Scrumptious food quotes from history’s famous foodies.
“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.”
― Charles M. Schulz
“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien
“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
― Virginia Woolf
“There is no love sincerer than the love of food.”
― George Bernard Shaw
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”
― Hippocrates
“We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.”
― David Mamet
“What I say is that, if a man really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow.”
― A.A. Milne
“Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.”
― Mark Twain
“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
― Michael Pollan
“The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.”
“You can’t just eat good food. You’ve got to talk about it too. And you’ve got to talk about it to somebody who understands that kind of food.”
― Kurt Vonnegut
“I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.”
― Oscar Wilde
“The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.”
― Calvin Trillin
“Anything is good if it’s made of chocolate.”
― Jo Brand
“I don’t know what it is about food your mother makes for you, especially when it’s something that anyone can make – pancakes, meat loaf, tuna salad – but it carries a certain taste of memory.”
― Mitch Albom
“If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.”
― Abraham Lincoln
“You can tell a lot about a fellow’s character by his way of eating jellybeans.”
― Ronald Reagan
“If you’re afraid of butter, use cream.”
“Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.”
― G. K. Chesterton
“The odds of going to the store for a loaf of bread and coming out with only a loaf of bread are three billion to one.”
― Erma Bombeck
“How can a nation be called great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?”
“All sorrows are less with bread.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
“I have made a lot of mistakes falling in love, and regretted most of them, but never the potatoes that went with them.”
― Nora Ephron
“Cooking is at once child’s play and adult joy. And cooking done with care is an act of love.”
― Craig Claiborne
“Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good.”
― Alice May Brock
“The first time you see something that you have never seen before, you almost always know right away if you should eat it or run away from it.”
― Scott Adams
“It’s so beautifully arranged on the plate – you know someone’s fingers have been all over it.”
“He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.”
― Jonathan Swift
“Life itself is the proper binge.”
“The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of the human race than the discovery of a star.”
― Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
“A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness.”
― Elsa Schiaparelli
“Always serve too much hot fudge sauce on hot fudge sundaes. It makes people overjoyed, and puts them in your debt.”
― Judith Olney
“The shared meal elevates eating from a mechanical process of fueling the body to a ritual of family and community, from the mere animal biology to an act of culture.”
― Michael Pollan
“No man is lonely while eating spaghetti: it requires so much attention.”
― Christopher Morley
“I’ve long believed that good food, good eating, is all about risk. Whether we’re talking about unpasteurized Stilton, raw oysters or working for organized crime ‘associates,’ food, for me, has always been an adventure”
― Anthony Bourdain
“New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.”
― Mark Twain
“Eating is an agricultural act.”
― Wendell Berry
“Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.”
― Samuel Butler
“I think preparing food and feeding people brings nourishment not only to our bodies but to our spirits. Feeding people is a way of loving them, in the same way that feeding ourselves is a way of honoring our own createdness and fragility.”
― Shauna Niequist
“Fools make feasts and wise men eat them.”
― Benjamin Franklin
“Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.”
― Ambrose Bierce
“Someone who eats pancakes and jam can’t be so awfully dangerous. You can talk to him.”
― Tove Jansson
“When chickens get to live like chickens, they’ll taste like chickens, too.”
― Michael Pollan
“Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.”
― Sophia Loren
“The preparation of good food is merely another expression of art, one of the joys of civilized living.”
― Dione Lucas
“Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.”
― M.F.K. Fisher
“Good food is very often, even most often, simple food.”
― Anthony Bourdain