A Good Wine Quotes & Sayings

Brillat-Savarin claimed to have seen the vicar of Bregnier eat the following within forty-five minutes: a bowl of soup, two dishes of boiled beef, a leg of mutton, a handsome capon, a generous salad, a ninety-degree wedge from a good-sized white cheese, a bottle of wine, and a carafe of water. If Brillat-Savarin was not exaggerating, the amount of food eaten by the vicar in less than an hour would have provided enough calories for a day or more. It is hard to imagine a wild chimpanzee achieving such a feat. — Richard W. Wrangham

I love a good steak with a great glass of red wine. But for the TV watching, laying around doing nothing kinds of days, nothing beats a pepperoni pizza and chocolate Haagen Daas. — Erin Daniels

She ought to call him Benjamin, but it was too intimate, too soft.
"My lord?" she ventured, only half serious.
"Good, God, no."
She bit back a smile. "Husband?" she took a sip of wine.
He grunted. "Are we to become Quakers? — Kristen Callihan

I felt badly because I'd been nasty. After your behavior tonight, I only wish I'd been nastier. I can be," she added on a threat.
Alan only smiled as Mario brought the wine to the table. Watching Shelby, Alan tasted it, then nodded. "Very good. It's the sort of flavor that stays with you for hours. Later, when I kiss you,the taste will still be there."
The blood began to hum in her ears. "I'm only here because you dragged me."
To his credit, Mario didn't spill a drop of the wine he poured as he listened.
Her eyes heated as Alan continued to smile. "And since you refuse to give me my keys,I'll simply walk to the nearest phone and call a locksmith. You'll get the bill."
"After dinner," Alan suggested. "How do you like the wine?"
Scowling, Shelby lifted the glass and drained half the contents. "It's fine." Her eyes, insolent now, stayed level with his. "This isn't a date, you know."
"It's becoming more of a filibuster, isn't it? More wine? — Nora Roberts

At least you're learning a thing or two about wine. Good to hear you're making such an effort to improve yourself."
"Does the U.S. attorney know how much you like spending your Saturday nights eavesdropping on private conversations?" Nick asked.
"The U.S. attorney knows exactly how I like spending my Saturday nights. — Julie James

Hmmm ... cooking with wine? I usually drink wine while cooking ... I do a good braised short ribs with cabernet, though. We're big red wine drinkers here. All that research showing that it's good for you takes the guilt away. — Alafair Burke

The Italians always made good wine, but you had the impression they were friendly guys in straw hats running family vineyards with slaves or something so that the vino was never more than ten bucks a bottle. — Joe Bob Briggs

What are you doing?" he asked as he came deeper into the dark kitchen.

"If you're going to pout, I'm going to drink," she said, pouring herself a steep glass of red wine. "I read somewhere that red wine is good for diabetics. Want one?"

"I'm not pouting. And I don't drink."

"There's a lot you don't do. — Tiffany Reisz

It is in the face of all this visual chaos, so opposed to order and simplicity, that I suddenly, perhaps a little guiltily, recall my vow to simplify my life. When I made that promise I had in mind the image of the ancient Greek subsisting on a fragment of pungent cheese, coarse bread, a handful of sun-warmed olives, a little watered wine; a man who discussed the Good, the True, the Beautiful with grave delight, and piped clear music in a sylvan glade. But I feel the absence of hills clothed in myrtle and thyme; of the Great Mother, Homer's wine-dark sea. Good resolutions, it seems, require good scenery. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

What are you making?" he asked me.
"Eggplant with a pomegranate walnut sauce." It was nice to be able to answer at least something with certainty. I turned the eggplant over in the pan. The sauce was just a mixture of pomegranate juice, good red wine vinegar, garlic, red pepper flakes, and salt. Nothing else. It was hard for me to resist embellishing recipes that called for so little, but the complexity of the juice transformed what would otherwise be the world's most basic support ingredients into a symphony of flavor. — Beth Harbison

The tavern haunter wanders lonely in a desert
And sees the whole world as a mirage.
The desert is limitless and endless --
No one has seen its beginning or its end,
And even if you wandered in it a hundred years
You would not find yourself, or anyone else.
Those who live there have no feet or heads,
Are neither "believers" nor "unbelievers."
Drunk on the wine of selflessness,
They have given up good and evil alike.
Drunk, without lips or mouth, on Truth
They have thrown away all thoughts of name and fame,
All talk of wonders, visions, spiritual states,
Dreams, secret rooms, lights, miracles. — Mahmud Shabistari

Now as they made their way through the exuberantly crowded village, Daisy understood what Westcliff had meant. It was still early evening, and already it appeared that copiously flowing wine had loosened inhibitions. People were embracing, arguing, laughing and playing. Some were laying floral wreaths at the base of the oldest oak trees, or pouring wine at the roots, or ...
"Good Lord," Daisy said, her attention caught by a perplexing sight in the distance, "what are they doing to that poor tree?"
Matthew's hands clasped her head and firmly aimed her face in another direction. "Don't look."
"Was it some form of tree-worship or - "
"Let's go watch the rope-dancers," he said with sudden enthusiasm, guiding her to the other side of the green. — Lisa Kleypas

There was nothing like an extra helping of guilt to cool a man's blood.And it was guilt as much as the hot food and the glass of good wine that got Brian through the evening in the Grant kitchen. The size of it left little room for lust, considering.
There was Adelia Grant giving him a warm greeting as if he was welcome to swing in for dinner anytime he had the whim, and Travis getting out an extra plate himself-as if he waited on employees five days a week-and saying that there was plenty to go around as Brendon had other plans for dinner.
Before he knew it, he was sitting down, having food heaped in front of him and being asked how his day had been.And not in a way that expected a report.
He didn't know what to do about it. He liked these people, genuinely liked them. And there he was lusting after their daughter. An alley mutt after a registered purebred. — Nora Roberts

What's foreign one can't always keep quite clear of,
For good things, oft, are not so near;
A German can't endure the French to see or hear of,
Yet drinks their wines with hearty cheer. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

To buy very good wine nowadays requires only money. To serve it to your guests is a sign of fatigue. — William F. Buckley Jr.

As a good wine must be kept in a good cask, so a wholesome body is the proper foundation for a well-appointed inner ground. — Johannes Tauler

A man will be eloquent if you give him good wine. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I prioritize in life. I like to work, I do TV shows, I do a lot of Iron Man training. I enjoy kicking back on a good night and drinking wine until I go to bed, and having fun with my friends. You just have to make time for it and keep it balanced. — Joe Bastianich

Depends on the evening. A good red wine is nice in cold weather. A Claret or a Rioja. I've got a good gin we make from damson plums. And you can't beat a glass of champagne every now and again. — Alan Titchmarsh

I would like a wine. The purpose of the wine is to get me drunk. A bad wine will get me as drunk as a good wine. I would like the good wine. And since the result is the same no matter which wine I drink, I'd like to pay the bad wine price. — Steve Martin

The banquet proceeded. The first course, a mince of olives, shrimp and onions baked in oyster shells with cheese and parsley was followed by a soup of tunny, cockles and winkles simmered in white wine with leeks and dill. Then, in order, came a service of broiled quail stuffed with morels, served on slices of good white bread, with side dishes of green peas; artichokes cooked in wine and butter, with a salad of garden greens; then tripes and sausages with pickled cabbage; then a noble saddle of venison glazed with cherry sauce and served with barley first simmered in broth, then fried with garlic and sage; then honey-cakes, nuts and oranges; and all the while the goblets flowed full with noble Voluspa and San Sue from Watershade, along with the tart green muscat wine of Dascinet. — Jack Vance

The 'good' mother, with her fixed smile, her rigidity, her goody-goody outlook, her obsession with unnecessary hygiene, is in fact a fool. It is the 'bad' mother, unafraid of a joke and a glass of wine, richly self-expressive, scornful of suburban values, who is, in reality, good. — Rachel Cusk

Several minutes later, when I passed among the guests to fill their empty cups with wine, I found him standing at my shoulder. "You'll wound my pride," he warned me softly, "ignoring me so." I flicked him a look that was only half-impatient. "I must not speak with you, by my uncle's own instruction." "And when have you obeyed instructions?" He held out his own cup to be filled, his mouth curved in amusement. "Besides, your uncle is engaged at present, with a most serious gentleman. If he should look this way, I've only to duck my head." "You are impossible, my lord." "Ay. And your good humor is lacking, madam. What is it that has so offended you? — Susanna Kearsley

What are you asking God for?" I joked. "A million dollars? Two million?" "I'm not asking Him for anything," he said. "I'm thanking Him for good food and wine, good health and famiglia. — Wally Lamb

I eat excellent bread, clean meat, good crisp veggies, organic fruits and nice wine and cheese. It is one of the things I am truly grateful for. I'm not kidding. You can't ask a single mother of three working two jobs for minimum wage to eat that way. I am lucky. — Rachael Taylor

The national characteristics ... the restless metaphysical curiosity, the tenderness of good living and the passionate individualism. This is the invisible constant in a place with which the ordinary tourist can get in touch just by sitting quite quietly over a glass of wine in a Paris bistro. — Lawrence Durrell

I started running around my 30th birthday. I wanted to lose weight; I didn't anticipate the serenity. Being in motion, suddenly my body was busy and so my head could work out some issues I had swept under a carpet of wine and cheese. Good therapy, that's a good run. — Michael Weatherly

If the thought is slow to come, a glass of good wine encourages it; and when it does come, a glass of good wine rewards it. — Richard Brinsley Sheridan

However like all little animals, it has to be nurtured and fed. It needs humour, interest, joy, love, compassion and a healthy bit of charity. It loves the unexpected and the unpredictable. It enjoys new challenges and experiences. Good wine makes it jump around a bit, good food makes it happy. Soft light make it dewy-eyed, happy memories light up its eyes. Good champagne is its preferred liquid. — Amos Van Der Merwe

None seemed to think the injury arose from the use of a bad thing but from the abuse of a very good thing — Abraham Lincoln

What you should really be sorry for," he continued, "is that for the rest of my life, I'll have to avoid wine cellars to keep from thinking about you."
"Why? Was kissing me that bad?"
A devil-solf whisper. "No sweetheart. It was that good. — Lisa Kleypas

But I have never had the privilege of unhappiness in Happy Valley. California is about the good life. So a bad life there seems so much worse than a bad life anywhere else. Quality is an obsession there - good food, good wine, good movies, music, weather, cars. Those sound like the right things to shoot for, but the never-ending quality quest is a lot of pressure when you're uncertain and disorganized and, not least, broker than broke. Some afternoons a person just wants to rent Die Hard, close the curtains, and have Cheerios for lunch. — Sarah Vowell

I always knew that food and wine were vital, with my mother being Italian and a good cook. — Robert Mondavi

I've entered the world of wine without any professional training, but a definite appetite for good bottles. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Yet, for my part, I was never usually squeamish; I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary. I am glad to have drunk water so long, for the same reason that I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater's heaven. I would fain keep sober always; and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness. I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fail when I am tempted by them! Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America. Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes? — Henry David Thoreau

I'm still not a very good white wine, but I'm drinkable - you could put me in a punch, anyway. — Nick Hornby

If this was the best wine that Jim and Nora could afford or, worse, if this was their idea of a good wine - well, sadly, then they were better off dead. — Dean Koontz

To me, the lasting impression of any good wine is the thought of its maker. Those whose efforts transformed the fruits of the soil into a finished work of art. Those who pulled from the hectic passage of time an ordered memory. They are immortalized by their wine in my glass. — Dave Chambers

If you love food and you love red wine and they put you in France, you're in a good place and you're in a bad place at the same time. You have to weigh yourself every day, and you have to have an alarm number. When you get to that number, you have to start putting it in reverse. — Salma Hayek

like a good wine without iocane powder, it seems to get better with time. — Cary Elwes

I'm an old man, now. I've been alone since my 17th birthday. I'd wanted to marry, have a bunch of kids, and maybe be a grandpa. The big family around the Thanksgiving table, laughing and pouring wine and cracking jokes and harmlessly teasing the missus - I wanted that. I wanted to do something good with my life - something right. I didn't want what happened to Danny, my best childhood friend, to be the only mark I'd ever make in this world. But I thought it best not to fancy such hopes and dreams: a family, love. I'd been cursed by my best friend, and I thought it right not to inflict that curse on anyone who'd be foolish enough to love me. — J. Tonzelli

I think if you look after yourself on a regular basis, and do the prep beforehand, you don't need to put lots of effort into looking good. It's about finding the right balance - if you have a good diet, drink lots of water, exercise regularly and sleep, you won't look bad on a regular basis. Then you can afford the occasional naughty slip up once in a while, going out and having a delicious glass of wine with friends, having a great laugh and chat then realizing its 2am isn't so bad - you've put in the hard work! — Cat Deeley

It's only since it's been made impossible that it's been made so damn easy. It's got like prohibition, with bums and crooks making fortunes out of hooch, everyone who might have had a palate losing it, nobody caring how you hold your liquor, you've been smart enough if you get it at all. You can't make good wine in a bathtub in the cellar, you need sun and rain and fresh air, you need pride in a job you can tell the world about. Only you can live without drink if you have to, but you can't live without love. — Mary Renault

I like an occasional glass of wine, though I don't drink before a shoot or a show - blotchy skin is not a good idea, however good your make-up artist. — Jourdan Dunn

I've never met a bread basket that I didn't love. At the same time, it can make me tired. If I have too much wine, it's too much sugar. If I overindulge on tortilla chips in a Mexican restaurant, I can really feel it. I think sometimes just watching it and not doing things in excess can really help with whether you feel good or not. — Molly Sims

I'd learned some things. I knew you weren't supposed to hold a good wine at the top - the paper bag falls off. — Pat Paulsen

Inevitably I came to associate any wine I met with a specific place and a particular slant of history. I learned to perceive more than could be deduced from an analysis of the physical elements in the glass. For me, an important part of the pleasure of wine is its reflection of the total environment that produced it. If I find in a wine no hint of where it was grown, no mark of the summer when the fruit ripened, and no indication of the usages common among those who made it, I am frustrated and disappointed. Because that is what a good, honest wine should offer. — Gerald Asher

For you she learned to wear a short black slip
and red lipstick,
how to order a glass of red wine
and finish it. She learned to reach out
as if to touch your arm and then not
touch it, changing the subject.
Didn't you think, she'd begin, or
Weren't you sorry. . . .

To call your best friends
by their schoolboy names
and give them kisses good-bye,
to look away when they say
Your wife! So your confidence grows.
She doesn't ask what you want
because she knows.

Isn't that what you think?

When actually she was only waiting
to be told Take off your dress---
to be stunned, and then do this,
never rehearsed, but perfectly obvious:
in one motion up, over, and gone,
the X of her arms crossing and uncrossing,
her face flashing away from you in the fabric
so that you couldn't say if she was
appearing or disappearing. — Deborah Garrison

Unlike an envied and admirable few, I separate my friends and almost never dare mingle one group with another. When I do, it is usually a social disaster, like mixing drinks. I love good beer and I love good wine, but you cannot drink both on the same evening without suffering. I love the friends with whom I play or once daily played snooker and tooted quantities of high-grade pulverized Andean flake; I love the friends with whom I dine at preposterously expensive restaurants; I love the friends with whom I'm film-making or mincing on the stage. I love and value them all equally and don't think of them as stratified or in tiers, one group in some way higher or more important than the rest, but the thought of introducing them to each other makes me shiver and shudder with cringing embarrassment. — Stephen Fry

As we say in the American Institute of Wine and Food, small helpings, no seconds. A little bit of everything. No snacking. And have a good time. — Julia Child

This is the sort of thing we should say by the fireside in the winter-time, as we lie on soft couches after a good meal, drinking sweet wine and crunching chickpeas: Of what country are you, and how old are you, good sir? And how old were you when the Mede came? — Herodotus

Wine was created with man in mind, for his pleasure and relaxation, a balm to his good health. — Andrew Sharp

Surely it is an excellent plan, when you are seated before delicacies and choice foods, to impress upon your imagination that this is the dead body of a fish, that the dead body of a bird or a pig; and again, that the Falernian wine is grape juice and that robe of purple a lamb's fleece dipped in a shellfish's blood; and in matters of sex intercourse, that it is the attrition of an entrail and a convulsive expulsion of a mere mucus. Surely these are excellent imaginations, going to the heart of actual facts and penetrating them so as to see the kind of things they really are. You should adopt this practice all through your life, and where things make an impression which is very plausible, uncover their nakedness, see into their cheapness, strip off the profession on which they vaunt themselves. For pride is an arch-seducer of reason, and just when you fancy you are most certainly busy in good works, then you are mostly certainly guilty of imposture. — Marcus Aurelius

The novel can't compete with cars, the movies, television, and liquor. A guy who's had a good feed and tanked up on good wine gives his old lady a kiss after supper and his day is over. Finished. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I think musicians have always been drinking and sharing a good wine. It is, I hate to say this, another form of vice. — Tom Araya

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. — Bryan Procter

Wine represents to me sharing and good times and a celebration of life. It is always around happy occasions with family and friends and centered around joy. What better item to be involved in then something that represents all these wonderful things. — Dan Aykroyd

Honest good humor is the oil and wine of a merry meeting, and there is no jovial companionship equal to that where the jokes are rather small and laughter abundant. — Washington Irving

Shimrod gave the boy a copper penny. 'Bring me now a goblet of good tawny wine.'
By a sleight of magic Shimrod augmented the acuity of his hearing, so that the whispers of two young lovers in a far corner were now clearly audible, as were the innkeeper's instructions to Fonsel in regard to the watering of Shimrod's wine. — Jack Vance

I don't go by the ratings. I buy wine that tastes good. Statistically, anybody's ability to predict what will be a good wine a decade from now is limited. — Richard Thaler

I would say that a good shoe is exactly like a good wine. These shoes are going to stay and last for a long time. — Christian Louboutin

A bottle of Stag's Leap Artemis Cab was open and hardly touched. That would be Stag's Leap Wine Cellars, thought Sunny, not to be confused with Stags' Leap Winery or the Stags Leap District. How many hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of dollars did the lawyers get to sort out that tangle of suits and countersuits? And, in the end, it all came down to the placement of an apostrophe. The place where one stag leaps versus the place where multiple stags leap versus the declarative statement that multiple stags are inclined to leap around these few acres where very good Cabernet Sauvignon grapes are grown. — Nadia Gordon

One learned to take time to savor life, much as one took time to savor a good meal or glass of wine. The French called it "l'entente de la vie," the harmony of life. — David McCullough

The Gods on the death of his wife Yang Kai-hui I lost my proud poplar and you your willow As poplar and willow they soar straight up into the ninth heaven and ask the prisoner of the moon, Wu Kang' what is there. He offers them wine from the cassia tree. The lonely lady on the moon, Chang 0, spreads her vast sleeves and dances for these good souls in the unending sky. Down on earth a sudden report of the tiger's defeat. Tears fly down from a great upturned bowl of rain. — Mao Zedong

Shalom is the Hebrew word for "peace." For rhythm. For everything lining up exactly how it was meant to line up. Shalom is happening in those moments when you are at the dinner table for hours with good friends, good food, and good wine. Shalom is when you hear or see something and can't quite explain it, but you know it's calling and stirring something deep inside of you. Shalom is a sunset, that sense of exhaustion yet satisfaction from a hard day's work, creating art that is bigger than itself. Shalom is enemies being reconciled by love. Shalom is when you are dancing to the rhythm of God's voice. — Jefferson Bethke

I'm used to going into the studio and smoking and drinking until three in the morning. But I can't drink as much because I'm breastfeeding. See this glass of wine? Before, I'd have, like, four of them. Now, one is good. Oh, and I quit smoking ... I've exorcised a lot of my demons, but I'm still working on myself. I think I'll be a work in progress for the rest of my life. — Pink

Ah, but I'm not a gentleman," said the Marquis. "I have it on the best of authority that I am only a
nobleman."
"Good gracious, Vidal, who in the world dared to say such a thing?" cried his cousin, instantly
diverted.
"Mary," replied his lordship, pouring himself out a glass of wine. — Georgette Heyer

Okay, here it goes--bread, so you'll never go hungry; a broom, so you can sweep away evil; a candle, so you'll always have light; honey, so life will always be sweet; a coin, to bring good fortune for the year; olive oil, for health, life, and believe it or not, to keep your husband, or in this case, your boyfriend faithful; a plant, so you'll always have life; rice, to ensure your fertility, but that's taken care of, eh? Salt represents life's tears. I recommend you place a pinch of salt on the threshold of every door and window for good luck and according to my grandmother Chetta it also mends old wounds. Oh and... ah, yes, wine, sparkling non-alcoholic wine, so you never go thirsty and always have joy and last, but not least wood, so your home will always have harmony, stability, and peace. — Aimee Pitta

When you have arrived at your country house and have saluted your household, you should make the rounds of the farm the same day, if possible; if not, then certainly the next day. When you have observed how the field work has progressed, what things have been done, and what remains undone, you should summon your overseer the next day, and should call for a report of what work has been done in good season and why it has not been possible to complete the rest, and what wine and corn and other crops have been gathered. — Cato The Elder

But Teccam claims that out of all the spirits, only wine is suited to reminiscence. He said a good wine allows clarity and focus, while still allowing a bit of comforting coloration of the memory. — Patrick Rothfuss

By my tenth glass of wine I started to wonder whether there was something wrong with my palate. Everyone else was marking the wine list with notes like "Pleasant finish. Robust spices." Meanwhile, I was doodling pictures of vampiric cougars. Then I noticed people staring at my doodles, and so I started writing notes next to the wine. Things like "Tastes of NyQuil, but in a good way," and "This one will get you all the way fucked up." "I can't feel my feet anymore." "Did I leave the garage door open? I wonder whether the cat is on fire. I should probably stop drinking now." Everyone else there had a sophisticated palate. I had one that needed therapy, and possibly an intervention. — Jenny Lawson

Later he wrote to Lodge: I don't grudge the broken arm a bit ... I'm always ready to pay the piper when I've had a good dance; and every now and then I like to drink the wine of life with brandy in it. — Edmund Morris

Other priests, he knew, found an intense pleasure in the raw, salty dialect of peasant conversation. They picked up pearls of wisdom and experience over a farmhouse table or a cup of wine in a workingman's kitchen. They talked with equal familiarity to the rough-tongued whores of Trastevere and the polished signori of Parioli. They enjoyed the ribald humor of the fish market as much as the wit of a Cardinal's dinner table. They were good priests too, and they did much good for their people, with a singular satisfaction to themselves. — Morris L. West

My chosen drink would be a Southern Comfort, lime and lemonade, a dry martini or a good red wine. — Nikki Sanderson

We could in the United States make as great a variety of wines as are made in Europe, not exactly of the same kinds, but doubtless as good. — Thomas Jefferson

The discovery of a good wine is increasingly better for mankind than the discovery of a new star. — Leonardo Da Vinci

It needs only a good bottle of wine for a roast chicken to be transformed into a banquet. — Gerald Asher

I think voice is like a good wine. If you work it well, it will mature. — Vittorio Grigolo

When you think you can stand no more of the wolf's snuffing under the door and keening softly on cold nights, throw discretion into the laundry bag, put candles on the table, and for your own good if not the pleasure of an admiring audience make one or another of the recipes in this chapter. And buy yourself a bottle of wine, or make a few cocktails, or have a long open-hearted discussion of cheeses with the man on the corner who is an alien but still loyal if bewildered. — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

A glass of good wine is a gracious creature, and reconciles poor mortality to itself and that is what few things can do. — Walter Scott

The saving of empty beer and liquor bottles is a strange college phenomenon. I bet most of you college students reading this right now have some empties on a shelf in your room. Everyone knows how much college kids like to drink, do we really need to display it? It's a good thing, though, that this trend stops after college. Wouldn't it be weird if your parents had empty wine bottles up on their bedroom wall? — Aaron Karo

Happiness is a chance to talk to a friend, to hear good music, to have a good glass of wine. Happiness is a chance to be myself and to find people with whom I agree or who I don't agree but I can learn something. — Maya Angelou

To sit beside the board and drink good wine And watch the turf smoke coiling from the fire And feel content and wisdom in your heart, This is the best of life; when we are young We long to tread a way none trod before, But find the excellent old way through love And through the care of children to the hour Forbidding Fate and Time and Change goodbye. — William Butler Yeats

Now, I will drink no German beer. The white wine of the country, with a little soda-water; perhaps occasionally a glass of Ems or potash. But beer, never - or, at all events, hardly ever." It is a good and useful resolution, which I recommend to all travellers. I — Jerome K. Jerome

In Spain we have a saying about the essentials of life: good food, good wine, good sex, good sleep. — Antonio Banderas

And on the night before he suffers the worst that wayward human culture can do, this is what he does: he takes bread and wine into his hands, lifts them up, and blesses them. Bread and wine, not wheat and grapes. Bread and wine are culture, not just nature. They are good for food and a delight to the eyes. Jesus takes culture, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to his friends. Taken, broken, blessed, and given, these cultural goods, these "creatures of bread and wine" as the old prayer book had it, become sign and presence of God in the world. — W. David O. Taylor

A good prince will tax as lightly as possible those commodities which are used by the poorest members of society: grain, bread, beer, wine, clothing, and all other staples without which human life could not exist. — Desiderius Erasmus

The Mania Speaks


You clumsy bootlegger. Little daffodil.
I watered you with an ocean and you plucked one little vein?
Downed a couple bottles of pills and got yourself carted off to the ER?
I gifted you the will of gunpowder, a matchstick tongue, and all you managed
was a shredded sweater and a police warning?
You should be legend by now.
Girl in an orange jumpsuit, a headline.
I built you from the purest napalm, fed you wine and bourbon.
Preened you in the dark, hammered lullabies into your thin skull.
I painted over the walls, wrote the poems. I shook your goddamn boots.
Now you want out? Think you'll wrestle me out of you with prescriptions?
A good man's good love and some breathing exercises?
You think I can't tame that? I always come home. Always.
Ravenous. Loaded. You know better than anybody:
I'm bigger than God. — Jeanann Verlee

At the Royall Oake Taverne, I drank a sort of French wine called Ho Bryan, that hath a good and most particular taste that I never met with. — Samuel Pepys

If John Grisham, Harper Lee, and Larry the Cable Guy were penned up in a remote cabin for a weekend with nothing but good bourbon, fine wine, and a couple of cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, something like Common Pleas (A Tale of Whoa!) might result... — J. Randolph Cresenzo

You sell your own wares,then.Are you clever at it?"
Shelby lifted her wine. "I like to think so." Tossing her hangs out of her eyes, she turned to Alan. "Would you say I was clever at it, Senator?"
"Amazingly so," he returned. "For someone without any sense of organization, you manage to work at your craft,run a shop,and live precisely as you choose."
"I like odd compliments," Shelby decided after a moment. "Alan's accustomed to a more structured routine. He'd never run out of gas in the freeway."
"I like odd insults," Alan murmured into his wine.
"Makes a good balance. — Nora Roberts

Love? Love? Love is not safe, my lady silk, love is dangerous. It is deceitfully sweet like wine from a fresh palm tree at dawn. Love is fine for singing about and love songs are good to listen to, sometimes even to dance to. But when we need to count on human strength, and when we have to count pennies for food for our stomachs and clothes for our backs, love is nothing. Ah my lady, the last man any woman should think of marrying is the man she loves. — Ama Ata Aidoo

The time of minor poets is coming. Good-by Whitman, Dickinson, Frost. Welcome you whose fame will never reach beyond your closest family, and perhaps one or two good friends gathered after dinner over a jug of fierce red wine ... While the children are falling asleep and complaining about the noise you're making as you rummage through the closets for your old poems, afraid your wife might've thrown them out with last spring's cleaning.
It's snowing, says someone who has peeked into the dark night, and then he, too, turns toward you as you prepare yourself to read, in a manner somewhat theatrical and with a face turning red, the long rambling love poem whose final stanza (unknown to you) is hopelessly missing. — Charles Simic

When red wine has you nailed to the sofa and Glee is on TV,that would be a good time for a jet engine to crash through your ceiling alla Donnie Darko. — M.P. Thorp

I'm on the diet where you eat vegetables and drink wine. That's a good diet. I lost 10 pounds and my driver's license. — Larry The Cable Guy

Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine — Thomas Aquinas

In this way all violent bonds and orders are cancelled as if the freedom of the primal world had been restored with one blow. Man, too, is made open and true by this freedom. Wine, as Plutarch says so nicely, frees the soul of subservience, fear, and insincerity; it teaches men how to be truthful and candid with one another. It reveals that which was hidden. Wine and truth have long been associated in proverbs. It is a good thing, so it is said, to search for the truth in earnest conversation while one drinks wine, and agreements arrived at over a wine glass were at one time considered to be the most sacred and inviolable agreements. — Walter F. Otto

The wine must have eradicated every last atom of common sense I possessed, because I reached up to give him a hug in the same way I would have done with Tom or one of Dane's other friends. A buddy hug. But every nerve from head to toe screamed "Mistake!" as soon as the front of my body met his, adhering like wet cottonwood leaves.
Jack's arms went around me, clasping me against a wall of muscle, and he was so big and warm, and it felt so scary-good that I stiffened all over.
The hot drift of his breath against my cheek made my heartbeat go crazy, and instant arousal filled the space between every thump.
I gasped, ducking away, my face crammed against his shoulder. "Jack ... " I could hardly speak. "I wasn't making a pass at you."
"I know." One hand slid to the back of my head, fingers lacing through the silky-fine locks. Gripping gently, he guided me to look at him. "It's not at all your fault that I'm taking it that way."
-Ella & Jack — Lisa Kleypas

Never be ashamed,' he said. 'Accept what life offers you and try to drink from every cup. All wines should be tasted; some should only be sipped, but with others, drink the whole bottle.'
'How will I know which is which?'
'By the taste. You can only know a good wine if you have first tasted a bad one. — Paulo Coelho

I do really enjoy Jay McInerney's wine writing. He's a good writer. He brings his fiction-writing skillset. He's not afraid to put wine in kind of a racy context and speak very candidly about it. — Mike D