Top 100 Food Quotes of All Time

A short, finished list rather than an endless feed: 100 of the best food quotes ever written, picked out of the full food archive on QuoteForever. You will find Benjamin Franklin, Dave Barry, Erma Bombeck and George Carlin among them.

Read the list top to bottom, or use it as a starting point - every author name links to everything else they said, and every quote has its own page you can share or turn into an image.

1

Some people have family crests, lions, tigers, unicorns, elephants - a whole menagerie - and if my family had a crest, you know what would be on it? A blintze. I mean it. All the good things in my life are measured in blintzes because by us it's not a party if there isn't a blintze.

2

What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye? What calls back the past like the rich pumpkin pie?

3

Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.

4

Conversation is the enemy of good wine and food.

5

You can't make a souffle rise twice.

6

Texas does not, like any other region, simply have indigenous dishes. It proclaims them. It congratulates you, on your arrival, at having escaped from the slop pails of the other 49 states.

7

Rum, n. Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.

8

Food without wine is a corpse; wine without food is a ghost; united and well matched they are as body and soul, living partners.

9

Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafes and McDonalds? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taqueria's mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head? I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once.

10

Dinner at the Huntercombes' possessed only two dramatic features - the wine was a farce and the food a tragedy.

11

Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don't get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goats cheese... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.

12

Our holiday food splurge was a small crate of tangerines, which we found ridiculously thrilling after an eight-month abstinence from citrus.... Lily hugged each one to her chest before undressing it as gently as a doll. Watching her do that as she sat cross-legged on the floor one morning in pink pajamas, with bliss lighting her cheeks, I thought: Lucky is the world, to receive this grateful child. Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.

13

A full Belly brings forth every Evil.

14

In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.

15

A full Belly is the Mother of all Evil.

16

A fat kitchin, a lean Will.

17

Innovations that are guided by smallholder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and environment will be necessary to ensure food security in the future.

18

And Honey, I miss you and I'm being good. And I'd love to be with you if only I could.

19

We may not be able to get certainty, but we can get probability, and half a loaf is better than no bread.

20

How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?

21

Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature .

22

Exercise is a dirty word. Every time I hear it I wash my mouth out with chocolate.

23

Know that you have complete control over what you put in your mouth. No one ever ate anything by accident.

24

Red meat is not bad for you. Now blue-green meat, that's bad for you!

25

Everything tastes better outdoors.

26

A man who is careful with his palate is not likely to be careless with his paragraphs.

27

The way you cut your meat reflects the way you live.

28

Eating rice cakes is like chewing on a foam coffee cup, only less filling.

29

In modern America, food is abundant everywhere except aboard commercial airplanes.

30

Granted, this system is insane, but we must not let sanity stand in the way of airport security.

31

Motto of the U.S. airline industry - "We're Hoping to Have a Motto Announcement in About an Hour."

32

Get out the rye bread and mustard grandma, cause it's GRAND SALAMI TIME!

33

Be careful not to be the first to put your hands in the dish. What you cannot hold in your hands you must put on your plate. Also it is a great breach of etiquette when your fingers are dirty and greasy, to bring them to your mouth in order to lick them, or to clean them on your jacket. It would be more decent to use the tablecloth.

34

I eat at this German-Chinese restaurant and the food is delicious. The only problem is that an hour later you're hungry for power.

35

I have never regretted Paradise Lost since I discovered that it contained no eggs-and-bacon.

36

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

37

I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?

38

If food were free, why work?

39

Eating crappy food isn't a reward -- it's a punishment.

40

From morning till night, sounds drift from the kitchen, most of them familiar and comforting. . . . On days when warmth is the most important need of the human heart, the kitchen is the place you can find it; it dries the wet sock, it cools the hot little brain.

41

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

42

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 entrees, the hors d'oeuvres, and the things a la though you know that Roast Beef, Medium, is safe and sane, and sure.

43

For a gourmet wine is not a drink but a condiment, provided that your host has chosen correctly.

44

You are eating the sea, that's it, only the sensation of a gulp of sea water has been wafted out of it by some sorcery, and you are on the verge of remembering you don't know what, mermaids or the sudden smell of kelp on the ebb tide or a poem you read once, something connected with the flavor of life itself.

45

The fast-food industry is in very good company with the lead industry and the tobacco industry in how it tries to mislead the public, and how aggressively it goes after anybody who criticizes its business practices.

46

Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the 'Titanic' who waved off the dessert cart.

47

I am not a glutton - I am an explorer of food

48

Mother's words of wisdom: Answer me! Don't talk with food in your mouth!

49

I was trampled to death by a man who believed his luggage would be the first piece off. If he were an experienced traveler, he would know that the first piece of luggage belongs to no one. It's just a dummy suitcase to give everyone hope.

50

Wine enlivens the human soul.

51

But I always felt that I'd rather be provincial hot-tamale than soup without seasoning.

52

In the orchestra of a great kitchen, the sauce chef is a soloist.

53

There are a lot of products still to be discovered in the world and experimentation, for example with seafood and fish. There are thousands of products that we're not eating right now that maybe will be cultivated in a good agriculture situation, a sustainable, ecological way. Maybe there will be textures or flavors we hadn't even thought of. In the Amazon there are 400 fruits that are not cultivated right now. They're just incredible fruits. Textures, tastes that we don't know right now.

54

Japanese food is very pretty and undoubtedly a suitable cuisine in Japan, which is largely populated by people of below average size. Hostesses hell-bent on serving such food to occidentals would be well advised to supplement it with something more substantial and to keep in mind that almost everybody likes french fries.

55

The appetite grows with eating.

56

Maybe a person's time would be as well spent raising food as raising money to buy food.

57

Aioli epitomizes the heat, the power, and the joy of the Provencal sun, but it has another virtue -- it drives away flies.

58

for the first time I tasted this tropical fruit, which people here are so fond of. ... I could have fancied I was biting into soap. I have a notion that we shall not become very good friends, the banana and I.

59

To be tempted and indulged by the city's most brilliant chefs. It's the dream of every one of us in love with food.

60

A mind of the caliber of mine cannot derive its nutrient from cows.

61

Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak! Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay.

62

I use the word 'fat'. I use that word because that's what people are: they're fat. They're not bulky; they're not large, chunky, hefty or plump. And they're not big-boned. Dinosaurs were big-boned. These people are not overweight: this term somehow implies there is some correct weight... There is no correct weight. Heavy is also a misleading term. An aircraft carrier is heavy; it's not fat. Only people are fat, and that's what fat people are! They're fat !

63

They mention that it's a nonstop flight. Well, I must say I don't care for that sort of thing. Call me old fashioned, but I insist that my flight stop. Preferably at an airport.

64

I never eat sushi. I have trouble eating things that are merely unconscious.

65

One can say everything best over a meal.

66

If you could make a pudding wi' thinking o' the batter, it 'ud be easy getting dinner.

67

I have fed purely upon ale; I have eat my ale, drank my ale, and I always sleep upon ale.

68

In nothing more is the English genius for domesticity more notably declared than in the institution of this festival-almost one may call it-of afternoon tea...the mere chink of cups and saucers tunes the mind to happy repose.

69

I do not think anything serious should be done after dinner, as nothing should be before breakfast.

70

Learn to do common things uncommonly well; we must always keep in mind that anything that helps fill the dinner pail is valuable.

71

A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables.

72

We are always giving foreign names to very native things. If there is a thing that reeks of the glorious tradition of the old English tavern, it is toasted cheese. But for some wild reason we call it Welsh rarebit. I believe that what we call Irish stew might more properly be called English stew, and that it is not particularly familiar in Ireland.

73

Just the other day in the Underground I enjoyed the pleasure of offering my seat to three ladies.

74

Classic Recipe for Roast Beef: 1 large Roast of beef 1 small Roast of beef Take the two roasts and put them in the oven. When the little one burns, the big one is done.

75

A newborn baby has only three demands. They are warmth in the arms of its mother, food from her breasts, and security in the knowledge of her presence. Breastfeeding satisfies all three.

76

All the great villainies of history, from the murder of Abel onward, have been perpetrated by sober men, chiefly by Teetotalers.

77

A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.

78

My favorite word is 'pumpkin.' You can't take it seriously. But you can't ignore it, either. It takes ahold of your head and that's it. You are a pumpkin. Or you are not. I am.

79

Hunger is not debatable.

80

Next to jazz music, there is nothing that lifts the spirit and strengthens the soul more than a good bowl of chili.

81

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.

82

The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go, she went.

83

I am more than ever convinced that what we eat today is what we are tomorrow.

84

My wife is on a new diet. Coconuts and bananas. She hasn't lost weight, but can she climb a tree.

85

Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.

86

If all be true that I do think, There are five reasons we should drink: Good wine - a friend - or being dry - Or lest we should be by and by - Or any other reason why.

87

I simply cannot imagine why anyone would eat something slimy served in an ashtray.

88

I know a good woman who thinks that her son lost his life because he took to drinking water only.

89

LOVE: A word properly applied to our delight in particular kinds of food; sometimes metaphorically spoken of the favorite objects of all our appetites.

90

Women never dine alone. When they dine alone they don't dine.

91

The food of thy soul is light and space; feed it then on light and space. But the food of thy body is champagne and oysters; feed it then on champagne and oysters; and so shall it merit a joyful resurrection, if there is any to be.

92

It was quite a challenge to make people eat crab ice cream.

93

If any man gives you a wine you can't bear, don't say it is beastly... But don't say you like it. You are endangering your soul and the use of wine as well... Seek out some other wine good to your taste.

94

Nature will castigate those who don't masticate.

95

All that changing of plates and flapping of napkins while you wait 40 minutes for your food.

96

There is no way to understand the public reaction to the sight of a Freak smashing a coconut with a hammer on the hood of a white Cadillac in a Safeway parking lot unless you actually do it, and I tell you it's tense.

97

Philosophy! Empty thinking by ignorant conceited men who think they can digest without eating!

98

Food is a profound subject and one, incidentally, about which no writer lies.

99

Dried peas and beans, being rather on the dull side, much like dull people respond readily to the right contacts.

100

Things that really matter are the things that gold can't buy, so let's have another cup o' coffee and let's have another piece o' pie.

More Food quotes

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