I was once the wine, and you the wineglass. I was once alive, when you held me. God became the glass: All things left were emptiness.

A poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflections in the glass, and our imagination adds the atoms. The glass is a distillation of the Earth's rocks, and in its composition we see the secrets of the universe's age, and the evolution of stars. What strange arrays of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization: all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts — physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on — remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!

Sparkling and bright in liquid light
Does the wine our goblets gleam in;
With hue as red as the rosy bed
Which a bee would choose to dream in.
Then fill to-night, with hearts as light
To loves as gay and fleeting
As bubbles that swim on the beaker’s brim
And break on the lips while meeting.

It seems there is something spiritual in wine.

No wine for me. Strange enough things happen when my head is clear. I want to know the difference.

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

I like on the table,
when we're speaking,
the light of a bottle
of intelligent wine.

I had a rare wine in my blood. Expiation was over, guilt washed out, terror canceled.

As a little drop of water added to a quantity of wine is completely dispersed and takes on the color and taste of wine, as red-hot iron becomes like molten fire losing its original form, as air when it is inundated with the sun’s light is transformed into total splendor and clarity so that it no longer seems illuminated but, rather, seems to be light itself, so I felt myself die of tender liquefaction, and I had only the strength left to murmur the words of the psalm: “Behold my bosom is like new wine, sealed, which bursts new vessels,” and suddenly I saw a brilliant light and in it a saffron-colored form which flamed up in a sweet and shining fire, and that splendid light spread through all the shining fire, and this shining fire through that golden form and that brilliant light and that shining fire through the whole form.

A bottle of wine was good company.

Fill ev'ry glass, for wine inspires us, And fires us With courage, love and joy. Women and wine should life employ. Is there ought else on earth desirous?

As you live Deeper in the Heart, the Mirror gets clearer and cleaner.

The cup of life is not so shallow That we have drained the best That all the wine at once we swallow And lees make all the rest.

O the clear moon's speckless, silvery night!
When filling thy cup, be sure to fill it quite!
Strive not for frothy fame or bubble wealth!
A passing dream—
A flashing flint—
A shadow's flight! O what is knowledge, fine and superfine?
To innocent and simple joys resign!
To be myself and in contentment face
A valley of clouds—
a sweet-toned ch'in—
A jug of wine!