Interesting wine quotes from famous people

The most famous quote about wine is probably this Latin one: “In vino veritas.” It is apparently referenced several times in antiquity. Pliny the Elder (23—79 AD) has an early allusion, usually translated as: “In wine, there is truth, and in friendship, there is joy”. Plato (427—348 BC) has an even earlier reference, usually translated as: “There is truth in wine and children.”

As a break from my usual type of blog post, it seems worthwhile to collate here other invaluable wine quotations from over the millennia, ones that are attributed to a specific person, rather than simply to the ubiquitous “Anonymous”. So, here are three dozen of them, with their acknowledged (usually well-known) authors, in time order.

• “Wine can of their wits the wise beguile, make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.” ― Homer (8th century BC)
• “Whenever a man is tired, wine is a great restorer of strength.” ― Homer
• “Where there is no wine there is no love.” ― Euripides (480—406 BC)
  
• “Nothing more excellent or valuable than wine was ever granted by the gods to man.” ― Plato (427—348 BC)
• “When a man drinks wine at dinner, he begins to be better pleased with himself.” ― Plato
• “Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.” ― Aristophanes (446—386 BC)
• “What I like to drink most is wine that belongs to others.” — Diogenes (4th century BC)
• “Wine brings to light the hidden secrets of the soul.” ― Horace (65—8 BC)
• “No poem was ever written by a drinker of water.” ― Horace
• “Wine is life.” ― Gaius Petronius Arbiter (27—66 AD)
• “Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath, and a glass of wine.” — Thomas Aquinas (1225—1274)
• “The discovery of a good wine is increasingly better for mankind than the discovery of a new star.” ― Leonardo Da Vinci (1452—1519)
• “Beer is made by men, wine by God.” ― Martin Luther (1483—1546)
• “Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.” ― Francis Bacon (1561—1626)
• “Wine is sunlight, held together by water.” ― Galileo Galilei (1564—1642)
• “The discovery of a wine is of greater moment than the discovery of a constellation. The universe is too full of stars.” ― Benjamin Franklin (1706—1790)
• “Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried, with fewer tensions and more tolerance.” ― Benjamin Franklin
• “In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria.” ― Benjamin Franklin
• “Wine brightens the life and thinking of anyone.” ― Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
• “In nothing have the habits of the palate more decisive influence than in our relish of wines.” — Thomas Jefferson
• “Wine rejoices the heart of man, and joy is the mother of all virtues.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749—1832)
• “Life is too short to drink bad wine.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• “A meal without wine is like a day without sun[shine].” ― Jean Anthelme Brillat−Savarin (1755—1826)
• “In victory, you deserve Champagne. In defeat you need it.” ― Napoleon Bonaparte (1769—1821)
• “Nothing makes the future look so rosy as to contemplate it through a glass of Chambertin.” ― Napoleon Bonaparte
• “God made water, but man made wine.” ― Victor Hugo (1802—1885)
• “Wine is life. It's the union of the earth with the sun; it’s the essence of time captured in a bottle.” ― Victor Hugo
• “Give me wine to wash me clean of the weather-stains of cares.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)
• “I rather like bad wine; one gets so bored with good wine.” ― Benjamin Disraeli (1804—1881)
• “Be careful to trust a person who does not like wine.” ― Karl Marx (1818—1883)
• “A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world.” ― Louis Pasteur (1822—1895)
• “Wine can be considered with good reason as the most healthful and hygienic of all beverages.” ― Louis Pasteur
• “Wine is bottled poetry.” ― Robert Louis Stevenson (1850—1894)
• “I will drink milk when cows eat grape.” ― Henri de Toulouse−Lautrec (1864—1901)
• “Penicillin cures, but wine makes people happy.” ― Alexander Fleming (1881—1955)
• “Men are like wine — some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age.” ― Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (Pope John XXIII) (1881—1963)
• “My only regret in life is that I did not drink more wine.” ― Ernest Hemingway (1899—1961)
• “I drink to make other people more interesting.” ― Ernest Hemingway
• “I cook with wine. Sometimes I even add it to the food.” ― usually attributed to either W.C. Fields (1880—1946) or Julia Child (1912—2004), neither of whom seems to have actually said it.