“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.”

“Why did Our Blessed Lord use bread and wine as the elements of this Memorial? First of all, because no two substances in nature better symbolize unity than bread and wine. As bread is made from a multiplicity of grains of wheat, and wine is made from a multiplicity of grapes, so the many who believe are one in Christ. Second, no two substances in nature have to suffer more to become what they are than bread and wine. Wheat has to pass through the rigors of winter, be ground beneath the Calvary of a mill, and then subjected to purging fire before it can become bread. Grapes in their turn must be subjected to the Gethsemane of a wine press and have their life crushed from them to become wine. Thus, do they symbolize the Passion and Sufferings of Christ, and the condition of Salvation, for Our Lord said unless we die to ourselves we cannot live in Him. A third reason is that there are no two substances in nature which have more traditionally nourished man than bread and wine. In bringing these elements to the altar, men are equivalently bringing themselves. When bread and wine are taken or consumed, they are changed into man's body and blood. But when He took bread and wine, He changed them into Himself.”

“You will always be the bread and the knife, not to mention the crystal goblet and—somehow—the wine.”

“Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust and old authors to read.”

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

“Norman Mailer said there were four stages in a marriage: first the affair then the marriage, then children and then finally the fourth stage, without which you cannot know a woman, the divorce.”