Iain Gately > Quotes

“Eagerness in drinking is a practice injurious to the partaker. Do not haste to mischief, my friend. Your drink is not being taken from you. It is given you, and waits you.”
― Iain Gately, Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol

“If an Aztec and a Roman were transported to the twenty-first century the Aztec might be the less mystified. He would know why people were smoking.”
― Iain Gately, Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization

“Their compliments were almost universal, their warnings few, if dire. Wine was a force for good, a substance that enabled people to relax while simultaneously elevating their minds, inspiring drinkers to “laughter and wisdom and prudence and learning.”
― Iain Gately, Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol

“Juan de Grijalva, coincidentally the first European to smoke on continental American soil,”
― Iain Gately, Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization

“The retail price of tobacco, whatever its source, was very high – only the rich could afford such an infallible medicine.”
― Iain Gately, Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization

“It is ironic that a number of eminent Christians were charged with the care of the same plant whose consumption had been linked with the arch-fiend and enemy of their church.”
― Iain Gately, Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization

“Two of its members, Rodrigo de Jerez and the interpreter Luis de Torres, had even gone so far as to try the custom for themselves, thus becoming the first Europeans to smoke tobacco.”
― Iain Gately, Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization

“A universal weakness of humanity is to equate the strength of an argument with their opinion of its maker.”
― Iain Gately, Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization