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Quotes

What is food to one is to others bitter poison.

—Lucretius, 50 BC

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

—La Rochefoucauld, 1678

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

—Seneca the Younger, c. 60

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

—Henry Ward Beecher, 1862

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

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

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

—David Hume, 1751

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

—W. Somerset Maugham, 1896

Thought depends absolutely on the stomach, but in spite of that, those who have the best stomachs are not the best thinkers.

—Voltaire, 1770

‘Tis a superstition to insist on a special diet. All is made at last of the same chemical atoms.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860

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

—Socrates, c. 430 BC

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard for their own interest.

—Adam Smith, 1776

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