To safeguard one’s health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness indeed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For, say they, when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.

I cannot but bless the memory of Julius Caesar, for the great esteem he expressed for fat men and his aversion to lean ones.

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