Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Inn, Tavern
You may go to Carlisle’s and to Almanac’s too;
And I’ll give you my Head if you find such a Host,
For Coffee, Tea, Chocolate, Butter, or Toast;
How he welcomes at once all the World and his Wife,
And how civil to Folks he ne’er saw in his Life.
Anstey—New Bath Guide. Fourth Ed. (1767). P. 130. Phrase “the world and his wife” also found in Swift—Polite Conversation. Third Dialogue. Another version “All the world and Little Billing.” A parish in Northamptonshire.
He who has not been at a tavern knows not what a paradise it is. O holy tavern! O miraculous tavern!—holy, because no carking cares are there, nor weariness, nor pain; and miraculous, because of the spits, which themselves turn round and round!
Aretino—Quoted by Longfellow in Hyperion. Bk. III. Ch. II.
He had scarcely gone a short league, when Fortune, that was conducting his affairs from good to better, discovered to him the road, where he also espied an Inn. Sancho positively maintained it was an Inn, and his master that it was a castle; and the dispute lasted so long that they arrived there before it was determined.
Cervantes—Don Quixote. Pt. I. Ch. XV.
Now musing o’er the changing scene
Farmers behind the tavern screen
Collect; with elbows idly press’d
On hob, reclines the corner’s guest,
Reading the news to mark again
The bankrupt lists or price of grain.
Puffing the while his red-tipt pipe
He dreams o’er troubles nearly ripe,
Yet, winter’s leisure to regale,
Hopes better times, and sips his ale.
Clare—Shepherd’s Calendar.
Alone the varying road of life,
In calm content, in toil or strife,
At morn or noon, by night or day,
As time conducts him on his way,
How oft doth man, by care oppressed,
Find in an Inn a place of rest.
Wm. Combe—Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque. Canto IX. L. 1.
Where’er his fancy bids him roam,
In ev’ry Inn he finds a home—
*****
Will not an Inn his cares beguile,
Where on each face he sees a smile?
Wm. Combe—Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque. Canto IX. L. 13.
Where you have friends you should not go to inns.
George Eliot—Agatha.
There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.
Samuel Johnson—Boswell’s Life of Johnson. (1776).
Souls of poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Keats—Mermaid Tavern.
The atmosphere
Breathes rest and comfort and the many chambers
Seem full of welcomes.
Longfellow—Masque of Pandora. Pt. V. L. 33.
A region of repose it seems,
A place of slumber and of dreams.
Longfellow—Tales of a Wayside Inn. Pt. I. Prelude. L. 18.
In the worst inn’s worst room, with mat half hung.
Pope—Moral Essays. Ep. 3. L. 299.
Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?
Henry IV. Pt. I. Act III. Sc. 3. L. 92.
The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day:
Now spurs the lated traveler apace
To gain the timely inn.
Macbeth. Act III. Sc. 3. L. 7.
Whoe’er has travel’d life’s dull round,
Where’er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found
The warmest welcome, at an inn.
Shenstone—Written at an Inn at Henley. Different version in Dodsley’s Collection.
What care if the day
Be turned to gray,
What care if the night come soon!
We may choose the pace
Who bow for grace,
At the Inn of the Silver Moon.
Herman Knickerbocker Vielé—The Good Inn.