Quotes & Sayings About Wine Drinking

Sweat, scalded meat, puke, blood, smoke and a dozen kinds of bad ale and wine: the bouquet of civilized nightlife — Scott Lynch

Life's too short to drink bad wine or smoke poor cigars. — Don Johnson

I'm only drinking white wine because I'm on a diet and I don't eat. — Oliver Reed

Politicizing of kids starts with pregnancy, of course. You shouldn't be drinking wine. You can't be smoking, either. The poor woman is poked and prodded and touched and obsessed over. — Sam Mendes

I've never quite felt totally comfortable up on stage. I've gotten more comfortable, but drinking wine is a crutch that gives me a little courage. It helps me lose a little bit of the self-consciousness and the awareness of how awkward it is standing on a stage with lights and a bunch of people looking at you while you sing love songs. — Matt Berninger

I was facing him before the last word was out, but I should have been dead by then. In a way I did die, right there, all that time ago, and this is a ghost who has been telling you stories and drinking your wine. You don't understand. Never mind. — Peter S. Beagle

During my drinking decades, I lived like a pig. My room was a hazardous pile of stilettos, tube tops, wine bottles, ashtrays, and old magazines. I valued nothing. Everything that came into my life was disposable: clothes, opportunities, people. My bedroom looked as if my insides had spilled out onto the floor. — Glennon Melton

It was her company he desired. He wanted to put his arms around her and
to sit in silence, staring into the fire, drinking wine, smoking the occasional cigarette; that
would be enough. Life was made up of simple things; he was weary of all the years
he had spent searching for something, though quite what he didn't know. — Paulo Coelho

No, Sir, claret is the liquor for boys; port for men: but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy. In the first place brandy will do soonest for a man what drinking can do for him. — James Boswell

I am drinking the stars — Dom Perignon

Although it is no longer customary to offer visitors a straw through which to drink from a communal vat of beer, today tea or coffee may be offered from a shared pot, or a glass of wine or spirits from a shared bottle. And when drinking alcohol in a social setting, the clinking of glasses symbolically reunites the glasses into a single vessel of shared liquid. These are traditions with very ancient origins. — Tom Standage

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

Most important, though, I had to wait until I found the perfect traveling/eating/drinking/napping companion. And I did finally find him, two years ago - my Brazilian-born, French-speaking, wine-worshipping, tripe-consuming, uncomplaining traveler of a sweetheart. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Ah, it was a fine night, a warm night, a wine-drinking night, a moony night, and a night to hug your girl and talk and spit and be heavengoing. — Jack Kerouac

These beliefs were mainly Protestant but not yet petty middle-class puritanism: there remained still an element fairly high stepping and wide gestured in its personal conduct. The petty middle class of fundamentalists who saw no difference between wine-drinking, dancing, card-playing, and adultery, had not yet got altogether the upper hand in that part of the country - in fact, never did except in certain limited areas; but it was making a brave try. — Katherine Anne Porter

Faith to you was more clay than mortar, and if you could interpret the gospel, so could I. So should anyone. If God wasn't mad at you for drinking wine and chain-smoking and being a homosexual, he might forgive me for stealing a kitten and trying to hide it under a blanket in the back of our station wagon. Certainly that God was preferable to others who wouldn't let you in Heaven if you said bad words or drank Mountain Dew. — Mary-Louise Parker

Some people spend the day in complaining of a headache, and the night in drinking the wine that gives it. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Halloo down there," the voice said. Ziba saw a burly soldier in armor standing at the edge of the cliff. "Are you Israelites?"
"We are," Jonathan said.
"We thought all of the Israelites were still hiding in the caves." Ziba heard others laughing and could tell that they had been drinking. "We have plenty of wine here if you want to come join us. We even have some of your countrymen who are now in our army."
"If we come up there, it will be only to fight and kill you," Jonathan said.
The Philistine laughed. "Well, then, come on up. It's plenty boring up here. Maybe you can liven things up, small as you are."
Jonathan looked at Ziba, who then nodded.
"We'll be right up," Jonathan shouted back. — Glen Robinson

Drinking wine, like kissing, is most memorable when done with someone else. — Paul Kreider

Legend has it that while drinking wine in a boat on the river, [8th century Chinese poet Li Po] tried to grab the moon's reflection on the surface and tumbled in, which is probably the poet's equivalent of dying bravely in battle. — Matthew White

The custom of saluting [i.e., embracing] ladies by their relatives and friends was introduced, it is said, by the early Romans, not out of respect originally, but to find by their breath whether they had been drinking wine, this being criminal for women to do, as it sometimes led to adultery. — Joseph Haydn

Dad phoned to wish us happy anniversary, and I picked up the phone and I was going to play it cool, but then I started crying when I started talking - I was doing the awful chick talk-cry: mwaha-waah-gwwahh-and-waaa-wa - so I had to tell him what happened, and he told me I should open a bottle of wine and wallow in it for a bit. Dad is always a proponent of a good indulgent sulk. Still, Nick will be angry that I told Rand, and of course Rand will do his fatherly thing, pat Nick on the shoulder and say, "Heard you had some emergency drinking to do on your anniversary, Nicky." And chuckle. So Nick will know, and he will be angry with me because he wants my parents to believe he's perfect - he beams when I tell them stories about what a flawless son-in-law he is. Except for tonight. I know, I know, I'm being a girl. — Gillian Flynn

Wine was served during the meal (rich and heavy, it was usually diluted with water), but the real drinking began once the food had been cleared away. This was the commissatio - a ceremonial drinking competition at which goblets had to be drained in a single gulp. Healths were drunk. This was the time for conversation and debate, which might last well into the evening, and was the Roman equivalent to the Greek symposium. — Anthony Everitt

Wine is not a magic serum of truth. It just silences that smart little voice in your head which advises against saying some dumb shit. — David Alejandro Fearnhead

The world needs water. For every bottle of wine you drink you contribute to conserving the drinking water reserves. — Paul-Emile Victor

Drinking wine and wearing trousers were nothing compared to reading the history of ideas. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

There are two reasons for drinking wine ... when you are thirsty, to cure it; the other, when you are not thirsty, to prevent it ... prevention is better than cure. — Thomas Love Peacock

The appreciation of wine was based solely on the way it tasted. The invention of drinking glasses meant that the color, transparency, and clarity of wine became important, too. We are used to seeing what we drink, but this was new to the Romans, and they loved it. — Mark Miodownik

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

BALLS! We want the finest wines available to humanity. We want them HERE, and we want them NOW. — Bruce Robinson

Right now everyone is drinking bad wine made of sour grapes and hysteria. Let them drink it, and let them regret it in the morning. — Sarah Addison Allen

The English seem to think drinking wine is like committing adultery, something you do rarely and abroad. — William Nicholson

When we gather for worship, whether with a handful in a storefront chapel or with thousands in St. Peter's Square, we perform a drama with different parts-speaking and singing and praying and giving money and baptizing and eating bread and drinking wine-all for the delight of God. — David Jeremiah

I write right off the typer. I call it my "machinegun." I hit it hard, usually late at night while drinking wine and listening to classical music on the radio and smoking mangalore ganesh beedies. — Charles Bukowski

There was a rough stone age and a smooth stone age and a bronze age, and many years afterward a cut-glass age. In the cut-glass age, when young ladies had persuaded young
men with long, curly mustaches to marry them, they sat down several months afterward and wrote thank-you notes for all sorts of cut-glass presents - punch-bowls, finger-bowls, dinner-glasses, wine-glasses, ice-cream dishes, bonbon dishes, decanters, and vases - for, though cut glass was nothing new in the nineties, it was then especially busy reflecting the dazzling light of fashion from the Back Bay to the fastnesses of the Middle West."
--from "The Glass-Cut Bowl" by F. Scott Fitzgerald — Diana Secker Tesdell

It is well to remember that there are five reasons for drinking: the arrival of a friend, one's present or future thirst, the excellence of the cognac, or any other reason — W.C. Fields

Drinking wine was not a snobbism nor a sign of sophistication nor a cult; it was as natural as eating and to me as necessary ... — Ernest Hemingway,

Be temperate in your drinking, remembering that too much wine cannot keep either a secret or a promise. — Miguel De Cervantes

Long before I became 'rich and famous' I just sat round drinking wine and staring at the walls. — Charles Bukowski

God enjoys drinking wine. He does not want the wine made from grapes, but the wine made from Christ's saturating us. God is not interested in grapes - He is interested in you with Christ. We must become wine through the experience of Christ. — Witness Lee

It's too much of a drinking culture, everything tastes better with a drink. Like, watch TV: glass of wine. Cooking dinner: glass of champagne. White wine vinegar hasn't got white wine in it. Has it? — Amy Winehouse

For tea, though ridiculed by those who are naturally of coarse nerves, or are become so from wine-drinking, and are not susceptible of influence from so refined a stimulant, will always be the favourite beverage of the intellectual; — Thomas De Quincey

Long ago there was a man that was crucified for being too loving and too lovable.
And strange to relate I met him thrice yesterday.
The first time he was asking a policeman to not take a prostitute to prison; the second time he was drinking wine with an outcast; and the third time he was having a fist-fight with a promoter inside a church — Kahlil Gibran

A new friend is new wine, when it grows old, you will enjoy drinking it. — Alan Kay

I Never Met A Malbec I Didn't Like — Michael C. Higgins, PhD

What is meditation? ... It is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life. The same escape, the same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the inn, drinking a few bowls of rice wine or fermented coconut-milk. — Hermann Hesse

Drinking is for the moon," she would say as she poured her wine. "Darkness hides our smaller sins. But the sun isn't so
forgiving. Light requires the innocence of sobriety. — Kyra Davis

She reflected on her time in Paris and thought how it seemed as if she'd spent half her life drinking wine in bed and covered with contusions. This, it occurred to her, was how it must feel to be Melanie Griffith. — Chuck Palahniuk

My dear girl, there are some things that just aren't done, such as drinking Dom Perignon '53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That's just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs! — Sean Connery

It is not against the law to drink in public places, and you will see people drinking in parks or by the lake. The Swiss have a more relaxed attitude to alcohol consumption. From the age of 16, young people can be served beer or wine in a bar. — Clare O'Dea

13. A Buddha
In Tokyo in th Meiji era there lived two prominent teachers of opposite characteristics. One, Unsho, an instructor in Shingon, kept Buddha's precepts scrupulously. He never drank intoxicants, nor did he eat after eleven o'clock in the morning. The other teacher, Tanzan, a professor of philosophy at the Imperial University, never observed the precepts. When he felt like eating he ate, and when he felt like sleeping in the daytime he slept.
One da Unsho visited Tanzan, who was drinking wine at the time, not even a drop of which is supposed to touch the tongue of a Buddhist.
"Hello, brother," Tanzan greeted him. "Won't you have a drink?"
"I never drink!" exclaimed Unsho solemnly.
"One who never drinks is not even human," said Tanzan.
"Do you mean to call me inhuman just because I do not indulge in intoxicating liquids!" exclaimed Unsho in anger. "Then if I am not human, wht am I?"
"A Buddha," answered Tanzan. — Nyogen Senzaki

One looks back to what was called a 'wine-party' with a sort of wonder. Thirty lads round a table covered with bad sweetmeats, drinking bad wines, telling bad stories, singing bad songs over and over again. Milk punch-- smoking--ghastly headache-- frightful spectacle of dessert-table next morning, and smell of tobacco--your guardian, the clergyman, dropping in, in the midst of this--expecting to find you deep in Algebra, and discovering the Gyp administering soda-water.

There were young men who despised the lads who indulged in the coarse hospitalities of wine-parties, who prided themselves in giving recherche little French dinners. Both wine-party-givers and dinner-givers were Snobs. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Wine drinking goes back at least six thousand years. Wine writing probably began a year or two later. — Frank J. Prial

We look up to see if it is day or night. If stars burn cool and moon does shine, we take to smoke divine and wine.
If breath of sun does belch its heat,
we boil coffee and prepare to eat. — Roman Payne

A good sherris-sack hath a twofold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain, dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapors which environ it, makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes, which, delivered o'er to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. — William Shakespeare

I would say 95% of the time, because you just can't remember your lines if you're drinking alcohol. I would say about 95% of the time it was grape juice or this fake wine, which was horrible. — Thomas Haden Church

In the next room, perhaps twenty people were sitting around, drinking what looked like wine out of wine-glasses. They were the sort of people William and Louisa used to be in the habit of knowing, a crowd of elegant furniture, like the legs of a herd of gazelle taken together, and equally useless, when all things are considered. — Jesse Ball

Remember gentleman, it's not just France we're fighting for, it's Champagne! — Winston Churchill

Learn to ignore everything anyone (including myself) has ever told you about wine protocol. Sometimes win drinking, like spontaneous sex on the kitchen table, is far more satisfying when you toss out all the rules. — Bob Blumer

Here is a tip for all you young people drinking wine. With pasta, drink white wine. With steak, drink red wine. And if you're vegan, you're annoying. — Demetri Martin

It wasn't depression, exactly; more a weird, restless pressure that made me wander the house late at night, opening the best bottles of wine in our cellar and drinking them alone while I channel-surfed along the forgotten byways of cable TV. — Jennifer Egan

The Christian conception of marriage is one: the other is quite the different question - how far Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws. A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mohammedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine.

My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognize that the majority of the British people are not Christian and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the church with rules enforced by her on her own members. — C.S. Lewis

Lord Henry went out to the garden and found Dorian Gray burying his face in the great cool lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their perfume as if it had been wine. — Oscar Wilde

Wine we need for health, and the health we need to drink vodka. — Viktor Chernomyrdin

At the end of the day, it's just grape juice. No one needs anything that I make. The last thing we need is another wine on the shelf. So that just makes me grateful for the people who do enjoy it. — Andre Hueston Mack

Live in rooms full of light. Avoid heavy food. Be moderate in the drinking of wine. Take massage, baths, exercise, and gymnastics. Fight insomnia with gentle rocking or the sound of running water. Change surroundings and take long journeys. Strictly avoid frightening ideas. Indulge in cheerful conversation and amusements. Listen to music. — Aulus Cornelius Celsus

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

That wasn't so bad," I decided, after downing the shot. Maybe I was getting my rhythm.
"Because you threw it over your shoulder," Scarface told me, looking smug.
"Did not." I looked behind me, only to see an outraged vamp with fey wine dripping down his face. "Oops."
"It was for luck," Ray said defensively, wrapping both my hands around a glass.
"Drink!"
I drank. — Karen Chance

According to Abkhazian custom, the time you spend with guests around the table doesn't count toward your lifespan because you're drinking wine and enjoying yourself. — Svetlana Alexievich

Regard yourself as a small corporation of one. Take yourself off on team-building exercises (long walks). Hold a Christmas party every year at which you stand in the corner of your writing room, shouting very loudly to yourself while drinking a bottle of white wine. Then masturbate under the desk. The following day you will feel a deep and cohering sense of embarrassment. — Will Self

A woman's place is in the kitchen ... sitting in a comfortable chair, with her feet up, drinking a glass of wine and watching her husband cook dinner. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Champagne is the only drink that leaves a woman still beautiful after drinking it. — Madame De Pompadour

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

There is one way by which a strolling player may be ever secure of success; that is, in our theatrical way of expressing it, to make a great deal of the character. To speak and act as in common life is not playing, nor is it what people come to see; natural speaking, like sweet wine, runs glibly over the palate and scarcely leaves any taste behind it; but being high in a part resembles vinegar, which grates upon the taste, and one feels it while he is drinking. — Oliver Goldsmith

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

In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is Freedom, in water there is bacteria. — Benjamin Franklin

These Americans believed that one great male god ruled the world. Sometimes they divided him into three parts, which they called father, son, and holy ghost. They ate crackers and wine or grape juice, believing that they were eating the son's body and drinking his blood. If they believed strongly enough, they would live on forever after they died. — James W. Loewen

People spend too much time tasting wine; not enough time drinking it. — Andre Tchelistcheff

I've got different ideas of complete happiness. But one is being by myself out in a forest, completely happy. Another is walking with a dog in some nice place. And three is sitting around preferably a fire, but not necessarily, and drinking red wine with friends and telling stories. — Jane Goodall

In wine was truth, perhaps, but in whisky, the way Hoffman sluiced it down, was an army of imaginary rats climbing your legs. — Ross Macdonald

The Clochemerle 1929 was a magnificent wine. Drinking it in small sips, his grace the Archbishop felt himself well disposed towards the Clochemerlins. It takes all sorts to make a world and a Church, to people Heaven and Hell. But there was no denying that it took capable vignerons to make a wine like this, men whose minds must on no account be distracted by excessive metaphysical cares. — Gabriel Chevallier

Babe, you're standing in my arm, in my house, drinking my wine after agreeing in the kitchen." "I haven't even sipped the wine," I pointed out. His lips twitched. Twitched! I made Knight Sebring's lips twitch! "Right, well, you will," he muttered. "And I didn't agree to anything," I went on. Another lip twitch. Then a repeated, "Right, well, you will. — Kristen Ashley

Most people whom you may view as wine experts are usually just good at one thing: winemakers are good at making wine, sommeliers at talking about it, and wine journalists at drinking it for free. — Olivier Magny

This is not really currency that circulates. It's like the old joke about expensive vintage wine. Wine prices will go up and once in a while somebody will buy a 50-year-old bottle of wine and say, "Wait a minute. This has gone bad." The answer is, "Well, that wine isn't for drinking; that's for trading." These $100 bills aren't meant to circulate. They're not to spend on goods and services. They're a store of value. They're a form of saving. — Michael Hudson

Making wine and drinking wine is not new to African Americans and others in the Diaspora. South Africa has a three-century history in growing, harvesting and distilling grapes as wine. The entire continent of Africa has a history in wine-making. In this country, slaves cultivated the vineyards owned by Thomas Jefferson and other vintners. — Andre Hueston Mack

Once, standing in an open space, he'd seen a commercial airliner pass overhead, on its way from one country to another, the sun golden upon its wings. It seemed incredible to him that there were people inside, drinking wine and eating from plastic trays, pressing a button for the hostess. Did they have any idea what was going on directly below them, a nation devouring itself? He felt like a drowning man watching a ship sail by. — Aminatta Forna

Thanks be to God. Since my leaving the drinking of wine, I do find myself much better, and do mind my business better, and do spend less money, and less time lost in idle company. — Samuel Pepys

Amongst the flowers I
am alone with my pot of wine
drinking by myself; then lifting
my cup I asked the moon
to drink with me, its reflection
and mine in the wine cup, just
the three of us; then I sigh
for the moon cannot drink,
and my shadow goes emptily along
with me never saying a word;
with no other friends here, I can
but use these two for company;
in the time of happiness, I
too must be happy with all
around me; I sit and sing
and it is as if the moon
accompanies me; then if I
dance, it is my shadow that
dances along with me; while
still not drunk, I am glad
to make the moon and my shadow
into friends, but then when
I have drunk too much, we
all part; yet these are
friends I can always count on
these who have no emotion
whatsoever; I hope that one day
we three will meet again,
deep in the Milky Way. — Li Bai

Black vintners in this country make some really great wines. Explore a wine list and you will find at least one of our wines in the best restaurants. Buy a bottle for your table, and let management know you appreciate them including a Black winemaker in their stock. — Andre Hueston Mack

A rake is a composition of all the lowest, most ignoble, degrading, and shameful vices; they all conspire to disgrace his character, and to ruin his fortune; while wine and the pox content which shall soonest and most effectually destroy his constitution. — Lord Chesterfield

I want to die.
I want die by drowning in love.
I want to die by becoming drunk,
by drinking the pure wine of love.
I want to die in an accident,
By falling in love and
breaking my heart.
I want to die by losing
in the game of love. — Debasish Mridha

When it comes to wine, I tell people to throw away the vintage charts and invest in a corkscrew. The best way to learn about wine is the drinking. — Alexis Lichine

It was a fine night, a warm night, a wine-drinking night, a moony night, and a night to hug your girl and talk and spit and be heavengoing. This we did. — Jack Kerouac

I yell and scream like they do. I'm the worst of them. Totally. I'm a nightmare. Once they gave me the passport that was it - started throwing my hands in the air, drinking red wine and flying off the handle. — John Kirwan

The social prestige of wine at table and at the club must be destroyed through lofty example and polite ridicule; forces which are not always available, and for whose successful operation much time will be required. But the outstanding fact remains, that the world has come to regard liquor in a new and clearer light. Our next generation of poets will contain but few Anacreons, for the thinking element of mankind has robbed the flowing bowl of its fancied virtues and fictitious beauties. The grape, so long permitted to masquerade as the inspirer of wit and art, is now revealed as the mother of ruin and death. The wolf at last stands divested of its sheep's clothing. — H.P. Lovecraft

The best way to learn about wine is in the drinking — Alexis Lichine

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
[misquote of a letter about wine, see quotes/831031] — Benjamin Franklin

One of the penalties of being president of the United States is that you must subsist for four years without drinking anything except Californian wine. — A.J.P. Taylor

Well, God doesn't intervene in many of the situations we would like Him to because He would have to intervene in everything that we say and do that is wrong right the way through to some of the most terrible things happening in nations. What He does is He gives us signs that He is with us and that we can draw help from Him. Jesus changed water into wine. That had no function really. They had already run out of wine in the party so he was only aiding and abetting more drinking. — Gerald Coates

Let us have wine and woman, mirth and laughter,
Sermons and soda water the day after.
Man, being reasonable, must get drunk;
The best of life is but intoxication:
Glory, the grape, love, gold, in these are sunk
The hopes of all men, and of every nation;
Without their sap, how branchless were the trunk
Of life's strange tree, so fruitful on occasion:
But to return
Get very drunk; and when
You wake with head-ache, you shall see what then. — George Gordon Byron