Taverns Quotes

• There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.

  Samuel Johnson

  Happiness, Beer, Men

  In James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 2, p. 452 (21 March 1776)

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• A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.

  Jonathan Swift

  Drinking, Bottles, Literature

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• A tavern chair is the throne of human felicity.

  Samuel Johnson

  Thrones, Chairs, Felicity

  Samuel Johnson (1977). “Selected Poetry and Prose”, p.13, Univ of California Press

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• Many a man who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened a tavern for his friends.

  Norman Douglas

  Friendship, Home, Men

  South Wind (1917) ch. 20

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• I am a drunkard from another kind of tavern. I dance to a silent tune. I am the symphony of stars.

  Rumi

  Stars, Symphony, Tunes

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• People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy.

  Mikhail Bakunin

  People, Religion, Atheism

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• There is no such joy in the tavern as upon the road thereto.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Joy

  Cormac McCarthy (2015). “Blood Meridian: Picador Classic”, p.43, Pan Macmillan

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• Souls of poets dead and gone,
  What Elysium have ye known,
  Happy field or mossy cavern,
  Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
  Have ye tippled drink more fine
  Than mine host's Canary wine?

  John Keats

  Wine, Mermaid, Soul

  'Lines on the Mermaid Tavern' (1820)

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• He who has not been at a tavern knows not what a paradise it is. O holy tavern! O miraculous tavern! - holy, because no carking cares are there, nor weariness, nor pain; and miraculous, because of the spits, which themselves turn round and round!

  Pietro Aretino

  Pain, Care, Paradise

  Quoted by Longfellow in Hyperion, Book III, Chapter II. "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations", p. 394-395, 1922.

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• They sell courage of a sort in the taverns. And another sort, though not for sale, a man can find in the confessional. Try the alehouses and the churches, Hugh. In either a man can be quiet and think.

  Ellis Peters

  Men, Thinking, Reflection

  Ellis Peters (2014). “The Heretic's Apprentice”, p.129, Head of Zeus

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• What I'm fighting for now in my work... for an expression relevant to all manner of blacks, poems I could take into a tavern, into the street, into the halls of a housing project.

  Gwendolyn Brooks

  Fighting, Expression, Projects

  Gwendolyn Brooks, Gloria Jean Wade Gayles (2003). “Conversations with Gwendolyn Brooks”, p.107, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Now musing o'er the changing scene Farmers behind the tavern screen Collect; with elbows idly press'd On hob, reclines the corner's guest, Reading the news to mark again The bankrupt lists or price of grain. Puffing the while his red-tipt pipe He dreams o'er troubles nearly ripe, Yet, winter's leisure to regale, Hopes better times, and sips his ale.

  John Clare

  Dream, Reading, Winter

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• I started out mopping floors, waiting tables, and tending bar at my dad's tavern. I put myself through school working odd jobs and night shifts. I poured my heart and soul into a small business. And when I saw how out-of-touch Washington had become with the core values of this great nation, I put my name forward and ran for office.

  John Boehner

  Jobs, Dad, Father

  "Friends say the real John Boehner nothing like his 'insider' image" by Padmananda Rama and Brianna Keilar, www.cnn.com. November 7, 2010.

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• Our Revolution was born and raised in taverns.

  Barbara Holland

  Revolution, Born, Raised

  Barbara Holland (2008). “The Joy of Drinking”, p.63, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• Storytelling in general is a communal act. Throughout human history, people would gather around, whether by the fire or at a tavern, and tell stories. One person would chime in, then another, maybe someone would repeat a story they heard already but with a different spin. It's a collective process.

  Joseph Gordon-Levitt

  Fire, People, Different

  Interview with Radheyan Simonpillai, www.askmen.com. September 30, 2011.

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• In the taverns all was amiable and easy, but the coffeehouses were cauldrons of edgy malcontents.

  Barbara Holland

  Easy, Cauldrons, Malcontent

  Barbara Holland (2008). “The Joy of Drinking”, p.34, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• The tavern will compare favorably with the church.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Church, Compare

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.243, Simon and Schuster

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• And may we find when ended is the page, Death but a tavern on our pilgrimage.

  John Masefield

  May, Pages, Pilgrimage

  John Masefield (1922). “The Poems and Plays of John Masefield: Poems”

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• The tavern will compare favorably with the church. The church is the place where prayers and sermons are delivered, but the tavernis where they are to take effect, and if the former are good, the latter cannot be bad.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Prayer, Religion, Church

  Henry David Thoreau (1868). “Excursions”, p.108

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• I’d heard he had started a fistfight in one of the seedier local taverns because someone had insisted on saying the word “utilize” instead of “use.

  Patrick Rothfuss

  Use, Heard, Locals

  Patrick Rothfuss (2011). “The Wise Man's Fear: The Kingkiller Chronicle: Day Two”, p.34, Penguin

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• I show up in my writing room at approximately 10 A.M. every morning without fail. Sometimes my muse sees fit to join me there and sometimes she doesn't, but she always knows where I'll be. She doesn't need to go hunting in the taverns or on the beach or drag the boulevard looking for me.

  Tom Robbins

  Beach, Morning, Writing

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• Hitler appeared, a man with limited intellectual abilities and unfit for any useful work, bursting with envy and bitterness against all whom circumstance and nature had favored over him....In his desperate ambition for power he discovered that his speeches, confused and pervaded with hate as they were, received wild acclaim by those whose situation and orientation resembled his own. He picked up this human flotsam on the streets and in the taverns and organized them around himself. This is the way he launched his political career.

  Albert Einstein

  Hate, Confused, Ambition

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• To understand Hitler's power as a speaker, we must consider that he was not just the bellowing tavern demagogue we always picture, but in fact constructed his speeches very deliberately.

  Volker Ullrich

  Speech, Facts, Speakers

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• When the hour is nigh me,
  Let me in a tavern die,
  With a tankard by me.

  Archpoet

  Drinking, Hours, Let Me

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• Mama and Papa are more to blame (for delinquency) than the kids; parents should stay home and raise their children and spend less time in taverns.

  Harry S. Truman

  Children, Home, Kids

  Harry S. Truman, Ralph Keyes (1995). “Wit and wisdom of Harry Truman”, Harpercollins

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