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Wine is sunlight, held together by water. —Galileo Galilei
If I had a thousand sons, the first humane principle I would teach them should be to forswear thin potations, and to addict themselves to sack.
—Shakespeare (Falstaff)

Quotes about wine, an alcoholic beverage made from the fermentation of unmodified grape juice. Wine is thought to have originated in present day Georgia or Iran about 8,000 years ago and adopted into Middle East and Europe. As one of the most popular alcoholic beverages in the Western culture, wine might be referred to alcoholic beverage in other cultures made from other materials.

Quotes

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  • If all be true that I do think,
    There are five reasons we should drink:
    Good wine, a friend, or being dry,
    Or lest we should be by and by,
    Or any other reason why.
    • Henry Aldrich, Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse, H. J. C. Grierson and G. Bullough, eds. (1934) Oxford University Press.
  • A vine bears three grapes, the first of pleasure, the second of drunkenness, and the third of repentance.
    • Anacharsis ( 6th Century B.C.) As quoted in Diogenes Laertius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Chapter "Life of Anacharsis", 1702 edition, John Nicholson, p. 54.[1]
  • When men drink, then they are rich and successful and win lawsuits and are happy and help their friends. Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.
  • Jeremiah was a bull frog
    Was a good friend of mine
    I never understood a single word he said
    But I helped him a-drink his wine
    And he always had some mighty fine wine.
  • For when the wine is in, the wit is out.
  • A meal without wine is like a day without sunshine.
  • Tell me what you drink, and I will tell you what you are
  • Burgundy makes you think of silly things, Bordeaux makes you talk of them and Champagne makes you do them.
  • A man who was fond of wine was offered some grapes at dessert after dinner. 'Much obliged,' said he, pushing the dish away from him, 'but I am not in the habit of taking my wine in pills.'
  • Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter,
    Sermons and soda-water the day after.
  • Ten thousand casks,
    Forever dribbling out their base contents,
    Touch'd by the Midas finger of the state,
    Bleed gold for ministers to sport away.
    Drink, and be mad then; 'tis your country bids!
  • A large cask of wine had been dropped and broken, in the street. The accident had happened in getting it out of a cart; the cask had tumbled out with a run, the hoops had burst, and it lay on the stones just outside the door of the wine-shop, shattered like a walnut-shell.
All the people within reach had suspended their business, or their idleness, to run to the spot and drink the wine. The rough, irregular stones of the street, pointing every way, and designed, one might have thought, expressly to lame all living creatures that approached them, had dammed it into little pools; these were surrounded, each by its own jostling group or crowd, according to its size. Some men kneeled down, made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped, or tried to help women, who bent over their shoulders, to sip, before the wine had all run out between their fingers. Others, men and women, dipped in the puddles with little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even with handkerchiefs from women’s heads, which were squeezed dry into infants’ mouths; others made small mud-embankments, to stem the wine as it ran; others, directed by lookers-on up at high windows, darted here and there, to cut off little streams of wine that started away in new directions; others devoted themselves to the sodden and lee-dyed pieces of the cask, licking, and even champing the moister wine-rotted fragments with eager relish. There was no drainage to carry off the wine, and not only did it all get taken up, but so much mud got taken up along with it, that there might have been a scavenger in the street, if anybody acquainted with it could have believed in such a miraculous presence.
A shrill sound of laughter and of amused voices—voices of men, women, and children—resounded in the street while this wine game lasted. There was little roughness in the sport, and much playfulness. There was a special companionship in it, an observable inclination on the part of every one to join some other one, which led, especially among the luckier or lighter-hearted, to frolicsome embraces, drinking of healths, shaking of hands, and even joining of hands and dancing, a dozen together. When the wine was gone, and the places where it had been most abundant were raked into a gridiron-pattern by fingers, these demonstrations ceased, as suddenly as they had broken out. The man who had left his saw sticking in the firewood he was cutting, set it in motion again; the women who had left on a door-step the little pot of hot ashes, at which she had been trying to soften the pain in her own starved fingers and toes, or in those of her child, returned to it; men with bare arms, matted locks, and cadaverous faces, who had emerged into the winter light from cellars, moved away, to descend again; and a gloom gathered on the scene that appeared more natural to it than sunshine.
  • I rather like bad wine … one gets so bored with good wine.
    • Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (1804–1881), Sybil; or, The Two Nations (1845), book I, ch. 1.
  • Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favours what you do.
  • Once... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were forced to live on nothing but food and water for days.
  • I was in love with a beautiful blonde once. She drove me to drink; that's the one thing I'm indebted to her for.
  • What contemptible scoundrel stole the cork from my lunch?
  • We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana, as of a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, and which incorporates itself with the grapes to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy!
    • Benjamin Franklin, The Posthumous and Other Writings of Benjamin Franklin (1819), p. 290.
  • Before man drinks of it, he is innocent as a lamb; if he drinks of it moderately, he feels as strong as a lion; if he drinks more of it than he can bear, he resembles the pig; and if he drinks to the point of intoxication, then he behaves like a monkey, he dances around, sings, talks obscenely, and knows not what he is doing.
  • And Noah began to be a husbandman, and he planted a vineyard.
    • Genesis 9:20
  • Youth is intoxication without wine. ("Jugend ist Trunkenheit ohne Wein.").
  • My dear girl, there are some things that just aren't done, such as drinking Dom Perignon '53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That's just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs!
  • So, I called up the Captain: "Please bring me my wine." He said: "We haven't had that spirit here since 1969."
  • At the third cup, wine drinks the man.
    • Hokekyō Sho, a Buddhist Sanskrit text. From Kojikotowaza Jiten (Dictionary of Tradition and Proverbs); reported in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989)
  • And now, my children, I pray you, do not intoxicate yourselves with wine, for wine twists the understanding away from the truth, and confuses the sight of the eyes. Wine led me astray, so that I felt no shame before the throngs of people in the city, and I turned aside and went in to Tamar in the presence of them, and committed a great sin. And though a man be a king, if he leads an unchaste life, he loses his kingship. I gave Tamar my staff, which is the stay of my tribe, and my girdle-cord, which is power, and my signet-diadem, which is the glory of my kingdom. I did penance for all this, and unto old age I drank no wine, and ate no flesh, and knew no sort of pleasure. Wine causes the secret things of God and man to be revealed unto the stranger. Thus did I disclose the commands of the Lord and the mysteries of my father Jacob to the Canaanite woman Bath-shua, though God had forbidden me to betray them. I also enjoin you not to love gold, and not to look upon the beauty of women, for through money and through beauty I was led astray to Bath-shua the Canaanite. I know that my stock will fall into misery through these two things, for even the wise men among my sons will be changed by them, and the consequence will be that the kingdom of Judah will be diminished, the domain that the Lord gave me as a reward for my obedient conduct toward my father, for never did I speak in contradiction of him, but I did all things according to his words.
  • In nothing have the habits of the palate more decisive influence than in our relish of wines.
    • Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson to William Alston, October 6, 1818, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.
  • And no man putteth new wine into old bottles: else the new wine doth burst the bottles, and the wine is spilled, and the bottles will be marred: but new wine must be put into new bottles.
  • And the vine said unto them, Shoult I leave my wine, which cheereth God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?
  • What care I, love, for what the Sufis say?
    The Sufis are but drunk another way;
    So you be drunk, it matters not the means,
    So you be drunk—and glorify your clay.
    Drunken myself, and with a merry mind,
    An old man passed me, all in vine leaves twined;
    I said, “Old man, hast thou forgotten God?”
    “Go, drink yourself,” he said, “for God is kind.”
    “Did God set grapes a-growing, do you think,
    And at the same time make it sin to drink?
    Give thanks to HIM who foreordained it thus—
    Surely HE loves to hear the glasses clink!”
  • Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape,
    Crushed the sweet poison of misused wine.
  • Clare takes a mouthful, swallows it in a businesslike fashion, and says, “Well, that’s not so bad.”
    “That’s a twenty-something-dollar bottle of wine.”
    “Oh. Well, that was marvelous.”
    • Audrey Niffenegger (2003), The Time Traveler’s Wife, (p. 419 in the trade paperback edition)
  • In vino veritas.
    • In wine, truth.
    • Roman proverb
  • Vinum bonum laetificat cor hominis.
    • Wine gladdens a man's heart.
    • Psalms 104:15
  • “They say wine will kill you slowly.” He nodded his head solemnly. “But that’s all right, we’re in no hurry.”
    • Sean Russell, World Without End, Chapter 12 (p. 173 in the paperback first edition)
  • Good faith, this same young sober-blooded boy doth not love me, nor a man cannot make him laugh. But that’s no marvel: he drinks no wine. There’s never none of these demure boys come to any proof, for thin drink doth so over-cool their blood, and making many fish meals, that they fall into a kind of male green-sickness; and then when they marry, they get wenches. They are generally fools and cowards, which some of us should be too, but for inflammation. A good sherris-sack hath a twofold operation in it: it ascends me into the brain, dries me there all the foolish and dull and cruddy vapors which environ it, makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes, which, delivered o’er to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. The second property of your excellent sherris is the warming of the blood, which before, cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity and cowardice; but the sherris warms it, and makes it course from the inwards to the parts’ extremes. It illumineth the face, which, as a beacon, gives warning to all the rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm; and then the vital commoners and inland petty spirits muster me all to their captain, the heart; who, great and puffed up with this retinue, doth any deed of courage. And this valour comes of sherris. So that skill in the weapon is nothing without sack, for that sets it awork; and learning a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil, till sack commences it, and sets it in act and use. Hereof comes it, that Prince Harry is valiant, for the cold blood he did naturally inherit of his father he hath, like lean, sterile and bare land, manured, husbanded and tilled with excellent endeavour of drinking good and good store of fertile sherris, that he is become very hot and valiant. If I had a thousand sons, the first humane principle I would teach them should be to forswear thin potations, and to addict themselves to sack.
  • O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!
  • Come, come, good wine is a good familiar creature, if it be well used; exclaim no more against it.
  • Give me a bowl of wine:
    I have not that alacrity of spirit,
    Nor cheer of mind, that I was wont to have.
  • Drink no longer water but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities.
  • Men to whom wine had brought death long before lay by springs of wine and drank still, too stupefied to know their lives were past.
  • O for a Bowle of fatt Canary,
    Rich Palermo, sparkling Sherry,
    Some Nectar else, from Juno’s Daiery,
    O these draughts would make us merry.
    • John Lyly, Alexander and Campaspe (1584), I, ii

Old wine

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  • Is not old wine wholesomest, old pippins toothsomest, old wood burn brightest, old linen wash whitest? Old soldiers, sweethearts, are surest, and old lovers are soundest.
    • John Webster, Westward Hoe, Act II, scene ii, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
  • Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things,—old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
    • Francis Bacon, Apothegms, No. 97, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
  • No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better.
    • Jesus, Luke 5:39, King James Bible.
  • Few things surpass old wine; and they may preach
    Who please, the more because they preach in vain,—
    Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter,
    Sermons and soda-water the day after.
  • Old wood to burn! Old wine to drink! Old friends to trust! Old authors to read!—Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appeared to be best in these four things.
    • Melchior de Santa Cruz, Floresta Española de Apothegmas o sentencias, etc., ii. 1, 20, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
  • What find you better or more honourable than age? Take the preheminence of it in everything,—in an old friend, in old wine, in an old pedigree.
    • Shackerley Marmion (1602–1639), The Antiquary, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
  • I love everything that 's old,—old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.
    • Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer (1771), Act i, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 874-77.
  • I hang no ivie out to sell my wine;
    The nectar of good wits will sell itself.
    • Allot, England's Parnassus, Sonnet to the Reader.
  • Firm and erect the Caledonian stood;
    Sound was his mutton, and his claret good;
    "Let him drink port!" the English statesman cried:
    He drank the poison, and his spirit died.
    • Anon. In Dodd's Epigrammatists (1870).
  • Old Simon the cellarer keeps a rare store
    Of Malmsey and Malvoisie.
  • John Barleycorn was a hero bold,
    Of noble enterprise,
    For if you do but taste his blood,
    'Twill make your courage rise,
    'Twill make a man forget his wo;
    'Twill heighten all his joy.
  • So Noah, when he anchor'd safe on
    The mountain's top, his lofty haven,
    And all the passengers he bore
    Were on the new world set ashore,
    He made it next his chief design
    To plant and propagate a vine,
    Which since has overwhelm'd and drown'd
    Far greater numbers, on dry ground,
    Of wretched mankind, one by one,
    Than all the flood before had done.
  • Which cheers the sad, revives the old, inspires
    The young, makes Weariness forget his toil,
    And Fear her danger; opens a new world
    When this, the present, palls.
  • Sweet is old wine in bottles, ale in barrels.
  • Sing! Who sings
    To her who weareth a hundred rings?
    Ah, who is this lady fine?
    The Vine, boys, the Vine!
    The mother of the mighty Wine,
    A roamer is she
    O'er wall and tree
    And sometimes very good company.
  • The conscious water saw its God and blushed.
    • Richard Crashaw, Translation of His Own Epigram on the Miracle of Cana, Stanza John's Gospel, Chapter II.
  • When asked what wines he liked to drink he replied, "That which belongs to another."
    • Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes, VI, Yonge's translation.
  • Bring me wine, but wine which never grew
    In the belly of the grape,
    Or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching through
    Under the Andes to the Cape,
    Suffered no savor of the earth to escape.
  • From wine what sudden friendship springs?
    • John Gay, Fables (1727), Part II. Fable 6.
  • Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain,
    With grammar, and nonsense, and learning;
    Good liquor, I stoutly maintain,
    Gives genius a better discerning.
  • Call things by their right names * * * Glass of brandy and water! That is the current, but not the appropriate name; ask for a glass of liquid fire and distilled damnation.
  • The wine in the bottle does not quench thirst.
  • Wine makes all sorts of creatures at table.
  • You cannot know wine by the barrel.
  • Sparkling and bright, in liquid light,
    Does the wine our goblets gleam in;
    With hue as red as the rosy bed
    Which a bee would choose to dream in.
  • And wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
    Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.
    • Homer, The Odyssey, Book XIV, line 520. Pope's translation.
  • Nunc vino pellite curas.
    • Now drown care in wine.
    • Horace, Carmina, I, 7, 32.
  • Vino diffugiunt mordaces curæ.
    • By wine eating cares are put to flight.
    • Adapted from Horace, Carmina, I, 18, 4; and 7, 31.
  • Quis post vina gravem militiam aut pauperiem crepat?
    • Who prates of war or want after his wine?
    • Horace, Carmina, I, 18, 5.
  • Spes donare novas largus, amaraque
    Curarum eluere efficax.
    • Mighty to inspire new hopes, and able to drown the bitterness of cares.
    • Horace, Carmina, IV, 12, 19.
  • Fœcundi calices quem non fecere disertum.
    • Whom has not the inspiring bowl made eloquent.
    • Horace, Epistles, I, 5, 19.
  • As for the brandy, "nothing extenuate"; and the water, put nought in in malice.
  • Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.
  • But that which most doth take my muse and me,
    Is a pure cup of rich Canary wine,
    Which is the mermaid's now, but shall be mine.
  • Wine it is the milk of Venus,
    And the poet's horse accounted:
    Ply it and you all are mounted.
    • Ben Jonson, from lines over the door of the "Apollo." "Wine to the poet is a wingéd steed: / Those who drink water come but little speed." From the Greek Anthology.
  • Dance and Provençal song and sunburnt mirth!
    Oh for a beaker full of the warm South,
    Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene!
    With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
    And purple-stained mouth.
  • There is a devil in every berry of the grape.
    • The Koran.
  • When flowing cups pass swiftly round
    With no allaying Thames.
  • Things of greatest profit are set forth with least price. Where the wine is neat there needeth no ivie bush.
  • The produce of the vineyards has not failed everywhere, Ovidius. The heavy rains have been productive. Coranus made up a hundred jars by means of the water.
    • Martial, Epigrams (c. 80-104 AD), Book IX, Epigram 98.
  • If with water you fill up your glasses,
    You'll never write anything wise;
    For wine is the horse of Parnassus,
    Which hurries a bard to the skies.
  • O Roman punch! O potent Curaçoa!
    O Maraschino! Maraschino O!
    Delicious drams! Why have you not the art
    To kill this gnawing Book-worm in my heart?
  • The Grape that can with Logic absolute
    The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute:
    The sovereign Alchemist that in a trice
    Life's leaden metal into Gold transmute.
  • Vina paract animos, faciuntque coloribus aptos:
    Cura fugit multo diluiturque mero.
    • Wine stimulates the mind and makes it quick with heat; care flees and is dissolved in much drink.
    • Ovid, Ars Amatoria, Book I. 237.
  • Magnum hoc vitium vino est,
    Pedes captat primum; luctator dolosu est.
    • This is the great evil in wine, it first seizes the feet; it is a cunning wrestler.
    • Plautus, Pseudolus, Act V, 1, 5.
  • It has become quite a common proverb that in wine there is truth.
  • In proverbium cessit, sapientiam vino adumbrari.
    • It has passed into a proverb, that wisdom is overshadowed by wine.
    • Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis, XXIII. 23. 1.
  • Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging.
    • Proverbs, XX. 1.
  • Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup;… at the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.
    • Proverbs, XXIII. 31. 32.
  • It is not for kings, O Lemuel-- not for kings to drink wine, not for rulers to crave beer, lest they drink and forget what the law decrees, and deprive all the oppressed of their rights. Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish; let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more.
    • Proverbs XXXI. 4-7. (NIV)
  • Wine that maketh glad the heart of man.
    • Psalms. CIV. 15.
  • We care not for money, riches, nor wealth;
    Old sack is our money, old sack is our wealth.
  • Der Wein erfindet nichts, er schwatzt's nur aus.
  • Like the best wine,… that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak.
    • Song of Solomon, VII. 9.
  • Day and night my thoughts incline
    To the blandishments of wine,
    Jars were made to drain, I think;
    Wine, I know, was made to drink.
  • Wine in excess is a snare for the fool; it lessens strength and multiplies wounds.
  • You need not hang up the ivy branch over the wine that will sell.
  • When the wine's in, murder will out.
  • He has had a smack of every sort of wine, from humble port to Imperial Tokay.
  • The hop for his profit I thus do exalt,
    It strengtheneth drink, and it favoureth malt:
    And being well brewed, long kept it will last,
    And drawing abide—if you draw not too fast.
    • Thomas Tusser, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandrie, A Lesson When and Where to Plant a Good Hop-Yard, Chapter XLIII.
  • And must I wholly banish hence
    These red and golden juices,
    And pay my vows to Abstinence,
    That pallidest of Muses?

See also

[edit]
[edit]
Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia has an article about:
Wiktionary
Wiktionary
Look up wine in Wiktionary, the free dictionary
  1. ↑ Diogenes Laërtius (1702). "Life of Anarchasis". The Lives of the Ancient Philosophers: Containing an Account of Their Several Fects, Doctrines, Actions and Remarkable Sayings.... John Nicholson. p. 54. Retrieved on 4 September 2013. 
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