Quotes about vinegar

A collection of quotes on the topic of vinegar, making, wine, oil.

Quotes about vinegar

“I wish you would recollect that Painting and Punctuality mix like Oil and Vinegar, and that Genius and regularity are utter Enemies.”

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

Quote of Gainsborough in a 'Letter to Edward Stratford' (a patron), 1 May 1772
1770 - 1788

Painting

“To make a good salad is to be a brilliant diplomatist – the problem is so entirely the same in both cases. To know exactly how much oil one must put with one's vinegar.”

Oscar Wilde Vera; or, The Nihilists

Vera; or, The Nihilists (1880)

Problem

“Sourness and bitterness come from the interfering and unappreciative mind. Life itself, when understood and utilized for what it is, is sweet. That is the message of The Vinegar Tasters.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Source: The Tao of Pooh

Life

“Seducing him in the tub smelling of vinegar was out of the question. There had to be some boundaries.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Slays

Question

“You know, those parlor tricks would be much more impressive if they actually helped me. (Danger)
I wanted to see what you had in you. (Alexion)
Piss and vinegar. Next time you don’t help me, I’ll unleash it fully against you. (Danger)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Sins of the Night

Time, Help

“Anyway, madness and genius. They're the disturbed pals of the human condition. The Bonnie and Clyde, the Thelma and Louise, the baking soda and vinegar. Insanity just walks alongside the brilliant like some creepy, insistent shadow.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: Wild Roses

Madness

“3454. More Flies are taken with a Drop of Honey than a Tun of Vinegar.”

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

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“Well, if you take a roll of film and instead of making pictures on it, you process it by pickling it in vinegar and putting it in a jar and presenting it for people to look at that way, projected through the lens of the fluid around it, this is so distorted and such a monstrous disfigurement of the normal way in which you are 'supposed to use' film, that it is a kind of pathology; it’s a sickness in the sense of a virus being inserted in the system. I think wellness and change are measured by comparison to potential for extremes of illness or death. I was trying to kill film. I wanted to let it lay over and die.”

Tony Conrad (1940–2016) American filmmaker, violinist and composer

Tony Conrad cited in: Jean-Michel Maulpoix (2005) A Matter of Blue Vol 92-94. p. 35.

Death, People, Way, Thinking

“When he halted near Kumbhalmîr which was a very big fort of that province, and well-known for its strength all over Hindustãn, Devã the Vakîl of the Governor of Kumbhã took shelter in the fort and started fighting. It so happened that a magnificent temple had been erected in front of that fort and surrounded by ramparts on all sides. That temple had been filled with weapons of war and other stores. Sultãn Mahmûd planned to storm the ramparts and captured it [the temple] in a week. A large number of Rajpûts were made prisoners and slaughtered. About the edifices of the temple, he ordered that they should be stocked with wood and fired, and water and vinegar was sprinkled on the walls. That magnificent mansion which it had taken many years to raise, was destroyed in a few moments. He got the idols broken and they were handed over to the butchers for being used as weights while selling meat. The biggest idol which had the form of a ram was reduced to powder which was put in betel-leaves to be given to the Rajpûts so that they could eat their god.”

Nizamuddin Ahmad (1551–1594) historian

Sultãn Mahmûd Khaljî of Malwa (AD 1436-1469) Kumbhalgadh (Rajasthan)
Tabqãt-i-Akharî

God, War, Water, Fight

“Knights of the Rosy Cross, they bore
Its weight within the heart, but wore
Without, devotion's sign in glistening ruby bright;
The gall and vinegar they drank alone,
But to the world at large would only own
The wine of faith, sparkling with rosy light.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Life Without and Life Within (1859), Sub Rosa, Crux

World, Faith, Light, Wine

“I've gotta keep writing. But where's the next step, where do you go? But at my age, you start to get tired. You're not full of piss and vinegar. The vinegar's all gone.”

Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) American writer

Crime Time interview (2001)

Age

“There is no inevitable connection between Christianity and cynicism. Truth is not a salad, is it, that you must always dress it with vinegar?”

William Morley Punshon (1824–1881) English Nonconformist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 139.

Truth

“[Footnote] Livy informs us that Hannibal split the huge Alpine rocks with vinegar to break a path for the elephants. Vinegar was a high explosive in 218 B. C., but not before or since.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Hannibal

“We find Theophrastus (315 B. C.) describing… the manufacture of white lead… "lead is placed in an earthen vessel over sharp vinegar, and after it has acquired some thickness of a kind of rust… they open the vessels and scrape it off. …repeating over and over again… til it is wholly gone. What has been scraped off they then beat to a powder and boil with water for a long time, and what at last settles to the bottom is white lead.”

J. R. Partington (1886–1965) British chemist

A Short History of Chemistry (1937)

Water, Time

“There is nothing in nature so impracticable as the obstinacy of your true husband; it is the insurmountable obstacle—the Alps no female vinegar can melt.”

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

Other Gift Books

Nature

“I'll have this on you for the rest of my life," the maid said, smiling and dangling the strand of hair before him. "Everything will be all right if all goes well between us. Otherwise I'll drag this out and show it to her."
"Put it away carefully and don't ever let her find it," Chia Lien importuned. Then catching Patience off guard, he snatched the hair from her, saying, "It's safest out of your hands and destroyed."
"Ungrateful brute," Patience said with a pretty pout. […] In his tussle with Patience Chia Lien began to feel the fire of passion burn within him. Patience now looked prettier than ever with her pouted lips and her provocative scolding. He tried again to put his arms around her and make love to her, but Patience wriggled free and fled from the room. "You shameless little wanton," Chia Lien said. "You get one all excited and then run away."
Standing outside the window, Patience retorted, "Who's trying to get you excited? You only think of your pleasure. What's going to happen to me when she finds out?"
"Don't be afraid of her," Chia Lien said. "One of these days I'll get good and mad and give that jealous vinegar jar a good and proper beating and teach her who is master. She spies on me as if I were a thief. It's all right for her to talk and laugh with the men of the family, but she grows suspicious if she sees me so much as look at another woman.”

Wang Chi-chen (1899–2001)

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (1958), pp. 131–132

Love, Life, Men, Pleasure

“Our Garrick's a salad; for in him we see
Oil, vinegar, sugar, and saltness agree!”

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) Irish physician and writer

Source: Retaliation (1774), Line 11.

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

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

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

No one is looking out for anyone but number one

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

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

Tomas Kalnoky (1980) American musician

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

Love, Drink, Wine, Time

“A fellow that makes no figure in company, and has a mind as narrow as the neck of a vinegar-cruet.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Tour to the Hebrides, Sept. 30, 1773
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

October 5, 1773
Recounted as a common saying of physicians at the time.
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)

“My mother taught me a Spanish saying,” he remarked, “that it takes four men to make a salad: a spendthrift for the oil, a philosopher for the seasonings, a miser for the vinegar, and a madman for the tossing.”

Poul Anderson book The Star Fox

Section 1 “Marque and Reprisal”, Chapter V (pp. 37-38)
The Star Fox (1965)

Men, Season

“For the sake of having her with me I had to tolerate the shadow of a tracksuited poet, but one who has taken the guise of a man in love will indiscriminately eat and drink platefuls of thistles, barrels of vinegar.”

Cees Nooteboom book The Following Story

The Following Story (1991)

Love, Drink

“…the vinegar of the law, then the wine of the gospel…”

Thomas Watson (1616–1686) English nonconformist preacher and author

Heaven Taken By Storm

Law, Wine

“Within one cup pour vinegar and oil,
And look! unblent, unreconciled, they war.”

Aeschylus Agamemnon

Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, lines 322–323 (tr. E. D. A. Morshead)

War

“4781. The sweetest Wine makes the sharpest Vinegar.”

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

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Wine

“733. As the best Wine makes the sharpest Vinegar, so the deepest Love turns to the deadliest Hatred.”

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

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Love, Wine

“Beautiful wine and sour vinegar come from exactly the same source. Curiously if one leaves a bottle of wine open for long enough it will become vinegar”

David Gemmell book Stormrider

Source: Rigante series, Stormrider, Ch. 7
Context: No need for confusion, my dear Mulgrave [... ] Beautiful wine and sour vinegar come from exactly the same source. Curiously if one leaves a bottle of wine open for long enough it will become vinegar. Happily in this house wine never survives long enough to go bad.

Beauty, Wine