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FOOD QUOTES SECTION

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Coffee Quotes

“A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.”
Paul Erdos (1913-1996)
 

“The morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about it which the cheering influence of the afternoon or evening cup of tea cannot be expected to reproduce.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., 'Over the Teacups'
 

“Coffee is a beverage that puts one to sleep when not drank.”
Alphonse Allais, French writer, humorist (1854-1905)
 

“Coffee isn't my cup of tea.”
Samuel Goldwyn, American film producer. (1879-1974)

“I never drink coffee at lunch. I find it keeps me awake for the afternoon.”
Ronald Reagan, Actor, 40th U.S. President. (1911-2004)
 

“There isn't enough coffee in the United States to keep everyone awake during a Presidential election campaign.”
Donald W. Brown
 

“Coffee it is best to buy by the bag, as it improves by keeping. Let it hang in the bag, in a dry place, and it loses its rank smell and taste.”
Catharine E. Beecher
'Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt-Book' (1846)
 

“The coffee was boiling over a charcoal fire, and large slices of bread and butter were piled one upon the other like deals in a lumber yard.”
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
 

"It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects, and the amount of money that goes out of the country as a consequence. Everybody is using coffee; this must be prevented. His Majesty was brought up on beer, and so were both his ancestors and officers. Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer, and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be relied upon to endure hardships in case of another war."
Frederick the Great of Prussia (1777)
Scientific American, June 1998.
 

"America lacks the decadence required for a truly great coffeehouse. But we're acquiring it, I think."
‘Great Food Almanac’ (excerpted from FoodArts)
 

"This Satan's drink is so delicious that it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it. We shall cheat Satan by baptizing it."
unknown 16th century
 

“I put instant coffee in a microwave and almost went back in time.”
Steven Wright
 

“Of all the unchristian beverages that ever passed my lips, Turkish coffee is the worst. The cup is small, it is smeared with grounds; the coffee is black, thick, unsavory of smell, and execrable in taste. The bottom of the cup has a muddy sediment in it half an inch deep. This goes down your throat, and portions of it lodge by the way, and produce a tickling aggravation that keeps you barking and coughing for an hour.”
Mark Twain (1835-1910) ‘The Innocents Abroad’ (1869)
 

"Liqueurs were not lacking; but the coffee especially deserves mention. It was as clear as crystal, aromatic and wonderfully hot; but, above all, it was not handed around in those wretched vessels called cups on the left banks of the Seine, but in beautiful and capacious bowls, into which the thick lips of the reverend fathers plunged, engulfing the refreshing beverage with a noise that would have done honor to sperm-whales before a storm."
The Physiology of Taste, Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826)
 

"Without my morning coffee I'm just like a dried up piece of roast goat."
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) ‘The Coffee Cantata’
 

"Soup must be eaten boiling hot and coffee drunk piping hot."
Grimod de La Reynière
 

"Good coffee should be black like the devil, hot like hell, and sweet like a kiss."
Hungarian saying
 

"Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love."
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand (1754-1838)
Speaking of the perfect cup of coffee.
 

"Coffee has two virtues: it is wet and warm."
Dutch saying
 

"Brewing espresso...unlike other methods of brewing coffee...IS rocket science..."
Kevin Knox and Julie Sheldon Huffaker
‘Coffee Basics: A Quick and Easy Guide’
 

"If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; if this is tea, please bring me some coffee."
Abraham Lincoln
 

"A cup of coffee - real coffee - home-browned, home ground, home made, that comes to you dark as a hazel-eye, but changes to a golden bronze as you temper it with cream that never cheated, but was real cream from its birth, thick, tenderly yellow, perfectly sweet, neither lumpy nor frothing on the Java: such a cup of coffee is a match for twenty blue devils and will exorcise them all."
Henry Ward Beecher, 'Eyes and Ears'
 

"Making coffee has become the great compromise of the decade. It's the only thing "real" men do that doesn't seem to threaten their masculinity. To women, it's on the same domestic entry level as putting the spring back into the toilet-tissue holder or taking a chicken out of the freezer to thaw."
Erma Bombeck
 

“You can tell when you have crossed the frontier into Germany because of the badness of the coffee.”
Edward VII (1841-1910)
 

“Moderately drunk, coffee removes vapours from the brain, occasioned by fumes of wine, or other strong liquors; eases pains in the head, prevents sour belchings, and provokes appetite.”
England's Happiness Improved (1699)
 

“A certain Liquor which they call Coffee...which will soon intoxicate the brain.”
G. W. Parry (1601)
 

“Coffee: Induces wit. Good only if it comes through Havre. After a big dinner party it is taken standing up. Take it without sugar -- very swank: gives the impression you have lived in the East.”
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
 

“As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move...similes arise, the paper is covered. Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle.”
Honoré de Balzac (1799-1859)
 

“It is true, says Liebeg, that thousands have lived without a knowledge of tea and coffee; and daily experience teaches us that, under certain circumstances, they may be dispensed with without disadvantage to the merely animal functions, but it is an error, certainly, to conclude from this that they may be altogether dispensed with in reference to their effects; and It is a question whether, if we had no tea and no coffee, the popular instinct would not seek for and discover the means of replacing them.”
Isabella Beeton (1861)
 

“It is the duty of all papas and mammas to forbid their children to drink coffee, unless they wish to have little dried-up machines, stunted and old at the age of twenty....] once saw a man in London, in Leicester Square, who had been crippled by immoderate indulgence in coffee; he was no longer in any pain, having grown accustomed to his condition, and had cut himself down to five or six cups a day.”
Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826)
 

“Coffee, though a useful medicine, if drunk constantly will at length induce a decay of health , and hectic fever.”
Jesse Torrey, ‘The Moral Instructor’ (1879)
 

“The best Maxim I know in this life is, to drink your Coffee when you can, and when you cannot, to be easy without it. While you continue to be splenetic, count upon it I will always preach. Thus much I sympathize with you that I am not cheerful enough to write, for I believe Coffee once a week is necessary to that.”
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
 

“Suave molecules of Mocha stir up your blood, without causing excess heat; the organ of thought receives from it a feeling of sympathy; work becomes easier and you will sit down without distress to your principal repast which will restore your body and afford you a calm, delicious night.”
Tallyrand (1754-1839)
 

“Physicians say that coffee without cream is more wholesome, particularly for persons of weak digestion. There seems to be some element in the coffee which combined with the milk, forms a leathery coating on the stomach, and impairs digestion.”
The Buckeye Cookbook (1883)
 

“The morning cup of Café Noir is an integral part of the life of a Creole household. The Creoles hold as a physiological fact that this custom contributes to longevity, and point, day after day, to examples of old men and women of fourscore, and over, who attest to the powerful aid they have received through life from a good, fragrant cup of coffee in the early morning.”
The Picayune Creole Cook Book (1901)
 

“Coffee leads men to trifle away their time, scald their chops, and spend their money, all for a little base, black, thick, nasty, bitter, stinking nauseous puddle water.”
‘The Women's Petition Against Coffee’ (1674)
 

“In a word, coffee is the drunkard's settle-brain, the fool's pastime, who admires it for being the production of Asia, and is ravished with delight when he hears the berries grow in the deserts of Arabia, but would not give a farthing for a hogshead of it, if it were to be had on Hampstead Heath or Banstead-Downs.”
Thomas Tryon (1634-1703)
‘The Good Hous-Wife Made a Doctor’ (1692)
 

“Coffee as drunk in England, debilitates the stomach, and produces a slight nausea ... it is usually made from bad Coffee, served out tepid and muddy, and drowned in a deluge of water.”
William Kitchiner (1775-1827)
 

“The smell of coffee cooking was a reason for growing up, because children were never allowed to have it and nothing haunted the nostrils all the way out to the barn as did the aroma of boiling coffee.”
Edna Lewis, author of 'The Taste of Country Cooking'
 

“Do you know how helpless you feel if you have a full cup of coffee in your hand and you start to sneeze?”
Jean Kerr (Mary, Mary)
 

“Coffee in England is just toasted milk.”
Christopher Fry
 

“No coffee can be good in the mouth that does not first send a sweet offering of odor to the nostrils.”
Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)
 

“Never drink black coffee at lunch; it will keep you awake in the afternoon.”
Jilly Cooper (1937-)
 

“Why do they always put mud into coffee on board steamers?   Why does the tea generally taste of boiled boots?”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)