Ninety-nine Beer Quotes On The Wall

"Let's all work to get people to drink more good beer, so if someone walks into your office and says he drinks Corona, don't immediately call him a dickhead."
-- Michael Jackson

"Beer, if drank with moderation, softens the temper, cheers the spirit and promotes health."
-- Thomas Jefferson

"Man's way to God is with beer in hand."
-- Koffyar Tribal Wisdom, Nigeria

"For drink, there was beer which was very strong when not mingled with water, but was agreeable to those who were used to it. They drank this with a reed, out of the vessel that held the beer, upon which they saw the barley swim."
-- Greek historian Xenophon (435-354 B.C)

"Two of the more dubious achievements of American culture are white bread and light beer."
-- Bruce Aidells and Denis Kelly (Real Beer and Good Eats)

"We're wanted men, we'll strike again, but first let's have a beer."
-- Jimmy Buffett

"Come tarry here and welcome be and guaff the foaming brew; a friendly smile a word a song will cheer the heart of you."
-- Altes beer sign (1939)

"Up to the age of forty, eating is benificial; after forty, drinking."
-- The Talmud

"Mike Hammer drinks beer because he can't spell cognac."
-- Mickey Spillane

"It is disgusting to note the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects and the amount of money that goes out of the country in consequence. Everybody is using coffee. If possible, this must be prevented. My people must drink beer."
-- Frederick the Great

"Marriage is based on the theory that when a man discovers a brand of beer exactly to his taste, he should at once throw up his job and go to work in a brewery."
-- George Jean Nathan

"Beer drinkers have been duped by mass marketing into the belief that it makes sense to drink only one brand of beer. In truth, brand loyalty in beer makes no more sense than 'vegetable loyalty' in food. Can you imagine it? "No thanks, I'll pass on the mashed potatoes, carrots, bread and roast beef. Me, I'm strictly a broccoli man.""
-- Stephen Beaumont (What I've Learned About Beer - January 2002)

"Doth it not show viley in me to desire small beer?"
-- William Shakespeare (Henry IV)

"I can tell you that the whole micro thing drives (Anheuser-Busch VP-marketing) August Busch IV absolutely nuts. It infuriates him that these upstart companies are coming in and implying that his family's product is lousy."
-- Beer Industry Executive

"It is not "just beer", it is a noble and ancient beverage which, like wine, food and television advertising, can be extraordinarily good or unmercifully bad."
-- Stephen Beaumont (World of Beer)

"Beer isn't just beer -- beer needs a home."
-- Die Welt, German newspaper, 1976

"That's right, lovers of 'music-you-can't-dance-to' have taken a shine to beer. As one particularly insensitive rooter remarked, 'There's nothing like laying your head back on the satin head rest, almost tapping your foot, and knocking down a couple of brews.'"
-- Lynne O'Connor (on the Austin, Texas Symphony's First Annual Beer Tasting and Benefit in Southwest Brewing News)

"Why, we'll smoke and drink our beer. For I like a drop of good beer, I does. I'ze fond of good beer, I is. Let gentlemen fine sit down to their wine. But we'll all of us here stick to our beer."
-- Old Somersetshire English song

"Three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make it felony to drink small beer."
-- William Shakespeare (King Henry VI Part II)

"I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety."
-- William Shakespeare (King Henry V)

"Thou reprobate mortal! What, dost thou not know whither, after your death, all drunkards may go? Must go when we're dead? Why, sir, you may swear. We shall go, one and all, where we find the best beer."
-- Verse by a Minister, 1880

"What's made Milwaukee famous, made a loser out of me."
-- Jerry Lee Lewis

"Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the world."
-- Kaiser Wilhelm

"Real ale fans are just like train-spotters, only drunk."
-- Christopher Howse

"In heaven there is no beer. That's why we drink ours here."
-- Frankie Yankovic, Polka King

"There's nothing as heartening as the sight of an empty pub in the morning, the shelves full and everything spick and span before the barbarian hordes come in. Them that drinks bottles spoil the look of the shelves but draught is a different story - you never see the barrel going down."
-- Patrick McGinley

"For this my heart is set, when the hour is nigh me, let me in the tavern die, with a tankard by me, while the angels looking down joyously sing o'er me. Deus sit propitius huic potatori."
-- Anonymous, 12th Century

"You could make an argument for Portland being the beer capital of the world...When I come into the airport, I'd like to see a sign that says, 'Welcome to the Beer Capital'."
-- Michael Jackson

"You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are."
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch

"American Beer is a lot like making love in a row boat. It's f**king close to water!"
-- Eric Idle (Monty Python)

"I liked the taste of beer, its live, white lather, its brass-bright depths, the sudden world through the wet-brown walls of the glass, the tilted rush to the lips and the slow swallowing down to the lapping belly, the salt on the tongue, the foam at the corners."
-- Dylan Thomas

"Would you really call yourself a Christian if charity cost half as much as beer?"
-- Jimmy Buffett

"Show me a nation whose national beverage is beer, and I'll show you an advanced toilet technology."
-- Mark Hawkins (New York Times, 1977)

"Praise not the day until evening has come; a woman until she is burnt; a sword until it is tried; a maiden until she is married; ice until it has been crossed; beer until it has been drunk."
-- Viking Proverb

"A statesman is an easy man, he tells his lies by rote. A journalist invents his lies, and rams them down your throat. So stay at home and drink your beer and let the neighbors vote."
-- William Butler Yeats

"When you own a Micro-brewery, you always have fluidity."
-- Ken Rich

"There's a-nothin' so lonesome, morbid or drear, Than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer."
-- Slim Dusty - Australian recording artist (Pub with No Beer)

"Beer brewers shall sell no beer to citizens, unless it be three weeks old. To the foreigner they may knowingly sell younger beer."
-- German Beer Law, 1466

"Beer made from corn, rice, or wheat is about as much beer as butter made from beef scraping...or sugar made from old rags."
-- The Milwaukee News, 1878

"And ale does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man."
-- A.E. Houseman, 1859-1936

"For when the lepers she nursed implored her for beer, and there was none to be had, she changed the water which was ready for a bath into an excellent beer, by the sheer strength of her blessing, and dealt it out to the thirsty in plenty."
-- Vita Sanctae Brigidae (Life of St. Bridget 439-521 A.D.)

"It was estimated that some five thousand people were trampled to death in the stampede for free beer at the coronation of Czar Nicholas II in Moscow in May 1896."
-- Guinness Book Of World Records

"Show me a nation whose national beverage is beer, and I'll show you an advanced toilet technology. "
-- Mark Hawkins in the New York Times, 1977

"Bitten by the brewer's horse."
-- Old English slang for being drunk

"I pray thee let me and my fellow have a haire of the dog that bit us last night."
-- John Heywood (Be Merry Friends)

"With hekt (beer) the Ka (spirit) is kept in balance with with the liver and blood... Hekt is the liquid of happy blood and body."
-- Ancient Egyptian Physician

"There are more old drunks than there are old doctors."
-- Old saying quoted by Alan Eames, September, 1994 (All About Beer)

"Beer is the only virtual reality I need."
-- Leroy Lockhorn

"The best place to drink beer is at home. Or on a river bank, if the fish don't bother you."
-- American folk saying

"When that guy turned water into wine, he obviously wasn't thinking of us Duff drinkers."
-- Homer Simpson

"I have never found that Bass's India draught pale ale, taken in small quantities at meals disagrees... The drink is laxative, while the contrary is to be said of other ales and porters."
-- Roger Protz (The Great British Beer Book)

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
-- Benjamin Franklin

"The awe with which man has regarded this natural process finds spontaneous expression in the fact the animating essence produced by fermentation is identified in language with the essence of human life, both being designated by the term 'spirit.'"
-- J.P. Arnold (1933)

"From man's sweat and God's love, beer came into the world."
-- Saint Arnold of Metz, The patron Saint of Brewers

"They told me this story while we were waiting for an up-train. I supplied the beer. The tale was cheap at a gallon and a half."
-- Kipling (The Three Musketeers)

"Boughs have their fruit and blossom at all times of the year; rivers are running over with red beer and brown beer."
-- William Butler Yeats (The Happy Townland)

"The public is a guy who wants his shot and a glass of beer."
-- Al Capone

"The easiest way to spot a wanker in a pub is to look around and find who's drinking a Corona with a slice of lemon in the neck."
-- Warwick Franks

"Do not cease to drink beer, to eat, to intoxicate thyself, to make love, and celebrate the good days."
-- Ancient Egypt

"Wine is on every lip: beer in every stomach. Those same writers who prate about priceless wines, drink beer."
-- Anonymous, 1934

"The day before election day they were still bowing their necks to the Anti-Saloon League, but two days later they were howling for beer and by the end of the year they were also howling for whisky, gin and rum."
-- H. L. Mencken (on the U.S. congress and the election of 1932)

"Our lager, which art in barrels, hallowed be thy drink. Thy will be drunk, (I will be drunk), at home as it is in the pub. Give us this day our foamy head, and forgive us our spillages, as we forgive those who spill against us. And lead us not to incarceration, but deliver us from hangovers. For thine is the beer, the bitter, the lager. Forever and ever, barmen."
-- Anonymous

"Leinenkugels makes better beer now that Miller bought them. It will license insecure people to like craft beers."
-- Michael Jackson (on megabreweries involvement in craft beers)

"Blessings of your heart, you brew good ale."
-- William Shakespeare (Two Gentlemen of Verona)

"Wisselton, wasselton, who lives here? We've come to taste your Christmas beer."
-- English Christmas verse

"Real women don't drink light beer."
-- New Glarus Brewing Co. bumper sticker

"A glass of bitter or pale ale, taken with the principal meal of the day, does more good and less harm than any medicine the physician can prescibe."
-- Dr. S. Carpenter, England, 1750

"I like lager beer, but the beer does not like me. Fifteen years ago I could drink fifty glasses of beer in one day and never get intoxicated and have no headache the next morning. But it seems the beer is changed. If I drink eight glasses of beer of an evening my head is ready to burst the next day....A friend of mine told me he drank beer freely at a picnic, and he was paralyzed for three days....There is no other drink I like better than lager beer, but the way they make it is a humbug. In former times they had a brewer to make beer, but now they have a chemist."
-- Letter to the Editor, New York Sun, 1882

"Beer glorious beer. Sing the praises of the first man to take barley and ferment the results now known as beer. Tip a cold pilsner to that unknown brewer. Give thanks to the beer god. I know not what course others may take but as for me... give me another beer!"
-- John Walentik

"The government will fall that raises the price of beer."
-- Czech saying

"It's better to have beer in hand than gas in tank."
-- Anonymous

"Some people love it so much it's like a cult, but it still has to be considered a specialty beer because Orval's limited production. It's not Miller Lite -- thank God."
-- Charles Finkel, of Merchant Du Vin (importers of Orval)

"Hermit hoar, in solemn cell, wearing out life's evening gray. Smite thy bosom, sage, and tell, what is bliss, and which the way? Thus I spoke, and speaking sighed, scarce repressed a starting tear. When the smiling sage reply'd, come, my lad, and drink some beer."
-- Samuel Johnson

"To suckle fools and chronicle small beer."
-- William Shakespeare, (Othello)

"Whoever makes a poor beer is to be transferred to the dung hill."
-- Edict, City of Dantzig, 11th Century

"Beer is the center of everything. Everything revolves around Beer. When you drink beer, everything revolves. Therefore, Beer is the center of everything."
-- University of Waterloo Engineers

"I wish you a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, with your pockets full of money, and your cellar full of beer."
-- Old English Carol

"There must be more beer, cheaper beer, better beer! People who do not drink beer do not realize that beer is as important to the working classes as bread. Men who find they cannot get beer tend to develop a taste for less innocent liqours. Good ale and good beer are drinks for the temperate men, and it must be confessed that England has bred a race of mighty fighting men on her national brew. Good beer is the basis of true temperance."
-- Daily Express, January 25, 1919

"They don't mind it; it's a regular holiday to them - all porter and skittles."
-- Charles Dickens (The Pickwick Papers)

"A beer in the hand is worth two in the case."
-- Walter Breidenstein

"Englishmen are like their own beer: Frothy on top, dregs on the bottom, the middle excellent."
-- Voltaire

"If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue."
-- Samuel Butler

"Cerevisia malorum. divina medicina (A little bit of beer is divine medicine.)"
-- Paracelsus - 16th century physician

"The toque is to keep your head warm in the winter and your beer cold in the summer."
-- Bob and Doug McKenzie

"Good beer needs no passport."
-- Anonymous

"Ale - not beer- in a pewter mug was comme il faut, the only thing for a gentlemen of letters, worthy of the name, to drink."
-- Guy de Maupassant (Twelve Men)

"Of beer, an enthusiast said that it could never be bad, but that some brands might be better than others."
-- A. A. Milne

"I think this would be a good time for a beer."
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt, upon signing the New Deal, paving the way for the repeal of Prohibition

"Here sleep in peace a Hampshire grenadier, who caught his death by drinking cold small beer; soldiers, take heed from his untimely fall, and when you're hot, drink strong, or not at all."
-- Epitaph on a soldier's grave

"No soldier can fight unless he is properly fed on beef and beer."
-- Duke of Marlbourough, 1650-1722

"He that buys land buys many stones. He that buys flesh buys many bones. He that buys eggs buys many shells. He that buys good ale buys nothing else."
-- John Ray (1627 - 1705)

"One of the few moments of happiness a man knows in Australia is that moment of meeting the eyes of another man over the tops of two beer glasses."
-- Anonymous

"Beer--it's not just for breakfast anymore."
-- Anonymous

"In your last installment of 'Spent Grains,' you boldly proclaimed that the Celis beers had outsold all other American beers in Belgium. This is a stretch for at least two reasons. First, there are virtually NO American beers in Belgium. I have seen Bud for $7.00 a can in specialty beer cafes, but you can imagine how overwhelmingly popular that was. Second, Celis is contract-brewed by the DeSmedt Brewery in Opwijk, Belgium. Now my hat is off to Pierre for riding back into town with his guns a-blazin', but you can't call a Belgian Wit brewed at a Belgian brewery under contract to a Belgian guy an American beer -- even if he does live in Texas!"
-- R.C. Snakepins, Austin, TX, in the Aug/Sept 1994 issue of The Celebrator

"It is not "just beer," it is a noble and ancient beverage which, like wine, food and television advertising, can be extraordinarily good or unmercifully bad."
-- Stephen Beaumont (World of Beer)

"I lived from beer of black wheat, and drank from beer of white wheat."
-- Inscription on Ancient Egyptian grave

"Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?"
-- William Shakespheare (Twelfth Night)

"There is an ancient Celtic axiom that says 'Good people drink good beer.' Which is true, then as now. Just look around you in any public barroom and you will quickly see: Bad people drink bad beer. Think about it."
-- Hunter S. Thompson

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