I love combining wine learning with the arts. Enjoy these literary wine quotes which I have compiled over the years.

Give me a bowl of wine.
In this I bury all unkindness. Cassius.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) in Julius Caesar

O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) in Othello the Moor of Venice

Give me a bowl of wine.
I have not that alacrity of spirit
Nor cheer of mind that I was wont to have.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) in The Tragedy of King Richard the Third

Good wine needs no bush.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Come, thou monarch of the vine, Plumpy Bacchus with pink eye.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

There’s none of these demure boys come to any proof; for thin drink doth so overcool their blood…that they fall into a kind of male green sickness; and when they marry they get wenches…If I had a thousand sons, the first human principle I would teach them should be, to forswear thin potations and addict themselves to sack.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) – about Sherry

Come, come, good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used; exclaim no more against it.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) in Othello

A man cannot make him laugh – but that’s no marvel; he drinks no wine.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) in Henry IV Part 2

I am falser than vows made in wine.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) in As You Like It: Act 3, Scene 5

Had I but died an hour before this chance
I had liv’d a blessed time; for, from this instant,
There’s nothing serious in mortality,
All is but toys; renown and grace is dead,
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) in Macbeth

The wine-cup is the little silver well,
Where truth, if truth there be, doth dwell.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

SHAKEY CONTEMPORIES

Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I’ll not look for wine.
Ben Jonson (1573-1637) in To Celia

Wine is the milk of Venus – Ben Jonson (1573-1637)

But that which most doth take my muse and me,

Is a pure cup of rich Canary wine,
Which is the mermaid’s now, but shall be mine.
Ben Jonson (1573-1637)

Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape,
Crushed the sweet poison of misused wine.
John Milton (1608-1674) in Comus

When night darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons of Belial, flown with insolence and wine – John Milton (1608-1674)

Wine, one sip of this will bathe the drooping spirits in delight beyond the bliss of dreams. Be wise and taste – John Milton (1608-1674)

MODERN WRITERS

Wine is bottled poetry – Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

White wine is like electricity. Red wine looks and tastes like a liquified beefsteak – James Joyce

Fan the flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship, and pass the rosy wine – Charles Dickens

There are no standards of taste in wine… Each man’s own taste is the standard, and a majority vote cannot decide for him or in any slightest degree affect the supremacy of his own standard.

Mark Twain

Too much of anything is bad, but too much Champagne is just right – Mark Twain

Wine is the most civilised thing in the world – Ernest Hemingway