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Quotes

What is food to one is to others bitter poison.

—Lucretius, 50 BC

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

Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea? How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.

—Sydney Smith, 1855

We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink, for dining alone is leading the life of a lion or wolf. 

—Epicurus, c. 300 BC

’Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers.

—William Shakespeare, c. 1595

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

—Virginia Woolf, 1929

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

—Horace, 20 BC

The decline of the aperitif may well be one of the most depressing phenomena of our time.

—Luis Buñuel, 1983

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

—Seneca the Younger, c. 60

Most vegetarians I ever saw looked enough like their food to be classed as cannibals.

—Finley Peter Dunne, 1900

Cooking is the most massive rush. It’s like having the most amazing hard-on, with Viagra sprinkled on top of it, and it’s still there twelve hours later.

—Gordon Ramsey, 2003

Whatsoever was the father of a disease, an ill diet was the mother.

—George Herbert, 1651

When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.

—St. Jerome, 395