PISTOL: Knocks go and come. God’s vassals drop and die,
And sword and shield,
In bloody field,
Doth win immortal fame.BOY: Would I were in an alehouse in London! I would
give all my fame for a pot of ale, and safety.PISTOL: And I.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Henry V, Act 3, sc. 2, l. 9ff (3.2.9-14) (1599)
(Source)
Quotations about:
beer
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
Bright college days, oh, carefree days that fly,
To thee we sing with our glasses raised on high.
Let’s drink a toast as each of us recalls
Ivy-covered professors in ivy-covered halls.Turn on the spigot,
Pour the beer and swig it,
And gaudeamus igit-
-ur.Tom Lehrer (b. 1928) American mathematician, satirist, songwriter
“Bright College Days”
Every major industrialized nation has A BEER (you can’t be a Real Country unless you have A BEER and an airline — it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need A BEER).
Frank Zappa (1940-1993) American singer-songwriter
The Real Frank Zappa Book, ch. 12 “America Drinks & Goes Marching” (1989) [with Peter Occhiogrosso]
(Source)
More discussion of this quotation: You Can’t Be a Real Country Unless You Have a Beer and an Airline – Quote Investigator
Beer makes you feel the way you ought to feel without beer.
Henry Lawson (1867-1922) Australian writer and poet
(Attributed)
(Source)
Quoted in Denton Prout, Henry Lawson: The Grey Dreamer (1963); David Low, Autobiography(1956). Also attributed to David McKee Wright.
I wish to see this beverage become common instead of the whisky which kills one-third of our citizens and ruins their families.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter (1816-01-06) to Charles Yancey
(Source)
On beer.
It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects. … If possible, this must be prevented. My people must drink beer.
Frederick II (1712-1786) King of Prussia (a.k.a. Frederick the Great)
Proclamation (13 Sep 1777)
I have never gotten into wine. I’m a beer man. What I like about beer is you basically just drink it, then you order another one. You don’t sniff at it, or hold it up to the light and slosh it around, and above all you don’t drone on and on about it, the way people do with wine. Your beer drinker tends to be a straightforward, decent, friendly, down-to-earth person who enjoys talking about the importance of relief pitching, whereas your serious wine fancier tends to be an insufferable snot.
Dave Barry (b. 1947) American humorist
“Daze of Wine and Roses,” Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits (1988)
Take a drink because you pity yourself, and then the drink pities you and has a drink, and then two good drinks get together and that calls for drinks all around. No; he’d have one drink, maybe a little bigger than usual, before he went to bed.
H. Beam Piper (1904-1964) American author
Little Fuzzy (1962)
First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) American writer [Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald]
(Attributed)
Sometimes cited to Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, but not found there. See also Hokekyo-Sho, Piper, and this Spanish Proverb.
PORTER: Drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things.
MACDUFF: What three things does drink especially provoke?
PORTER: Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine.
Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes;
it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance:
therefore, much drink may be said
to be an equivocator with lechery:
it makes him, and it mars him;
it sets him on, and it takes him off;
it persuades him, and disheartens him;
makes him stand to, and not stand to;
in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep,
and, giving him the lie, leaves him.William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Macbeth, Act 2, sc. 3, l. 27ff (2.3.27-38) (1606)
(Source)
We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana, as of a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, and which incorporates itself with the grapes to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy!
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Letter to Abbé Morallet (1779)
(Source)
Apparent origin of the misquote: "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
