Banquets Quotes - Page 2

• Did you come of age in those sweet summers of the early nineteen-sixties, when the airwaves were full of rock and roll's doo-wop promise of joy and the nation was full of J.F.K.'s eloquent promise of a New Frontier? I did. Life seemed to be laid out before us like a banquet; everything was for the taking, especially hearts.

  John Lahr

  Summer, Sweet, Heart

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• We Americans sit at the head of the banquet table, as we have done for a century. Our standard of living is luxurious by any measure.

  Deepak Chopra

  Done, Tables, Century

  "Why Globalism Is a Victory for You" by Deepak Chopra, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 18, 2012.

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• There is something wrong in a government where they who do the most have the least. There is something wrong when honesty wears a rag, and rascality a robe; when the loving, the tender, east a crust, while the infamous sit at banquets.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Honesty, Equality, Government

  Robert Green Ingersoll, Herman E. Kittredge (1909). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”

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• Go to your banquet then, but use delight
  So as to rise still with an appetite.

  Robert Herrick

  Use, Delight, Eating

  Robert Herrick (1869). “Hesperides: The Poems and Other Remains of Robert Herrick Now First Collected”, p.236

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• Perhaps the whole world is actually a banquet, to which every living thing is invited. First you come as guests: then eventually you're on the menu.

  David Suzuki

  World, Guests, Firsts

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• When your crowd of attendants so loudly applaud you, Pomponius, it is not you, but your banquet, that is eloquent.

  Martial

  Crowds, Eloquent, Eloquence

  Martial (1871). “The Epigrams of Martial”, p.283

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• The lives of most people are small tight pallid and sad, more to be mourned than their deaths. We starve at the banquet: We cannot see that there is a banquet because seeing the banquet requires that we see also ourselves sitting there starving-seeing ourselves clearly, even for a moment, is shattering. We are not dead but asleep, dreaming of ourselves.

  David Foster Wallace

  Dream, People, Sitting

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• Death is the king of this world: 'Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.

  George Eliot

  Life, Death, Kings

  George Eliot (1839). “Theophrastus Such, Jubal and other poems and The Spanish gypsy”, p.401

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• The sanity of the average banquet speaker lasts about two and a half months; at the end of that time he begins to mutter to himself, and calls out in his sleep.

  James Thurber

  Sleep, Average, Two

  James Thurber (1990). “Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and Writers, Humor and Himself”

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• Why dost thou not retire like a guest sated with the banquet of life, and with calm mind embrace, thou fool, a rest that knows no care?

  Lucretius

  Calm Mind, Care, Guests

  Titus Lucretius Carus (1947). “Titi Lucreti Cari De Rerum Natura Libri Sex: Prolegomena. Text. Translation”

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• Discourse, the sweeter banquet of the mind.

  Homer

  Mind, Discourse

  Homer, John Selby WATSON (1858). “The Odyssey of Homer; Translated by Alexander Pope. To which are Added the Battle of the Frogs and Mice by Parnell; and the Hymns by Chapman and Others. With Observations and Brief Notes by the Rev. J. S. Watson ... Illustrated with the Entire Series of Flaxman's Designs”, p.251

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• The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet.

  Mark Twain

  Laughter, Political, United States

  Mark Twain (2016). “Mark Twain in Eruption (Abridged, Annotated)”, p.58, BIG BYTE BOOKS

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• NECTAR, n. A drink served at banquets of the Olympian deities. The secret of its preparation is lost, but the modern Kentuckians believe that they come pretty near to a knowledge of its chief ingredient.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Believe, Preparation, Secret

  Ambrose Bierce (2012). “The Devil's Dictionary”, p.84, Courier Corporation

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• My dinners have never interfered with my business. They have been my recreation. . . A public banquet, if eaten with thought and care, is no more of a strain than a dinner at home.

  Chauncey Depew

  Home, Dinner, Care

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• Without the book business it would be difficult or impossible for true books to find their true readers and without that solitary (and potentially subversive) alone with a book the whole razzmatazz of prizes, banquets, television spectaculars, bestseller lists, even literature courses, editors and authors, are all worthless. Unless a book finds lovers among those solitary readers, it will not live . . . or live for long.

  John McGahern

  Book, Editors, Long

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• I fell into a sound sleep and dreamed that I was at a banquet back in Gion, talking with an elderly man who was explaining to me that his wife, whom he'd cared for deeply, wasn't really dead because the pleasure of their time together lived on inside him.

  Arthur Golden

  Sleep, Men, Elderly

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• Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe, love is a banquet on which we feed.

  Patti Smith

  Romantic, Love Is, Fire

  "Because the Night" (song) (1978). Coauthored with Bruce Springsteen.

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• If you don't participate, you're just taking up oxygen. (Bunny) Life is a banquet. Approach it with hunger. (Chuck)

  Deb Caletti

  Oxygen, Bunnies, Life Is

  Deb Caletti (2013). “Love Is All You Need: Wild Roses; The Nature of Jade”, p.86, Simon and Schuster

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• At banquets surfeit not, but fill; partake, and retire; and eat not again till you crave.

  Herman Melville

  Eating, Retiring, Crave

  Herman Melville (1855). “Mardi: And a Voyage Thither”, p.298

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• The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night.

  John Piper

  Night, Apples, Pie

  John Piper (2013). “A Hunger for God”, p.17, SPCK

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• The simplicity of winter has a deep moral. The return of Nature, after such a career of splendor and prodigality, to habits so simple and austere, is not lost either upon the head or the heart. It is the philosopher coming back from the banquet and the wine to a cup of water and a crust of bread.

  John Burroughs

  Heart, Wine, Winter

  John Burroughs (2012). “In the Catskills Selections from the Writings of John Burroughs”, p.15, tredition

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• It gladdens me to know that Baldr’s father [Odin] makes ready the benches for a banquet. Soon we shall be drinking ale from the curved horns. The champion who comes into Odin’s dwelling [Valhalla] does not lament his death. I shall not enter his hall with words of fear upon my lips. The Æsir will welcome me. Death comes without lamenting… Eager am I to depart. The Dísir summon me home, those whom Odin sends for me [Valkyries] from the halls of the Lord of Hosts. Gladly shall I drink ale in the high-seat with the Æsir. The days of my life are ended. I laugh as I die.

  Ragnar Lodbrok

  Father, Drinking, Home

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• Hunger in the midnight, hunger at the stroke of noon
  Hunger in the banquet, hunger in the bride and groom
  Hunger on the TV, hunger on the printed page
  And there's a God-sized hunger underneath the questions of the age

  Jackson Browne

  Age, Midnight, Noon

  Song: Looking East, Album: Looking East, 1996

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• Here is a book to savor?flavorful and nutritious, it sticks to the mind's ribs. The 'New Agrarianism' is about Americans re-learning how to care for the land, and Eric Freyfogle has thoughtfully assembled a banquet of eloquent voices.

  Tony Hiss

  Book, Land, Voice

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• A continual feast of commendation is only to be obtained by merit or by wealth: many are therefore obliged to content themselves with single morsels, and recompense the infrequency of their enjoyment by excess and riot, whenever fortune sets the banquet before them.

  Samuel Johnson

  Excess, Merit, Wealth

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”, p.329

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