A great step toward independence is a good-humored stomach, one that is willing to endure rough treatment.
—Seneca the Younger, c. 60Quotes
To eat is to appropriate by destruction.
—Jean-Paul Sartre, 1943He makes his cook his merit, and the world visits his dinners and not him.
—Molière, 1666At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
—W. Somerset Maugham, 1896Is it only the mouth and belly which are injured by hunger and thirst? Men’s minds are also injured by them.
—Mencius, 300 BCWhat is food to one is to others bitter poison.
—Lucretius, 50 BCFeasts must be solemn and rare, or else they cease to be feasts.
—Aldous Huxley, 1929A woman should never be seen eating or drinking unless it be lobster salad and champagne, the only truly feminine and becoming viands.
—Lord Byron, 1812No lyric poems live long or please many people which are written by drinkers of water.
—Horace, 20 BCBad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.
—Socrates, c. 430 BCIt is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard for their own interest.
—Adam Smith, 1776Why is not a rat as good as a rabbit? Why should men eat shrimps and neglect cockroaches?
—Henry Ward Beecher, 1862The belly is the reason why man does not mistake himself for a god.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1886