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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Feasting

The feast of reason and the flow of soul.

Pope.

  • The turnpike road to people’s hearts, I find,
  • Lies through their mouths, or I mistake mankind.
  • Peter Pindar.

  • Their various cares in one great point combine
  • The business of their lives, that is to dine.
  • Young.

    It is not the quantity of the meat, but the cheerfulness of the guests, which makes the feast; at the feast of the Centaurs they ate with one hand, and had their drawn swords in the other; where there is no peace, there can be no feast.

    Clarendon.

  • The latter end of a fray, and the beginning of a feast,
  • Fits a dull fighter, and a keen guest.
  • Shakespeare.

  • Blest be those feasts with simple plenty crown’d,
  • Where all the ruddy family around
  • Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail,
  • Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale.
  • Goldsmith.

  • But ’twas a public feast, and public day,
  • Quite full, right dull, guests hot, and dishes cold,
  • Great plenty, much formality, small cheer,
  • And everybody out of their own sphere.
  • Byron.

  • Of all appeals,—although
  • I grant the power of pathos, and of gold,
  • Of beauty, flattery, threats, a shilling,—no
  • Methods more sure at moments to take hold,
  • Of the best feelings of mankind, which grow
  • More tender, as we every day behold,
  • Than that all-softening, overpow’ring knell,
  • The tocsin of the soul—the Dinner Bell.
  • Byron.