Dinner Quotes - Page 33

• I don't like to cook. I can make a TV dinner taste like radio.

  Phyllis Diller

  Radio, Taste, Tvs

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• Much depends upon when and where you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Faerie Queen for a stopgap, or a volume of Bishop Andrews's Sermons?

  Charles Lamb

  Queens, Book, Reading

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• What if thou be saint or sinner,
  Crooked gray-beard, straight beginner,--
  Empty paunch, or jolly dinner,
  When Death thee shall call.
  All like are rich or richer,
  King with crown, and cross-legged stitcher,
  When the grave hides all.

  Richard Watson Gilder

  Death, Kings, What If

  RICHARD WATSON GILDER (1885). “LYRICS AND OTHER POEMS,”

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• Cold soup is a very tricky thing and it is a rare hostess who can carry it off. More often than not the dinner guest is left with the impression that had he only come a little earlier he could have gotten it while it was still hot.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Food, Dinner Guests, Hot

  Fran Lebowitz (2011). “The Fran Lebowitz Reader”, p.125, Vintage

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• I got to thinking one day about all those women on the Titanic who passed up dessert at dinner that fateful night.

  Erma Bombeck

  Night, Thinking, One Day

  Erma Bombeck (2013). “Forever, Erma: Best-Loved Writing From America's Favorite Humorist”, p.340, Open Road Media

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• I have a theory that since everyone is always dieting, no one at a convention dinner ever eats the potatoes. Therefore, they go back to the kitchen uneaten. And the next night they reappear at another convention. Therefore, one should never eat the potatoes. Who knows? They may be six or seven years old.

  Lois Wyse

  Food, Night, Years

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• The motives and purposes of authors are not always so pure and high, as, in the enthusiasm of youth, we sometimes imagine. To many the trumpet of fame is nothing but a tin horn to call them home, like laborers from, the field, at dinner-time, and they think themselves lucky to get the dinner.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Home, Thinking, Enthusiasm

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (2012). “Kavanagh (Annotated Edition)”, p.46, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding; and those who are conscious of their inferiority have the modesty not to talk; when they have drunk wine, every man feels himself happy, and loses that modesty, and grows impudent and vociferous; but he is not improved; he is only not sensible of his defects.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wine, Men, Drunk

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1859). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Including a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”, p.64

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• If you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.

  Herman Melville

  World, Ifs

  Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.420

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• At dinner my man appeares.

  George Herbert

  Men

  George Herbert (1874). “The Complete Works of George Herbert: Prose”, p.316

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• Going through life without love is like going through a good dinner without an appetite -- everything seems so flat and tasteless.

  Helen Rowland

  Love Is, Appetite, Life Without Love

  Helen Rowland (1909). “Reflections of a Bachelor Girl”

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• Then from the Mint walks forth the man of rhyme,
  Happy to catch me, just at dinner-time.

  Alexander Pope

  Men, Poet, He Man

  Alexander Pope (1854). “The Poetical Works”, p.105

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• Food became, for dinner parties in the sixties, what abstract expressionism had been in the fifties.

  Nora Ephron

  Party, Abstract, Expressionism

  Nora Ephron (2011). “Wallflower at the Orgy”, p.7, Bantam

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• the illusion never really dissipates that you can lose twenty pounds in one night by cutting out dinner.

  Shirley MacLaine

  Cutting, Night, Twenties

  Shirley MacLaine (1987). “It's all in the playing”, Bantam

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• A typical Irish dinner would be: cream flavored with lobster, cream with bits of veal in it, green peas and cream, cream cheese, cream flavored with strawberries.

  Nancy Mitford

  Typical, Lobster, Would Be

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• I need an hour alone before dinner, with a drink, to go over what I've done that day. I can't do it late in the afternoon because I'm too close to it. Also, the drink helps. It removes me from the pages.

  Joan Didion

  Needs, Done, Afternoon

  "Joan Didion, The Art of Fiction No. 71". Interview with Linda Kuehl, www.theparisreview.org. 1978.

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• It is as easy for most of us to keep from stealing our dinners as it is to digest them, and there is quite as much voluntary morality involved in one process as the other.

  Jane Addams

  Poverty, Morality, Stealing

  Jane Addams (2016). “Democracy and Social Ethics”, p.10, Youcanprint

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• A Finnan haddock has a relish of a peculiar and delicate flavour, inimitable on any other coast than that of Aberdeenshire. Some of our Edinburgh philosophers tried to produce their equal in vain. I was one of a party at dinner where the philosophical haddocks were placed in competition with the genuine Finnan fish. These were served round without distinguishing whence they came; but only one gentleman out of twelve present espoused the cause of philosophy.

  Walter Scott

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Party

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• A man, doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at a creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation, or remote enquiries.

  Samuel Johnson

  Food, Men, Meditation

  'The Lives of the English Poets' (1779-81) 'Collins'

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• A soup so thick you could shake its hand and stroll with it before dinner.

  Robert Crawford

  Food, Hands, Cooking

  John Burnside, Robert Crawford, Kathleen Jamie (1996). “John Burnside, Robert Crawford, Kathleen Jamie”

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• Artichoke: That vegetable of which one has more at the finish than at the start of dinner.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Food, Vegetables, Cooking

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• Before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding.

  Samuel Johnson

  Food, Men, Understanding

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1866). “The Life of Samuel Johnson”, p.24

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• Don't hit the person across from you with bits of toast, And don't, when dinner is nearly through, say 'Who's the host' It isn't done.

  Cole Porter

  Food, Cooking, Done

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• Drink wine every day, at lunch and dinner, and the rest will take care of itself.

  Waverley Root

  Food, Wine, Lunch

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• Gazing at the typewriter in moments of desperation I console myself with three thoughts. Alcohol at six, dinner at eight, and to be immortal you've got to be dead.

  Gyles Brandreth

  Food, Eight, Typewriters

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