Quotes about food-and-eating

I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead -- not sick, not wounded -- dead.

— Woody Allen

We live in an age when pizza gets to your home before the police.

— Jeff Arder

I would like to find a stew that will give me heartburn immediately, instead of at three o clock in the morning.

— John Barrymore

Sadder than destitution, sadder than a beggar is the man who eats alone in public. Nothing more contradicts the laws of man or beast, for animals always do each other the honor of sharing or disputing each other's food.

— Jean Baudrillard

A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart, who looks at her watch.

— James Beard

Only the pure in heart can make a good soup.

— Ludwig Van Beethoven

Taking food alone tends to make one hard and coarse. Those accustomed to it must lead a Spartan life if they are not to go downhill. Hermits have observed, if for only this reason, a frugal diet. For it is only in company that eating is done justice; food must be divided and distributed if it is to be well received.

— Walter Benjamin

Yogi ordered a pizza. The waitress asked How many pieces do you want your pie cut? Yogi responded, Four. I don't think I could eat eight.

— Yogi Berra

Put a knife to thy throat, if you're a man given to appetite.

— Bible

Man shall not live by bread alone.

— Bible

Edible. Good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.

— Ambrose Bierce

Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good.

— Alice May Brock

Clearly, some time ago makers and consumers of American junk food passed jointly through some kind of sensibility barrier in the endless quest for new taste sensations. Now they are a little like those desperate junkies who have tried every known drug and are finally reduced to mainlining toilet bowl cleanser in an effort to get still higher.

— Bill Bryson

Gluttony is the source of all our infirmities and the fountain of all our diseases. As fire extinguished by an excess of fuel, so is the natural health of the body destroyed by an intemperate diet.

— Burton

I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. I am President of the United States, and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli.

— George Bush

Eating is touch carried to the bitter end.

— Samuel Butler

The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.

— Samuel Butler

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

— Lord Byron

The right diet directs sexual energy into the parts that matter.

— Barbara Cartland

It is a difficult matter to argue with the belly since it has no ears.

— Cato The Elder

For its merit I will knight it, and then it will be Sir-Loin.

— Charles II

Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.

— Marcus T. Cicero

The soup is never hot enough if the waiter can keep his thumb in it.

— William Collier

The one way to get thin is to re-establish a purpose in life.

— Cyril Connolly

It has been an unchallengeable American doctrine that cranberry sauce, a pink goo with overtones of sugared tomatoes, is a delectable necessity of the Thanksgiving board and that turkey is uneatable without it. There are some things in every country that you must be born to endure; and another hundred years of general satisfaction with Americans and America could not reconcile this expatriate to cranberry sauce, peanut butter, and drum majorettes.

— Alistair Cooke

To eat is human, to digest divine.

— Charles T. Copeland

Square meals often make round people.

— E. Joseph Cossman

I found there was only one way to look thin, hang out with fat people.

— Rodney Dangerfield

I can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let the stoics say what they please, we do not eat for the good of living, but because the meat is savory and the appetite is keen.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

When a man's stomach is full it makes no difference whether he is rich or poor.

— Euripides

A cheese may disappoint. It may be dull, it may be naive, it may be oversophisticated. Yet it remains cheese, milk's leap toward immortality.

— Clifton Fadiman

Roast Beef, medium, is not only a food. It is a philosophy. Seated at Life's Dining Table, with the menu of Morals before you, your eye wanders a bit over the entr?es, the hors d'oeuvres, and the things ? la though you know that Roast Beef, medium, is safe and sane, and sure.

— Edna Ferber

I've been on a diet for two weeks and all I've lost is two weeks.

— Totie Fields

The food here is so tasteless you could eat a meal of it and belch and it wouldn't remind you of anything.

— Redd Foxx

It is the mark of a mean, vulgar and ignoble spirit to dwell on the thought of food before meal times or worse to dwell on it afterwards, to discuss it and wallow in the remembered pleasures of every mouthful. Those whose minds dwell before dinner on the spit, and after on the dishes, are fit only to be scullions.

— St. Francis De Sales

One should eat to live, not live to eat.

— Benjamin Franklin

More die in the United States from too much food than from too little.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

God comes to the hungry in the form of food.

— Mahatma Gandhi

It isn't so much what's on the table that matters, as what's on the chairs.

— W. S. Gilbert

There is such a thing as food and such a thing as poison. But the damage done by those who pass off poison as food is far less than that done by those who generation after generation convince people that food is poison.

— Paul Goodman

A gourmet is just a glutton with brains.

— Phillip H. Haberman Jr.

As a child my family's menu consisted of two choices: take it, or leave it.

— Buddy Hackett

A store of grain, Oh king is the best of treasures. A gem put in your mouth will not support life.

— Hitopadesa

The flesh endures the storms of the present alone; the mind, those of the past and future as well as the present. Gluttony is a lust of the mind.

— Thomas Hobbes

Most of us are either too think to enjoy eating, or too fat to enjoy walking.

— Edgar Watson Howe

A lot of Thanksgiving days have been ruined by not carving the turkey in the kitchen.

— Kin Hubbard

We seldom report of having eaten too little.

— Thomas Jefferson

A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.

— Samuel Johnson

He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

— Samuel Johnson

He who cannot eat horsemeat need not do so. Let him eat pork. But he who cannot eat pork, let him eat horsemeat. It's simply a question of taste.

— Nikita Khrushchev

Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may diet.

— Harry Kurnitz

I judge a restaurant by the bread and by the coffee.

— Burt Lancaster

The act of putting into your mouth what the earth has grown is perhaps your most direct interaction with the earth.

— Frances Moore Lappe

Vegetables are interesting but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat.

— Fran Lebowitz

If you're going to America, bring your own food.

— Fran Lebowitz

Food is an important part of a balanced diet.

— Fran Lebowitz

Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he's buying.

— Fran Lebowitz

I told my doctor I get very tired when I go on a diet, so he gave me pep pills. Know what happened? I ate faster.

— Joe E. Lewis

If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible for the pneumatic pump or a poor one for a war?

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.

— Sophia Loren

Choose rather to punish your appetites than be punished by them.

— Tyrius Maximus

It ain't what you eat, but the way how you chew it.

— Delbert Mcclinton

You can travel fifty thousand miles in America without once tasting a piece of good bread.

— Henry Miller

We are digging our graves with our teeth.

— Thomas Moffett

Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.

— Charles De Montesquieu

No man is lonely while eating spaghetti; it requires so much attention.

— Christopher Morley

Hors d'oeuvres have always a pathetic interest for me; they remind me of one's childhood that one goes through wondering what the next course is going to be like -- and during the rest of the menu one wishes one had eaten more of the hors d'oeuvres.

— Hector Hugh Munro

You needn't tell me that a man who doesn't love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.

— Hector Hugh Munro

We know that every woman wants to be thin. Our images of womanhood are almost synonymous with thinness.

— Susie Orbach

We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine-gun.

— George Orwell

Avoid fresh meats, which angry up the blood. If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts. Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move. Go very light in the vices such as carrying on in society. The social ramble ain't restful. Don't look back. Someone might be gaining on you.

— Leroy ''Satchel'' Paige

Strange to see how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody.

— Samuel Pepys

Never eat anything you can't lift.

— Miss Piggy

Never eat more than you can lift.

— Miss Piggy

Make food a very incidental part of your life by filling your life so full of meaningful things that you'll hardly have time to think about food.

— Peace Pilgrim

Abstain from beans.

— Plutarch

The most dangerous food to eat is a wedding cake.

— Proverb

Seven's a banquet nine a brawl.

— Proverb

Much meat, much disease.

— Proverb

Hunger is a good cook.

— Proverb

Gluttony kills more than the sword.

— Proverb

He who eats alone chokes alone.

— Arabian Proverb

It's better that it should make you sick than that you don't eat it at all.

— Catalan Proverb

Don't dig your grave with your knife and fork.

— English Proverb

A good meal ought to begin with hunger.

— French Proverb

Appetite comes with eating; the more one has, the more one would have.

— French Proverb

He that eats till he is sick must fast till he is well.

— Hebrew Proverb

There is only one thing harder than looking for a dewdrop in the dew, and that is fishing for a clam in the clam chowder.

— New England Proverb

Coffee should be black as Hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.

— Turkish Proverb

Want to learn to eat a lot? Here it is: Eat a little. That way, you will be around long enough to eat a lot.

— Anthony Robbins

He who is a slave to his stomach seldom worships God.

— Saadi

There is nothing to which men, while they have food and drink, cannot reconcile themselves.

— George Santayana

To eat is to appropriate by destruction.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life and contributes immensely to goodwill and happy companionship. It is of great importance to the morale.

— Elsa Schiaparelli

My body is like breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I don't think about it, I just have it.

— Arnold Schwarzenegger

There is no love sincerer than the love of food.

— George Bernard Shaw

That food has always been, and will continue to be, the basis for one of our greater snobbism does not explain the fact that the attitude toward the food choice of others is becoming more and more heatedly exclusive until it may well turn into one of those forms of bigotry against which gallant little committees are constantly planning campaigns in the cause of justice and decency.

— Cornelia Otis Skinner

Worthless people love only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.

— Socrates