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Quotes

A great step toward independence is a good-humored stomach, one that is willing to endure rough treatment.

—Seneca the Younger, c. 60

To eat is to appropriate by destruction.

—Jean-Paul Sartre, 1943

He makes his cook his merit, and the world visits his dinners and not him.

—Molière, 1666

At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.

—W. Somerset Maugham, 1896

Is it only the mouth and belly which are injured by hunger and thirst? Men’s minds are also injured by them.

—Mencius, 300 BC

What is food to one is to others bitter poison.

—Lucretius, 50 BC

Feasts must be solemn and rare, or else they cease to be feasts. 

—Aldous Huxley, 1929

A woman should never be seen eating or drinking unless it be lobster salad and champagne, the only truly feminine and becoming viands.

—Lord Byron, 1812

No lyric poems live long or please many people which are written by drinkers of water.

—Horace, 20 BC

Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.

—Socrates, c. 430 BC

It 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, 1776

Why is not a rat as good as a rabbit? Why should men eat shrimps and neglect cockroaches?

—Henry Ward Beecher, 1862

The belly is the reason why man does not mistake himself for a god.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1886