought of the pleasantry. But Philip, standing at the threshold of the men's hall where the banquet was served, announced: “You all know that I am a jester; and so I have come here with a will, thinking it more of a joke to come to your dinner uninvited than to come by invitation.””

Xenophon Symposium

“Well, then,” said Callias, “take a place; for the guests, though well fed, as you observe, on seriousness, are perhaps rather ill supplied with laughter.”
Symposium, 1.11-13

Men , Food , Thinking , Laughter

“There are so many! It is going to be a feast. There will be blood up to your knees.”

Ratko Mladić (1943) Commander of the Bosnian Serb military

Nedzida Sadikovic, as quoted by Roy Gutman, Newsday News Service, August 9, 1995.
Srebrenica Massacre

“No sooner have you feasted on beauty with your eyes than your mind tells you that beauty is vain and beauty passes”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Beauty

“WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEART OF MEN?

The Death of Rats looked up from the feast of the potato. SQUEAK, he said.

Death waved a hand dismissively. WELL, YES, OBVIOUSLY ME, he said. I JUST WONDERED IF THERE WAS ANYONE ELSE.”

Terry Pratchett book The Truth

Source: The Truth

Death , Men , Evil , Heart

“Brother Hovind, I know you will say that you don't know for sure and all that what is your 'guess' on when the Lord is coming back?
SHORT ANSWER- During the feast of Trumpets in 2028.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 239

“A gloomy guest fits not a wedding feast.”

Friedrich Schiller William Tell

Act IV, sc. iii, as translated by Sir Thomas Martin
Wilhelm Tell (1803)

Wedding

“God grant you, friends, a helping hand—
In cares of state and private plights,
In rowdy feasts of friendship's band,
In passion's sweet and secret rites!
God grant you, friends, a helping hand—
In daily woes and days of strife,
On vacant sa, in distant land,
In every black abyss of life!”

Aleksandr Pushkin (1799–1837) Russian poet

Pushkin, 19 October 1827.
as quoted in Pushkin, Alexander (2009). Selected Lyric Poetry. Northwestern University Press, p. 121.

Life , God , Friendship , Secret

“No fool can be silent at a feast.”

Solón (-638–-558 BC) Athenian legislator

Epictetus, Fragment 71, translated by Thomas Wentworth Higginson. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0237&query=chapter%3D%23192&chunk=book

Fools

“Between the first and second Passover John and Christ baptized together, till the imprisonment of John, which was four months before the second. Then Christ began to preach, and call his disciples; and after he had instructed them a year, lent them to preach in the cities of the Jews: at the same time John hearing of the fame of Christ, sent to him to know who he was. At the third, the chief Priests began to consult about the death of Christ. A little before the fourth, the twelve after they had preached a year in all the cities, returned to Christ; and at the same time Herod beheaded John in prison, after he had been in prison two years and a quarter: and thereupon Christ fled into the desert for fear of Herod. The fourth Christ went not up to Jerusalem for fear of the Jews, who at the Passover before had consulted his death, and because his time was not yet come. Thenceforward therefore till the feast of Tabernacles he walked in Galilee, and that secretly for fear of Herod: and after the feast of Tabernacles he returned no more into Galilee, but sometimes was at Jerusalem, and sometimes retired beyond Jordan, or to the city Ephraim by the wilderness, till the Passover in which he was betrayed, apprehended, and crucified.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Vol. I, Ch. 11: Of the Times of the Birth and Passion of Christ
Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733)

Death , Fear , Time , Christ

“Let all partake of the feast of faith. Let all receive the riches of goodness. Let no one lament their poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed. Let no one mourn their transgressions, for pardon has dawned from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the Saviour's death has set us free.”

John Chrysostom (349–407) important Early Church Father

Paschal Homily

Death , Fear , Faith , Universe

“The inexperienced in wisdom and virtue, ever occupied with feasting and such, are carried downward, and there, as is fitting, they wander their whole life long, neither ever looking upward to the truth above them nor rising toward it, nor tasting pure and lasting pleasures. Like cattle, always looking downward with their heads bent toward the ground and the banquet tables, they feed, fatten, and fornicate. In order to increase their possessions they kick and butt with horns and hoofs of steel and kill each other, insatiable as they are.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Republic IX: 586a-b
Plato, Republic

Life , Wisdom , Pleasure , Truth

“The inexperienced in wisdom and virtue, ever occupied with feasting and such, are carried downward, and there, as is fitting, they wander their whole life long, neither ever looking upward to the truth above them nor rising toward it, nor tasting pure and lasting pleasures. Like cattle, always looking downward with their heads bent toward the ground and the banquet tables, they feed, fatten, and fornicate. In order to increase their possessions they kick and butt with horns and hoofs of steel and kill each other, insatiable as they are.”

Plato The Republic

586a–b
The Republic

Life , Wisdom , Pleasure , Truth

“O mortals, from your fellows' blood abstain,
Nor taint your bodies with a food profane:
While corn, and pulse by Nature are bestow'd,
And planted orchards bend their willing load;
While labour'd gardens wholesom herbs produce,
And teeming vines afford their gen'rous juice;
Nor tardier fruits of cruder kind are lost,
But tam'd with fire, or mellow'd by the frost;
While kine to pails distended udders bring,
And bees their hony redolent of Spring;
While Earth not only can your needs supply,
But, lavish of her store, provides for luxury;
A guiltless feast administers with ease,
And without blood is prodigal to please.”
Parcite, mortales, dapibus temerare nefandis corpora! sunt fruges, sunt deducentia ramos pondere poma suo tumidaeque in vitibus uvae, sunt herbae dulces, sunt quae mitescere flamma mollirique queant; nec vobis lacteus umor eripitur, nec mella thymi redolentia florem: prodiga divitias alimentaque mitia tellus suggerit atque epulas sine caede et sanguine praebet.

Ovid Metamorphoses

Book XV, 75–82 (from Wikisource); on vegetarianism, as the following quote
Metamorphoses (Transformations)

Food , Spring , Nature , Bee

“O impious use! to Nature's laws oppos'd,
Where bowels are in other bowels clos'd:
Where fatten'd by their fellow's fat, they thrive;
Maintain'd by murder, and by death they live.
'Tis then for nought, that Mother Earth provides
The stores of all she shows, and all she hides,
If men with fleshy morsels must be fed,
And chaw with bloody teeth the breathing bread:
What else is this, but to devour our guests,
And barb'rously renew Cyclopean feasts!
We, by destroying life, our life sustain;
And gorge th' ungodly maw with meats obscene.”
Heu quantum scelus est in viscera viscera condi ingestoque avidum pinguescere corpore corpus alteriusque animans animantis vivere leto! Scilicet in tantis opibus, quas, optima matrum, terra parit, nil te nisi tristia mandere saevo vulnera dente iuvat ritusque referre Cyclopum, nec, nisi perdideris alium, placare voracis et male morati poteris ieiunia ventris!

Ovid Metamorphoses

Book XV, 88–95 (from Wikisource)
Metamorphoses (Transformations)

Life , Death , Men , Law

“I have always advocated that a woman had as much sense as a man, or she would not have been called to be his help-meet and companion. A question: What man wants to spend his days with a woman fool? I think she is in as much danger of spending her days with a fool as he is. I opened wide the doors of my first school for ladies. Another and a much greater reason I will offer and emphasize. Why not elevate our sister’s mentality, qualify her to fill all places of trust and honor, place her hand and head with the skilled arts. I know no reason she should not study anatomy, physiology, chemistry and all the machinery and laws of life… I will say by way of encouragement that all ladies who have graduated from this school and gone out in the world, have done well financially, and are made the guests of the best society in the land. They are well received and honored as ladies, and well paid for their skill. Places are open and ready for all that have a diploma from this school. And for the first time I will say, come on and qualify yourselves to take your places of usefulness. Do your part well, and a feast awaits you.”

Andrew Taylor Still (1828–1917) Founder of Osteopathic Medicine

Still, A. T., Dr. A.T. Still's Department, Journal of Osteopathy, p. 413-414. https://www.atsu.edu/museum/subscription/pdfs/JournalofOsteopathyVol4No91898February.pdf/ Note: The first ASO class had 5 women members..

Life , World , School , Law

“The darkness. Goddamn the darkness. It seemed to Garraty they had been buried alive in it. Immured in it. Dawn was a century away. Many of them would never see the dawn. Or the sun. They were buried six feet deep in the darkness. All they needed was the monotonous chanting of the priest, his voice muffled but not entirely obscured by the new-packed darkness, above which the mourners stood. The mourners were not even aware that they were here, they were alive, they were screaming and scratching and clawing at the coffin-lid darkness, the air was flaking and rusting away, the air was turning into poison gas, hope fading until hope itself was darkness, and above all of it the nodding chapel-bell voice of the priest and the impatient, shuffling feet of mourners anxious to be off into the warm May sunshine. Then, overmastering that, the sighing, shuffling chorus of the bugs and the beetles, squirming their way through the earth, come for the feast…I could go crazy, Garraty thought. I could go right the fuck off my rocker.”

Stephen King book The Long Walk

The Long Walk (1979)

Way , Sun , Hope

“But, gathering in its ancient market-place,
Talked group with restless group; and not a face
But wrath made livid, for among them were
Death's staunch purveyors, such as have in care
To feast him. Fear had long since taken root
In every breast, and now these crushed its fruit,
The ripe hate, like a wine: to note the way
It worked while each grew drunk! men grave and grey
Stood, with shut eyelids, rocking to and fro.
Letting the silent luxury trickle slow
About the hollows where a heart should be;
But the young gulped with a delirious glee
Some foretaste of their first debauch in blood
At the fierce news”

Robert Browning book Sordello

Book the First
Sordello (1840)

Hate , Wine , Heart , Way

“A warrior knows that he is waiting and knows also what he is waiting for, and while he waits he feasts his eyes on the world. The ultimate accomplishment of a warrior is joy.”

Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author

Source: The Eagle's Gift, (1981)

Waiting , Joy , World

“Our happiness depends on the habit of mind we cultivate. So practice happy thinking every day. Cultivate the merry heart, develop the happiness habit, and life will become a continual feast." ~”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

Life , Thinking , Heart , Dependency

“Life is short and often stingy; feast the heart with what it craves, short of cruelty, and let the world wonder.”

Reynolds Price (1933–2011) American writer

Life , World , Heart

“We set down feasts for each other and treated our love with tongues of fire. Our bodies were fields of wonder to us.”

Pat Conroy book Beach Music

Source: Beach Music

Love

“Christmas it seems to me is a necessary festival; we require a season when we can regret all the flaws in our human relationships: it is the feast of failure, sad but consoling.”

Graham Greene (1904–1991) English writer, playwright and literary critic

Source: Travels With My Aunt

Sadness , Failure , Christmas , Season

“The Feast of Fortuna had nothing to do with tuna, which was fine with Percy.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

“I might have to drink the blood of animals to stay alive, but I would never feast on one of my own kind, no matter what Mr. Crepsley said, or hows much my belly growled.”

Darren Shan book The Vampire's Assistant

Source: The Vampire's Assistant

Drink , Animals

“I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Way , Fashion , Housing

“Healing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of loneliness. Conviviality is healing. To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation.
(pg.99, "The Body and the Earth")”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Source: The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

Loneliness

“It is good to dress in fair clothes to dine with friends. It honors your host, if you are a guest; and your guest if you are a host. And both adorn the feast, and so celebrate the gifts of the world.”

Alison Croggon (1962) contemporary Australian poet, playwright and fantasy novelist

World , Clothes

“But what is worse, smelling the roast and not feasting, or not smelling the roast at all?”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

“I will feast on enemies of Ra until my belly is full!”
“Charming,” Sadie whispered.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

“Strange to see how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody.”

Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) English naval administrator and member of parliament

9 November 1665 http://books.google.com/books?id=azIEAAAAQAAJ&q=%22Strange+to+see+how+a+good+dinner+and+feasting+reconciles+everybody%22&pg=PA120#v=onepage
Diary
Source: The Diary of Samuel Pepys: A Selection

New Year

“Love After Love
all your life, whom you have ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.”

Derek Walcott (1930–2017) Saint Lucian–Trinidadian poet and playwright

Love , Life , Heart

“He took the Who’s feast, he took the Who pudding, he took the roast beast. He cleaned out that ice box as quick as a flash. Why, the Grinch even took their last can of Who hash.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Source: How the Grinch stole Christmas! And other stories

Box

“Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.”

James Beard (1903–1985) American chef

Food

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Epigraph
Source: A Moveable Feast (1964)

Life

“And when Hugh would grow progressively Gandhi on me, I'd remind him that these were pests---disease carriers who feasted upon the dead and then came indoors to dance upon our silverware.”

David Sedaris When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Source: When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Disease , Dance , Dead

“To the loved, a word of affection is a morsel; but to the love-starved, a word of affection can be a feast.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Love

“Feast, and your halls are crowded
Fast, and the world goes by
Succeed and give, and it helps you live
But no man can help you die”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) American author and poet

World , Help

“All fled—all done, so lift me on the pyre—

The Feast is over, and the lamps expire.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

“At the Feast of Fortune, she'll awaken, and the demigods will be cut down like-- like---"
"Like our low prices at Bargain Mart!" Stheno suggested.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

“Ladies. Gentlemen. You have eaten well. You've eaten Gotham's wealth. Its spirit. Your feast is nearly over. From this moment on… none of you are safe.”

Frank Miller book Batman: Year One

Source: Batman: Year One

Wealth

“Here was a torture that Greek inventors of the Feast and the Stone had omitted from their Hades: the Blanket of Self-Deception. A lovely warm blanket as far as it covered the soul in torment, but it never quite covered everything.”

Jonathan Franzen book The Corrections

Source: The Corrections

Love , Soul

“There were many guests at the table
Misfortune, jealousy, and sloth
Acting fine, drink the wine
Spill it on the tablecloth - "Feast"”

Steve Kilbey (1954) British artist

Lyrics

Jealousy , Drink , Wine

“Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man
In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

" Carrion Comfort http://www.bartleby.com/122/40.html", lines 1-4
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Hope , Cry , Despair

“Go by reverently, and read with sober care
How a great people, riding with defiant shouts
The centaur of Revolution,
Spurred and whipped to frenzy,
Shook with terror, seeing the mist of the sea
Over the precipice they were nearing,
And fell from his back in precipitate awe
To celebrate the Feast of the Supreme Being.”

Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950) American writer

" Captain Orlando Killion http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/captain-orlando-killion/'

People , Reading , Sea

“We take notice of all feasts, and the almanack is part of the common law, the calendar being established by Act of Parliament, and it is published before the Common-prayer Book.”

John Holt (Lord Chief Justice) (1642–1710) English lawyer and Lord Chief Justice of England

Brough v. Parkings (1703), 2 Raym. 994; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 92.

Books , Law , Parting

“When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this person your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Luke the Evangelist Gospel of Luke

14:8-11 NIV
Gospel of Luke

Wedding , Personality

“Everybody has a skeleton in the closet; the thing is to keep ’em there and not at the feast.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Starman Jones

Source: Starman Jones (1953), Chapter 10, “Garson’s Planet” (p. 109)

“The Feast of Birds is dedicated to Avalei, the Goddess of Love and Death, of whom my master had said: “Not all that is ancient is worthy of praise.””

Sofia Samatar book A Stranger in Olondria

Source: A Stranger in Olondria (2013), Chapter 6, “The Feast of Birds” (p. 60)

Love , Death , Bird

“Fan Chin feasted his eyes on this announcement; and, after reading it through once to himself, read it once more aloud. Clapping his hands, he laughed and exclaimed, "Ha! Good! I have passed." Then, stepping back, he fell down in a dead faint. His mother hastily poured some boiled water between his lips, whereupon he recovered consciousness and struggled to his feet. Clapping his hands again, he let out a peal of laughter and shouted, "Aha! I've passed! I've passed!" Laughing wildly he ran outside, giving the heralds and the neighbours the fright of their lives. Not far from the front door he slipped and fell into a pond. When he clambered out, his hair was dishevelled, his hands muddied and his whole body dripping with slime. But nobody could stop him. Still clapping his hands and laughing, he headed straight for the market.”

Wu Jingzi book The Scholars

The Scholars (c. 1750), Chapter 3 http://ctext.org/text.pl?node=566382&if=en&remap=gb (trans. Gladys Yang)

Laughter , Water , Reading , Dead

“6082. Enough’s as good as a Feast,
To one that’s not a Beast.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
Variant: 1370. Enough's as good as a Feast.

“Are these the choice dishes the Doctor has sent us?
Is this the great poet whose works so content us?
This Goldsmith’s fine feast, who has written fine books?
Heaven sends us good meat, but the Devil sends cooks?”

David Garrick (1717–1779) English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer

Epigram on Goldsmith’s Retaliation. Vol. ii. p. 157. Compare: "God sendeth and giveth both mouth and the meat", Thomas Tusser, A Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (1557); "God sends meat, and the Devil sends cooks", John Taylor, Works, vol. ii. p. 85 (1630).

Books , Cooking

“So cruel prison how could betide, alas,
As proud Windsor? where I, in lust and joy,
With a King's son, my childish years did pass,
In greater feast than Priam's sons of Troy.
Where each sweet place returns a taste full sour.”

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516–1547) English Earl

Source: Prisoned in Windsor, He Recounteth his Pleasure there Passed, Line 1

Joy

“The pleasure of being with you is in the clash of personality, the intellectual battle, the war of ideas. To survive you one must have a strong brain, an assertive ego, a dynamic character. In your luncheon-parties, in old days, the remains of the guests were taken away with the débris of the feast. I have often lunched with you in Park Lane and found myself the only survivor.”

Frank Harris (1856–1931) Irish journalist and rogue

Oscar Wilde, letter to Frank Harris, June 13, 1897, in The Letters of Oscar Wilde (1962) p. 608.
Criticism

War , Pleasure , Idea , Strong

“Of two men sharing with a calf the milk of that calf's mother one eyes the calf with the thought that his tender flesh would provide good meat for him and his friends to feast upon at his approaching birthday. The other thinks of the calf as his brother of the teat and is filled with affection for the young beast and his mother. I say to you, the latter is truly nourished by that calf's meat; while the first is poisoned thereby. Aye, many things are put in the belly that should be put in the heart.”

Mikha'il Na'ima book The Book of Mirdad

The Book of Mirdad (1948)

Men , Birthday , Thinking , Heart

“Whether looming over the land as a symbol of a ruler’s authority or providing a setting for displays of wealth and power in spectacular feasts and tournaments, castles made a visual statement about their owners. All ar chitecture has symbolic overtones, and the castle is a potent image.”

Marilyn Stokstad (1929–2016) art historian

Source: Medieval castles (2005), Ch. 4 : The Castle as Symbol and Palace

Wealth

“What a wide difference between the American position and that imagined by the vagabond who thought of liberty as a glorious feast unprotected and unregulated by law. This is not civilization, but a plain reversion to the life of the jungle. Without the protection of the law, and the imposition of its authority, equality cannot be maintained, liberty disappears and property vanishes. This is anarchy. The forces of darkness are traveling in that direction. But the spirit of America turns its face towards the light.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

Life , Law , Travel , Imagination

“Who built Thebes of the 7 gates ?
In the books you will read the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock ?

And Babylon, many times demolished,
Who raised it up so many times ?

In what houses of gold glittering Lima did its builders live ?
Where, the evening that the Great Wall of China was finished, did the masons go?

Great Rome is full of triumphal arches.
Who erected them?

Over whom did the Caesars triumph?

Had Byzantium, much praised in song, only palaces for its inhabitants ?

Even in fabled Atlantis, the night that the ocean engulfed it,
The drowning still cried out for their slaves.

The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone?

Caesar beat the Gauls.
Did he not even have a cook with him?

Philip of Spain wept when his armada went down.
Was he the only one to weep?

Frederick the Second won the Seven Years' War.
Who else won it?

Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feast for the victors?

Every ten years a great man.
Who paid the bill?

So many reports.

So many questions.”

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

"Questions from a worker who reads" [Fragen eines lesenden Arbeiters] (1935) from The Svendborg Poems (1939); trans. Michael Hamburger in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 252
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

War , Books , Question , Time

“As much valour is to be found in feasting as in fighting, and some of our city captains and carpet knights will make this good, and prove it.”

Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy

Section 2, member 2, subsection 2.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I

Fight

“The separation of men from women at the dinner was still in the mediaeval tradition. Another interesting feature of the evening is the relatively small number of people involved. Eighteen sat down to dinner, fifteen couples danced at the ball. The entertaining was ‘the finest that ever was seen’ because of the style and richness of the accompaniments, not because of its size. This was typical of the period. Feasts for several hundred people were still being given in the country, to prepare for an election or celebrate Christmas, births, weddings, and comings of age. They usually centred round dinner in the hall, and could involve all the neighbouring gentry and near-gentry, and even the tenants and local freeholders. But the entertainments which enjoyed the most prestige were small but elaborate ones for relatively few people – just as the prestigious part of the house was devoted to a few large apartments for great people coming on what amounted to a state visit. A hard line was still drawn between the inner ring of the great and smaller fry.”

Mark Girouard (1931) British architectural historian

Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History (1978)

Women , Men , People , Age

“Enough 's as good as a feast.”

George Chapman Eastward Hoe

Act III, scene ii.
Eastward Hoe (1605)

“Her shoulders sagging, her back hunched, her eyelids tired, Rose-Anna sewed for the feast, not daring even to sing for fear of frightening off her joy.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P. 177

Fear , Singing , Joy

“And pomp, and feast, and revelry,
With mask, and antique pageantry,
Such sights as youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted stream.
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild,
And ever, against eating cares,
Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
Married to immortal verse
Such as the meeting soul may pierce,
In notes with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Source: L'Allegro (1631), Line 127; comparable to: "Wisdom married to immortal verse", William Wordsworth, The Excursion, book vii

Youth , Dreams , Soul , Learning

“1577. Fools make Feasts, and wise Men eat them.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1745) : Fools make feasts and wise men eat them.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Men , Fools

“What is the secret behind the emotional effect of great works of painting? What laws govern their beauty? Delacroix said that being a feast for the eyes is the prime merit of a good painting. I seek the timeless, the quintessential in painting.”

Stefan Szczesny (1951) German painter and sculptor

Mustique (2002)

Secret , Law , Beauty , Painting

“Beloved, I congratulate you, that you are at the feast of redeeming love, that you know the riches of grace in Christ Jesus; but this is only the "early meal" (introductory feast); the " grand supper "is awaiting you, at the close of the day, in the palace of the King, where the fellowship will be perfect and eternal, where the table will be beyond all the mists and fogs of sin, where death never enters to disturb the festivities, and where we shall see the Lamb face to face. O! if the feast with Jesus here is so precious, what, what must heaven be!”

Abbott Eliot Kittredge (1834–1912) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 372.

Love , Death , Christ , Perfection

“Well, the New York Times editorial board, that reliable abettor of all the liars, haters, and fantasists, aka Democrats, who detest the American South and lust to rewrite America's history into party-serving fiction, has endorsed dumping Andrew Jackson in favor of rewarding a woman with his place on the twenty dollar bill. So fundamentally important to the nation is this switch that the Board’s reputedly adult members have decided that the only group sober and knowledgeable enough to decide how to destroy another piece of American history and further persecute the South is 'the nation's schoolchildren' who should be made to 'nominate and vote on Jackson’s replacement. Why not give them another reason to learn about women who altered history and make some history themselves by changing American currency?' Why of course, what geniuses! And, then, why not let these kids — who cannot figure out that the brim of baseball cap goes in the front — go on to decide other pressing national issues. Maybe they can replace General Washington on the $1 bill with a Muslim woman and thereby end America's war with Islam. As the saying goes, you could not make this stuff up. Now Andrew Jackson was not the most unblemished of men, but he risked his life repeatedly for his country; killed its enemies; expanded U. S. territory in North America; defeated the British at New Orleans; was twice elected president; and faced down and was prepared to hang the South Carolina nullifiers when he believed they were seeking to undermine and break the Union. Jackson is one of those southern fellows, and so he is now a target for banishment from our currency and eventually our history because he did not treat slaves and Indians as if they were his equals and, indeed, inflicted pain on both. But he also was, along with Thomas Jefferson, another insensitive chap toward blacks and Indians, the longtime icon of the Democratic Party and its great self-praising and fund-raising feast, the annual 'Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner', which was, of course, a fervent tribute to those that General Jackson would have hanged without blinking.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention http://non-intervention.com/1689/democrats-scourge-the-south-after-the-battle-flag-it%e2%80%99s-on-to-old-hickory/ (9 July 2015), by M. Scheuer.
2010s

Life , Women , Men , Pain

“At Christmas be merry and thankful withal,
And feast thy poor neighbors, the great with the small.”

Thomas Tusser (1524–1580) English poet

"December Husbandry".
A Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (1557)

Christmas

“The manuscripts in which these early Greek treatises have been preserved to us seem to be derived from an encyclopaedia compiled during the tenth century, at Constantinople, from the works of various alchemists…. The Greek text. now published by M. Berthelot and M. [Ch. Em. ] Ruelle, custodian of the Library of Ste.-Geneviève, is derived from a careful collation of all these sources, and is accompanied with notes by M. Berthelot bringing light and order into the mystical obscurity in which from the beginning the alchemists enveloped their doctrines.
First among these is the 'Physica et Mystica,' ascribed to Democritus of Abdera, a collection of fragments, among which a few receipts for dyeing in purple may be genuine, while the story of magic and the alchemical teaching are evidently spurious. The philosopher is made to state that his studies were interrupted by the death of his master, Ostanes the Magian. He therefore evoked his spirit from Hades, and learned from him that the books which contained the secrets of his art were in a certain temple. He sought them there in vain, till one day, during a feast in the sanctuary, a column opened, and revealed the precious tomes, in which the doctrines of the Master were summed up in the mysterious words: 'Nature rejoices in Nature, Nature conquers Nature, Nature rules Nature.'
The unknown Alexandrian who wrote under the name of Democritus gives not only receipts for making white alloys of copper, but others which, he positively asserts, will produce gold. M. Berthelot, however, shows in his notes that they can only result in making amalgams for gilding or alloys resembling gold or varnishes which will give a superficial tinge to metals”

Osthanes (-500) pen-name used by several pseudo-anonymous authors of Greek and Latin works of alchemy

, Marcellin Berthelot, Ch. Em. Ruelle, "The Alchemists of Egypt and Greece," Art. VIII. (Jan. 1893) in The Edinburgh Review (Jan.-Apr. 1893) Vol. 177, pp. 208-209. https://books.google.com/books?id=GuvRAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA208

Death , Secret , Books , Art

“The men went to Catraeth, swift was their host, the pale mead was their feast and it was their poison.”

Aneirin book Y Gododdin

Stanza A8, pp. 118.
"This famous quotation does not mean that the Gododdin army was too drunk to fight properly, but that they lost their lives in 'earning their mead'" (Jackson The Gododdin p. 35).
Y Gododdin

Men

“Life to each individual is a scene of continued feasting in a region of plenty; and when unexpected death arrests its course, it repays with small interest the large debt which it has contracted to the common fund of animal nutrition, from whence the materials of its body have been derived. Thus the great drama of universal life is perpetually sustained; and though the individual actors undergo continual change, the same parts are filled by another and another generation; renewing the face of the earth and the bosom of the deep with endless successions of life and happiness.”

William Buckland (1784–1856) English clergyman, geologist and palaeontologist

Geology and Mineralogy Considered with Reference to Natural Theology (1841), p. 109

Life , Death , Universe , Change

“The method for practicing this ardent love is short and easy. Its subject is constant and loving aspiration. But to be perfect, aspiration must be practice so eagerly and continually that it becomes as easy as breathing. It has a number of degrees, all of which can be reduced to four. The first consists in offering oneself and all created things to God. As far as possible, this should be done in an abstract manner. The second degree consists in making requests of the divine Spouse, asking him for his gifts in him and for his own sake. The third degree consists in being resigned and completely conformed to him. This conformity is very lofty and perfect, and is characterized by a great love. Moreover, the soul also desires it for creatures who are capable of such exalted love. The fourth degree is that of unitive love which unites the soul to God. Here the souls yearns for him and pursues him with acts of love until he opens his loving and super essential bosom to it. Here it feast upon his immense beauty in great abundance and intoxication, eating and drinking at the table of the Blessed. But since this does not last very long, the soul soon returns to itself to feed upon its former spiritual fare. From this it derives renewed strength, until God again receives it into his bosom with the same effect.”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From Prayer, Aspiration, and Contemplation

Love , God , Beauty , Soul

“The Pharisees were orthodox Jews, deeply concerned with the affairs of the Church and conscientious observers of all its ceremonies. They held its chief offices, occupied the chief places at the feasts, and sat in the chief seats in the synagogues…. Who then could have been more astonished than they when, like a thunderbolt from the sky, came the simplest, clearest, most concise and yet complete statement of fundamental religious truth that has ever been uttered? In twenty-eight words Jesus stated for all time and in a manner that may be understood by everybody, the fundamental basis of Christianity—"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all mind… And Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 92-93

Love , God , Truth , Soul

“One to the other / Unos á otros' - Thus goes the world. We mock at and deceive each other. He who, yesterday, was the ball, is to-day the horseman in the ring. Fortune directs the feast, and distributes the parts according to the inconstancy of its caprice.”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

title of Capricho no. 77 and Goya's inscription on this plate; from Paul Lefort, in Francisco Goya: etude biographique et critique, suivi de l'essai d'un catalogue raisonne de son oeuvre grave et lithographe; published in the 'Gazette des Beaux-Arts', February, 1867; April, 1867; February, 1868; April, 1868; August, 1868
1790s

World , Parting

“This airport has been designed with big windows viewing the runways, so if there's a crash everybody can feast upon it with their own eyes. The fireball, the fuselage doing a slow skidding twirl, shedding its wings.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

“Not only has capitalism failed to bring us to the brink of a scarcity-free world, but in a sense, you could say that capitalism invented scarcity - at least as a deliberate method of economic organization…. The flipside of this bounty, this endless feast, is scarcity.”

Linda McQuaig (1951) journalist and author

All You Can Eat: Greed, Lust and the New Capitalism (2001)

World , Sense

“The wine of Love is music,
And the feast of Love is song:
And when Love sits down to the banquet,
Love sits long:

Sits long and rises drunken,
But not with the feast and the wine;
He reeleth with his own heart,
That great, rich Vine.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

Part XVIII
Sunday Up the River (1865)

Love , Music , Wine , Heart

“We are celebrating the feast of the Eternal Birth which God the Father has borne and never ceases to bear in all eternity… But if it takes not place in me, what avails it? Everything lies in this, that it should take place in me.”

Michael Elmore-Meegan (1959) British humanitarian

All Will be Well (2004)

God , Birth

“O faithless brother what has happened that in vain you joined hands to violate my honour, and to stain your own hand with my blood. You gathered round yourself a band of persons addicted to vice … you excited this gang of villains to hate me … I appointed you to act for me. I ordered my friends to obey you … you are now out to destroy me. I was your guest you abused me. You swore at me in my face. That which you yourself deserved you ascribed to me. You inspired your servants with rancorous hatred of me. Even you taught your own barber your own falsehoods. He gave false evidence against the truth. You set in motion this great sedition …. Outwardly you pretended to be my friend. You attended my feast. You ate my meal of trust. Inwardly you manifested your falsehood until Shawal 23 [Presumably March 11, 1866] when I was keeping a fast you withheld bread and water from me. … By deceit you intercepted my epistles. Some of them which were to your advantage you paraded before the inhabitants of the city [i. e. Edirne]. At present am in straitened circumstances and you are in affluence. And yet you pretend the contrary.”

Subh-i-Azal (1831–1912) Persian religious leader

Quoted in Mirza Mustafa Katib's Response to Zayn al-Muqarrabin on page 46
Open Letter to Bahá'u'lláh

Hate , Truth , Water , Personality

““For many, abstract thinking is toil; for me, on good days, it is feast and frenzy.” (XIV, 24) Abstract thinking a feast? The highest form of human existence? … “The feast implies: pride, exuberance, frivolity; mockery of all earnestness and respectability; a divine affirmation of oneself, out of animal plenitude and perfection—all obviously states to which the Christian may not honestly say Yes. The feast is paganism par excellence.” (WM, 916). For that reason, we might add that thinking never takes place in Christianity. That is to say, there is no Christian philosophy. There is no true philosophy that could be determined anywhere else than from within itself.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Source: Nietzsche (1961), p. 5

Thinking , Animals , Perfection

“Conan's hand fell heavily on her naked shoulder.
"Stand aside, girl," he mumbled. "Now is the feasting of swords."”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"Xuthal of the Dusk" (1933)

Girl

“Any heart turned Godward feels more joy
In one short hour of prayer, than e'er was raised
By all the feasts of earth since its foundation.”

Philip James Bailey Festus

Festus (1839)

Feeling , Heart , Joy

“Enough is as good as a feast.”

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

Part II, chapter 11.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“I think Stone Mountain is amusing, but then again I find most representations of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson outside of Virginia, and, in Jackson's case, West Virginia, to be amusing. Aside from a short period in 1861-62, when Lee was placed in charge of the coastal defense of South Carolina and Georgia, neither general stepped foot in Georgia during the war. Lee cut off furloughs to Georgia's soldiers later in the war because he was convinced that once home they'd never come back. He resisted the dispatch of James Longstreet's two divisions westward to defend northern Georgia, and he had no answer when Sherman operated in the state. It would be better to see Joseph E. Johnston and John Bell Hood on the mountain, although it probably would have been difficult to get those two men to ride together. Maybe Braxton Bragg would have been a better pick, but no one calls him the hero of Chickamauga. Yet Bragg, Johnston, and Hood all attempted to defend Georgia, and they are ignored on Stone Mountain. So is Joe Wheeler, whose cavalry feasted off Georgians in 1864. So is John B. Gordon, wartime hero and postwar Klansman. Given Stone Mountain's history, Klansman Gordon would have been a good choice.”

Brooks D. Simpson (1957) American historian

2010s, The Future of Stone Mountain (July 2015)

Men , War , Home , History

“You know, whenever women make imaginary female kingdoms in literature, they are always very permissive, to use the jargon word, and easy and generous and self-indulgent, like the relationships between women when there are no men around. They make each other presents, and they have little feasts, and nobody punishes anyone else. This is the female way of going along when there are no men about or when men are not in the ascendant.”

Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer

quoted in "A Talk With Doris Lessing; Lessing Author's Query" (30 March 1980), Minda Bikman, New York Times Book Review

Women , Men , Way , Literature

“The lizard dragged the priest’s body back to her nest, and her children feasted very well. As for the rifle, it lay in the grass where Father Gomez had laid it down, quietly turning to rust.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Source: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000), Ch. 36 : The Broken Arrow

Children , Grass

“On November 8, the feast of Saints Archangels Michael and Gabriel, we were discussing the possible name for this youth organization. I said: "Let it be 'Michael the Archangel'." My father said: "There is in the church, on the left hand door of the altar, an icon of St. Michael." "Let us go see it!" Mota, Garneata, Corneliu Georgescu, Radu Mironovici, Tudose and I went to look at it and we were truly amazed. The icon appeared to us of unsurpassed beauty. I was never, attracted by the beauty of any icon. But now, I felt bound to this one with all my soul and I had the feeling the Archangel was alive. Since then, I have come to love that icon. Any time we found the church open, we entered and prayed before that icon. Our hearts were filled with peace and joy.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), The Legion

Love , Youth , Peace , Beauty

“I will not go
Prefer a
feast of Friends
To the Giant family”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

An American Prayer (1978)

Family

“The after-silence, when the feast is o'er,
And void the places where the minstrels stood,
Differs in nought from what hath been before,
And is nor ill nor good.”

William Watson (poet) (1858–1935) English poet, born 1858

The Great Misgiving http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-great-misgiving/.

Silence

“The lot of the favored guest of an Indian camp or village is idleness without repose, for he is never left alone, with the repletion of incessant and inevitable feasts.”

Francis Parkman (1823–1893) American historian

Pt. II, Ch. 14 The Great War Party
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)

“Some men are born to feast, and not to fight;
Whose sluggish minds, e'en in fair honor's field,
Still on their dinner turn—
Let such pot-boiling varlets stay at home,
And wield a flesh-hook rather than a sword.”

Joanna Baillie (1762–1851) Scottish poet and dramatist

Act I, scene 1.
Count Basil (1798)

Men , Home , Fight

“The early bird catches the worm But I have never been one for worms. I am not sure what the late bird catches, but I will feast with him today. Probably porridge.”

Donald Miller (1971) American writer

Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)

Bird

“It was Twelfth Night, and the Saxons, who in these days of torment refreshed and fortified themselves by celebrating the feasts of the Church, were off their guard, engaged in pious exercises, or perhaps even drunk. Down swept the ravaging foe. The whole army of Wessex, sole guarantee of England south of the Thames, was dashed into confusion. Many were killed.”

Winston S. Churchill book A History of the English-Speaking Peoples

On King Alfred's defeat by the Danes in January, w:878; Vol I; The Birth of Britain.
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956–58)

Exercises , Night

“There's feasting spread in gorgeous halls,
The lamps flash round the city walls,
And many a flood of lustre falls
O'er many an honoured name.
Turn thou from this, and enter where
Some mother weeps o'er her despair,
Some desolate bride rends her rich hair,
Some orphan joins the cry!
Then back again to the death plain,
Where lie those whom they weep in vain,
And ask, in gazing on the slain,
What art thou, Victory?”

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

21st January 1826) Io triumphe (under the pen name Iole
The London Literary Gazette, 1826

Death , Lie , Art , Victory

“I have often been surprised that Mathematics, the quintessence of Truth, should have found admirers so few and so languid. Frequent consideration and minute scrutiny have at length unravelled the cause: viz. that though Reason is feasted, Imagination is starved; whilst Reason is luxuriating in its proper Paradise, Imagination is wearily travelling on a dreary desert.”

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

Letter to his brother (1791).
Letters

Truth , Travel , Imagination , Mathematics

“Here let us feast, and to the feast be joined
Discourse, the sweeter banquet of the mind;
Review the series of our lives, and taste
The melancholy joy of evils passed:
For he who much has suffered, much will know,
And pleased remembrance builds delight on woe.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

XV. 398–401 (tr. Alexander Pope).
E. V. Rieu's translation:
: Meanwhile let us two, here in the hut, over our food and wine, regale ourselves with the unhappy memories that each can recall. For a man who has been through bitter experiences and travelled far can enjoy even his sufferings after a time.
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

Suffering , Evil , Joy