Bread is a whole lot more than a mere food. A goodly loaf is the staff of life, as someone wise once said. The vital importance of bread is clear when you realise how many people around the world have coined sayings about bread in all its hearty, fragrant, comforting, healthy wonderfulness. You just don’t get the same flurry of wit and wisdom written about, say, cornflakes or cheese or fries. Here are 24 of our favourite bread quotes.

The things wise people say about bread

1. “How can a nation be great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?” American TV chef and author Julia Child
2. “There is not a thing that is more positive than bread.” The Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky
3. “With a piece of bread in your hand you’ll find paradise under a pine tree.” Russian Proverb
4. “Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.” James Beard, the cook book author
5. “The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight.” Mary F.K. Fisher, the American food writer
6. “Two things only the people desire: bread, and the circus games.” Juvenal, the Ancient Roman poet
7. “If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars and all the heavens.” The poet Robert Browning
8. “Give me yesterday’s Bread, this Day’s Flesh, and last Year’s Cyder.” Pennsylvania President Benjamin Franklin
9. “I judge a restaurant by the bread and by the coffee.” Actor Burt Lancaster
10. “For less than the cost of a Big Mac, fries and a Coke, you can buy a loaf of fresh bread and some good cheese or roast beef, which you will enjoy much more.” Steve Albini the singer-songwriter
11. “With bread all sorrows are less” The character Sancho Panza in Don Quixote
12. “Blues is to jazz what yeast is to bread. Without it, it’s flat.” Carmen McRae the jazz singer
13. “Better dry bread in peacetime than meat in wartime.” Hungarian Proverb
14. “Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread.” The diplomat and poet Pablo Neruda
15. “If I survive, I will spend my whole life at the oven door seeing that no one is denied bread and, so as to give a lesson of charity, especially those who did not bring flour.” Jose Marti the Spanish poet
16. “Without bread all is misery.” William Cobbett, journalist
17. ‘A loaf of bread,’ the Walrus said, ‘is what we chiefly need: Pepper and vinegar besides are very good indeed.’” Author Lewis Carroll
18. “Bread is the king of the table and all else is merely the court that surrounds the king.” The American novelist Louis Bromfield
19. “A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou.” Omar Khayyam the poet, astronomer, astrologer, physician, philosopher and mathematician
20. “Where there’s no law, there’s no bread.” Benjamin Franklin again
21. “Man cannot live by bread alone. He needs peanut butter.” James A. Garfield, US president
22. “Avoid those who don’t like bread and children.” Swiss Proverb
23. “Rather a piece of bread with a happy heart than wealth with grief.” Egyptian Proverb
24. “Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.” Nelson Mandela

If you’re in the foodservice industry, appreciate great breads as much as we do, and are keen to delight your customers, we’ll send you a big box full of fragrant samples for you to test drive. No charge. Sent with love.