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, gives being to our hopes, bids the coward flight, drives dull care away, and teaches new means for the accomplishment of our wishes.” ― 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.