SPECIFICALLY GIN OR MARTINI QUOTES!
“I don’t get cast as the guy who steps off a yacht in a white linen suite with a Martini”.
Martin Freeman (aka Bilbo Baggins)
“If you told me to write a love song tonight, I’d have a lot of trouble. But if you tell me to write a love song about a girl with a red dress who goes into a bar and is on her fifth martini and is falling off her chair, that’s a lot easier, and it makes me free to say anything I want.“
Stephen Sondheim
A priest is sent to Alaska. A bishop goes up to visit one year later. The bishop asks, “How do you like it up here”? The priest says, “If it wasn’t for my Rosary, and 2 martinis a day, I’d be lost. Bishop, would you like a martini?” “Yes.” “Rosary, get the bishop a martini!“
Henny Youngman
“I should like to elbow aside the established pieties and raise my martini glass in salute to the mortal arts of pleasure.“
Bob Shacochis
“I bought a piano once because I had the dream of playing ‘As Time Goes By’ as some girl’s leaning on it drinking a martini. Great image. But none of it worked out. I can’t even play Chopsticks. But I’ve got a nice piano at my house!“
George Clooney
“A dry martini,’ he said. ‘One. In a deep champagne goblet.’ … Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel. Got it?“
Ian Fleming
“Have you seen the bologna that has the olives in it? Who’s that for? ‘I like my bologna like a martini. With an olive.’ ‘I’ll have the bologna sandwich – dirty.’ ”
Jim Gaffigan
“I had to give up martinis – I enjoyed them too much.”
Brett Somers
“If Plato is a fine red wine, then Aristotle is a dry martini.”
Eric Stoltz
“You can no more keep a Martini in the refrigerator than you can keep a kiss there.“
Bernard DeVoto
“I don’t get cast as the guy who steps off a yacht in a white linen suite with a Martini”.
Martin Freeman (aka Bilbo Baggins)
“I should learn to crochet something I’ll actually use … like a martini.”
Maxine (John Wagner)
“I believe in red meat. I often said: ‘red meat and gin’.”
Julia Child when asked to explain her longevity.
“I only take a drink on two occasions: when I’m thirsty and when I’m not.”\
Brendon Behan
“Nothing like a martini to put me in the mood… for another martini.”
Maxine (John Wagner)
“There is no sugar in a martini; no egg whites, no black and white rums, no shaved almonds, no fruit juice, no chocolate, and no spices…. It is a clear, clean, cold, pure, honest drink …”
Donald G. Smith, Wall Street Journal
“My doctor said eat more fruits and vegetables. An extra strawberry in my daiquiri and olive in my martini should do the trick”
Maxine (John Wagner)
Sinatra: “Let me fix you a Martini that’s pure magic.”
Martin: “It may not make life’s problems disappear, but it’ll certainly reduce their size.”
“I am prepared to believe that a dry Martini slightly impairs the palate, but think what it does for the soul.”
Alec Waugh
“Shaken, not stirred.”
James Bond
“Martinis are the only American invention as perfect as a sonnet.”
H. L. Mencken
“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”
Humphrey Bogart, Casablanca
“See, in mixing the important thing is the rhythm. Always have a rhythm in your shaking. Now a Manhattan, you shake to fox-trot time, a Bronx to two-step time. But a Martini, you always shake to waltz time.”
Nick Charles, The Thin Man
“Happiness is a dry martini and a good woman … or a bad woman.”
George Burns
“One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.”
James Thurber
I’d like a dry martini, Mr. Quoc, a very dry martini. A very dry, arid, barren, desiccated, veritable dust-bowl of a martini. I want a martin that could be declared a disaster area. Mix me just such a martini
Hawkeye Pierce.
“I never go jogging, it makes me spill my martini.”
George Burns
I’m not talking a cup of cheap gin splashed over an ice cube. I’m talking satin, fire and ice; Fred Astaire in a glass; surgical cleanliness, insight, comfort; redemption and absolution. I’m talking MARTINI
Anonymous
“Happiness is…finding two olives in your Martini when you’re hungry.”
Johnny Carson
“A man must defend his home, his wife, his children, and his martini.”
Jackie Gleason
“If it wasn’t for the olives in his martinis he’d starve to death.”
Milton Berle
“I must get out of these wet clothes and into a dry Martini…”
Mae West, Clark Gable, Robert Benchley, Charles Woolcott, Billy Wilder,
Charles Butterworth, or Alexander Woolcott ???
(This quote has been attributed to all of the above at one time or another.)
“A perfect martini should be made by filling a glass with gin then waving it in the general direction of Italy.”
Noël Coward
“The proper union of gin and vermouth is a great and sudden glory; it is one of the happiest marriages on earth, and one of the shortest lived.”
Bernard DeVoto
“I would like to observe the vermouth from across the room while I drink my martini.”
Sir Winston Churchill
“He knows just how I like my martini – full of alcohol.”
Homer Simpson
“When I have one martini, I feel bigger, wiser, taller. When I have the second, I feel superlative. When I have more, there’s no holding me.”
William Faulkner
“I never should have switched from Scotch to Martinis.”
Humphrey Bogart last words
“They say that a martini is like a woman’s breast. One ain’t enough and three is too many.”
Gayle, the Cocktail Waitress, “Parallax View”
“The three martini lunch is the epitome of American efficiency. Where else can you get an earful, a bellyful and a snootful at the same time?”
Gerald R Ford
“I feel sorry for people who don’t drink. When they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day.”
Frank Sinatra & Gerald R. Ford
“Let us candidly admit that there are shameful blemishes on the American past, of which the worst by far is rum. Nevertheless, we have improved man’s lot and enriched his civilization with rye, bourbon, and the Martini cocktail. In all history has any other nation done so much?”
Bernard De Voto (1897-1955)
“Zen Martini: A martini with no vermouth at all. And no gin, either.”
P.J. O’Rourke
“There is something about a martini, Ere the dining and dancing begin, And to tell you the truth, It is not the vermouth- I think that perhaps it’s the gin.”
Ogden Nash
“Bright was the light of my last martini on my moral horizon”
Norman Mailer
“All the charming and beautiful things, from the Song of Songs, to bouillabaisse, and from the nine Beethoven symphonies to the Martini cocktail, have been given to humanity by men who, when the hour came, turned from tap water to something with color in it, and more in it than mere oxygen and hydrogen.“
H. L. Mencken
“I’ve tried Buddhism, Scientology, Numerology, Transcendental Meditation, Qabbala, t’ai chi, feng shui and Deepak Chopra but I find straight gin works best.”
Phyllis Diller
“… all my life I’ve been terrible at remembering people’s names. I once introduced a friend of mine as Martini. Her name was actually Olive.”
Tallulah Bankhead
“A well-made Martini or Gibson, correctly chilled and nicely served, has been more often my true friend than any two-legged creature.”
M. F. K. Fisher
“This is an excellent martini—sort of tastes like it isn’t there at all, just a cold cloud.”
Herman Wouk
“For each glass, liberally large, the basic ingredients begin with ice cubes in a shaker and three or four drops of Angostura bitters on the ice cubes. Add several twisted lemon peels to the shaker, then a bottle-top of dry vermouth, a bottle-top of Scotch, and multiply the resultant liquid content by five with gin, preferably Bombay Sapphire. Add more gin if you think it is too bland… I have been told, but have no personal proof that it is true, that three of these taken in the course of an evening make it possible to fly from New York to Paris without an airplane.”
Isaac Stern
“The only time I ever enjoyed ironing was the day I accidentally got gin in the steam iron.”
Phyllis Diller
“I’ve never tasted anything so cool and clean … They make me feel civilized,”
Hemingway in “A Farewell to Arms”
“the elixir of quietude”
E.B. White
“The gin and tonic has saved more Englishmen’s lives, and minds, than all the doctors in the Empire.”
Winston Churchill
“Personally, I believe a rocking hammock, a good cigar, and a tall gin-and-tonic is the way to save the planet.”
P. J. O’Rourke
Is your favorite Martini or Gin quote not in the list?
Please let me know and I’ll add it.
THE WISDOM OF W.C. FIELDS
“Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.”
“If I had to live my life over, I’d live over a saloon.”
“A man’s got to believe in something. I believe I’ll have another drink.”
“I don’t drink anymore, on the other hand I don’t drink any less either.”
“I exercise strong self-control. I never drink anything stronger than gin before breakfast.”
“Twas a woman who drove me to drink, and I never had the courtesy to thank her for it.”
“…more people are driven insane through religious hysteria than by drinking alcohol.”
Now don’t say you can’t swear off drinking; it’s easy. I’ve done it a thousand times.
How well I remember my first encounter with The Devil’s Brew. I happened to stumble across a case of bourbon — and went right on stumbling for several days thereafter.
Back in my rummy days, I would tremble and shake for hours upon arising. It was the only exercise I got.
Thou shalt not kill anything less than a fifth.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house unless they have a well-stocked bar.
Somebody’s been putting pineapple juice in my pineapple juice!
Charlie McCarthy: “Say, Mr. Fields, I read in the paper where you consumed two quarts of liquor a day. What would your father think about that?” WC: “He’d think I was a sissy.”
I don’t believe in dining on an empty stomach.
Say anything that you like about me except that I drink water.
Of course, now I touch nothing stronger than buttermilk: 90-proof buttermilk.
Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
I never drank anything stronger than beer before I was twelve.
I seldom took a drink on the set before 9 a.m.
(Fields gave this rationale for not drinking water:) “Fish f**k in it.”
(Fields, who never got falling-down drunk, explained why:) “When you woo a wet goddess, there’s no use falling at her feet.”
Fields’ retort from his dressing room after a director had shouted, “Camera reloading!” – “Fields reloading!”
(After a Universal executive wondered aloud if Fields drank all the time, the enraged comedian retorted:) “I certainly do not drink all the time. I have to sleep you know.”
I was in love with a beautiful blonde once. She drove me to drink; that’s the one thing I’m indebted to her for.
“I take inordinate pride in my nose. Indeed, I have treatment done on it every day” (At this point, Fields lifts a glass.) “My daily treatment.”
My illness is due to my doctor’s insistence that I drink milk, a whitish fluid they force down helpless babies.
I like to keep a bottle of stimulant handy in case I see a snake, which I also keep handy.
Sleep…the most beautiful experience in life–except drink.
Christmas at my house is always at least six or seven times more pleasant than anywhere else. We start drinking early. While everyone else is seeing only one Santa Claus, we’ll be seeing six or seven.”
Is your favorite W.C. Fields quote not in the list?
Please let me know and I’ll add it.
OTHER GENERAL COCKTAIL OR ALCOHOL HUMOROUS QUOTES
“I drink to make other people more interesting.”
Ernest Hemingway
“It’s just that I’d rather die of drink than of thirst.”
Ian Fleming, Thunderball
“Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you won’t be invited to cocktail parties.”
Oscar Wilde
“The only things that the United States has given to the world are skyscrapers, jazz & cocktails.” Federico Garcia Lorca
“Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough”
Mark Twain
“The water was not fit to drink. To make it palatable, we had to add whiskey. By diligent effort, I learned to like it.”
Winston Churchill
“Happiness is having a rare steak, a bottle of whisky, and a dog to eat the rare steak.”
Johnny Carson
“I feel sorry for people who don’t drink. When they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day.”
Frank Sinatra & Gerald R. Ford
“I like my whisky old and my women young.”
Errol Flynn
“I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.”
Sir Winston Churchill
“Tell me what brad of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals.”
Abraham Lincoln
“90% I’ll spend on good times, women, and Irish Whiskey. The other 10% I’ll probably waste.”
Tug McGraw
“When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.”
Henny Youngman
“Do not allow children to mix drinks. It is unseemly and they use too much vermouth.”
Steve Allen
“Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors … and miss.”
Robert A. Heinlein
“If you drink, don’t drive. Don’t even putt.”
Dean Martin
“I love to sing, and I love to drink scotch. Most people would rather hear me drink scotch.”
George Burns
“I went to the hospital for a blood transfusion and they gave me a wine list.”
Dean Martin
“Whisky is liquid sunshine.”
George Bernard Shaw
“Champagne is the one thing that gives me zest when I feel tired.”
Brigitte Bardot
“I drink too much. The last time I gave a urine sample it had an olive in it.”
Rodney Dangerfield
“It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can’t remember if it’s the thirteenth or the fourteenth.”
George Burns
“Health – what my friends are always drinking to before the fall down.”
Phyllis Diller.
“My grandmother is over eighty and still doesn’t need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle.”
Henny Youngman
“I saw a notice that said ‘Drink Canada Dry’ and I’ve just started.”
Brendan Behan
“First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald
“In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is Freedom, in water there is bacteria.”
Benjamin Franklin
“Alcohol may be man’s worst enemy, but the bible says love your enemy.”
Frank Sinatra
“After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.”
Oscar Wilde
“Alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, may produce all the effects of drunkenness.”
Oscar Wilde
“Scotch whiskey is made from barley and the morning dew on angel’s nipples.”
Warren Ellis
“it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance”
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
“I always take Scotch whiskey at night as a preventive of toothache. I have never had the toothache; and what is more, I never intend to have it.”
Mark Twain
“When a man who is drinking neat gin starts talking about his mother he is past all argument.”
C.S. Forester, The African Queen
“Not everyone who drinks is a poet. Some of us drink because we’re not poets.”
Dudley Moore
“Come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness.”
William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor
“Whisky, I find, helps clarity of thought. And reduces pain. It has the additional virtue of making you drunk or, if taken in sufficient quantity, very drunk.”
Julian Barnes
Is your favorite cocktail quote not in the list?
Please let me know and I’ll add it.
A few little humerous inserts from this side of the pond. ..lol
‘Always remember that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.”
Winston Churchill
I never should have switched from Scotch to Martinis.”
Humphrey Bogart last words
The three martini lunch is the epitome of American efficiency. Where else can you get an earful, a bellyful and a snootful at the same time?”
I feel sorry for people who don’t drink. When they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day.”
Frank SinatraGerald Ford
Thank you. I’ve added those to the list. And added a few more of my own. 🙂
Pingback: Random Quote of the Day | The Guide to the Perfect Martini
Pingback: Random Martini Quote of the Day | The Guide to the Perfect Martini
I like your post and your blog is very nice and simple. I will promote it to my facebook group. I think most of my member group will like your site. thanks
Great post!