Skip to main content
My Favorite Pipe Smoking Quotes!

My Favorite Pipe Smoking Quotes!

Posted by Eddie Gray on Aug 1st 2018

Greetings from The Pipe Nook! I hope you've had time recently to smoke your pipe, and to reflect on the many blessings in life. Recently, I've been compiling a list of some of my favorite quotations in regards to pipe smoking, which I thought would be fun to share with you. The first of these has even found its way onto the back of my business cards. So without further ado, here's the current list!

“The pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouth of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation, contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected.”
-William Makepeace Thackeray, from “The Social Pipe”

“Nowhere in the world will such a brotherly feeling of confidence be experienced as amongst those who sit together smoking their pipes.”
- The Results and Merits of Tobacco, 1844, Doctor Barnstein

“A pipe is the fountain of contemplation, the source of pleasure, the companion of the wise; and the man who smokes, thinks like a philosopher and acts like a Samaritan.”
-Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

“I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgement in all human affairs.”
-Albert Einstein, 1950

“The fact is, squire, the moment a man takes to a pipe, he becomes a philosopher. It’s the poor man’s friend; it calms the mind, soothes the temper, and makes a man patient under difficulties. It has made more good men, good husbands, kind masters, indulgent fathers, than any other blessed thing on this universal earth.”
-Sam Slick, the clockmaker

"If you can't send money, send tobacco."
-George Washington to the Continental Congress, 1776

"I toiled after it, sir, as some men toil after virtue."
-Charles Lamb, when asked how he became such a prodigious pipe smoker

"As the priest is characterized by his cassock, so the smoker by his pipe. The way in which he holds it, raises it to his lips, and knocks out the ashes, reveals his personality, habits, passions, and even his thoughts."
-E. Th. A. Hoffmann

"...pipe smoking is properly an intellectual exercise."
-Christopher Morley, 1916

“There is no composing draught like the draught through the tube of a pipe.”
-Captain Frederick Marryatt

“A pipe is to the troubled soul what caresses of a mother are for her suffering child.”
-Indian Proverb

“I hated tobacco. I could have almost lent my support to any institution that had for its object the putting of tobacco smokers to death…I now feel that smoking in moderation is a comfortable and laudable practice, and is productive of good. There is no more harm in a pipe than in a cup of tea. You may poison yourself by drinking too much green tea, and kill yourself by eating too many beefsteaks. For my part, I consider that tobacco, in moderation, is a sweetener and equalizer of the temper.”
-Thomas Henry Huxley

“There is nothing like being left alone . . . to walk peacefully with oneself in the woods. To boil one's coffee and fill one's pipe, and to think idly and slowly as one does it.”
-Knut Hamsun

"On land, on sea, at home, abroad,
I smoke my pipe and worship God."
-Johann Sebastian Bach

I hope you enjoyed reading this list as much as I enjoyed compiling it!

Keep 'em lit,

Eddie Gray