Favorite quotes?

[mbanu]

Here are a few of mine. :)

"Almost anyone can learn to mix drinks accurately and fast. That is the least of it. I have always believed success behind the bar comes from an ability to understand the man or woman I am serving, to enter into his joys or woes, make him feel the need of me as a person rather than a servant. And yet - and this is so important - to keep my place. It is sometimes hard to draw the line. There are men I have addressed as 'Mister' for ten years, and probably will for another ten years, whom I know better than their best friends." -- Jimmie Charters

"We don't drink cocktails on our knees and there's no point in making them that way; so no ritual, be off-hand, be casual and decently fast. An appearance of habituated ease will get you off to a running start." -- Bernard DeVoto

"Originality is the key to success. Therefore, always try to work accordingly; make a change in the old system, if you see it needs improvement; introduce it to your guests instead of being taught by them what to do. A bartender ought to be leading and not to be led." -- William Schmidt

What are some of yours? :)

Edited July 20, 2005 by mbanu (log)

[eje]

Baudelaire was an asshole and probably a fascist; but, aside from more or less the whole of Lowry's "Under the Volcano" the following three paragraphs have always been my pithy favorites regarding drunken-ness.

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"Be always drunken. Nothing else matters: that is the only

question. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time

weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, be

drunken continually.

Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as

you will. But be drunken.

And if sometimes, on the stairs of a palace, or on the green

side of a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you

should awaken and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped

away from you, ask of the wind, or of the wave, or of the star,

or of the bird, or of the clock, or whatever flies, or sighs, or

rocks, or sings, or speaks, ask what hour it is; and the wind,

wave, star, bird, clock, will answer you: 'It is the hour to be

drunken! Be drunken, if you would not be martyred slaves of

Time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry, or with

virtue, as you will.'"

[maggiethecat]

"I like to have a Martini

Two at the very most -

After three I'm under the table,

After four I'm under my host."

-Dorothy Parker

[Pan]

The Baudelaire quote is beautiful, and I don't think someone who died in 1867 could have been a Fascist.

[KatieLoeb]

The Baudelaire quote is beautiful, and I don't think someone who died in 1867 could have been a Fascist.

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That's valid.

[Joe Blowe]

Whissskeeey... all you want...

-- Randolph Duke to Billy Ray Valentine, Trading Places

[limewine]

Here's one I'm fond of--the original source is unknown (at least to me), but I cribbed it from Paul Harrington:

"If, when you say 'whiskey,' you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman's step on a frosty morning; if you mean the drink that enables a man to magnify his joy and his happiness and to forget, if only for a little while, life's great tragedies and the heartbreaks and sorrows; if you mean that drink ... then certainly I am in favor of it."

[fatdeko]

In Nevada for a time, the lawyer, the editor, the banker, the chief desperado, the chief gambler and the saloon-keeper, occupied the same level in society, and it was the highest.

The cheapest and easiest way to become an influential man and be looked up to by the community at large, was to stand behind a bar, wear a cluster-diamond pin, and sell whisky.

I am not sure but that the saloon-keeper held a shade higher rank than any other member of society. His opinion had weight. It was his privilege to say how the elections should go. No great movement could succeed without the countenance and direction of the saloon-keepers. It was a high favor when the chief saloon-keeper consented to serve in the legislature or the board of aldermen.

Youthful ambition hardly aspired so much to the honors of the Law, or the Army and Navy as to the dignity of proprietorship in a saloon.

To be a saloon-keeper and kill a man was to be illustrious.

MarkTwain's "Roughing It" Chpt 48, 1872

myers

[Splificator]

"THE DRUNKEN SAXONS

...Malmesbury says that excessive drinking was the common vice of all ranks of people. We know that King Hardicanute died in a revel, and King Edmund in a drunken brawl at Puckle Church. Thus did mankind reel through the dark ages quarreling, drinking, hunting, hawking, singing Psalms, wearing breeches, grinding in mills, eating hot bread, rocked in cradles, buried in coffins, weak, suffering, sublime. Well might King Alfred exclaim 'Maker of all creatures, help now thy miserable mankind.'"

--Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1883

[bacchant036]

"if you don't remember it, it didn't happen"

if only life could be so simple.....................

[Mabelline]

DRINK LIKE A FISH

EAT LIKE A HOG

IF A MAN WERE FORTUNATE

HE'D COME BACK AS A DOG

Sorry. Actually, my favorite is an old toast that I cannot find to save my life. It was basically," blessings on my friends, and may God inflict my ill-wishers with a limp. That way, I'll see them coming."

[limewine]

Here's another, that I just remembered thanks to Netflix (it's from To Catch a Thief, one of Hitchcock's Cary Grant pictures):

Bourbon’s the only drink. You can take all that champagne stuff and pour it down the English Channel. Well, why wait 80 years before you can drink the stuff? Great vineyards, huge barrels aging forever, poor little old monks running around testing it, just so some woman in Tulsa, Oklahoma can say it tickles her nose.

[Lan4Dawg]

one of my favorites is another pairing of Hitchcock and Grant, "North by Northwest". Roger Thornhill (the character portrayed by Cary Grant) is being told of the spy agency that has made his life miserable for the past few days and is asked to continue the role responds, "I am afraid I can not carry on with this little charade of yours Professor. I have a business, two ex-wives, and several bar-tenders depending on me." (or that is as close as I can come to the exact quote w/ my feeble remembering machine)

I must pat my self on the back for one line. A few years back we were dining in Nashville at City Grill of all places and the waiter was bringing my martini to the table. About the time he was in ear shot I said, "Oh look! here comes my best friend in the world.....and he has a waiter attached." The poor waiter started laughing so hard he spilled most of my drink and had to return to the bar to replace it.

[enrevanche]

Actually, my favorite is an old toast that I cannot find to save my life. It was basically," blessings on my friends, and may God inflict my ill-wishers with a limp. That way, I'll see them coming."

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It's an old Irish toast.

"May those who love us, love us.

And for those who don't love us,

May God turn their hearts.

And if he cannot turn their hearts,

May he turn their ankles,

So we may know them by their limping."