Meat

Organized alphabetically by author.

• Interiores plerique frumenta non serunt, sed lacte et carne vivunt pellibusque sunt vestiti.
  • Of the inlanders most do not sow corn, but live on milk and flesh and clothe themselves in skins.
  • Julius Caesar, Gallic War, V, 14, as translated by Henry John Edwards (1917)

• O for a plump fat leg of Mutton,
  Veale, Lambe, Capon, Pigge, and Conney,
  None is happy but a Glutton,
  None an Asse but who wants money.
  • John Lyly, Alexander and Campaspe, 1:2

• There is boiled meat, and roast meat, and meat from the coal,
  You may chop it, and tear it, and gnash it for fun,
  An hairy goat’s-skin contains the whole.
  • Euripides, Cyclops (tr. P. B. Shelley)
  • Posthumous Poems (1824)

• At even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread; and ye shall know that I am the LORD your God
  • Bible, Exodus 16:12.

• Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh
  • Bible, Proverbs 23:20.

• Some hae meat and canna eat,
  And some would eat that want it;
  But we hae meat, and we can eat,
  And sae the Lord be thankit.
  • Robert Burns, The Selkirk Grace (1793) attributed.

• God sends meat, and the Devil sends cooks.
  • Thomas Deloney, quoted in A. Borde Dietary of Health xi. (1542).

• I have always eaten animal flesh with a somewhat guilty conscience.
  • Albert Einstein, to Max Kariel, 3 August 1953. Einstein Archive 60-058. Quoted in The Ultimate Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice (Princeton University Press, 2011), p. 454. ISBN 978-0-691-13817-6

• Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine.
  • Robert Herrick, "Ode for Ben Jonson", Hesperides (1648).

• I didn't squawk about the steak, dear. I merely said I didn't see that old horse that used to be tethered outside here.
  • W. C. Fields, to a waitress, in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941).

• War without fire is like sausages without mustard.
  • Juvénal des Ursins or Henry V

• Not eating meat is a decision, eating meat is an instinct.
  • Denis Leary, No Cure For Cancer (1993).

• I wouldn't touch a hot dog unless you put a condom on it! You realize that the job of a hot dog is to use parts of the animal that the Chinese can't figure out how to make into a belt?
  • Bill Maher, Bill Maher: I'm Swiss (2005), timecode 1:11:10.

• Meat is murder.
  • Original author unknown; slogan used by certain animal rights groups, reported in Maureen Duffy, Men and Beasts: An Animal Rights Handbook‎ (1984), p. 142, as having been painted on the wall of a Surrey, England butcher shop by ALF activists on April 4, 1983.

• We used to have a lot of fun. We never had any problems. We always ate. The fact that we didn't have steak? Who had steak?
  • Jesse Owens in Tony Gentry, Jesse Owens, Champion Athlete (1990).

• If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat!
  • Teacher, Pink Floyd The Wall (1982).

• It is meat, drink, and cloth to us.
  • François Rabelais, Works, Book v, Chapter vii.

• No, I won't condemn anyone for putting ketchup on a hot dog. This is the land of the free. And if someone wants to put ketchup on a hot dog and actually eat the awful thing, that is their right.
  It is also their right to put mayo or chocolate syrup or toenail clippings or cat hair on a hot dog.
  Sure, it would be disgusting and perverted, and they would be shaming themselves and their loved ones. But under our system of government, it is their right to be barbarians.
  • Mike Royko (1995-11-21). "Even A U.S. Senator Can Somehow Botch A Recipe For Success". Chicago Tribune. ISSN 1085-6706. 

• A king is a thing men have made for their own sakes, for quietness' sake. Just as in a family one man is appointed to buy the meat.
  • John Selden, Of a King.

• O! beware, my lord, of jealousy;
  It is the green-ey'd monster which doth mock
  The meat it feeds on.
  • William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act. III., scene iii.

• It may indeed be doubted, whether butcher's meat is any where a necessary of life. Grain and other vegetables, with the help of milk, cheese, and butter, or oil, where butter is not to be had, it is known from experience, can, without any butcher's meat, afford the most plentiful, the most wholesome, the most nourishing, and the most invigorating diet.
  • Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776), book V, ch. II, part II, Appendix to Articles I and II.

• I cannot eat but little meat,
  My stomach is not good;
  But sure I think that I can drink
  With him that wears a hood.
  • William Stevenson, Poem Jolly Good Ale and Old.

• A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.
  • Leo Tolstoy, Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence (1886).

• God sendeth and giveth both mouth and the meat.
  • Thomas Tusser, A Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (1557).

• This dish of meat is too good for any but anglers, or very honest men.
  • Izaak Walton, The Complete Angler, Part i, Chapter 8.

• In all the round world of Utopia there is no meat. There used to be. But now we cannot stand the thought of slaughter-houses. And, in a population that is all educated, and at about the same level of physical refinement, it is practically impossible to find anyone who will hew a dead ox or pig. We never settled the hygienic question of meat-eating at all. This other aspect decided us. I can still remember, as a boy, the rejoicings over the closing of the last slaughter-house.
  • H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (1905), ch. 9, sect. 5.

• Animals
• Cows
• Pigs
• Sheep
• Flesh
• Vegetarianism
• Veganism