“We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine.”

“But then the wine came, one glass and then a second glass. And somewhere during that second drink, the switch was flipped. The wine gave me a melting feeling, a warm light sensation in my head, and I felt like safety itself had arrived in that glass, poured out from the bottle and allowed to spill out between us.”

“If at first you don't succeed, pour yourself a glass of wine and have another go.”

“On the occasions where we do have to participate, to do more than nothing, it is desirable to have a glass of wine to soften all the everything.”

“When a great figure passed through a city of Burgundy or Champagne, the corporation of the city turned out to deliver an address and present him with four silver goblets in which there were four wines. On the first goblet he read the inscription “monkey wine,” on the second “lion wine,” on the third “sheep wine,” on the fourth “swine wine.” These four inscriptions expressed the four descending degrees of drunkenness: the first, which enlivens; the second, which irritates; the third, which stupefies; finally the last, which brutalizes.”

“A man snatches the first kiss, pleads for the second, demands the third, takes the fourth, accepts the fifth - and endures all the rest.”