Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Tobacco
It’s all one thing—both tend into one scope—
To live upon Tobacco and on Hope,
The one’s but smoke, the other is but wind.
Sir Robert Aytoun—Sonnet on Tobacco.
The Elizabethan age might be better named the beginning of the smoking era.
Barrie—My Lady Nicotine. Ch. XIV.
Little tube of mighty pow’r,
Charmer of an idle hour,
Object of my warm desire.
Isaac Hawkins Browne—A Pipe of Tobacco. Parody in imitation of A. Phillips.
The man who smokes, thinks like a sage and acts like a Samaritan!
Bulwer-Lytton—Night and Morning. Bk. I. Ch. VI.
He who doth not smoke hath either known no great griefs, or refuseth himself the softest consolation, next to that which comes from heaven.
Bulwer-Lytton—What Will He Do With It? Bk. I. Ch. VI.
Woman in this scale, the weed in that, Jupiter, hang out thy balance, and weigh them both; and if thou give the preference to woman, all I can say is, the next time Juno ruffles thee—O Jupiter, try the weed.
Bulwer-Lytton—What Will He Do With It? Bk. I. Ch. VI.
Tobacco, divine, rare superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all panaceas, potable gold and philosopher’s stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases.
Burton—Anatomy of Melancholy.
After he had administer’d a dose
Of snuff mundungus to his nose;
And powder’d th’ inside of his skull,
Instead of th’ outward jobbernol,
He shook it with a scornful look
On th’ adversary, and thus he spoke.
Butler—Hudibras. Pt. III. Canto II. L. 1,005.
Sublime tobacco! which from east to west,
Cheers the tar’s labour or the Turkman’s rest;
Which on the Moslem’s ottoman divides
His hours, and rivals opium and his brides;
Magnificent in Stamboul, but less grand,
Though not less loved, in Wapping or the Strand:
Divine in hookas, glorious in a pipe,
When tipp’d with amber, mellow, rich, and ripe;
Like other charmers wooing the caress,
More dazzlingly when daring in full dress;
Yet thy true lovers more admire by far
Thy naked beauties—Give me a cigar!
Byron—The Island. Canto II. St. 19.
Contented I sit with my pint and my pipe,
Puffing sorrow and care far away,
And surely the brow of grief nothing can wipe,
Like smoking and moist’ning our clay;
*****
For tho’ at my simile many may joke,
Man is but a pipe—and his life but smoke.
Content and a Pipe. Old ballad.
The pipe, with solemn interposing puff,
Makes half a sentence at a time enough;
The dozing sages drop the drowsy strain,
Then pause, and puff—and speak, and pause again.
Cowper—Conversation. L. 245.
Pernicious weed! whose scent the fair annoys
Unfriendly to society’s chief joys,
Thy worst effect is banishing for hours
The sex whose presence civilizes ours.
Cowper—Conversation. L. 251.
The Indian weed, withered quite,
Green at noon, cut down at night,
Shows thy decay.
All flesh is hay.
Thus think, then drink tobacco.
****
And when the smoke ascends on high,
Then thou behold’st vanity
Of worldly stuff,
Gone at a puff.
Thus think, then drink tobacco.
Attributed to Erskine—Gospel Sonnets. Meditations on Tobacco. Pt. I. Printed in a Collection Two Broadsides against Tobacco. (1672). Erskine claimed only Pt. II. Pt. I. is from an old poem.
Tobacco, an outlandish weed,
Doth in the land strange wonders breed;
It taints the breath, the blood it dries,
It burns the head, it blinds the eyes;
It dries the lungs, scourgeth the lights,
It ’numbs the soul, it dulls the sprites;
It brings a man into a maze,
And makes him sit for others’ gaze;
It mars a man, it mars a purse,
A lean one fat, a fat one worse;
A white man black, a black man white,
A night a day, a day a night;
It turns the brain like cat in pan,
And makes a Jack a gentleman.
Fairholt—J. Payne Collier’s MS.
With pipe and book at close of day,
Oh, what is sweeter? mortal say.
It matters not what book on knee,
Old Isaak or the Odyssey,
It matters not meerschaum or clay.
Richard Le Gallienne. In Volumes in Folio. See Cope’s Smoker’s Garland.
Tobacco is a traveler,
Come from the Indies hither;
It passed sea and land
Ere it came to my hand,
And ’scaped the wind and weather.
Tobacco’s a musician.
And in a pipe delighteth;
It descends in a close,
Through the organ of the nose,
With a relish that inviteth.
Barten Holiday—Texnotamia. (1630).
Some sigh for this and that;
My wishes don’t go far;
The world may wag at will,
So I have my cigar.
Hood—The Cigar.
Neither do thou lust after that tawney weed tobacco.
Ben Jonson—Bartholomew Fair. Act II. Sc. 6.
Ods me I marle what pleasure or felicity they have in taking their roguish tobacco. It is good for nothing but to choke a man, and fill him full of smoke and embers.
Ben Jonson—Every Man in His Humour. Act III. Sc. 2.
And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.
Kipling—The Betrothed.
For Maggie has written a letter to give me my choice between
The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick O’Teen.
And I have been servant of Love for barely a twelvemonth clear,
But I have been priest of Partagas a matter of seven year.
And the gloom of my bachelor days is flecked with the cherry light
Of stumps that I burned to friendship, and pleasure and work and fight.
Kipling—The Betrothed.
For I hate, yet love thee, so,
That, whichever thing I show,
The plain truth will seem to be
A constrained hyperbole,
And the passion to proceed
More from a mistress than a weed.
Lamb—A Farewell to Tobacco.
For thy sake, tobacco, I
Would do anything but die.
Lamb—A Farewell to Tobacco.
Nay, rather,
Plant divine, of rarest virtue;
Blisters on the tongue would hurt you.
Lamb—A Farewell to Tobacco.
Thou in such a cloud dost bind us,
That our worst foes cannot find us,
And ill fortune, that would thwart us,
Shoots at rovers, shooting at us;
While each man, through thy height’ning steam,
Does like a smoking Etna seem.
Lamb—A Farewell to Tobacco.
Thou through such a mist dost show us,
That our best friends do not know us.
Lamb—A Farewell to Tobacco.
Tobac! dont mon âme est ravie,
Lorsque je te vois te perdre en l’air,
Aussi promptement q’un éclair,
Je vois l’image de ma vie.
Tobacco, charmer of my mind,
When like the meteor’s transient gleam,
Thy substance gone to air I find,
I think, alas! my life’s the same.
Misson—Memoirs of his travels over England. (1697). Trans. by Ozell.
I would I were a cigarette
Between my Lady’s lithe sad lips,
Where Death like Love, divinely set.
With exquisite sighs and sips,
Feeds and is fed.
****
For life is Love and Love is death,
It was my hap, a well-a-day!
To burn my little hour away.
H. A. Page—Vers de Société. Madonna Mia.
Old man, God bless you, does your pipe taste sweetly?
A beauty, by my soul!
A ruddy flower-pot, rimmed with gold so neatly,
What ask you for the bowl?
O sir, that bowl for worlds I would not part with;
A brave man gave it me,
Who won it—now what think you—of a bashaw?
At Belgrade’s victory.
Gottfried Konrad Pfeffel—The Tobacco Pipe.
Sir Plume, of amber snuff-box justly vain,
And the nice conduct of a clouded cane.
Pope—Rape of the Lock. Canto IV. L. 122.
Just where the breath of life his nostrils drew,
A charge of snuff the wily virgin threw;
The gnomes direct, to every atom just,
The pungent grains of titillating dust,
Sudden, with starting tears each eye o’erflows,
And the high dome re-echoes to his nose.
Pope—Rape of the Lock. Canto V. L. 81.
Tobacco’s but an Indian weed,
Grows green at morn, cut down at eve;
It shows our decay, we are but clay.
Think on this when you smoak Tobacco.
As quoted by Scott—Rob Roy. First printed in Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy. Vol. I. P. 315. (Ed. 1707).
And ’twixt his finger and his thumb he held
A pouncet-box, which ever and anon
He gave his nose and took ’t away again;
Who therefor angry, when it next came there,
Took it in snuff.
Henry IV. Pt. I. Act I. Sc. 3. L. 37.
Divine Tobacco.
Spenser—Faerie Queene. Bk. III. Canto V. St. 32.
Yes, social friend, I love thee well,
In learned doctors’ spite;
Thy clouds all other clouds dispel
And lap me in delight.
Charles Sprague—To My Cigar.
It is not for nothing that this “ignoble tabagie,” as Michelet calls it, spreads over all the world. Michelet rails against it because it renders you happily apart from thought or work;… Whatever keeps a man in the front garden, whatever checks wandering fancy and all inordinate ambition, whatever makes for lounging and contentment, makes just so surely for domestic happiness.
Stevenson—Virginibus Puerisque. I.
Am I not—a smoker and a brother?
A Veteran of Smokedom—The Smoker’s Guide. Ch. IV. Last line.
Look at me—follow me—smell me! The “stunning” cigar I am smoking is one of a sample intended for the Captain General of Cuba, and the King of Spain, and positively cost a shilling! Oh!***I have some dearer at home. Yes, the expense is frightful, but——it! who can smoke the monstrous rubbish of the shops?
A Veteran of Smokedom—The Smoker’s Guide. Ch. IV.
To smoke a cigar through a mouthpiece is equivalent to kissing a lady through a respirator.
A Veteran of Smokedom—The Smoker’s Guide. Ch. V.
Dick Stoype
Was a dear friend and lover of the pipe.
He used to say one pipe of Wishart’s best
Gave life a zest.
To him ’twas meat and drink and physic,
To see the friendly vapor
Curl round his midnight taper,
And the black fume
Clothe all the room,
In clouds as dark as sciences metaphysic.
Charles Westmacott—Points of Misery.
A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can you want?
Oscar Wilde—Picture of Dorian Gray. Ch. IV.
Lastly, the ashes left behind,
May daily show to move the mind,
That to ashes and dust return we must:
Then think, and drink tobacco.
G. W. Probably George Withers, in MS. of 17th. Cent. owned by J. Payne Collier. Printed in My Little Book of Songs and Ballads from Ancient Musick Books MS. (1851). “Drink tobacco” means drinking in, or smoking.